"Squad leader," he told the muscle armour 'ware. A green go-ahead dot appeared in the communication section of the tactical display. "Leol. Couple of our friends on board. Suzi, and that Mindstar bastard, Mandel." He was aware of Reiger's mental flare of excitement, the unclean glee.
"Yeah? Well don't fuck up like last time, my boy, or I'll kick your arse into orbit," Reiger said.
"Not a chance. He pulled a fast one back in the Prezda, that's all, won't work twice."
"OK, well, get this straight, that bitch Suzi is mine."
"Sure thing, Leol."
"Where is she?"
"Upper deck, twenty metres from the prow."
"What about the Fielder girl?"
"Cabin on the lower gondola deck, right at the stern." He heard Leol Reiger issuing a stream of instructions to the rest of the squad. There were none for him, Reiger was leaving him free to deal with Mandel.
He saw the first two squad members were about twenty metres from the gondola, actually under the bulk of the airship's vast fuselage. The leader lifted his Lockheed rip gun, and fired at the target window. The shot was like a rigid bolt of lightning, two metres long. A section of the gondola hull around the oblong window simply blew apart, leaving a jagged gap three metres wide.
The first squad member flew straight in, never even touching the sharp composite fangs round the edge of the gap. The rest of the squad were clustering round outside, passing through the gap one at a time, like black, hyped-up hornets sliding into their nest.
Chad tilted his jockey-stick, veering off to one side. The jetpack nozzles behind his shoulders rotated slightly, realigning him. He brought his own rip gun up. The armour's muscle-band lining made the movement effortless. A targeting graphic traversed the side of the gondola. He halted the motion when it had centred on a window a couple of metres behind Mandel. He fired.
The window vaporized instantly, enveloped in a blinding fireball. Chad's photon lamp blanked out for a second, protecting his eyes from the violent light burst. He jigged about in the blastwave.
When his vision came back on line the window and its surround was a rough-edged crater. A jumble of broken struts and disfigured decking lay inside.
He twisted the jockey-stick for full acceleration, heading straight for it. Another coherent lightning bolt from the rip gun tore out a chunk of the cabin's interior wall. A cloud of scorched fragments fluttered round him and he slammed in through the hole he'd made. He jerked the jockey-stick back savagely, killing speed. His feet landed on the decking, and he ran at the narrow rent in the cabin wall ahead.
The wall seemed to be made out of kelpboard, his muscle armour punching through into the gondola's central corridor without even slowing him.
His photon amp penetrated the gloom beyond. Frail biolum light illuminated the corridor, flat sheer planes of floor, walls, and ceiling extending into ambiguous distance.
For one unnerving moment his eyes tricked him into believing it went on for ever.
The beast was waiting. Snarling, Chad brought the rip gun up, target graphics zeroing its open jaw. The bolt overloaded his photon amp again.
It was Suzi, lying on the corridor floor, her chest torn apart by the rip bolt. The violation had blackened her flesh and singed her ribs, flinging her slight body backwards to sprawl against a wall. Flames licked at her shellsuit.
Mandel was standing behind her, yelling in torment at the sight. He looked at Chad, then turned and ran.
"No good!" Chad cried jubilantly. His armour's external speaker boomed the words down the corridor after the fleeing man. "Nowhere you can hide from me, shithead!"
Mandel's mind gibbered in terror. He disappeared through a door at the end of the corridor.
Chad charged after him, rip gun blowing the door into splinters. There was another corridor behind; Mandel was halfway down it. "You're not going to die quick, Mandel. It's going to take a long time after I catch you. A real long time."
"I know," Mandel said as he rushed through the door at the end of the corridor.
Chad shouted an unintelligible curse of rage. Fucking typical smartarse answer. He sent a rip bolt spearing into the door. "I can see your mind, Mandel. You're scared shitless, and it hasn't even begun yet."
There was another corridor waiting for him. He fired off a barrage of rip gun bolts, slamming them into walls and doors. Revelling in the unstoppable vandalism, the keening of terror in Mandel's mind at each shot. His tireless armoured feet pounded on the decking, leaving sharp indentations.
Mandel was disappearing through a door ahead of him. Just how long was this airship? The tactical display was wavering, out of focus, colours smearing together into an oil rainbow film over his vision.
Crashing through the door. Another corridor. Shorter this time, the door at the far end still closing. A blink of Mandel, face red, wheezing, stumbling on, energized by adrenalin alone.
"Going to catch you, Mandel. Real soon. And when I do it's going to be worse than you could believe."
"I'm relying on it, Chad."
The voice was sensed rather than heard, desperately weary.
"Shithead!" Chad used the armour's speaker like a sonic cannon. He hit the door full on, composite crumpling under the impact. The corridor was barely fifteen metres long.
Mandel was shutting the door at the other end.
Chad sprinted for him, the armour's muscle bands whining softly. He was closer now, much closer, and Mandel was tiring. Past the door, so flimsy it was virtually unnoticeable. The next corridor, ten metres long. Five quick steps. Mandel's mind so near he could feel sweaty skin, labouring heart, burning lungs.
"Nowhere in this universe you can hide from me," Chad crowed.
"I'm not hiding from you, Chad, I'm inside you. You've been running through your own mind, an eidolonic reality."
Chad opened the door. There was a five-metre corridor in front of him. An armoured figure opening the door at the far end. What the fuck…? Mandel trying to fool him. "Not good enough any more, shithead!"
"It's powered by your own anger, Chad. This is what you yearn for. I grant it to you, I surrender to you."
The door behind Chad swung shut in tandem with the one he was looking at. He was alone in the corridor; walls shrinking, biolums dimming. "Think I'm falling for that? Your last mistake, Mandel."
"Stop hating me and you're free. Can you do that, Chad?"
Chad flung himself at the door ahead. Triumphant. "Die, shithead!"
"I'm right behind you."
The door shattered. It was like being caught between two mirrors. Infinite multiples of a muscle armour suit jumping through the door, arms outstretched, legs bent, long composite splinters spraying out all around. The same ahead, the same behind. Slowing. Freezing—
— reality flickered—
— Greg staggered against a wall. A groan escaping from his mouth.
"Bollocks, hey, you OK now?" Suzi asked. Her taut anxious face peering at him through blood-coloured mist.
"Yeah," he croaked.
"Sure, you look it."
He swung his head about, focusing. A neurohormone hangover was burning like napalm inside his skull. They were at the end of a gondola corridor. The sign on the door ahead read DINING-ROOM. "Where are we?"
"Upper deck, at the stern. I think. Jesus, Greg, I reckon I got corridor-phobia after that. Couldn't hardly tell if what I was seeing was real or not. What happened?"
"I suckered Chad into an eidoloscape, looped him in his own power fantasy. Think of it as cephalic judo."