After that, Maze took me to be outfitted in my chest armour of ultimate doom, and all the gear I’m expected to carry. A breather, of course, and a good wad of rations and thin water bottles and a firelighter because I’d specifically requested one (I’m so over making fires by rubbing two sticks together). The gun, and a spare charge pack for it. A small and a large relay beacon – one I can wear and one I’ll be holding which is very powerful but they were worried it wouldn’t come through with me. Maze carted that about for me – it must have weighed twenty kilos.
He was very much in control of himself, calm and relaxed on the surface at least, even when he was telling me what he wanted me to do if he didn’t come through with me. Basically get off the platform and get back on, since that might be all that was required. If not, head for the next platform. He’d made me read through all the information about Cruzatch before we came to Muina, which hadn’t really made me more comfortable about being anywhere near them.
"You’re facing up to this very well," he said, finally. "But I know that you must be nervous."
I shrugged. "Would be stupid not to be. But it’s got to be easier than last time, after all, even if I get stuck there by myself."
He sighed, and gave me a quick hug (which made me feel hot all over – it’s very different when Maze does that to when Lohn does). "The first few moments after arrival will be critical," he said. "You will have the advantage of surprise – don’t waste it."
We met up with the rest of First Squad and levitated over to the amphitheatre, where the other squads were waiting with a mix of greensuits and greysuits. I was totally distracted by tiny flakes of white swirling and drifting around us as we flew. Two trips to Thredbo hasn’t made snow any less of a novelty to me and I said as we dropped down to the amphitheatre: "We have to have an epic snowball fight if it gets deep enough."
"The frozen rain?" Lohn asked. Tare doesn’t have a word for snow, though I guess old Muinan must. I’d taught them the Earth word for snow instead. "How do you fight with it?"
"You scrunch it into balls and throw it at each other. And you can make forts to hide behind. But for fun," I emphasised, smiling hello to everyone waiting about in the cold. "Not to figure out the most efficient way to kill things in snowy places or anything."
Maze shook his head slightly – I think he thought I was putting on a brave face or something – but said: "All right – if there’s enough snow we’ll have an epic ball of snow fight. Ready now?"
I nodded, and he brought me into mission channel, adding over it: "We’ve all been fully briefed. Let’s do this."
Four squads are a lot of people, and the amount of machinery which has been installed in the platform room, along with various technicians, made it feel quite close and cramped. But warmer than up top, at least.
"Verifying equipment function," said the one technician who was in the main mission channel.
Maze handed me back the heavier relay, and then had me take the carting Cass about position, and bound our suits together as best he could with my chest armour interfering. Zee got up on the platform with an even more powerful drone, since they were hoping I might bring everything through which was on the platform, whether or not I was touching it.
"Clear to begin," said one of the bluesuits over the mission channel, and Maze lifted us both up and dropped down on the platform.
It worked. Even to the point of bringing Zee and the drone through with us. Maze let his breath out, and he and Zee shared a look of total relief, even as they both reacted to this weird, crystalline web filling the room. It made a little dome over the top of the platform, and was particularly thick on the side which was broken, hiding the cisterns below.
There were two Cruzatch, over by the room’s entrance, but before they could do anything they had to hastily dodge the pieces of rubble and shattered wall Maze threw at them. The crystalline stuff snapped and broke apart.
"Blocking the entrance till we know more about what this is," Maze said, already busily doing so. He just shoved the Cruzatch out with the slabs of fallen wall and then piled the stone up.
While he was busy fishing up bits of fallen stone and preventing the Cruzatch from getting back into the room, Zee extruded a bit of her uniform into a thin cloth and wrapped it around one end of a stick of broken crystal, setting it there like a handgrip.
"Three or four dozen in the immediate area," Zee said, taking the heavy relay from me and handing me the stick of crystal. "We’ll hold them out of the room. Bring back the rest of the squad, and get some kind of initial impression on this."
Maze swept a corner of the room clear and shifted us and the big drone off the platform. "Satellite signal not reaching," Zee told him, and he nodded and then picked me up physically and dropped me back on the platform.
I shifted back to Pandora immediately, the suddenness of it a bit disorienting since I’d expected a delay. Blinking, I looked around at the circle of waiting Setari, then slid back off the platform, saying rapidly: "Forty Cruzatch, and the room is full of crystal – some kind of trap. Maze wants to know what it is. He’s barricaded the entrance."
Ruuel was conveniently nearby, so I handed the stick to him as a greysuit materialised at my elbow and insisted on shining a light in my eyes and making me follow it. The rest of First Squad climbed on the platform and – when the greysuit said they couldn’t see any immediate impact on me – Second Squad joined them.
The faintest brush of fingers on my arm brought my attention back to Ruuel, who had enhanced and now touched one bare finger very lightly to the crystal stick. He was still looking tired, but calmly analytical as he gazed down at the crystal.
"Good instinct," he said, at last. "The elementals – fire, light, electricity particularly – will cause it to become a gas. Not poisonous. The intention of this is to capture."
"Understood," Grif from Second Squad said, and I found myself lifted back on the platform, Ketzaren and Alay flanking me even before my feet touched the stone.
The next couple of minutes were pretty frantic. Cruzatch are dangerous close-combat fighters, and their claws can cut through things: not quite as easily as a light-sabre, but enough to mean that Maze’s barricade wasn’t holding. And there were dozens of the things. The telekinetics took point, using the splintering rock to force them backward, out of the trapped room. I was sent straight back to Pandora, to bring Third and Fourth Squad, and the Setari went full-out once they were out of the range of the crystal.
Ketzaren and Alay kept me close, but moved me out of the platform room, even though Maze had broken up most of the crystal and shoved the pieces off to one side. By the time I got outside the battle was aerial, and the Cruzatch were retreating.
"Don’t pursue individually," Maze said, and the Setari dropped down to gather in the very centre of Kalasa, then broke into two – Second and Third staying at the central point with me, while First and Fourth vanished into a big building about four levels up.
I didn’t like that: listening to Maze’s occasional terse instructions but not able to see what was happening. The Cruzatch tried to ambush them, and it sounded like it got pretty hairy for a couple of moments. I guess my expression mustn’t have been particularly guarded – First and Fourth Squad are most of the people I care about on this world – because Taarel put her hand on my shoulder for a moment and smiled at me, eyes full of confidence and reassurance. She really is so very kingly.