EIGHT TWO KILLER

1563 4D

With a thump of pain, the toe of a boot in Andrew‘s backside woke him back to the corridor. A deep voice rumbled, “Get off your ass, man, and get up topside. What’s the matter, you sick? I don’t see any holes or toasty spots. Come on, move it. And if that droid is yours, tell him to grab a load and follow you.”

Andrew clambered to hands and knees, and stood up. To his relief, the bout of fever had passed. A big man with a nasty, gap-toothed grimace now faced him, armed with a pair of huge beam guns and laden with ammo pods.

Without a word, Jeddin helped him wobble to the now-depleted pile of beamers to select weapons. Jeddin said in a low tone, “For now I’ll play it like a regular andro would. Easier with guys like this.”

As they collected other essentials, the voice harried him. “Move, move! I want those sad butts of yours in the power switch matrix now, ahead of me. And you, droid, you better keep out of harm’s way when the heat’s on, you hear me?”

“This is Warren,” Angie said cheerfully. “He’s a top barker, ten folks under him. Now you’re his. Enjoy the company.”

“How long was I asleep?” Andrew murmured to Angie as he shouldered a loaded carapiece.

“A few minutes, that’s all. Here’s a little nutrient to get your systems back in shape. No stims yet. And, boy, you do have an interesting chem profile.”

Andrew‘s balance returned, and his walk steadied as he got into the lift. Lights had cut back to a crepuscular glow that made the understreets feel like a deep forest, a forest of stone, grown too heavy and dense to live in, where the air weighed more than blood.

Warren and Jeddin piled in behind Andrew with monstrous loads of ammunition and armor. The lift shuddered. Warren said, “Sucking Four Hundred.” The lift rose. Andrew stole a quick look at Jeddin‘s face, out of Warren‘s line of sight; Jeddin grinned.

They trundled out into electric hell. Ozone bit Andrew‘s nostrils and singed his eyes. He slammed down his visor. The space they stood in rose into a dark, soaring dome penetrated thickly by ladders, catwalks, gigantic molecular switches that spat green hairs in Andrew‘s visor display, conduits the diameter of his waist, bundles of smaller lines that hosed and snaked here and there like multicolored vines and trees, and layer on layer of smoke and haze. The air hummed and shook. Power conduits and their accompanying information and control lines rose like fountains of metal and polyglass out of openings in the gridded floor decking to twine, spread, and vanish into near-invisible openings in the dome far above. Andrew and Warren stood on a deck down through which more layers of nebulous light and darkness shrouded vague structures in the gloom.

“This is Trans Three,” Warren said, loud in Andrew‘s helm. “The fucking corpos took Trans One, and we fell back here. Trans Two is still okay.” Warren‘s ferocious grin showed a long spread of huge square teeth. “And they found out the shuckass pulsers won’t work in here. So, you ready to play slag and bag, slowcock?”

“Yeah.” Andrew looked up. He’d worked in here once before, installing the opticals in some new conduit tunnels to the spaceport. He tried to trace them in the visual confusion, but lost track of the lines he knew.

“Come on. We got to get over to the west side. That’s where there’s been trouble. Warble Six, Chang Two here. Gotta volunteer and a pack droid. Warble Six. Warble Six, anybody home?”

“Chang Two, Warble Three. Get to Point Eight Two Killer. We’re there. Off.”

“Shit, what happened?” Warren‘s shoulders sagged under his load. “Warble Six were my guys.”

They got to Eight Two Killer, a bare cubby high in the west wall of the dome, to find it filled with about twenty filthy and exhausted fighters. Warren dumped his load of gear on the floor and leaned back against the wall. “Where’s Warble Six?”

A haggard officer, skin stretched thin over high cheekbones, spoke in a monotone. “They’re dead. We’re all that’s left up here now. The corpos have Trans One, the regionals have Trans Two, and they’re lining up for an attack on this section. When they get it, they’ll be able to cut power wherever they want to. Already they’ve made sure we can’t cut their power from here. This thing is almost over, and we’ve lost it.”

Warren sat down and stared, his wide mouth in a long downturned line. Andrew looked around at the men and women in brown, sprawled and hunched in the room. One man, his tousled black hair divided by a wide scab that ran from his forehead to behind his left ear, let his head loll back, his eyes shut, and drew a choked breath.

Two women sitting on the floor leaned against each other, arms around shoulders; one laid her hand tenderly on the other’s knee, where a jagged rip in the brown coverall showed an improvised bandage. Another man endlessly worked the manual feeder on his beamer, trying vainly to eject a shell, muttering, “Shit, shit,” with each attempt.

The image of the imprisoned Unagrist flashed through Andrew‘s mind: Here they would be, melded to the walls of the City, drooping with exhaustion, gargling for air, hand stroking a wound, struggling with a weapon, endlessly repeating their last gestures. Every time some wanderer happened into this small chamber with its bare stone walls and floor and ceiling, they would all begin again their final and unending routines of desperate hope.

There was no hope. He removed his helm and lowered his head, and the City‘s weight pressed him down into darkness, drained him dry, hardened him, drove out all the feeling that had survived from his torments and violations and losses. A rumble echoed outside the cubby. Angie muttered something; at least Turiosten was silent. It was nearly over.