Pestle (8)
Mar. 29th, 2011 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolPart Eight. Fighty fighty.
The breeze of the sphere decompressing became a strong wind, and then a typhoon. I reached a leg out of my side corridor and hooked it in the nearest ladder rung to stabilize myself. Lopez jerked past me, caught up in the wind; I grabbed him by the handle on his jetpack and hung on for dear life.
"We need to lay down a field of fire straight down the corridor!" I shouted into my comm.
"Why?" asked Gray Gretchen from somewhere back behind me. "We can't see anything!"
"This is our last chance to catch them unawares!" I shouted. "They can't delay coming inside because the sphere is going to roll over them! They're coming through now!" Practicing what I preached, I pulled my blaster rifle, steaded it on Lopez's shoulder, and started shooting down the hall.
"Hey! Cut it out!" shrieked Lopez, possibly upset at the amount of muzzle flash going on inches from his facemask. Nevertheless, to the credit of my Weasard engineer, he managed to pull his own blaster pistol and added to my field of fire. Streaks of orange shot down the hall from behind us as well, indicating Gray Gretchen had seen the sense of my suggestion, and a sustained white beam as thick as my arm lanced along the corridor as well.
"Wow," marveled Lopez, "Hoggrid has a maser. How did he get that into his encounter suit? And where's the power coming from?" Dammit, Lopez, I thought to myself; if curiosity doesn't kill you then I'm likely to.
Orange bolts shot back up the corridor. McMillan's men were firing back. I pulled Lopez out of harm's way but continued to lay suppressing fire down the hall. I saw the white start to fade out of Hoggrid's maser beam as the air in the hall dropped in pressure – less intervening medium meant fewer molecules to excite. I knew it was still there, though, and silently reminded myself to avoid that part of the hall.
"Jackpot," whispered Swami, "I'm close enough to the Round Door for a visual. Watching them now. You've burned two and a third is stuck outside trying to get in. Three more are in the bay. One is a Sirrip and he's already in a side corridor; the others are trying to work the monitor. No sign of Hot Henry."
"They must have a comm," I replied. "Can you intercept it?"
"I intercepted it as soon as they entered," Swami replied, perhaps a little pridefully. "The trick is decrypting it. I'm going to work on that while observing. Jackpot, the monitor is on the lower right quadrant of the corridor relative to your position."
The air was now almost gone from the sphere; it was no longer a struggle to hold on. I let go of Lopez. "I'm gonna rush 'em," I told him. "You brake my fall; I don't want to hit bottom headfirst."
"A head injury could only improve your smarts *and* your looks," sneered Lopez, but when I broke cover from the side corridor he was right behind me. In this part of the Grand Hall, 'downward' gravity was fairly light; the pull towards the Round Door was not very strong. I faced straight down and pushed off the ladder rungs to get my acceleration up. I laid down blaster fire at the lower right corner of the corridor and push/ran as hard as I could.
I felt Lopez leap onto my jetpack and hang on. "Keep firing at the Round Door!" I yelled at Gray Gretchen and Hoggrid. "And come join us, because things are going to get ugly!"
Lopez patched into my jetpack. "Boss," he said, "I'm going to give you a boost, so don't drop your goo, okay?" He fired a maximum delta-vee burst from my pack, jerking his tail out of the way of the burn at the last second. Between the rockets and my leg-power, we were soon hurtling down the Grant Hall at high speeds. Lopez played with the attitude on the jets to keep us from crashing into a wall; in rotational gravity, there's just as much pull to the side as there is down.
Orange bolts flew all around me. Suddenly light banished the darkness of the hall in front of me; I could see every conduit and side-passage, and a frenzy of activity in the bay at the end. Good old Muskie had gotten the spot turned around to blind the intruders. He was also making a nice target of himself, something I wasn't going to scold him over as long as enemy blasters were trying to choose which of us to aim for.
I hurtled down the hall, now falling as fast as terminal velocity on Earth. I straightened my legs, flying rifle-first down the Grand Hall. Lopez turned himself around on my jetpack, his tail whacking the back of my helmet. Then he pulled some plasline and a carabiner out of his pouches and secured his belt to my pack. We were now a single lump of mass falling towards the round door.
I could see the door was still open and there was a figure in it. I drew a bead on it and burned its leg. More than likely the casualty had one of those self-sealing suits, but that would be small comfort to his leg. I saw the fellow grab the edge of the door but fail to fully pull himself inside.
Now we were falling past Swami and Muskie. Just as we passed by their corridor, an orange bolt streaked out of cover near the Round Door and blew up Muskie's spotlight. It exploded in a million pieces and tore a hole in Muskie's suit. He started whooping and screaming as the suit integrity seals started inflating, and I saw Swami rummage for a patch kit. Muskie was such a Nancy; you'd think the guy never got a holed suit before.
"Less falling please," I barked at Lopez. "Sorry, boss," he said and toggled my jetpack off. I could make out two targets still in the bay, not counting the wounded guy still trying to crawl through the Round Door. It was harder to make out targets now that the spotlight was out. Also, I realized, there was less sunlight coming in through the hatch. The Sphere was rolling over.
One of the targets suddenly lost an arm. Haggrid's maser was now completely invisible. The guy's suit did its job as far as sealing up the breach, but it couldn't do anything for the amputation. He staggered for a side passage, the inside of his facemask a solid red smear, and collapsed.
Things were coming to a head very, very quickly. "Even less falling!" I shouted. "All right, don't coat your longjohns," groused Lopez. "Down with gravity, aye." The Weasard toggled his own jetpack, a blast of hot gas burning over my head, and we began to decelerate.
A shadow fell over the unlucky bastard in the Round Door. His hands clutched at the edge of the doorframe and then relaxed, his body slumping. I realized that the Sphere had rolled all the way over, and for all practical purposes the bottom half of his body had ceased to exist.
The guy at the monitor shot me, an orange beam from his blaster grazing the shoulder of my suit. My ears immediately popped as the self-inflating seals deployed. I had to drop my blaster rifle as that arm went numb, but I still had my reciprocating sword out. We fell the last ten meters and the tip of my sword clawed into his facemask. There's nothing a suit can do for you when you hole a facemask; bad things happened to his head as I hit the back of the bulkhead heavily. We were down.
Lopez, whose fall had been cushioned by me, uncoupled us and stood up. Muskie and Swami came swarming down the ladders. Light began to dawn through the Round Door again; the period of time when the doors were mated within the groove was very short indeed. As the edge of the Apex Sphere lifted up out of the groove, the compressed part of the dead enemy's body remained stuck to the cold stony surface outside; the part of his body that appeared whole was dragged out of sight and not seen again.
Swami's hands played over the console. The three leaves of the round door slid shut, and the environmental systems cranked up. Warm air refilled the bay. Muskie and Lopez propped me up and Lopez unsealed my helmet. "You okay, boss?" my Weasard asked, his nose twitching with concern.
I felt like I had just survived a Venusian enema. "You oughta see the other guy," I said. I looked over at the guy whose helmet had blown out. "No, on second thought, you probably don't wanna see that." My entire left shoulder had stiffened up; likely I had significant burns from the blaster there and just wasn't feeling the pain yet.
The whine of blaster fire echoed down the Grand Hall. It was just when I tried to get up that the pain decided to make an appearance. "You stay still for a minute, buddy," said Lopez, fumbling with a medpack.
Swami continued punching at the monitor with his left hand while thumbing his comm with his right. "Gray Gretchen, talk to me," he said.
"GRAY GRETCHEN IS DEAD," said Hoggrid flatly. "SIRRIPS ARE VERY QUICK. THIS ONE CAME OUT OF A SIDE PASSAGE, GRABBED HER FROM BEHIND, TORE HER SUIT OPEN AND SQUEEZED HER INTO ITS MOUTHS LIKE A PROTEIN POUCH."
"I think he means some of those Zero-G ration packs, Lopez," I said. "I love those."
"The turkey flavored ones are the best," Lopez agreed.
Swami frowned. "I can't help but notice, Hoggrid," he said, "the absence of any evidence of you shooting at the Sirrip."
"THE SIRRIP HAS INVOKED THE ANCIENT TRUCE BETWEEN SIRRIP AND BETELLIANS," Hoggrid said. "I REGRET THAT I CANNOT INTERFERE."
"I did not know about any such truce prior to now," Swami said lightly. "That would have been nice to know. Ah, well. May I assume that it is coming for us now?"
"OH, YES," Hoggrid replied dispassionately.
"Great," said Muskie, standing up and putting his back to a wall. His eyes were very wide. "That's just great." Without another word, he fled into a dark passage behind him, leaving me, Lopez and Swami by the Round Door console.
Civilians.
The Sirrip came. Sirrips are tripedal, and its principle means of locomotion is to wheel along with surprising speed. This Sirrip was used to strange gravity configurations, and each of its feet clutched at the ladder rungs with its long hooked toes; it rolled down to the bay almost as fast as I had fallen. The Sirrip was blood red in color and didn't seem to need or want a vacuum suit. Its body was studded with orifices, each ringed with small sharp teeth, and its three arms were muscular and oddly jointed. In a few places I saw its body marred with recent scorch marks, likely from blaster fire. The wounds didn't seem to be slowing it down.
It dropped to the bulkhead, standing upon the Round Door itself, and turned to survey us. It didn't seem to have any eyes, but it studied us all the same. When it spoke, it used multiple mouths at the same time in a melodious harmony.
"Where is Number Four?" it said.
"Who? Muskie?" I asked. "He's around here somewhere. He's probably looking for the Cowarditorium."
"He might have needed to go to the Whiny Little Bitches' Room," Lopez added.
The Sirrip considered this. "Now you will surrender," it said. "Blasters only annoy. You give up blasters?"
Lopez looked like he was about to say something, but Swami stopped him. "Yes," he said. "We'll surrender." He confiscated Lopez's blaster pistol and tossed it over. "We want to cooperate anyway. You know how to open the round doors."
"McMillan very smart," sang the Sirrip. "McMillan teaches code. You Swami? You very smart. You know how to beat Swanturni defenses. "
Swami nodded. "With the code to the round doors, I can get us through to the main tomb," he said. "Let us live and the Javanite is yours."
The Sirrip angled the top part of its body, looking inquisitive. "You can beat Swanturni defenses?" it chirped. "We opened round door in main tomb. Some kind of trap. Everybody in transport die. You beat trap, you not get eaten."
Swami pointed at me and Lopez. "Add these guys in and it's a deal," he said. "All the Javanite will be for you."
"Not Number Four," said the Sirrip. "Still hungry. McMillan not bring crew for feedings."
"You catch it, you keep it," said Swami. He looked at the monitor.
"The doors are about to align," he said. "Want to do it now?"
The Sirrip did the head-cocking trick again. "You stay in bay. All of you. Bad things happen, happen to all."
"Naturally," said Swami.
The Sirrip went to a box near the door. It had a disk sticking out of it with spots of color spaced along the surface. The disk could be rotated to place color within a window of the box. The Sirrip rotated the disk until blue appeared.
"Hurry now," said Swami, studying the monitor. "Only a few seconds to go."
"What about disable trap?" warbled the Sirrip.
"That's what I've been doing," said Swami impatiently.
The Sirrip manipulated the second disk. The color showing in this window was silver.
"Three…two…one…now." Swami looked up from his monitor with interest.
The trifold leaves of the Round Door slid open with a hiss. A corresponding hiss came from the other side of the door, probably from the cigar's set. A bright light shone up the Grand Hall in a powerful beam.
"See?" said Swami. "We're all still alive." I noticed a fine bead of sweat at his hairline, but I decided to say nothing.
"Javanite," hummed the Sirrip. It leaned forward to peer into the beam…
…and suddenly it was gone. It seemed to be jerked off its three feet, drawn roughly into the beam of light, and sucked down into it. The Sirrip screamed, a series of arpeggios in harmony, but the sound of its voice faded quickly. Swami dived for the monitor and slapped a button; both doors hissed closed again.
"That worked," I said admiringly. "Did you have that bit planned out too?"
"No, I pretty much made that up as I went along," Swami admitted.
The breeze of the sphere decompressing became a strong wind, and then a typhoon. I reached a leg out of my side corridor and hooked it in the nearest ladder rung to stabilize myself. Lopez jerked past me, caught up in the wind; I grabbed him by the handle on his jetpack and hung on for dear life.
"We need to lay down a field of fire straight down the corridor!" I shouted into my comm.
"Why?" asked Gray Gretchen from somewhere back behind me. "We can't see anything!"
"This is our last chance to catch them unawares!" I shouted. "They can't delay coming inside because the sphere is going to roll over them! They're coming through now!" Practicing what I preached, I pulled my blaster rifle, steaded it on Lopez's shoulder, and started shooting down the hall.
"Hey! Cut it out!" shrieked Lopez, possibly upset at the amount of muzzle flash going on inches from his facemask. Nevertheless, to the credit of my Weasard engineer, he managed to pull his own blaster pistol and added to my field of fire. Streaks of orange shot down the hall from behind us as well, indicating Gray Gretchen had seen the sense of my suggestion, and a sustained white beam as thick as my arm lanced along the corridor as well.
"Wow," marveled Lopez, "Hoggrid has a maser. How did he get that into his encounter suit? And where's the power coming from?" Dammit, Lopez, I thought to myself; if curiosity doesn't kill you then I'm likely to.
Orange bolts shot back up the corridor. McMillan's men were firing back. I pulled Lopez out of harm's way but continued to lay suppressing fire down the hall. I saw the white start to fade out of Hoggrid's maser beam as the air in the hall dropped in pressure – less intervening medium meant fewer molecules to excite. I knew it was still there, though, and silently reminded myself to avoid that part of the hall.
"Jackpot," whispered Swami, "I'm close enough to the Round Door for a visual. Watching them now. You've burned two and a third is stuck outside trying to get in. Three more are in the bay. One is a Sirrip and he's already in a side corridor; the others are trying to work the monitor. No sign of Hot Henry."
"They must have a comm," I replied. "Can you intercept it?"
"I intercepted it as soon as they entered," Swami replied, perhaps a little pridefully. "The trick is decrypting it. I'm going to work on that while observing. Jackpot, the monitor is on the lower right quadrant of the corridor relative to your position."
The air was now almost gone from the sphere; it was no longer a struggle to hold on. I let go of Lopez. "I'm gonna rush 'em," I told him. "You brake my fall; I don't want to hit bottom headfirst."
"A head injury could only improve your smarts *and* your looks," sneered Lopez, but when I broke cover from the side corridor he was right behind me. In this part of the Grand Hall, 'downward' gravity was fairly light; the pull towards the Round Door was not very strong. I faced straight down and pushed off the ladder rungs to get my acceleration up. I laid down blaster fire at the lower right corner of the corridor and push/ran as hard as I could.
I felt Lopez leap onto my jetpack and hang on. "Keep firing at the Round Door!" I yelled at Gray Gretchen and Hoggrid. "And come join us, because things are going to get ugly!"
Lopez patched into my jetpack. "Boss," he said, "I'm going to give you a boost, so don't drop your goo, okay?" He fired a maximum delta-vee burst from my pack, jerking his tail out of the way of the burn at the last second. Between the rockets and my leg-power, we were soon hurtling down the Grant Hall at high speeds. Lopez played with the attitude on the jets to keep us from crashing into a wall; in rotational gravity, there's just as much pull to the side as there is down.
Orange bolts flew all around me. Suddenly light banished the darkness of the hall in front of me; I could see every conduit and side-passage, and a frenzy of activity in the bay at the end. Good old Muskie had gotten the spot turned around to blind the intruders. He was also making a nice target of himself, something I wasn't going to scold him over as long as enemy blasters were trying to choose which of us to aim for.
I hurtled down the hall, now falling as fast as terminal velocity on Earth. I straightened my legs, flying rifle-first down the Grand Hall. Lopez turned himself around on my jetpack, his tail whacking the back of my helmet. Then he pulled some plasline and a carabiner out of his pouches and secured his belt to my pack. We were now a single lump of mass falling towards the round door.
I could see the door was still open and there was a figure in it. I drew a bead on it and burned its leg. More than likely the casualty had one of those self-sealing suits, but that would be small comfort to his leg. I saw the fellow grab the edge of the door but fail to fully pull himself inside.
Now we were falling past Swami and Muskie. Just as we passed by their corridor, an orange bolt streaked out of cover near the Round Door and blew up Muskie's spotlight. It exploded in a million pieces and tore a hole in Muskie's suit. He started whooping and screaming as the suit integrity seals started inflating, and I saw Swami rummage for a patch kit. Muskie was such a Nancy; you'd think the guy never got a holed suit before.
"Less falling please," I barked at Lopez. "Sorry, boss," he said and toggled my jetpack off. I could make out two targets still in the bay, not counting the wounded guy still trying to crawl through the Round Door. It was harder to make out targets now that the spotlight was out. Also, I realized, there was less sunlight coming in through the hatch. The Sphere was rolling over.
One of the targets suddenly lost an arm. Haggrid's maser was now completely invisible. The guy's suit did its job as far as sealing up the breach, but it couldn't do anything for the amputation. He staggered for a side passage, the inside of his facemask a solid red smear, and collapsed.
Things were coming to a head very, very quickly. "Even less falling!" I shouted. "All right, don't coat your longjohns," groused Lopez. "Down with gravity, aye." The Weasard toggled his own jetpack, a blast of hot gas burning over my head, and we began to decelerate.
A shadow fell over the unlucky bastard in the Round Door. His hands clutched at the edge of the doorframe and then relaxed, his body slumping. I realized that the Sphere had rolled all the way over, and for all practical purposes the bottom half of his body had ceased to exist.
The guy at the monitor shot me, an orange beam from his blaster grazing the shoulder of my suit. My ears immediately popped as the self-inflating seals deployed. I had to drop my blaster rifle as that arm went numb, but I still had my reciprocating sword out. We fell the last ten meters and the tip of my sword clawed into his facemask. There's nothing a suit can do for you when you hole a facemask; bad things happened to his head as I hit the back of the bulkhead heavily. We were down.
Lopez, whose fall had been cushioned by me, uncoupled us and stood up. Muskie and Swami came swarming down the ladders. Light began to dawn through the Round Door again; the period of time when the doors were mated within the groove was very short indeed. As the edge of the Apex Sphere lifted up out of the groove, the compressed part of the dead enemy's body remained stuck to the cold stony surface outside; the part of his body that appeared whole was dragged out of sight and not seen again.
Swami's hands played over the console. The three leaves of the round door slid shut, and the environmental systems cranked up. Warm air refilled the bay. Muskie and Lopez propped me up and Lopez unsealed my helmet. "You okay, boss?" my Weasard asked, his nose twitching with concern.
I felt like I had just survived a Venusian enema. "You oughta see the other guy," I said. I looked over at the guy whose helmet had blown out. "No, on second thought, you probably don't wanna see that." My entire left shoulder had stiffened up; likely I had significant burns from the blaster there and just wasn't feeling the pain yet.
The whine of blaster fire echoed down the Grand Hall. It was just when I tried to get up that the pain decided to make an appearance. "You stay still for a minute, buddy," said Lopez, fumbling with a medpack.
Swami continued punching at the monitor with his left hand while thumbing his comm with his right. "Gray Gretchen, talk to me," he said.
"GRAY GRETCHEN IS DEAD," said Hoggrid flatly. "SIRRIPS ARE VERY QUICK. THIS ONE CAME OUT OF A SIDE PASSAGE, GRABBED HER FROM BEHIND, TORE HER SUIT OPEN AND SQUEEZED HER INTO ITS MOUTHS LIKE A PROTEIN POUCH."
"I think he means some of those Zero-G ration packs, Lopez," I said. "I love those."
"The turkey flavored ones are the best," Lopez agreed.
Swami frowned. "I can't help but notice, Hoggrid," he said, "the absence of any evidence of you shooting at the Sirrip."
"THE SIRRIP HAS INVOKED THE ANCIENT TRUCE BETWEEN SIRRIP AND BETELLIANS," Hoggrid said. "I REGRET THAT I CANNOT INTERFERE."
"I did not know about any such truce prior to now," Swami said lightly. "That would have been nice to know. Ah, well. May I assume that it is coming for us now?"
"OH, YES," Hoggrid replied dispassionately.
"Great," said Muskie, standing up and putting his back to a wall. His eyes were very wide. "That's just great." Without another word, he fled into a dark passage behind him, leaving me, Lopez and Swami by the Round Door console.
Civilians.
The Sirrip came. Sirrips are tripedal, and its principle means of locomotion is to wheel along with surprising speed. This Sirrip was used to strange gravity configurations, and each of its feet clutched at the ladder rungs with its long hooked toes; it rolled down to the bay almost as fast as I had fallen. The Sirrip was blood red in color and didn't seem to need or want a vacuum suit. Its body was studded with orifices, each ringed with small sharp teeth, and its three arms were muscular and oddly jointed. In a few places I saw its body marred with recent scorch marks, likely from blaster fire. The wounds didn't seem to be slowing it down.
It dropped to the bulkhead, standing upon the Round Door itself, and turned to survey us. It didn't seem to have any eyes, but it studied us all the same. When it spoke, it used multiple mouths at the same time in a melodious harmony.
"Where is Number Four?" it said.
"Who? Muskie?" I asked. "He's around here somewhere. He's probably looking for the Cowarditorium."
"He might have needed to go to the Whiny Little Bitches' Room," Lopez added.
The Sirrip considered this. "Now you will surrender," it said. "Blasters only annoy. You give up blasters?"
Lopez looked like he was about to say something, but Swami stopped him. "Yes," he said. "We'll surrender." He confiscated Lopez's blaster pistol and tossed it over. "We want to cooperate anyway. You know how to open the round doors."
"McMillan very smart," sang the Sirrip. "McMillan teaches code. You Swami? You very smart. You know how to beat Swanturni defenses. "
Swami nodded. "With the code to the round doors, I can get us through to the main tomb," he said. "Let us live and the Javanite is yours."
The Sirrip angled the top part of its body, looking inquisitive. "You can beat Swanturni defenses?" it chirped. "We opened round door in main tomb. Some kind of trap. Everybody in transport die. You beat trap, you not get eaten."
Swami pointed at me and Lopez. "Add these guys in and it's a deal," he said. "All the Javanite will be for you."
"Not Number Four," said the Sirrip. "Still hungry. McMillan not bring crew for feedings."
"You catch it, you keep it," said Swami. He looked at the monitor.
"The doors are about to align," he said. "Want to do it now?"
The Sirrip did the head-cocking trick again. "You stay in bay. All of you. Bad things happen, happen to all."
"Naturally," said Swami.
The Sirrip went to a box near the door. It had a disk sticking out of it with spots of color spaced along the surface. The disk could be rotated to place color within a window of the box. The Sirrip rotated the disk until blue appeared.
"Hurry now," said Swami, studying the monitor. "Only a few seconds to go."
"What about disable trap?" warbled the Sirrip.
"That's what I've been doing," said Swami impatiently.
The Sirrip manipulated the second disk. The color showing in this window was silver.
"Three…two…one…now." Swami looked up from his monitor with interest.
The trifold leaves of the Round Door slid open with a hiss. A corresponding hiss came from the other side of the door, probably from the cigar's set. A bright light shone up the Grand Hall in a powerful beam.
"See?" said Swami. "We're all still alive." I noticed a fine bead of sweat at his hairline, but I decided to say nothing.
"Javanite," hummed the Sirrip. It leaned forward to peer into the beam…
…and suddenly it was gone. It seemed to be jerked off its three feet, drawn roughly into the beam of light, and sucked down into it. The Sirrip screamed, a series of arpeggios in harmony, but the sound of its voice faded quickly. Swami dived for the monitor and slapped a button; both doors hissed closed again.
"That worked," I said admiringly. "Did you have that bit planned out too?"
"No, I pretty much made that up as I went along," Swami admitted.
