The Deacon's senses faded with his methane. His beady eyes began to swim with bright stars. He thought he heard the buzz of Yanme'e wings and the surprised shouts of the aliens as they retreated toward the control center. Then he passed out.
"Breathe," a deep voice echoed in Dadab's ear.
He woke a few seconds later, just in time to see a Jiralhanae's hairy paws finish connecting his mask's supply lines to Humnum's tank. "Where is the Huragok?"
"Around. The bend," the Deacon gasped. For a moment he thought Maccabeus was his savior. But as his vision cleared, he realized it was Tartarus, now wearing the Chieftain's golden armor. Dadab knew exactly what this meant. "Inside the control room, Chieftain."
Tartarus ripped Humnum's lifeless body from his tank, and held its harness open for Dadab.
"Show me."
"But the wounded …" Dadab said weakly, sliding into the bloody straps.
Without a moment's hesitation, Tartarus pumped a single glowing spike into the center of Bapap's chest. The Unggoy jerked once and was still.
"Rapid Conversion is disabled—the victim of an alien trap." Tartarus leveled his weapon at Dadab. "They tricked us with information only one of us could give."
Dadab looked up from Bapap's corpse, more stunned than frightened.
"You can live long enough to explain the extent of your betrayal. Or you will die here like the others." Tartarus jerked his weapon toward the control center, commanding Dadab to run.
And he did, Tartarus following close behind, the Fist of Rukt clanking loudly against his armor.
As Dadab rounded the junction, he found himself in the middle of a raging firefight.
It turned out that Flim had made multiple barricades: one around the control room's pried- open door, and another farther down the central walkway. Flim, Tukduk, Guff, and a few others still held the nearest line of barrels, but the aliens pressing from the far end of the orbital had taken the latter. Between the two lines were many Unggoy bodies.
Dadab saw the aliens who had stormed his barrels heading toward the far barricade, trading fire with Flim and the others near the control center. One of the aliens fell, downed by a plasma-burst to the back. The Deacon saw Guff leap from cover to finish the job, only to be cut down by an alien with black skin who leapt over the far line of barrels. This alien lifted the wounded soldier by an arm, and hauled him back to the barrels while laying down cover fire for the last of his retreating comrades.
Tartarus brandished his hammer and charged into the fray. The Yanme'e were already engaged; at least two dozen of the insects swarmed toward the alien's barricade, flitting from one walkway support cable to the next. But not all the Yanme'e were focused on the aliens.
Dadab watched in horror as a trio of the creatures wriggled through the gap in the control room door. Ignoring stray rounds from the aliens' weapons meant for Tartarus, as well as a surprised look from Flim as he rushed past, Dadab sped after the three Yanme'e, already knowing he was too late.
The insects had shown Lighter Than Some no mercy. The Huragok had usurped their position once, and they were determined not to let it happen again. By the time Dadab was through the door, his dearest friend was ribbons—reduced to strips of pink flesh dangling from the Yanme'e's hooked fore-limbs. The noise of the battle outside the control room ringing in his ears, the Deacon stared at the dissipating cloud of methane and other gasses from Lighter Than Some's lacerated sacs. One of the Huragok's severed tentacles was sunk deep into a gap in the centermost tower's protective paneling. The Yanme'e skittered over one another in an effort to pull the limb loose, but it was firmly rooted—its cilia tightly bonded to the alien circuits.
Dadab filled with rage. As the insects continued their gruesome tug of war, the Deacon raised his pistol and let them have it.
The closest Yanme'e's triangular head was boiled away before the others' antennae were up.
Dadab burned the second as it attempted to take flight and roasted the third as it buzzed for cover behind the arc of towers. The dying flutter of the insects' wings against their shells sounded like shrill screams. But the Deacon felt no pity as he stalked into the control room's pit, pistol steaming by his side.
Near the holo-projector he saw a glistening pile of offal: the spilled remains of Lighter Than Some. He felt his gorge rise in his throat, and he looked up. It was then that he noticed the small representation of an alien on the projector. Thinking it was just a picture, Dadab was surprised when the alien removed its wide-brimmed hat and glared at him with fiery eyes. But the Deacon was dumbfounded when the representation raised its hand and signed: < I Am Oracle, you, obey. > Dadab might have dropped his pistol and prostrated himself before the projector, but at that very moment, the image began to change. The alien's red eyes flickered gray. Its pristine garments began to flutter, accumulating dirt—as if it had been hit by some invisible maelstrom of dust. Then its arms began to tremble, and though it grasped its own wrist to try and keep its hand from signing, it very clearly flexed: < Liar! > < Liar! > < Liar! > Without warning, the orbital lurched. Dadab fell back onto his triangular tank and rolled sideways into the smoldering carapace of one of the Yanme'e. Kicking away from the sticky shell, Dadab caught something with his heel: the central tower's missing protective panel. He pulled the panel from the charred yellow gore and wiped it with his hand. On the bare metal of its interior surface was an etching of the Oracle's sacred glyph—shallow, delicate lines, obviously the work of Lighter Than Some.
The Deacon looked back at the projector. < Who, liar? > he asked.
But the image of the alien gave no answer except to keep flashing its manic accusation.
Dadab had no idea that he was watching the destruction of Loki's fragment—its forced extraction by the JOTUN all-in-ones that had assaulted the reactor tower's maser.
The Deacon only knew that whatever intelligence resided in the towers had preyed on Lighter Than Some's peace-loving naivete—convinced the Huragok to divulge the sacred glyph, and unknowingly help it set a trap for the Jiralhanae. Why it would reveal its deceptive nature now, Dadab had no idea. But he also didn't care.
The Deacon tasted the mineral tang of blood in his mouth and realized his sharp teeth had bitten into his lower lip. He rose to his feet and swept his pistol across the towers, pulsing its trigger. The image of the alien warped and sputtered above the projector, like the flame of one of the Jiralhanae's oil lamps. Then it collapsed to a mote of light that faded as Dadab's pistol cooled.
As the Deacon surveyed the dead Yanme'e and the towers' burning circuits, he knew there was still one accessory to Lighter than Some's murder who yet lived—one whose death might accomplish what his friend had so desperately desired: an end to all this violence. Sliding through the control room's door, Dadab checked his pistol's charge. There was enough for one more shot. He vowed to make it good.
"What just happened?" Avery yelled as the Tiara's large support beams groaned and the walkway bucked beneath him.
"Number seven strand," Jilan replied, still breathless from the fight. "It's gone."
Avery fired his M7 at one of the insects as it leapt from a nearby support cable. The creature lost a wing and half its limbs, and crashed to the walkway behind a trio of barrels to Avery's right that Forsell shared with Jenkins. "What do you mean, gone?" Avery shouted as Forsell finished the insect with a burst from his MA5.
"Snapped. A few thousand kilometers above its anchor." The Lt. Commander was crouched behind a barrel to Avery's left. She frowned and pressed her helmet's integrated speaker closer to her ear. "Say again, Loki? You're breaking up!"
"Two! Coming high!" Healy interrupted, firing a wild burst from Dass' rifle. The older squad leader was down and groaning with a serious plasma burn in his back. He would live, but there were many dead—Wick and two others from Avery's bucket and five militiamen from Jilan's. Most of the others bore a grim assortment of wounds: fragments from the gray-skinned alien's cutlasses and lacerations from the insects' razor-sharp limbs. Avery's right arm was sliced just below the elbow—a swipe he'd gotten while he dragged Dass to safety.
Avery had emptied his BR55's last clip halfway back to the barricade, and the bug had jumped him before he could bring up his M7. Luckily Jenkins was on the ball. The recruit took the thing out with a well-placed battle rifle burst—killed it with the same stoic accuracy he'd exhibited ever since the mission began.
"Loki's been hit. His data center's damaged." Jilan reloaded her M7. "He can't balance the load."
The Tiara shuddered as a container pair passed through the number-five coupling station behind Avery. If they were lucky, three-quarters of the civilians were away. But then Avery remembered: "How many containers were on number seven?"
Jilan pulled her M7's charging handle. "Eleven." She locked Avery's grim stare. "Eleven pairs."
Avery did the math: more than twenty thousand people gone.
"Staff Sergeant!" Andersen yelled, firing from a barrel past Jilan's. "Hammer!"
Avery snapped focus back to the alien's barricade. Both sets of barrels had shifted when the Tiara bucked. Some of the foam-filled canisters had tipped and rolled down the walkway, confounding the gold-armored alien's first charge. A steady stream of fire from the recruits had kept it pinned near the control center. But now it was coming—hammer in both paws, low across its waist—flanked by four of the gray-skinned aliens, each wielding an explosive shard.
Avery knew the armored alien would be too difficult to take one-on-one. And even if they concentrated their fire, he doubted they could stop it. Which was why, right after the alien made its initial charge, Avery had come up with another plan. "Forsell!" he bellowed. "Now!"
While Avery lay down covering fire, Forsell hefted one of the aliens' glowing energy cores over his barrel—a two-handed sideways fling, just like he was back on his family farm and hurling bags of soybeans into his father's hauler. The core landed ten meters in front of the gold-armored alien, and the vortex of blue energy inside its clear walls flared as it rolled forward. But it didn't explode on impact as Avery had hoped. It took a burst from his M7 to set it off, but by then the gold-armored alien had already leapt over the core and the explosion missed it completely.
But Forsell's effort wasn't a total loss. The explosion hit the four gray-skinned aliens full force, blowing them off the walkway. Spiny forearms flailing, they plummeted to the bottom of the Tiara. None survived the fall.
"Commander! Move!" Avery shouted as the armored alien landed, hammer high above its head. Jilan leapt away as it smashed her barrel, spewing yellow foam. Avery emptied his M7's into the alien's left side, but the high-velocity rounds simply sparked off its energy shield. The alien wrenched its hammer free of the shattered barrel and glared at Avery, teeth bared. But as it hefted its hammer a second time, Avery leapt headfirst over his barrel toward the control center, away from Jilan and his recruits. The alien's hammer smashed down where Avery had stood a moment before, buckling one of the walkway's diamond-grid metal panels.
As Avery rolled to his feet and pulled a fresh M7 magazine from his vest, he saw another of the gray-skinned aliens striding toward his position. This one looked different than the others.
Beneath its harness it wore an orange tunic, emblazoned with a yellow, circular symbol. The plasma pistol clenched in its knobby hands glowed with an overcharged bolt. Avery looked the thing square in the face, knowing it had him dead-to-rights. But the alien seemed to be looking past him. And when it loosed its bolt, the wavering ball of green plasma sizzled wide of Avery's head.
Avery whipped around to follow the shot and saw it strike the gold-armored alien in the chest. Instantly, its energy shields collapsed with a loud snap. Some of its armor broke away in a burst of sparks and steam. The alien roared as electricity from its armor's shorted circuits arced about its neck and arms. Then it sprinted forward, knocking Avery aside.
The Staff Sergeant lost his M7 as he landed on his hands. Looking up, he saw the hammer- wielding alien bring its weapon down onto the head of the alien in the tunic. The shorter creature simply disappeared under the weight of the heavy stone cudgel—perished in a crushing blow that saw the hammer's head straight down between its arms and legs, pulping it against the walkway.
Avery didn't waste any time wondering why the smaller alien had tried to kill its leader and not him. Instead, he raised his M7 and did his best to finish the job. And he might have done it if the black haired giant hadn't retreated, dragging its hammer behind it, into an unexpected melee between the insects and the gray-skinned aliens near the control center.
The two sets of creatures were now at each others' throats—claws and cutlasses flashing.
Jilan and the militiamen opened fire on both sides, but most of their targets went down with mortal wounds delivered by one of their own. Only Jenkins remained focused on the alien with the hammer. He marched past Avery, firing at the beast as it limped toward the number-four station.
"Let it go!" Avery barked.
But Jenkins disobeyed. In his target, he saw the cause of all his hurt and loss. He would kill the aliens' leader and be avenged. But his rage had made him blind, and he didn't see the last of the gray-skinned creatures spring up behind a barrel as he passed, its horribly pockmarked skin flecked with the insects' yellow blood.
Avery raised his M7, but Forsell ran directly into his line of fire. Legs pumping, the big recruit tackled the alien a moment before it jabbed its cutlass in Jenkins' side. Together, they tumbled toward the data center, a jumble of blue-gray limbs and sweaty, olive-drab fatigues, leaving the alien's pink cutlass spinning on the walkway behind them. Forsell managed to tear off the alien's mask, only to get a face full of freezing methane and putrid spittle. He put his hands to his eyes, and the alien took the opportunity to bite deep into the recruit's left shoulder, right at the base of his neck. By this point, Avery was sprinting forward.