Nash was right, of course. Webster would do as he was asked. The idea that he might somehow carry the same tragic flaw as his father was almost too much to bear.

  “So what do you think, commander?” Nash held out the detonator. “Are you going to help me with this, or what?”

  Webster hesitated, mulling over his options. If Nash were to meet with some kind of unfortunate accident then that would be the end of it. So many people had died already that one more death would hardly matter. The thought that Joanna had perished while someone like Nash had survived, he found particularly galling. Her death had robbed him of a lot of the certainties he’d previously clung to in life and made him want to consider what he might have done differently.

  How events might have been reconfigured to create an alternate reality in which Joanna Silva had survived and Nash had been the one to perish.

  So tempting was that line of thought that he had to deliberately break off from it. That way lay madness.

  No, he was going to have to deal with the realities of the situation if he wanted to ensure that they all got out of this alive.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” he said flatly. “I’ve got better things to be getting on with.”

  *

  LaCruz and Walker followed the path out of the valley and along a trail which had been cut into the side of the mountain. Scientific exploration was only half of what this settlement had been tasked with. They’d also been given the job of carving out a rudimentary roads system throughout the surrounding area. And rudimentary was exactly what it was. As they started to climb, it became clear that some of the ‘roads’ were so narrow that only a single vehicle would be able to pass through at any one time. This made traversing them in their powered armour doubly difficult. As she and Walker passed beneath overhangs they came across certain patches which were inaccessible to the sun’s rays. This meant that they were permanently sheathed in ice, so that - even given all the suits’ advantages over harsh terrain - there were moments which gave them both pause.

  LaCruz had hoped that once the Da’al troops realised that they intended to press on deeper into the mountains that they would quickly lose interest but she was quickly disavowed of that notion. After the losses they had absorbed down in the valley, the Da’al seemed determined to settle the score and by dawn the next morning they were both exhausted by the pursuit.

  It quickly became clear that they couldn’t hope to outrun their pursuers forever and even though Walker proved himself adept at setting booby traps there was nothing to suggest that this discouraged the Da’al in any way. If anything, it seemed to motivate them to keep up the pressure. They seemed reluctant to rest and were always eager to press their advantage, such as when the terrain became more treacherous and therefore more difficult for the suits to negotiate.

  Despite their technological advantages, the pair found themselves out-numbered and out-gunned. It was inevitable that their thoughts would eventually turn to making a stand.

  Mid-afternoon they took a break on a snow-covered saddle spanning the divide between two mountain ranges. The sun was low and the light had a hard, pinkish glare to it. It was a beautiful spot but LaCruz was thankful that the suit spared her from the harshness of the elements as a cold wind cut across the top, blowing up a flurry of snow crystals.

  Walker had become more and more morose as it became clear that they weren’t going to shake their pursuers any time soon and she waited until he’d finished his rations before pushing him for a decision.

  “We could just make a stand here,” she said. “It’s as good a place as any.”

  Walker didn’t respond. He just walked towards the edge and looked down. It wasn’t a sheer drop but once you went over that there was very little to slow you down until you hit the valley floor. It was the same on the other side.

  “It’s got possibilities,” he said. “Least this way they can’t try and flank us.”

  “Plus, they’ve got no cover. We can see them coming from three klicks away.”

  Walker looked back the way they’d come, making his calculations.

  “They might not have any cover but then neither do we,” he turned about, making an expansive gesture with his arms. “Too exposed.”

  LaCruz had to admit that he had a point. While they still had no clear idea what weapons the Da’al possessed, it would only need one lucky mortar strike to wipe the pair of them off the ridge.

  “What if we started here and then fell back to the tree line?”

  “I’d rather start at the tree-line and go from there. Perhaps set up an ambush.”

  “Okay, why don’t we take a look at that?”

  But that hadn’t happened. Walker had taken a cursory look around before announcing that the trees were too densely packed to provide a decent field of fire and that had been that.

  LaCruz knew that she should have taken a firmer line with him. Perhaps insist that they commit to plan of action and, if Barnes had been with them, that might have been the line she did pursue. But Barnes wasn’t there. They’d left him at the bottom of a ravine after putting his suit into stasis.

  As it was, LaCruz was all too aware of Walker’s fragile mental state. She was conscious too that Walker was now the only person she had left to rely on. She didn’t relish the idea of turning around at some point in the heat of combat only to find that he’d abandoned her.

  So she decided that she was going to have to bide her time if she wanted his help setting up a trap. Besides, as they moved up through the trees, she wasn’t sure that this kind of terrain was going to suit them, short term. The ground was particularly deceptive, rising up at a fairly marked angle and was riddled with exposed roots and potential trip holes. Not the sort of terrain you wanted to negotiate moving backwards under fire.

  Something moved over to her right, causing her to swing her machine guns round in an arc but then she relaxed, letting go a sigh of relief. About fifty metres away, two deer-like creatures were moving off through the undergrowth.

  She spoke briefly with Walker and they both agreed that it would be best for them to keep moving until they were clear of the trees. Then they could think about finding somewhere to set up camp. They wouldn’t be able to rest for long, probably a couple of hours, but it would give them the opportunity to get a little shuteye and that was about all they could reasonably expect.

  The pair moved in silence, each one of them concentrating on the ground ahead. After a while, she could feel the back of her neck start to tighten up as she became transfixed by the small area of ground directly ahead of her. Twice she had to look up only to find her route blocked by fallen trees. Then it was a question of awkwardly crabbing sideways until they were able to find a way around.

  The canopy overhead was so dense that she found herself having to intermittently switch over to night vision mode just to see where she was going. When she finally glanced up she realised that they had seriously under-estimated how vast this area of woodland was. If it hadn’t been for the suit’s in-built navigational system it would have been easy to have got lost in there.

  Last thing she wanted was to go lumbering straight into the opposition.

  She was in the process of picking her way through a thicket of fallen branches when she heard a sharp crack coming from over on her right.

  Her first response was that it was a gunshot so she was hugely relieved to see that the trunk of one of the trees up ahead had split down the middle. She watched in fascination as the tree slowly began to split in half, driven largely by its own weight.

  “What the hell’s all that about?” Walker wanted to know.

  It was only then that she realised the extent to which they’d become separated. According to her HUD, Walker was two hundred metres away over to her left. She had no clear line of sight to his current location.

  “Relax. Just a tree coming down, is all. But perhaps you should …”

  Her words were cut short as a bright burst of purple energy whipped past her shoulder and the tree directly to her left exploded.

  The air was immediately filled with a million deadly slivers, the sheer explosive force of them knocking her sideways. As her servos screamed in an attempt to keep her upright, she shot out her leg in the hope of stabilising herself. Only there was nothing there, aside from thin air.

  Her sideways progression down the hillside was only halted when she slammed into another tree, only one which was much lower down. The trunk impacted solidly against her head unit and for a moment she lost consciousness.

  When she had regained her senses she found herself looking at a screen full of threat alerts. Her suit had suffered a number of minor hull breeches but what her HUD wasn’t telling her was how significant those breeches were, so she quickly checked her vital signs.

  Her heart rate was massively elevated but that was to be expected. Oxygen and other gases looked normal but if there was a leak it might be too soon to tell. Everything else looked fine and she went through the process of switching off the alerts one by one. That was when she saw that her battery power was flashing.

  Down to fifty seven percent and falling fast.

  No time to worry about that now.

  “Walker, you hear that? We’re under attack.”

  Up ahead, another purple flash zipped past but this time over to her right. It illuminated the forest floor before fizzling out.

  “Looks like there’s two of them at least. Sending you their possible co-ordinates.”

  “Roger that.”

  Then the whole area echoed with the sound of automatic fire as Walker opened up.

  He’s firing, she thought. But what’s he firing at?

  There had to be more of them.

  Her screen icon reticule flashed confirming one of the targets directly ahead of her and she reflexively fired off four tracer missiles, one after the other.

  Bad idea.

  One of them hit a tree and was deflected off somewhere over to her right. It hit a rock face less than ten metres away, peppering her with a hail of fragments.

  When the other three detonated they did so over such a wide area of ground that their likelihood of actually hitting anything was miniscule.

  “Dammit!” she squeezed off a burst of automatic fire more in frustration than in hope.

  Her targeting system kept throwing up possible contacts which disappeared as quickly as she could click onto them. What she needed was a clearing of some kind so that she could get her bearings but she knew that that wasn’t likely to happen so instead she decided to arm an offensive missile and wait.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  Two bursts of energy arced towards her. One struck a tree and quickly fizzled out while the other cut an erratic path towards her, before slamming into her left leg.

  There was a loud bang and everything went black. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing. Without the reassurance provided by her read-outs it was easy to focus on how confined she really was in there. Just as well she didn’t suffer from claustrophobia.

  LaCruz ground her teeth in frustration. She had a few seconds, a minute at most, to get her suit up and running again. If she couldn’t, then it would be Game Over and most the ordnance she was packing would go unused. Now, that would be galling.

  Before she could begin to fixate on that, the lights flashed back up, bringing with them a spate of error messages. It was shocking to realise that she’d just suffered a complete system shutdown. It was going to take an age to re-configure everything and, until she could do so she would be left effectively defenceless. Of all the armaments she possessed, the only one currently available to her was her vibroblade which, might have been useful earlier for cutting through undergrowth but was now otherwise useless.

  In the meantime, she was getting reliable readings suggesting that two hostiles were currently approaching: one from over on her extreme right and one from directly ahead.

  If either one of them managed to score a hit with one of their energy bolts she seriously doubted that her suit would be able to cope. But they were currently holding their fire. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed that these weapons of theirs needed re-charging between individual shots. It wasn’t much to go on but it might be something she could work to her advantage.

  In a situation like this her only option was to fall back but that was of course just what they wanted: force her into an unplanned retreat so that their main force could take her from the rear. She’d be trapped.

  There was nothing else for it.

  She checked her battery power.

  Forty six percent and still falling.

  She hoped that would be enough.

  She set off up the steep incline as quickly as she could, gaining speed as the ground levelled out and she was able to get her bearings. Her secondary target was a hundred metres away over to her right while her main target was seventy-five metres away and closing fast. If he managed to hit her at this distance she was going to be in trouble but for some reason he held off, no doubt waiting for a clearer line of sight.

  But she didn’t intend to give him one.

  At fifty metres, she fired the only rocket available to her: the one she’d armed prior to the shut-down.

  For a horrible moment, she thought that it wasn’t going to launch but then its propulsion system kicked in and it was off, streaking towards its target, leaving a thick pall of smoke in its wake.

  It was only then, at the very last moment that she changed direction, kicking off again at ninety degrees. With her secondary target now directly in front of her, she calculated that the diversionary missile had bought her about fifteen seconds. It would take them that long to work out where it was she was actually headed. All the while she was running, she kept jabbing at the two chain gun icons, hoping to see at least one of them turn from amber to red. But it appeared that she’d ridden her luck for far too long. The chain guns resolutely refused to engage.

  Distracted as she was, she careered into a young sapling which initially appeared to give way before wickedly springing back, catching her full in the chest and throwing her off her stride. She should have gone down then but somehow managed to stay upright while still maintaining her forward momentum.

  Perhaps her luck was about to change.

  The secondary target was less than fifty yards metres away. If he was going to chance a shot, now was the time.

  Something bolted from cover just ahead of her, startling LaCruz before she realised what it was. It was a pair of the deer like creatures she’d seen earlier. As the youngest one lurched from out of cover, it twisted its neck to look at her, the white of its eye bulging with fear.

  The two creatures burst through an expanse of undergrowth before bounding up the far bank and disappearing over the top.

  LaCruz didn’t see what happened next but the twin flashes of purple light told their own story. She had no time to think as her own forward momentum carried her up the bank and out onto an exposed plateau.

  The superheated charges had literally cooked two animals from the inside out and huge slabs of steaming flesh lay everywhere.

  The Da’al soldier who had shot them stood in the clearing wearing some kind of exoskeleton. Pound for pound he looked to be an equal match and he didn’t miss a beat, bringing his heavy weapon round to sight on her. LaCruz had nowhere to hide but found that when he came to fire, all that happened was that the colourful flanges on either side of his barrel flared brightly and then died.

  LaCruz’s vibro blade roared into life and she was on him in seconds. Her right forearm caught him across the throat, lifting him off his feet and the pair of them flew across the clearing before crashing hard against the trunk of a tree. The impact dazed LaCruz and she staggered back, raising the vibro blade for protection.

  It wasn’t much but it was enough to knock her opponent’s energy weapon to one side, sending a stutter of purple light off into the undergrowth. If she were to take a hit at such close range there could be only one outcome and so she threw herself forward, using her shoulder to pin him against the tree. She used her free hand to lever the weapon downwards, the undergrowth taking on an unwieldy violet hue as energy flooded from the barrel.

  Up close, she could see the soldier’s mandibles twitch as he struggled to throw her off. His exoskeleton was shorting out from where she’d damaged it and she could see green ichor oozing from a wound in its chest. But that didn’t stop it from trying to bring a second weapon to bear.

  Keeping up the downward pressure on the other arm, she brought the vibro blade up and round, slicing into the hydraulics powering the secondary weapon. There was an acrid burning smell as the blade bit deep into the workings of the exoskeleton and even after the weapon was discharged, peppering the side of her suit with projectiles. She kept working at the joint until a fountain of dark liquid started spraying everywhere and the arm went limp.

  But still her opponent struggled to throw her off, putting all its efforts into bringing up the barrel of its main weapon.

  With both hands committed to pinning her opponent in place, LaCruz brought up her heavily armoured right knee. It ground against the lower part of the exoskeleton and, feeling something start to yield, she brought it up again and again, applying thousands of pounds of pressure to her opponent’s only lightly armoured midsection.

  At one point, she became aware of the branches above them shaking. Then she felt part of her opponent’s armour give way followed by a sharp crack as his carapace shattered. She was close enough to see the realisation in her opponent’s eyes before the mandibles around its mouth stiffened and its whole body went slack.

  LaCruz shuddered as she stepped backwards. She was breathing heavily and it took her several seconds to go through the process of shutting down and securing the vibro blade.