“That isn’t what EP told us earlier,” Rollo said. “We could use flyers.”

  “He said twenty people could use them,” I replied. “We need more than twenty of us down in the planetary center.”

  “It may be that the relic is wrong about the flyers,” N7 said, interrupting our conversation. “We may be able to take more troopers than that.”

  “We’d better figure out what we’re going to do fast,” Rollo said. “I hear more of those robots coming.”

  The clangs and tap-tap clicking was different from the regular Kargs.

  I bit my lower lip with indecision. The aliens were blocking us from the station. Did the Kargs realize how important the train-tube was to us? The answer was probably a big yes. They were pouring themselves against us and would likely continue to do so. It was one thing retreating before that, and another thing trying to advance into the enemy’s teeth.

  “We’re turning around,” I said. “It’s time to see how many flyers there are.”

  It took several minutes to communicate with the others in the parallel corridors, as the ultra-dense construction material hindered radio waves. During the back and forth comm-chatter, it became clear we’d lost our margin of separation with the enemy all along the line.

  We leapfrogged down the corridors and chambers, one zagun at a time providing covering fire for others. Because of the BigDogs, we had to keep the plasma cannons active. We set up ambushes for them. We threw grenades, hosed machine gun fire and slowly died ourselves one by one.

  Yeah, the aliens killed us by inches. We slaughtered them in droves. One thing, though: the moth-ships upstairs no longer beamed right down on top of us. The alien infantry had to hoof it part of the way from their drop-pods. For whatever reason, we were deep enough now so we didn’t have to fear the graviton rays.

  I’d played computer games like this before as a kid. Once or twice, I’d even wondered back then what it would have felt like being the lone marine against hordes of insect-like aliens bum-rushing his last position. I no longer had to wonder. I knew. It sucked because it tasted like bitter fatigue, the kind that dried out your mouth and make you gulp air as if it was the most precious commodity in the universe. I would have sweated like a pig, too. My suit ate that, or drank it. My sweat went straight to the body armor—that was part of the symbiosis. I sweated and the suit gave me strength, gave me spacesuit-like covering and a few stims when the time was right.

  So far, it had kept itself from doing that. While in Jelk service, the suits had stimmed us at whim. The Lokhars had helped us figure out how to turn that function on and off. Mostly—so far all the time—we kept it off. Being a berserker wouldn’t help us here, not yet at least. We needed our minds to outthink the banzai-oriented Kargs.

  “It’s time to run,” I said. “Next over-bound, we’re all taking off.”

  “The BigDogs will quickly catch up with us,” Rollo said. “You know what that means.”

  “I know. We’re going to run and get them to follow fast, without infantry support. Then we’re going to ambush the lot of them. Afterward, we’ll run again all the way to the flyers. We can rest on them or rest when we’re dead. Any more questions?”

  I fielded two more. They were both on tactical niceties. Afterward, we implemented the plan.

  I clutched my brace of enemy rifles, and at my word, I picked up the pace several notches. Lengthening my stride, I sprinted in twenty-foot bounds. Air wheezed past my throat. Fatigue threatened to turn my leg muscles into jelly, but I ignored that as only a conditioned trooper could. I thought about all the heartache I’d been through this past year. I told myself it was down to this run. Soon, it would be over. First, we had a job to do.

  “They’re here!” Dmitri radioed.

  “There’s no finesse this time, boys and girls,” I wheezed. “Lay down prep fire and set up those cannons. Let’s toast these suckers.”

  I dove, hit the deck, twisted around and raised my first rifle, tucking the butt tight against my shoulder. Three seconds later, the trotting robots appeared. The way they lurched and moved with speed—the sight made me grit my teeth. I instinctively hated these things.

  I aimed and fired exploding bullets. So did the troopers near me. It did nothing but cause the machines to deploy their heavy weapons. Our plasma cannon boys proved faster this time, and superheated substance melted the things. The alien BigDogs flopped. They rolled, and those tentacle legs waved and thrashed as they lay on their backs. Some of our bullets found the right spots then. We killed the trotting machines, at least in this wave.

  I panted where I lay, exhausted, almost ready to faint. Instead, I steadied my nerves. I gave myself an interior pep talk, and still I lay there. I had to go back in my mind to the time the Lokhars beamed their ray at my dad’s shuttle. For a second, I didn’t think that would work either. But it did…barely.

  I dragged myself upright, and I staggered to prone troopers with their weapons tucked against their shoulders for firing. Not a one of them stirred. I would have liked to bend down and tug them up. I did not have the strength for that. Instead, I kicked them in the sides.

  “Up, up, it’s time to get a move on,” I said.

  I heard curses, my mother insulted and what a prick I truly had turned out to be. I kicked harder after that, and managed to get a quarter of them back onto their feet.

  “Good,” I told the rest. “I don’t need you weaklings anyway. Stay here for the Karg knives. Maybe I’ll see you later on a video as you’re strapped down and tortured. You can thanks the stars then you got a few moments rest here. So long,” I said.

  “Wait,” a trooper pleaded.

  “Wait for what?” I asked. “The stopwatch is ticking. We’re all out of time. If you want to come, tell me.”

  “Please,” the trooper said. “Let us rest a few more minutes.”

  “So long, pussy,” I said.

  A few of them raved at me. I pointed at standing troopers and told them to go and help the complainers. If a man or woman could curse, they still had the energy to keep moving. I wanted every trooper I could get, but this wasn’t the time or place to hold anyone’s hand.

  In the end, I got all but three troopers up. I went to those three and aimed at the nearest. “Good-bye, soldier,” I said, and I fired between his legs.

  The man scrambled up in terror, and he stood there, with his visor aimed at me.

  “Are you crazy?” the man bellowed.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I am crazy. Now start marching.”

  The last two decided to drag themselves to their feet. Then we started for the flyers, and soon we loped again. This time, no trotting robots caught up with us, at least not yet. We gained some separation from the Karg horde.

  I’d like to say I did deep thinking as we hurried for the flyers, if indeed any existed. I’d be lying, though. At that point, I endured. Setting one foot ahead of the other was all I could do.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t all about running down corridors. Negotiating this nightmare world was often as much about climbing. Sometimes I scaled down, down, and my arms ached.

  Finally, we stumbled into a hanger bay. There were flyers all right, open-air platforms with raised controls in the center. At least, I took them to be controls.

  “Ella,” I said. “Get over here.”

  Dmitri oversaw sentries setting up plasma cannons. Rollo provided them with rifle teams. N7 trailed our artifact-carrier.

  “It’s time to wake up the relic again,” I told Ella.

  The hanger bay had a hundred-foot ceiling over us, with girders crisscrossing each other. Light shined down from there. To the sides were big open shafts going down into the planet. I couldn’t see how far they went. Did they go all the way to the center?

  I backed away from an opening because dizziness threatened. Falling down the shaft would be a poor way of finding out the truth about them.

  “Ella,” I said.

  She sat cross-legged and hugged her ammo bag, rocking back and forth as if holding a sleeping baby.

  A quick glance showed me we had approximately two thousand troopers and maybe three hundred legionaries left. The Lokhars were exhausted, and they sat so all of them had their backs to us. Good. I didn’t want any trouble with them now.

  “Are you ready, N7?” I asked.

  “Affirmative,” the android said.

  I walked to Ella and crouched before her. “Take EP out of the bag,” I said.

  She raised her visor as if regarding me. “When do you think the artifact first used the pink ray on me?” she asked softly.

  “Probably right away,” I said.

  “I was going to discover their secrets,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “The Lokhars used me,” she said, sounding bitter.

  “No, Ella, the artifact used you. I don’t think the Lokhars are in charge of this game.”

  “Do you think EP is running it?” she asked.

  “I think the relic knows more than the Lokhar Emperor.” A thought struck me. “You know what? I bet the oracle is simply another Forerunner artifact.”

  “Ahhh,” Ella said. “Yes. That would make better sense than their religious nonsense.”

  The android squatted beside me. “Do you believe in the conspiracy theory of history?” N7 asked me.

  I didn’t twist to look at him. Instead, I kept crouched before Ella and the artifact. “Why don’t you enlighten me as to what you mean?” I told N7.

  “Conspiracy theory,” the android said. “That others behind the scenes manipulate the masses.”

  “Maybe some of the time I believe that, sure,” I said.

  “Do you believe that the manipulators are Jelk and Forerunner artifacts?” N7 asked.

  “What about the Creator?” I asked.

  “So far we have only seen supposition concerning His reality,” N7 said.

  “We don’t even have that,” Ella said.

  “I’m not going to argue about it,” I said. “This isn’t the time or place. All I know is that I’ve seen weird things this past year. The weirdest was the collapsing universe. Abaddon strikes me as awfully strange, too. An apparition down here of a giant snake with centipede-like legs didn’t help, either. Is this a war of angels and demons or ancient races? Who cares at this point? Maybe later we can hash it out. For now, we have to get out of here. Ella, take out EP or you’re going to lose the privilege of carrying him.”

  Her visor was aimed at me, and it never strayed. Did she scowl or frown? I don’t know. Finally, she unzipped the ammo-bag and withdrew our artifact.

  “EP,” I said, “wakey, wakey.”

  Lights glowed within the artifact. It lifted from Ella’s hands to hover in place.

  “You have reached a flyer bay,” the artifact informed us.

  “There’s more than a few craft in here,” I said. “If we pack in tight, we can carry everyone.”

  “I believe you’re right,” EP said. “I find that curious.”

  “How come you said we could only take twenty people before?”

  “I have insufficient data to make an analysis,” the relic said.

  The idea EP had huge gaps in its memories didn’t ease me any. In fact, it was getting more concerning by the moment. Yet what other choice did I have? None. I had to trust the Forerunner thing to an extent.

  “How about showing us how these flyers work?” I said.

  I’m not sure what I expected. What happened was the best possible outcome. The artifact floated to one, with the three of us following. Swiftly, EP gave us a rundown on the controls.

  “Do the flyers have enough fuel or energy for the trip?” I asked.

  “You will have to test them,” EP said, “as I do not know.”

  I climbed onto the nearest platform, hurried to the raised controls and began waving my hand over colored knobs. To my relief, other knobs lit up as the relic had explained, and I waved my suited hands over them in the sequence EP had described. The surface under my feet began to hum, and softly, gently, the platform lifted off the hanger deck.

  “It works,” I said.

  “How much fuel or energy does it have?” N7 asked.

  I checked a gauge. “By the symbolism, I’d say it’s half energized.”

  “That should prove sufficient,” EP said. “Now I would like to hibernate and conserve energy.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  The artifact hovered near me.

  “Can’t you power up off these flyers?” I asked. “Can’t you drain energy from them?”

  “No,” the artifact said. “I cannot.”

  “Where can you gain power then?”

  “At the Altair Object,” it said.

  “Where does the object draw its power from?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” EP said.

  That didn’t ring true. I wondered. Could these things lie? Why not? “EP,” I said, “how do we know you’re telling us the truth about anything?”

  “I fail to understand your question.”

  “Are you lying to us about certain things?” I asked.

  “No. I can only speak truth.”

  I blinked several times. If the artifact could lie, it could have just told me one now. So I was no closer to knowing if it was trustworthy or not than I’d been a few seconds ago.

  “EP,” Ella asked, “could the Altair Object be draining energy from the collapsing universe?”

  The artifact hovered in place.

  “EP,” Ella said, “did you hear me?”

  “I do not appreciate these continued interrogations,” the relic said. “I forbid you to ask me anymore.”

  “Who are you forbidding?” I asked. “Ella or me?”

  “Both of you,” EP said.

  “Commander…” Ella said. Then she quit talking.

  I decided we could push the issue later. We had to leave.

  With N7’s help, I explained the controls to selected troopers. They hurried to various platforms. Three of the control panels failed to light up. N7 checked each one and discovered that one of the troopers had failed to follow the correct procedure. The other two platforms simply didn’t work.

  By this time, we could hear alien BigDogs trotting down the corridors. At my orders, troopers and our few legionaries piled onto the flyers.

  “They’re almost here,” Dmitri told me. “Maybe I’d better stay behind to hold them back.”

  “No,” I said. “Everyone is leaving.” Then I gave quick instructions to the plasma cannon crews. I wanted at least one of them per flyer, preferably more.

  Dmitri’s flyer and mine floated beside by the chosen shaft. One by one, the other platforms sank into the great abyss, heading down for the center of the planet.

  The last flyer disappeared, when a company of BigDogs trotted into the hanger bay. Like old time sailing ships Francis Drake had sailed against the Spanish Armada, our plasma cannons belched broadsides from our last two platforms.

  “Go, go, go!” I shouted at Dmitri. “Get into the shaft.”

  “We have to nail them all,” he shouted back at me. “Otherwise, they can just leap after us and fall down like missiles.”

  He had a point. So our two platforms hovered by the opening as more BigDogs leapt into the hanger bay. We slaughtered them, the sizzling orange superheated blobs melting them by the dozen.

  “My cannon is overheating,” a trooper shouted.

  Other crews yelled similar news.

  “It’s time to go,” I said.

  “The BigDogs—” Dmitri said.

  “Forget about them,” I said. “Go, go, go.”

  Dmitri’s flyer maneuvered over the shaft. Then his platform dropped into it, disappearing out of sight. Mine was the last one left, with grim troopers armed to the teeth. I’d put N7 and Ella on an earlier flyer, so it was just my remaining zagun and me.

  More BigDogs flowed into the hanger bay, climbing over the destroyed ones. These held Karg soldier-creatures on their backs.

  I waved my hand over the bright controls. The flyer lurched. Then Karg bullets reached us. The platform spun around like a top, and we lost three troopers who sailed off. They got up on the hanger deck. A Karg bullet flipped one soldier onto his back. Then bullets made the man’s helmet crack. I saw a puff of air jet out and knew he was dead. The other two troopers jumped, reaching our platform just as it sank out of sight.

  By that time, I brought a semblance of control back to the flyer. Troopers craned their heads, looking up. The hanger lights dwindled, and then it darkened suddenly.

  I used long-scan vision and put it on my HUD. Just as Dmitri had predicted, BigDogs jumped down the shaft after us, falling like missiles for our platform.

  -28-

  The next few minutes were gut-wrenching. I stood at the controls, and I judged distances. The shaft was quite a bit bigger than my platform, maybe three times the circumference. That didn’t give me much maneuvering room, though.

  We floated down, and I dared to drop faster.

  “Dmitri,” I radioed. He was somewhere below me.

  “Here, Commander,” the Cossack said.

  “Kargs and BigDogs are raining down on us.” Even as I said that, the falling aliens began firing rifles and heavier ordnance. An occasional exploding bullet blasted against the platform, wounding troopers and raining bio-suit pieces. “Raise a cannon!” I shouted. “Give them something to worry about.”

  Two crews informed me their cannons wouldn’t be ready for a few more minutes. That just left the one. Troopers helped wrestled it into position so its orifice aimed straight up. Then a roiling orange glob spat upward. How far would it go before it stopped climbing and fell back down onto us? This was a mad gamble.

  As we sank, we passed girders and tiny openings, but nothing to fly a platform through in order to dodge. I wondered if this had been a service or maintenance flyer. It had that feel. It certainly didn’t possess weaponry or anything approaching combat speeds.

  “We got some!” a trooper shouted. “The plasma melted them into scrap metal.”

  Twice more the cannon fired, the discharge climbing to strike falling enemies. The number of bullets hitting us dropped dramatically, although we still saw occasional muzzle flashes up there.