Vigilant

Plants had rooted in the thin soil, and some had even grown — tundra species don’t need much light or root space. But the farther we got from the entrance hole, the fewer signs of flora and fauna. Even carpet moss won’t grow in absolute darkness, and after a while, tundra-dogs must get the willies, wandering into black silence.

I could sympathize: thank heavens for Tic’s torch-wand. When I glanced that way, though, I noticed Tic’s knuckles had turned gray-blue as they squeezed the torch in a death grip. Dads had amused himself making up names for that gray-blue color. Anxious indigo. Whacko woad. Unbalanced ultramarine. When an Oolom hits a crapulating level of stress, the color-adaptive glands get thrown off-kilter by other hormones, and random patches of skin start turning that telltale shade. Yet Tic forced himself onward, till the tu

Some distance down, we came to a fork: a side tu

Daunt leaned in to peek at the screen himself. "I think it’s a shanshan." Great St. Caspian’s closest analog to a bear: covered in black peach fuzz instead of hair, and sporting orange dorsal sacs for sexual display, but shanshans were still four-legged omnivores with claws and a temper. "Are you sure it’s dead?" Daunt whispered. "Shanshans hibernate. If one decided to hunker down here for the winter…"

"No body heat," Ramos answered. She thumbed a dial on the Bumbler, "And almost no bioelectric activity — just a little glow from decay microbes working their way through the flesh. Maybe it came down here to hibernate, but it didn’t survive the cold. Old age or disease, I suppose." She drew her stun-pistol. "We’d better check it out."

Ramos and Daunt moved forward, right keen cautious. Tic and I followed at a safe distance while Paulette hung back, standing guard at the junction where the main shaft met the side tu

Sweat trickled down my armpits. Something in the tu

The shanshan didn’t shift a whisker as we approached. Warily, Ramos nudged the body with her foot.

No reaction.

From this angle, we could only see the animal’s back. I didn’t notice any decomposition in the parts I could see… but if the shanshan died during winter, the cold would have slowed decay, as good as a powered freezer.

Ramos poked the animal a few more times. Still no reaction. Keeping her stu

The carcass rolled limply, deadweight. Its legs splayed outward as Ramos flopped it over on its back. "Definitely deceased," Daunt murmured, looking down at the shanshan’s chest. From muzzle to belly, the animal’s flesh had been eaten away by…

By…

Not insects or bacteria. I was close enough to smell a tangy bite in the air, wafting up from the shanshan’s wounds. The odor was ugly familiar: cruel, vinegary acid, harking back to Pump Station 3.

The shanshan had wandered in here… and got shot gooey dead.

"Run!" I yelled.

But of course it was too late.

They came out of the side tu

Thunder. Rocket blasts lit the whole tu

Four missiles. More than four androids.

Boom, the sound of impact. Crackle, the zap of lightning shorting out robot circuits. Then cough-cough-cough-cough-cough, a flurry of jelly guns unloading on the nearest target.

Paulette staggered back from the impact — acid wads slapping against her body armor, splotching over her chest, arms, helmet. Her armor bloomed with smoke, every acid drop keen to burn its way through the plastic shell and blister the woman inside.

"Get out!" Daunt yelled at her… but in the split second Paulette had before the robots were on top of her, she charged toward us rather than heading back to the mine entrance.

So. All five of us were blocked in, with an army of gun-toting androids between us and the exit.

Jolly.

Daunt fired his four robot-poppers up the tu

Not good enough. I counted four robots still on their feet, black silhouettes outside the shine of Tic’s torch.

Paulette raced toward us, wrapped in peels of acid smoke; and as she ran, she slapped a button on the wrist of her armor. Inside my head, I felt like someone had just shouted, "Mayday, Mayday!" though I hadn’t heard the actual words. An emergency alert to Protection Central. I decided to add my own: Xe, if you have any tricks up your sleeve, now would be a precious good time to trot them out.

Nothing. Then Ramos was pulling my arm, shouting words my buggy-whipped ears couldn’t hear. I got the message anyway: retreat down the tu

Where else? Except that if this mine was like the ones near Sallysweet River, we’d soon run out of retreating room: the top level always dead-ended at a pithead. Once upon a time, such pitheads may have held elevators to transport miners down to lower levels, and ore back up. But after three thousand years, the elevator sure as deviltry wouldn’t be working… which meant we’d just have the elevator shaft. A sheer drop into the depths.

Still… better a nice clean fall than chug-a-lugging acid.

Run, run, run: us, then the robots in pursuit. We all sprinted full speed, except Tic, who launched himself into a downward glide that matched our pace. To keep his hands free, he’d jammed the torch-wand under the straps of his tote pack. The light reflecting off his scaly chest had a glowery gray-blue cast to it… but Tic was far from collapsing with the jitters. As he flew, he shouted back over his shoulder at the androids. "Stop, you’re burning us! Stop, you’re freezing us! Stop, you’re drowning us!"

"What the hell are you raving about?" Daunt snapped.

Ramos and I didn’t try to explain. "Stop, you’re smothering us!" Tic hollered at the robots. "Stop, you’re strangling us! Stop, you’re squeezing too hard!"

"Stop," Paulette said, "we’ve hit a dead end." The pithead. Tic’s torch showed a blank wall in front of us, broken by a black hole opening downward. Above the hole hung a few rusty twists of metal, all that was left of the elevator mechanism.

"The sides are sheer rock," Daunt said, looking into the shaft. "Straight down."

"The robots are going to fire again," Paulette shouted from behind us. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see her spin to face the shots and spread her arms wide. Trying to protect us from the acid barrage by blocking it with her body.