Omega Games (35 page)

A shimmering figure pulled itself out of an air shaft and secured a rope to one of the ceiling struts before beginning the long climb down. The intruder’s dimsilk garments made it impossible to identify who it was, but it was Terran-sized, and moved with inhuman speed and agility that I recognized instantly.

“Up there,” I said, pointing. “It’s Reever.”

“Go and tell him the dreds are on the way. And take this.” Cat shoved one of his blades into my hand. “You don’t have to kill anyone with it. Just defend yourself, will you?” I nodded and slipped the blade inside my tunic before I hurried over to intercept my husband as he

jumped down the last three feet from the end of the rope. “Duncan.”

I flung myself into his arms, holding on to him with tight hands. It wasn’t until he bent his head toward me that I smelled his scent, which was all wrong. I pushed myself out of his embrace. “What are you doing here?” Davidov pulled the mask of dimsilk away from his face. “Finishing things, Cherijo.” He looked down at

Cat’s dagger, which I had pressed to his chest. “Before you cut my heart out, you might help me catch

the Sovant when it comes. It won’t be able to resist the fighting.” “The same way it wasn’t supposed to resist me?” I asked. “I don’t have much faith in your predictions. Where is Reever?”

His fair brows drew together. “Isn’t he here with you?” “He went to stop Tya.” “I’m afraid I can’t have that.” Davidov moved like water, and suddenly the dagger I held appeared in his

hand. “I need her here, with me.” He took out a small device and checked its readout. What he saw made him scowl, and he glared at me. “How are you jamming her signal?”

A barrage of pulse fire sent us both to the ground. The fighting between Posbret’s men, the crew of the
Renko,
and the simulated raiders appeared to be escalating.

“I need Tya here,” Davidov said as he pulled me behind a boulder. “Go and find her and bring her back to me.”

How did Mercy say it? “In your dreams, stupid.”

“Find Tya and bring her here,” Davidov said, “or I will detonate the explosives I’ve planted around the domes. That will end this game once and for all.”

“You’re bluffing,” I said. “You won’t blow up anything.”

Davidov tapped his wristcom, and an instant later a tremendous explosion rocked the dome. As I ducked and covered my head, bits of the grid ceiling rained down over us.

“That was Epsilon Dome, where all the colony’s stores are kept,” Davidov informed me pleasantly. “What shall I blow up next? Mercy House? I don’t think anyone will really miss the whores. Well, perhaps the cripple.” He reached for the keypad.

I grabbed his hand. “Don’t. I’ll go. I’ll find her.”

“Excellent.” He kissed the back of my hand before I could wrench it away. “You should hurry, Doctor. You have fifteen minutes before I blow the next charge.”

I ran out of the melee room and down the corridor to the maintenance hatches where Reever and I had returned from Alpha Dome. I took a few precious minutes to suit up before I left Gamers and descended into the tunnels.

Duncan, Duncan, Duncan.

I didn’t know I was chanting his name out loud until my suit com answered me. “Jarn, where are you?”

“Duncan.” I stumbled and stopped, bracing myself against one of the rock walls. “I’m in the tunnels, just below where the Gamers maintenance hatch is. Do you have Tya?” “No, I’m still tracking her.” My heart clenched. “If we don’t find her and take her to Davidov within the next fifteen minutes, he’s

going to start blowing up the domes. He’s already destroyed one to prove he can do it.”

“Take the first left turn and follow the passage,” he told me. “I will meet you at the waste recycling station.” I followed his instructions and waited beside an enormous tangle of pipes and processors until he came

out of one of the nearby passages. After giving me a brief, hard hug, he went over to the equipment and began working on one of the consoles.

“What are you doing?” I went to his side. “We have to find the Hsktskt.” “I chased her into one of the dome substations,” he said as he pulled up a complex-looking schematic. “She got away from me by crawling into one of the water supply pipes.” He pointed toward the screen.

“You have to be mistaken,” I said. “She is too big to fit into a pipe.”

“Not anymore,” he assured me, studying the schematic. “That line leads to Mercy House’s substation. There’s a junction I think I can valve off here.” He seized my hand. “Come, there’s not much time left.”

We went to the point where the pipes intersected with another group, and Reever grabbed hold of a wheel, turning it slowly. I heard metal groan and something bang into the side of the pipe. I lifted my scanner and passed the beam over the piping until I found a distinct thermal signature.

“Here,” I said. “She’s here.” I moved as close to the pipe as I could. “Tya, this is Cherijo. Please come out of there. Davidov is threatening to detonate the explosives if you don’t go to him now. He’s not far. All you have to do is go to the melee room at Gamers.”

The signature changed direction and entered another series of pipes. In another moment it was gone.

“Where do these lead?” I asked my husband.

He turned and studied the direction of the pipes. “To Davidov.”

Reever and I made our way back to Gamers, running to beat Davidov’s time limit. As my breath burned in my tired lungs, and my leg muscles knotted,I tried not to think of Kohbi and the other females who had been kind to me at Mercy House. If Davidov kept his promise and killed them, I would never forgive myself.

Reever stopped outside the melee room and pulled me into a corner by the entry. I removed my helmet—there had not been enough time for us to take off our suits—and watched him do the same.

“I will deal with Alek,” he said, taking a pulse pistol out of his utility pocket. “You find Mercy and the others and stay with them.”

I nodded. “What about Tya?”

“I don’t think we have to worry about her,” he said, his eyes so dark a gray they almost looked black.

We entered the melee room, ducking to avoid pulse fire and moving to the nearest cover. The fighting seemed to be nearly over; the crew of the
Renko
was pinned down in one malfunctioning section of the grid, hiding behind the slain bodies of the simulated Hsktskt.

Davidov was nowhere in sight.

As I looked for Drefan and Mercy, I saw something pouring from a supply pipe into the water trap. It was Swap, judging by the pink color of the mass, but when the worm touched the water his body darkened and seemed to expand. Another, smaller form waded into the water and dove under the surface before I had time to see who it was.

“It’s Tya,” Reever said to me.

We moved closer to the water trap. I peered into its depths to see if the Hsktskt was trying to attack the giant worm. I saw Tya briefly surface, taking in air through her mouth. Her scaly head seemed to be melting into a mass of gray ooze. A dark pink pseudopod came out of the water, wrapped around her face, and tugged her under.

Men began shouting in victory as the crew of the
Renko
threw their weapons over the wall of Hsktskt The largest of Drefan’s drednocs stepped into the line of fire, blasting Posbret with a halo pulse. It had no effect on the raider leader, although it did render his weapon useless. He turned it around in his hands and smashed it against the drednoc’s sensory case, smashing the outer plas. For a moment the inner shield slid up, revealing a very human face beneath.

“Duncan,” I whispered, clutching at his arm.

Now I understood why the largest of the battle drones had been designed so differently from the others. Drefan had built himself a complete chassis to fit around his body and compensate for his amputated limbs. His remaining arm, covered in protective armor and gauntlet, matched the artificial one on the opposite side.

“No wonder he is so awkward with standard prosthetics,” I muttered. “He’s been using that thing all this time.”

Drefan’s reconstruct-styled body appeared to have the same strength and resilience as the other drednocs, but even that did not seem to be giving him an advantage over Posbret. The raider leader wrestled ferociously with him, paying no attention to the damage Drefan’s grapplers were inflicting on his arms, shoulders, and head. I didn’t understand why until tears of blood began spilling from the raider leader’s eyes.

“The Sovant—Duncan, the Sovant has taken over Posbret’s body.” I tried to imagine what would happen if the skin thief got inside Drefan’s drone chassis. It would be unstoppable. “We have to get it away from him.”

“You can’t,” Cat said as he joined us. “Tya is the only one who can kill it.”

“Swap has trapped Tya underwater,” I said.

“Not trapped.” Cat winced as Drefan was knocked over onto his back. “He’s helping her. Although he better hurry up. James can’t hold it off much longer.”

“Tya is the Odnallak,” Reever said softly.

The Omorr nodded. “Swap and I had a little chat down in the tunnels. He’s going to help her shift into the one thing that monster fears.”

Water began to bubble as the dark mass spread across the bottom of the pool, moving closer to the shore. Something like a Hsktskt slowly emerged from the dark stain, its body swelling and changing as the worm’s body seemed to pour into it from behind.

“What is Swap doing to her?” I said, appalled.

Reever looked grim. “They’re merging.”

What was left of the Hsktskt and the enormous mass beneath the water slowly came together into one form. It spread out countless limbs and folds as it moved to the edge of the water, displacing most of it with its bulk. A nightmarish mouth opened at the very top of the grossly swollen body and then slid down the front of it, burrowing into the center and widening. I saw a cavity the size of a mine tunnel open and line itself with hundreds of thousands of pointed teeth, some the size of my head.

Reever looked away from it. “A rogur.” Drefan punched Posbret’s face, making it turn toward the water trap. The raider leader went still as it

saw the monster lurking at the edge of the water. He scrambled off Drefan’s chassis and crawled backward, trying desperately to get his feet under him. Spine-tipped limbs sprang from the body of the rogur, impaling the simulated bodies of the Hsktskt and

dragging them back toward the water. The corpses were flung into the cavernous open maw, which

opened and closed in a spiraling motion, swallowing the bodies with compulsive greed. “When it ruled Vtaga, the rogur was virtually indestructible, ” Reever said absently. “It swallows its prey whole, and slowly digests them. TssVar said it kept its victims alive in its gullet for months.”

“But the rogur is extinct,” I said. “Like the braael.” “The Sovant doesn’t know that,” Cat said. “It has no reasoning. It only kills and eats and breeds.” Posbret managed to escape Tya/Swap’s grasp by throwing other bodies at them. For a moment I

thought he meant to run out of the melee room, until he abruptly changed direction and came toward us.

Both Duncan and Cat raised weapons and fired at Posbret, but nothing stopped him. When he got close enough for me to see how his skin was rippling, I knew what it meant to do, and whom it would choose. “Run, Jarn,” my husband said as he kept firing until the power cell drained completely. The pulse beams both Reever and Cat had fired at Posbret had done a great deal of damage to his body,

but he seemed unaware of it. Just before he reached us, Cat drained the last of his power cell firing into

Posbret’s face, which abruptly burst into flames. I waited until Posbret came within two feet of my husband, and I jumped in front of him. “Don’t take him,” I told the Sovant. “I’m the one you want.”

“Jarn.” Reever grabbed my waist between his hands and tried to set me out of the way. I turned and kissed him, hard, and then jammed the syrinpress against his neck. “I’m sorry.” My husband’s eyes widened and he swiped at me with one hand before he dropped to the floor. I turned to Posbret, who reached up and slapped at the flames on his face until they went out. His fur had

been burned off, as had much of the skin beneath it. Fresh blood rimmed his heat-whitened eyes as he regarded me.

Cat dragged Reever out of the way. “What are you doing?” “Stay back,” I said, thumbing the dosage meter on the syrinpress to a lethal dose of neuroparalyzer. To Posbret I said, “I’m the one in the bounty, remember? Cherijo Torin.”