The Drift Wars (24 page)

Too
close,
Peter thought. He emptied a pistol blindly around the
corner. It wouldn’t do much, but maybe they didn’t know that. He
tossed two more explosives at the floor and reached his arm into the
hallway to twist one to the nearest wall. Eight more seconds to
charge the gun. He peeked around the corner, knocking helmets with
one of the Threes.

The
white helmet was long and narrow, the darkened visor split in two
like the eyes of an insect. The man inside was surprisingly small,
maybe half Peter’s height. The suit extended his arms and legs,
bringing him up to size.

The
Three was as surprised as Peter. It stepped back involuntarily, as
if to let Peter pass. His gun was pointed right at Peter’s face,
but he didn’t fire. The other Three appeared behind the first,
peering curiously over his shoulder.

Peter
turned away and came back with a wide roundhouse. His fist drove
into the Three’s chin, bowling him over. The Three’s gun fired
wildly, spraying the wall and ceiling. A bullet caught Peter’s
arm, shoving it back.

“Here
we go,” Peter said, scooping up the giant X-910. He aimed it at
the floor as the last second ticked off the charger. The light went
green and he fired.

—   —   —

The
force of the blast drove Peter into the air. The impulsor wave
ripped through three floors and finally out the hull itself.

A
perfect escape route,
he thought, lifting Linda over his head.
For one
. It would work only if he stayed behind to cover her
exit.

“Peter,
don’t,” Linda said. But it was already done. He cast her into
the hole and the vortex of escaping air sucked her into space.

She’ll
be safe for now
,
hidden in the debris
, Peter assured
himself
.

—   —   —

Bullets
tore apart the hallway. The Threes fired as if making a show of
destruction.

Pissed
someone off,
Peter thought.

He
set the explosives’ timer to three seconds and dove into the
hallway. He landed flat on his stomach and fired his rocket pack.

Two
seconds.

His
rocket pack was designed for space; in gravity it lacked the power
to get him airborne. He scraped along the floor.

He
shoved his elbows down to raise his head but careened sideways,
clipping the wall. His legs flipped over his head, and he rolled
into a ball. As he bounced down the hallway like a loose tire, the
rocket pack was spinning him faster and faster.

One
second.

Bile
splashed up his throat and blood filled his head. He let himself
roll until he was about to pass out, then killed the rocket and
threw his arms out, slapping against the floor. His body stopped,
but his brain kept spinning. He staggered to his feet, wavering,
disoriented. Bullets plinked against his armor, knocking him around.
Then came the explosion.

The
shock wave curled the walls on four sides, rolling them toward him.
Peter was shoved forward by a blast of air. A wall of fire—hot gas
mixed with molten metal—bore down on him. He ran.

He
sprinted with all he had, but the fireball rolled over him. The
flame engulfed him, triggering every warning light in his suit. Then
the floor shattered and he fell through.

—   —   —

Peter
fell. Ten, twenty, forty feet.

The
flame burned out, and he plunged through the dark. He slammed
against something solid. It shattered and he continued down.

He
turned on his sensors and saw he was inside a wide steel duct. Thick
steam filled the air and Peter didn’t see the floor until he
crashed into it.

He
bounced from the impact, then settled onto the grate flooring. Dark
vapor streamed around him, swirling, dancing with shadows. Peter
stood up and eased forward blindly, arms out, feeling for the wall.
His foot landed on nothing—he had reached the edge. He jerked
back, then leaned forward, peering out from the curtain of steam.

The
room was massive. Peter couldn’t even see the walls. Titanic
equipment loomed overhead and enormous metal pipes twisted and
mingled as they dropped into the depths. Everything was too far to
reach. Peter was stuck.

A
familiar screech echoed through the room: Riel fighterships. Peter
killed his sensors, but too late. Two fighterships whipped around a
large pipe, heading straight at him. They popped off four rockets
and then curved back and away. Peter bent his legs, ready to leap
into the abyss, but the rockets angled up. They weren’t meant for
him.

He
watched them fade overhead and saw the flash of their explosion.
There was a moment of silence, then a deep groan. It grew louder,
trembling the grate under his feet. Peter waved his arms, trying to
keep his balance.

Fragments
of pipe and hunks of malformed plastic rained from above. A metal
gear sheared a support cable, its frayed end whipping toward Peter.
He ducked. It whistled by, but the grate beneath him flipped,
tossing him over the edge.

Peter
fired his rocket, directing his fall toward a doughnut-shaped
coupler that bulged out from a colossal pipe. White lines appeared
on its casing; then a massive turbine tore through, ripping it
apart. He was falling straight toward it.

Peter
fired his rocket again, but it only sputtered—out of fuel. He
dropped through a crack in the casing to the coupler’s cavernous
interior and splashed into some frothy white liquid at the bottom.

The
turbine crashed down, its blade a gleaming steel tidal wave two
stories tall. Peter tried to scramble back, but his feet slipped on
the smooth surface. He raised his arms uselessly as the blade closed
in.

A
hunk of pipe tumbled from the sky, shearing the turbine at the neck
and sending the ungainly blade forward. It rolled overhead,
rupturing the walls around him. The coupler fell and so did Peter.

Peter
shoved away from the coupler just as it smashed against another
pipe. The pipes merged and grew thinner as he fell. Floodlights
shone up from below and lit the framework of a transportship.

The
ship was only half-finished. Robotic arms hung over it, lifeless.
There were blocky extruders attached to their tips, with hoses
connected back to a large crucible. It looked like a giant printing
machine—one that could build entire ships. Peter passed through
its frame and continued down.

The
corrugated steel of the base’s hull appeared in the distance.
Peter could see the stars through a gaping hole. He was about to
fall out the bottom of the base.

He
used his stabilizers to angle at the side of the hole. If he missed,
he’d plunge through space indefinitely.

His
stabilizers didn’t offer much propulsion, and it didn’t look
like he was going to make it. But Peter wasn’t falling as quickly
as he had first thought. In fact, he was slowing. The gravity had
shifted. He had dropped below the gravity generators, and they were
now pulling him back up.

He
slowed to a halt, the hull just beyond his reach, then fell back up.

—   —   —

He
rose toward the half-finished transport, catching its skeletal frame
in his hands and pulling himself onto one of the wide I-beams. He
tried his boot magnets, but the ship was made from high-density
plastic. He peered down and saw debris from the wrecked pipeworks
floating in a thick blanket.
That must be the midpoint of the
base’s gravity
, he thought. He scanned around, but there was
only debris. He’d have to find a different way—up or down—if
he didn’t want to end up trapped in the middle.

Peter
searched the cavernous room. Under the floodlights he could see the
dividing lines between the twelve sections of the base. But not
twelve, he realized. Thirteen. He looked at the ship beneath his
feet.
A thirteenth section
, he thought.
For the navy
.

Something
caught Peter’s eye: a pair of rockets punched through the layer of
floating debris. But they were too big to be rockets.

The
Threes were coming for him.

—   —   —

Peter
had no weapons, no rocket fuel, nothing.
The only bright side
,
Peter thought,
is that they’re chasing me instead of Linda.

The
Threes opened fire. Bullets riddled the transportship’s frame. He
ran down the beam, but there was nowhere to go. Then, just as a
bullet clipped his heel, they swerved away—one of the Threes had
knocked the other’s elbow, saving Peter’s life. But only, it
seemed, because he was trying to kill him himself.

The
second opened fire, but the first one retaliated, playfully slapping
his friend’s arm. They rocketed past, horsing around, ignoring
Peter. They flew through the break in the hull and disappeared
outside.

Peter
walked to the end of beam, leaped to one of the robotic extruders,
and slid down the hose to the crucible. Molten plastic bubbled
inside, fed from a pipe that ran out the bottom—back toward the
center of the room. He couldn’t see where it led, but having only
one option made for an easy choice. He shimmied down.

—   —   —

Peter
had gone just twenty feet when he heard the screaming of the
fighterships. Two of them swung around a wide pipe, and the one in
front fired a single rocket. It came right for him.

Peter
clasped the pipe in both hands and drew his legs to a crouch. He
timed the rocket’s approach, springing forward right before it
hit. The rocket passed beneath him so close that he could feel the
heat of its exhaust.

He
fell toward the layer of floating wreckage. The rocket arced around,
releasing a plume of flame as it accelerated toward him. Peter
looked from the rocket to the debris, trying to gauge which one
would reach him first. It would be close.

Peter
plowed into the debris. A large hunk of steel pipe cracked against
his helmet, sending a jolt through his spine. He fell out on the
other side, the wreckage sealing behind him.

The
rocket should have exploded against the wreckage, but somehow it
pushed through. It flew up alongside Peter. It was nearly as tall as
he was and slender. It was seemingly unaware of him, but then
something clicked and it turned sharply. Peter seized it with both
hands, holding it back.

The
two spiraled through the air. The rocket kept pivoting to aim at
Peter, but since he was latched on to it, the rocket just spun him
faster and faster. Peter’s hands were slipping, so he kicked his
legs in and locked them around the rocket, hugging it with his whole
body. He raised his face over the tip of the cone. The rocket,
sensing Peter in front of it, flew straight.

He
leaned his head to the side and the rocket turned to follow. He
considered steering it down, through the break in the hull, but the
Threes might still be out there. Instead he took it straight up,
back to where he started.

—   —   —

Peter
and the rocket soared up the vaulting room, passing through a halo
of fire—the damage of the earlier rockets. Pipes and machinery
were torn and mangled. Something important had been destroyed, but
Peter had no idea what.

They
flew higher, into the dark. Peter turned on his headlamp, but it was
another minute before the ceiling came into view, glinting like
steel. He certainly hoped it was.

He
tightened his hands on the rocket’s cone, and just before it
struck the ceiling, he flipped his legs up. His timing was off, too
early, and he almost fumbled his hold. But the roof was indeed made
of steel; his boots locked in place.

The
rocket swung wildly and Peter nearly lost his grip. He jerked the
rocket back, keeping the nose from the ceiling, and tucked it under
his arm. He knew that if he let it go, it would circle back for him,
so he punched the rocket’s stabilizer, an oval bulge at the rear
of the housing, pounding it inward. The stabilizer sparked,
releasing a puff of smoke. Peter aimed the rocket away and let go.

The
rocket spiraled into the dark and, unable to control itself,
exploded against a distant pipe.

Peter
found a ladder welded to the side of a nearby pipe. He grabbed a
high rung, released his boot magnets, and flipped right-side up. He
climbed to a hatch in the ceiling.

—   —   —

Peter
emerged into the glow of the Drift boundary. The hull had been torn
away, and he saw the gridwork of rooms outlined by stubby remnants
of their walls. Strings of metal twisted into the sky to where four
dark shapes—fighterships—hovered overhead. Peter clicked off his
helmet light and froze.

The
ships gave no indication that they had seen him. Their trapezoidal
windows all faced the middle, as if huddled in conference. Peter
waited several minutes and then decided to try for cover.

He
was at the bottom of a crater—the product of some massive
explosion. Ahead, high on a wall, an intact hallway led into the
base. Peter carefully lowered himself flat and rolled into the
channel of a half-destroyed pipe. He shimmied forward.

Halfway
there he had an overpowering urge to look back. Something glinted
above the fighterships. A combat suit, Peter thought, his heart
sinking. But it was only debris. Linda was still out there. He
pressed on, faster.

The
melted ruins curved upward until Peter was climbing. He made slow,
decisive movements, easing up the coarse surface. A mangled door
blocked the lower half of the hallway. He grabbed the top and
flipped over, then peered back. The fighterships hadn’t moved.

He
crawled down the hall until the ships were blocked from view; then
he stood and ran.

—   —   —

The
hallway was pitch-black; even his low-light sensors registered
nothing. He didn’t dare use his headlamp—it would make him a
target long before it revealed any—so he turned on his
intermittent radar, the lowest-power sensor in his array. The
hallway appeared in intervals, bright green pings that slowly melted
to black. He was back in the Purple Area, heading toward the center
of the base.