Falling Angel, Page 3

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  "We gotta stop," Santiago muttered, raising an arm to brush at his sweating brow and seeming surprised when—for the fourth time that hour—his gloved hand struck the transparent mask of his environmentally sealed combat headgear. "We gotta stop," He repeated disgustedly, making a sort of bird-pecking motion that sent the suit's systems the message to wipe off his forehead for him.

  "Just a little further," Zhiang exhorted, as he had to do more and more frequently. "As soon as we find some place we can defend."

  No one spoke—they were all too well-trained to surrender to panic—but the unspoken words were heavy on the six men. How could they defend themselves from things that could melt out of walls at will, impervious to bullets and unhampered by the latest advancements in protective synthetics? It had been eight hours since the disaster in the arcade; most of them had been awake since launch from Redhall—Lagrange Two Station—the day before. They were exhausted.

  "But what if we don't find anywhere to set up?" McDougal rumbled, rolling his shoulders to work out the soreness that constant tension had rooted deep. "It's just been hallway and arches except for that big room, and that isn't what we're looking to repeat." Brick grunted his agreement, but the tag-along Marine almost never spoke unless directly addressed. Despite the piecemeal nature of the operation, with most infiltration groups comprised of mixed forces and nationalities to ensure that any one insertion team would have a wide array of skills, the fact that his entire unit had been wiped out seemed to keep the American separate from the other five.

  "It can't be all hallways," said Zhiang, albeit without real conviction. He kicked himself mentally for his tone, but he was exhausted and couldn't keep up a steady stream of optimism in the face of an increasingly bitter reality.

  "Why not?" Murchison broke in. "You saw those spider-things; blow them apart and they'd just squidge all back together again. If whatever runs this madhouse can do that with something as complex as a robot—or whatever those were—then why not architecture? A truly modular ship, where you just have to have the right sort of interface to call up whatever room you want from whichever archway you happen to be standing next to."

  "We don't know what 'they' can or cannot do," Zhiang replied a little too stiffly. By his ancestors, he was tired. "So let's not go ascribing them every unproven idea a half-dozen nervous minds can think up, alright? We've job enough with the enemies in front of us, without worrying about the ones inside."

  "Yes, sir," The others chorused with varying degrees of petulance.

  Still, every step seemed to a sap confidence from the troops, with nothing but that endless tunnel of smooth white wall and its monotonously reliable studding of archway after sealed archway, all glowing nacre in the artificial white light. Hours of walking revealed that the ground under their feet felt like no substance they had ever encountered. It was softer than metal or stone, but harder than soil or linoleum, producing no sound regardless of how roughly they trod upon it or when they dropped a heavy load, as Santiago had discovered a few hours earlier. Fiddling about distractedly with his gear, he had accidentally cut power to his pack's magnetic clamps and the entire unit had braced, expecting a gods-awful clamor as the slab of metal and plastic went bouncing down the hallway. Contents packed tight so as not to shift, it had produced not a single sound.

  "Merda," Santiago breathed.

  Zhiang had been lost so deeply in thought that, when the hallway they were in ended in a perpendicular junction with another, he had actually turned right and took three full steps before drawing himself up short at the Brazilian's curse.

  "No kidding," McDougal replied, similarly overawed.

  Even if they had not just been subjected to hours of endless, banausic architecture, the room would have come like a punch to the plexus; after their long trek, Zhiang and the others could only nod in mute agreement with the Portuguese profanity. Down the hall stood the arched entrance to a chamber that appeared to be a massive, cylindrical space a quarter kilometer across and tiered with circular platforms arranged at odds heights with no visible means of support. One hovered centimeters off the floor, while the next one visible was a good three meters—plenty of clearance to walk under—and the edge of yet another was perhaps ten meters. The height of the room was lost past the upper edge of its entrance.

  "Stim up and give me a standard entrance," Zhiang managed, recovering himself swiftly enough to assert military discipline before anyone acted rashly. With a faint mechanical whir, he felt the prick at the base of his neck followed by the warm, tingling rush of the chemical stimulants. Immediately, fatigue melted away and his muscles tightened, his awareness heightened as his eyes focused more sharply. His Chinese cocktail was just about as good as one got, though Black's Eur-U stimulant would probably be the latest miracle out of Austria's system-class labs. Zhiang sent off a quick prayer that the rest of his unit had chemicals good enough to keep them from being liabilities in a fire-fight.

  The walls and platforms of the chamber were as white and unadorned as they had come to expect but by the play shadows cast by higher platforms, Zhiang guessed that ceiling must be truly soaring in height.

  Movements swift and steady now, Brick and McDougal swung into the doorway, dropping to one knee and darting their snub-nosed rifles in quick arcs. Santiago and Murchison were in a heartbeat later, their own rifles trained up and around to cover the ceiling and platforms, while Zhiang and Black pulled up the rear, eyes firmly on the far side of the chamber.

  "Clear," McDougal called, standing but not lowering his rifle.

  "Clear," The others added, each in turn; only after Zhiang added his voice did everyone's gazes start to wander.

  "How tall?" Murchison mumbled, and Zhiang focused his eyes on the distant ceiling. Suit system reacting to the action, it calculated the distance and displayed '846.37m' in a blinking box just to the side of where his eye was pointed.

  "About eight-hundred-and-fifty meters," Zhiang replied. "No signs of movement or an-"

  "The door!" Brick cried and the group whirled as one. Even as they finished turning, they barely had time to glimpse a thin white sliver of the hallway ceiling outside before it disappeared behind the rising edge of a curved door. Santiago was there in an instant, banging the butt of his rifle on the obstruction but, like the floors, it produced no sound and less reaction.

  "Damnation," Murchison muttered, looking around. "We're trapped. I don't see any other doors on this level."

  Click.

  "What was that?" Black asked, twisting and training his rifle on the air above them, where the distant noise seemed to have come from. With the sound-absorbing properties of the walls, it had not echoed but merely filtered down to them.

  "Bad tidings," Zhiang muttered. "Pairs spread out, find some cover, and watch each others' backs. We've come too far to lose anyone else."

  "And remember boys," Santiago added with a last dash of gallows humor, "Friendly fire ain't, so keep your lead to yourselves." They all laughed, even though it wasn't a very good joke. You had to, in situations like this.

  "This whole thing stinks," Black muttered conspiratorially as he knelt backpack-to-backpack with Zhiang against the partial cover of the room's lowest platform. "You saw those spiders; they could wipe us out in a heartbeat, if they really wanted to. So why all the games?"

  "Maybe it amuses them," Zhiang whispered back, too low for the other pairs to hear. "Maybe they're studying our psychology under pressure. They could just be operating under restraints we know nothing about; like I said, it's no use trying to guess with as little information as we have."

  Click.

  "Brilliant," The English airman spat, but this time the strange sound from above did not come and go without incident.

  With a faint hiss like the opening of an electronic door in a high-end shopping center back home, the floor underfoot gave a quick jerk and then began to slide smoothly. Zhiang cast about frantically before he sp
otted it in the center of the room. Like some sort of telescoping iris, a circular opening was growing in the center of the chamber's floor. Two hundred meters away, Santiago roared another Portuguese curse.

  "Up on the platforms," Zhiang shouted, then subvocalized the command into the local radio for good measure. Black had already scrambled onto a smooth disc about the size of a small car and was holding out his hand to give Zhiang a boost.

  "Playing with us," He growled as he pulled Zhiang up next to him.

  Click.

  "Oh, for the love of," McDougal's voice sounded from a nearby platform floating perhaps twice as wide and a meter higher than the one Zhiang and Black occupied.

  With a jarring start, the platform beneath Zhiang started to rotate like a slow gear even as it began to transcribe a circular path around the circumference of the room. A quick glance showed that the scores of platforms that comprised the room's near-kilometer height were beginning to gyre about in similar fashion; the closer to the ceiling, the more swiftly the discs spun.

  "What in God's name is that?" Santiago called, gesturing towards the growing hole in the floor's center with the nose of his rifle. Dashing to a better vantage, Zhiang peered over his platform's lip and down into...something.

  "A jet engine?" Murchison supplied.

  "Something hot," McDougal agreed, the air around them already beginning to ripple with distorting waves of heat.

  Down at the pit's bottom was a device that did, indeed, resemble some sort of jet exhaust, though it produced no sound as it cast up searing incalescence from a flaring nozzle. As the opening widened—eventually replacing the chamber floor entirely—more and more of the thrusting knives of heat appeared, adding to the temperature of the room. Glancing at a corner of his H.U.D., Zhiang's eyebrows leapt; the suit's exterior thermistor registered almost a hundred degrees. Before now, the ship had not varied from a constant and comfortable temperature of twenty-three-and-one-half degrees. Even as he watched, the temperature rose another two degrees.

  "Are they planning on barbequing us?" McDougal asked, glancing over at Brick, who was staring up at the platforms that twirled and spun above them.

  "I've played games like this before," The Marine said suddenly, casting about quickly.

  "What?" Santiago asked, voice disbelieving. "What in God's name does that have to do with anything?"

  "Pointless traps and puzzles in the dungeon," Brick replied as if that explained everything and suddenly took a running start to the edge of his platform, leaping out over the growing pit like a high jumper going for the record. Everyone cried at once before, at the apex of his jump, the twirling edge of a higher platform spun out under him and he landed with a well-executed roll. Springing back up to his feet, he motioned for McDougal and the others to follow.

  "Basic platforming dungeon design: you drop in some danger, then force the hero to hop his way out of it," He called. "It's just like a video game. If we stay down there, we get roasted alive. But the higher we go," He jerked a thumb skyward, "The harder the trap is to negotiate. The heat will probably keep increasing until the lowest platforms are hotter than our suits can compensate for. If we don't get to the top in time, we fry like so much bacon on a griddle."

  "Don't talk to me about bacon," McDougal muttered as he followed Brick to the higher platform, almost missing the jump before the Marine snagged his arm and dragged him up.

  "Come on, everyone," Brick shouted, making beckoning sweeps with his arm. They all looked at Zhiang, who could only shrug.

  "So now we're playing alien video games," He muttered and thus began their skyward exodus.

  The first hundred meters were simplicity in-and-of itself for men near the apex of physical human ability and hopped up on the latest military-grade stimulant mixtures, but soon the spinning of the platforms under their feet made it difficult to stand and almost impossible to properly time their jumps up the growing distance between platform levels. The spinning edges offered no ridges or indentations for them to grip and Murchison and McDougal had both missed their last jumps, though they had managed to land back on the platforms they had just abandoned with only a minimum of stopping the other soldiers' hearts.

  "We're going to have to ditch the packs," A panting Brick told Zhiang after they had just barely managed to scrabble onto a platform that spun by. "They're too heavy."

  "I hate to do it," Zhiang admitted, "But you're right. We won't make it to the top at this rate. Everyone," He subvocalized over the local radio, since Santiago and Murchison were making their way up platforms on the other side of the chamber, "Ditch your packs. Keep some food and ammo, but dump everything else you can."

  "Spread the stuff out as far as you can," Brick added. "Chuck it onto every platform you see. They have integral sensors, so we can monitor how the heat levels are increasing," He added after a querying glance from Zhiang.

  "Good idea," He admitted, a little chagrined that he had not thought of it himself as he dumped his own backpack in the center of the platform they occupied. They worked swiftly, so by the next revolution Brick and Zhiang were able to boost McDougal and Black up alongside them while Santiago and Murchison made it up onto a platform that was curling along at the same height but on the opposite side of the room.

  "Much easier," Black puffed, massaging the small of his back uselessly through his hard suit. "My turn, then." He heaved a deep sighed, eyeing the platform that was making its way towards them.

  Another hundred meters, then two, and finally they were half-way up the chamber. A loud staccato of bang-bang-bang had everyone jumping and rolling, rifles sweeping every visible corner of the room. Nothing.

  "My fault," Murchison admitted into his radio after a moment. "Sensors say it was an extra ammo clip I'd tossed down on one of the lower platforms. Looks like it's hot enough to go off down there."

  "Good thing no one tossed a mine," Black muttered.

  "Aww hell," Santiago shouted.

  "You had better be joking," Zhiang cried back.

  "We all better be climbing!" The Brazilian returned and made a reckless leap for the next highest platform as it charged by—they were moving at a considerable clip this high up—almost spilling himself over backwards before twisting sharply enough to make a gymnast blanch and rolling safely onto the smooth white disc.

  "Goddammit!" McDougal spat, everyone moving with a renewed sense of urgency. "This is why I hate working with you."

  "And here I thought you were just jealous," Santiago laughed back as he yanked Murchison up after him.

  They were two-thirds of the way up the cylindrical room, the platforms whizzing around somewhere between 'inconvenient' and 'homicidal,' when the dumped mine detonated. Zhiang wasn't sure what sorts of explosives Santiago's Forças Armadas do Brasil had issued its specialists for Fallen Angel, but the blast was stronger than anything the solid-state hydrocarbon mines magnetized to his waist could have produced. Shuddering like a wounded monster, the entire cylindrical room quivered and Zhiang had to drop to hands-and-knees to keep his balance.

  "Murchison!" Black shouted, leaping impotently towards the edge of the platform. He skidded to a stop with one arm hanging out over empty air, as if he could reach across the hundreds of meters that separated him from where the Canadian's bemusedly surprised face was dropping out of view.

  "Santiago! Murchison!" Zhiang shouted the names with mingled horror and rage as he watched the platforms on the far side of the chamber collapsing. From ceiling to boiling floor, every platform on that half of the room seemed to have suddenly lost whatever invisible force supported it. They went crashing in eerie silence towards the ravenous thermal jets on the floor, ivory platforms disintegrating a dozen meters above the reaching fires.

  "Get back!" Brick shouted and it took Zhiang a moment to realize why. Decades of genetic 'social engineering' and new customs of diet and lifestyle had long since quashed the stereotype of the small-statured Chinese—unless you counted those u
nfortunate children of socialites that had been swept up in the 'retro-China' craze and made sure their offspring were stylishly diminutive—but it was still a feat for Zhiang to leap backwards while bodily hauling Black one-armed with him.

  Waves of pressure rolled up over them as the mines left strapped to the two soldiers detonated with ferocious vigor while the unspent ammunition in their rifles and on their persons went shrieking through the chamber. With so many platforms fallen, they were much more dangerous than the occasional dumped magazine had proven.

  McDougal cursed vociferously as one rogue bullet whined off the ferramic plate on his left shoulder, leaving a short dash of scorched carbon around a small divot in the black-green material.

  "What was that?" Black asked breathlessly, shaking in Zhiang's grip. "Why did they go crashing like that?"

  "We don't know the rules of the game," Brick radioed in reply, voice eerily calm. "That explosion might have broken one of them and...we just don't know."

  "What we do know," Zhiang interjected, "Is that we have to get to the top before we join them." Everyone glanced up, faces blanching.

  Juking and twisting, the platforms above them raced about the chamber. There was a disheartening amount of ceiling visible now that fully half of their options had gone tumbling into that terrible furnace below.