She loaded the coordinate into her weapons hardware. A homing grenade shot out of her belt dispenser, curving over the top of the sheltering machinery. An EE explosion obliterated the corridor entrance. Another maser slashed across the serjeant’s armour. Ione rolled quickly, swinging the launcher round. A second homing grenade eliminated the corridor the Tyrathca soldier was charging out of.

They’re moving bloody fast,she told her other selves and samuel. It was a good pincer manoeuvre.she used the suit’s sensors to scan down the corridor ahead. No motion or anomalous infrared source was detectable.

You can’t go back,the serjeant with monica and samuel down in ring five told her. You know they’re behind you.

Yes.she unclipped a magazine from her belt and slotted it into her multi-barrelled launcher as she walked over to the one remaining corridor entrance. Three slender missiles were fired at two second intervals, streaking away down the lightless tunnel. The serjeant flattened itself against the wall.

Each of the three missiles was tipped with a neutron pulse warhead. They detonated simultaneously, soaking a five hundred metre length of the corridor with a lethal cascade of radiation. If there had been any Tyrathca lurking down there, the neutron bombardment would have killed them almost instantaneously. Holding the fat missile launcher in one hand, and an X-ray laser in the other, the diversion serjeant started to creep down the radioactive corridor.

“Oski, progress report, please,” Monica datavised. A sensor disk showed her the Tyrathca massing at the top of the spiral ramp which led down to ring five. “We’re getting a little critical out here.”

“I’m in the general systems layout. Should have the archive location any second now. This is another terminal the Kiint have refurbished. That must mean we’re on the right track.”

“Oski,” Samuel datavised. “Please store as much of the layout as possible. It might help us to get out of here.”

“To get out?” Monica queried.

“Yes. I have an idea.”

“I’d love to hear it.”

“One moment.” Syrinx?

Yes Samuel. Are you making progress?

Not as much as I’d like, but yes. Oski will start to datavise the information we have acquired so far to you and the Lady Macbeth in case we do not get out.

There’s still only one Tyrathca ship at Tanjuntic-RI. They’ll be no match for Oenone. As long as you can get back up to what’s left of the spaceport support column, you’ll be fine.

That may prove difficult. The Tyrathca soldier-caste are very capable, as the serjeants are discovering. And they know where we have to return to. An ambush would be easy for them.

What do you propose?

Monica and I were both present when Dr Mzu escaped from Tranquillity.

Now wait a minute—syrinx protested.

I could do that,Oenone said. If the Udat can, I can.there was considerable eagerness in the voidhawk’s mental tone.

No,syrinx said, instinctively protective. Tanjuntic-RI is a hell of a lot smaller than Tranquillity. You’d never fit into one of the rings.

But I would fit into the level-one chambers.

That was what I was going to suggest,samuel said. We ought to be able to reach one of them. And I doubt the hellhawk could swallow in to harass you. Whereas if you came back here to fight your way past the Tyrathca ship, it could certainly complicate the situation for you.

I can do it,Oenone insisted.

Are you sure? This isn’t just bravado, is it?

You know I can. And we would honour Udat ’s memory by doing so.

All right.syrinx couldn’t hide the pride and simmering excitement in her mind. Samuel, we’ll attempt to pick you out from one of the axial chambers.

Thank you,samuel said emphatically.

Oski and Renato were almost running as they emerged from the control office airlock. Their suit programs were having to limit the augmentation to stop them from hitting their heads on the airlock chamber ceiling. “I’ve found the archive.” Renato datavised the layout file over to Monica, Samuel, and the serjeants. “It’s on the other side of the ring, a kilometre away.”

“Move out,” Monica datavised. Her guidance block was analysing the new data, incorporating it into existing files.

“According to this file, there’s a ramp up to the second level just past the archive,” Samuel datavised. “I’ll blow the airlock hatch, and we’ll evacuate through there as soon as you’ve got the information.”

“Sounds good,” Renato datavised.

The five of them were skating along the lightless streets in long low bounds, utterly reliant on their guidance programs. Nothing changed around them. At every turn, the wintered towers were the same ahead and behind, their infrared signatures identical.

“The Tyrathca are on their way down the ramp to this ring,” datavised the serjeant who was guarding the entrance. “I’ve rigged the airlock. Do you want me to blow it?”

“No,” Monica datavised. “Wait until they’re all inside the ring, then blow it.”

“You want to trap them in here?” Renato datavised. “With us?”

“Good tactics,” Samuel confirmed. “If we block them now, we won’t know where they are, nor how they gain entry. But once they’re in, they can’t get out easily, and we can monitor them via the sensor disks. It gives us the strategic high ground.”

A glimmer of infrared started to shine down the corridor ahead of the diversion serjeant, like an autumnal dawn. Ione stopped and slapped a magazine of smart-seeker missiles in the launcher, datavising the Tyrathca profile into their processors. Suit sensors showed a similar infrared glow expanding behind her.

Surrounded,she informed her other selves. Be warned. They really are making good use of their knowledge.

A couple of neutron pulse tipped missiles were fired at the group behind her. She dropped a grenade, and started to run forwards. Smart-seeker missiles sliced out of the big launcher ahead of her. The neutron pulses went off. She triggered the grenade, bringing down the corridor roof. Small EE detonations were flaring up ahead as the missiles punctured the Tyrathca spacesuit fabric, burying themselves deep in the xenoc bodies before detonating.

Infrared vision was wiped out in splashes of brilliant crimson. Still firing missiles. Something like a medium-sized cannonball hit her right leg. Exploding. She was flung violently against the ceiling, bouncing down against the floor. Internal bones snapped. Cracks multiplied across her exoskeleton. But the armour held, reinforced by the molecular binding generators.

The diversion serjeant raised its head, dislodging various rocks which were lodged on its helmet. It moved its arms, actuators pushing hard against the weight of rocks holding its torso down. More rocks slithered off the armour. Two soldier-caste Tyrathca were bounding towards it. Ione waited until they were fifteen metres away, and fired a couple of homing grenades.

The sensor disk by the spiral ramp up in level one noted a rise in the thermal environment beyond its pre-set parameters, and broadcast an alert. Visual observation showed twenty new Tyrathca marching into the interior.

“Oh God,” Monica datavised. “Just what we need.”

“It will take them forty minutes to reach ring five,” Samuel datavised. “If Oski hasn’t retrieved what we need by then I doubt it will matter.”

They were fifty metres short of the ring wall, passing the last of the towers. Five sets of suit lights slithered erratically over the wall, kindling small refractive auras from the curtain of frosted creeper leaves.