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He cruises past me, naked and bleeding, carrying horrible, jagged weapons. Both covered in gore. His feverish eyes meet mine. There is a manic joy there. He is at peace in the zero gravity, coasting toward his next target. To strike me is to ruin the pattern of his hunt. But his eyes say: soon.
Darkness. No guns fire. There’s a wet hacking sound.
Then a screech.
A blaring gun illuminates the room as it fires a stream of energy at the wall. The metal glows molten. The man’s arm is pinned by a spear to the floor or the ceiling or the wall, I can’t tell. It’s Paxton, I realize just as the smallest intruder embraces him like a child hugging its father.
“It’s eating me…” Paxton screams. “It’s eating…”
His voice gurgles away as the intruder gnaws into his throat and it goes black again.
I gotta get out of here.
My heart hammers in my chest so hard I can barely breathe. My mine-born eyes and my weeks in unreliable gravity save me this time from rebounding poorly off the wall. I push off with intent toward the hallway behind me, away from the slaughter block. I drift on my course, everything black, hearing only gnawing sounds, gurgles, whimpering, and shearing metal.
I slam into the wall and scramble to hold on.
I can’t find anything in the darkness. Then I grab at a shape, encircle my hands around it, and feel a foot. Then another leg encircles me, bringing me close.
“It’s me,” Volga says. Her voice is husky and even. “Quiet. I need you to get me out of these cuffs. Tap my leg if you understand.”
A man screams nearby.
I tap Volga’s leg.
“Climb up me.” I climb and with shaking hands listen to Volga’s instructions. “There is a knife in my thigh.”
“Which pocket?”
“In my thigh.”
I search blindly for it and find a cold hilt. I hesitate to pull it out until Volga wrenches her leg away herself. Warm blood spil
ls over my fingers as I slide the thick blade out. Volga doesn’t make a sound. I feel the weapon’s edge. It cuts my finger. Gods, it’s sharp. Following her instructions, I manage to remove the finger cuffs one by one.
By the time I cut through the cable around her waist, someone is laughing in the darkness. Blue light emanating from her tattoos reveals Fig cornered on the wall opposite the breach by five of the laughing intruders. Slaughtered Sol Guards float around them. The smallest intruder uses the bodies to navigate the null G. Looks like Fig has killed one of them. His body floats above her, missing its head.
If anything, the intruders look intrigued by her, and eager to test Fig themselves. They line up one by one. The little one gets to go first. His knotted arms pick up two axes. He sticks out a tongue implanted with a circle divider and hisses through the hole in the center.
Fig just sneers.
“Night vision. Berserker psychoactives and pressure-sealed skin. Someone had a fun time making you ugly fucks.” Fig smiles. “How’s it work in vacuum if you got a wound?”
Something blinks on the wall behind the monsters.
“Bihd am’drah zürk Fá!” the smallest says, lifting both axes above his head and closing his eyes. The others echo the call and lift their weapons.
Volga shoves me hard out of the shower block and into the hall.
Something inhales. Then a flash.
A force slams me into the opposite wall of the hall hard enough for me to bloody my tongue and dent my skull. I drift senseless, wailing in my ears.
Everything aches.
When I open my eyes, the hall is filled with broken tiles. Volga blinks, dazed from a wound on her forehead. Spheres of fire writhe in the null gravity behind us in the shower block. One of the intruders floats in the middle of the fire, wheeling its arms in vain to escape.
Then there’s a secondary explosion from Fig’s bomb and the sound of warping metal.
