"Gruesome, but effective," she said to herself. "I have something here. Something I hope isn"t too scrambled to be a.n.a.lyzed."

Cilreth scanned the room again. She didn"t see any threats, but she realized she had not been paying enough attention to notice. The Vovokan spheres were watching her, at least. They rotated lazily around the tube she had dug in.

"Where"s Telisa?" she asked again.

The other column displayed the flat creature. Cilreth felt only frustration. She took a deep breath and approached the display.

"No. This. I want her," she thought, bringing up the image of Telisa in her mind. "Where?"

A pane opened in her PV. The routing protocol was accessed and a route entered into her link. Cilreth accessed the map. There was a display of more tunnels she had not been in yet. And a red line marked a path through them.

"She"s there?" Cilreth asked. Nothing happened. "Then that"s where I need to be," she said. Cilreth opened her eyes. The display before her showed a Terran brain again.

The brain was utterly dark. Devoid of all activity.

Oh no. She isn"t dead, is she?

Cilreth stuffed the sample tube in her pack and hefted her laser rifle. She followed the map out a tunnel across from where she had entered.

Chapter 19.

"I heard a grenade go off at the entrance, but my machine there is still intact," Magnus said.

"I got a close miss on the Konuan with a grenade," Arakaki replied.

"Has it been hurt? Maybe we can track it now."

"Don"t think it for a second. It will use the blood trail to lead us into a trap," Arakaki said over her link. "If it even has blood. Besides, it was an incendiary."

"We have a trap of our own," Magnus transmitted back. "And the scout robots."

"Better than nothing. The bugs aren"t even worth mentioning."

"The bugs-my scouts-are of limited use, but if I have one train its laser right at a grille, it could shoot fast. No target sig. Just if it moves, fry it. The machine has a destructive discharge option. And they can sense moving ma.s.s through walls. An alien trick. They can see it coming, I guarantee it." Unless it has a Trilisk trick to defeat that. I gotta be more careful what I guarantee these days.

Magnus meant the scout could blow its entire energy supply in one shot, which would damage or destroy the laser, but the strike would probably vaporize anything short of a tank. Which should be good enough to fry one Konuan; super fast or not, it wasn"t faster than light. Or more accurately, faster than the ramp-up speed of the laser delivery system, which was very fast.

"Then it will shoot us if we get in the fire corridor," Arakaki replied.

"The scouts will be at an angle. I won"t put them right in front of the grille. They can stay in corners and cover the grille opening. The center position is for us."

"Good luck picking the grille," Arakaki said.

"They have ma.s.s sensors, remember? And the other one has a glue grenade launcher. And these grilles are small. One shot for each one and they"re blocked off..."

Arakaki gave him a new look.

She realizes I may have a plan forming here.

"Okay, that"s good," she said. "We can block off the tunnel entrance at the bottom of the building with a couple of armed grenades. If it drops down there, boom. The scouts can glue off the exit routes..."

"Except one."

"Yes. Except one."

"That traps it in here with us," Magnus said.

"No, that pretty much traps us in here with it. We"re toast, my friend. Or my enemy, or whatever the h.e.l.l you are." She paused. "It"s still around. I"m getting a few readings of it nearby," Arakaki took out two grenades. Magnus caught sight of a flash of green from them; then she dropped them to the ground. They spun off.

"It"s staying here with us," Magnus said. He told his scouts to glue the grilles shut by the exits. He wanted to restrict the movements of the Konuan, give him a chance at a clear shot.

Arakaki shifted but didn"t flinch when she heard the sounds of the glue capsules popping through the building.

"We should move to cover these two exit grilles I busted open," he said, showing her a map through his link.

"Gluing us in? I doubt it"s concerned."

"Well, it should be," Magnus said.

Arakaki kept out both the UED PAW and her laser. Her weapons were shorter range, but fast to aim and rapid firing. Magnus felt rea.s.sured by the familiar feel of his old rifle, even if it wasn"t as optimal for a fight in the tight confines of the building.

"It"s nearby. Coming closer," she said.

"Which way? How do you know?" Magnus replied over his link.

In reply, Arakaki sent him a pointer to a feed. It opened in his PV. He saw information from the sensor module outside. In response, he gave her access to his own sight and his weapon"s scan feed through his link. It was trusting her with a great deal, but Magnus was in grave danger anyway, and he felt like trusting her was a solid gamble.

A moment later her sight feed joined the channel. Magnus looked it over along with the sensor data.

"I see two sigs here," Magnus transmitted.

"Never. There"s never been two. It"s messing with us," Arakaki said. "One is fake. Or both."

He heard the hiss of a laser. He had missed whatever it was she saw. "You saw it?"

"My laser did."

"You have it on auto?"

"The only way to be fast enough," she said.

"Send me your target sig."

Her weapon sent his rifle a target profile. It was a lot more detailed than he had put together so far, so he loaded it and told his weapon to shoot as soon as it saw that signature again.

Then he caught sight of the creature on the ma.s.s sensor of a scout.

"There, by the north exit," he said. It was probably trying to dig through the farthest grille, the one the scout had plugged up with glue. It darted away quickly and dropped off the ma.s.s map.

"Cover me," he sent. The he realized it would be hard to cover an invisible person. In fact, to try might simply get him shot. "Scratch that."

"I know I said we should stick together but...I"m wired to explode if that d.a.m.n thing burns my head off," she said.

Magnus paused. She"s serious.

"Okay," he said, since he didn"t know what else to say. "Thanks for the heads-up." No pun intended.

He crouched and entered an adjacent room filled with old garbage, sc.r.a.ps of iron, and what looked like a long, low table with dozens of legs. Something caught his eye, but it wasn"t a Konuan.

A single word had been sc.r.a.ped onto the wall: "stunner." Magnus kept his weapon trained down the new corridor of grille holes toward a glued dead-end.

Stunner? Why would it say that? How did it know? I don"t even know what it means even though it"s readable. And I don"t have a stunner. Telisa. Maybe she wrote that after getting separated from Cilreth? Maybe she"s still alive.

"The wall says *stunner" in here. Nothing else. Just that word," he said. Before Arakaki could reply, his rifle saw a long creature flit through the air in the room ahead. It matched its signature close enough that the weapon took the shot. The weapon thundered twice. A smart round registered hits on its logged target less than a second later.

"Got it!"

Painfully loud pops echoed through the building. Telisa reeled from the input. It took her a moment to clear her mind and identify them: glue grenade detonations.

Magnus is gluing us in here together. With the other one.

A funny sc.r.a.ping sound-no, two sounds-scuttled along through nearby rooms then headed down to the tunnel entrance at the bottom of the building. Something fast and loud.

The native creatures are very quiet. Magnus must have sent some devices down to the tunnel below...grenades?

Telisa could intermittently hear the other Konuan. Sometimes it scurried through one or two rooms; other times it remained still, just breathing. She decided to follow it around the outside rooms. When it struck, maybe she could intervene, somehow.

Is it trying to escape? I doubt it. It"s lurking on the perimeter waiting to go in and kill them. This is life or death. I can"t let my shock at this situation hold me back any longer. I have to do something.

Telisa found her courage. She didn"t really know her new body, but she knew she had to try something. She couldn"t let Magnus die. And if she died trying to save him, well, she didn"t really want to live the rest of her life as a flat crawler anyway. Not even an acute-hearing, swift-jumping crawler. She felt on edge.

More of that carpet-creature adrenaline.

She shuffled toward the other Konuan more rapidly. She flitted across a room to the far wall, then crawled into the same room as the other. She didn"t need to spot it with her antennae lights; she could hear exactly where it was. She jumped toward it. Her body was a jumble of nerves.

It launched itself before she arrived. She landed directly in its spot. She didn"t feel like lingering there, so she jumped again on a parallel course.

A jet of acid sprayed the wall where she"d been a split second earlier. The substance fizzled on the wall, emitting a foul odor.

That would have hurt. How can I do that?

Telisa thought of spitting. She felt two muscular cylinders at the front edge of her body tense.

I think maybe I can spit back.

But the other Konuan had already jumped again. She landed, then launched after it. She spit at it in midair, launching a stream of her own. Then something shot past her, hurting her. The edge of her body had been clipped. A loud boom ripped through the room, then another.

Someone shot me!

Telisa felt something vaguely like pain. Her mind rang with the sensory overload of the loud noises. She wondered how bad the wound was. She landed on acid. The bite of it came through her legs, and something in her undersides reacted sharply. She jumped away before she had a chance to think it over.

It skips by, I follow it, and Magnus and that woman are slower than us, so they end up shooting at me. They don"t even realize I"m following it.

The other Konuan shot off into the next room. Telisa hid behind a metal machine attached to the ceiling. It looked like it could be anything from an old printing press to a laundry steamer. There was a handle that could press two flat plates together. She hid under them both.

If I make noise now, it will just distract them from it. And if I keep chasing it, I"ll just get shot more. I should be smarter.

She had to think carefully to even distinguish between the ceiling, walls, and floor. She flitted over toward a wall. There she scratched another message: "two konuan."

Then she pursued the other again. It was lurking only one room away from the woman. Telisa darted into the same room with it again. In a flash, she spit acid and leaped toward it. Only in flight did she realize she would land in her own acid. But she had sprayed it across a wide area this time, trying to make sure she at least grazed the target.

The other leaped away. A few droplets struck it as it headed away. Telisa could not alter her own course much in midair, but she tried.

A huge noise boomed over them. It made Telisa"s body shake. But it was worse for the other: a chunk of its hide flew off with a round that punched through the corner of its body.

The creature is toying with us.

Magnus felt waste heat in his weapon from the rounds he"d fired. One of his bullets had reported a hit before disintegrating on a wall. Arakaki"s laser hissed, but Magnus didn"t stop to wonder if it had hit.

He slipped the last grenade off his belt and armed it with the Konuan signature. It took him one more second to make sure it wouldn"t detonate near Arakaki, since she wasn"t on his predesignated safe list. Then the grenade whizzed off, bouncing along the ground like a tire that had flown off a dune buggy at high speed. It bounded straight through a grille into an adjacent chamber.

Magnus reacquired the blocked grille on his rifle and waited. If it tried to escape the grenade, it might fly into his vision again. He waited for two breaths; then the grenade flew into the far room, little more than a streak of black. Magnus narrowed his eyes.

The grenade exploded, sending flashes of white flame blasting through the ruined grille. The device had reported an imminent hit before detonation.

Got it! I think.

Her hearing had been damaged. Yet she could still hear the Terran approaching as if she had bells and whistles attached to her. Then she heard Magnus again. He must have turned off the stealth sphere. She easily picked up the sound of their clothing rubbing as they moved and the crunch of their feet on the dusty floor. Two of them now. Magnus and the other one. The odd pain feeling had returned and intensified, along with the confusing shock of loud noise. Her body did not respond to her.

I have to move again, I have to get out of here...

The pain was so severe she almost changed her mind and wished for death. On queue, Death slipped into the room. The woman with the laser and the carbine. The laser was pointed right at Telisa. Her Konuan body trembled. She was not sure she could jump again. At least not in a way she could land on her feet like before.

Then Magnus walked through. He looked at the other woman for a moment, then trained his own weapon at Telisa.

No, Magnus, it"s me, it"s me...