Mick Farren - Their Master's war

None of the surviving troopers had thought much about what would happen when they actually arrived back on board. As they'd stormed onto the e-vac, gunning down three field police in the process, simply getting off the planet in one piece had been the all-consuming goal. It had remained so during the go-for-broke takeoff that had them running the gauntlet of a sudden storm of enemy ground fire. It was only when they were in space and could see the dozens of tiny craft shuttling in between the thirteen big ships that they started to remember that they might well have jetted from frying pan to fire. Collectively, the shuttles seemed to be moving with such a desperate frenzy that it was obvious that the cluster was in the throes of a major alert.

The bombardment began while Rance's troopers were just emerging from the blue room decontamination process. The ship shuddered, and the floor tilted. A number of men fell on their faces. There were muffled explosions in another part of the ship. Farther down the corridor, a duct burst and superheated steam roared from the breach. This in turn caused a short in a power transfer, and a shower of blue sparks cascaded through the clouds of swirling vapor. The ship lurched again, and there were more explosions. Smoke billowed down the corridor. Fire alarms were ringing. Rance clung to a doorjamb and tried to organize the men under his command. Their equipment was still on the conveyer, coming out of decontamination. Without a helmet, it was hard to make himself heard.

"Everyone suit up!"

The ship now seemed to be tilting steeply toward the bow. Rance knew that this was probably a localized illusion. The floor grav control in this sector had probably been jarred off line, and no one had yet managed to reset it. The knowledge didn't make the experience any easier to stand.

Dyrkin crawled up the sloping floor, dragging himself with one hand. His suit and helmet were tucked under his other arm. "So what are we supposed to do?"

"Get into your suit. The ship's going to jump before too long, and we've got to get back to our coffins. If we don't, we're going to be pulp."

Most of the survivors were at the bottom of the angled corridor, piled against an emergency bulkhead that had closed immediately after the first series of shocks. They were grazed and bruised, and a couple had been scalded by the steam, but otherwise the men seemed to be more or less intact. Rance clawed his way to the conveyer offload. He grabbed the first suit to emerge, slapped it against his chest, and let it crawl over his body. He fitted his helmet and then started sliding the rest of the suits and helmets down to the men.

"Dyrkin, get up here and help me!"

The floor righted itself, but the lights went out. A half dozen helmet lights came on in the gloom.

"Get that bulkhead open."

"Controls don't respond. It must have shorted out." "Somebody rig a bypass."

Hark's voice came over the communicator. "I got it."

The bulkhead rolled back. There were still lights in the next section of corridor. A public address was trilling urgently in nohan. The ship slammed sideways as if it had received a blow from a giant hammer. The men were thrown up against the left-hand wall. Those who were still struggling into their suits were thrown down on the deck.

"That's got to be a direct hit."

"You wouldn't know about a direct hit."

"The screens got to be buckling, though."

Rance hurried them along. "We've got to get back to the coffins if we don't want to make the jump on bare floor."

The men reached the next safety bulkhead. "This one's fused, too." "Hark…" "I got it."

The bulkhead opened on a sheet of flame that billowed out at them. It engulfed the trooper next to Hark. His suit was only half on, and he staggered back screaming with his underclothes on fire. Benset grabbed him and rolled him on the deck. Rance was yelling.

"Back! Back!"

The fleeing troopers ran headlong into a nohan fire-fighting crew in red ceramic armor. They were whistling in what sounded like the alien equivalent of panic, but at least they were headed for the fire.

"This way!"

They ran in single file down a narrow companionway. All around them, sirens were blaring, signifying widespread damage. There was a confused babble in their helmets. They came up against a third closed safety bulkhead. This time, the manual bypass refused to work, and Hark and Renchett had to crawl into the mechanism before they could get it to open. The others waited tensely.

"We ain't going to make it."

"Come on, you guys!"

"Will you shut the hell up and let us work? We're troopers, not riggers," Renchett called back tensely.

The bulkhead creaked open. It led to a free-fall shaft.

"If I remember right, this is the emergency shaft to one of the dropcraft bays," Dyrkin said.

As he spoke, the sound of the alarms changed.

"That's five minutes to jump."

"What do we do?"

"Into the shaft," Rance ordered.

"That's not the way to the messdecks."

"Don't argue, I got an idea."

The men ran to the end of the companionway and jumped. Even in their armor, they floated lightly down to a kneebend landing on the dropcraft launch deck. There were only two ships in a bay designed for five, but they had been locked down in preparation for the emergency. Rance pointed to the nearest craft.

"Inside, as fast as you can!"

"We can't fly that thing!"

"We're not going to fly it. We going to rack ourselves in and hope we can survive the jump in there. At least we'll be strapped down."

The ship reeled as it was hit repeatedly. Plasma cascaded down the far side of the bay, burning through anything it touched. There were more internal explosions.

"Are we capable of a jump?"

"Everybody inside! Now! There's no way we can make the coffins."

Dyrkin fell into step beside Rance as they ran for the grounded ship. "Is this going to work?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Training took over, and the troopers went to their places as if they were going on a mission. The restraint cages were snapped into place, and then the men waited. Renchett tried to strike a positive note in the terrifyi] communicator silence inside the ship.

"This may be almost as good as a coffin. At least we can't thrash around, and the suits should help some.

The calming voice was stretched out into an inhu scream. The damaged ship had gone into the jump.

The hallucinations were jagged and metallic, no doubt a result of the surroundings. Razor-sharp shards slice through tiny vulnerable figures as they scuttled through towering mazes of incredible pain. Steel jaws snapped and snarled and tore at naked flesh. Iron claws gouge^ 1 and ripped, spikes impaled, and needles slid through genitals and eyeballs. All the time they were falling, down toward other waiting rows of knives and teeth. Perhaps it was the noise that was the worst. A screeching, ripping scream, surface against surface, that con stantly rose in pitch and volume assaulted the ears and seared through the mind. Where the surfaces touched, sheets of flame and burning gas spiraled upward, broiling flesh and brain into red, raw, blind horror. The universe was a hollow steel drum being constantly pounded by some hammer of the gods. Metal. Metal. The prisoners of the hallucinations were chained to the interior of that drum. The vibrations rattled loose their teeth and caved in their chest cavities, shaking apart their very molecular structure. Ears and eyes and noses were bleeding. Blood ran down between their legs. It was oozing from their every pore. Hot blood was everywhere. They could taste it, boiling and angry against the background of the ever-present metal. As they drowned in blood, a terrible laughter started, a laughter so angry and mocking that it seemed to be a summation of all previous pain.