18.

The floor of the deep-core station thrummed. A prickly sensation scratched at Marten’s nerves. He’d heard before from a news show or a spy video, he couldn’t remember which, that the discharges of magnetic force off the molten metal created strange electrical currents within the station. It felt as if spiders with sandpaper feet scurried across him. He kept rubbing his arms and rolling his shoulders. And he kept a sharp lookout for red-suits.

The station was grimly utilitarian. Thick ablative foam walls, dull gray in color, sectioned the place into what seemed like hundreds of tiny rooms. The hall ceilings hung uncomfortably low. The light-globes embedded in them radiated almost no heat. Every time he entered a new room through a hatch, he had to duck his head.

His mother had once taken him to a museum. He remembered seeing submarines from the Twentieth Century. It had been in a conflict called World War Two. The rooms and the narrow hatchways of the deep-core station seemed similar to those WWII subs. Gauges, dials, control boards and computer screens abounded everywhere. Emergency breathing masks hung on all the walls, along with fire extinguishers and heavy-duty tanks filled with construction foam. When sprayed and exposed to air, the foam quickhardened into a lightweight, durable wall. Riot police and soldiers used construction foam, as did firefighters creating a fast firebreak. Marten realized that fires must be a constant hazard on the station.

He touched the ablative foam wall. Hot. He looked around warily. The foam walls seemed to mute sound. He barely heard his footsteps. They were muffled, almost noiseless.

He crept down a small, steep set of stairs and peered onto the next floor. It was just like the previous floor. Then an odd clang sounded. It seemed to come from all around. An eerie c-r-e-a-k of ghostly quality followed. The entire station shuddered. In his fright and surprise, Marten almost lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs.

His heart thudded as he hurried up them instead. Those noises didn’t sound good. He wondered if it was stage one of Major Orlov’s objective. Or was it merely regular deep station occurrences? He had no way to judge, but he felt that time was running out. Assault carbine at the ready, he hunted from room to room, straining to hear anything that would lead him to the enemy. The thick foam walls absorbed sound, so that the station seemed empty, lifeless, dead. It gave Marten an evil, creepy feeling. Was he too late to change anything?

Then he stumbled onto PHC-created carnage. It looked like a kitchen, a food center with a microwave and a refrigerator. Pockmarked ablative foam lined the wall, where laser beams had hit. Gray smoke curled from each pockmark and gave off a horrible stink. Draped over several small tables were six bodies, each in the brown coveralls of Deep-Core. The laser burns that had killed them still smoldered.

Rage filled Marten, at such wanton murder, senseless slaughter. He had to stop Major Orlov and her killers.

He increased his pace, but it was impossible to run. The psychological pressure wouldn’t allow it. It felt as if he dragged his legs against a horizontal gravity. Then he heard a sound, a voice. He slowed to a creep, peering ahead so hard it seemed as if his eyeballs would spill out. He mouth went dry. His fingers stiffened.

Two men spoke in monotone voices, and they were just around the hatch. They said that maybe they should rape the system specialist after the major was finished with her.

Marten’s rage burned in him and loosened his stiff fingers. He rounded the hatchway and stepped through.

Two red-suits sat at a small table. Their lasers lay in their laps as they stared at their drinks. They looked up as Marten stepped through the hatch. They had hard, tanned faces, like bloodthirsty weasels given human form. For a nanosecond, Marten and they stared at each other.

“You,” one of them said in a dull monotone.

Marten vaguely recognized the pointed chin. Yeah, that man had given the major the agonizer. That seemed like an age ago.

The nanosecond ended, and the red-suits lunged out of their chairs, spilling their drinks. They were deadly as serpents, almost as fast. Their lasers lifted into firing position as red beams hosed the floor. Marten’s assault carbine spoke—a quiet cha-cha-cha. The two red-suits hit the floor dead, riddled and twisted into grotesque positions.

Marten stepped over them, moving faster now. He was certain that because of the walls the sound of his gunfire wouldn’t carry far.

The next moment a red-suit walking like a deprogrammed android almost bumped into him. Marten blew him aside, the red-suit only beginning to realize what had happened as his eyes fluttered for the last time. Marten moved like a killer robot now, a machine. Down a steep set of stairs, turn left, right, right. A red-suit tried to poke a stimstick between his own compressed lips. His face was filled with intense concentration, but he kept hitting his cheek or nose with the end of the stimstick. Marten gunned him down, thankful that the deep-core pressure was making them stupid.

Marten kept striding, but it felt as if he moved through water. His head started hurting and it was hard to concentrate. So he watched his feet, willing them forward one step at a time. When had control of them again, he looked up, hunting, searching. He hurried through a hatchway—and he tripped over a foot. Marten threw out his arms to catch himself. His weapon went spinning, but he landed without knocking out his teeth. When nothing more happened, he looked back.

A red-suit pointed a laser at him. The man had razor-thin eyebrows and the deadly intent eyes of a pit bull. On his suit was the name: Ngo Drang. He was the second guard that had helped the major torture him in the interrogation room.

Drang frowned. “I… I should shoot you.”

Marten sagged in defeat. He didn’t know why Ngo Drang hadn’t already done it. Then he looked at the tight face, at the empty, odd stare in the killer’s eyes.

“Hissss—splat,” said Drang. “A neat laser hole in your forehead.”

“You should take me to the major,” Marten said.

Drang shook his head. “No. I… I should kill you. I don’t know why I haven’t done it already. It’s…” He shook his head, frowning.

“The major wants you to take me to her,” Marten said.

“Yeah?”

Marten rose slowly, noting how the laser tracked his forehead. Deep-core pressure was all he had between him and death. “We’d better go.”

The intense frown left Ngo Drang’s face. “That way,” he said, gesturing with the laser.