More nukes exploded and we staggered across the base, between buildings that swayed dangerously with each new explosion. The shield was flaming deeper and deeper into the red now, as more laser beams fired against it. It was only a matter of time until the shield was overloaded. Another blast knocked us to the ground again. Dust and grit filled the air, burning my eyes.
Spitting dirt from her begrimed face, the security officer pointed in the direction of the scientists’ compound. “Shelter,” she said. “You go there.”
“What about you?”
“I have duty station.” She hauled herself to her feet and started off in the opposite direction just as another nuke pounded outside the shield, making the shield go black for eons-long moments. The ground shook violently and several buildings collapsed. A heavy support beam cracked loose from one building and fell like an ax across the back of the security officer, flattening her beneath its weight.
I staggered over to her, through the choking dust, as more explosions shook the ground. The shield was visibly wobbling now, blinking red and orange and bubbling like water on the boil.
She was conscious, but barely. The beam had crushed her ribs, maybe broken her back. I strained against it, summoning up every reserve of strength in me, and hauled it off her. It fell to the ground beside us with a thunderous clunk.
I dared not turn her over. Her tunic was a mass of blood from her shoulders to her waist. She lay facedown, one cheek in the dirt, the other caked with grime.
One yellow eye gazed steadily at me. “You do not follow orders,” she muttered.
“I’ll get help.”
“No one will come. I am dead. Go to shelter before you become dead, too.”
Her eye closed. She stopped breathing. I felt for a pulse in her throat, in her wrist. Nothing. She would have gleefully ripped me to ribbons a few days ago, yet I felt an enormous reluctance to leave her there, to admit that she was dead and there was nothing more that I could do.
Another blast and the twisted, crazily leaning side of the building next to us began to groan and shudder. I jumped to my feet and started running, glancing over my shoulder to see the whole building collapse in a thundering heap on top of the Skorpis’ dead body.
For a moment I was disoriented. I stopped, blinking in the swirling dust while explosions thudded around me and the energy screen crackled and hissed like a badly tuned video.
There! I recognized the scientists’ compound. Its buildings still stood, although the electrical fence around it seemed to be turned off. The Skorpis must be feeding all the base’s power into the energy shield, I thought. Once that shield is overloaded and shorts out, the attackers can blast the whole area with nukes.
But what good would that do? I asked myself as I dashed past the dead fence and into the largest building in the compound. The fleet’s been sent here to rescue me and my troop, not annihilate us.
Or so I thought.
I had no idea of how to find their shelter. Must be a doorway or a hatch somewhere, but I could see none in the dim twilight caused by the dust sifting through the air outside. Another explosion shook the building so hard I nearly was knocked to my knees.
“Where’s the shelter?” I bellowed as loudly as I could. “It’s me, Orion!”
Almost immediately a section of the floor cracked open. “Down here,” a voice shouted back. “Quick!”
I dashed for the trapdoor and yanked it wide enough to squeeze through just as a greenish light filled the room and I felt a dizzying, nauseating sense of vertigo that made my head swim.
Then everything went utterly black.
CHAPTER 15
When I came to my senses once more I was hanging in midair almost three meters above the team of human scientists, who stood craning their necks upward toward me.
I landed in their midst with a painful thump, knocking several of them to the metal plates of the flooring. I rolled over and sat up. Looking around, I saw it was obvious that we were no longer in the Skorpis base.