Aligning the bottleneck of the harp with the center of the iris pattern, he said, “Stand back.”
Brigid began to protest, but her words were swallowed up by a discordant wail as Kane stroked the strings, experimentally at first, then harder and faster. The notes rolled, slapping against the hatch metal, building higher and higher until the tunnel seemed to vibrate in unison with them.
Grant and Brigid stood on either side of the frame, hands over their ears, watching pain slowly twisting Kane’s face. He stood fast, strumming and plucking the threads of the harp. The disharmonious music flooded the passageway, beating against the portal in invisible waves, splashing back over him.
He felt a crushing weight pressing against his body, and his eardrums seemed to push inward. He labored for breath. It became intolerably hot, heat radiating in hazy shimmers from the hatch.
The metal segments cracked, a pattern of jagged lines bisecting them, widening and lengthening. Flakes of alloy showered down, then small chunks. The panels shivered, a violent tremor shaking them within the frame.
Kane removed his fingers from the strings, but he still felt, if not exactly heard, the echoes of the musical notes. Gritting his teeth, he swung his right foot at the center of the hatch. The sole of his boot struck it hard, and a corresponding vibration jolted up through his leg, like an electrical shock. He almost cried out from the unexpected pain.
The hatch buckled a bit, more pieces crumbling and falling from it. Kane limped back, his leg numb from the tips of his toes to his knee.
Grant pushed him aside, tucked his chin against his shoulder and sprang forward, slamming all of his 220-plus pounds against the portal.
Fatigued metal shrieked and burst inward in a clashing rain of fragments. Grant landed heavily in the room beyond, skidding forward a few feet atop a large curved segment.
Shaking his head, trying to rid his ears of the chiming echoes, Kane stepped over the threshold. The room was small, dimly lit, bare and unfurnished. It looked more like an entrance foyer, not a chamber.
Grant climbed to his feet, grimacing and rubbing his shoulder. “Felt like the door was electrified.”
“You intersected with the vibrational field around it,” Brigid told him. “Good thing it broke as soon as you hit it or you could’ve been seriously hurt.”
A turnstile security checkpoint occupied most of the opposite wall. Beyond it, they saw a short hallway ending at an open doorway. From it wafted a familiar sound, but Kane wasn’t sure if he really heard it or only the ghostly after-chimes of the harp song. It sounded like the distant howl of a gale-force wind.
Brigid rushed forward toward the turnstile, blurting, “It’s the gateway! It’s activated!”
They pushed through the prongs of the checkpoint and into the narrow corridor. They had taken less than a dozen running steps before a stunted figure appeared in the doorway. All of them recognized David with Brigid’s Ingram gripped in his small hands.
He laughed wildly as he triggered a long, stuttering burst, flame wreathing the short muzzle. Grant, Kane and Brigid went to the floor as a raking stream of auto-fire tore long gouges in the walls and chewed up ceiling tiles. A flurry of plaster dust sifted down on them.
David was a novice with a blaster, hosing the bullets around indiscriminately, the recoil of the full-auto firing rate kicking up the barrel.
Raising the harp, Kane sighted down the bottleneck and stroked the strings. Because of the Ingram’s steady hammering, he barely heard the sound his strumming produced, but he saw its effect.
Ragged tongues of flame flared from the blaster in David’s grasp as all the rounds in the magazine detonated with a brutal, bone-jarring concussion. The Ingram vanished. Up to the wrists, David’s hands vanished with it.
He staggered on wide-braced legs, staring at the blood-spurting stumps at the end of his arms. As if he did not believe what his eyes saw, David lifted his wrists in front of his face. A stream of crimson squirted over his cheek.
By the time he had dragged enough air into his lungs to start screaming, Grant was on his feet and throwing a pile-driver right fist at his head. The scream went back into David’s throat as the blow lifted him off his feet and flipped him through the door.