Sindri smiled at her impishly. “Afterward… following the removal of a pair of exceedingly troublesome factors to our personal equation.”
Kane’s eyes fixed on the remote-control unit and saw Sindri’s index finger curve around to caress a button. Within a microsecond, he kicked himself off the floor, slamming headlong against Grant in a flying tackle, bowling him off his feet.
Grant’s breath left his lungs in an explosive whoosh. Both men rolled ten feet across the deck, bouncing lightly. Without the reduced gravity, Kane would not have been able to push Grant away from the red streak that lashed out from the lens of the MD.
Kane heard a sizzling crackle, as if the very molecules of the thin air were seared by its passage. Brigid’s shrill shout of fear and anger reverberated within the walls of his helmet.
Pushing himself away from Grant, he spared a half second to look at the section of inner bulkhead that had been sluiced away by the antiproton beam.
On the platform, Brigid struggled with Sindri, attempting to wrench the control unit from his hand while trying to avoid the blows he swung at her with his walking stick.
Crimson radiance sparkled in the lens of the particle-beam emitter. Kane and Grant leaped up and scrambled away from each other, trying to put as much distance between them as the domed chamber would permit.
Kane started an abortive dash for the GRASER cannon platform, but a spear of hell-light spit toward him. He put all his strength into a backward lunge that carried him nearly to the ramp.
The MD shifted back in Grant’s direction. He avoided the stream of deadly energy by executing a standing high jump. The beam missed his feet by a fractional margin and turned another section of the bulkhead into bubbling slag.
The low gravity aided them in evading the weapon’s beam, but both men knew they couldn’t keep ducking and leaping until the molecular destabilizer’s batteries were drained. It was only a matter of seconds before one of them made a misstep and was unraveled.
Kane whirled toward the doorway, moving in yards-long bounds.
Sindri’s sneering laughter sounded in his ears. “To where do you hope to run, Mr. Kane?”
He reached the top of the ramp, snatched up the harp and spun on his heel. Pointing the bottleneck of the instrument at the rolling molecular destabilizer, he strummed the strings fast and hard. Nothing happened, except that the lens spewed another whiplash of blood-hued light at him. The beam scorched a path across the deck, toward his legs.
Kane jumped but came down on a strip where the alloy turned to slush. His feet slipped out from under him, and he tumbled, cradling the harp in his arms. His roll ended a scant three feet from the front wheels of the MD.
Even as his heart seemed to seize and freeze in his chest, Kane struck the strings of the instrument repeatedly. The lens cracked, sparks spurting out between the splits. The glassy substance fell apart, and a borealis of ghostly light sprayed out from the aperture.
Kane shoulder-rolled away, coming to his feet. He saw Grant at the end of the chamber and Brigid still grappling with Sindri, trying to wrest the remote-control unit from his hand. He desperately pressed the buttons, sending the wheeled weapon careening on a crazy figure-eight course. It shed sparks in its wake.
Brigid stiffened her left wrist, locking the fingers in a half-curled position against the palm. She drove a vicious leopard’s-paw strike against the base of Sin-dri’s left hand.
He choked out a pained curse, and the remote dropped from suddenly nerve-dead fingers. He swung his cane like a cudgel at her faceplate, but she checked the blow with a forearm. Her knee flashed up, pounding into Sindri’s chest and driving him backward against the railing.
Bracing himself against the rail, he delivered both feet into Brigid’s midriff. She staggered, hit the top rail, teetered for a second, then plunged over it. It wasn’t really a fall. She twisted her body and managed to alight on her feet in a crouch, catching herself on her hands. She immediately bounced upright.