The squeal of failing metal mixed with the moans of the dying. In the darkness overhead, a transformer blew out with a shotgun report and sparks rained down through the catwalks. Somewhere in the distance a siren howled mournfully.

The truck lay dead. Strips of linear shaped charge inside the tank had cut an instant doorway through her side, the edges of the gaping wound curled back like bits of torn paper.

Steam parted as an armored form emerged through the hole, oblivious to the Hex that streamed off of grey armored skin. Dan Ridgeway climbed out of the wreckage and fired a brief glance toward the front of the vehicle. Hex-laden sludge hemorrhaged from buckled seams, thick with dissolving electronics and upholstery. Some of the runny clumps oozing to the floor would doubtlessly be the driver.

Turning quickly, Ridgeway's attention swept the loading bay. Everywhere he looked, walls and equipment were pockmarked with smoking holes. Shrapnel from the blast, every sc.r.a.p coated with Hex, had riddled the area. Anyone caught in the open was already dead or dying.

A sea of liberated Hex now churned in a knee-deep pool that stretched across the sunken floor. Dark fumes boiled from the surface, forming a brown, corrosive fog that crawled steadily outward. With a loud crackle, power cables dissolved in the caustic haze, spitting blue-white ribbons of voltage. Hissing madly, severed hoses thrashed like beheaded snakes.

But on the fringes of the disaster, Ridgeway could see training take hold. A response team appeared at the far corner of the loading bay. He counted a dozen figures in rubbery suits as they raced across the overhead catwalks, bold Hazmat symbols prominent on their blaze orange helmets.

Almost a hundred yards away, a pair of huge steel doors parted with a pneumatic whine, clearing the way for a bright yellow maglev. HAZMAT-4 appeared along the curved skirt in day-glow lettering. The sled oozed toward the acid lake on a cushion of magnetic force, flanked by yet another column of responders. Twin chrome barrels belched streams of thick white foam.

For a brief moment Ridgeway was impressed. Faced with an immense crisis, the Rimmer responders fought back with courage and discipline.

A good way to die, he thought as his right hand chopped crisply in the direction of the nearest team.

In response, Monster's Gatling gun spun into motion. Flame roared from the muzzle with a howling scream as an incandescent finger reached out to the tightly ma.s.sed responders. They disintegrated under its deadly touch, bodies churned into b.l.o.o.d.y bits by a withering hail of ammunition. A helmet burst into fluorescent shards while an air tank skipped across the metal floor, driven angrily by gas venting through its punctured sh.e.l.l.

The fiery stream swept left and came to bear on the maglev. Amid the staccato pang and whine of bullet hits on metal, ragged holes appeared across her hull, widening rapidly. Ridgeway watched the brilliant discharge of covalent ammunition as the onslaught ripped it's way to the vehicle's heart.

The gravitic core breached, incinerating the hapless souls who had scrambled behind the vehicle for cover. The powerful blast filled the air with white-hot frag and vaporized Hex.

Thunder echoed through the cavern as Ridgeway scanned the aftermath. The explosion had gutted an area almost twenty meters in diameter. Behind his impa.s.sive mask the marine grinned; gravcore failures were always dramatic.

Sections of catwalk hammered by the blast hung down from the ceiling in broken tatters. Fires burned by the dozen. A broken pressure line hemorrhaged compressed gas that added to the growing cloud of smoke and acid fumes. Nothing human moved amid the carnage. Ridgeway's right fist snapped up.

The spinning barrels of the Gatling stopped with a metallic click and the soft curl of rising smoke. Monster jumped down to the concrete floor and splashed through the acid with evident purpose. The rest of the RATs quickly followed.

Ridgeway cursed inwardly as he checked his mission clock. Behind the pace already. The elevator had descended far slower than projected and any margin for error was now gone. What had been a narrow window from the onset had become a flat-out race against time.

Ridgeway bolted forward, mechanized legs driving him through the knee-deep acid in a blur of acceleration. He hooked past the smoking crater left by the maglev's detonation, confident that nothing in his path had survived the initial room-clearing.

With his head encased in an opaque sh.e.l.l of carbonite, Ridgeway relied on synthetic vision pumped straight to his optic nerves. The days of laser-scorched retinas had long ago made clear visors obsolete. Multi-spectrum data gathered by each suit of armor was transmitted to the others, providing a shared tactical awareness. The TAC system resolved these streams of data into graphic icons and color-coded vectors.

As Ridgeway sprinted, Taz fell in on his heels. Darcy was moving to high ground, climbing a thin tensile grapling line to the catwalks above. Monster had broken right with Merlin and St.i.tch and now thundered across Cathedral on a direct line to the reactor. Ridgeway watched as the TAC displayed a series of threat indicators in Monster's path. Just as quickly as they appeared, they winked out.

In full stride, Ridgeway hurdled a steel rail. Ahead and to the left, a wide metal staircase led downward. The yellow and black sign on the wall read SECURITY with a prominent arrow pointing down.

Launching himself from the top of the stairs, Ridgeway hurtled through the air and landed with a bone-jarring slam on the grated steel walkway below. His inertia carried him into the midst of a Rimmer response team ma.s.sing frantically.

Powered forearms hooked viciously to the sound of snapping bones as he drove through the crowd. A second heavy shudder told him that Taz was right on his tail. The two Marines carved into the security team like a pair of chainsaws.

A door slid open on the right side of the wide industrial hallway as a tyvek-clad engineer appeared in the portal. His squad number, 62, gleamed on both helmet and airpack. Ridgeway saw the eyes behind the respirator flash wide with last-second alarm as an armored gauntlet slammed into the facemask with the force of a sledgehammer.

Taz blew by as Ridgeway cut hard and spun through the still-open doorway. Inside, Alliance responders were in chaos. Hands grappled with hazmat suits and s.n.a.t.c.hed at equipment as an orchestra of sirens blared at a deafening level. Reacting to a soundless cue, the Rimmers turned in stunned confusion at the dark metallic form in the doorway. The figure raised its armored hands, palms turned up as if in b.l.o.o.d.y supplication.

With a practiced mental command that had long become second nature, Ridgeway triggered the weapons mounted in his forearms and a dull roar whooshed from the compact flamethrowers. Twin streams of liquid fire swept across the writhing ma.s.s, igniting flesh and clothing alike. Thick with magnesium-phosphorous particles, the incendiary flared many times hotter than conventional fuel. Even the metal bunk frames began to burn.

Seven seconds after entering, Ridgeway backpedaled out of the room. The twin doors slammed shut with a sharp bang. He left the raging firestorm to quell any lingering screams.

Squad 62 will not be partic.i.p.ating in the remainder of today's exercise.

Resuming his charge down the hall, Ridgeway scanned the TAC. The mission clock ticked incessantly near the bottom center of his visual field, its numeric display enhanced with a steadily diminishing time bar.

Three minutes, sixteen seconds. The first wave of Marine Firehawks were already burning in through the upper atmosphere.

Just ahead, another set of doors slid open. Smoke and flickering orange light broiled angrily into the corridor, perforated by sporadic gunfire. Taz burst from the inferno and flashed an upraised thumb as the doors slammed shut behind him. The TAC noted scattered damage across the aussie's armor, but nothing of consequence.

Storming down the hall in tandem, Ridgeway called up a tactical map and a crisp wireframe materialized across the upper portion of his visual field. Refined to minimize clutter, the display gave Ridgeway rapid access to the condition and location of each Marine. One floor above, Monster's squad had reclaimed nearly a minute against the clock.

Ridgeway broke into a dead run, electroactive polymer muscles driving his legs like pistons. He broke left at a four-way junction and bolted across a cluttered machinist's bay.

The TAC scoured the path ahead, a.n.a.lyzing not only visual data but heat, acoustics, even the faint fields of myoelectric current generated by living flesh. Translated into a constant stream of EAD, expanded-awareness data, the heightened perception could give the Marines a nearly supernatural sense of a battlefield. Sometimes it simply gave him a split-second edge.

The sudden red bracket framed the corner of a black riot shield wedged hard against an oil-streaked air compressor. A short-barreled carbine rocked up and leveled at Ridgeway's chest.

"Break!" Ridgeway barked, twisting his torso as the carbine fired.

The world slowed as Ridgeway's enhanced nervous system kicked into overdrive. Combat noise pulled back, stretching as it faded into a hollow, cavernous echo. The image before him refined into crystal clarity.

Muzzle flash. White cloud of vented gas as the carbine cycled another round of caseless ammunition. Flash again, angry yellow-orange.

Ridgeway felt a string of impacts pound across his ribs. He felt pain as well-- something better given than received. A snarl boiled in his throat as the s.p.a.ce between the combatants evaporated.

At full run, Ridgeway uncoiled with a vengeance and swung at the center of the shield. The smooth kevlar panel shattered like balsa wood. His gauntlet drove the Rimmer's sternum violently against his spine, bursting the organs that lay between. The body dropped to the floor like a stringless marionette.

With elastic suddenness, Ridgeway's perception snapped back to normal. The angry buzz of damage control led the way, shifting from dull to prominent. Points of orange blinked rapidly in a line that angled across his ribs. The shots had been well-aimed, only the severe rotation of his body had caused them to strike at a glancing angle. Still, at point-blank range the heavy rounds had inflicted damage; a cracked rib at the least, and several pitted dents across the armor plating. Durable did not mean indestructible.

Screw it, Ridgeway growled inwardly. In about three minutes a cracked rib would be the least of my problems. He pressed on, driven by mounting urgency.

The two Marines ascended a flight of stairs in powerful strides and cut back towards the reactor, scanning for anything that could pose a threat to Monster's squad. The rapid search produced no candidates. From the looks of things, Rimmer resistance had evaporated. The entire corridor stood empty.

Just as well. The time bar on the TAC was also vanishing, and now stood below three minutes. Monster's team should have the Detonex in place by now. Barely enough time to-- Ridgeway braked hard, his boots skidding on the metal floor as he stopped just short of the huge steel door that slammed down from the ceiling. An oddly flattened shout pa.s.sed through the wall-mounted intercom. "I got you, motherf.u.c.ker! Hey guys, I got 'em. He's stuck behind the--"

The sudden high-pitched whine of the Gatling was unmistakable, even through a foot of steel. The energetic voice cut off abruptly as Ridgeway watched a swath of bulges ripple across the metal door as though someone beat the opposite side with a million ball peen hammers.

A deep metallic thunk preceded the ascending whine of hydraulics as the door rose. Blood drooled freely from its lower edge as it withdrew into the ceiling. On the other side, Monster stood framed in a swirl of smoke.

Ridgeway stepped through the door, oblivious to the steaming slick of human mulch. "We good with the charges?"

Monster's gravel voice was firm. "Roger that, six in the green."

Ridgeway glanced at the mission clock. Just two minutes and twenty-eight seconds before the powerful Detonex charges would turn the nuclear reactor inside out. The explosion to follow would reduce most of Cathedral to a subterranean slagheap, a party his Marines would just as soon miss.

Ridgeway stabbed a finger in the air, pointing down the hall that led back to the loading bay. "Marines! We are out of here!"

Like a pack of armored wolves the Marines fell into formation and swept down the corridor. They ran flat-out, their charge marked by only token bursts of weapon fire.

According to the TAC, they had thus far escaped serious injury. A dropship rigged with decon and medics would be poised at the top, more than enough to deal with the lingering hex and the smattering of wounds. All Ridgeway had to do was get his team out of this d.a.m.ned hole.

He prodded the TAC for a status on the Cathedral. The response was sorely lacking. While the facility map was clear and vivid, the TAC disclosed no data on enemy troops.

"It's the shielding for the reactor," Monster barked, antic.i.p.ating Ridgeway's move and matching it. "We're still inside the containment vessel; it's playing h.e.l.l with scanners and comm."

As if in confirmation, Ridgeway caught the broken fragments of a garbled ComLink. Darcy's voice crackled in his head, her tone thick with urgency. "Tango char...ull platoon... ...epeat, Condit-- Re..."

"Say again!" Ridgeway barked as he rounded a huge block of transformers that hummed with voltage. At a dead run, the Marines hurtled from the hallway into the wide expanse of Cathedral-- and into a meat-grinder.

The TAC went berserk as the first cl.u.s.ter of heavy sh.e.l.ls chewed into the wall above Ridgeway's head. A hail of small-arms fire erupted, filling the air with the neon streak of infantry lasers.

The Marines fanned out in headlong dives for cover. Ridgeway rolled hard, his armored ma.s.s slamming into a stack of blue industrial drums. Several of the cylinders bounced away like oversized bowling pins. A trail of cannon fire chewed at his heels, blasting the containers apart into clouds of chemical mist.

"Delta three! Delta three!" Ridgeway shouted over the slap of bullets on steel. His right arm reached for the Covalent a.s.sault Rifle holstered in the backpack section of his armor.

All right, Ridgeway snarled, No more Mr. Nice Guy. The CAR gave off a sharp whine as protocol Delta Three went into effect.

On cue, Monster's huge right arm curled over the cab of a forklift and the Gatling blazed a vicious arc of suppressing fire. Incoming fire stuttered abruptly as Rimmers frantically scrambled for cover.

In the momentary lapse, Taz and Merlin bolted forward on the edges of the skirmish. As they ran, the charging forms suddenly became indistinct against the background of machines and electronics. Cloaked in active light-bending camouflage, the two ghostly forms blurred through the maze of smoke and tracer-streaks.

St.i.tch opened up on Ridgeway's right, adding the distinct, full-auto ba.s.s of exothermic fire to the din. The medic had disengaged the MP17's silencer, wringing out every bit of velocity the subgun could produce. A tongue of flame licked out from the muzzle.

The TAC devoured acoustic and visual signatures, plotting points of origin. Ridgeway quickly saw that the large gun was an Oerlikon 30mil on a mobile platform.

"Big b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he grunted, knowing that easily four centimeters of armor plate surrounded the gunner. The Oerlikon was a heavy-hitter designed to anchor a defensive line in the midst of a s.h.i.tstorm. And doing a d.a.m.n good job at the moment.

The Rimmers had bunched up around the Oerlikon, using the heavy gun for fire support and cover. Judging from the sand-colored BDUs and light ballistic armor, Ridgeway took the Alliance troops for regular army, probably a detachment from an upper level that had the brights to double-time it down here when the first sirens went off. Gung-ho types.

The TAC counted some fifteen guys to the left of the cannon, another ten to the right. At least six of them carried squad automatics, accounting for a lot of the Rimmer fire.

A lance of ionized air streaked in from the distance as the hypersonic bullet punched a fist-sized hole through the Oerlikon's gunner compartment. The cannon fell silent as a thunderclap rolled in from somewhere high in the Cathedral catwalks. A familiar female voice echoed in Ridgeway's ear. "Hammer time."

Ridgeway suppressed a grin as he rolled to his feet. The Covalent a.s.sault Rifle roared, blue-white plasma flaring from its muzzle. The Rimmer line was pounded with a stream of charged covalent rounds that flared with cyan light on impact. The very fabric of matter destabilized by the disruption of covalent bonds, soldiers literally unraveled at the seams.

The CAR's underslung launcher barked sharply, lobbing Thermalite grenades over the ma.s.sed opponents. Four airburst detonations thudded down the enemy line, white-hot flashes invoking a new wave of screams.

To either side, a pair of phantoms coalesced as Taz and Merlin raked the enemy flank with flamethrowers. Tongues of searing heat licked through the troops, withering skin to a blackened crust. Burning figures flailed on the ground, wrapped in shrouds of dull, flickering orange.

A game Rimmer with Lieutenant bars on his collar tried to rally the survivors. Shouting commands over the roar of battle, the young officer struggled to sh.o.r.e up the center of the line. Driven by his commands, one squad automatic came back online before the Lieutenant's tan ballistic helmet launched in a burst of crimson mist.

People with rank insignia shouldn't wave their arms in combat, Ridgeway sneered as he saw the cloudburst of red. Dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d might just as well have worn a bright yellow T-shirt that read SNIPER BAIT.

Any lingering shred of Rimmer discipline came apart like the Lieutenant's skull. With fire closing in from either side, the middle of the Alliance line bunched together. But in drawing away from the flames, they also backed away from cover.

Stepping out from behind the forklift, Monster brought the Gatling to bear and an incandescent stream of bullets carved through the exposed throng. Chunks of flesh, bone and kevlar sprayed wildly.

The battle ended as abruptly as it began. Surround, divide and destroy; thirty-four seconds to chew an enemy platoon to shreds. From each corner, Marines swept the kill zone. Nothing survived.

Ridgeway snapped a glance at the chrono. Detonation in one minute forty-six; no chance of making it to the surface. Their only hope was to get as far up the elevator shaft as possible. Ridgeway barked, "Marines, double time! Darcy, torch anything between us and the elevator!"

As the RATs bolted for the exit, a sudden chain of thunderclaps echoed ahead. The Marines abandoned everything in the name of speed. Nearing the gutted maglev, Ridgeway checked the time.

One minute.

The elevator shaft extended straight up the far wall and out through the ceiling. The way home. At nearly 40kph Ridgeway's hurtling form reached the-- crater?

The d.a.m.ned hex, Ridgeway realized. Trapped in the sunken floor of the loading bay, the insatiable acid had attacked the concrete with unexpected effectiveness. The fuming surface of the corrosive lake still boiled, but now some ten meters below floor level.

Reflex kicked in as Ridgeway hit the edge of the jagged pit. Synthetic muscles launched him over the gaping hole.

The far wall came up fast. A subconscious neural command flashed, survival reflexes firing madly. Bayonet-sized blades recessed along the outer edge of both forearms hinged at the wrist, pivoting ninety degrees to the axis of Ridgeway's arm. They locked into place just as he slammed into the wall. Even through the armor, the impact rattled his teeth.

Sucking for air, Ridgeway hung from the spikes buried in the wall. He looked down to see the steaming hole that yawned beneath him, its sides porous and crumbling from the caustic excavation. The truck lay crumpled at the bottom, only the front sections of the tank and cab still recognizable above the bubbling surface.

Dozens of red brackets filled the TAC, converging on the Marine's position. At the edge of the pit, Monster unleashed a wide arc of suppressive fire. St.i.tch spun back to back with the gunny, firing the MP17 in rapid, accurate bursts.

Merlin and Taz sprinted by and leaped over the smoking hole in a mimic of Ridgeway's lead. Better prepared to hit the wall, they immediately began a hand-over-hand ascent. Powerful arms drove their own blades deep into the rough concrete.

Ridgeway pulled himself onto a narrow ledge. A deep gurgle belched up from the acid pool as a ma.s.sive bubble broke across the steaming surface. The Hex dipped noticeably, drawing back from the edge like a caustic tide. As it did, the rearmost section of the truck settled with a low groan.

A garish warning tone snared Ridgeway's attention. Flaring madly, a bright red bracket appeared on the left edge of his vision where the ugly nose of an RPG peered up from within a doorway. The conical head of the rocket-propelled grenade leered malevolently as Ridgeway perched on the wall like a fly. With almost a kilo of high explosive and a sleeve of t.i.tanium flechettes, the OG-9 would make one h.e.l.l of a swatter.

Ridgeway flattened against the wall. The grenadier was tucked in tight, using the doorframe and wall for cover. Only the outer edge of his shoulder was visible, pathetically little to target.

The ionized wake of a railgun bullet punched through the metal doorframe like rice paper, blasting through the grenadier and into the concrete floor. Unfired, the launcher bounced once and clattered into the crater.

Forty nine seconds. We aren't gonna make it.

A 40mm grenade slammed viciously off Monster's chest, caroming only an arm's-length before it detonated. The concussion knocked the big man sprawling. His icon flashed furiously on the TAC.

From the walkways above, Darcy's rifle thundered in rapid succession. A string of white-hot concussions burned a swath through Rimmers that tried to close on Monster's position. The sonic boom was sharper now, explosive, telling Ridgeway that the sniper had spun the railgun's velocity to max. Uranium projectiles left the barrel so fast that air friction melted them into bolts of superheated plasma.

The gurgle of Hex suddenly amplified, a sucking roar that sounded like a jet intake. The churning surface bowed inward and twisted into an accelerating spiral. With an abrupt flush, thousands of liters of hydrogen hexafluoride drained from sight, dragging the dead truck in its wake.

Ridgeway blinked twice. The smoldering crater had become a tunnel shaft that ran deeper than the eye could see.

Another cavern? The idea flashed through Ridgeway's mind as an image more than as words. How far? No way to know. Big hole, big enough for a truck. But to where?

Ridgeway's damage control screamed as machinegun fire chewed the wall around him. Sound flattened as the hammering noise slipped out of sync with reality. He caught a distant CRUMP and saw a huge black-orange fireball roll across thirty meters of Cathedral floor.

Thirty seconds. No time left. Ridgeway made the call.

"Down the hole. Move!"

Without question Merlin and Taz pushed back from the wall, tearing their climbing blades out of the concrete. The Marines plummeted feet-first into the crater, glanced roughly off the uneven slope and tumbled out of sight.

Ridgeway looked up to see the sniper holding ground on the catwalk. Ferocity tainted his voice as he screamed, "Darcy - get out of there!"