“Shit,” Ralph grunted. It wasn’t a flare, it was the white fire. They were in the distribution centre! “Shut down those mechanoids now,” he datavised. His neural nanonics reported that several of his suit systems were degrading.

“No response, sir,” a technical officer replied. “We’ve lost them completely, even their fallback routine has failed. How did they do that? The mechanoids are equipped with military-grade electronics, a megaton emp couldn’t glitch their processors.”

Ralph could imagine the officer’s surprise. He’d undergone it himself back on Lalonde as the awful realization struck. He stood up from behind the parapet on top of the tunnel entrance, and lifted the heavy-calibre recoilless rifle. Targeting graphics flipped up over his helmet’s sensor image. He fired at an assault mechanoid.

It exploded energetically, its power cells and ordnance detonating as soon as the armour-piercing round penetrated its flexing body. The blast wave shifted half of the precariously tangled wreckage in front of the collapsed loading bay. More crates thumped down from the sagging first-storey floor. Three assault mechanoids were sent lurching back down the feed roads, plasmatic legs juddering in fast undulations. Ralph shifted his aim and took out another one just as it started to lumber upright.

“Squad, shoot out the mechanoids,” he ordered. His communications block informed him that half of the command channels had shut down. He switched on the block’s external speaker and repeated the order, bellowing it out across the feed roads at a volume which could be heard above the detonating mechanoids.

A streak of white fire lanced down from one of Moyce’s upper windows. The threat response program in Ralph’s neural nanonics bullied his leg muscles with nerve impulse overrides. He was flinging himself aside before his conscious mind had registered the attack.

Two more mechanoids exploded as he hit the concrete behind the parapet. He thought he recognized the heavy-calibre gaussrifle which the G66 troops used. Then an insidious serpent of white fire was coiling around his knee. His neural nanonics instantly erected analgesic blocks across his nerves, blanking out the pain. A medical display showed him skin and bone being eaten away by the white fire. The whole knee joint would be ruined in a matter of seconds if he couldn’t extinguish it. Yet both Dean and Will said smothering it like natural flames made hardly any difference.

Ralph assigned his neural nanonics full control of his musculature, and simply designated the window which the white fire had emerged from. With detached interest he observed his body swivelling, the rifle barrel swinging round. His retinal target graphics locked over a window. Thirty-five rounds pummelled the black rectangle, a mixed barrage of high explosive (chemical), shrapnel, and incendiary.

Within two seconds the room had ceased to exist, its carved stone frontage disintegrating behind a vast gout of flame and showering down on the melee below.

The white fire around Ralph’s knee vanished. He pulled a medical nanonic package from his belt and slapped it on the charred wound.

Down on the feed roads most of the AT Squad had switched to their communications block speakers. Orders, warnings, and cries for help reverberated over the sound of multiple explosions. A vast fusillade of heavy-calibre rifle fire was pounding into the loading bays. Comets of white fire poured out in retaliation.

“Nelson,” Ralph datavised. “For Christ’s sake, make sure the troops out front don’t let anyone escape. They’re to hold position and shoot to kill now. Forget the capture mission; we’ll try it back here, but nobody else is to attempt anything fancy.”

“Yes, sir,” Nelson Akroid answered.

Ralph went back to the speaker. “Cathal, let’s try and get in there. Isolation procedure. Separate them, and nuke them.”

“Sir.” The cry came back over the parapet.

At least he’s still alive, Ralph thought.

“Do you want stage two yet?” Admiral Farquar datavised.

“No, sir. They’re still contained. Our perimeter is holding.”

“Okay, Ralph. But the second there’s a status change, I need to know.”

“Sir.”

His neural nanonics reported the medical package had finished knitting to his knee. The weight load it could take was down forty percent. It would have to do. Ralph tucked the heavy-calibre rifle under his arm, then bending low, he ran for the end of the parapet and the steps down to the trunk road.

Dean Folan signalled his team members forward, scurrying around the side of the big mound of crates and into the loading bay area. Flames had taken hold amid the fragments piled outside.

It was dark inside the loading bays. Projectile impacts had etched deep pocks into the bare carbon-concrete walls. Rattail tangles of wire and fibre-optic cable hung down from the fissured ceiling, swaying gently. Through the helmet’s goggle lenses he could see very little, even with enhanced retinas on full sensitivity. He switched his shell helmet sensors to low light and infrared. Green and red images merged to form a pallid picture of the rear of the loading bay. Annoying glare spots flickered as small flames licked at the storage frames which lined the walls. Discrimination programs worked at eliminating them.

There were three corridors leading off straight back from the rear of the bay, formed by the storage frames. Metal grids containing crates and pods ready for the lorries, they looked like solid walls of huge bricks. Cargo-handling mechanoids had stalled on their rails which ran along the side of the frames, plasmatic arms dangling inertly. Water was pouring out of five or six broken ceiling pipes, spilling down the crates to pool on the floor.

Nothing moved in the corridors.

Dean left his gaussrifle at the head of the middle corridor, knowing it would be useless at close range, the electronic warfare field would simply switch it off. Instead, he drew a semi-automatic rifle; it had a feed loop connected to his backpack, but the rounds were all chemical. The AT Squad had grumbled about that at the start, questioning the wisdom of abandoning their power weapons. Nobody had complained much after the mechanoids went berserk, and their suit systems suffered innumerable dropouts.

Three of the team followed him as he advanced down the corridor, also carrying semi-automatics. The rest of them spread out around the bay and edged down the other two corridors.

A figure zipped across the end of the corridor. Dean fired, the roar of the semi-automatic impressively loud in the confined space. Plastic splinters from the crates ricocheted through the air as the bullets chiselled into them.

Dean started running forwards. There was no corpse on the floor.

“Radford, did you see him?” Dean demanded. “He was heading towards your corridor.”

“No, Chief.”

“Anybody?”

All he got was a series of negatives, some shouted, some datavised. No doubt the hostiles were about, his suit blocks were still badly affected by the electronic warfare field. His injured arm was itchy, too.

He reached the end of the corridor. It was a junction to another three. “Hell, it’s a sodding maze back here.”

Radford arrived at the end of his corridor, semi-automatic sweeping the storage frames.

“Okay, we fan out here,” Dean announced. “All of you: keep two other squad members in visual range at all times. If you lose sight of your partners, then stop immediately and reestablish contact.”

He picked one of the corridors leading deeper into the shop and beckoned a couple of the Squad to follow him.

A creature landed on top of Radford; half man, half black lion, features merged grotesquely. Its weight carried him effortlessly to the floor. Dagger claws scraped at Radford’s armour suit. But the integral valency generators had stiffened the fabric right from the moment of impact, protecting the vulnerable human skin inside. The creature howled in fury, thwarted at the very moment of triumph.