Their presence was one more complication for the defenders. Although the personality could watch the Orgathé flying along the habitat, it certainly didn’t know where they’d land. That left Erentz and her relatives with the entire circumference to guard. They’d already decided that it would be impossible to move the thousands of sick and emaciated humans from the front line of the outer caverns. Flight time down the length of the habitat was barely fifteen minutes, and the Orgathé emerging from the southern endcap were joined by several new arrivals who had just entered through the starscrapers. There simply wasn’t time to prepare, all they could do was snatch up their weapons and assemble in teams ready to respond to the nearest incursion; even the way they were spaced round the endcap was less than ideal.

Wait until they get inside,the personality said. If you fire while they’re still in the air, they’ll just swoop away. Once they’re in the caverns they can’t escape.

The Orgathé hesitated as they glided down towards the scrub desert, in turn sensing the hatred and fear of the entities below. For several minutes they circled above the cavern entrances as the last ghosts fled inside, then the flock descended.

Thirty-eight of the buggers. Stand by.

Tolton shifted his grip on the incendiary torpedo launcher as Erentz told him to get ready. His sweat was making its casing slippery. He was standing behind Dariat, who in turn was at the tail end of a group of his relatives waiting in a passage at the back of one of the hospital caverns. What he thought of as his special status hadn’t exempted him from this brand of lethal madness.

He heard a lot of groaning start up in the cavern. It quickly degenerated into weak screams and shouted curses. The ghosts were flooding in, ignoring the bedridden humans to plunge deeper into the cavern network. They started to run past him, mouths open to yell silent warnings. Their movements sketched short-lived smears of washed-out colour through the air.

Then one of the Orgathé hit the entrance outside. Its body elongated, the front section pressing forward eagerly through the curving passageway, while the bulbous rear quarter squirmed violently, adding to its impetus. Those ghosts that had only just made it inside were engulfed by writhing appendages as the huge creature surged along. Their savage cries of suffering penetrated the entire endcap as their life-energy was torn away from them. The other ghosts and Dariat could actually hear them, while the humans experienced their torment as a wave of profound unease. Tolton looked down at the launcher for reassurance, only to find his hands were trembling badly.

“We’re on!” Erentz barked.

The Orgathé charged into the cavern, preceded by a hail of freezing polyp pebbles and a technicolor ripple of terrified ghosts. Ahead of it, three rows of grubby bedding were laid out across the polyp floor, home to over 300 lethargic patients, already disturbed by the ghosts. They did their best to retreat, staggering or crawling back against the wall; some of the nurses managed to lug their charges towards the passageways. The Orgathé lunged forwards greedily, turning the cavern into a riot of hysterical bodies and slashing appendages. Each time it coiled a tentacle around someone their body turned to solid ice and shattered, releasing a ghost that sank to its knees and waited for the devastating follow-up blow.

Through it all, Erentz and her relatives attempted to spread out and encircle the Orgathé. Every metre of ground had to be fought over, elbowing through the throng of terrified people. Blankets, plastic cartons, and chunks of rock-hard frosted flesh were kicked about underfoot, making every step treacherous. The pincer movement was never going to work properly; the best they could hope for was positioning themselves close to the passageways, blocking the Orgathé’s escape.

When they had five of the possible seven exit routes covered, they opened fire. A cowering Tolton saw slivers of dazzling light pulse through the air to be absorbed by the Orgathé’s nebulous form, and assumed that was the signal to start firing. He pushed a couple of elderly, enfeebled men aside and brought his own launcher up. His mind was so battered by the sight of panic and devastation across the cavern floor he barely aimed it. He just pulled the trigger and watched numbly as the incendiary torpedoes pummelled the dark mass.

The flame throwers opened fire with a raucous howl, adding their particular brand of carnage to the onslaught. Eight lines of bright yellow fire jetted over the heads of the cowering crowd to flower open against the Orgathé. The beast jerked frenziedly, buffeted from all sides by the terrible flame. Its constituent fluid boiled furiously, sending clouds of choking mist to saturate the beleaguered cavern.

Tolton clamped a hand over his mouth as his eyes smarted. The vapour was colder than ice, condensing over his skin and clothes to form a slick mucus-like film. He had trouble standing as it built up underfoot. All around him people were falling over and skating across the floor. He couldn’t aim the launcher with any accuracy now, the recoil from each shot sent him slithering back wildly. In any case, he wasn’t entirely sure where the creature was any more. The mist was fluorescing strongly as the jets of flame continued to seer through it, turning the whole cavern into a uniform topaz haze.

Without any visible target, Tolton stopped firing. People were everywhere, shrieking and crying as they skidded about, a racket which fused with the roar of the flame throwers to create total sonic bedlam. Any random shot would probably hit someone. He dropped to all fours and tried to find the cavern wall, a way out.

Erentz and the others kept on firing. The personality’s perception of the cavern through its sensitive cells was less than perfect, but it could keep them informed of the Orgathé’s approximate location. Erentz twisted about continually, keeping the flame playing on the creature’s flanks. With the billowing mist, running figures, and the target continually shrinking, she had a lot of trouble keeping aligned. But it was working: that mattered above all else, helping to blank the knowledge of what a misapplied jet would strike.

Dariat finally perceived the Orgathé’s denuded ghost flying back out into the habitat. He shared his enhanced cognition with his relatives and the personality, showing them the wraith flashing past. The light and sound of the flame throwers swiftly died away.

As the disgustingly clammy mist descended out of the air to congeal over people and polyp alike, it revealed a floor littered with bodies. Those who hadn’t been too badly burnt or had escaped the Orgathé’s slashing appendages were wriggling mutely beneath the slick membranous muck. Nearly a third remained motionless; whether they were too exhausted or wounded to make an effort was impossible to tell. The grungy fluid concealed details.

Tolton watched with numb incredulity as ghosts started to rise up out of the floor like humanoid mushrooms, stretching elastic fronds of the fluid with them. They were harvesting the material as Dariat had done, cloaking their form with substance.

Erentz and her team were striding through the slaughter and misery as if it didn’t exist, whooping out greetings to each other as they congregated by one of the side passageways. Dr Patan was among them, wiping sloppy goo from his face and grinning with the same vivacity as the others as he checked his launcher.

Tolton stared after them as they hurried off down the passageway, totally immune to the suffering throughout the cavern. The personality had informed them of another visitor raising hell in a cavern close by, and they were eager to resume the fight. It wasn’t just entropy which was stronger in this continuum, he reflected; inhumanity was equally pervasive.