The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [23]
Shran was beginning to notice that his targets were growing as scarce as the Aenar, almost all of whom had by now either fled or been captured. He caught another glimpse of Jhamel, who had bravely stayed behind, apparently intent on helping every last Aenar get to safety. Beside her was Theras, who evidently hadn’t fled or been captured after all.
Shran grinned and resumed his continuous search for new targets, trying to cover Jhamel’s efforts. Maybe I’ll drive them all off before they can do any more—
Something abruptly slammed into Shran then, spinning him as though he were a small moon that had been dealt a glancing blow by a passing asteroid. His feet slipped out from under him, in spite of the heavy, studded treads built into his cold-weather boots. The entire left side of his body was suddenly numb and paralyzed, which prevented him from stopping himself as he slid down a slope on the icy cavern floor.
Must have been hit, he thought, feeling woozy as his slide continued unchecked. More energy discharges stitched the ice all around him, filling the air with superheated steam and the tortured creaks of breaking ice and grinding stone. He was keenly aware that he was now a target, no doubt of the highest priority.
The maw of a large, dark crevasse- perhaps opened up only moments earlier by the firefight’s relentless volleys, maybe even by one of Shran’s own blasts- yawned hungrily before him. He flailed with his good right arm to arrest his tumbling, sliding descent, but succeeded only in entangling himself awkwardly in the strap of the Orion rifle he’d been holding when he’d fallen.
The accelerating sensation of sliding abruptly ceased, replaced by the gut-churningly familiar vertigo that accompanied orbital freefall in ships not equipped with artificial gravity. His nervous system charged with survival-instinct panic, Shran realized that he was falling feet-first into the crevasse, tumbling toward the fathomless, unilluminated spaces below.
His right arm lashed upward as he dropped, and the sensation of weight returned with a suddenness that slammed his jaw shut and probably loosened a few of his teeth. He looked up and saw in the gloom surrounding him that his rifle strap had snagged on a stony, ice-covered outcropping. Awkwardly restricted to the use of his right arm and leg, he gripped the strap hard and struggled to pull himself back up over the crumbling lip of the crevasse.
Inching upward, his head cleared the ice-crusted verge, giving him a reverse view back up the path of his unplanned and haphazard descent. He caught sight of Jhamel, still calmly assisting what Shran hoped were the last few Aenar stragglers in escaping the predations of the Orions. Near her was Theras, who seemed every bit as paralyzed by fear as Jhamel was composed and self-possessed.
Until she crumpled to the ice in a strobe-flash of light, struck in the back by an Orion energy-weapon discharge. Theras hurried out of sight- fleeing!- even as a pair of the slavers converged on Jhamel’s motionless form and tagged it with a communications beacon that enabled them to have her beamed away.
“No!” Shran cried, pulling himself, one-handed and one-legged, up onto the creaking, groaning ledge. Fueled by rage and adrenaline, he dragged himself slowly toward the two slavers, one of whom very calmly raised his weapon, changed its setting, and took careful aim in Shran’s direction.
He didn’t bother looking away as he braced himself for the brutal heat of the beam he expected to take him down to final oblivion.
Then the surface directly beneath Shran cracked sharply and gave way, spilling him back into the crevasse while sparing him from the Orion’s weapon. An energy beam lashed out over his head, missing him by a wide margin, not that it mattered now. Time dilated as he plunged into the frigid darkness below.
A rough, sharp shock followed, and oblivion came.
The tingling and pain that commingled along the left side of his body, coupled with the biting cold of the surface