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  operational?"

  Erik checked his HUD. The diagnostics section glowed green across the board, except

  for his guns, which were highlighted in bright yel ow. "I'm good," he said.

  "Me too," said Baleog. "My rig's left leg's shattered, but my cockpit's still intact."

  "Affirmative," said Olaf. "My cockpit has maintained integrity as wel . I lost one of my cannons, though. A rock clipped it clean off."

  "Fire those engines up," Varg said. "Activating your vertical-lift jets ought to generate enough heat to bust you loose."

  "How about you?" asked Baleog. 21

  The major grunted. "I'm in one piece, but the avalanche spun me upside down. I fire up

  my engines, and I'll go in the wrong direction. Might be able to break free, though, if you

  three can loosen things up for me."

  "We can manage that, right?" said Erik. "We've already accomplished our mission,

  which should give us plenty of time. And we did a lot more than just distract the zerg. That

  avalanche should have crushed them too. The clock's on our side."

  Baleog let loose a sharp, bitter laugh. "You don't know much about the zerg, do you?"

  Erik, who had been pretty thril ed about the avalanche until he was caught up in it, felt

  his heart sink. "How could anything have survived that?"

  Varg coughed a weak laugh. Erik wondered if the man was hurt worse than he wanted

  to let on.

  "The zerg are burrowers, kid," Varg said. "As long as that icefal didn't crush them flat, they have everything they need to dig themselves out of it."

  "Must have got some of them, though," Baleog said. As gruff as he sounded, Erik

  detected a note of fear lacing his words. "Right?"

  "Sure," Varg said. "Maybe. But al of them? Not a chance. They're out there, and they're pissed."

  "Pissed and looking for revenge." Olaf's voice sounded smal for a man as large as he

  was.

  Varg only grunted at that.

  Erik started to activate his viking's fighter mode as fast as he could. He set it up in

  sequence, in his head running through the checklist that Varg had gone over with him again

  and again on the flight out. When Erik reached the part about making sure his ship wasn't 22

  held down or restrained in any way—because that might result in an overload that could

  cause the viking's engines to explode—he skipped right over it. He didn't have much choice.

  "Fuel rerouted? Check," he said to himself. "Power to legs cut? Check."

  He reached out and grabbed the lever that would transform his viking's arms into

  wings. He squeezed the green safety trigger on the end of it, then hauled on the lever with

  as much muscle as possible.

  Nothing happened. Not a damn thing.

  He swore and pul ed on the lever again, putting his whole back into it. He could feel the

  lever start to give, but he feared it might snap off in his hand. He listened hard and thought

  he could hear the viking's servos whining in protest as they tried to dislodge his craft from

  what had to be at least a ton of snow on top of it.

  "I'm stuck!" he said. "Standard operating procedure not providing results. Any ideas?"

  "I am stuck as well," said Olaf.

  "Try activating your VTOL jets," Varg said. "Just by themselves. Put as little juice into them as you can."

  "How about we disable the auto-shutdown circuit?" Erik said. It made him nervous to

  try it; the governor had been installed to keep him from accidental y breaking the ship.

  Now, though, he needed every bit of help he could squeeze out of the machine, dangerous

  or not.

  "Can't hurt," Varg said. "Wel , it could blow you up, but that's the least of our problems."

  "Wha's that?" Scorch said. "Wha's that noise?"

  "Scorch!" Varg said. "You need to snap out of it." 23

  "Somethin'—somethin's out there," Scorch said, concern creeping into her pain-drunk

  voice. "Can hear it scratchin' on m'rig."

  "That's the zerg!" Varg said. "You got to move, Scorch! Do something now!"

  A horrible cracking noise sounded over the comm. Erik had no doubt where it had come

  from, but it stil made him jump.

  "Dammit," Baleog said, his tone so soft with horror that Erik had to strain to hear him.

  "They found her."

  A scream leaped out of the comm and pierced the air in Erik's cockpit. "Get off me!"

  Scorch said, her voice sharpened by terror.

  There was something then that sounded like clicking and gnashing and squishing al

  together and al at once. Erik shuddered at it.

  "No! NO!" Then there was another horrible gurgling noise—something far too human—

  that was cut short.

  Erik wanted to bellow in rage at the zerg. He hadn't known Scorch that wel . He'd never

  worked with her before today. But he ached to pulverize every last one of those damn

  creatures that had kil ed her.

  Instead, he cut out the safety protocol that included the auto-shutdown circuit and

  gunned his VTOL jets. He felt them thrum to life. He might be too late to save Scorch, butif

  he didn't get moving, he'd be too late to save himself as wel .

  "Come on," he said. "Come on!"

  He tried to move his viking's legs and found that the snow around them had loosened. It

  had probably vaporized into scalding steam. He knew that if he stopped his jets now, the ice 24

  would re-form around the legs in a matter of seconds and trap him even tighter in Braxis's

  frozen shel .

  He gave his VTOL jets a bit more gas and felt his armor shake from head to toe.

  Something would have to give soon. He just hoped it wouldn't be the viking. If he overdid it

  with the jets, they might malfunction, and that would kill him faster than a zerg. At least it

  would be over quick.

  Stil , dead was dead, and Erik wasn't ready to give up yet. He gunned the VTOL jets

  again, and this time, he heard a horrible crack.

  Daylight appeared above him, almost blinding him with its brightness.

  The snow beneath his VTOL jets had gone from solid to steam, and the pressure from

  that had built up around his viking until it had to find some way to escape. Instead of

  crushing his craft, the steam had expanded upward until it located a weakness in the layers

  of snow under which he was buried, blowing them away.

  "You al right, kid?" Varg said.

  "That sounded like his craft detonated," said Olaf, his voice filled with awe.

  "Better than being eaten by the zerg," said Baleog.

  Erik wanted to respond, but he was too busy getting his viking into the air. He was used

  to flying something more reasonable. Moving from a stand to zipping through the air was

  never easy. Even an expert like Varg would have a hard time getting a viking to pop out of a

  deep hole without sending the craft into a spin.

  Erik wrestled with the controls, trying to reorder the proper maneuvers that would get

  him airborne and stable. He managed to slip from the hole fast enough, but he came out at a

  slight angle that sent him sideslipping back toward the ice. He had to swing down the 25

  vertical jets hard, and then he fought for balance like a tightrope walker struggling through

  a tornado.

  But he survived it. A moment later, he punched the control that triggered the rest of the

  transformation. The craft's legs folded in, and the wings at his shoulders stretched out,

  giving him the kind of lift he needed to stay in the sky.

  "I'm out!" he said.
>
  Baleog whooped with delight, and Varg chimed in.

  "Excel ent work!" Olaf said. "Is it possible you could give us a hand?"

  "Hold on," Erik said. "Let me see what I can do."

  He stopped short of kicking in his craft's rear jets. If he gave the engines their head, he'd

  be ful y airborne, and the viking's momentum would make it hard for him to come back and

  help the others. Of course, landing his viking on the ice would leave him vulnerable to

  burrowing zerg, but Erik knew he didn't have a choice. He had to try to dig out his

  compatriots.

  The only problem was that he had no idea where they were. Not only had the avalanche

  spun him dizzy, but it had also taken out most of his sensors. He couldn't pinpoint where he

  was, much less where the rest of the pilots were trapped.

  "I can't see you," he said. "Can you—I don't know—send up a flare or something?"

  An instant later, the snow about ten meters in front of him began to glow from some

  light source far below the surface.

  "Does that help?" Olaf said.

  "Nice headlights," Erik said. "I'm coming over." 26

  He moved his craft to the spot where the freshly turned snow glowed, and then he

  lowered his legs again. He fired the VTOL jets straight down and peered over to see the ice

  melt away beneath them. But it was hard for him to look in that direction, and the buried

  viking remained hidden.

  Erik didn't want to just melt anything he stood over until the others appeared. For one,

  he'd soon run out of fuel or time. For another, he had to be careful not to melt them as well

  as the snow. The viking's shell would protect them from some of the heat, but it wouldn't

  shield them from a sustained burn.

  "If you could bring yourself back about two meters," Olaf said, "that might do the trick."

  Olaf wasn't shining his headlights straight up but at an angle, Erik realized. He moved

  away from the surface of the avalanche's ruin and gunned his jets hard. As they lifted him

  into the air, he saw the top of Olaf's viking appear, and the big man whooped with joy.

  Erik moved to the side fast, and a moment later Olaf's craft rose from its frozen grave to

  hover beside him.

  "How about the rest of you?" Erik said. "Where are you?"

  "Get the hel out of here!" Varg said. "Those mutalisks have to be coming back by now."

  Erik glanced up, which he had been too busy to do before, and saw how right Varg was.

  High above, a huge number of flying zerg, more than he cared to count, were diving toward

  him. He didn't know when they'd spotted him—if it was when he'd burst out of the ice or

  when he'd fired his VTOL jets to free Olaf. Either way, his time was running out.

  "We got a minute." Erik wasn't sure whether he was lying, but he wasn't about to give

  up. "Show me a signal—something—and we'l get you loose."

  "I'm stuck face down," said Varg. "Headlights might not do much good." He hesitated for a moment. "See anything?" 27

  Erik scanned the churned-up ice and snow. He thought he saw something glowing, but

  when he moved his viking forward, it turned out to be just a trick of the sunlight. If it were

  darker, he might be able to see the lights from Varg's viking, but he couldn't sit there and

  wait for the sun to set.

  "Guns?" Erik suggested. It was dangerous for the major to fire blind, but at this point

  they were running out of options.

  "Damn things are frozen solid."

  "Same problem here," Baleog said, "but I think I got my jets working. Give me a second."

  "Argh! Dammit!" Varg said. "I can hear them! They're tearing against my armor!"

  "Where are you?" Erik said. "Show me something! Anything!"

  "Get clear! I'm a dead man, but I'm going to take as many of these bastards as I can with

  me!"

  "Hold on!" Baleog said. "Give me five more seconds!"

  "I don't think I can—gah! They breached my cockpit!"

  Erik studied the snow below him, but the avalanche had stripped it of any features.

  Other than the holes that he and Olaf had made, he couldn't see any difference between one

  part of the ice slide and another. Al he knew was that the major was down there, dying.

  The sound of gunshots cracked over the comm, mingled with Varg's bellows of anger,

  frustration, and rage. The major fired round after round into the creatures, determined to

  kil as many zerg as he could. Erik could tel he wasn't going to bother saving a bullet for

  himself.28

  Erik wanted to melt every bit of snow until he found the man and rescued him, but he

  knew there wasn't time. The only thing he and Olaf could do now was get themselves into

  the air as fast as they could.

  He looked up and saw a mutalisk right on top of them. The great bat-winged creature

  glared with its deep-set red eyes as it angled its massive tail toward him, the fanged and

  gaping maw on the tip reaching for him with ravenous intent.

  Olaf was already transforming his viking into its airborne mode. As the mutalisk got

  nearer to him, he gunned his jets and was gone.

  Erik tried to do the same, but he could see that he would never make the transformation

  in time. Instead, he did his best to backpedal from the creature. His only hope was that the

  bug had misjudged the distance to the ground and would smack into it before it could

  correct its course.

  But the mutalisk hauled up at the last instant, the bottom of its thrashing tail hanging

  over the top of the snow. The creature had come so close to crashing, though, that it had to

  wind up its tail tight to cushion its partial landing on the ice.

  The zerg bounced as if it were hopping on the curl of its backside, flapping its wings

  wide and hard. Then the ground beneath the mutalisk exploded. The blast tore it to shreds

  and sent Erik's viking skidding backward.

  When he managed to get the viking's legs back underneath it, Erik wanted to stare into

  the smoking crater that had appeared, but he knew that indulgence might cost him his life.

  Having been granted another chance to survive, he wasn't inclined to waste it.

  He punched the controls that would launch his viking into the air, and he shoved

  himself back into his harness, preparing himself for the impending tug of inertia. He

  glanced up and saw that the gathering of zerg coming his way had spread out to become a

  blanket. If he didn't move fast, it would close over him like a net. 29

  The viking rocketed forward. If the transport he had driven for a living was a lumbering

  beast, the viking was a speedy jungle predator: quick, nimble, and almost impossible to

  control. He felt it struggling to escape his mastery, and he knew that if he let his grip over

  the craft slip even in the slightest, he might not live long enough to regret his error.

  Olaf had drawn some of the mutalisks away, but just as many of them converged on

  Erik's craft. His HUD brought up targeting reticles centered on two oncoming mutalisks,

  and he took the hint. With the squeeze of a trigger, he let loose a matched pair of Lanzer

  torpedoes.

  To Erik, it seemed as if they barely moved faster than his viking, and he feared that he

  might reach the mutalisks at the same time as his munitions. The torpedoes slammed into

  the creatures and detonated, sending shrapnel and bits of zerg everywhere. As Erik piloted

  his viking through the blast, debris splattered acro
ss the aircraft's windshield, splashes of

  acid etching fragile trails along its surface.

  Erik couldn't help but throw back his head and whoop in triumph. But his elation lasted

  only a moment.

  "Baleog?" Olaf said over the comm system. Erik spotted the freed pilot's viking beyond

  the perimeter of the overlords, circling back to join him.

  "Varg loosened up the ice packed around me," the buried pilot said. "Just need another

  few seconds."

  Erik looked back and scanned the fractured ice. A little ways off from the smoking

  crater where Varg's viking had been, he spied the top of another viking poking out of the

  ice. He also saw a number of mutalisks converging on it. The explosion might have scared

  them off for a bit, but they seemed to be getting over their fear fast.

  "You're out of time," Erik said as he nosed his craft toward Baleog's snow-mired viking. 30

  "There are too many of them," Olaf said. Erik saw his viking peeling off. "We cannot take them al on."

  "We don't need to," Erik said. He knew how to handle himself in a dogfight, and for the

  first time today his confidence surged. The familiar rush of endorphins from engaging in

  midair battle felt just as great as he remembered. "We play the mutalisks here like Varg

  planned to play the whole force."

  "Right!" said Olaf. "It's not necessary to challenge them al . We just need to draw them away from Baleog until he can get free."

  "Exactly!"

  Erik headed for a point to the far right of the bulk of the mutalisk flock. As he went, he

  started to let loose round after round of torpedoes. He didn't much care what they hit as

  long as they hit something. In such a target-rich environment, he knew they were sure to

  manage that.

  As the first few torpedoes blasted apart a group of mutalisks that had been flapping too

  close to one another, Erik spotted another set of Lanzers zipping over his right shoulder.

  They found targets of their own and added to the mayhem.

  "I can smell them!" Baleog said. "The zerg. They're ripping through my armor. They're

  coming for me!"

  "Just hold on!" Erik glanced back over his shoulder to spy Olaf zooming up behind him,

  and the sight put a grin on his face. A huge flight of mutalisks that had been closing in on

  Baleog peeled off from that attack vector and set itself on Erik's and Olaf's tails instead.