Starquake.pdf

pools of flaming liquid and screaming blistered warriors. One warrior who man-
aged to reach the wall between two portholes slid a shield over a flame hole between bursts. The flame
thrower backfired and an explosion behind the wall sent flames and pieces of bodies flying through the
sky. The speckled one moved in front of the porthole and repeatedly jabbed the end of a pike in the hole
to keep it from being reused. One after another, the flame throwers fell silent as porthole after porthole
was blocked by a crust-rock or pike guarded by a singed, sliced, and angry speckled warrior.
Only six of Falling-Quirrl's warriors made it to the entrance. She sent two each into three of the
corridors, then she entered the fourth alone.
"The pressure sensors indicate seven targets." Mega-Bar was monitoring the indicators on the maze map
in the west wall control room. "There are two each in the dead-end corridors and one entered the main
maze trail."
"Let them pass over the first traps, then reactivate those behind them," said Neutron-Gas. "That way we
can get them coming or going."
Falling-Quirrl moved slowly along the narrow corridor. She jabbed a pricker into every porthole before
passing and looked carefully for traps. The point of her short sword poked hard into the crust in front of
her before she put her tread on it. When she reached the striped section of corridor, she was especially
careful. She prodded the ground and walls with her sword and pushed her shield ahead of her with the
front portion of her tread weighing it down. Nothing happened, and she passed over.
In the distance she heard a crackle and a scream. It sounded like Nasty-Scar. Almost immediately there
was a sharp explosion and another scream. She came to another striped area and started across it using
her shield under her tread again. There was a loud explosion and a dented shield flew up from under her
shocked tread. The shield came down on top of the wall, pushed down on the magnetic barrier until it
glowed and hummed, then fell back down into the corridor, nearly hitting her.
Ferocious-Eyes waited and waited for Falling-Quirrl and her warriors to emerge. Finally they did, their
bodies pushed one-by-one out of the entrance by a little machine that just fit neatly between the narrow
corridor walls. Three had been burned by a strange flame that cooked holes through their bod-
ies, and three had deadly puncture wounds that went from tread to topside.
The last one pushed out was Falling-Quirrl. Ferocious-Eyes sent the butchers to pick up the body, but
they brought her to him, for she was still alive despite the large oozing holes in her. Two-thirds of her
body was paralyzed from damage to her brain-knot, but she was able to talk with the rest of her tread.
"They have traps that they can turn on and off. I passed over one on the way in. It got me on the way
out. I played dead. They stabbed me only a few times through a hole in the wall, then left me. They are
weaklings, unused to killing. I would have made sure with a thrust to my brain-knot." She held out her
dented shield.
"My shield struck the 'magnetic barrier' and was not burned. Maybe with many shields or one large one,
we can keep the barrier from burning us."
Ferocious-Eyes tried her shield on the magnetic barriers in the open areas outside the wall. He found
that he could indeed pass over it if he narrowed his body down so that it stayed on the shield. Other
shields didn't work, however. They interrogated some of their new slaves from the local clans and found