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She hit the ground next to the lu them both to the airlock door She tapped the button and the outer door cycled open Of course Who locks their door on Io? No one is going to hike across a wasteland of molten silicon and sulfur to steal the fa for breath only once he was inside Bobbie followed Prax in a second later, and she was about to tell Amos to cycle the airlock when her radio died
She spun around, looking out across the surface of the moon for ainst her back armor When he yelled, it was barely audible “What is it?”
Instead of yelling back, she stepped outside the airlock and pointed to Amos, then pointed at the inner door She ers Amos nodded at her with one hand, then moved back into the airlock and shut the outer door
Whatever happened inside, it was up to Amos and Prax now She wished them well
She spotted the ainst the sulfurous yellow background So not quite the same color She tracked it with her eyes and had the suit hit it with a targeting laser She wouldn’t lose track of it now It obble radio waves, but the fact that she could see it ain Not quickly, and staying close to the ground If she hadn’t been looking right at it, she’d havesneaky Which probably e finderto her theory, once it realized it had been spotted, it would charge her, rab and rip If it couldn’t reach her quickly, it would try to throw things at her And all she needed to do was hurt it until its program failed and it self-destructed Lots of theories
Tiun at it The suit helped her correct for deflection based on the range, but she was using ultrahigh velocity rounds on a ravity Bullet drop at three hundred h there was no way the creature could see it through her helmet’s darkened visor, she blew it a kiss “I’ger on her gun Fifty rounds streaked downrange, crossing the distance froun to the creature in less than a third of a second All fifty slay as they passed through Just enough to burst the tip of each round open and ignite the self-oxidizing flael they carried Fifty trails of short-lived but very intense flah thefro with a flash
The monster launched itself toward Bobbie at a dead run that should have been iravity Each push of its lih into the air It stuck to the silicate surface of Io as though it earingIts blue eyes blazed like lightning The long, i at nothing as it ran It was all just like in her dreams And for a split second, Bobbie just wanted to stand perfectly still and let the scene play out to the conclusion she’d never gotten to see Another part of herwith sweat, as she had so many times before
Bobbie watched as it ran toward her, and noted with pleasure the burnt black injuries the incendiary bullets had cut through its body No sprays of black fila like water Not this ti it
She turned away and took off in a bounding run at a ninety-degree angle to its path Her suit kept the targeting laser locked on to thearound to look As she’d suspected, it turned to follow her, but it lost ground “Fast on the straightaways,” Bobbie said to it “But you corner like shit”
When the creature realized she wasn’t going to just stand still and let it get close to her, it stopped Bobbie stu to watch it It reached down and tore up a big chunk of ancient lava bed, then reached down to grip the ground with its other hand
“Here it comes,” Bobbie said to herself
She threw herself to the side as the creature’s arm whipped forward The rock missed her by centimeters as she hurtled sideways She hit thefire This ti hundreds of rounds into and through the creature
“Anything you can do I can do better,” she sang under her breath “I can do anything better than you” The bullets tore great fla chunks out of the monster and nearly severed its left arm The creature spun around and collapsed Bobbie bounced back to her feet, ready to run again if the ot back up It didn’t Instead, it rolled over onto its back and shook Its head began to swell, and the blue eyes flashed even brighter Bobbie could see thingsbeneath the surface of its chitinous black skin
“Booo off
Instead, it bounced suddenly to its feet, tore a portion of its own abdomen off, and threw it at her By the time Bobbie realized what had just happened, the bomb was only a few meters from her It detonated and blew her off her feet She went skidding across Io’s surface, her ars at her When she finally ca a Christhts She tried to move her limbs, but they were as heavy as stone The suit’s motion control processor, the computer that interpreted her body’s movements and turned them into commands for the suit’s actuators, had failed The suit was trying to reboot it while sirae on the HUD said PLEASE STAND BY
Bobbie couldn’t turn her head yet, so when the monster leaned down over her, it took her completely by surprise She stifled a scream It wouldn’t have mattered The sulfur atmosphere on Io was far too thin for sound waves to travel in The monster couldn’t have heard her But while the new Bobbie was at peace with the idea of dying in battle, enough of the old Bobbie re like a baby
It leaned down to look at her; its overlarge and curiously childlike eyes glowed bright blue The daun had done seemed extensive, but the creature appeared not to notice It poked at her chest arer, then convulsed and vooo all over her