~I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Colonel Agansu.

Berdle glanced at Cossont again. “The tour party near the combat arbite’s position is now clear of the likely destruction volume and the knife missiles are cleared to fire,” the avatar told her. “Due to the nature of the munitions being used, the corridor is about to become extremely bright. We are trying to keep damage to a minimum, but – ah; here we go …”

The air in the corridor seemed to fill and streak with fanned white light, intensely bright; it almost looked like the smoke-hazed air was being lit by lasers, but something about the quality of the light itself and the way the smoke in the corridor was tugged after whatever it was that was making its way down the corridor argued against this. Cossont had never paid all the attention she might have in weaponry identification or whatever they’d called it back in military academy.

It really was astoundingly bright; it was as though part of the surface of a blue-white sun had suddenly appeared in the corridor, searing, bleaching everything. The light cut off; what had seemed like a brightly lit space in front of them suddenly looked dull.

An instant later a series of colossal, still greater outbursts of light – just barely distinguishable as being made up of hundreds of small, searingly bright flares rather than being a single massive eruption – made a white sun of the end of the corridor to their right. In the instant between the light and the trailing sound of the fusillade, what probably was laser light came flicking through the hazed air, filling the patch of corridor Cossont could see with sparkling bars of cerise light.

Explosions shook and battered her from both sides. She put her head down, wondering if she’d have had any hearing left without the suit.

Something touched her on one ear and Berdle said, “We have only one knife missile remaining to our left now. The person above us is either waiting or hesitating. I have instructed the remaining knife missile to mount a frontal attack; it will fly past us at just under ceiling height in approximately six seconds and fire over us and through the lift-shaft doorway. The munitions being used, though tiny, are both powered by and payloaded with anti-matter, so some radiation exposure at such close quarters is inescapable. Immediately after the missile has passed, you must stand and grasp me as you did before, from behind, arms round my body. Preferably legs wrapped round mine over my shins, too. Keep the bag with the mind-state device in it at your side, not over your back, do you understand?”

She nodded. More bars of pink light filled the air in front of the alcove, creating a screaming, tearing noise as the laser light impacted the swirling smoke and dust particles. Her mouth had gone very dry.