CHAPTER 27
Soon as Doc looks away, l lunge
toward the emergency
override panel.
Unfortunately, I’m not as fast or agile as I used to be, and he
wheels round to catch my wrist. He radiates frustration, but before
he can yell at me, a boom sounds.
The whole house
shakes.
I hit the floor,
expecting the roof to come down on me. “I didn’t know Lachion was
prone to quakes.”
“It’s not,” Doc says
grimly. “They’re bombarding us.”
I’m not even sure
what that means. For a moment, I envision Clan McCullough dropping
giant rocks on us. “They’re what?”
On his hands and
knees beneath the exam table with me, he looks as though he’s
considering one of his university-style explanations. Then he
shakes his head. “This is a hostile takeover, Jax. Welcome to stage
two.”
Shit. We did come at a bad time.
Between Teras who
attack on command and the McCullough war machines, things don’t
look good. Oh, Mary, I might never see March again. Dread threatens
to close off my throat. It can’t end here, before I can make him
understand.
“I guess we were
lucky to land before they struck.”
He stays low,
duckwalking toward the back of the lab. “I suspect your arrival
prompted them to step up the attack. They can’t take the chance the
ship carried reinforcements, or that the Conglomerate means to
interfere with local politics. You’re not just Jax anymore,
Ambassador. Not that you were ever ‘just’ anything.”
He can’t be serious.
I did this by showing up? I am the fucking
butterfly, causing ripples everywhere I go.
“It’s a tiny little
cutter,” I protest, crawling after him. Wherever he’s going, I’m
headed there, too. We weave around a tall metal cylinder that
quivers like it wants to crush my spine. “What the hell could we
possibly haul? And it’s not like we could’ve carried many mercs in
it.”
“A fair number of
Threshers would fit into the cargo hold,” he answers over his
shoulder.
The McCulloughs hit
us again, and this time, the walls tremble. Dust spills from the
ceiling, powdering my head. Not far away, something collapses. Mary
curse it, I hope Doc has a plan.
“I would’ve brought
Threshers,” I say, “if I’d known you were at war.”
Made by Veratech,
Threshers represent the gold standard in killing machines for
terrestrial combat. I couldn’t have afforded them, but he doesn’t
need to know that. Let my financial embarrassment die with
me.
“Keri tried to tell
you. Didn’t her message go through?”
I remember the way it
hissed and cut out. “Not all of it. Not the crucial bit. We thought
there might’ve been a problem with the bounce-relay. It’s never
stable here.”
The freedom of a
backwater planet also comes with a certain amount of technological
disadvantage. There’s no grid in place, no warning system for
natural disasters, and no help forthcoming if people get in
trouble. To the folks who live here, that’s a plus.
Advance teams told
Farwan that Lachion offered nothing special in the way of natural
resources, no money to be made via exploitation, so they packed up
and left the place to the settlers. That’s why the Corp called this
place a frontier world and paid them no mind. So for the last fifty
turns, the Clans have policed themselves and made it up as they
went along.
Another hit sends me
sprawling. As he rights me in a casual motion, I note the pack
slung across his shoulder. Doc pushes a heavy piece of equipment
over to the side with the sheer physical strength that never ceases
to amaze me. Head down, he looks like a short, squat ox.
“Plan B,” he
says.
That happens to be a
small escape hatch built into the floor. The house will come down
around our ears if we don’t get a move on. Even so, I hesitate to
skin down the ladder after him, gazing into a vertical shaft that
measures less than a meter. He descends carefully to accommodate
his shoulders.
Soon he disappears
from sight. A cold sweat breaks out over me, but I don’t make the
leap onto the skinny little ladder until another boom threatens to
collapse the ceiling on me.
“Close it!” Doc
shouts, an echo inflating his voice.
I yank on the short
chain to seal us off from the surface world. The light vanishes. My
hands feel slippery on the rungs, and I can taste the dark, thick
as rancid meat grease.
Down one step.
I can do this.
The shaft shudders.
Overhead, huge chunks of rubble slam against the trapdoor. If I
hadn’t moved, I’d be crushed up there, along with all of Doc’s
expensive equipment.
We’re buried
alive.
Pure terror paralyzes
me. They’re going to find my bones on this ladder, twenty turns
from now. Trembling, I remember the Sargasso, how I felt while buried in the
wreckage.
Why isn’t March here?
He promised, damn him. He said I’ll always come for you. That
probably doesn’t hold true anymore, though. If it ever did.
What a dickhead. Why
couldn’t he understand I just needed some time? Anger, even the
manufactured variety, lends me some strength, but it’s not quite
enough. I can’t make myself move.
“Jax?” I can’t see
him, but I hear sympathy and understanding in his voice. “One step
at a time. Closing your eyes might help. Forget about the
dark.”
How embarrassing. He
knows. Sirantha Jax, afraid of the dark. Nonetheless, I take his
advice and squeeze my eyelids shut. Feel my way down.
Somewhere along the
way, I miss a rung, but I don’t fall far. Solid as a brick wall,
Doc’s placed to catch me. I think he could hold a baby elephant. He
holds me for a moment, effortlessly, while we listen to the sky
falling above us.
I’m sure it’s just my
imagination, but I swear I can hear the rustle of wings. “Is this a
good idea? I mean, don’t the Teras live underground?”
“Clan Dahlgren dug
the bunkers,” he assures me. “And secured them. They don’t connect
to the natural caverns where the Teras make their home.”
“If you say
so.”
I remember what he
said about magnesium mines. You couldn’t pay me enough to work down
there. Or maybe it’s all automated, like some of the moon mining
facilities, just a skeleton crew to oversee and repair the
droids.
Doc sets me on my own
feet and cracks a torch-tube. I’ve never been so glad to see
chemicals mixing. Soon the ambient light bathes our faces in a
sickly yellow-green glow.
“I’m afraid your
tests will have to wait.”
Really? I thought you’d produce a pocket lab and cure
me this minute. Somehow I manage not to snap at him. He’s the
only thing standing between me and madness down here.
“Yeah, I gathered
that. Where do these tunnels lead?”
“To the main bunker.
It’s a honeycomb, and unless you know the way, you could wander for
days and never find the way in.”
“I guess that’s the
idea.” I fall behind him, keeping one hand on his shoulder. I don’t
care if he thinks I’m touchy-feely, overly familiar, or just scared
shitless. The latter is true, and he’s seen me melt down
before.
“Exactly. This is our
final fallback. They can reduce the compound to rubble, but they’ll
never find us.” He sounds so calm at the prospect of living for an
undisclosed period of time below ground.
The very idea makes
me sweat. I can smell my fear, sour and sickly. My fingers trail
along the sides of the tunnel as we move, puffs of powder drifting
into the wan light. I fall quiet, listening to our footsteps scrape
over the dry stone. Time slows, becomes impossible to
measure.
Just Doc and me,
surrounded by an island of night. I want to hide my face against
his broad back. Instead I walk on, trying to think of this as a
test. If I come out of it unscathed, I’ll be stronger.
At least there are no Morgut down here.
I don’t know how long
we’ve been walking, but my throat aches. So I tug on his pack. “Do
you have any water?”
“Of course. I
should’ve offered. Let’s rest a moment.”
There isn’t room for
us to relax, but I sink down onto the tunnel floor and take a long
drink from the lukewarm water in his flask. He probably has paste,
too, but I can’t face the thought of it, not yet. I’m simply not
hungry enough.
If I was paying Jael,
I would so fire him for leaving me with a pacifist to protect me. I
hope he’s all right. Dina and Vel, too. I can’t think about March.
My stomach wants to tie itself in knots over him, and I have to
stay calm. It’d be far too easy to lose myself in the dark.
I squeeze my eyes
shut to combat the panic boiling up in my throat. Steel bands
tighten around my rib cage, making it hard to breathe. I swear the
walls are getting closer together.
“Easy, Jax.” Doc tugs
me to my feet. “We need to keep moving.”
So we do. More
trudging. I’m just about to ask for a packet of that disgusting
paste when the torch-tube flickers. Hope to Mary he has a
replacement. I can’t walk in the dark. As it is, I’m barely hanging
on. The solid rock above me registers as a tangible, menacing
presence. Our tomb.
We come up against a
dead end. Shit. Doc doesn’t know this honeycomb as well as he
thought he did. We’re lost.
I can’t take this. I
need the open sky. Need to see the stars and feel the wind on my
face. I need to jump. This isn’t where I’m supposed to die.
“What now?” I ask
finally. “We can’t stay holed up forever.”
“Guerilla war,” he
tells me. “The monsters can’t serve the McCulloughs in here, nor
will their killing machines. So they’ll come looking eventually.
They can’t claim clan assets as long as either chieftain lives.
When they make that mistake, we’ll kill them, one by one. Keri’s
trained her men for tunnel fighting.”
“Won’t they just
starve you out?”
In answer, he
depresses a hidden button in the wall and the door to another world
swings open.
