He removed his night goggles, smoothed his long hair back and walked alone into the street, toward the main entrance. When he reached the entrance, McLure lifted the latch and pushed, but the door didn't open. He knocked.
“Who's there?” A muffled voice from behind the door.
“It's Professor McLure.” He tried to sound scared. “Let me in.”
“It's late, Professor. The others are long gone. Where have you been?”
“Busy.” Why didn't the nitwit open the door?
The sound of a heavy crossbar being lifted off its metal hooks reached McLure's ears. Then the lock clicked, and the door moaned as it opened a crack.
“Are you alone?” The whispering face peered outside, barely visible against the torchlight from within. The man glanced right and left, then he opened the door wide. “Hurry in!”
“Come on, boys,” McLure said loudly, motioning to the commander who peeked out from the alley into the street.
The guard's eyes widened as he noticed the contingent of enforcers rushing out of the alley. McLure stepped aside to let them pass. The guard retreated inside and attempted to close the door. Too late.
The enforcers stormed into the lodgings. One enforcer grabbed the guard by the scruff of the neck and snapped electronic cuffs on his wrists. McLure tried to ignore the brutality. It wasn't his problem. The clone led the sentry outside and into the alley, probably to lock him up inside the shuttle.
McLure didn't like that feeling of being responsible for another Human's misery, but it was necessary. As he stood there, near the door, the commander grabbed McLure's shoulder and shoved him inside. “You come. You show us.”
Shaken by such lack of respect, McLure obeyed grudgingly. Inside the house, torchlight illuminated the modest habitation.
Ignoring the activity and the many enforcers crowding the place, McLure focused on the layout. He could barely see the stone stairs leading down. “This way.”
McLure felt the surge of adrenaline flooding him as he hurried down the stairs, followed by the commander and his clones. Lighting devices now illuminated the stairwell as bright as day. At the bottom, he discovered a cellar, larger than the room above. And at the far side, an enormous millstone rigged to a primitive device of ropes and pulleys.
“Where is it?” The commander looked flustered.
“Here.” McLure demonstrated by pushing the lever but nothing happened. “You need someone strong to push this, and it will open.”
The commander motioned to one of the enforcers, who braced himself against the lever, making it move. The millstone rolled away with a grating of stone on rock, revealing the dark entrance to the tunnels.
* * *
“Did you hear that?” Trixie could swear she'd heard something like a muffled stampede, far away in the tunnels behind them. “Stragglers?”
Kostas shook his head. “No. It's bad news.”
“Enforcers?” Trixie's insides turned to water.
Kostas stepped to the side and motioned for the settlers to hurry past him. “Run!”
Trixie and all the settlers in the group understood the nature of the danger. By the frantic light of the torches, they ran as fast as they could toward the relative safety of their underground shelter. But Trixie doubted that a simple door, no matter how thick, would stop the enforcers. The mere fact that they had found them was catastrophic.
As she ran, Trixie wondered what Kostas had in mind and dared to hope. Then she heard and felt the explosion rumbling along the tunnel. The aftershocks threatened her balance. Somehow, she managed to keep running. Kostas had collapsed the tunnel behind them. Smart.
When she reached the vast room lit by torches, where hundreds of settlers already camped, Tabor glanced at her in alarm.
He rushed toward her. “We felt the explosion.”
“The enforcers are behind us,” Trixie explained, out of breath. “But Kostas collapsed the tunnel.”
Tabor nodded, all expression gone from his face. “I doubt the collapse will stop them.”
“But it will slow them down.” Kostas rushed in, locked the heavy door behind him, and braced it with both metal crossbars. “The settlers can't stay here.”
Trixie couldn't believe they had been found. “Disperse through the back exits, as far and wide as you can into the tunnels.”
The settlers seemed riveted in place, as if she'd asked them to throw themselves into a shark pond at feeding time.
Tabor shook one by the shoulders. “Take some weapons, take the food and run. Zerkers aren't bullet-proof.”
Panic widened the eyes of the refugees. Even with a rifle, the tunnels must seem just as dangerous as the enemy coming to take them. But Trixie also realized there was little hope. Once unleashed in the tunnels, the black-clad monsters could probably sense them, smell them, and they would hunt them to the last.
Kostas lifted his rucksack and upended it upon the thick table. An entire arsenal dropped with clatters and clangs upon the rough-hewn wood. “Whoever wants to fight, stay with me. I'll try to stop them here, or at least slow them down long enough so the rest of you can escape.”
Trixie understood his tactic, but it meant certain death or capture for the defenders. Still, she would fight to protect the innocent. With Kostas at her side, they might stand a chance. “I'll stay with you.”
Kostas' deep brown eyes hooded in the torchlight. “These people will need a leader.”
Tabor looked up from checking his rifle. “You should go with them, Trixie.”
Trixie understood that they both wanted to protect her. How noble. But she refused to run. “If this is our last stand, I want to be part of it. If we fail, they won't need a leader. And you can use all our fighters here. I'd rather die firing a rifle than in chains from exhaustion or sickness.”
Kostas nodded slowly. He probably understood.
More garrison volunteers gave their food bundles to other settlers and lined up beside Kostas, who distributed weapons, power packs and grenades. Then he shoved the heavy table and set it on its long side, to form a barricade facing the door. The thick wood would provide the last shielding barrier, behind which to take cover when the enforcers broke through the door. For they certainly would, and soon enough.
From behind them, Tom and Cheng came to join the fighters. They were already armed and silently took their place behind the barricade.
Trixie welcomed her crewmen with a tight smile. But another thought bothered her. She turned to Kostas. “What if they come from behind us?”
Kostas shook his head. “I know their kind. If they can't clear the debris from the explosion, they'll excavate a detour around it. These enforcers have a one-track mind, and they never give up.”
Wraith! Trixie understood only too well. “And this is the strategic bottleneck they have to get through in order to gain access to the rest of the tunnels.”
Their enemy was coming this way for sure. It was only a matter of time. And every minute gave the settlers a better chance to disperse and escape into the maze of tunnels behind them... as long as they didn't end up as fresh meat for Zerkers.
“What a screwed-up world!” Trixie shook her head. Yet it was the hand she was dealt, and she refused to consider the worst. There had to be a way out of this mess... although right now, she couldn't see any. Such a shame. Such high hopes... but Trixie and everyone in that room would probably not live to see what happened next.
When ominous pounding hit the other side of the door, the garrison fighters behind the barricade came to alertness, exchanging worried glances. Trixie raised her rifle, steadied it on the edge of the upturned table and aimed through the sight. She would make every shot count.
The pounding on the door reminded her of the Zerker raid on the citadel, but this enemy was infinitely more dangerous.
A blast of heavy weapon fire splintered the door, sending the crossbars clanging against stone. Dust and pebbles rained upon the garrison fighters from the high ceiling.
“Fire!
” Kostas ordered
The entire group fired at the open door at the same time, effectively repelling the first enforcers crowding through the opening. But Trixie could see the gossamer flickering of shields protecting the squadron of clones. She realized Human weapons could not penetrate such armors.
Kostas threw a grenade, but it did not stop the enforcers.
A sudden flash of bright light blinded Trixie. She lost balance. Her rifle slipped from her grip. She fell, and fell, and fell, in slow motion, into darkness. The sounds of battle hushed, and quiet surrounded her. She never hit the ground but remained suspended in limbo. So that was what it felt like to die...
* * *
Kostas opened gritty eyes to a dim, yellow glow. He tasted stone dust and needed a shower. Turning his head, he flinched at the pang lancing his skull. Strange that he could feel pain so acutely. He never had before.
He lay on cold stone, inside a perfectly rectangular bunk carved into the rock wall. The open side showed a vast, high-ceilinged room. The light came from yellow globes far above. The inside of his bunk displayed bold symbols and graffiti of runes and uneven cuneiform writing. Some humanoid drawings, abhorrent in shapes and proportions, made him cringe... alien prison art.
Something felt terribly wrong. His weapons were gone with his utility belt. He wore his black military cargo, tee shirt and boots. How did he get here? Even with total recall abilities, he couldn't remember. The hum of air recycling units, the vile phosphorous smell, and the distant vibration and grinding noises of heavy machinery, however, seemed familiar. They reminded him of the deepest levels of the duranium mine.
Kostas sat up, cringing from the effort, his head and muscles screaming in protest. He dangled his legs over the edge of his stone bunk. All around, from floor to the high ceiling, the walls had been hollowed out with similar rectangular cubbyholes at regular intervals. Metal ladders ran up the walls between the vertical rows. Far down below his feet, on the room floor, stone benches formed square patterns.
Many other Human forms lay supine in the stone bunks, like cadavers in an ancient burial mound. No one moved. Were they all dead? No. The graffiti indicated prolonged habitation... a prison, not a tomb. Besides, he heard gurgling water sounds coming from a corner behind a recess. Latrines? Showers?
His keen eyes adjusting to the light, Kostas now recognized Tom's bright red cap, and Tabor's burgundy garb, and Cheng's navy uniform. He wanted to call to them, but some deep-seated sense of danger stopped him.
Now Kostas remembered the bright flash that had ended their short battle against the enforcers in the tunnels. As for this vast gray room, he'd glimpsed it before, on his way to the deepest extraction line. At the time, he'd dubbed it slave quarters, not guessing he'd end up as one of its inhabitants. Counting the rows, he calculated about two hundred and forty bunks... all occupied by Humans.
Where was Trixie? He couldn't see her uniform, or her tousle of short blond hair. He feared the worst. Had she survived whatever had knocked him down? Could her small Human body endure such a shock? He certainly hoped she was more resilient than she looked. The thought of never seeing her smile again, never talking to her, never feeling her gentle touch frightened him. Fear... a very unsettling sensation.
The changes in his pain threshold and his vulnerable emotional state made him wonder about the surge of energy the enforcers had used... a transport beam? If so, it could have damaging effects on a clone. An energy blast of this magnitude could realign DNA. He'd heard of such occurrences in botched experiments.
He suddenly understood how miserable it must be for a simple Human to face danger with fear and pain gnawing at their gut. No wonder the military used clones for extreme missions. His mind wandered... it never had before. Another shocking observation. Stay focused, damn it!
As quietly as a cat on rubber paws, Kostas climbed down the side ladder to the floor below. The many low benches jutting up at regular square angles seemed carved in the same rock as the rest of the room. From down here, the walls loomed even taller and more forbidding.
Kostas checked the pulse at the throat of the nearest person lying on a lower bunk. The man had a faint but regular heartbeat. Likely because of his special constitution Kostas had awakened before the others. If the enforcers didn't expect the prisoners to wake up for a while, perhaps he could use this advantage to sneak around and find Trixie... make sure she was alive and well.
The entrance to their slave quarters had no door, just a tall rectangular archway through the stone wall, opening onto the main corridor. Once again Kostas wondered how the Godds had excavated this entire complex in the stone. Just like the citadel above. Lasers? Probably something more advanced. So why would they still use grinders and slaves to extract the ore? It made no sense.
Glancing right and left into the corridor, Kostas saw no enforcers. They wouldn't waste their time guarding unconscious slaves. Besides, with the dorm so far down the mine, where could they go? Like any trained guards, the enforcers would concentrate their efforts at the strategic points, like the lifts, and make sure the slaves went to work when ordered.
He resisted the urge to cough from all the grit in the air. Any living sound might betray his presence where he didn't belong.
Investigating further down the corridor, he found another archway leading to another room, similar to the one from which he came. More settlers slept in the same spacious rectangular bunks hollowed into the rock. He realized they must have been carved for much taller humanoids. Climbing a ladder to get a better view of the higher cubbyholes, he still didn't see Trixie. Damn!
Back in the corridor, he found a third room, same size, same set up, but that one stood empty. The occupants could be at work at the excavation site. Was Trixie among them? Half of the Human population of Kassouk seemed to reside on this level.
Kostas came upon a tall wall hiding a side corridor. Around the corner, he saw a closed door. When he pushed it, the door swung open, and he found himself inside a small room, brightly lit, with white walls. The air smelled noticeably fresher here.
The three inhabitants in their white stone bunks lay wrapped into some kind of white cocoon... layers of fibers emitting a faint glow. He'd seen such contraptions before, to accelerate the recovery of the wounded on the battlefields of Sirius Four. Of alien origin, the cocoons had been stolen from the enemy. Reverse-engineering had failed to replicate them... too advanced. This must be the floor's infirmary, or recovery room.
Feverishly, Kostas searched the faces emerging from the healing devices. Then he found Trixie, barely breathing, eyes closed, her lovely face like a pale mask on a Babushka nesting doll.
He sighed with relief at having found her... alive. Then his heart raced at the thought that she must have been wounded to justify such a healing process. Controlling his panic, he reminded himself that she would be all right. The regenerating cocoon would heal her faster, and more efficiently than the most advanced earthly medical care.
Despite their ruthless methods, why would the Godds be concerned about Trixie's health? Did her leading position among the settlers, or her association with Ktal and Kuhr, explain her privileged treatment? If that were the case, why didn't Kostas recognize the two other occupants in the recovery room?
Kostas caressed Trixie's cheek. “Hang in there, Angel. You'll be all right. I'll check up on you whenever I can.”
Her eyelids remained closed, but her lips curved into a faint smile, and she took a slightly deeper breath. Whether conscious or not, she seemed to enjoy his touch, or was it his voice?
“I love you, Angel,” Kostas whispered. He wished he could say it when she was awake, but he slowly realized that despite his irrational hopes, friendship may have to suffice.
Since Trixie knew he was a clone, nothing could erase the stigma from her memory. No clone could ever receive Human love... but no clone could experience love either, and yet he did. He deposited a soft kiss on her cool forehead and left the infirmary.
Now that he
'd located Trixie, Kostas had to find a way to get them all out of this prison. He hoped that by the time he formulated a plan, Trixie would have recovered.
He returned to his slave quarters as the others started to awaken, stretching and yawning, and coughing. They opened wide eyes, glancing at each other in surprise. Then the sirens marking shift changes blared, and the metallic clank of enforcers' boots stomped down the length of the corridor.
“Time to go to work,” a disembodied voice boomed over the sound system. “Follow the arrows to the designated areas.”
Startled, men and women shook themselves and obeyed, all of them familiar with the routine of the mine. Except that this time, they slept on the premises, and had no protective suit, no breathing mask. Outside the archway, the armored enforcers lined the corridors to make sure they did not dally.
The settlers conformed like broken men and women who have lost all hope. Kostas noticed their dull eyes, the slump of their shoulders, the slack arms, the hunch of their back, as if they carried the heavy load of defeat. He wanted to shout and tell them there was still a chance to get out alive.
At this point, however, he didn't have a plan, and without a plan they would not believe him. So, Kostas kept his mouth shut and followed the flock like a sheep, working his way closer to Tom, Cheng, and Tabor, keeping his ears and eyes alert for any useful tip that might help them escape.
* * *
Trixie dreamed of Kostas. But in the dream, he was Human. And while all clones were made sterile to safeguard the integrity of the Human race, Kostas gave her children, twins, a boy and a girl. The boy had Kostas' soft brown eyes, tan skin and dark hair, and the girl was blond and blue-eyed like Trixie... How beautiful their beloved children were.
A pang hit Trixie as she yearned for the simple, peaceful family life of the dream. She wanted Kostas, she wanted his children, their children.
Noah's Ark Page 19
