It was all over in a few ticks. Though the alarm still shrieked, the shouts and disruptor fire had gone quiet. The whole operation had been flawless, and Tal allowed herself a sigh of relief. Time to get out of here.
“Lancer Tal to all teams. Check in.”
“Team green, two enemy dead upstairs. All clear.”
“Team red, two enemy captured, three dead downstairs. All clear.”
Tal waited, then frowned at the delay. “Team blue, check in.”
No response.
“Team blue, respond.” She waited another five pipticks, but there was still no answer.
“Shut off that shekking alarm!” she shouted to no one in particular, and two Guards scrambled to obey. “Teams green and red, stay put and wait for further instructions.” Pulling a frequency locator from her pocket, she snapped, “Who has the heat scanner?”
“Right here, Lancer.” Vellmar appeared in front of her.
Tal scanned for the frequency signatures of every wristcom in the area and frowned. “I’ve got Gehrain’s, but not Micah’s.”
“And the heat scanner shows eleven bodies in the house,” Vellmar said. “We’re missing three.”
They stared at each other.
“Basement,” they said simultaneously.
“Shek! Damn that Parser!” Tal tapped her earcuff again. “Lancer Tal to teams; we’re missing one enemy warrior and possibly more that didn’t show up on heat or empathic scans due to underground locations. Team blue may be in pursuit. Start looking for an access to a basement.”
She tapped out and thought furiously. Gehrain’s wristcom was transmitting a strong signal, so there was no reason for him to be silent unless he was in pursuit of the last guard—or unable to respond. And where the shek had Micah gone?
“Vellmar, see if there are any suspicious large animals around here.”
“You think there’s another entrance to the basement?” Vellmar asked, watching her scanner as she slowly turned in a circle. Her voice was loud in the sudden silence; the alarm had stopped at last.
“I’m certain there is. The question is whether anyone has popped out of it.”
Vellmar completed her circle. “And the answer is…no.”
“So far.” Tal looked up at the Guards waiting nearby. “Assume that we still have active enemies in the area and take no chances. Senshalon, you’re with me. Vellmar, you’re in charge out here. Stay on Opah with two others, put four on perimeter, and watch that heat scanner like a winden with a newborn.”
Vellmar immediately began organizing assignments while Tal called Thornlan.
“Yes, Lancer,” came the instant reply.
“Get ready to transfer to my wristcom location. There’s room to land. Don’t come until I give the word; we’re still securing the area. But you can tell Raiz Opah that her brother is safe. Call Aldirk right now and tell him to activate the safe vid. And tell Colonel Razine that she is now free to act.”
“Confirmed.”
Tal made a sharp motion to Senshalon and jogged back across the clearing. She swore quietly as they crossed the shattered threshold. Having to reenter the site of a covert mission was a sign of bad planning.
“Why didn’t we think of a basement?” she muttered.
“We were in a rush,” Senshalon said. “And basements aren’t common in Blacksun Basin.”
It was an understandable lapse. But Fahla, that fantenshekken Parser thought of everything. Which made her wonder why he hadn’t kept Herot underground as well. If he had, they would never have found him.
She could think of no answer to that one. A tick later, she forgot the question.
CHAPTER 35:
Team blue
By the time Micah’s team had gathered in the dark bedroom, Tal’s team was already out the door. Gehrain confirmed that none of the guards in the house were alarmed. Everything was going according to plan.
If this house was like most, the staircase would be near the front door. They had entered to the right of it, as close to Herot’s location as they could safely get. Micah led his team out of the bedroom and turned left. When they arrived at the staircase, he held up two fingers and pointed. Dewar and Nilsinian peeled off and began ascending the stairs, while Micah waited just long enough to be sure that no creaking steps would give them away. Sure enough, the old stairs protested their weight, but if any of Herot’s guards heard, they assumed it was from one of their own. Gehrain kept his hand in a fist, indicating that they were still undetected.
Nilsinian gained the second floor and waved behind him.
Micah left his Guards to their work. He knew them well, and as far as he was concerned, the upstairs was already secured.
Their own targets were still separated. Two guards were together in one room, and a third was unmoving some distance away. Micah crept cautiously to the arch on the other side of the stairs, freed a tiny cambot from his belt pouch, and sent it just around the corner. The vid feed on his wristcom showed a living area furnished with old chairs and a rug that looked ready to crumble. The room had an abandoned air; this wasn’t where the guards spent their time.
A flick of his finger sent the cambot across the empty room to the archway on the opposite side, where it revealed another curving corridor that most likely went around to the back side of the dome. Two doors were visible before the curvature of the hall hid the rest.
He motioned to Gehrain, and they quickly crossed the living area to crouch against the wall beside their hovering cambot. Micah sent it into the corridor to peek through the first doorway, seeing an office crowded with dusty bookshelves and a large, dented wood desk. A man and a woman sat in overstuffed chairs in front of the desk, which housed a pile of papers, an open bottle of spirits, and two mostly empty glasses. They were speaking animatedly, and Micah quickly tapped his wristcom to activate the audio feed and send it to his earcuff.
“—getting tired of it. I think they might walk.”
“Yeah? I’m getting tired of their complaining. They try walking and they’ll see the wrong end of my disruptor. Does no one understand the significance of an oath anymore?”
“Shek, Oren, none of us swore a damned oath. Except Periso, and that woman is insane. The pay isn’t enough for the kind of duty we’re pulling. For Fahla’s sake, we’re in the middle of shekking nowhere! Why are we killing ourselves guarding that little dokker? He’s not worth anything alive. I hear the Lancer wants him dead.”
“She doesn’t want him dead, you grainbird, don’t you ever check your caste account? She put out a directive ordering him to be kept safe.”
“Well, I have no idea why. If I were her, I’d want him dead. Come to think of it, I want him dead anyway.”
The man laughed. “Still upset about the nose, eh?”
“Shut the shek up.”
With another laugh, Oren picked up the bottle and refilled their glasses. Micah wished he could hear more, but they had no time. He pulled the bot out of the doorway and left it hovering just outside as he held up two fingers for Gehrain, then pointed at the arch and held up one.
Two guards. First door.
Gehrain nodded, and Micah sent the bot to the next door. Finding it closed, he dropped the bot all the way to the floor and extended a tiny tube into the space beneath the door. Though the image it sent back was difficult to make out, it was enough to eliminate the room, which appeared to be an empty closet.
The doorway after that revealed their third guard, relaxing on the bed with a reader card. Micah showed Gehrain the footage, then pointed at the arch and held up three fingers.
Reconnaissance completed, he recalled the cambot, plucked it from the air, and returned it to its pouch. From a second pouch he produced a thin, transparent cable and snapped one end of it into an adhesive peg.
Gehrain
held out his hand for the cable and second peg. As he snapped in his end, Micah attached the first peg to the side of the archway, less than two handspans above the ground. Gehrain secured his peg on the other side, wound the cable tight, and locked it down while Micah set an immobilizer to wide dispersal. Once it was connected to the trip line, they put their backs against the wall on either side of the archway and drew their goodnights.
Micah had a special fondness for these weapons, so rudimentary yet effective. They were nothing more than a grip and a spring-loaded shaft with a flat, weighted end, designed to disable without permanent damage. One swing and an opponent would be instantly unconscious. Sometimes, he thought, the simplest things still worked the best.
The house was silent, save for the murmur of voices and an occasional laugh from the office. Micah didn’t need Gehrain’s senses to know that Tal’s team was operating undetected. These two had no idea that they were losing their hostage and their salaries even while they drank.
He was jerked out of his musings by the silent vibration of his wristcom. Lifting it, he read the message from Tal.
Target acquired.
He smiled. She had Herot.
Still they waited. Unless it became absolutely necessary, no one on his team would make a move before Tal’s team was out.
A shout sounded upstairs, followed instantly by disruptor fire. Nilsinian and Dewar had been seen.
“What the shek?” Oren bellowed from the office.
Chairs scraped as Oren and the female guard scrambled out. They barreled through the archway, flying over the trip line and sprawling paralyzed on the floor. Keeping clear of the immobilizer’s dispersal angle, Micah and Gehrain swung their goodnights and put both guards out of commission. Gehrain deactivated the immobilizer and jumped through the arch in pursuit of the last one, while Micah pulled out tielocks and swiftly locked the wrists of the unconscious guards. He had just snapped the second one shut when the front door blew in and disruptor fire began tearing up the outside of the house. Tal had gotten Herot out quickly.
Micah pulled his own disruptor and ran after Gehrain.
“Colonel! Down here!”
Following Gehrain’s shout and the sound of weapons fire, he found a closet door standing open in the now-empty third room. But when he reached it, he realized it wasn’t a closet—it was a wooden staircase leading down.
“Damn,” he muttered. They hadn’t considered a basement. There could be anything or anyone down here. He tapped his earcuff and opened his mouth to alert the unit, but a tremendous crash distracted him, followed a piptick later by a disruptor shot impacting the doorway over his head. Debris rained down and knocked him off his feet. He fell several steps down the stairs before stopping, then had to throw himself the rest of the way down as disruptor fire tore chunks of dirt and rock from the wall where he had just been. At the bottom he dove under the staircase, taking the nearest cover available.
“Micah to unit,” he said breathlessly. “There’s a basement access in the third room from the living area. We’re in pursuit—”
The steps just over his head blew apart, and he flattened himself to the dirt floor. Deciding that his unit knew enough for now, he concentrated on saving his skin and finding this damned guard. He pulled out his cambot and sent it airborne, looking to his wristcom for the vid feed and sucking in a breath when he saw the damage to his arm. Between his uncontrolled descent of the stairs and the rock shrapnel flying around, he had managed to scrape a good portion of the skin off his arm, resulting in a bloody mess. That wasn’t the problem, however. The shattered and blackened screen of his wristcom worried him a good deal more. He was cut off from his unit.
“Gehrain!” he shouted. There was no answer but the sound of someone running away from him, deeper into the dimly lit basement. Carefully, he poked his head out.
A shape flitted away, too short to be Gehrain and with the wrong stride. He sent several shots after it, his aim hampered by the stairs, then scrambled out and went in pursuit.
The guard stopped and fired, and Micah dove to the side. Rolling to a crouch, he returned fire, cursing the lack of cover. What little there had been was back by the stairs.
His quarry resumed her dash, running in an irregular zigzag for the opposite wall of the basement, where a metal power panel reflected what little light there was.
Micah noted the shiny newness of the panel compared to everything else in this house and made a snap decision. If it was important enough for this woman to ignore disruptor fire, then it was important enough to be destroyed. Adjusting his aim, he sent a series of shots at the panel, blowing it out in a shower of sparks and metal shrapnel.
With a shout of rage, the guard turned on the spot and fired.
Micah pushed off, rolling away, but there was nowhere to hide and the disruptor fire followed him faster than he could move. A searing heat ripped through his side, shoving him backward and slamming his head into the dirt floor. Disoriented, he clenched his hand around his disruptor and tried to lift it, but the weapon seemed to weigh far more than normal.
It didn’t matter, he thought calmly. He couldn’t see anything anyway.
He heard running footsteps, the deep slam of a heavy door, and then nothing.
CHAPTER 36:
Path of the Return
“Lancer Tal! Over here!”
Following Nilsinian’s voice, Tal and Senshalon ran into the living area and paused at the sight of two unconscious guards lying facedown with their wrists bound behind them.
“We found the entrance.” Nilsinian led them across the room and down the curving corridor. “Colonel Micah and Head Guardian Gehrain got those two, so we started looking here. We didn’t have to go very far.”
He jogged past an office scattered with papers and turned into a bedroom that showed signs of recent use. Rubble littered the floor near an inside door, and Tal stopped at the opening. Crashing sounds emanated from below.
“Are the others already down there?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s clear; no heat signatures except our own. Colonel Micah and Head Guardian Gehrain are injured. We don’t know how badly; the others just went down. I was just about to call you.”
Tal was halfway down the stairs before Nilsinian finished speaking.
“Look out for the last few steps!” he called after her.
She barely registered the destroyed steps with their sharp and blackened splinters, vaulting onto the floor from the last intact step above them. Now she could see the source of the crashing sounds: a Guard was pulling crates off a pile and throwing them to one side. As she ran over, a body came into view beneath them.
“Lancer Tal.” The Guard grunted, pulling off another crate. Now that she was close enough, she could see it was Corlander, one of the assault team members who had gone in after blowing the door. “Head Guardian Gehrain isn’t badly injured so far as we can tell. But you need to see Colonel Micah.” He threw the crate away and pointed into the dimness, where two light beams flashed and shifted.
“Senshalon, help Corlander.” She trotted as fast as she dared across the uneven dirt floor.
The lights were from headbands worn by Dewar and Windenal, Corlander’s partner. They were bent over a huddled mass on the ground.
Tal sprinted the last distance, skidded to a halt, and dropped to her knees. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “What happened?”
“We don’t know.” Dewar sealed the oxygenator over Micah’s nose and mouth. “But whoever did this is gone. And they didn’t come up the stairs.”
Belatedly remembering her own headband, Tal pulled it from her pocket and slipped it on. Her eyes watered as she looked more closely at the wreck of Micah’s body.
A disruptor hit to his right side had done horrific damage, tearing open his lower torso, hip, and thigh. The dirt beneath him was w
et with blood, and only after seeing it did Tal realize that the knees of her uniform pants were soaked. The blood loss was severe, and they were in the middle of nowhere.
She couldn’t accept this. Micah bore as many scars as the rest of them, but he had never been badly hurt before. She hadn’t thought it was possible. Not Micah.
Something soft thumped to the ground beside her.
“Lancer Tal, I need to wrap him,” Dewar said gently.
Tal nodded and stood back, watching in helpless grief as her medic unrolled the pressure sack. Dewar called Nilsinian over and fired off rapid instructions to both of her assistants. It would take all three of them to gently maneuver Micah’s body into the pressure sack, which would prevent additional blood loss and give them more time to get him into surgery.
Tal was now a bystander, her main task that of staying out of the way. She should have been offended at the way Dewar had simply elbowed her aside, but she couldn’t summon the emotional energy. Instead she felt sluggish and foggy, staring at Micah’s white face until she had to close her eyes against the sudden sting.
He would not Return. It was not his time! They would get him to a healing center, and the healers would take care of him, and he would be back to normal. He had to be. She refused to consider any other option.
Healing center. Yes. She needed the transport. Tal felt the fog thinning, and with an enormous effort she pulled herself out of her stupor. Taking a few steps away, she called Thornlan and quietly told her to retrieve her perimeter Guards and make haste to the new landing coordinates. “We have a medical evacuation,” she finished. “Notify Redmoon. They’re the closest.”
Without a Front: The Warrior's Challenge (Chronicles of Alsea Book 3) Page 26
