[Fallen Empire 00.5 - 03.0] Star Nomad Honor's Flight Starfall Station Starseers Last Command

by Lindsay Buroker

  Alejandro, who had made his descent in a more controlled manner, walking his hands and feet down the walls, slid into the water next to them.

  “This way,” Leonidas said, striding away from the drainage chute—and the only source of light.

  “You know where you’re going?” Alisa asked, surprised. He hadn’t even known where the elevators were when they had entered the first floor.

  “Away from them.” He found her back with his arm and pulled her along faster than she could have walked in the deep water. She might have objected, but she sensed he was doing the same thing with Alejandro on his other side. “I don’t want to shoot imperial soldiers.”

  “I don’t want to be shot by imperial soldiers,” Alisa said.

  “Then leaving is a good idea.”

  “I’ll agree with that,” Alejandro muttered.

  They followed the current deeper into the darkness, Leonidas striding forward fearlessly. Alisa wanted to pull out her flashlight to get a better feel for their surroundings. She could imagine inimical things down here. White alligators, fang fish, poisonous water snakes…

  “Can you see?” she asked Leonidas.

  “Not much. We’ve gotten too far from the light.”

  “So, you can’t see in complete darkness? You’re like a cat?”

  “I’m a human with eye implants,” he said, his tone taking on that faintly miffed quality it had whenever someone implied he wasn’t entirely human.

  “Too bad. I was going to offer to rub your ears later if you were like a cat.”

  That did not earn her a response, and she had no idea if he was shooting her a scathing look. Probably.

  The sound of rushing water increased up ahead, making Alisa wish he had said he could see. There were supposed to be centuries’ worth of old channels for storm water and sewage that snaked around under the city, and she remembered stories of people living down here, too, in abandoned transportation tunnels that were deeper than the existing lines, that came from a time before the capital had been built up, newer levels atop older.

  Something brushed past Alisa’s shoulder, bouncing off before flowing along with the current. Maybe it was good that none of them could see. The odor grew fouler as they continued on, and she feared the water dumping into their channel from the nearby pipes was true sewer water.

  “I’m sorry you’re involved in this, Captain,” Alejandro said, sounding weary as he slogged along with Leonidas’s help. “I didn’t expect Leonidas to bring you.”

  “He said I would be safer with him than staying behind with Beck,” Alisa said, aware of Leonidas’s muscled arm wrapped around her back. One could easily feel safe in his arms, but their current situation was too bizarre for her to feel much more than discomfort, especially when something slithered past her leg. She jerked her foot away, thoughts of snakes returning.

  “It’s possible he has an inordinately high opinion of himself,” Alejandro said.

  “I just assumed he had an inordinately low opinion of Beck.”

  “That is also possible.”

  “Usually,” Leonidas said, “people talk about me behind my back, and I’m forced to use my enhanced auditory faculty to hear what disreputable things they’re saying about me.”

  “We didn’t want you to strain yourself,” Alisa said.

  His arm tightened around her briefly, and she wasn’t sure if it was a fond squeeze of acknowledgment—he sounded more amused than irritated by their commentary—or a reminder that he could break her in half with his pinky.

  “If they catch up with us,” Alejandro said, “you should veer off in another direction if possible, Captain. This isn’t your fight.”

  Water full of clumps of questionable material flowed in from a pipe, splatting onto Alisa’s shoulder, and it was a moment before she could respond. Her last meal was too busy trying to come up.

  “You’re not going to make a similar suggestion to me?” Leonidas asked, turning them around a bend that Alisa had not seen in the darkness. The dreadful aroma was getting stronger, threatening to sear the nose hairs out of her nostrils. “I know nothing about your secret treasure,” he added.

  “I know, but you’re… we’re… on the same side.”

  “The war is over, Doctor,” Leonidas said. “The empire has fallen.”

  Alisa punctuated this somber statement with gagging sounds. Rebus-de’s river of decay, she was going to end up puking all over Leonidas. What would his enhanced cyborg senses think about that? She took deeper breaths, trying to calm her queasy belly, doing her best not to breathe through her nose.

  A distant clang sounded.

  “Any chance that’s not related to us?” Alejandro asked. He didn’t seem affected by the stench. Maybe doctors were used to all manner of human excrement and grossness.

  “They found the grate,” Leonidas said.

  Wonderful. Their cyborg probably wouldn’t be slowed down by shepherding two civilians along.

  “Any chance you know where we’re going and that we’ll be out soon?” Alisa asked, sucking in gulps of air between the words. It did not help. Her belly roiled with discontent.

  “I know the direction to the harbor,” Leonidas said. “There should be a sewage treatment plant there, perhaps a way to climb out.”

  “The harbor is miles from the library,” Alejandro said.

  “I know.”

  Alisa lost it. Maybe it was the suggestion that they had to travel miles in this, with sewer sludge flowing all the way to their chests, or maybe she was just succumbing to the inevitable. Either way, she turned to the side and threw up. Her only consolation was that the water was flowing in that direction, so it would not come back and hit them. A small consolation. There were worse things than vomit in the channel.

  Leonidas continued to carry her along. Apparently, they couldn’t risk slowing down for regurgitation breaks.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Alejandro said again when she was done.

  He sounded miserable. At least she wasn’t the only one.

  “I think there’s a tunnel ahead without water in it,” Leonidas said. “It may tilt upward, an old subway passage perhaps.”

  “It’s pitch black in here,” Alejandro said. “You can’t possibly see anything.”

  “I can hear auditory changes, get a sense of the layout based on the echoes.”

  “Like a bat?” Alisa managed to rasp, not trusting her voice.

  At first, Leonidas did not answer, and she thought he would ignore her, but then he said, “I think I preferred it when you compared me to a cat.”

  “Perhaps he was intrigued by the proffer of an ear rub,” Alejandro said.

  “Yeah,” Alisa said. “I’m sure the idea of being rubbed by someone who just puked on him gets him excited.”

  “One hopes you would shower first.”

  “Shower? I’m going to need the top layer of my skin cells lasered off to feel sanitary again.”

  Another clang sounded in the distance. They all fell silent. Alisa had the uneasy feeling that their pursuers knew exactly which way they were going and were catching up.

  Her foot scuffed the bottom of the channel. As Leonidas turned them to the side, the ground rose, slick with slimy growth under her boots. She stuck her hands out in front of her and found the rough stone of a crumbling wall. By feel, they climbed into a higher passage that connected to the main one. Leonidas let go of her as she pulled herself out of the water. The scent had not lessened any, but she felt better being out of the grimy sludge.

  “Hurry,” Leonidas urged as Alisa clambered to her feet, leaning against the wall for support.

  Now, voices were audible in the distance. She did not know how the soldiers were tracking them, but they seemed to know exactly where they were.

  Alisa forced her legs into motion, first walking and then, at Leonidas’s light touch on her back, running. She kept her hands outstretched, one in front of her and one using the wall to the side for guidance. She did not want to
smack into another wall with her nose. Leonidas ran soundlessly at her side, clearly pacing himself so that he would not leave her and Alejandro behind. She could hear Alejandro both by the sound of his breathing and by the thump of his satchel against his side as he ran.

  The tunnel curved, then connected with another in what she guessed, by the sudden disappearance of her wall, was a cross-shaped intersection. Leonidas kept going straight. Alisa was completely lost and had no idea which way the harbor was or even if she could have found her way back to the library. She wondered if Leonidas had truly kept his bearings or if he was just guessing.

  They had run for about five minutes, with their passage widening, when two pinpricks of light appeared up ahead. Alisa’s first reaction was one of relief as she believed they had reached the surface, but as the lights grew larger and brighter, she realized that they hadn’t traveled upward enough to be anywhere near the surface. A faint rasping came from the direction of those lights.

  “Run faster,” Leonidas said, touching Alisa’s back again to urge greater speed.

  “What is that up there?” Alejandro asked, panting from his exertions.

  “An automatic sewer cleaner,” Leonidas said.

  Normally, that would not have sounded ominous, but it was coming straight toward them.

  “Will we… be able to… get around it?” Alisa asked, her legs burning.

  “There’s an intersection between us and it,” Leonidas said, not even slightly winded. “If we make it in time, we can turn off and avoid it.”

  “That… sounded like… a no,” Alisa said.

  “Just keep running,” Leonidas said.

  She did not try to speak again after that, siphoning all of her energy into her legs. The lights grew larger, appearing to be several feet off the ground, giving her a sense of the size of the cleaning machine. It might fill the entire tunnel.

  It rasped and ground as it continued toward them, and Alisa realized it was coming at a good speed. Images of being flattened under huge wheels and spinning brushes filled her head, and she ran faster, looking for the intersection Leonidas had promised. She could make out the gore-covered gray walls now, the light of the cleaner stealing some of the darkness of the tunnels.

  A grunt sounded behind her. Alejandro had fallen behind, his robes heavy with water and pulling at his legs. Leonidas threw him over his shoulder, then easily caught up with Alisa. He did not offer to pick her up, merely pointing ahead of them.

  “There.”

  Alisa could barely see the spot. She was squinting now, half-blinded by the bright lamps of the cleaner. Leonidas ran ahead of her, then disappeared from the light, jumping into a side tunnel. She sprinted toward it on leaden legs, the towering body of the cleaner filling her vision, giant brushes and whirring circular blades that cut away the grime on the walls to either side of it. There was no way someone could run past it, and its huge body would be capable of crushing anything in its path.

  She made it to the intersection and leaped after Leonidas, her ears full of the rasping and grinding. Thinking they were safe now, she paused, leaning forward and gripping her knees as she gasped for air. But Leonidas grabbed her.

  “Keep going,” he ordered.

  “What?” she blurted, feeling betrayed.

  The headlight beams swung into their dark passage, driving away the shadows. The cleaner was turning here too.

  Chapter 7

  “Climb,” Leonidas barked as the light beams of the massive tunnel cleaner flared, nearly blinding Alisa.

  “Climb what?” she demanded, scrambling backward, away from the machine. Not that it would matter. It was turning slowly around the corner, but it would pick up speed soon—it must have been zipping along at twenty-five miles per hour in the other tunnel. Leonidas might be able to outrun it, but Alisa and Alejandro never could.

  “The side of the tunnel.” Leonidas gripped her and lifted her from her feet, thrusting her at the wall.

  The ancient stones were jagged and uneven, but she would hardly consider them a ladder. But she did not argue. She did her best to find a grip. Would it be enough? The cleaner rolled toward them, nearly touching the ceiling with its bulky automatic control cab. Brushes and blades whirred, sweeping and chipping away the accumulated sediment and organic matter. With the ominous grinding in her ears, Alisa scrambled up the rough wall, her toes wedging into gaps between the stones where mortar had cracked and fallen away in pieces.

  The cleaner rumbled toward her, picking up speed as it moved away from the corner. She slipped, cursed, and recovered, nails breaking painfully as she dug them into the crumbling mortar.

  “Isn’t there an override or command to turn that thing off?” Alisa asked in frustration. “Surely even the empire doesn’t want its city sewer workers getting eaten by the machinery.”

  “If you were a legitimate worker down here, you would have a remote control to deactivate the automatons,” Alejandro said from the wall beside her. He was slipping even more than she, struggling to find hand and toeholds.

  Alisa glanced behind her. Leonidas stood in the center of the tunnel, facing the oncoming mechanical beast.

  “What are you doing?” she blurted as she climbed higher, imagining him being smashed beneath the massive construct. Even with his enhanced cyborg bones, he surely could not withstand being run over by a five-ton machine.

  “Go,” he ordered, almost yelling to be heard over the noise. “To the ceiling, to where the arch starts.”

  “Arch?” Alisa glanced up.

  She was close to the top of the wall now. It did arch in the middle, rising a few feet higher there than at the sides of the tunnel. Maybe there would be room if she reached that gap and could somehow hang upside down as the cleaner swept past below. All she needed was to turn into a spider to manage the feat…

  Cursing, she climbed as high as she could, to the point where she could see over the cab of the cleaning vehicle. With the headlights blinding her and utter darkness behind it, she couldn’t see much else, but thought the machine dipped down in the back. Maybe there was a cargo area?

  Bits of mildew and slime sheered from the walls and smacked her face as the huge swirling brushes approached. She tried to climb higher, but her foot slipped, and she almost fell off the wall. With terror surging through her limbs, she found the strength to hang on.

  As the top of the cab drew closer, she sucked everything in, hugging the wall. She prayed it would rumble by below her instead of knocking her from her perch.

  The lights passed first, and Alisa thought she might be safe. Then the corner of the cab hammered her in the back. She tried to hang on, ignoring the pain of the blow, but gravity fought against her. She tumbled backward, horror coursing through her body as she imagined the blades and brushes sweeping her under the machine where she would be crushed. If she died down in this nameless hell, her daughter would never know what had happened to her.

  But she only fell inches, onto the top of the cab, then bounced off something protruding from it, some vent pipe. She tumbled away and fell, not down in front of it and into the sweepers but down behind it. She landed on a flat metal surface.

  She held her breath, expecting some giant cleaning appendage to smash into her. Bits of slime and shards of mineral deposits struck her, plastering her face, but nothing larger came near her. Corrugated metal vibrated beneath her back. She was in a cargo bed.

  A grunt of pain came from above her, followed by someone tumbling down from the arched ceiling, almost landing on top of her. Alejandro. He slammed into the bed next to her, his foot clobbering her leg. Given that she had thought she would be pulverized under a machine a moment earlier, it was a small pain to endure.

  “Apologies,” Alejandro said.

  “You’re forgiven.”

  A soft clank sounded, something landing on top of the cab.

  “Leonidas?” Alisa asked.

  She spotted him crouching up there. He must have jumped and landed on top of the cleaner. He
slid around the vent pipe and joined them in the cargo bed.

  Gradually, Alisa’s hammering heart slowed as she realized that none of them were going to be smashed. More than that, they were getting a ride.

  She scooted out of the middle of the bed and put her back to the cab so she could see behind them—not that she could glimpse anything in the blackness back there. A soft breeze tugged at her wet hair and clothes, created by the cleaner. It had returned to full speed and was cruising down the tunnel. Alisa had no idea where it would take them, but she would settle for anywhere away from the people trying to catch them.

  No, not catch them. The soldiers had been shooting at them in that stairwell.

  One of the men scooted over to sit beside her, his back also to the cab. Alisa wrinkled her nose. They might be in a dry tunnel for the moment, but the stench of the sewer clung to them all.

  “To think,” she said, “I was feeling bad for Beck because he got left outside of the library. Now I think he was the smart one, deliberately getting himself in trouble with security so he could avoid this.”

  “Better than getting in trouble with the imperial army,” Leonidas said dryly. He was the one who was sitting beside her.

  Alejandro grumbled something from the other end of the cargo bed, though she couldn’t make it out over the continuous grinding of the machine.

  “I believe he’s thanking us for coming to help,” Alisa said, offering a possible translation.

  “Actually, he was cursing,” Leonidas said.

  “Cursing us?”

  “No, cursing in general.”

  “I didn’t think holy men were allowed to do that,” Alisa said.

  “I wasn’t thanking you,” Alejandro said, “but you’re right that I should have been. You both risked your lives to help me. I appreciate that. I’m just frustrated that I’d barely started to use the library when those men showed up, following me around. It was alarming enough when it was plainclothes people. But having soldiers after me is worse. And somewhat perplexing. Although, now that I think about it, perhaps it isn’t.”