Princess Zarah motioned to a woman soldier. “Give them back their weapons.”
“You trust a prisoner with weapon?" Cole thought the princess sorely lacked logic for a leader.
“Are you telling me I shouldn’t?" Zarah raised one eyebrow as if daring him to answer.
“I didn’t say that." Cole felt foolish. After all he’d just given his word, but he didn’t really expect the princess to keep hers.
“We made a pact, didn’t we?" Did Zarah enjoy playing with Cole? “We are on the same team, Captain. Besides, there might be dangers in the tunnels as well as on the surface. We may all have to fight together.”
“Dangers?" Cole could only think of earthquakes and cold weather on the surface, but these did not require phasers or knives. “You mean bearcats?”
“Did you say bearcats?" Zarah laughed good-heartedly. “I’m talking about real dangers, Captain, like escaped convicts. Some of them have reached the upper levels and may already be on the surface.”
“Of course." Cole berated himself for this oversight. If Zarah had reached the Garrison, other convicts had made it this far as well.
The fact that Zarah didn’t believe in bearcats didn’t reassure Cole. None of the rare souls who ever met one face to face had survived to tell the story, but that didn’t make them less real. Although none had been sighted in years, Cole suspected such dangerous creatures still inhabited the frozen surface. He gladly accepted his phaser and yataghan blade. Rhonda slid her phaser and dagger into place as well.
Cole’s mind, now recovered from the shock of this unexpected invasion, and the humiliation he’d just suffered at the hands of a woman, turned to more practical matters. “How’s the temperature outside?”
“Unpredictable,” Princess Zarah said, matter-of-fact. “The landscape is changing every ten minutes. Still frozen in places, but new volcanoes are popping up everywhere. The ice is melting into boiling lakes, but the surface water can re-freeze within minutes.”
“Do we need a respirator?" Rhonda’s question seemed childish to Cole and reminded him that she’d never been on the surface.
The princess nodded. “Take one. There are pockets of toxic gasses.”
“After all that damage, what’s the best route to get up there?" Cole suspected the stairs might be out of the question, too slow.
The princess motioned toward the hallway. “We use the mining tunnels still accessible from the engine room, but some of them are starting to flood." Zarah offered a disarming smile. “Good luck to you both." She walked away toward the stack of crates.
Trying to make the best of a humiliating situation, Cole winked at Rhonda and motioned toward the line of soldiers marching out of the gym. “Let’s go, then.”
Cole and Rhonda fell in line with the company of soldiers. Two by two, the rebels carried the heavy crates in the direction of the engine room. Primitive but efficient. No sense in using vehicles with all the debris littering the hallways. Besides, the vehicles probably didn’t run anymore.
As much as Cole hated this situation, he could not afford to be choosy. Rebels had overrun his Garrison, but so what? Zurin Five would soon be history anyway. He could think of worse things than being at the mercy of a compassionate escapee. Zarah had agreed to save the guards, hadn’t she? Cole damn well hoped the Princess would keep her word, or else he swore she’d have to answer for the lives of his crew.
Finally, Cole convinced himself that things had started to look up. Besides, between a month’s trip in a brig and imminent death, Cole saw only one viable option. He realized he very much wanted to live, get off this rock, and make a new life for himself, a different kind of life.
Somewhere on the surface, not too far away, the mercenary ship awaited. No matter the price to his pride, Cole would welcome salvation from this unforgiving hell, for him and his crew. And none deserved it more than Rhonda.
Chapter Sixteen
Level Six - The Garrison
The temperature inside the Garrison kept rising steadily. Dripping with sweat, Rhonda hurried alongside Cole in the line of rebels and mercenaries carrying the crates of company weapons. At a swift, military pace, they went through dim crumbling hallways.
Rhonda remembered the first time she’d walked through that same hallway on the first day she’d joined the Garrison. How the vivid scenes of cerulean seas, white beaches, and red canyons had dazzled her. “I’m going to miss the scenic holograms." She realized with surprise that she really would.
“Believe me, I won’t." Cole looked so serious, or maybe still mad about having to deal with the rebels.
Rhonda wanted to lighten his mood. “When I get back to Banoi, I’ll try to recreate the pictures from memory in art form.”
Cole scoffed. “Don’t get too excited, kiddo. We are not out of this hell yet.”
A young soldier carrying a crate and walking in front of them glanced back with a disapproving stare. Rhonda noticed that none of the rebels spoke in the ranks and all wore their uniforms buttoned all the way up despite the heat. No wonder Rhonda disliked regimented life.
The choking smell of burnt circuitry and settling dust sticking to her skin brought Rhonda back to the harsh reality. As the small company moved from collapsed rooms to grim hallways, all the doors stood wide open, something unheard of when the Garrison functioned. Regulations requested that all doors remained closed at all times.
Traces of fire blackened the walls in places, in others, dirty water dripped from the ceiling and pooled on the floor. Sophisticated equipment lay in haphazard piles, reduced to useless junk. What a waste!
Even the spa facility, the former pride of the Garrison, lay in shambles. As they crossed it, the soldiers stared in disbelief at the shattered glass walls and cracked marble floors. A few of the pools lay empty, others, half-filled with soiled water, contained sunken junk and floating garbage.
When the small company reached the arctic gear room, the officer at the head of the column ordered the soldiers to stop. Rhonda noticed heaps of green bundles, parkas and boots of the same green as the soldiers’ uniforms. Each rebel grabbed one bundle and slung it on one shoulder. They seemed very organized.
Out of a guard’s locker Rhonda pulled out a yellow parka, Eskimo boots, gloves in her size, and a respirator. “Good thing this bulky stuff is lightweight." Usually they would have dressed in the locker room, but the sweltering temperature didn’t allow for that.
Cole tied his gear by the strings into a bundle and did the same for Rhonda. “You sling it over your shoulder like this." He demonstrated for her.
Carrying her bundle, Rhonda filed in with the procession of green-clad soldiers. They walked briskly through a maze of dimly lit tunnels, just wide enough for two soldiers to walk side by side while carrying a crate between them. Only short vertical shafts linking the tunnels at various levels and equipped with metal ladders slowed their progress. Rhonda and Cole had to help lift the heavy crates up the shafts.
Living things scurried into dark recesses as the company walked by. Bugs? Rats? Rhonda never thought the mining tunnels would support so much life, but evidently they offered a choice shelter from the frozen surface.
Water dripped through the stone walls in places and mixed with the dust and the dirt on the tunnel floor. Planks spanned the mud where it went too deep. The temperature in the tunnels grew suffocating, along with the stink of natural gas pockets and decomposing things. Rhonda’s feet sloshed into sticky goo and the whole column slowed down. Then the mud turned to deep fluid.
Wading in the black water that smelled of sulfur, Rhonda advanced carefully, so as not to get in over her boots. She hated soaked feet and although she’d never been on the frozen surface, she knew about frostbite, even through insulated gear.
The lights flickered, the tunnel walls groaned and seemed to close in. Heart pounding, Rhonda stopped, turned on her floodlight and held her breath. Dear God, don’t abandon us now. As the earth shook, everyone in the tunnel stopped and waited.
Just ahead of Rhonda and Cole, someone screamed. The ground opened up and the young rebel in front of them suddenly let go of the crate and dropped his arctic gear bundle as he washed into a deep crevice. His hands clawed at the edge of the hole, but the recruit slid inexorably deeper into the cavity that filled with rushing dark water.
Cole dropped down and grabbed the young soldier by one wrist . He glanced up at Rhonda. “I got him, but I need some help.”
Rhonda could see the young man’s hand in Cole’s grasp, but the soldier’s entire body had disappeared into the water hole. Cole pulled while Rhonda and the soldier’s partner fished inside the dark water to get a better grip on him.
As the young man struggled, his other hand flailed out of the narrow pool.
Rhonda grasped the hand. “Got it!”
Cole nodded. “Pull!”
Rhonda and Cole’s breathless grunts filled the air, but the young recruit didn’t budge.
“He’s stuck in there! He’s going to drown!" Rhonda heard the panic in her own voice.
As she and Cole pulled harder, something gave, and the young man’s head finally emerged. He gasped and coughed water while his partner seized his emerging shoulders and lifted him out of the hole to sit him on the edge.
Dripping with mud, a terrified look stamped on his pale face, the young recruit faced his rescuers. “Thank you." He coughed. “You saved my life.”
The other rebels in the company cheered at the sight of the young man rising to his feet with his partner’s help. Rhonda felt relieved to see the boy unharmed. Cole retrieved the man’s bundle and handed it to him. The recruit took it and smiled.
“Let me carry that crate for you,” Cole offered.
“Sorry, can’t do that." The young recruit picked up the handle on his side of the crate and nodded to his partner.
“Everyone all right?” yelled an officer somewhere ahead of them. Without waiting for a response, he ordered, “Let’s go.”
Avoiding the gaping hole in the tunnel floor and spreading the word down the line for the rest of the company, the cortege resumed its progression through more tunnels. Finally, they emerged into a wide ascending shaft, like a stone ramp at a rather steep incline.
“This one goes straight to the surface." Cole winked and started up the ramp.
The pitch of the slope tested Rhonda’s sore muscles. As she climbed, her thighs and calves felt like wood. Soon, however, they reached a flat landing the size of a small hangar, closed by a pair of massive metal doors. It looked like the end of the tunnel. All stopped. The soldiers set down the crates. Four of them, armed with crowbars, hurried toward the heavy doors as if to pry them open.
“Wait,” Cole yelled, with such authority that they stopped and turned to him with surprise. Cole signaled to Rhonda. “We can do that for you.”
Rhonda understood. She went to the control pad at the left side of the massive doors while Cole went to the right. She applied her hand on the scanner. So did Cole on the other side, and the huge doors grated as they slid slowly on their rail.
Rhonda rejoiced at the sight of daylight in the distance, less than a hundred meters away. Soon, they would finally be safe.
The open door, however, let in an icy draft. The temperature fell suddenly, and Rhonda attacked the knots of her arctic gear bundle.
“Get dressed,” ordered the commanding officer.
The soldiers obeyed, and Rhonda wondered whether they could do anything of their own accord, without being told.
“Don’t forget the armband,” Cole reminded her as he pulled the yellow insulated footwear on top of his gray boots. “We don’t want to get shot by mistake."
“Right." Rhonda removed her green armband, handed it to Cole, then donned her arctic parka and offered her arm.
Cole tied the armband over her fat yellow sleeve. Rhonda enjoyed his touch, even through the thick gear, and she wondered whether he felt the same tingle. Would they ever make love again? The very thought of imminent freedom filled her with tender feelings.
As she returned the favor by tying his armband for him, her hand lingered on his arm, but Cole didn’t react or acknowledge the gesture. Confused, Rhonda donned her Eskimo over-boots, still hoping for a kind word from Cole.
But all he said was, “Never been outside?”
Shaking her head, Rhonda let him open the front of her parka and remove her weapon belt.
Then Cole closed her parka and secured the belt on top of it. “Just in case we need to defend ourselves." He smiled and adjusted his own holster belt.
Rhonda shuddered at the idea that they might have to fight, out there on the surface. She felt clumsy, all tied up in the bulky gear like a doll in bubble wrap. Struggling to keep a positive outlook, she fumbled with the respirator.
“Let me help you." Cole clipped the small mask to her collar, gently pushed her hair away from her face and hooked the elastic band around her head. Then he pulled up the hood of her parka. “Keep the hood up at all times." He adjusted the clear visor. “It also protects your face from the glaring sun and the cold. Breathe slowly at first.”
“How do I look?" Rhonda mimicked a model turn on an imaginary runway.
Cole laughed. “I’d say we both look like fat yellow chicken mascots.”
While Rhonda practiced breathing through the apparatus, she pulled on her gloves and watched Cole finish dressing. She wondered how to interpret his attentiveness. Did it mean anything special? Cole always looked out for his guards.
Did he treat her like just another guard or like a lover? Rhonda burned to ask him, but too many soldiers surrounded them. She felt self-conscious in such company.
Someone gave an order, and Cole and Rhonda resumed their trek with the rest of the soldiers toward the circle of light at the end of the tunnel. The parka and boots seriously impeded Rhonda’s movements. But as she walked she started to feel lighter and lighter on her feet and remembered the difference in gravity. As they gradually left the artificial gravity of the mining complex, she had to acclimate herself to the natural conditions.
From a physics class long ago, Rhonda remembered that the size and mass of a planet usually defined its gravity. And Zurin Five, only the size of a small moon, had extremely low gravity.
Rhonda resisted the urge to jump to see how high she could leap. She would probably lose her balance, or bump her head on the ceiling and fall, then bounce on her butt, shaming herself in front of the soldiers. The thought made her giggle. No way she could ever run in that gear. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to.
When she walked out of the open mineshaft into the bright sunlight intensified by the glare of snow and ice, Rhonda blinked. Within two seconds, however, the visor of her respirator darkened automatically to shield her eyes. They had emerged from the base of a small hill onto the frozen expanse.
A loud rumble to her right caught Rhonda’s attention. A sudden vent of steam rushed out of a volcano, just a few kilometers away. Black smoke billowed high in the pure lavender sky, hurling fiery lava rocks high into the atmosphere. On the surrounding slopes, ice hissed into instant steam jets under the assault of incandescent lava snaking down from the belching crater. Fire and ice vied for supremacy.
“Get back!” Cole’s yell came muffled by his respirator. He propelled Rhonda back into the mouth of the mineshaft, where she bounced for lack of gravity.
Retrieving her balance, Rhonda saw the soldiers drop their crates and run for cover as half a dozen molten rocks the size of giant bowling balls rained down as if in slow motion. Just outside the mouth of the mine, the rocks impacted then sizzled and steamed as they melted deep black holes into the frozen snow.
Heart hammering her chest, Rhonda realized they
were still far from safe. “Where is that ship? Can’t it just come to us?”
Cole shook his head. “There is no landing pad here. The ground is too uneven." He pointed at the volcano. “According to the coordinates, the platform is on the other side of that fire breathing monster. Should be about four kilometers in a straight line, but skirting the lava makes it more like ten or twelve.”
“Great!" Rhonda could run a ten-K in less than a standard hour, but it would take three times that long to walk around the fiery hill in the stupid gear.
Cole walked to one of the crates the soldiers had dropped. He picked it up easily and winked at Rhonda. “Low gravity has its advantages." Lifting the crate above his head, he held it like a shield then motioned Rhonda to join him underneath.
Delighted at Cole’s creative thinking, Rhonda joined him under the crate and helped him hold it up. Although the deadly shower had ceased for now, a few soldiers imitated Cole’s shielding technique as the company deployed onto the snow. For the first time since they’d left the gym, Rhonda could see their entire group. She counted fifteen soldiers as the column advanced in a wide arc to the left, around the base of the spitting volcano.
Rhonda worried about the ship. With the landing platform so close to the eruption, would it be there, intact, after they crossed that dangerous zone? Was the officer in command of the company in communication with the waiting ship? None of the men were talking, even less sharing information. Rhonda had no idea of what they would find over there. She felt out of the loop, powerless, at the mercy of strangers.
Images of whole towns choked in volcanic ashes came to Rhonda’s mind. First, the burning breath incinerated the lungs. Then the volcano buried the victims under copious lava flows. Would they suffer the same horrible death?
While the lavender sky remained clear behind them, they headed straight for the darkness under the solid cloud of smoke and ash that shadowed the volcano.
Alien Lockdown Page 20
