by S. S. Segran
A thought that had been tugging at Tikina’s mind since the previous night surfaced. She mulled over it, then stated, “I think the five should come with us.”
The men turned to her, surprised. “Really?” Tayoka asked. “You wish to take them on this mission?”
“Yes. I have been reflecting since we began planning the mission yesterday.” Tikina lightly scratched her cheek. “At first, I thought it was reckless, but a feeling has been nagging me. Something is telling me that they must come. Everything that is happening, is happening for a reason. The younglings are not here by accident. Destiny’s role for them is unfolding, even as we speak.”
“I agree.”
The men whipped their heads around to look at Saiyu, all of them wide-eyed at the two words she’d spoken.
“The Elders who are arguably the most concerned for the five would like to speed up their endangerment?” Nageau asked, bewildered.
“That is certainly not our intent,” Tikina said firmly, “but I believe that they have a role to play in this.”
“I do not know.” Ashack prodded the fire with a metal poker. “Their training is not yet complete. What if they cannot handle what happens on the mountain?”
“Tsk, such pessimism.” Tikina smiled, trying not to show that she, too, was anxious.
“We must have confidence in them,” Saiyu murmured. “If they can handle this with their training still in progress, imagine what they can accomplish once they have finished.”
The Elders regarded one another, then Nageau. He raised his eyes and met their gazes. “Perhaps Tikina and Saiyu are right,” he said slowly. “Perhaps this is what we should do.”
50
Nageau lay prone at the edge of a clearing at the top of Ayen’et. From there, he had a bird’s-eye view of the mining site below. The muffled sound of machines at work in the tunnel directly below him was barely audible. It was still dark but the Elder knew the sun would rise soon.
The lack of light made it hard to see much. Nageau pressed his forefingers against his temples, waiting until his low-light vision kicked in. When he scanned the site again, he was able to clearly perceive the buildings and the miners shambling about as their shifts changed.
Focusing once more, he brought distant objects into sharp relief. He was mildly surprised by how accurate Tikina’s sketch of the site had been. He located the big vehicle shed at the center of the operation. Along the flank to his left was the site’s largest building, the one Tikina had identified as the miners’ barracks.
On Nageau’s right were two small buildings erected away from the others. Even after a few reconnaissance missions with Akira, Tikina said that hardly anyone was ever seen going in and out of those structures, save for a man with auburn hair.
The Elder felt a tug on his arm. Kody was seated cross-legged beside him. Behind them were four villagers. Kody took a quick look down the mountain at the four-hundred-foot drop.
“Daunting,” he muttered. “How much longer do we have to wait?”
Nageau indicated the sky. “Until it brightens a little more. Tikina told us that the beasts are let out during the nighttime and put away at first light.”
“She never did say what the beasts were.”
“That is because they are like no other creature she has ever seen.” Nageau scanned the site in silence for a couple of minutes. Then he stiffened. “Kody, come. I think those are the creatures.”
Kody slithered closer to the Elder. “I can barely see a thing,” he said, keeping his voice down.
“Remember what I taught you, youngling. This is a wonderful opportunity to use the skills you have learned.”
Kody rubbed his eyes and squeezed them shut for a few moments. Nageau watched him closely, knowing that in the stillness Kody would be feeling a brightening in his mind. When he opened his eyes again, he would see what lay below them almost as plainly as if it were daylight, except for a bluish glow in his vision.
Kody skimmed over the site and noticed something to the left of the vehicle shed that sent a shudder up his spine even from afar.
“Found them,” he said. He leaned forward as his vision zoomed in on one of the beasts. “Man, they’re huge! And ugly. And—whoa. Those jaws look like they belong on a velociraptor! What are they?”
“I do not know,” Nageau said. “But Tikina warned the Elders that these creatures have incredibly keen senses. There must be a reason why they are only brought out during the night.”
One of the villagers sitting behind them, an omnilinguist, was listening to their conversation. “If those beasts are out now, why can we not put them away for good?”
He held up a crossbow and a quiver with immobilizing darts attached to the tips of the arrows. The regular darts were meant to immobilize a person or animal for no longer than a few minutes, but among the other weapons and contraptions Magèo had designed for the mission were new darts with a higher dosage. These could potentially kill if the targets were unable to handle the increased quantity of tranquilizer.
Nageau looked back down. “There is a giant man with the beasts. If we strike now, he will notice and sound an alarm.”
“I cannot wait to let my arrows fly,” the villager said, rattling his quiver. “Those men down there are destructive and are not above murdering our friends.”
“We are not looking to kill them,” Nageau said sharply.
“Of course not. But I believe we have the right to give them something to remember us by.”
The Elder wore a wry grin. “Oh, I think we will.”
“Will we have a chance to get down to the site?” Kody asked.
“Not unless the others cannot handle it. We are their eyes and support up here.”
“Where are the others, anyway?”
Nageau indicated to his left. “Tikina and her group will emerge from behind the miners’ barracks.” He pointed straight ahead. “Tayoka will emerge from behind those buildings with his team.” He then pointed to his right. “And finally, Saiyu will proceed from behind that lone building.”
“And Elder Ashack?”
“His group is coming through one of the tunnels as we speak.”
After that, not a word was shared as everyone waited. Nageau and Kody observed the miners going about their business. Then Kody whispered, “I think that guard is taking the beasts back.”
Nageau cast around until he spied the large man walking behind the four creatures. They disappeared inside the steel building.
“Is it time to signal the others?” Kody asked.
“Not yet.” Nageau watched the steel door like a hawk until it opened again and the giant man emerged, making his way to the large building where the workers went to grab their meals.
Kody trailed the guard until he was out of sight. “Now?”
The Elder exhaled. “Now.”
Down in the abandoned tunnel, Ashack and his group were seated on the beams of the partially collapsed underpass. Aari had watched earlier as his mentor rummaged through the rubble and debris for the clues to the fate of the two men who had died there. He had found nothing except for a single torn moccasin boot.
Ashack went still for a few beats, forehead slightly furrowed in concentration as he received what Aari suspected was a message from Nageau. Then the Elder motioned to the team. They hopped up, grabbing the packs with Magèo’s gadgets, and hastened up the sloping tunnel toward the opening to the mining site.
Some of the villagers stuck green cube-shaped gels the size of their palms onto the sides of the tunnel. The cubes contained high-impact explosives and had three indents on the surface that functioned as timers.
The villagers pressed the third one, setting the cubes’ delay mechanism for, as Aari understood it, two hours, the longest selection available. Once the time expired, the cubes would explode, causing the tunnels to collapse. The plan was that Ashack’s group would have completed their tasks and escaped before the devices timed out.
Aari jogged beside his mentor unt
il they could hear and feel the vibrations of the machinery in the adjacent tunnel. They poked their heads out of the opening. To their left was the miners’ supply storage, just as Tikina had described. To the right lay the entrance to the tunnel that was being mined.
Turning back to his team, the Elder silently pointed at two of the villagers. The men crept forward, staying in the shadows. Ashack and Aari followed.
Just inside the entrance of the mining tunnel were parked machines. The four of them crouched, hidden by the darkness of the cover that the vehicles provided.
A pair of workers in coveralls across from them shoveled ore onto a conveyor belt. They had their backs to Ashack’s team. The Elder urged the two villagers out into the open. As they slunk toward the workers, Aari and Ashack focused, bending the light around the villagers and causing them to vanish from sight.
A couple of Bobcats rotated around, lifting and dumping the heavy chunks of ore for the workers to scoop onto the conveyor. The workers were oblivious to most of their surroundings.
Suddenly, they both felt something grab them around their necks from behind. They tried to twist around to face their assailants but saw nothing. The villagers, still invisible, performed a rear chokehold on the men.
The workers dropped unconscious in their arms and were dragged into the abandoned tunnel with Ashack and Aari following. Once out of sight, mentor and apprentice released the villagers from invisibility.
One of the workers from the main tunnel suddenly shouted. “Joe! Grant! Where are you guys?”
Aari turned to the villagers as they hastily pulled on the coveralls. “I think one of the guys inside is looking for those two.”
The men indicated they understood. They adjusted the respirator masks and hardhats, then strolled back to the mining tunnel. The worker who had called out was one of the Bobcat drivers. “You guys tried to sneak off for a smoke again, didn’t you?” he accused.
The villagers said nothing but one of them raised his hand to put the driver at ease. They picked up shovels and began scooping ore onto the conveyor belt.
Ashack nodded at the other two villagers from his team. Aari, feeling more confident, bent the light away from them as they snuck out.
One of the Bobcat drivers was returning to the conveyor belt with the machine’s loading bucket full. Something shimmered directly in front of his vehicle. He squinted and blinked rapidly but saw nothing now. Shrugging, he thought, Milroy, you’ve gotta quit drinking when you’re this tired. It screws with your head, buddy.
Then the shimmer appeared again and he almost yelled when a face appeared out of thin air. Aari, hiding in the shadows near the entrance of the tunnel, scolded himself, quickly regaining his focus. The villager disappeared once more.
The driver tried to scramble out of the Bobcat but was instead dragged to the ground as soon as he stepped out of his machine. The villager stuck an immobilizing dart into the man’s arm, knocking him out, and quickly lugged him away to exchange garments.
The driver of the second Bobcat turned his machine around to head over to the conveyor belt and found the other machine idling, driverless. “Mil, you jerk,” he muttered. “Where the hell did you go?”
He sat back, impatiently waiting for the other driver to return so he could dump his load. As he waited, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He turned and bleated in surprise when he saw an enormous, tan-skinned man with a bald head and a giant smile.
The next thing he knew, he was pulled out of the Bobcat and slammed onto the dirt. Something sharp stabbed through his coveralls and into his skin. Within moments he was unconscious and the snickering villager hauled him into the other tunnel.
Saiyu’s team was crouched some ways down the western flank of the mountain, reviewing their plan. She stole glances at her apprentice; Mariah had become quick friends with a girl of seventeen summers with rosy cheeks and ebony eyes. She and her twenty-year-old sister had volunteered to plant incendiary devices among the barrels of leaching compound that had been found stored away behind a rock wall next to the conveyor belt.
The girl held up a pyramid-shaped gel to her face. “This will not affect us when it erupts, will it?” she asked in her language.
“No,” Saiyu assured her. “But you will not want to be around when it does.”
Saiyu, the Elder suddenly heard in her head. You may proceed.
Will do, Nageau. Thank you. Saiyu nodded at her team. Besides the sisters and Mariah, there were two men with them, one of whom had lost an eye in a hunting accident and now wore an eyepatch.
Keeping low, the Elder led them up to the mining site and they remained hidden in the tree line as a guard with a rifle strolled into the open-faced building. Saiyu ran, light-footed, across the empty space to the vats, the rest of the team at her heels. They crept under the platforms that held up the vats and tiptoed to the four-foot wide opening to the left of the main tunnel.
A moving belt snaked from the mining area, carrying mounds of rocks to a machine where they were crushed. Another belt carried the pounded ore through the opening to the vats outside.
The team risked a peek through the opening. A worker stood only a few feet away with his back to them. Another man stood beside the conveyor belt not too far in front of the first, directing a cone-shaped device that was attached to a rotating cuff so it could swivel from side to side to prevent the rocks from piling up in one spot. Mounds of ore were heaped up to seven feet in height.
The team couldn’t see the actual hydraulic crusher as depicted in Tikina’s sketch, but they still knew where it should be—toward the left side of the chamber, if they could only see further in.
Saiyu gestured for her team to step back from the opening and addressed them. “There should be four other workers inside; six in total. We want to keep this as quiet as possible, but if one of them makes any loud noise, by all means silence them. If they attempt to escape, do what you must.” She looked at each member of her team. “Is everyone ready?”
They were simultaneously nervous and excited as they nodded.
Saiyu smiled. “Then go!”
The two men on the team crawled under the conveyor belt. The first one, a freckly villager known as The Spring—because he was constantly jumping around with exuberant energy—immediately pounced on the closest worker and slapped a hand over his mouth. Before the worker could react, The Spring stuck an immobilizing dart into his arm and the miner went limp.
The man operating the cone-shaped spreader must have sensed the commotion behind him. He turned and saw his co-worker on the ground. A stranger dressed in buckskin stood over the unconscious man, grinning. It was a genuine, disarming smile, as innocent as a child’s. Nevertheless, the worker charged at him.
As he neared the villager, he felt a thud on his chest. He stumbled and fell, unable to move any part of his body. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the dart that had pierced his coveralls protruding from his chest.
The other four miners working behind the mounds carried on, unaware of what had transpired. Saiyu and the three other adults in her team stealthily climbed over the dunes of ore and disappeared.
Mariah had stayed outside by the vats with the seventeen-year-old girl. They peeked into the opening and heard only the sounds of machinery for a minute, and then a couple of deep voices shouting in English before being abruptly silenced.
Mariah tucked her hair behind her ear and deliberated entering the crusher area. Making a snap decision, she tugged the girl’s arm and crawled under the conveyor belt. The girl followed eagerly, obviously wanting to get a glimpse of the inside as well.
They stepped over the first unconscious worker and looked around. Battery-powered lamps hung everywhere, providing illumination so the workers wouldn’t have to constantly use the lights on their hardhats.
Mariah heard a buzzing noise and investigated the source: It was the spreader attached to the conveyor, still swiveling. As it rotated, she realized that no one had moved the
unconscious worker who had manned the spreader—and the spreader was about to unload a generous amount of rocks on top of him. She would never reach him in time.
Thinking fast, she stared at the spreader and tried to focus but panicked when the cone-shaped device still moved. She pleaded with herself to concentrate. Come on! Come on!
Slowly but steadily, the spreader started to swivel away. She pushed it as far back as it could go, then ran to the worker, grabbing his hands and pulled him away. “Why are you so heavy?” she grumbled, even though he couldn’t hear her. The rosy-cheeked girl ran up and took one of the man’s arms, and together they dragged him next to the first worker.
The girls only had to wait a few moments more before the others returned, each carrying or dragging an immobilized man in coveralls. They bound up all six workers with active vines and laid them next to a passageway connecting the mining tunnel to the crusher area.
“Good job so far, everyone,” Saiyu praised. She winked at the sisters. “Your turn. The barrels are against the wall behind the mounds.”
As The Spring translated, Mariah asked, “May I go with them?”
Saiyu nodded her permission and Mariah clambered over one of the mounds after the sisters. She slipped on the way down to the other side and tumbled forward, hitting the solid rock wall with the full force of her body. She groaned and peeled herself away, then stumbled after the girls, trying to regain her balance.
When she reached them, they had already planted the incendiaries in four of the chemical barrels. In an apparent attempt to conceal the deadly poison they carried, the unlabeled barrels were painted an innocuous blue.
