“Be difficult to get them out . . .”
I shook my head. “Very easy. Very easy.”
‘I know the kind of installation they’re in. Couldn’t burn your way through with a battle laser . . .”
“They still have to breathe . . .”
The doctor turned whitish-green as she understood what I had in mind.
Odin Thor looked puzzled.
“Gas. Any kind of gas. Like the monarchy used on the Eastron installations that refused to surrender.”
“But how . . . ?”
“Leave that to me, Colonel-General. My pleasure . . .”
XXXI
FROM SOMEWHERE IN the equipment bunkers, Janth came up with a case of gas grenades. I stared at the black mushroom-shapes. Each had a brilliant yellow danger warning, a set of crossed bones, painted on the top. The stemlike part was a handle.
“Ugly beasts, aren’t they?” Janth frowned at the four on the armourer’s table. On the floor remained a case. Two other grenades lay in the top layer of padding. “Should be another eighteen or so left there.”
“They just left this lying in the old armoury?”
“Verlyt, no. All the chemical stuff was in the sealed vault in the back. This was just the outer case. They had another airtight seal around this.”
I leaned over to look at one of the black objects. A heavy metal ring protruded from one side of the mushroom’s “cap.”
“What’s this?” I pointed.
“Don’t touch it. That’s the arming ring. Once you pull that, the valve between the two gas fractions opens, and they combine.”
“It just seeps out?”
“Not exactly, Trooper. Not exactly.” Janth pursed his lips. “Been a long time . . . but . . . There’s a lot of heat, which builds up as they combine. Eventually, you get an explosion. Combines the best of a frag grenade with the long-term kill power of the nerve gas.”
“Eventually?” I managed to repress a shudder. “Nerve gas?”
“Paralyses the nerves . . . you know, stops your brain. Stops your heartbeat. There’s no cure.”
“They used this . . . ?”
“Not since the Eastron revolt.”
Since Eastron had been independent, as my mother had pointed out so often, the term “revolt” was inaccurate. “Can I pick one up? I need to know how heavy they are.”
“Be careful, Trooper. That plastic should last forever, but that’s got to be nearly a century old, and I really don’t want it going off.”
Neither did I. The grenade was heavier than the killer mushroom it resembled. Carrying more than three or four would be a problem. I put down the grenade and shook my head.
The slick paper of the instruction sheet was yellowed, and fine cracks ran from the central fold. The print of the instructions was crisp and black. So was the information. The Mark Delta contained enough nerve toxin to cover an area of fifty square rods in a no-wind condition. The toxin worked through contact, surface or inhalation, and one microjot (whatever that was) was sufficient to ensure lethality in ninety percent of the exposures.
There was also a bold-print warning.
DO NOT USE IN UNFAVORABLE WIND CONDITIONS!
The preferred method of delivery for the Mark Delta was with the projectile rifle modified launcher.
“Projectile rifle modified launcher?”
“None in the inventory. There haven’t been for years.”
I shrugged. The new preferred delivery method was the Sammis Mark One diver. “I’ll be back when the time comes, Janth.”
“That’s what the colonel-general said, Trooper. Can’t say I envy you.”
Neither could I.
After walking around the corner, I slipped undertime and back to my room to think about the options again. I was glancing outside at the clouds over the southern peaks, having second thoughts about delivering death.
Tap, tap. Tap, tap.
“Yes?”
“Sammis?” The husky feminine voice was familiar.
“Come on in, Mellorie.”
Wearing a clinging aqua coverall of some sort of soft material that indicated that she was very feminine, Mellorie eased open the unlatched door and stepped inside. She stopped. “When did you get back?”
“Just now.”
“I didn’t hear you in the corridor . . .” Her eyebrows were raised, and the corners of her eyes crinkled.
I tried not to grin. “I didn’t come in that way.”
“Oh . . .”
“I was down in the armoury, getting a briefing on some antique weapons.” I coughed to clear my throat.
Mellorie slipped into one of the chairs without waiting for the invitation I was reluctant to issue.
I sat on the foot of the bunk, not quite facing her. The wooden armchairs got uncomfortable after a while.
She crossed her ankles and sat up a little straighter. She pursed her lips before leaning forward.
As she did, I realised how deep the cut of her coveralls was, how much narrower her waist was than I had realised, and how shapely her breasts were.
I must have stared where I shouldn’t have, because I could see her flush, the colour rising from her neck into her lightly freckled and tanned face.
“Sorry . . .” I apologised.
“You are . . . rather direct . . .” Her voice was still throaty.
I looked away, shrugging. “Sorry. Dealing with women was a part of my education that I never reached.” Outside the clouds had spread to cover the sun, and a breeze from the half-open sliding window ruffled my hair.
“You didn’t have any sisters?”
“No sister. No brother.” I continued to watch the clouds pile up over the mountains.
“What about your mother?”
“We didn’t get around to talking much about women. I wasn’t too interested . . . before the . . . disaster . . .”
“You liked your mother.”
“Yes. I respected her, too.” I still didn’t want to think about her for too long.
“Any women friends?”
“In the ConFeds?”
“I meant before . . . and could you look this way? Please.”
I shifted my weight and turned. Mellorie was sitting back a bit in the chair. The coverall still revealed too much for me to take easily.
“Thank you. I like looking at your face better.” She crossed one leg over the other and twisted in the chair.
“They are uncomfortable.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“The chairs, I meant.”
“Do you mind if I move?”
“Of course not. I said they were uncomfortable.”
She uncrossed her legs and slipped to her feet, then sat down on the bed next to me. She brought with her the sweetness of ryall.
“Sammis . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“If you wanted something, and you could have it now, but knew you couldn’t keep it, would you take it now? Even if losing it would hurt?”
Mellorie’s voice was low, and she wasn’t looking at me.
I didn’t look at her either, but I could feel myself stiffening, excited, and yet afraid I knew exactly what she meant.
“I suppose I would, if it were offered. I’m not up to just taking.”
“I know. I could tell, but are you offering?”
“I . . . hadn’t thought about it.”
“Look at me . . .”
I did. Her brown eyes were clear, direct, her lips slightly parted.
Her hand touched mine, covered it, and tightened gently. The soft warmth of her touch sent a jolt up my arm.
I turned my hand in hers, returning the pressure.
“I’ll take that for an offering.”
I scarcely moved as her fingers touched my face, gently suggesting I turn toward her. I did, and found warm and soft lips on mine.
My hands were on her back and shoulders, and I realised she wore nothing under the clinging coverall.
“Gently . . .
kiss me again.”
Somehow . . . we ended up lying next to each other on the bed. The kisses lasted so long I was short of breath, and what breath I had was filled with the scent of ryall, and Mellorie.
Her hands slipped under my tunic, guiding it off me, and in time, I discovered that she had indeed been wearing nothing under the coverall.
I had been wearing plenty, but her hands were deft, and her warmth more than enough to balance the breeze from the afternoon thunder-storm that played over us.
Too soon was my release, and I felt cheated somehow.
“Just relax.”
I couldn’t. So I let my hands stroke her smooth skin, her soft hair, exploring the curves and lines I had always imagined, but never before felt.
She shivered. “I’m cold.” She had some goose bumps on her back.
The blanket was soft enough, and warm enough, especially as close as we were. I began to kiss her neck, but I kept touching her skin.
The warmth began to return to her skin.
“Roll over,” she directed.
So I did, and Mellorie began to massage my back, starting at the base « my neck and working down. She took a long time, and by the time she had reached more sensitive areas, neither one of us was interested in just touching.
The second time took longer, and I didn’t feel cheated . . . at all.
I must have fallen asleep, because it was much later when the sound of the thunder and the pelting rain woke me.
Mellorie was still curled next to me, but her eyes were open. One hand rested on my shoulder.
“Did you sleep?” I asked.
“A little.”
Crrasssh . . .
“Sammis . . .”
“Don’t say anything,” I told her. “Don’t say anything.”
In the craziness outside, in the storm, and inside, in me, there wasn’t any room for saying the obvious. Tomorrow was a long way off, and while I hadn’t known enough to love Allyson when we should have, Mellorie had given me something I didn’t want to lose before I had to.
So I put my arms around her and held her while the thunder played outside, and I think I cried, but neither of us said anything.
XXXII
ODIN THOR GLARED at the hand-drawn map on the plotting table, then at me. His glance softened slightly, when he turned and looked at Wryan—Dr. Relorn. The three of us stood each on a different side of the table.
“You can’t mean that,” he repeated.
I sighed. “I do. The tunnelled spaces are about ten rods wide and a rod high, and there’s about four hundred rods of tunnels all told. That’s a lot of cubic rods. To get total coverage of the tunnels would take almost a gross of the gas grenades—without accounting for all the problems caused by walls and ventilation.”
I could see Wryan rolling her eyes. “At the outside, I can make four or five dives before I can’t carry any more. That’s if no one gives the alarm. I can carry four or five of those monsters each time. That just isn’t enough for a brute force approach.
“What we’ve suggested will allow you to capture the remainder with minimal casualties for our troops.” I couldn’t really call Odin Thor’s force the ConFeds. What Wryan had suggested was simplicity itself. Don’t try to cover the whole redoubt, but plant the grenades in the ventilation systems and in the exit corridors.
“But we’ll have to stand off so far that some of them will escape.”
“Not many,” I asserted.
Wryan shook her head sadly. “There will be a few left to murder.”
Odin Thor looked away from her quickly, as though she were a rock snake.
I glared at him.
“And you, Trooper. I could have you shot tomorrow.”
“Not if you want this mission carried out.”
“True!” He laughed again, as if I had forgotten something important. “We’ll see.” Then he shook his head, as if our disagreement were of only passing interest. “How about the day after tomorrow?”
“Fine,” I answered, just wanting to get the meeting over. “I’ll start the drops just before first light.”
Odin Thor glanced around the old laboratory, his eyes passing over the instrumented diving stage and taking in the shut-down consoles. “That should do it for now.”
I nodded.
“Good day, Doctor. Good day, Trooper.” His feet shook the floor as he left.
Click.
As the laboratory door shut behind him, we exchanged glances.
“He knows something we don’t,” I said.
“I’m sure he does, but we know something he doesn’t.”
Frowning, I looked at the dusty tiles before glancing back at Wryan. She wore a baggy blackish-green tunic over straight-cut grey-blue trousers—an ideal combination to make her cosmetics look garish and her face pale.
“We do? You, maybe. Not me.”
“You know it, too, Sammis. You may not wish to recognise it.”
A shivery feeling quivered down my back at the matter-of-fact tone.
“Do you want me to spell it out?”
Finally, I nodded.
“What’s to keep you from applying a gas grenade to him in his sleep? Or anything else lethal? No guard or wall could stop you. Or me, assuming you teach me what you say you can.” Her voice was flat.
I hadn’t wanted to face that truth. Now Wryan was deliberately recalling it. Bad enough to think about killing faceless enemies who had tried to kill me and my family, but I owed Odin Thor something.
“Are you still willing to murder the ConFeds in their fortress?”
“They murdered my father and a lot of other innocents. They tried to kill me. And you, that one night.”
She smiled gently, with a twist to her lips. “Don’t make me a part of your decision, Sammis. If you do this, the blood will be on your hands.”
“You don’t have any on yours, Doctor?”
“It’s Wryan, not doctor,” she corrected me. “I have my share, more than my share. What you do remains for life, and that may be a very long time.”
Again, she was acting as though I would be around forever. Even the witches all died. It just took longer; that was all.
“You’re acting as if you don’t want me to do this. You tell me that the blood will be on my hands, and that I can certainly stop Odin Thor.”
She shrugged, and her gesture was like looking in a mirror. “This is your decision, and not anyone else’s. You have to live with it—one way or the other.”
“Wonderful. If I don’t do something, we’ll have a war between two groups of ConFeds who will destroy everything that’s left. The other side might even win, and they want to kill me, and probably you. That leaves me a choice?”
She sighed. “It does. Don’t you think the old witches of Eastron could have killed more than a few of their persecutors?”
“I thought they had.”
“Some did; some didn’t. Some left Eastron, took other names, had children, and avoided their heritage.” She was looking intently at me.
“So . . . avoiding the problem is only a short-term solution. But the longer-term solutions have higher prices. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I’m just pointing out the alternatives.”
“Why don’t you decide?”
“Because.” Again, there was that ghost of a smile, as she stepped away from the plotting table and the hand-drawn map. “Because it’s your choice.”
“Why, why, why do you insist on making it all my choice?” I was almost screaming.
“Because that is the way you will see it when you are older.”
As her eyes caught mine, I could see a deep blackness behind the light piercing green, a glimpse of a darkness deeper than the undertime. I shivered where I stood, at having seen just that sliver of hell.
XXXIII
I LINED UP the grenades on the armourer’s workbench in five groups of four.
“Oooaaaah . . .” yawned Janth, before covering his mouth.
I couldn’t say I blamed him. Getting up well before first light is not conducive to alertness.
Even as he yawned, the assistant armourer’s eyes never left the grenades, and his hand remained on the holstered butt of the projectile pistol. “How long before you make your first . . . trip . . . ?”
Concentrating on adjusting the equipment belt, I did not answer immediately. A quick release snap kept snagging. Finally, I got it unjammed. “Not very long. . . .”
“And how long between?” He was serious.
“No one briefed you?”
“Just that you’d be done before first muster. The colonel-general told me not to tell anyone.”
I sighed. Secrecy about the mission was fine, but keeping the fundamentals of time-diving secret was just plain stupid. “I don’t have time to tell you everything, but the duration between trips will be exactly the amount of time it takes me to place these,” and I held up one of the black killer mushroom grenades, “at the other end. Actually diving undertime doesn’t take any time at all. So . . . if I don’t show up back here pretty quickly, you had better tell the colonel-general that there’s trouble.”
“How quickly?”
I had to shrug. “Can’t tell you that because I don’t know how long it will take to place them. Not very long, because I’ll be back for the others.”
I slipped four of the grenades into the release clips on my equipment belt. “Looks like it’s time, Janth. Wish me luck.”
“Luck, Trooper.” He even smiled.
The first dive entry was smooth, splitting the now like a needle through a morning-still pond. The exit was almost as slick as I broke out in the middle of one of the four main ventilation ducts heading from the air-recirculating plant. The duct was carved from the rock and was wider than my armspan, though not much higher than the top of my head.
In quick motions that I had practised with dummies Janth and I had put together, I released the four grenades from the equipment belt and spaced them equidistantly from the walls and each other. Then I pulled the arming pin of the first, then the second, the third, and the last. As I placed and armed the grenades, the forced air smelling of oil and metal whipped through my hair and past the squat and deadly black mush-rooms. So heavy were the grenades that the wind that tore at me did not even rock them.
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