Where the river widened, they drifted past sandbars and tear-shaped masses of land in the middle of the river. Once, Alex actually saw one of the blink-jaguars, a massive lionlike beast with horns, standing atop an islet, watching them with eyes that shone green in his night vision. At least he thought it was a blink-jaguar because a moment later, it vanished.
Just ahead, Alex heard the rush of cascading water, and the river became more turbulent.
"The breath of the water dragon," Gevn Ap whispered behind him.
A wide pool, a lagoon hundreds of feet wide, opened between the cliffs to their right, and Gevn Ap and the others maneuvered the canoes into its chaotic waters. Several of the canoes, especially the one bearing the stripped-down gateway rig, rocked wildly as they entered the lagoon, a pocket among the cliffs. At the rear of the pocket lagoon, a narrow waterfall several feet wide fell from the cliffs. Mist, like breath from the waterfall, filled the air, interfering with his night vision.
"Hold on tight, Alex," Gevn Ap, said, thrusting his oar into the water and shoving the tip of the canoe directly at the waterfall. Water cascaded over Alex's visor, obscuring his sight, and his heartbeat pounded wildly as they shot forward, looking as if they'd smash into the rocks behind the waterfall.
Ice-cold water drenched them, and they shot past the waterfall, past the cliff face, and into the cave on the other side. He wiped the water from his visor and saw a large water-filled cave, an underground tunnel. The tunnel, at least twenty feet wide and ten to fifteen feet above the surface of the water, disappeared into the dark depths ahead of them. The other canoes shot through the waterfall, and his wife and the others stared about themselves in wonder.
Gevn Ap steered them closer to a rock wall, steadied their canoe against it, and used a flint and stone to light a wicker torch he handed to Alex to set in a rung at the front of the canoe, a low-tech headlight. The other redcaps did the same, and minutes later, all the canoes blazed with torchlight, casting moving shadows along the wet rocky walls. Alex's visor adjusted, switching to low-light mode. The redcaps might have superb night vision, but they couldn't see in total darkness.
No way this hydra will miss these torches, he mused. Dinner is served.
Tang Ap brought Huck's canoe alongside Alex's, and he and Huck shared a nervous glance. Huck nodded, and Alex brought his new Tac rifle, taken from the wounded, to his shoulder, turning on the powerful torchlight attached to the barrel.
"Let's go," he whispered.
Gevn Ap paddled them down the tunnel, with Huck and his father following just behind. The canoes with the soldiers carrying the LAWs came next, with Leela, Liv, Huck, Martinez, and Ylra behind them, and finally, the rest of the canoes dragging the soldiers hanging onto the nets in the rear. No one spoke above a whisper, and few even that. Focused on the threat, they scanned their surroundings, their flashlight beams washing over the black water.
In places, the ceiling dropped, and Alex had to duck under low-hanging moss and rocks before it opened again. The tunnel branched ahead, revealing a second tunnel. Gevn Ap steered them to the left-hand passage. Three more times, secondary tunnels appeared, and each time, Gevn Ap chose the way forward without hesitation. But the farther they went, the more on edge Alex became. Is the hydra even here? Alex wondered. Maybe it's hunting. Can we be that lucky?
When have we ever been that lucky?
He raised his visor and wiped sweat from his eyes. The constant drip, drip, drip of falling water echoed around them as it leaked from the rocks above, sending ripples spreading across the still tunnel waters, making Alex think something was moving beneath the water. Other times, he saw shapes ahead, and his pulse raced until they drifted past a half-submerged moss-covered log or boulder that extended over the water. This place was nerve-racking.
A half hour later, they still drifted beneath the Spine, an unimaginable weight of rocks over their heads. Nothing moved. They were alone in nearly complete darkness broken only by their torches and flashlights. His heart leaped into his throat when their canoe shuddered against something sliding sideways. Alex used his off hand to grasp the canoe for balance as he held his rifle by the pistol grip, scanning the waters. Gevn Ap straightened the canoe with his oar.
"A rock beneath the water?" Gevn Ap softly suggested.
"Maybe," Alex answered, doubt eating at him.
The waters behind them erupted as a massive black form smashed into one canoe, shattering it. Someone screamed, and two of the canoes tipped over, spilling the soldiers and redcaps. A thrashing shape roiled among them, most of it underwater, but it looked to be as large as a truck, with multiple heads atop long necks. Each neck ended in a black eellike head with glowing blue eyes and a mouth filled with sharp teeth. Rows of spikes, each a foot long, ran along the back of the glistening black necks to the submerged body. The hydra!
Alex fired at the creature and was certain at least some of his shots had hit, but the heads snapped about, never remaining still long enough for a killing shot. One head knifed into the water and rose a moment later, holding a screaming soldier upside down by his thigh. Several of the other heads darted in at the soldier, trying to bite him, but the teeth couldn't puncture his MR suit. Alex, fearing he'd hit the man, held his fire. Then one of the hydra's heads found purchase over the man's head and ripped it free in one savage bite, ending his screams. Ylra's anti-material rifle boomed, and that head exploded in a shower of blood and gristle. Two other heads rose and spit out a torrent of bile onto one canoe, drenching the soldier and redcap. Both redcap and soldier screamed in agony, their flesh dissolving to the bone in moments. The canoe fell apart and sank. Acid! It spits acid.
The beast sank beneath the waters and disappeared. Alex and the others looked in all directions, expecting it to burst among them again. Men and redcaps treaded water or hung onto the capsized canoes, their eyes wild with fear.
After several heart-stopping seconds, Alex called out, "Anybody see anything?"
No one answered, and the waves settled once more.
"Watch our backs!" Huck yelled.
She and Martinez moved to recover the men in the water and used their canoes to turn the tipped-over canoes upright then hold them in place while the men and redcaps climbed in again.
Alex's flashlight beam scanned the now-bloody surface of the water. The air stung his lungs.
"We must go from here now!" Gevn Ap said, covering his mouth with his arm.
"We need to move, Huck," Alex yelled.
Two soldiers and one redcap guide were dead, and the hydra was still out there, but they moved on, rowing quicker now, the need for silence gone.
Alex leaned forward, playing his flashlight across the waters as they left the tunnel and entered a massive cavern filled with a black lake.
"The Pool of Night," Gevn Ap whispered with reverence. "A holy place, now the lair of the water dragon."
Alex shone his light up at the stalactites hanging from the cavern's ceiling a hundred feet high. Water dripped from the stalagmites, like rainfall, disturbing the surface of the lake with a cascade of ripples. In the center of the lake sat a rock formation so large it resembled an island. It rose almost as high as the roof of the cavern, with rough-hewn stairs cut into its side winding around it to the flat summit. A beam of silver shone down upon the summit. Moonlight, Alex realized. The way out to the desert. Now all we have to do is get up there.
Where was the hydra? Was that it? Maybe it had had enough. Maybe it was nursing its wounds, regrowing the head Ylra had destroyed. Maybe bats might fly out of his butt.
"What do you think, Alex?" Huck asked, searching the water with her light.
"We have room. Let's spread out, guard the others."
"Concur." Huck gave her orders, and the remaining eight canoes with shooters spread out, forming a U around the canoes hauling the fishing nets and their vulnerable human cargo.
Veraxia grasped a net. She was no longer handcuffed, but surprisingly, she still wore her heavy chain mail. Neithe
r did she look as miserable as the others. In fact, when she saw him looking, she even flashed him a smile, her alien eyes shining with excitement. Probably thinks this is a zoological expedition. Alex shook his head and scanned the surface of the lake once more.
"Weapons free," Huck said. "You see something moving, you open fire. Don't wait for permission."
Several of the soldiers still had their LAWs, and they snapped the tubes into their firing positions and held them atop their shoulders, ready to fire. The flotilla paddled closer to the giant rock formation.
From far across the lake on their right, Alex heard a splash. He searched the waters. "Come on, come on," he whispered. "Give us a break."
"Call it!" Huck yelled.
One by one, the soldiers called in no contacts. The rock formation was much closer now, less than a hundred feet away. An old wooden landing, a pier, sat on the rocks where the steps began.
Alex recognized the redcap woodwork. "How long have you been coming here?" he asked Gevn Ap.
"As long as the sun has warmed my ancestors but not since the water dragon came."
He glanced at his wife on his left. Leela gave him a brave smile, but they both spun as someone screamed in horror and pain, and the cry cut off a moment later. The scream had come from the soldiers in the water. They scanned their lights across the terrified faces of the men and women.
"Who?" Huck yelled.
"It took Peters!" a terrified soldier yelled. "He's… he's gone."
Shit. It was behind them, or beneath them, or God only knew where.
An assault rifle fired on the left, a long, drawn-out burst, the flames jetting from the barrel. The water near the soldier shooting exploded as the hydra launched itself onto the canoe and shattered it beneath a massive body shaped like an overgrown water buffalo with four stubby legs. Several of the hydra's heads held the redcap guide aloft before ripping him apart and swallowing chunks. Alex and the others opened fire. The heads shrieked in rage as they whipped about. A white-hot nova sped across the surface of the lake—one of the anti-tank missiles. But the missile shot past the hydra and skipped off the water to explode a hundred feet away. But then a second missile blew up in the water just beside the beast, scoring its flesh with shrapnel. The hydra screamed and dropped beneath the waves again.
The soldiers scanned the water, calling out to one another, their beams flashing like strobe lights. Alex's chest tightened with fear as he searched but saw nothing.
The hydra burst out again, this time shattering the canoe carrying the soldier who had fired the last missile. Both soldier and redcap fell into the water. One serpentine head gripped the leg of the man and dragged him underwater. Seconds later, the water turned frothy with blood and bubbles.
Goddamn it! Alex fired rounds into the lake, knowing he was wasting his time but too angry to hold back. The movies had it wrong—bullets only traveled a foot or two underwater, but the act of defiance made him feel better.
"Get to the rock!" Huck screamed.
The redcaps frantically rowed for the pier and safety, those in the water yelling encouragement. The hydra was far too large to ascend the stone steps. Get to firm footing, and they'd be safe.
"Watch all around! Watch all around!" Huck yelled.
Tang Ap paddled the canoe to the redcap in the water, and Huck leaned over, offering the tribesman her hand. The hydra resurfaced beneath her, smashing her canoe into wooden splinters and hurtling Huck and Tang Ap into the water. Alex fired a burst, ripping apart another head. Tang Ap resurfaced, gripping a broken section of the canoe. One head fixed on him, and it opened its jaws, spitting acid directly onto the chieftain. Tang Ap howled in misery, slipping underwater, and Alex fired again and again before his weapon clicked on an empty chamber.
Huck floated facedown in the water, buoyed by her MR suit. A head reared back, the jaws opening to belch acid onto her. A fireball the size of a basketball smashed into the head, the flames washing over it, burning its flesh. The hydra dropped beneath the water once more. Not ten feet away, Leela still held her hands raised and ready for another fireball spell.
Alex's gaze darted to Huck, still facedown in the water a dozen meters away. "Hurry. Get us to her!" he ordered Gevn Ap, worry snaking through him.
Before Gevn Ap could move, a figure swept past their canoe, swimming in a fast front crawl. Alex saw a flash of long white hair—Veraxia—and then seconds later, she was at Huck's side, flipping her over and holding her against her chest as she swam on her back, kicking for the rock formation.
The hydra burst from the water again, this time between Alex's and Leela's canoes, and the turbulence spilled Leela and her redcap guide into the water. The monster, its huge body only feet away from Alex, just below the surface of the water, focused on his wife. One of the remaining four heads rose, the jaw opening again. Time slowed.
He dropped his empty rifle, somehow finding Witch-Bane in his grip, and leaped into the water atop the hydra's elephantine bulk. The hydra spit its acid, but something blocked the spray, and it splashed back, melting the hydra's eyes. Alex slammed atop the hydra's torso, ramming his sword to its hilt into the monster's muscular back. The hydra reared and thrashed, and Alex, gripping the pommel with both hands, held on as the beast tossed him back and forth. The hydra submerged, with Alex just having time to hold his breath.
Down dove the hydra, the pressure on Alex's eardrums intense. Miraculously, his visor adjusted, switching on its own to IR mode, painting the massive bulk of the hydra and its remaining heads orange.
Using both hands and bracing his thighs against the hydra's body, he twisted the sword, opening the wound. The hydra screamed underwater, bubbles spraying from its mouths, and it shot for the surface once more and burst out a second later.
Alex gasped for air, and two of the heads twisted back, their blue eyes glaring at him. The necks were more than long enough to allow the heads to bite him or spit acid, he knew. But then something unexpected happened.
The hydra rose from the lake, floating up into the air, dripping lake water, its hippo-like legs pumping beneath it for purchase it didn't have. The heads forgot Alex. A single thunderous boom shattered throughout the cavern, and the hydra's body jerked as Ylra's Light Fifty drilled a hole through its torso then exploded within its chest cavity, destroying the monster's heart. Ylra had hit it with an explosive .50-caliber bullet. The remaining heads dropped as the monster died.
Below him, kneeling in her canoe and wearing the Brace, was Liv, her left arm extended as she levitated the hydra's carcass back down with Alex still sitting atop it, gripping his sword hilt. Liv had the Brace, not Leela.
As soon as the carcass hit the water, Alex ripped his sword free, swam for his canoe, and climbed aboard once more. He looked at Gevn Ap's sorrowful face. "Your father?"
The redcap shook his head. "Gone to the hero's reward."
Grief surged through Alex, and he squeezed the youth's shoulder. "He was very brave."
Leela swam for the other side of his canoe. Alex reached over and gripped her arm, hanging onto her. "Are you—"
"Fine. I'm fine," she panted. "I put a shield around the hydra's head just before it spat acid. What the hell were you thinking, jumping onto it?"
"Who was thinking?"
She shook her head in exasperation, splashing water. He was just relieved she was unhurt. They reached the pier where Veraxia was waiting for them. Huck lay on her side, her eyes closed but her chest rising and falling.
"Thank you," Alex said.
Veraxia inclined her head, her expression neutral. "Too mean a death for one who defeated Bale-Fire. She should die in fire, not water."
First Sergeant Martinez knelt beside his commanding officer and listened to her breathing.
Liv joined them, handing the Brace to Leela. "I'm sorry it took so long. The damned thing slipped off, and I thought I lost it, but it was just sloshing about in the bottom of my canoe—marvelous focus, by the way."
Leela pulled the Brace onto
her left arm, yanking on it to make sure it was snug. "You should see it make shields."
Alex, still breathing hard, watched the Strike Force soldiers on the fishing nets reach the pier. Once on firm ground, the soldiers untied their supplies and weapons. In the lake, the hydra's bloated body sank beneath the water for the last time.
We made it. His gaze took in the comatose Huck. But at what cost?
36
Sharon Ireland leaned over one of her sleeping patients, placing her ear near the woman's mouth, and listened to her breathing. She had tried to sleep after Major Armstrong and the rest of the Strike Force departed, but try as she might, sleep eluded her. She was wound too tightly, too frightened by her principled stand to stay behind. I'm alone on an alien planet.
Well, not alone, she corrected herself as she straightened and met the gaze of one of the two redcap women who were helping her. She couldn't speak to them in anything other than gestures, but they understood well enough to help tend the three men and one woman.
Her gaze darted to the rifle lying atop her backpack, which Major Armstrong had insisted she take. She shuddered, understanding the mechanics of the weapon but loath to touch it. In her time as an ER doctor, she had tended dozens of gunshot wounds—terrible injuries, never just simple holes. No, she wouldn't touch the damned thing.
She moved among the other patients, listening to their breathing, examining the field-portable miniature blood pressure and respiratory monitors, each no larger than a cell phone and attached by wire sensors. All readings were stable.
Their injuries remained life-threatening, with significant blood loss, typical with the MR suits: they stopped everything but the worst wounds, and she had few supplies or equipment to treat such horrific damage. While the Strike Force had deployed with the best medical gear the soldiers could carry, it was still only what they could carry. There was no oxygen equipment, no automatic ventilation, no CPR gear, no defibrillators, no blood lab, and no CT scanner. Had her ER partner, Cassie, been here, she'd have healed all four soldiers in minutes. But Cassie wasn't here. Sharon was.
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