by T. M. Catron
“Where to from here?” Rance asked, standing and dusting off her hands. “We still need to go under the river, correct? We haven’t done that yet?”
Moira shook her head.
“So we are back to the tunnels,” Abel said. “Come on. I’ll lead the way.”
He helped Tania to her feet, and they walked up the flight of stairs, which emptied them out into a service tunnel. They had to choose left or right. Rance had completely lost her sense of direction, and when she called upon her NNR to show her a map, all she got was static in her ZOD. It would have picked that moment to glitch out. They still had Abel’s HUD, so he took point and led them to the service network. They headed down a corridor, and then descended two flights of narrow, metal stairs to end in another service tunnel.
The new tunnels looked much like the tunnels they’d used the day before—dirty, greasy, and smelly. More signs of an empire degrading. Only this time, Rance kept her eyes on each door they passed, half-expecting an angry mob to burst out of one and block their exit. All the doors looked alike, except for a few with red or yellow signs plastered in a language Rance didn’t know. If her NNR had been working, she could have translated without trouble.
Abel didn’t have any trouble deciphering it because he used it to navigate as they went.
“What do they mean?” Rance asked after the fifth door.
Abel shrugged. “Just numbers.”
Rance’s heart was still beating fast from the encounter below. And her senses were hyper-aware. She couldn’t relax. Really, she didn’t want to. The adrenaline rush was all that was keeping the guilt at bay. She mentally ticked off all the reasons for hating herself. One, they’d left all those people behind. Two, Rance had endangered her crew on the most foolish errand imaginable. Three, they had no plan for escaping the planet, other than taking off and hoping for the best.
Don’t think about it now.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She tugged at her collar again, but since she still wore her helmet, no air passed through her suit. She kept her visor up and plodded on. The tunnels were uncomfortably warm, and after a minute Rance realized the air flow had stopped.
“I’m surprised we still have power,” she commented.
“These underground tunnels have their own grid,” Abel said. “But it’s probably in jeopardy like everything else.”
With the absence of ventilation, they grew stifling hot. Rance sweated through her flight suit, which was designed to wick away moisture. But it couldn’t keep up with the heat. Soon, the fabric mesh lining was so wet it stuck to her skin and began chafing.
So much for state-of-the-art flight suits. Rance made a mental note to get different ones if they ever got out of this mess. As they walked, the adrenaline rush abated. The guilt hit her full force, washing over her in wave after wave. Raised around perfection and with high standards, Rance had always been hard on herself when she messed up.
And she’d really messed up this time.
They walked a long time, following Abel’s cues. Moira, Tania, and Sonya remained quiet. Once Rance had calmed down, she felt sorry for all three of them. They’d always lived around comfort, even the servants, and had never been in a life-threatening situation such as this.
But Rance was still disgusted with herself for even being in this situation.
In addition to the guilt overwhelming her, every inch of Rance’s body was bone-tired. She pinched herself to keep from falling asleep as she walked.
Soon, the tunnel began to stink. She closed her visor and let her suit’s air circulate. But the battery was low—it wouldn’t last much longer.
Everything began to look alike. The walls, the doors, the signs. The red and yellow became blurred. Rance raised her visor and pushed her palms into her eyes, trying to wake up.
They didn’t stop until an hour later when they sagged against a wall to rest. Rance leaned her head back against the inside of her helmet. But she couldn’t get comfortable, so she removed the helmet to let some air to her head.
The stench of the tunnel drove her to put it right back on. So much for some air. Rance looked over at Moira, whose dress hem was stained with the filth of the tunnel and whose nose was permanently wrinkled at the stink. The veil did nothing to protect her from it. As Rance watched, Moira removed the fine veil and cast it aside. It fell onto the greasy floor without ceremony.
They all looked worse for wear. Abel’s eyes were puffy. Solaris looked paler than Rance had ever seen, and Tania and Sonya looked so tired, they might have been sleep-walking.
If they stayed any longer, they’d fall asleep, and possibly lose their window for leaving the planet—if they still had one. With a groan, Rance climbed to her feet and gave the command to move out. No one complained aloud, but everyone glared at her. One by one, they stood and moved on down the tunnel.
The rumbling above subsided as they marched downward, under the river. Rance prayed the explosions above hadn’t damaged the tunnels so badly they would flood. She could think of more horrible deaths than violent drowning, but not many.
As they moved deeper under the river, the water streaming down the walls became more than condensation. Soon they were sloshing through water up to their ankles, and Rance was thankful for her tall boots.
The water ran downhill toward the lowest portion of the tunnel. It washed the floor grease on top, creating little rainbow-colored rivers of oil on top of the new current.
The group halted.
“What’s the final depth under the river?” Solaris asked Abel.
He shook his head. “Dunno. But we go quite a bit deeper than this before it slopes upward.”
They needed to choose. Go forward until the water became too powerful to deal with? Or go back and find an alternate route?
“Regardless of which tunnel we use,” Rance said. “We need to cross the river. I don’t know how we’re going to do that above ground.”
“Right,” Abel said, frowning. “Right.”
They all stared at the water a minute. Rance was hoping for a genius idea, a moment of inspiration. She didn’t care who came up with it as long as it got them out of their predicament. When no one spoke, she realized they were waiting on her to make the decision.
“Down,” she said finally. “At least this way we might have a chance. Up top, we have nothing.”
They nodded, and the group continued on. The farther they traveled, the deeper the water became. When it first spilled over the top of Rance’s boots, she gasped at the cold. Then she glanced back at Moira and her servants, who had been walking through the icy water without complaint all this time.
Rance felt another twinge of guilt, but she couldn’t do anything about it. The options remained the same—go back up to be stuck in the apocalypse, or continue their current path and cross the river.
When the water level was thigh-high, they moved to the wall to steady themselves. At this depth, Rance could still push through, but Moira and the other women were struggling. It was up to their waists and occasionally lifted them off their feet. Abel was shorter than Rance and Solaris, but his massive, armored body had no trouble staying grounded. He held out an arm for their wards to cling to, staying behind them to buffer the worst of the current.
When Rance lifted her visor to let some air into her suit, water splashed onto her face. It stank but cooled her face.
“How much farther, you think?” she yelled over the roar of the water.
“We’ve got to be close!” Solaris answered. “If we’re not, the current is going to wash us away!”
As they braced themselves against the current, the lights began to flicker. Then, Rance heard the noise she’d been dreading.
A rumbling sound overcame the sound of rushing water. She turned and looked back up the tunnel from where they’d come. With a sinking feeling, she noticed the lights behind them had gone out completely. The noise grew beyond a roar, more like a tempest.
The tunnel was flooding.
<
br /> “Everybody grab onto something!” she screamed, grabbing a pitifully small door handle.
She barely got the words out of her mouth when a wall of water hit them from behind.
CHAPTER NINE
IF RANCE HAD EVER FALLEN out of an air vehicle without a parachute, she imagined this is what hitting the ground would feel like. All the air was knocked out of her, and her body smacked into Solaris, who was standing in front of her when the water hit.
Her hand was yanked away from the door, and sharp pain shot up her arm as two fingers were dislocated. Rance yelped and gulped a mouthful of water.
Then her entire body was underwater, the current pulling and pushing, slamming her against the wall, against another person—she couldn’t tell who at this point—and even into the piping along the ceiling.
Time seemed to slow. Rance had never felt so much pain in her life. Every part of her body was being pummeled, and she’d never been so grateful for a helmet as she was at that moment, even if she’d been caught with the visor open.
But even as Rance registered that she was still alive, she waited for her death. She was powerless to stop her body from rolling over and over in the current, from banging against every object imaginable. And she needed air.
Her lungs were about to burst. Any second, her body would force her mouth open to take great lungfuls of greasy, black water. She’d always thought she’d die in space—in a glorious space battle or as an old woman in her chair, watching the stars slide by. Drowning underground had never been an option.
If she stopped fighting, it would all be over. The pain in her body and lungs would vanish. If she’d just let go.
Still rolling over and over, Rance allowed her arms to float out to her side, preparing to give in.
And then a hand grabbed hers. Its grip was strong, and it almost dislocated her arm as it pulled her through the water. As soon as she realized what was happening, she fought harder to hold her breath.
It became harder than ever. Her lungs were going to burst. She had to breathe.
The next second, Rance was hauled up into a pocket of air. She gasped. The icy water tugged angrily at her body, the current trying to reclaim its prize. Someone grabbed her by the neck of her suit and pulled until she banged against something thin and metal—a pipe. She grabbed onto it in the darkness, holding on to save her life.
Then, the person was gone.
Rance sputtered and gasped. She must have inhaled water at some point because her chest burned. The metal pipe she was holding had a twin at her elbow. Another was at her knee.
They weren’t pipes. It was a ladder.
She climbed up, hauling her bruised and battered body out of the water. Before her boots were clear, somebody else burst out of the water. No, two somebodies.
“Hey!” she called, groping down to grab someone. She found hair and pulled anyway.
Solaris yelped. “Watch it! I’m trying to save people here!”
Rance let go. “Sorry! Here, give me somebody!”
Solaris hoisted the other sputtering person onto the ladder. By the sound of it, he’d found Moira.
“I’ve got you, Moira!” Rance said. “Hang on and let’s get up higher!” Rance was already shaking with cold, but her heart chilled more as she thought of Abel, Tania, and Sonya.
“Abel has Tania and Sonya,” Solaris said, anticipating her question.
Rance sagged against the ladder in relief. Moira pressed herself against Rance’s legs, shaking like a wet kitten.
“Move up,” Solaris said. “I’m freezing.”
They climbed up farther. Rance was shaking so badly now with cold that she had trouble holding onto the ladder. Her left hand slipped, sending more pain through her dislocated fingers.
“Okay, I’m good,” Solaris said. “We’re out of the water. Okay, Moira?”
Moira had yet to say anything, but she whimpered through chattering teeth. Then she sniffed and asked, “What h-happened to T-Tania and Sonya?”
“Abel’s got them on another ladder,” Solaris said. “I spotted these maintenance shafts just as the water hit us. I almost had you, Rance, but then the water tore you away from me. The next person to hit me was Abel, so I grabbed him and pointed him toward the ladder. With his suit, he had been swimming around, searching for us. Then we went after everybody else. That man can swim like a lantess, even in armor.”
“How do you know they got into the other ladder?”
“That shaft has light. I saw them. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to climb this one in the dark.”
“Better than being too dead to climb anything,” Rance said.
Without further conversation, she began climbing. Rance had always preferred action to sitting around pondering, and they had nowhere to go but up. Her back scraped along the rear wall, and she silently cursed the short maintenance crew. She engaged her magnetic boots and used them to steady herself on the metal ladder. The going was easier after that, but her thighs were soon burning with the effort. With no light to gauge distance, and barely enough room to squeeze through, she felt as if she were climbing a never-ending tunnel. Before long, her heart was pounding along with the burn in her legs.
And still they climbed. Rance hoped they came out in the same place as Abel and the others, then realized that unless the other tunnel went sideways, they would end up just down from them. The thought cheered her and motivated her to keep climbing.
Below, Moira was struggling. Her breath came in gasps, her tears came in gushes, but she didn’t ask them to stop. Occasionally, Solaris called up to her, alternating between encouragement and threats.
Rance’s leg muscles moved from burning to cramping. Her bruised body ached with every step, and even breathing hurt. She thought she might have cracked a rib. She knew she’d broken at least one finger. And then they still had no idea how far they had to climb.
Just when she felt like she couldn’t go any further, she banged the top of her skull against something metal. It rang with the blow. “Son of Triton,” she said. “I think we’re at the top.”
“And?” Solaris asked.
“Hang on a minute.” Rance fumbled her cold, numb fingers around on the metal, looking for a handle or latch. Then she found it—a recessed handle near the ladder. She managed to get her fingers underneath it and pulled.
Nothing.
She yanked on it as hard as she dared without breaking anything else.
Still nothing.
“For the love of the Founders, it won’t budge.”
“Did you try pushing?” Solaris asked.
“Of course I…” No. She hadn’t tried that. Rance pulled the handle and simultaneously pushed up with as much strength as she could muster. Her ribs ached. Every bit of her body protested.
And then the door popped open.
The first thing Rance noticed was fresh air on her face. The next thing she noticed was the light. It was night, but after climbing up a black tunnel, the little light up top was as good as daylight. Rance resisted the urge to whoop for joy and climbed out.
She sprawled out on the ground, facing the sky, and relished stretching her legs and her cramped, sore body. Moira came out next and crawled away from the manhole to sit against a tree.
Then Solaris appeared. Even in the dim light, Rance saw his bloody, bruised face. He must not have had his helmet on when the water hit them. She couldn’t remember now. He heaved himself out of the tunnel and lay on his back beside her, breathing heavily.
They were silent a minute, then Rance whispered, “Thanks for coming to get me.”
Solaris laughed and then moaned with pain. “As always, Captain, you’re my ride. What would I do without you?”
“Did you get into this much trouble with the Wizards?”
“It’s a close tie, I think.”
“Seriously, I thought I was gone,” she said. She needed him to know. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
They lay in silence a
bit longer, savoring the feeling of freedom and life. Then a horrible thought occurred to Rance. “What side of the river are we on?”
“Don’t know. I’m just glad we’re not underneath it.”
But Solaris sat up—carefully—and looked around. Then he looked up at the sky. “I think we’re in the Senate section. This street looks familiar.”
Rance sat up too, looking around at the wide street lined with trees. “How can you tell?”
“He’s right, Devri,” Moira said.
Rance jerked around at her name, and then sharp pain shot through her neck, and she wished she hadn’t. “Rance,” she corrected.
“Rance,” Moira said. “We made it.”
“Not yet we haven’t,” Solaris said grimly as he climbed to his feet. He held out a hand for Rance, who was too tired to refuse his help. When she gripped his hand, she noticed his skin was unnaturally smooth. It didn’t have the usual callouses and ridges he’d had there before now. Then she was on her feet, and he let go.
As they attempted to get their bearings, three starships sped by overhead, weaving among the tall buildings.
“Pirates,” Solaris said, watching the sky. “Looks like they’ve begun landing in earnest.”
“Then we’re out of time,” Rance said. “We’ve got to find Abel and get out.”
“Abel will meet us at the ship.”
“I’m not leaving until we see them climb up out of the ground!”
“Captain, Abel is armed to the teeth and wearing combat armor, and those girls are tough. They’re probably already on their way.”
But Rance insisted on searching the area, so they fanned out, looking for another manhole. One street over, they found one just like theirs. It was open, the light shining all the way down as far as they could see.
“This has to be it,” Solaris said. “Now can we go to the ship?”
“Alright, I had to be sure.”
“Your loyalty is admirable, Captain.”
“I don’t know any other way to be,” Rance muttered.
