Warriors of Risnar 4

by Tracy St. John

  The Risnarish attacks on the three hives they currently held had been full frontal, nothing clandestine. Maybe the Monsuda didn’t suspect them capable of subterfuge. It would be a terrific mistake Selena could take advantage of, if it were the case.

  She slipped around the column, assessing the situation. She kept low but was occasionally exposed to the enemy. None appeared to note her presence. Drones not guarding doorways were devoted to the task of loading the bore machines with Risnarish tech.

  The difference between living, breathing creatures that thought for themselves versus automated machines couldn’t have been more obvious. The Monsuda had constructed perfect slaves, but imperfect soldiers.

  Nonetheless, Selena had no doubt she’d be in real trouble if the drones detected her presence. To get to the next column, she’d have to go into the open. Should the guards turn, they’d have an unimpeded view of her.

  She dashed for the column, hoping the tapping feet of the drones loading the humming carts and the clanging of the operation would mask the soft thuds of her sneakers. To herself, she sounded like a herd of wildebeests crashing across cement.

  She made it to the dubious cover of the next column without any of the drones she passed swiveling about. One stretch of exposed killing field down, two more to go. At least there was only one other manned entrance to sneak past. She was now in a position where the closest hulking bore machine hid her from those loading it.

  Selena worked to reach the rear of that machine, making progress in her journey by fits and starts, huddling next to the massive columns to catch her breath and calm her speeding heart between sprints. Sweat ran from her pits in rivers, and her lower back was soaked where the pack of explosives lay heavily.

  At last, she was faced with a final dash, to the gaping hole from which the bore machine had erupted from.

  Her gaze settled on that gaping maw to the underground, and the perspiration coating her body suddenly felt ice cold. It would be far better to take her chances with the drones in a firefight, though there were at least a couple hundred in the temple. Anything was better than the dark void below, where the earth pressed in from all sides and air could disappear at any moment.

  Selena had a last look at her surroundings, half-hoping to spot drones bearing down on her, giving her an out from taking that plunge. She remained undetected, with no excuse but to do the task set before her.

  Remember who you’re doing this for. If you stop them here, Arga can go into that hive later and clean house with a lot less threat. For him and Earth—let’s do this, soldier.

  Selena didn’t allow hesitation to creep in. She raced for the hole, her legs pumping for all they were worth. Then she was scrambling over the humped-up dirt, rock, and flooring that surrounded the chasm that looked narrower than it should have.

  Don’t think. Just go. Go. Go.

  She was in, with no alarms raised. Dirt and pebbles chased after her as she hurried into the tunnel. Darkness, ceiling and walls closed in. She tried to ignore the sudden thinness of the air, trotting deeper within.

  As the illumination filtering in from the opening grew less and less, Selena slowed. After a few more yards, she paused. She kept her shooter at the ready as she faced the too-distant circle of the tunnel’s end and waited.

  She counted off a minute. Another. With no sign of pursuit, she relaxed as much as her claustrophobia would allow.

  She started to count off another minute, and Selena realized she was putting off turning from the light and facing the maw of oppressive darkness she had to dare. Suddenly angry at herself for the weakness, she resolutely swiveled.

  Goodbye, sunbeam. I hope we meet again.

  Her hand reached and found the side of the tunnel. Using it as a guide, Selena navigated into the deepening void. A dozen steps in, and she couldn’t discern anything.

  The tunnel wall was amazingly smooth, almost like glass. Selena wanted to switch on the Risnarish version of a flashlight she’d tucked in her pocket, but not until she was out of sight of the tunnel’s entrance. She made herself take fifty steps before each check, afraid that watching the opening diminish too much would steal her resolve.

  It soon became clear the tunnel was curving. No doubt it led to the convergence with the paths bored by the other two machines. From that point would be the main thoroughfare toward the hive they had come from. Selena guessed she had gone about the length of a football field when the pale circle of the exit into the temple disappeared.

  Aware of her harsh gasps, Selena switched on her torch. The matte-gray circle of floor, walls, and ceiling reflected some of the illumination. She felt the whole of it, particularly the rock overhead, pressing down. How much stone on top of her? Would it fall? If so, would she be instantly crushed or slowly suffocate? She wore the activated containment belt. It might hold shit off while she heaved for dwindling oxygen under a ton of rock slowly pressing down on her as the barrier failed. Slowly crushed and suffocated—that had to be the worst possible death.

  Stop it, right the fuck now. Breathe normally.

  Selena concentrated on drawing air in slowly, smoothly. Ignoring the weight on her chest, the tightness of her throat. Plenty of air. It was even cool down there, not hot like an oven. Not similar to the Box in the middle of the cult’s compound. She would be okay.

  Think of Arga. He’s counting on you.

  Selena didn’t look up at the ceiling again, not wanting to notice how it pressed in despite being at least twenty feet distant. Just as her windpipe hadn’t narrowed to the width of a coffee stirrer straw, the tunnel was roomy. Cavernous, even.

  She peered at the wall her hand flattened against instead, pushing curiosity to the fore. It had an almost metallic sheen to it. The Monsudan machines hadn’t simply bored through the rock. They’d changed its composition.

  “Vulcanized. Similar to the tunnels of the hive.” Impressive. A bit concerning when it came to setting the explosives. Selena wasn’t sure how the change would affect the blast force or radius. After all, the buildings she’d been trained to knock down were not constructed of vulcanized stone.

  It was far better to think of such concerns, rather than the dull gray wall that reminded her of a concrete box, halfway sunken into the earth in Texas. Concentrating on the mission was definitely the mindset to adopt. She needed to move her ass.

  Her steady trot set off soft echoes, but Selena believed they wouldn’t reach the tunnel’s exit. The torch in her hand bounced, but she kept her gaze on the floor and walls, not looking above eye level, where she might catch a glimpse of the ceiling. She’d have to inspect that soon enough.

  Soon came too soon, unfortunately. She estimated she’d gone half a mile when her passage joined three others. The two paths forged by the other machines split to her right. The third tunnel, gaping somewhat larger by virtue of having the trio of bores following more or less in a line, was on her left.

  Selena focused her attention on the convergence, checking the floor first. As she’d suspected, the vulcanization had faltered where the vehicles had splintered apart from each other. Cracks that peered into bare rock were obvious.

  She raised the light up the walls of the main trail, noting the cracks growing larger as they neared the ceiling.

  The ceiling…

  Selena swallowed. She’d noted the slight sift of dirt, the pebbles on the floor of the tunnel. She’d known she’d find fractures. They were big, all right. Not so big that she’d be able to fit herself through them, had they opened to the sky beyond. But a couple, she’d definitely squeeze her arm into. No disbelief on that score. The tunnel was a cave-in begging to happen.

  She shuddered. Closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe normally again. Reminded herself how easy it would be to knock the whole mess down. How that would slow the drones’ retreat should the rest of the plan not play out as she and Arga hoped.

  Focus on the mission. Don’t think about anything else but that.

  A deep breath. She opened
her eyes.

  Selena couldn’t reach the high ceiling, the best area to plant her explosives. However, the biggest fissure spread down on both sides of the main tunnel, its many branches within easy reach. Setting her bombs, three on either wall, approximately ten feet apart in those crooked tributaries, would work perfectly.

  Sweet. We’ll have the gang back in town for a celebration by tonight. We’ll be sucking down drinks and chewing broadleaf before bedtime. Party on.

  Selena whipped off her pack. Moments later, she was setting up, pretending she had plenty of air to breathe and the cave wasn’t closing in on her.

  * * * *

  Arga spent the next several minutes dodging the drones he’d run into. Fortunately, those he’d lured from the entrance of the temple had fallen back, apparently allowed to chase only so far. Those he’d encountered afterward were far more diligent in their pursuit. He’d pause to pick a couple off before speeding off again, staying ahead of their capture fields. For once, he appreciated Yitrow’s winding lanes and crowded buildings. They were far easier to hide among than the wide spaces of his home village of Hahz.

  At last, he managed to destroy the last of his pursuers. Or maybe they’d decided another gang of drones could kill him off if he happened across their path. He had no idea, because drones were an enigma when it came to their programming.

  He circled to the main temple, hoping to retrieve the capture field that held his CPP aloft, recording the activity within the building. He tried not to let his concerns for Selena overcome training—be stealthy, be smart, do not be seen by the enemy. He’d not been so tempted to rush in with shooter blazing since Retav had been abducted years before.

  As it was, he was nearly intercepted on five encounters with patrolling drones and scavenging teams as he crept back to the Mating Center dome. As the minutes ticked past, Arga became more and more anxious that he wasn’t close enough to lend Selena assistance she might require. His need to return, to make certain she was okay, began to override concerns for personal safety.

  Finally, he reached his objective and was able to retrieve the capture field and his CPP unobserved. The area was active, however, so he was delayed in checking the recorded footage until he slunk to another area close by, within a lush garden beyond the women’s dorm. His distraction had worked well, given the heightened bustle close to the Mating Center.

  Crouching among dense bushes, he played the recording. He chewed his lower lip until it throbbed while watching Selena sprint from column to column, somehow not attracting attention as she stole to one of the tunnels. When she darted into its opening, he heaved a sigh of relief. She’d gotten in without being seen.

  Unfortunately, the rest of the recording displayed the flow of carts with stolen Risnarish materials slowing, becoming a mere trickle. Were they nearly finished emptying out Yitrow already? Would the drones soon leave the way they’d come, with Selena still in the tunnel?

  She hadn’t emerged yet. Arga raked his fingers through his mane and cursed himself for planning too big. All their schemes had been dicey to start with, the two-part attack probably too complicated for a pair of people to pull off. The situation looked worse by the moment as the lines of carts diminished to nothing.

  Fearing the worst had happened in the few minutes he’d taken to race through the gathered footage, Arga sent the CPP into the air again, recorded the interior of the temple for a minute while nervously shifting from foot to foot, and recalled the device. He played the latest intel, hoping Selena had returned to the tunnel entrance. Surely she should be waiting for him to set up another distraction so she could escape the temple.

  What he saw filled him with horror. He darted out of the garden and carefully slid around the women’s sleeping dome to check the closest entrance to the main temple. Spying the lines of carts reforming was a physical punch to the gut.

  No, no, All-Spirit, no.

  The incoming carts no longer carried energy containment units or machinery of any kind. Instead they were loaded with the bodies of Risnarish people, frozen in capture fields, stacked on top of each other like so much firewood. The captured residents of Yitrow were being loaded into the bore machines to be taken to the hive with the stolen technology.

  They were being packed in with the hidden explosives. If Arga destroyed the bore machines or Selena brought down the tunnels on top of them, the Risnarish inside would die.

  * * * *

  Selena placed her final charge. She could look forward to getting the hell out of the tunnels, with their seemingly diminishing size that squeezed down until she had to remind herself over and over to breathe. If a million drones waited for her in the temple, she’d gladly run into their arms rather than spend an extra moment below the tons of rock waiting to crash down on her.

  She packed her few tools, checked the detonator for the hundredth time to make sure it was safely inactive, and swung the pack on her back. She faced her path out and froze.

  Tap-tap-tap-tap.

  Tiny noises, a lot of them. Like water dripping. A completely normal sound in a tunnel, which Selena had started hearing maybe a minute before. Except she hadn’t heard it, not really. Not until that moment. After all, trickling water was a natural noise for underground caverns.

  Not in these. No water was seeping in the bored-out rock. Selena would have noticed it in her examination before she set the explosives. The environs were cool but not particularly damp.

  Taptaptaptaptaptap…faster. From multiple directions.

  Selena’s brain registered what the noise must be before the first drones appeared in the tunnel she’d come from, the route she’d planned to use for her escape. Racing to the next opening disclosed more of the robotic creatures closing in on her. As did the third.

  The only tunnel clear for her to run down was the passage that went for miles and miles and emptied into a Monsudan hive. She was trapped. Underground.

  It wasn’t impossible to figure out how they’d realized she was down there. Where dirt sifted from the cracks in the vulcanized ceiling, she’d left footprints. There had been plenty of dirt at the opening of the tunnel where she’d entered. A passing drone must have seen it and alerted the squads now rushing toward her.

  Scatter-shot streaked through the dim environs, splashing against her containment field. Selena blinked against the blooms that blinded her. She returned fire, aiming as well as her grayed-out sight allowed. Meanwhile, she retreated into the larger tunnel leading away from the temple. Gold-and-white blasts continued to splash against her protective forcefield, keeping her from focusing on her attackers.

  A red light flashed at the lower part of her peripheral vision. Her containment belt signaled imminent failure.

  It was no wonder. She’d already been in a firefight earlier that day, distracting the drones so Arga could plant the explosives on the power modules. She was vulnerable to the Monsudan capture fields, should the drones get in range to use them on her. If she were lucky, the containment would fail first, and she’d die rather than be captured for dissection.

  The Monsuda would discover the explosives. They might figure out the Risnarish were up to something to stop their invasion of Earth. Neither capture nor death at the hands of the drones was acceptable.

  “Assholes!” Selena raged as she kept up her retreat, unslinging her pack over her arm while she shot with the other. Warmth flowed down her cheeks, and she knew she was crying before she heard the sobs barreling from her chest. It was her worst fear coming true—dying underground.

  She hurled epithets as she opened the pack, her belt flashing its final warning. She scrabbled for the detonator for the tunnel explosives, desperate to reach it before a capture field froze her in the act of destruction.

  “I hope there’s a hell, and I hope you burn in it for this!” she shrieked, pulling the device out. She wasn’t sure if she screamed at the oncoming soulless drones or the many faces from the past racing across her mind’s eye.

  Her thumb was on the s
witch as the belt’s glow suddenly switched off, all power depleted. A blast hit her protective vest, grazing her arm as it ricocheted off into the darkness, jerking her thumb aside. She gasped at the blaze of pain.

  No time. Do it!

  Forgive me my sins. I’m sorry…

  Do it!

  Thumb on the switch. Pushing. Time slowed, the silver toggle under her touch creeping up, up, up, now halfway, up…

  She couldn’t move. Frozen, not by terror, because she only wanted to get it over with, wanted the world to fall in on her and finish the job before she could feel pain. Before terror eclipsed all of it, and she ended life enveloped in horror rather than determination.

  She was caught in a capture field. She’d been frozen by the drones.

  Yet in the instant before the field grabbed her, the endless instant stretched impossibly by the desperation filling her, the toggle switch, guided by momentum, finished its course. It clicked.

  From her immobile state, Selena watched distant flashes pop yellow in her peripheral vision. The sounds were painful ear-ringing booms. Just as agonizing were the echoes that followed before the earthshaking rumble drowned them out. Somehow Selena knew there was also the crash of falling rocks, thudding and crunching down. She was too deafened to hear it by then.

  The capture field’s clutch on her disappeared. She had just a millisecond to throw her arms over her head, the instinctive cowering of an animal because all thought had vanished. Except for a vision of a striped face smiling at her under a cloudless blue sky—a final sweet image, a last tender emotion.

  Then darkness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The rumbles and crashes rose again then faded, as if racing off through the tunnel. A strange hissing sound replaced them, which also diminished as the seconds ticked by. It took Selena a few moments, but she eventually realized she was hearing dirt and dust sifting to the ground.