Warriors of Risnar 4

by Tracy St. John

  I’m alive? After that, I’m alive?

  She touched herself all over, though she hadn’t experienced any impacts against her body. Had she retreated so far into the larger tunnel that she’d escaped harm? It hardly seemed possible, but her explorations assured her she remained intact and she felt quite physical—no departed soul, insubstantial and wispy. Quite alive. No fluids flowing from her, blood or otherwise.

  What the hell, I didn’t even piss myself. Way to go, me.

  She’d dropped her torch during the firefight, and there was no sign of it any longer. Selena knelt and explored the floor carefully with her fingertips. Plenty of dirt. Shards of vulcanized glass-rock, some sharp enough to chop her to bits if she wasn’t cautious. Regular chunks of rock. No torch. No shooter. Nothing but blast debris.

  Selena crept in the direction she thought the tunnel had split into three, hoping she hadn’t somehow gotten turned around during the blast. More and more rocks and stones littered her path, getting larger all the while. Slowly, slowly, not letting panic set in, she moved forward.

  The growing heaps of stones rose before her, her palms sliding over slabs of smoother surfaces. The vulcanized rock had come down in larger sheets. Selena stretched up and up and found it extended beyond her fingertips. She couldn’t find an opening no matter how far she reached.

  A spike of terror went through her, but she drove it down. Selena turned to her left and began a laborious circuit of the blockage. She kept her hand in contact with the surface of the rock face, sliding it up and down in hopes of discovering some gap to the tunnels beyond. She picked her way over the hills of debris, reminding herself how dumb it would be to break a leg after getting through an actual explosion without injury.

  No rush. No imminent danger, apparently. Not even the sound of an anthroquake. Or a drone tapdancing its nasty little self in the vicinity. We’re good here as long as I don’t freak and start running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

  Her internal pep talk worked, even when she reached the end of the rockslide and found her hand skating over the pristine, undamaged smoothness of the tunnel wall without encountering a break in the blockage.

  About face. Forward, march.

  Turning in the opposite direction, Selena repeated her blind exploration of the cave-in. She took a careful step. Feeling up and down the rock wall for a breach. Another step. Searching, searching. Another step. Stone shifting beneath, maintaining balance, searching out a better place to put her foot down. Checking the impervious wall of stone that she’d brought down.

  And so it went until she discovered the smooth tunnel wall on the other side, having not found an exit to escape through.

  Damn, I do good work. Yitrow has been successfully cut off from the hive. Nice job, Boom-Boom. Except for the part about getting stuck on the opposite side of the cave-in. That part isn’t so impressive.

  “Definitely not part of the plan.”

  Selena’s voice echoed in a way that made her wish she hadn’t spoken out loud. It bounced back as it should in any chamber, but there was deadened quality to it that bothered her. It sounded too tinny, as if the area were enclosed.

  Paranoia. That’s all it was. Just the old phobia trying to get a foothold. Or, more accurately, a stranglehold. Selena drew a deep breath to prove to herself she could.

  Better yet, she’d find the opening of the other end of the tunnel, where it led to the distant hive. Not because she had any intention of skipping merrily in that direction, oh no sir. Just to prove to herself she wasn’t completely closed in. To give her poor racing heart a reason to ease down to something beneath a gallop.

  She kept walking, her route much easier to chart in the section where the rock hadn’t fallen. A lovely little stroll, no big deal. Her fingers strained at the end of her hand as they groped for the opening to the tunnel, searching for that sanity-saving gap in the wall, any second now, it was coming—

  Jagged stone. A pile of rock, both before her hand and her feet.

  “No. No.”

  Selena almost ran forward, nearly gave in to the rush of adrenaline that pushed her to discover the opening that had to be there. Instead, she stopped entirely, forced herself to breathe. To think.

  After a few seconds, she pulled off the protective vest. If anything was going to shoot her in there, it would have done so already, she reasoned. It was good to think of such considerations rather than the one that put her on the verge of screaming.

  Screaming would be bad. If she started, she might not stop.

  No, no, concentrate on the next step. Nothing else. All was not lost until the fat lady sang. That’s not the saying. It’s not over until the fat lady sings. Come on, Baumer, get it together.

  Deliberate, measured breathing. Attaching her vest to where the rockslide began, making sure it didn’t fall down. Right at shoulder level, where she’d encounter it if she managed a full circuit. Which she wouldn’t. She’d figure a means out first. Definitely.

  Selena continued her circuit of the void she’d been in since the beginning of existence. She counted her steps, measuring her progress as she went. Broken rocks, broken rocks, going on forever. She fended off tears. She snarled at stray wonderings of how enclosed the space she was in would prove to be, how little air was trapped in there with her. She fought with a long-ago voice, which had shouted at her from beyond the cement Box.

  “Repent! It’s the only way out, child. Confess your sins and be freed.”

  “I already gave you what you wanted. It wasn’t enough, never was, I was hell-bound no matter what, so shut up.”

  For a wonder, her mutter silenced that well-remembered voice, which still harangued her in her nightmares.

  Here was a stretch of smooth wall. Not important. She’d encounter an opening. She had to.

  She didn’t. Instead, she found the cave-in again—and her vest. She’d walked in a circle and discovered she wasn’t in an open portion of the tunnel at all. She was trapped in a pocket, a tiny space maybe the size of her bathroom on Earth, judging from the number of steps she’d taken.

  “Repent!”

  “No. Oh please, no, no, no.”

  She tried to remind herself that the pocket was bigger than the concrete Box. That it wasn’t turning into an oven under the hot sun. That the walls weren’t closing in on her, that the tiny area wouldn’t collapse on her at any moment.

  In that lightless void, where she couldn’t see to dig out without the threat of sending the piled stone down on herself, Selena could feel the space tightening. The air running out. She had blundered into her own tomb, forged by her own hands.

  She gasped for oxygen, her lungs heaving for life.

  The darkness pressed down on her, a weight as intense as what she imagined the tunnel roof would be, should it fall. When Selena spotted a shining mote in the distance, she could hardly believe her good fortune. She shouted for help and ran toward the glimmer and the voices calling from that direction.

  Her boots thumped dully on the ground, digging into softness rather than rock. Then sunlight burst over her, blinding her as badly as the gloom of the tunnel had. She blinked in the glare, startled at the heat frying her skin within her clothing, the sweat running in rivers from her close-cropped hair beneath its helmet.

  Helmet?

  Selena squished her lids shut and opened them again. She was behind a rock wall, but not the cave-in of the tunnel. Carefully laid and mortared stones were arranged in horizontal lines that curved around a too-familiar mudbrick house.

  “I asked you a question, Baumer. Is it close enough?”

  Selena glanced to her left. Lieutenant White hunkered down, peering carefully over the wall at the home beyond. His face was creased with consternation, making him appear far beyond his twenty-seven years. They all appeared old and used up when they were out in the field.

  Selena glanced at the rest of the squad. Her group was as pinned in position. The enemy was cornered in the house. The American soldiers,
crouched behind the wall, had a vast area of open land between them and the safety of the crags some two hundred yards to their backs. Running for distant cover was not an option, not when the insurgents were waiting for an opportunity to take them out. She had a vision of herself, White, Jarvis, Cooper, and the other five popping up along the chest-high wall, like ducks in an arcade shooting gallery. Knock ‘em down, win a prize.

  The insurgents holed up in the building, reliably identified as the attackers of a small village twenty miles away, couldn’t move without being turned into the human equivalent of Swiss cheese. It was an old-fashioned standoff.

  Selena peered over the low wall, aware of what she’d see. The robot that was supposed to bring the explosive to the house’s doorstep had stopped moving five feet from its destination. A faulty battery pack in her remote control was to blame, though she hadn’t realized it at the time. All she’d understood then was they’d been spotted by the enemy holed up within the house she was supposed to blast. The robot had gone motionless on its spry little treads, and everyone’s brains were cooking under the sky bleached colorless beneath the merciless sun.

  She groaned. “Of all the places for panic to send me. Hello delusion, my old friend. Fucking stupid trauma.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Baumer? If the ‘bot’s within proximity, blow the damned place!” White wore the expression he always did in these nightmare scenarios: betrayal. It had not gone down that way in reality. There had never been any bitter reprisals, not from White. Not toward her.

  Grim realization and self-hatred had been the emotions that overtook his features on that day, but recall was crazy. A person could slap a mask, built by doubt and guilt, over any memory, even when she knew better.

  Selena was aware of far more than that. On cue, the little girl, her dark hair in high ponytails that bobbed as she walked, stepped out of the house’s door. Half the squad tensed, guns aiming then jerking up, as they realized it wasn’t a rebel in their sights. Curses muttered and teeth bared in helpless snarls as the child, magazine-adorable in her little blue dress and sparkling eyes, approached the frozen robot and its deadly payload.

  The insurgents had sent her out with the assurances that the robot was a toy bought by the parents who lay dead in a back room of the house. The child didn’t know she was an orphan. She only knew she couldn’t see her parents and the men who’d invaded her home were scary. This delightful present, which had arrived in the midst of fear and confusion, was an object to grasp, to pin her hopes on. It was a wonder she walked toward the robot so carefully, so slowly, rather than racing to it as fast as her tiny legs would allow.

  It was the ultimate dare by the monsters who killed civilians as quickly as they did the militaries they disagreed with. A way to bring Selena’s squad down to their level, forcing them to kill the innocents along with the foe, with a child as a pawn in the ideological games adults played.

  “Shit. There’s nothing we can do for her. I’m sorry, Baumer, but I have to make the call to knock that cell out. Blow it.” Now White wore the correct expression, which said he couldn’t believe he’d just ordered the death of a child. But he had, because he was no more than a kid himself with too much responsibility shoved on him.

  Selena scowled at him. “Listen up, Lieutenant. We’ve already had this dance. I’m not playing along.”

  She tried to will herself out of the mirage but reconsidered while he stared at her blankly. If she left here, where would she end up? Another hallucination, the really bad one? A return to reality, deep beneath the earth with air running out?

  “Boy, I’m screwed in any case. Okay, here might not be so bad.”

  “Baumer—”

  “Don’t wet yourself, Lieutenant. This is how it goes down; I run out there and grab the kid while you guys freak out and yell at me. You’ll meanwhile lay down some cover to keep me and Little Sister there in once piece.”

  “The robot—”

  “No problem. I snatch the kid out of the way, light those fuckers up—and yeah, Robo-Blow-Blow will do the job from that distance—and in the end, settle down for a nice court martial that never acknowledges I saved the good guys and an innocent. That will be left to you, sobbing like a baby while you beg my forgiveness for testifying against me.”

  His expression was wretched. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “Not your fault. You told the truth about me disobeying orders and putting the mission in jeopardy. There are no deviations with the EOD, babe, not with what we do.”

  “So sorry.”

  “But the powers that be—not one damned word that recognizes what I did. The only official accolade I’ll receive is that the brass will grant me an administrative instead of a dishonorable discharge.”

  Her vision was growing fuzzy, White’s guilty face blurring into a smear of neutral shadows and lights. The house, the wall, her squad, and the child faded in a wash of overly bright smears.

  “Hey, awesome, I don’t have to do this again after all. Just don’t dump me in the Box, okay, brain? Can we make that deal? Because I will lose my shit then. Lose it, and maybe not get it back.”

  She was jabbering, standing in the strange landscape of pales and darks, which were steadily intensifying into burning nothing, broken up only by the raging spotlight of the still-present sun overhead.

  “Please don’t fade to black. Blind me, fry me, but don’t put me in the Box or that tunnel. I prefer it out here in the open.”

  * * * *

  Arga had never been adept at keeping his mind on the situation in front of him when someone he cared for was threatened. That issue had played havoc with his abilities as a law enforcer when his guardian Retav was taken from him by the Monsuda. It was threatening him anew, following the blast from the tunnels.

  Had his friends and fellow enforcers Kren from Hahz and Jape from Cas not shown up, Arga would probably already be dead or captured in his desperation to reach Selena. The pair on either side of him, along with the warriors they’d brought, fired nonstop salvos at the drones. With their support, Arga somehow maintained his better sense and fought the battle he had to.

  It was hard not to break away and race for the tunnel mouth he’d seen Selena disappear into. Damned hard.

  Not knowing what had happened to Selena drove him crazy. Not after the three groups of drones had trooped into the tunnels and the blast of dirt and debris had shot from those gaping holes minutes later. The unexpected arrival of warriors from three villages had been all that kept Arga from attempting to race past the enemy to reach his Earthling. The battle was on to reclaim the Risnarish capital, to protect those immobile citizens on the carts the warriors surrounded. Arga was in the thick of it—though his attention kept straying to those tunnel openings, hoping against hope Selena would emerge whole and unhurt.

  “Man, what I wouldn’t do to unload the boom cannons on these assholes!” Anneliese shouted over the din. She and Nex fought side by side a few yards away, blasting drones by the score with wide spreads of plasma fire.

  “It would shorten the fight. But we can’t take the chance on hitting those machines with our people trapped inside,” gold, brown and white Kren agreed. Arga’s best friend since childhood was almost smiling, however. Hahz’s hive had been demolished over a year ago, and he’d been spoiling for a battle since the word had gone out that the Risnarish would try to rid themselves of the Monsuda.

  “Don’t forget Arga and his lady friend stuffed the bores with explosives,” the golden behemoth Jape shouted. “If we hit those with the booms, we might all go boom.”

  “I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time?” Kren asked Arga.

  Arga didn’t answer. He was too intent on cutting through the swaths of drones before him. Scatter-shot set off blooms of color against his containment barrier before he mowed the enemy down. As many as he tore through, leaving their smoking shapes in heaps on the temple floor, there were always more to take their places, always more between him
and Selena.

  Hurry. Hurry. I have to find her.

  She had to be alive.

  “Damn it, just die!” Arga shrieked in impotent fury when they were still battling ten minutes later.

  “Tenacious bastards, aren’t they?” Kren didn’t wait for a response. “All right, we have to get to Selena as fast as possible. Jape, Nex, Anneliese, we’re heading in.”

  Jape paused to shout at the other warriors nearby, “We’re going special. Squad Five, move to the middle tunnel and hold it! Squad Seven, right tunnel. The rest of you, hold the line and keep taking them down!”

  Going special referred to a particular formation to retrieve a person of importance from a combat situation. Selena made the cut, as far as Arga was concerned. It meant a lot to him that Kren and Jape, who hadn’t met her, would accord her that kind of respect.

  “I owe you,” he told his friends as the five bunched shoulder to shoulder, and charged forward, blasting every drone in their path.

  “It’s nothing you wouldn’t do for us,” Jape insisted. “Or haven’t already done.”

  As they plunged into the heart of the enemy and drones closed around them, the group slowed, positioning themselves in a circle that faced outward so they could keep firing and holding off attack. Arga took the point position and Jape took the rear, walking backward, with the others between them.

  It was working. They made slow but steady progress, their containment belts fending off enemy fire. In just over two minutes, as near as Arga could judge, they reached the mouth of the tunnel Selena had gone into.

  Kren shouldered Arga forward as they spread out across the tunnel’s mouth. The other two squads had reached their objectives as well. “Go, Arga. We’ll cover the entrances while you search for her.”

  “Thank you.” Arga’s gratitude was heartfelt, but he was already racing down the dark hole, yanking his torch from his belt and switching on the beam as he ran. Kren’s reply was lost in the barrage of fighting.

  The pungent, oily stench of drone was heavy in the tunnel, cancelling out any scent Selena had left. Arga concentrated at first on the silt-and-rock-strewn floor, but the blast had covered any prints. No one had attempted to come out since the explosion. He’d half-hoped Selena had crept close enough to realize a pitched battle was going on in the temple and had wisely stayed under cover rather than attempt to escape.