Rebellion

by Edward M. Grant

  A couple of small bags hung from the saddle. But who knows what she had in them?

  “Where’s your metal suit?” she said.

  “It was easier to sneak up on you without it.”

  “So how did you know I would come this way?”

  “We have our sources.”

  “Where are your friends hiding?”

  “They’re out there, watching us.”

  “Then why do you want to tie me up?”

  A wooden ladder led from the floor of the barn to the half-floor above them, stacked with more hay bales and straw. A short rope dangled from the pillar near the top of the steps, with a harness at the end that looked like it would go over a horse’s head. Logan reached up and pulled it from the pillar.

  “What are you doing?”

  He dragged her closer to the wall, then wrapped the rope around her wrists, and tied the other end to the pillar. She could still stand and sit, but wasn’t going to be going anywhere in a hurry. Even if she could get her thin fingers close to the knots in the rope, they didn’t look like they’d be strong enough to untie them.

  He found a spot a couple of metres away, and sat himself.

  “Don’t just ignore me,” she said.

  “If I was ignoring you, I wouldn’t have tied you up.”

  “You can’t just leave me like this.”

  “Sorry, but I have to get some sleep. And it’s either tie you up, or shoot you. I think you’ll prefer it this way.”

  She wriggled against the pillar, and the rope rattled against the wood. “I can’t sleep like this.”

  “I’ll make you a deal. You admit to being on the other side, and I’ll move the rope so you can sleep. Can’t say much fairer than that.”

  She said nothing.

  Fine, then.

  He wriggled on the straw until he found a comfortable spot, then closed his eyes. That felt good after so long on his feet. But there was still something wrong. Something that had bugged him since they arrived there in the village.

  The insurgents hadn't taken Gallo's rifle. They hadn't even taken the grenades from Gallo's suit. The rifle needed power to operate and kicked too hard to use without a suit. But surely they would at least have taken Gallo's grenades. He would have, if he was one of them. And they'd cleared up their own dead and taken their weapons away, leaving none behind that were still usable. Were they really in such a hurry to leave and chase the truck? As slow as it was, it could easily outrun a man on foot, so they had little chance to catch it. They'd have shot at it a few times, then turned back when it passed out of range.

  “Alright,” the girl said. “I was the girl you met in Gries. But I didn’t know what they were planning to do. They just asked me to get you to walk down that street, past the houses. I didn’t mean anything.”

  Logan chuckled. “You knew where to find an insurgent base. You hid after the firefight, rather than talk to us. You took the boy’s body back to the insurgents. I think you knew exactly what was going on.”

  “I was scared that you’d torture me. I’ve heard the stories about what the Legion does to rebels. And I’d heard people talk about the rebels hiding in Valenciennes. I thought they could help me.”

  “Who was the boy? The one who shot at us.”

  The one he killed. Did she even know he did that? She'd been hiding in the street the last time he saw her in Gries, and probably running away by the time he shot the kid.

  “I knew him at school. We both grew up in the same village He just asked me to help him. That’s all I know.”

  Yeah, whatever. You didn’t just agree to help an attack on the Legion. That was the kind of thing that signed your death warrant with your own blood.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Why would I tell you?”

  “Fine. I’ll call you Alice. Is that OK?”

  “No. That’s not my name.”

  “It is now. Unless you feel like telling me what it really is.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she scowled at him. She didn’t like him very much. Not that he was surprised. He wasn’t sure he liked her much.

  “Well,” he said, and shoved more straw beneath his head. “I’m exhausted, and I’m going to sleep. You can spend the rest of the day working out your story for when I wake up.”

  “I can’t just stand here all day.”

  Logan closed his eyes, and wriggled his head on the straw until he found a comfortable spot. He could already feel the world beginning to fade away into sleep. “Unless you’re going to tell me who you really are, I don’t really think you’ve got much choice.”

  “I don't think I know who I am any more.”

  He opened his eyes again, and yawned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It all seemed to make sense. My father died in the mines, my mother brought up five of us on her own. We just wanted freedom, so we could make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Half the kids I know lost their fathers to the mines, or working out in the sun storms.”

  “And freedom is supposed to end that?”

  She pouted as she spoke. “At least we’d keep the money from selling what we mine, and it wouldn’t all go to the aristos back home. We could make sure no-one else has to die in the mines.”

  “And that’s worth killing your own people, and putting their heads on spikes because they disagree with you?”

  “We didn’t. We wouldn’t. We want to be free, together. Why would we kill other colonists?”

  “You haven’t seen the vids?”

  Her face dropped at Logan’s words. She spoke more quietly as she responded. “That wasn’t us. It was the Montagnards. We’re not with them. I knew no-one had heard from Saint Jean for weeks. No-one’s heard from the mine, either. After I saw the vid, I came here to make sure my aunt was safe.”

  “We spoke to the mine yesterday.”

  “Not to anyone we know.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Logan crawled through the dark night, staying as close to the ground as he could. The sky above glowed with stars, and the lake beside the mine entrance, about a hundred metres wide and maybe five hundred long, glittered in the starlight through his goggles’ light intensifiers.

  Without the goggles, he’d barely have been able to see as he moved through the moonless darkness from Saint Jean. With his naked eyes, the only way to tell where hills and mountains ended and the sky began was by the sudden appearance of the stars when the mountains no longer got in the way.

  Through the goggles, the mine entrance was little more than a dark blob against the slightly lighter hillside. Drill holes and the weathered scars of shattered stone ran across the rock wall beside the three-metre tall, metre-thick wooden beams that supported the entrance, and showed where the miners had blown their way in with explosives when they built the tunnel.

  Piles of dark rubble at least ten metres tall surrounded the entrance, where the miners must have dumped them when the mine was being built. A dozen or more wooden carts sat in a group beside the piles, and wooden rails ran toward them from the mine entrance.

  Two men stood beside the rubble piles, one on each side of the mine entrance, both wearing armour, and holding a rifle.

  They didn’t look much like the Compagnie men who had come with the fireteam on the truck, but it was hard to tell with the limited resolution of the goggles. Not to mention that the men seemed to be wearing goggles similar to his own. They’d need them, if they were going to see much of anything in the darkness on the plateau outside the mine entrance.

  He ignored the two obvious guards for a moment. They were probably standing there as much to draw the attention of anyone who approached the mine as to stop him getting in. While he was shooting at them, their friends would be getting ready to shoot him.

  He stared into the dark shadows on the hillside above the entrance. A grainy blob moved behind a rock. Another crouched beside a rock to the right. If there were two men on the hillside, there were probably more elsewhere that he couldn
’t see.

  The truck was parked outside the entrance, facing toward it with the trailers twisted along a curved path behind. The side of the truck was pockmarked with bullet holes, but no serious damage. So they’d got it here somehow, still pretty much intact. Logan had left the girl and horse in the barn after the sun set, and followed the truck's tracks up the hill from the village on foot, moving as much as possible among the trees and rocks to stay out of sight of anyone watching the road. Bairamov and Desoto’s claw prints in the dirt of the road had accompanied the truck all the way to the mine.

  Whoever these men were, they were guarding the mine. And they seemed determined to keep any uninvited guests out, so there was something in there they wanted to protect. These weren’t just a few villagers with shotguns and hunting rifles, they had military equipment, and knew what they were doing. They must have done, when Bairamov and Desoto arrived, or there’d be signs of a firefight on the plateau. The others had probably been glad to reach their destination, been taken in by whatever show of a friendly welcome the insurgents had put on, and the insurgents surprised them at a time when they could do little to protect themselves.

  Either way, Logan had to get in there, and find out what was going on. He hadn't expected to be able to walk in the front door, but how else could he get inside? And do it without any of the guards spotting him?

  He’d expected to be able to sneak around the area with his goggles while the insurgents were blind in the darkness. But, when they had goggles too, the odds looked even. Worse in fact, with at least four of them and one of him. He might as well have come in daylight.

  If only he had Alice to help, he’d have the schematics of the mine right on hand in the intel pack. He’d skimmed through them before they left, and he knew the mine had only this one entrance, and an emergency exit tunnel further up the hillside. But they’d surely be guarding that one, too.

  He crawled slowly up the hillside beside him, moving away from the guards while gaining some height to give him a better view of the area around the mine. He paused every few metres in the cover of a rock or tree trunk, to peer around it and check that he hadn’t been spotted.

  Then stopped and looked down. The plateau was barren, aside from a few dozen long trails of boot prints in the dirt heading in all directions. Men had been in and out of the mine many times since the last rain up here, and they’d left their marks behind in the dirt.

  But that was all. Each of the trails either started or ended at the tunnel entrance. Some did both. So it didn’t look like they were entering or leaving the mine through any other route. And one pistol and a few grenades wasn’t going to get him in there, when he was up against at least four men with rifles or worse. Even if he could take one of their rifles from them, it wasn’t likely to be enough.

  He thought back to the schematics, closing his eyes as he tried to visualize the image on Alice’s HUD. He’d grown so used to the technology in his suit that he suddenly felt ignorant without it. Not to mention weak and vulnerable. In many ways, he was just a machine that helped the suit get its job done, and believed it was a man using a machine.

  But there was something else. There had been more lines on the schematic, leading away from the mine at an angle.

  He remembered them, now. They were heading across the plateau toward the cliff face. He hadn’t taken a closer look at them at the time, because why would he need to?

  He looked toward the cliff. His gaze followed the plateau toward it from the mine, but, from where he was up on the hillside, he couldn’t see over the edge of the cliff.

  Maybe it was nothing, or he was just imagining he’d seen the lines. But it was all he had. He crawled back toward the cliff edge, following a path that curved slowly away from the mine, to stay out of sight of the guards.

  Finally, he lay at the top of the cliff, and peered over. There was something below it. Half a dozen pipes protruded from the cliff face. Some were narrow, no more than half a metre across. They wouldn’t do him much good. But the one in the middle was more than a metre in diameter. Tall enough that he could crouch inside it, if not walk.

  Maybe the boy he shot had had the right idea back in Gries. Crawl through the waste pipe into the nearest mine, then find another way out where the Legion wouldn’t be watching.

  Logan crawled along the cliff edge toward where the pipe would be below him, studying the cliff face as he moved. There were ridges in the cliff, and a narrow ledge that ran below the outlets of the pipes. Which made sense. There had to be some way for the miners to get down to the pipes when they had to do some kind of maintenance.

  And there it was. A rough, rusty metal ladder attached to the cliff face by thick, black bolts. He swung his legs over the edge, and carefully lowered his boots onto the first rung they reached, trying to make as little noise as possible. He clambered down slowly, passing the mouth of the pipe on his right as he did so. Then his boots clunked down onto the ledge.

  He stepped along the ledge toward the pipe, trying not to look down, and keeping one hand on the ladder for support, as his boots barely fit on the narrow ledge. He leaned around the side of the pipe, and peered into it.

  The faint starlight barely illuminated even the mouth of the pipe, so he risked turning on the IR illuminators. A dried-up stream of dark liquid marked the bottom of the pipe, running in a haphazard way to the mouth from as far back as the goggles could see. Whatever that crap was, it hadn’t been running out of there for some time.

  He leaned in. There was a faint oily smell, but nothing that immediately alerted his senses to danger. He clambered into it, moving slowly to avoid making noise when his boots scraped against the concrete walls.

  He had to crouch low to creep through the narrow pipe. His back was sure going to hate him in the morning if he had to follow the pipe for a long way. The mine entrance must be a hundred metres away across the plateau, then who knows where the pipe went inside the mine. Or whether he could even get out once he’d gone that far.

  His boot crunched down on something in the bottom of the pipe that cracked beneath the sole, and the sound echoed back from the hard walls.

  He slowed down. He didn’t need to make a noise that would alert anyone near the far end. He still had most of the night to scout the mine, and return to Saint Jean.

  The pipe seemed to go on forever.

  After a few minutes, all he could see both ahead and behind were a few metres of a circle of dirty concrete, as though the outside world had never existed. He stopped every minute or so, and listened. There was a faint tapping ahead, followed by a scratching as a rat stared up at him from the bottom of the pipe, with the light of the illuminators reflecting from its big, round eyes. It squeaked as Logan approached, then turned and ran away, its claws scraping against the concrete as it moved.

  Then he spotted something up ahead. A dark lattice rising from the middle of the pipe to the top. A ladder, going up to... somewhere. The pipe continued on, but, if there was a ladder, there had to be a way out. He reached it, and looked up. There was a hatch in the top of the pipe, just above his head. The only question was what was on the other side?

  He clicked off the illuminators, and the pipe went dark. But his hands could find the hatch. He pressed gently on the cold, hard metal. The hatch didn’t move. He pressed harder. Still no movement. He pressed his shoulders against it, and pushed up with his legs. The hatch stayed shut. It must be sealed from the far side, somehow.

  He crouched again, and moved on along the pipe. It had to go somewhere. Though perhaps all the hatches were closed at the moment, because nothing was flowing through it.

  But what other choice did he have?

  CHAPTER 24

  Logan peered out of the open hatch at the end of the pipe, into the darkness around him. Whatever garbage the miners usually dumped down the pipe, they weren’t doing it right now. It had been dry all the way into the mine.

  The tunnel alongside the pipe was dark and quiet, though he could hear faint, m
uffled voices somewhere nearby. Thinner pipes ran near the base of the ridged, rocky tunnel walls from both directions, and joined the pipe he’d crawled through.

  He shivered in cold air that stank of mould as he clambered out, and closed the hatch behind him. The IR illuminators on his goggles lit up the few metres of the rocky tunnel nearest to him, beyond which the tunnel faded into blackness except for a faint glow in the distance to the right.

  In the other direction, above the pipes on the walls, stood a row of wooden wheels taller than Logan, lashed together from poles and attached to wooden axles that protruded from the wall. Wooden rods protruded from the side of each wheel, maybe twenty of them around the circumference, as though someone could grab them, and turn the wheels by hand.

  Beyond the wheels, the tunnel ended in black. There was only one sensible way to go.

  He crept along the dirt floor of the tunnel toward the glow, stopping and listening every few metres.

  The mumbling grew louder, but was hard to decipher after it echoed from the hard walls of the tunnel. A few metres from the light, he turned off the IR illuminators, and slid the goggles up onto his forehead. The tunnel curved to the left, and he put his back to the wall, pressing himself as close to it as he could as he crept around the corner. The light was coming from an open doorway on the far side of the tunnel, just a few metres ahead of him.

  He could make out a voice now. A familiar voice.

  Volkov’s.

  “I need to know where my men are.”

  “Sergeant,” another male voice said, “your men have already loaded up their truck, and left.”

  “And they didn’t even inform me?”

  “I believe they tried. Comms are bad right now with these solar storms. You’re lucky you were able to get through to us now. You may not be able to later.”