Rebellion

by Edward M. Grant

  “What happened?” she said.

  “They must have decided to destroy the mine to cover their tracks. Or to trap us in here.”

  The tunnel shook again, and loose dirt and stones fell from the roof.

  “And I would guess that was probably the emergency exit tunnel going up.”

  She gasped, and her body shook. “Then we’re trapped? We’re going to die in this darkness?”

  Logan glanced behind them. The rocks piled up beyond the mouth of the tunnel were too big for him to move.

  With a suit, he might be able to do it, but the only suits were on Bairamov and Desoto, and they’d be busy trying to dig themselves out right now.

  If they were still alive.

  In any case, there was no point in trying to get out that way, when the mine entrance would be blocked, too. He thought back to the last second before he dove into the tunnel, and what he’d been able to see. The dark entrance to one more tunnel above them, then the mine entrance above that.

  He peered into the distance along the tunnel where they stood. There was a side tunnel just ahead. Something long and thin lay near floor level, and followed the tunnel onward.

  Pipes. Metal pipes ran along the walls. He grabbed the girl’s hand, and pulled her toward the tunnel.

  “I think I have a way out.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Logan climbed up the wooden ladder. It had been easy to find by following the pipes, which now rose beside it, up the shaft between levels, along the wall. The ladder ended just above the floor of the next level, and he pulled himself out of the shaft, then grabbed the girl’s hand and helped her up beside him. The pipes led away to the right. He turned on the helmet’s lights and pushed the goggles away from his face. There was little point trying to be stealthy any more, now the Montagnards and Panzergrenadiers had left the mine.

  The girl raised her hand in front of her face. “Turn that off.”

  She’d been in the dark for the last hour or more. No wonder her eyes needed some time to adjust to the harsh glow. Logan turned away from her, aiming the lights down the tunnel.

  “You’ll get used to it in a minute or two.”

  He followed the pipes along the tunnel. She crept behind him, blinking, and holding her arms out in front of her. He grabbed her hand again, and helped her on to the next junction. The pipes turned left, and he went that way.

  This was beginning to look familiar. Those wooden wheels on the wall with the handles. More pipes joining those he was following, down near the floor. The wide, curved surface of the effluent pipe leading out to the cliff face.

  And the hatch, still slightly open.

  He stopped beside the pipe and lifted the hatch.

  “What is that?” she said.

  ‘Our way out. Follow me, and be careful. You don’t want to fall out when the pipe reaches the cliff.”

  He swung his legs down through the hatch, then adjusted the rifle on his back, and dropped into the pipe. The girl peered in and bit her lip for a moment, as though wondering whether she should risk climbing in.

  But where else was she going to go?

  Finally, she clambered in behind him, and crouched low.

  Logan began to move.

  “Where does this go?”

  “Out.”

  Assuming they hadn’t blown this up, too. If they had... well, maybe he could dig his way out somehow. But, if it was clear, they’d be outside in a few minutes.

  There was only one way to find out which.

  “I think I liked it better when I couldn’t see,” the girl said. “Now I can, it feels like this pipe is getting smaller all the time.”

  “I came in this way. If it’s big enough for me, it’s sure big enough for you.”

  “I want to go back.”

  “Sure. Go back into the tunnels in the dark. You’ll be dead in a few days. If you don’t fall down one of those shafts and break your neck, you’ll die of thirst. Or starve.”

  “I don’t want to die at all.”

  “I’d say it’s a bit late for that. You could have been safe at home right now if you hadn’t decided to help the insurgents shoot at us.”

  Her breath was coming in long gasps behind him. So was Logan’s, but he still hadn’t grown accustomed to the air. She’d grown up on the planet, and she must be used to the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere.

  No, she was just scared. And no wonder, after everything that had happened in the last few days. When all was said and done, she was just a girl taken advantage of by adults who should have known better. She couldn’t help it.

  “Are you really going to take me to be tortured?” she said.

  Something was glowing faintly in the distance. “Can you see the stars?” he said, as much to distract her from her fears as to confirm what he was seeing.

  “Where?”

  “Up ahead. At the end of the pipe.”

  And he could definitely see them now. The pipe was still open, and he could see the sky through the hole at the end. Just a few more seconds, and he was slowing for the end of the pipe as it reached the cliff. He stopped just inside, then leaned out of the pipe and looked around them. No sign of anyone waiting, and the only sounds were the running water far below them, and the wind whistling through the valley.

  He grabbed the edge of the pipe, and swung his legs around, down onto the ledge.

  “Careful,” he said. Then helped her out. He nodded to the left. “There’s a ladder that way. You probably don’t want to look down.”

  Though she wouldn’t see much if she did, other than the faint starlight reflecting from the river. All he could see was the ledge ahead of them, in the helmet lights.

  She grabbed his waist, and he turned toward the rock face and helped her along it. He clambered onto the ladder, then climbed up a couple of steps before leaning over and helping her grab the rungs. He climbed higher, pointing his face down so the lights cast an oval glow beside the ladder that she could use to get onto it.

  He stopped as he approached the plateau, turned off the lights, and looked over the edge through the goggles, toward the mine entrance. The truck was gone from the plateau, and the only life he could make out in the starlight was a horse chewing something grassy at the edge of the lake.

  He climbed the last couple of rungs, then helped the girl up. There was something he still had to check before they moved on. He slid the rifle from his back and led the girl across the plateau, toward the mine entrance. Then looked in.

  “Do you see the others?” the girl said.

  The wooden supports holding the tunnel up had collapsed, and rocks were piled up inside the mine entrance, blocking it completely. He and the girl were alone now. They could forget any help from Bairamov and Desoto any time soon. The two Legionnaires were buried under there somewhere.

  “Bairamov? Desoto? Can you hear me?” he said.

  There was no response from the helmet speakers. Nor any signal from their suits shown in his helmet display. And there was nothing he could do for them right now, without a suit of his own to help dig them out. If they were still alive, his only chance was to find the Legion and return with help.

  The horse had taken a step into the lake while they peered into the tunnel. The reins dangled down over its neck as it tapped its front hooves against the ground, and sucked up water from the lake. Logan turned the helmet lights back on, and helped the girl toward it.

  The horse looked up as they approached. He’d never ridden a horse before. But how hard could they be to drive?

  “I need your horse,” he said. “I have to find those damn Panzergrenadiers, and warn the Legion. If you head back down the road, you can be in Saint Jean before sunrise.”

  The horse returned to drinking, and ignored Logan as he approached it. He patted the animal’s neck. Maybe that would help keep it calm.

  Then he put his foot into one of the stirrups, and hauled himself up, throwing his leg over the far side of the saddle. The horse continued to drink, a
nd its head was so low that the reins had slid half-way down its neck. Logan leaned forward and grabbed them, then pulled them back up. As the reins pulled its head, the horse puffed air through its nose, and twisted its head against them. It chewed on the bit, with a metallic rattle.

  “I’m coming with you,” the girl said.

  “This is probably a one-way trip.”

  He hadn’t really thought about that until he spoke, but it was true. If the Montagnards and Panzergrenadiers didn’t get him, the sun would be up in a few hours, and he’d be out in the open for the next solar storm. The odds really weren’t good.

  He looked up at the sky. Earth must be there somewhere, but, without his suit, he couldn’t even tell which star it might be orbiting. It was strange to think he’d be buried such a long way from home, if the Legion ever found him. And, odds were, no-one he knew on Earth would ever even know.

  Still, if he stopped the Panzergrenadiers, maybe someone would write a marching song about him. A grand one, that went well with a bottle of wine and a pint of beer.

  The girl stepped up beside the horse’s neck, and stared into Logan’s face. She seemed to be losing some of her fear now they were out of the tunnels.

  “They killed my aunt. I want to stop them too.”

  “And they’ll kill you as well, if you’re with me.”

  She grabbed the reins, and adjusted them in his hands, then shifted his boots in the stirrups.

  “Besides, you really don’t know what you’re doing. You need someone to help you.”

  She put her foot on top of Logan’s boot in the stirrup, then grabbed the saddle and his waist, and hauled herself up behind him. Logan slung his rifle around across his chest as she put her arms around his waist. Then she leaned forward, far enough to look past his shoulder.

  “I thought you said it was slow with two?” he said.

  “Not as slow as you’d be, trying to figure it out by yourself. Now, press your legs against her sides to get her going, and steer with the reins.”

  He pressed his boots against the horse. It shook its head, then began to move forward. Its legs sloshed through the lake toward the dirt banks around it. Logan leaned forward and clung on with his feet as the horse climbed out, and its back tilted beneath him.

  A wide trail of metre-long footprints from the Panzergrenadier suits, and rough gouges from the truck and trailers, ran up the hillside near the mine entrance.

  “How fast can this thing go?” he said.

  “Not as fast as men run in those suits.”

  “Then I guess we’d better get moving.”

  He pulled hard on the right rein. The horse’s hooves stomped on the hard dirt as it turned toward the tracks. Then he kicked the horse’s side, and tried to hold on as it accelerated beneath them.

  CHAPTER 31

  Logan might not have known much about horses before he climbed onto this one, but, with the girl’s help, he’d learned a lot about them as it raced across the hillsides following the trail the Panzergrenadiers and truck had left behind them. The horse was panting beneath them now, and running noticeably slower than when they’d left the mine. Logan’s legs ached, his arms ached, and his butt ached. Death would almost be better than another minute trapped on the back of this thing.

  The horse approached a field of rocks as it descended the hillside ahead. Logan clung on tighter as the horse crouched slightly, then jumped forward, stretched its legs out as it flew over the rocks, then lowered them again as it hit the ground on the far side. The girl twisted on the saddle behind him, and he reached back and grabbed her to hold her in place.

  “How much further,” she gasped, pulling tighter on his waist and pressing her head against his back.

  The first glow of dawn lit the sky behind them. The sun would be rising above the hills before long.

  He could finally see the Panzergrenadiers and the truck a little more than a kilometre ahead. He was lucky they’d taken the truck, because it had slowed the suits down. They must have needed a way to transport all the Montagnards, who didn’t have suits to protect them against radiation.

  But he’d missed any chance of warning the Legion before the insurgents arrived. He could hear the crack of rifle fire and the thump and boom of grenade and RPG explosions up ahead.

  The fight was already on.

  He pulled back on the reins, and the horse slowed to a trot, then to a walk. It gasped for breath as its feet slowed, and twisted its head against the reins. It must be as glad to slow down as Logan’s body was. And he’d just been clinging on to the creature’s back, not running.

  He studied the scene ahead of them. The truck was parked a few hundred metres behind the insurgents. They were carefully advancing up a ridge, with the Montagnards leading, and the Panzergrenadiers providing support fire from the rear. Logan could make out the curved buildings of a small village on top of the ridge, and a flagpole where a tricolour flag still fluttered in the morning breeze. No civilians moved in the streets, only combat suits. Legion suits.

  Hopefully the villagers had got the hell out before the fight began. They wouldn’t stand much chance otherwise, with the amount of ordnance flying toward the village.

  At least the Legion had some kind of defensive position. But the Panzergrenadiers were living up to their name, as their grenades flew high through the dark sky toward the ridge, and exploded among the rocks and low trees that still remained around the village.

  Logan walked the horse carefully around the battle, keeping his distance from the insurgents. Unless he got a lucky hit on a vital system, his rifle would do little to a man in a suit, except annoy him. Maybe he’d damage their weapons, if he was lucky. Punching through that armour would require something with more power, like a MAS-99 or RPG.

  The main attack wave was trying to fight its way up the ridge, while more groups of Montagnards and a handful of Panzergrenadiers tried to flank the defences to the east and west. As he approached the ridge, his helmet began to receive messages from the company net. Volkov’s voice barked orders. Lieutenant Merle asked for status.

  Logan could just turn around, and look for a place to hide out the day. Wait for the end of the battle, and see who won. He was too late to warn them before the insurgents attacked. He could only provide one more body to shoot back.

  But he couldn’t just sit there and watch them die, to save his own skin.

  Besides, what would happen to any surviving villagers if the Montagnards found them? He wasn’t having another massacre on his conscience. If all he could do was take a few of them with him, so be it.

  “I have to get in there.”

  The girl leaned past his shoulder. “I’d rather be in one of those buildings than out here while the sun is up.”

  Logan swung the rifle around to his side, grabbed the pistol grip with his right hand, and used the sling to support it from his shoulder as he held it against his hip.

  “So, what is your name, anyway?”

  He waited a second for her to respond. Then she did.

  “It’s Nicole.”

  “Well, Nicole... hang on.”

  Logan pulled the right rein hard, and kicked the horse’s side. It began to walk, and he pressed harder with his legs against its side, until it broke into a fast trot. He pulled it around toward the village as it accelerated to a gallop. There were only a few dozen men between him and the village.

  Only.

  The horse’s hooves thundered across the ground, and the creature gasped for breath. Spit flew from its lips as it used up whatever reserves of strength it had left.

  Two Panzergrenadiers lay prone behind rocks, firing rifles at the village. Logan pulled the horse around to the left, and sprayed the nearest suit as he passed. Most of the bullets went wide, and impacted the dirt around the rock, but sparks flew from the suit where some hit.

  For a few seconds, the Panzergrenadiers seemed to have no idea of what had happened as the horse passed them and charged on.

  Then the riflemen
behind them began to fire. Rounds tore up the dirt to Logan’s right, and he swung the horse to the left.

  A Montagnard rifleman was crawling forward among the rocks ahead of the horse, and another was setting up an RPG behind a rock to their left. Logan pulled the left rein harder, and swung the horse between the rifleman and grenadier.

  He twisted the rifle to point across the horse’s neck and fired. The burst threw up a shower of dirt around the grenadier, and Logan raised the barrel. The next burst ricocheted off the rock. The Montagnard dropped the RPG, then ducked behind the rock.

  Two Panzergrenadiers up ahead.

  They raised their arms, aiming their suits’ built-in grenade launchers at the village, and firing bursts of grenades that way. One turned toward Logan. Their net must be full of reports of some crazy guy with a rifle on a horse by now. Logan fired at him. Splinters of glass exploded from the man’s helmet visor as rounds impacted, but failed to penetrate. Maybe it would make them hard to see.

  Then the horse was past the front line of Panzergrenadiers on this side of the ridge. A handful of the Montagnards were crawling up the hillside ahead of him, or making a run from cover to cover. Some turned toward him, and fired their rifles as he approached. Logan ducked as rounds cracked through the air around them, swung his rifle their way, and fired until the magazine was empty.

  A Montagnard went down, oozing blood from what was left of his face. Another fell backwards, screaming, as a round tore off the lower half of his leg. The rest took cover and fired as the horse passed, moving too fast for the riflemen to aim.

  There was nothing much left to do, except gallop as fast as the horse could until they reached the village. Logan pulled the reins at random, and the horse followed a twisting path up the ridge. Rifle rounds slammed into the ground around them, and more passed over their heads. Whether aimed for them, or heading for the village, was hard to say. But the horse was now racing directly into the crossfire between the two sides.