A small portion of my mind reminded me of the way Mack had been beaten into the ground, and I told it to be quiet. Some things a girl just doesn’t want to think about, especially not when she’s about to head into a bug infested hole owned by a rat of intergalactic proportions. Ants and hornets aside, I could think of another infestation I wanted to clear out. It was nice to have someone to be mad about that wasn’t Mack...or Odyssey...or Delight...or Tens.
Tens snorted in my head, and I was glad to be reminded I wasn’t alone, even grateful that he was along for the ride.
“Anytime, kiddo,” he said, and I didn’t feel quite so grateful, anymore.
Man couldn’t have been that much older than I was.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, and I remembered his old girlfriend was a lot older than I was, and decided I didn’t have time to go there.
“Darn right, you don’t,” he said, “but I’ve got a good connection, and the team is standing by to haul your ass out of there if you need it.”
They were, were they? Well, that was damn good to know. Having teleportation as an option for getting out of this hole was a definite bonus—and it wasn’t even my birthday!
“You could always walk.”
“No thanks, Tens. I’m good. You can give me a lift any time you think I need it.”
“I think you need a lift under the ear, right about now.”
I couldn’t stop the smile tweaking my lips.
“You and whose army?”
“Come up here and find out.”
“Not right now. I’ve got more important things to do.”
And he clucked, making chicken noises run through the implant, until I wanted to laugh out loud.
“Child,” I said, and was brought rudely back to the present when Easrick spoke.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, coming up to stand in front of me, and I realized my smile had leaked into a grin.
The way he was positioned put him right between me and the pre-fab. It also trapped me between him and the crawler where I presumed my trigger-happy guardian was still aiming point-blank at my head. And it let him stay side on to the firing slit and the mesh gate, which was a direction his eyes barely strayed from.
“Well?” he asked, when I was silent.
I thought fast.
“I was just wondering how many other contractors have gone before me?” I answered, keeping as close an eye on his face as I could.
He frowned, but didn’t reply, so I pushed a little bit more.
“I mean this footage of her heading into the elevator has got to be at least two months old, and I don’t imagine his lordship is a very patient man. He’d have had someone on her trail just as soon as he’d found out what she’d taken.”
Again, Easrick didn’t respond, so I sighed.
“So,” I wheedled, “how many have there been?”
He snapped his head around, giving me the full benefit of his glare, and I wondered exactly how many troops had been frightened by similar looks in the past. It only made me want to start a fight, since I wasn’t going to let myself be intimidated by anyone—not after Delight, or Odyssey, or even Mack. Nope, never again. I glared back.
“Was it in the briefing?” he asked, clearly unimpressed.
I cocked my head, and put my hands on my hips. He was only half a head taller than me, nowhere near as imposing as Mack’s seven feet.
“You lose any men because something was left out of a briefing, and some bastard wouldn’t share?”
It was a challenge, but it was something that hit home. For a moment, his expression rippled, and I thought I might be getting somewhere, but then his face hardened, and he handed me my pack, and the box holding my gear.
“What might and might not have been lost doesn’t change my orders,” he said, and I knew he’d chosen his side and wouldn’t be shifted. “His lordship didn’t tell you how many had gone before, or if any even had? Then I’m not free to divulge.”
He glanced at the gate.
“And you’re wasting daylight. You want to be a good ways from here before the night cycle hits, because this cavern will be crawling.”
“Ants?” I asked, packing my weapons back into the places they belonged, unstrapping the holsters, and then dragging the suit of light combat armor on, before climbing back into the weapons rig.
“You wish.”
I wanted to ask him exactly what sort of crawling he might mean, but really didn’t have time—and Easrick was clearly not in the mood.
He watched, and I sensed him going over the harness with a practiced eye. He might not be running a manual check, but he couldn’t help checking I’d put things on right. I checked my blades, and then pulled my boots on. It felt good to have something between my feet and the hard stone floor. When I was done, we headed for the gate.
Behind us, I heard boots hit the pavement, followed by the crawler door slamming shut. I guess my guardian had decided I didn’t need shooting any more... or he had to move to clear his line of fire. Either worked.
When we hit the gate, Easrick looked down at the guards on either side.
“Nothing, sir. Looks clear.”
“Crack the gate.”
He didn’t move, save for a slight movement of the head as he surveyed the cavern beyond.
“Tunnel you want, is that way,” he said, lifting his chin in the required direction. “You’ll need your goggles.”
Like I hadn’t already worked that out.
I didn’t say a word, just pulled the dark-vis goggles into place, and stepped through the foot-wide opening between the gate-edge and the plassteel frame supporting it. This time, Easrick let me take the lead—and he didn’t follow. He just pushed the gate closed behind me, and sealed the locks. I turned around to ask him if that was the same tunnel he’d pointed out to everyone else, but he’d already turned away.
All I got was a good look at the business end of half a dozen blasters, with not a look of sympathy from any of the men holding them.
“I’ll be going, then,” I said, and walked out into the dark. “Bastards.”
13—The Place is Crawling
Crossing the cavern, with an armed outpost at my back wasn’t as easy as it seemed. For one thing, I had no guarantee that any one of those boys would open fire, if I was attacked. As far as I could tell, their duty was to protect the mines, not me. And, for a second thing, whatever stim Mack had given me seemed to have worn off, and I could no longer access the map in my head, while navigating to where I wanted to go.
Life can be a real bitch, sometimes.
I didn’t let that stop me, just kept a good, close eye on the dark, and moved carefully over the unfamiliar terrain. This part, the floor was mostly smooth, with just the odd bit of rubble or debris lying on the floor. Those bits were enough to stub a toe, or roll an ankle, on, but they were nothing to what I expected to find in the caverns proper. Those suckers, after all, didn’t need to have roads for mining vehicles, or men; they just were.
I moved swiftly and easily towards the tunnel Easrick had indicated, my ears aching as they strained to hear anything beyond the sound of my own footsteps. When I’d reached the other side and eased my way just past the tunnel mouth, I stopped. There was another alcove here, similar to the ones the workers had used as duck-ins to let us pass in the mines proper. It would give me shelter enough to check the map.
“Of all the self-licking, auto-gyrating, fuck-twisted, love-nutted, ass-wiping paranoid fucktards in a universe of paranoid self-licking fucktards!” I muttered, keeping my voice down to an outraged whisper—and even then it felt too loud in the tunnel’s confines.
“What,” but Tens wasn’t asking a question, and I couldn’t hear his voice echoing through the dark around me.
“The map doesn’t match.”
“What?” Now, the man sounded upset—but at least he was upset for me, and not at me.
“The map doesn’t match,” I repeated, glad I could keep the realization in
my head, and the outrage I felt firmly behind my teeth and out of the dark. “The fucking map doesn’t fucking match the fucking tunnels. The fardnardling fuck knuckle gave me shit, and now I’m fucked six ways to stardust and haven’t got a fucking clue as to where the fuck I am!”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Tens spoke.
“That was rather uninspired.”
“So, shoot me. I’m having a bad day.”
“Honey, you don’t know the half of it,” and there was a phrase I didn’t need to hear.
“What is it, Case?”
“I can barely get a scan off the level you’re on—and even then it’s dirty with the levels above it, so I can’t be sure of what I’m seeing. Tens is doing his best to calibrate it, but it’s still going to be a bit dodgy round the edges...”
“And...” I couldn’t help it; I was drumming my fingers on my arm, again.
“I know from his lordship’s maps that the mines go down at least another twenty levels, but the next level’s a complete blank. We’re trying to hack a path through one of the satellites that passes over the Carafakt, but, unless we get the right angle, you’re going to be running blind as soon as you go down.”
“Who says I need to do that?” I asked, pushing aside the double meaning that layered her words. I was pretty darn sure she hadn’t meant to add it in—and if she caught that thought, Case didn’t try to enlighten me.
I took a moment, closing my eyes to block out the tunnel’s darkness, and taking in a long, deep breath. Letting the breath out just as slowly, I thought about what I had to do next. ‘Down’ was pretty obvious, since that was the way the servant woman had taken, and it was sure as shit the way the tracker pointed.
“Well,” I said, out loud and quiet, as I opened my eyes, “sucks to be me, then, doesn’t it?”
Neither of them had an answer for that, so I kept talking.
“Just tell me if the teleport lock gets wobbly.”
This time, I didn’t wait for a response. I pushed off the wall, and checked the tunnel for company. It stayed as empty as it had been, before, so I stepped out and followed the trail Barangail had given me, all the while, trying not to think of exactly how much he’d lied to me. If the trail he’d laid was false, if the tracer he’d tagged the maid with wasn’t working, then I was just as much in the dark as she was.
Maybe even more so, since she had seemed to have half a clue as to where she might be going. Which reminded me... I stopped, again. This time, I didn’t bother finding a duck-in, since it wasn’t like I’d have to get out of anything’s way. I tapped Tens and Case, again, sending them the image of the woman in the image Barangail had supplied.
“This is the woman who stole the bracelet,” I said, and then passed them up the image of the bracelet, “and this is the bracelet. Why don’t you see what you can pull on both of them, since our patron doesn’t seem to have a good relationship with the truth.”
Turns out it was a good question to ask.
I’d been trotting through the tunnel, towards the slant-wise cutting that would take me down a level, when Tens and Case called me back.
“That wasn’t the maid,” Tens said. “It was the concubine.”
“Figures.”
I slowed to a walk, found an alcove, checked it for creepy crawlies, and stepped inside.
“Go on.”
“And it’s a slave bracelet.”
“A what?”
“You heard the man,” Case told me. “A slave bracelet. You know, the kind of thing that stops folk from running away, or lets their masters track them.”
“Uh huh. So why does he need me, then?”
“That would be the thing to ask.”
I huffed out a sigh.
“No point. He probably wouldn’t tell the truth, anyway. What I want to know is why he hasn’t sent a squad after her, and why he needs someone from off-world. And it would be good to know I wasn’t’ going to be retrieving a person, because you know the contract’s breached nine ways to Hell, if he expects that. I’m not taking anyone back to slavery under that asshole.”
“Literally,” Case said, and I rolled my eyes.
Not what I needed to hear.
She snickered.
“That was not intentional.”
Uh huh, sure it wasn’t.
“It wasn’t, but whatever,” Case grumbled. “The thing is, if we want to take the bracelet back to his lordship, we’re going to have to work out a way to remove it, because I think it might still be attached.”
The thought had already crossed my mind, but I didn’t need to point it out. We had to find the bracelet, first.
“I’ll keep looking. Let’s hope the tracker he gave me is actually what we need.”
“Nope,” Tens said. “That’s the real deal. I’ve checked the bracelet model. It looks pretty, but the tracking waves are unique, and the trace you’re following is the right kind. Now, I just have to hack his lordship’s database to match the waves on record to the waves your tracking—make sure you’re following the concubine, and not someone else. If they don’t match, he’s in breach.”
I was listening with only half an ear, following the direction of the trace for a few feet, and then stopping to make sure I was on the right track. It took a few minutes for me to realize I’d gone past the cutting leading down to the next level. I stopped.
“I’ve gone past the down ramp.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Tens said. “There’s nothing to say she stayed in the mines any longer than she had to.”
“And there are breaks into the caverns just ahead,” Case added. “Has to be more than one way down, right?”
She was right, but I didn’t feel like admitting it. I took a moment to scan the trace, and fix its path in my head, and then I headed back into the tunnel. The floor was a lot more uneven, here, as though this section had been abandoned a lot longer than where I’d just been. I trotted forward, using the night-vis to avoid losing my footing. I twitched the resolution and added in another light level, to see if that enhanced the view. I knew if I raised the goggles it would be like trying to look through ink...kinda.
I also scanned the tunnel walls, remembering to look up at the ceilings, too. I remembered the arach coming over the ceilings, figured they weren’t the only ones who could do that, and wasn’t taking any chances. I couldn’t even tell myself that there weren’t any arach on planet. I’d seen at least two, and then two dozen, and they’d wanted to be seen. There was no telling exactly how many more there might really be.
“Cheerful, Cutter.”
Yeah, well, Tens would know.
I reached the end of the path I’d memorized, and stopped to pull up the trace. This time, Case provided an updated overlay. I’d moved out from under the upper layers of the mine, and the foundations of Barangail’s house, so the ship could get a cleaner scan of where I was. My day was looking up.
“Not likely,” Tens cut in. “Heads up. You’ve got company.”
Well, damn.
I took a couple of seconds to memorize the next section of the trace, and hoped I’d remember it well enough, to kick clear of whatever Tens had seen approaching. It took a couple of sweeps for me to pick the movement at the edge of the tunnel walls, and then a few seconds more for me to realize the mines had cut into a large, open cavern whose ceiling rose some thirty feet over my head.
Double damn.
I tracked the rising wall, and saw movement high up and off to my right. Hoping that was all there was, I quickly picked my way through the debris towards the long, narrow crevice the maid...concubine, had taken to get out of the mines.
“Looks like that will take you down a hundred feet or so,” Case said. “Watch your footing.”
Like I needed to be told, but I didn’t argue. I hustled. A quick glance at the critters on the wall showed they were descending. They also showed they might be the giant ants Easrick had said roamed the tunnels. Were they why this section of mine had been abandon
ed? Or was there something else?
“There’s always something else,” came from Tens, and I resisted the urge to tell him to shut up if he didn’t have anything more helpful to say.
Those bastard things were fast.
I was only half-way to where I needed to be, by the time the first one hit the floor.
Not good.
I took the risk, and ran, cursing as I stumbled over shards of stone, pebbles, and some kind of growth that squished beneath my boots. The smell that rose from that little experiment left a lot to be desired. Keeping my footing was difficult, but not impossible, and I slipped into the crack, just as the sound of a myriad feet grew loud enough for me to really worry about.
“Keep running,” Case said. “They can fit.”
They could?
Well, fuck me sideways, that wasn’t good.
“Shut up and run.”
Easy for her to say; she wasn’t the one trying not break her neck.
She had a point, though. The crevice wasn’t as narrow as it had looked from the other side of the cavern, and there was enough room for someone to have run on either side of me. Easrick, and his squad would have loved it... maybe. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have loved the creatures scrambling along behind me.
“You’re not going to be able to outrun them,” Tens said, just as I reached the same conclusion.
I bolted past an opening in the chasm wall, before I’d fully registered it was there. It looked a Hell of a lot narrower than what I was running down. Maybe I’d stand half a chance if I took it.
Turning back, showed me just how close the ants had come—and they were ants. I was wrong about them being bigger than the arach, though. Must have been a trick of light and distance that had made me think that with the last lot I’d seen. These critters were almost as big as the arach—and that was quite big enough.
I eyeballed the distance between us, and the distance to the hole in the wall, and I ran towards it.
“No, don’t!” and “Stop!” rang out in an alarmed duet, just as something the size of a very large dog came blurring out of the hole.
Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9 Page 11