by Sara King
“Wait,” Joe said, holding up the Planetary Positioning Unit. “Can you show us how these work?”
Linin frowned at the unit, then at Joe. “You’re not gonna learn the PPU until your second year.”
“We could use it now,” Joe said.
Commander Linin snorted. “A good fifty percent of you weren’t even literate when you were drafted, and you ashpile Humans take extreme repetition to learn even the most basic tasks.” He gave Joe and his sleeves a pointed look. “Dressing yourselves, for instance.”
“I can read,” Joe said, desperate, now. He could feel the tunnels down there, under the ship, and his heart wouldn’t stop hammering at the thought of getting lost in them.
Linin snorted. “They say you sooty furglings wrote in lines.” He shook his turd-shaped head, making the hahkta slap against the sides of his face. “They’re sending specialized linguists to deal with you furglings next turn. Until then, I don’t have enough time to teach you slugs to read.” He wrenched open the gate to the haauk. “Figure it out yourselves.” In the tunnel underneath, Joe could see movement in the shadows.
“They’re waiting for us!” Joe shouted into his headcom. To Linin, he said, “We need another tunnel.”
“Burn that,” Linin said. “You get the tunnel we give you.”
Frustrated, Joe started firing at the movement in the shadows. “Fourth Platoon’s got cover! Second and Third jump in there!” Libby squatted beside him and opened fire.
“Burn it, Zero. Take your own platoon down there.” Joe recognized the speaker as Third Platoon’s battlemaster.
“You know, the nine tics doesn’t start until you get off the haauk,” Commander Linin said casually, leaning against the skimmer’s armored side.
“Someone’s gonna have to get in there,” Joe shouted.
“We could sure use some grenades,” someone muttered.
“That would plug the tunnel,” Commander Linin commented behind them.
Joe frantically tried to figure out what to do. Two attackers had already been hit and the game hadn’t even started yet. He peered into the darkness of the tunnel. There couldn’t be more than two defenders down there. The attackers had them outnumbered, but none of them wanted to climb out of safety and go press their advantage.
Joe surveyed First Company. They had pulled away from the hatch in the massive haauk, huddling down and to the back to avoid the spray of goop. Several of the kids were watching him, and not all of them were from Fourth Platoon, either.
Joe took a deep breath. The longer they waited, the more time the defenders would have to reinforce their tunnel. Steeling himself, he said, “Libby, Scott, Maggie, Monk, down the hole!” He got up and lunged through the open gate, down into the dark pit, firing as he fell. Libby was right behind him. Seeing more attackers pouring in after them, the defenders pulled back, shouting for help from their companions.
Libby started to follow the retreating defenders, but Joe grabbed her arm. “No,” he said. “Fourth Platoon stays at the surface.” She gave him an odd look, but stayed.
Behind him, the rest of First Company was pouring from the skimmer, swarming the tunnel. “Fourth Platoon hang back!” Joe shouted. “We’ll protect our ass!”
If the other Battlemasters heard, they were too busy shouting orders, pushing their own platoons deeper into the warren. Soon thereafter, one of them started screaming. In minutes, only Fourth Platoon was still in the entryway.
“I’ll go keep watch,” Libby said, moving toward the rim of the pit.
“Wait,” Joe said. “Maybe if we make it look like the tunnel’s empty, they’ll come to get us.”
Which is exactly what happened. One entrepreneuring squad leader rushed his recruits across the surface, thinking to take them by surprise. Joe and his squad surprised them and disabled all eighteen without losing a single recruit. Then they waited, hunkered down in their pit, surveying the abandoned landscape for any signs of another attack. There were none. They were alone.
Still, Joe couldn’t bring himself to lead them back to the fight.
“They’re all down below,” Scott said. Like everyone else, he could hear the fighting taking place over the headcom. “Why’re we still up here, Joe?”
Joe tensed, wondering if his groundmates had any suspicion of his fears. He’d been afraid Libby had begun to catch on, but when he looked at her, she said nothing.
How are you gonna lead these kids if you’re goddamn claustrophobic?
Joe glanced at his friends’ faces, his hands sweaty. They looked irritated for the lack of action, but they didn’t appear to notice he was procrastinating. That wouldn’t last long, though. They were glancing at each other, then out across the pitted clearing, obviously noticing the fact that there was no one here for them to fight. In his ear, the other battlemasters were demanding that Joe get down there and help them. Joe pulled off his helmet and took a deep breath. He was letting everyone down. He had to do something.
And yet, the idea of leading them down into the darkness below made his guts clench up in terror. He already felt like he had to take a massive liquid dump, just from the sheer proximity of the dark hole in the ground. “Listen up, everybody,” Joe managed, his voice cracking. His hands, he noticed, were shaking badly. “We’re changing tunnels—there’s too much fighting blocking the path to the flag with this one. We’re gonna change to a different entry point, but first I need a volunteer, someone to go out there and see if anyone shoots at you.”
Several recruits’ faces soured at that, but Maggie immediately raised her hand and said, “I’ll do it, Joe!”
Joe gave her a relieved grin. “Okay, Mag. Give your spare ammo to somebody. Then run out that way as far as you can until I tell you to come back. Act like you’re running scared.” Joe pointed toward the other side of the clearing.
Maggie beamed and handed her ammo to Monk. Then she got up and crawled out of the pit. When nobody shot at her, she broke into a run. Libby watched her as she crossed the surface, her face unreadable.
“She’s not getting shot,” Libby said finally.
Joe called her back, and when Maggie returned, she was flushed and panting. She hacked up a lump of red from her chest and took her ammunition back from Monk.
“What’d it look like out there?” Joe asked.
“Nobody out there,” Maggie replied. “I even looked down a few holes. Everything’s empty.”
Joe slipped his helmet back on. “Okay everybody, let’s go.” He got up and led them sprinting across the landscape, ignoring the other platoons’ shouts in his headcom. He found a tunnel entrance on the other side of the battlefield and Joe only hesitated a moment, eying the height and width of the walls before hurrying inside.
Almost immediately, they got lost.
“I can’t see anything,” Monk muttered, after they’d been wandering for hours. The space was dimly lit with the glowing blue light of their guns, all the tunnels looking the same in the underground maze. “Where are we, Joe?”
“We’re lost, stupid.” Sasha, who had been demoted to a grounder after her walking episode three days earlier, was haphazardly gripping her rifle with one hand, leaning against the tunnel wall with the same air of casual indifference she had borne ever since losing her rank to Joe.
“Just shut up, Sasha.” Joe had finally given up on trying to get to the flag in the center chamber and now just wanted to get them back to the surface. He slumped against the wall. His hands were shaking outright, now. He was using every spare ounce of self-control trying to keep himself from panicking in front of the little kids and he felt himself dangerously close to a breakdown.
“Maybe they ended the hunt,” Libby said. “I haven’t heard anything in a while.”
“Me, neither,” Joe said. “But that could just mean the rest of the platoons are dead.” He cleared his throat, glad to have a distraction to take his mind from the fact that he had spent the last several hours trapped and lost under the earth. Into his headcom,
he said, “Hey, any other battlemasters out there? This is Zero, Fourth Platoon. Can anyone hear me?”
There was no reply.
“Well, soot,” Joe said. “If I could make this stupid thing work, I could tell you where we are, but I can’t read Congie.” Joe flipped his Planetary Positioning Unit away in disgust. In the gloom, Libby bent to pick it up. The unit was surprisingly sturdy, made from some sort of metal composite that refused to scratch, dent, or bend.
She handed it back to him. “Nebil said we run laps ‘til our feet bleed if we lose anything,” she reminded him.
“Thanks,” Joe muttered. He stuffed it back into his cargo pocket in disgust.
“Last time the hunt ended, we heard it in our helmets,” Scott said. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”
“Maybe we’re out of range,” Libby said.
“Out of range?” Sasha scoffed. “These things work in outer space.”
“There’s a lot of diamond dirt above our heads,” Scott said. “Maybe it’s blocking the signal.”
Joe’s skin grew slick and cold with the thought. He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. “If the hunt was over, they’d send Takki after us,” Joe said. “So we’re still supposed to be trying to find the flag.”
“Then let’s find the flag,” Libby said. “It’s gotta be down here somewhere.”
“Scott, which way’s the way we came in?” Joe asked, able to only really think about the surface at this point. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking in hours.
Scott sheepishly pointed to a wall of dirt.
“Fat lot of good that does us!” Joe snapped, losing it. Then, at Scott’s cringe, he caught himself and took a deep, steadying breath. The walls hadn’t closed on him yet. He was doing fine. All he had to do was keep his cool. He let his breath out slowly. “Can you get us out of here, Scott?” he asked.
Libby shot him a glance and said, “Can you get us to the flag?”
Monk sniffed. “Maybe we’re at the bottom already. We went down a long ways, Joe. Like my Uncle George in the mineshafts right before they collapsed and they gave Aunt Susie that huge check.”
Oh God, Joe thought, his fingers reflexively clutching his rifle. Oh God oh God oh God…
But the other kids went on as if Monk hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary.
“Seriously?” Scott said. “A check? Like how much of a check?”
“A big house and new car and llamas check,” Monk replied. “She bought llamas. They spit.”
“No they don’t,” Maggie said.
“Do too,” Monk retorted. “One of them spat in my hair. It was green and gooey.”
“My grandmother had llamas,” Scott said.
“The flag, Scott,” Libby reminded him.
“Oh.” He winced guiltily. “Yeah, I dunno.”
“Well, how did you get us back home?” Libby demanded. “Can’t you do the same thing and get us to the deep den? You said you felt the city, Scott.”
Scott grimaced. “Yeah, uh, okay. If I knew where it was, I could get us there, but right now, all I can do is guess. Like, I can feel there’s a tunnel directly underneath us, but that’s like twenty feet down.”
Twenty feet down… Joe felt his face break out in sweat and his heart start to hammer. The flag, he knew, was always in the deepest section of the tunnels. They had to go deeper…
“Joe, maybe we should let Scott lead.” Libby was looking at Joe, eying him a little too carefully.
“I don’t wanna lead,” Scott said, eying the empty black tunnel ahead of them. “The ones who lead get shot.”
“Try, okay?” Joe managed. “We’ve tried marking our path and turning left at every intersection. That just got us even more lost. Maybe you should see what you can do, okay? We can’t get any worse off than we are right now.”
“Second Battalion could find us,” Monk reminded them.
“Right now, I’d love it if Second Battalion found us,” Joe retorted. “At least if Lagrah’s recruits found us, we could all get shot and we won’t end up having to explain to Tril why we ran away.”
“We didn’t run away,” Maggie said, frowning.
“I know, Mag,” Joe said. “But you gotta admit it looks pretty damn bad. Scott, how ‘bout it? Think you can get us out of here?”
Scott straightened, looking increasingly irritated. “You want me to get us out of here or find the flag? Which is it?”
“The flag,” Libby snapped.
“Too bad!” Scott snapped back. “I can’t do either. It’s a burning maze. A sense of direction doesn’t mean jack shit if I can’t go where my head’s telling me to go.”
“Don’t be an asher, Scott,” Joe muttered.
“Libby’s the asher,” Scott screamed. “We’re stuck down here and we’re not getting home and it’s her fault because she wouldn’t listen to me when I kept telling her she was taking the wrong tunnels!” He sat down and crossed his arms over his knees.
A hand touched Joe’s shoulder. “Excuse me,” a kid said quietly.
Joe rounded on him. “What?!”
The kid nervously pointed at Scott. “Is that the kid that got your groundteam back to Alishai before all the others?”
Joe frowned at the newcomer. “Yeah. Why?”
The kid blushed and dropped his eyes. “I played a lot of video games before the Draft. Pyramid PI was almost exactly like this. It was a huge Egyptian maze with the Pharaoh’s tomb at the end. I’m the only one I knew who could get all the way to the tomb and then all the way out again without using the magic transporter at the end. If I can use Scott as a…a…” The kid swallowed and looked at his feet.
“Use him as a what?” Joe barked.
“Compass,” the kid squeaked. “I think I can get us out if I had a compass.”
Joe peered at him. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Carl, Zero.”
“My name is Joe. And if you think you can get us out of here, Scott will help you out.” He turned to glance at groundmate. “Scott, help him out.”
Scott ignored him, sniffing. Joe kicked him. “Be his compass.”
His groundmate snorted and rolled his eyes. Joe kicked him again, harder.
Scott lunged to his feet. “Goddamn it, what the hell do you want me to do? Hold his hand?!”
Carl twined his fingers and stared at the ground. “Back on the game, “I always had a compass in the corner of the screen.”
“So?” Scott said, glaring.
“Just do what he says, Scott,” Joe warned.
Carl looked like he was about to have some sort of death-by-shyness. He swallowed and glanced at Joe, then finally found the courage to look at Scott. “I can navigate a maze no problem, as long as I have a compass. I just have to be able to see you all the time.”
“You mean walk in front.”
“Yeah.” Carl blushed.
“I hate walking in front.”
“He’ll walk in front,” Joe and Libby said at the same time.
Scott sighed deeply. “That’s it?”
“No. I’m gonna need you to…to…” Carl turned as red as a beet. In the bluish light of the guns, he looked purple.
“Oh spit it out,” Scott muttered.
Carl’s next sentence came out all in one breath. “I need you to hold out your arm and point toward the entrance all the time.”
Scott stared at him. “You’re kidding.” He glanced at Joe. “He’s kidding, right?”
“Just do it,” Joe said.
Sulking, Scott lifted his hand and pointed at the wall.
Joe nodded. “Go ahead, Carl.”
“And get us to the flag,” Libby added, still giving Joe that odd look. “We go back to the surface now, Tril will give us perceptual punishment.”
Joe bit down the urge to contradict her and instead nodded.
Still red as a beet, Carl said to Scott, “Okay, so start walking. As soon as you come to an intersection, stop.”
“Do I have t
o hold my arm up the whole time?” Scott whined.
“Yes,” Libby and Joe said as one.
“Oh man,” Scott muttered. “What if someone shoots me in the back?”
“Libby will watch your back,” Joe said, gesturing at her.
Libby obediently started down the tunnel, gun up. When Scott just crossed his arms and pouted, she frowned, stalked back, grabbed him by a hand, and tugged him deeper into the darkness. Though Scott technically weighed more than she did and probably could have put up a fight, Libby was taller, and she had the reputation of wiping grins off faces with her combat boot. Everyone in the battalion was terrified of her, some even more than they were of the legendary ‘Zero.’ Probably wisely, Scott went utterly meek in her grip, trudging along and rolling his eyes, one arm held up in disgust.
For what seemed like an eternity, they walked, Libby and Scott leading the way, Carl staring at his arm in rapt attention. When they reached a four-way intersection, immediately Carl told them to turn left. Then Scott was walking backwards, complaining even more loudly.
They made six more turns over another hour, then Libby suddenly brought them up short. She released Scott’s hand abruptly and grabbed her rifle. Scott, who had been leaning on her as a form of noncompliance, fell onto his ass. As soon as he started to curse, Libby kicked his arm. “Shhh. Does anyone hear that?”
Voices? Joe held his breath, trying to pinpoint the source.
“Nice going, asher,” Scott muttered, getting back to his feet. “You led us to the bad guys.”
“Shut up, Scott,” Libby snapped. “That’s what we told him to do.”
“It only sounds like a couple,” Maggie whispered.
“Could be a lot more and only two’s talking,” Libby said.
“Okay, get ready for a fight, guys,” Joe said, “I want my best shooters in front. Libby, Scott, Carl. If it’s more than two, Sasha, you and your best groundmate are gonna help us out. If it’s more than four, everybody just start firing. Got it?”