“Ah Lexa, your chest is most bloodied. What has occurred? Do you require medical attention?” the doctor inquired his hands jerking back and forth.
“No, doc. Khala’s taken care of me.”
“Of course, It is most good to see you. You will not believe what Vakrexid and Doctor Yu have–”
I held my hand up, stopping him short before he could go into one of his long-winded explanations. “Later doctor, the nest isn’t safe for us anymore. We’re leaving.”
“But you do not understand this is most momentous! This discovery could unravel the very fiber of the Qharr soc–”
“I don’t care, unless it’s something that can help up escape Dahl’s clutches. If it’s not relevant to our current situation I don’t want to hear it.”
“You have been injured!” Vakrexid said as his long delicate fingers pulled the bloody cloth away from the wound in my side.
“Like I said, Doctor, I’m fine, Khala is taking care of it. We need to get out of here, NOW!”
“I see, Doctor Yu, it has been most pleasant working with you, but it appears that Vakrexid must now depart,” he tooted and turned to me. “I am ready.”
I turned to leave, but then stopped and turned to Doctor Yu. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but if you know of any alternate escape routes I’d really love to know them.
“You’re right I don’t,” she said folding her arms across her chest. “But I know Dahl and he’s sent people after you it probably doesn’t bode so well for Rayland. My son seems to think highly of you and that’s good enough for me. Find him, and he can get you out safely.”
I nodded then smiled at her. “Should have thought of that myself. Doctor,” I turned to Vakrexid. “Keep behind me, if things get sticky stay low to the ground in case any stray phase bolts or bullets come your way.”
“Oh, yes, most assuredly.”
We departed back through the tunnel and made our way back into the main nester chamber. The rangers I’d taken out earlier were still sprawled unconscious upon the floor. We stopped just long enough to collect the power cells from their rifles and we were on our way. We had a little trouble getting back to the house, but I made short work of those who stood in our way.
Chapter Ten
Lips locked around mine, a tongue swirled inside my mouth, and I became lost to the slow sensuality of Lily’s kiss. I pulled away, reluctantly, then cleared my throat and looked her over. She blushed and glanced around the room. “I-I was worried.”
I smiled and cupped her face in my hand before turning to my sister. “Are we ready?”
“Yeah,” she nodded and tossed me my phase pistols harness and all. I slipped it on and popped a pair of power-cells into the handles. I passed one to my sister, and the third and fourth to Lily and Farris. Besides my twin pistols, we only had three other weapons which meant we had just enough to power all our weapons. Not that we’d need it any time soon, it took weeks of prolonged use to drain your average power-cell. I’d have offered someone else my spare pistol if I thought they’d take it, but the truth was with my abilities I could make more use of them than the others.
“Watch your aim, and shoot to disable if you can help it. I don’t want any of you killing any rangers unless you’re left with no choice. They’re not our enemies whether they realize it or not,” I winced running my hand over my now mostly healed wound. “Be on the lookout, they filched at least one coil gun from our ship they probably have the other two. I had a pretty close call with Corporal Jake. I really don’t care to repeat the experience.”
“Well, I think I’ve had about enough of this place as I can stand. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to get the hell out of here.” I gritted my teeth and spun around, slamming the door to our dwelling open and leapt through the door.
Farris was the first out the door after me, barring his phase pistol in front of him ready for whatever trouble might come our way. “Tell me, oh wise leader, just how the fuck are we supposed to find a way out of this place. If we go out the way we came in they’ll be able to pick us off one by one through those gun slits. If they got a coil gun they could probably take you and Lily out pretty easily.”
“You don’t think I haven’t thought of that? I get the feeling, those slits aren’t the only defenses. That whole tunnel is a perfect place to lay down traps and I don’t want to get caught in any them. We find Rayland, hopefully he can show us another way out. If not, well then, we’ll find our own way out.”
“You really think that grinning bastard will help us?”
“You got any better ideas?” I rounded on him and forced myself to look away when an image of him defiling my sister popped into my head. I shook my head and forced the image out of my mind. Survival was a little more important at the moment. “He’s our best hope of getting out of this place alive.”
“She’s right Matt, we don’t have any other options,” my sister said staring at me apprehensively. She looked like someone who was staring at a coiled snake, ready to strike and she was looking right at me. I’d seen that look in Becca’s eyes plenty of times, but not once had it been directed at me. It made me feel sick and I thought I might throw up, but then my stomach rallied and I shook my head. That look had shaken me to my very core, and I realized just how close I’d come to killing Farris. The worst part was that I deserved that look. I didn’t like Farris, I definitely didn’t like the budding relationship he had going with my sister, but killing him wasn’t the answer.
I would have to deal with it later as much as it pained me to put it off we didn’t have the luxury to stand around while I sorted out my feelings. We needed to get away, and then I would eat humble pie. I just hoped Becca could forgive me. I still didn’t have to like Farris, but I definitely needed to reassess the way I’d been treating him.
I charged down the corridor, screaming at the top of my lungs as the rangers’ fire came splashing into me. Each charge sent a trickle of power coursing through me and I shuddered as I plowed into the nearest guard. Lily was right there firing her single pistol, as my twin pair blazed brilliantly through the tunnel. We made short work of the pair, injuring them sufficiently that they wouldn’t be able to fight but it looked as if the nesters had a surprise in store for us as another pair of guards rounded the corner.
An arrow zoomed through the air and I dove out of the way. It appeared that rather than try and create an advanced projectile weapon like the Qharr, the nesters had elected for a more low-tech solution. Given that I managed to kill overseer with nothing more than a broken table leg it didn’t exactly seem that far-fetched that they could do me in with a bow and arrow. I dodged a volley of arrows and slammed my fist into the face of my chosen target, a tall ranger with a shaved head and a pair of brilliant blue eyes.
He was down for the count, and I moved onto the next, but Lily had already taken him down.
“Shit,” Farris cursed coming up behind us panting from overexertion. “You sure you know where you’re going? This is the sixth tunnel we’ve taken and we haven’t seen any signs of the detention area that ranger you interrogated mentioned.”
“This is the one, unless he lied to me. Either way, we’ll find out soon enough,” I replied and then without waiting for him to catch his breath I took off back down the corridor. Lily was only a step behind me, and together the two of us carved a path through the corridors ensuring that our companions had safe passage.
The tunnel’s end was almost in sight, we were so close that I could see the cave mouth less than a dozen meters away, but we came to a screeching stop when we found another pair of guards both with arrows nocked. I jumped out of the way as they released their bows, but Lily was just a second too slow. One of the arrows lodged itself into abdomen just below her waistline and she fell backward onto her back.
I screamed, and all I wanted was to crawl across the floor and fall cradle her in my arms, but I had just enough sense to duck and take co
ver instead. For a moment, one of the longest moment’s of my life, I thought she was dead, but I peaked around the corner just long enough to see chest rise and fall. There was a brief flash of pain and I clasped my hand around my ear realizing that one of the bastards must have nicked me. I leapt back onto my feet, pouncing on the pair of rangers and disabled them before they could fire off more shots.
I could hear the ‘ping’ of metal against the floor as the projectiles popped out from my wounds. I grunted and shivered as I felt the injuries begin to heal. I craned my neck back and watched Lily climb to her feet with the doctor’s help. “You alright?”
She nodded, and rubbed at the now mostly healed wound on her chest. “That was a lot closer to my heart than I’d care to admit.”
“I know the feeling.” I grimaced and shook my head as knelt down to grab a still-holstered phase pistol from one of our assailants. There was a brief surge of power as Khala absorbed the energy and I tossed the second to Lily whose symbiote quickly did the same.
Together, we stepped through the door and once on the other side, I was gratified to discover, that the ranger had not in fact been lying when he’d told me where Rayland was being held.
He and Neada were locked in opposing cells, and about a dozen other rangers were locked away in half as many. I didn’t bother looking for keys, I approached the door to Rayland’s cell and slammed my foot into the lock. It groaned, but held. It took three more successive blows to knock it open.
“Man am I glad to see you,” he said grinning from ear to ear.
“Well, we’re just lucky Dahl and his goons underestimated us.” I grimaced then spun around and watched as my sister unlocked Neada’s cell using a key she had no doubt procured from one of the fallen ranger guards.
“I don’t suppose you know another way out of the nest, do you?” I glanced back at Rayland. “I’d rather not use the front door.”
“Yes, there’s an alternate escape route we can take. Free the rest of my men and I can show you where it is.”
Rebecca had already begun to approach the other cells, and was in the process of releasing each of the captive rangers. I didn’t want to wait any longer than we had to so I started on the opposite side of the line of cells, and managed to mash open two cells before my sister finished opening the remaining four.
“Neada, I want you to go with Lexa and her group. Help them find a way out and do whatever you can to make sure they reach New Anaheim in time.” Rayland put his hand on her shoulder.
She shook her head. “Send someone else, I’m staying here with you and helping you take that bastard down.”
“No,” he shook his head. “You know the escape tunnels better than anyone. I need to stay and fight Dahl. That means I need someone to go with them that I can trust.”
“To hell with it,” she said yanking him forward then locked her lips around his in a long passionate kiss. “I don’t care who knows anymore. I don’t care if I lose my commission. I can’t bear the thought of losing you. I thought I lost you once already. Try to stay safe.”
Rayland looked around the room, the other rangers looked positively flabbergasted, but he merely grinned then returned her kiss. “I’ll stay safe, if you promise to do the same.”
She nodded, then turned to me, all hint of the emotions she’d displayed just moments ago replaced by the cold air of a professional soldier that normally surrounded her.
“Follow me.”
Neada stopped just long enough to snatch a pistol from one of the guards I’d downed. She led us back into the main chamber, but only briefly. We took another side tunnel which led up with a gradual incline. “The route to the surface is pretty roundabout and it will involve some climbing. We’ve laid out a lot of traps along the way, so make sure to follow my lead unless you like the prospect of a thousand foot drop.”
I didn’t bother mentioning that Lily and I could probably survive such a tumble, and Becca too if her symbiote decided to cooperate. I merely nodded and followed the ranger until she led us to an apparent dead end.
She knelt down, pinching a seemingly innocuous piece of rock jutting out from the wall. The cliff face in front of us disappeared replaced by an opening that was less than a meter and a half tall. She produced a light and flicked it on before turning back to me. “This tunnel is a little cramped, but we should all be able to fit in there. The engineers who dug out these tunnels were hoping that a shorter and narrower passage would make it difficult for any would-be Qharr pursuers to follow people through.”
“Makes sense,” I nodded. Even the most broad-shouldered humans couldn’t match the overall width of our masters. Hell, Duvak had been considered downright diminutive by his people’s standards and his shoulder width had been more than double mine even before I’d been transformed.
Farris grimaced and let out a bit of shudder. “I hate enclosed spaces.”
“Buckup cowboy,” Neada glanced back at him without a trace of humor or irony in her voice. “We’re going in.”
“Don’t worry, Matt,” my sister came up beside him eying me warily. “I’ll be right there with you the whole time.”
I turned away and was the first to follow Neada in, eager to break my sister’s gaze. The entryway was just a little wider than the rest of the tunnel and further we got in the narrower the passage was. The doctor seemed to be able to travel through the tunnel with surprising ease. Yes, he had a more slender frame than us humans, but he was also by far the tallest member of our group. He crawled on all fours, shuffling through like it was the most natural thing in the world.
There was a decided upward slope as we crawled our way through the tunnels and I could hear some of the others grunts and groans as the climb became more and more difficult. The climb was less physically taxing for me, but still it was a challenge to find the right handholds and stretch my arms out.
Neada didn’t have any trouble finding her way up and she set a pretty grueling pace as we made our ascent. I paused and glanced back over my shoulder to watch the others. The doctor was working his way up at a much slower pace, there were some places that his elongated form just didn’t fit, but somehow he managed to squeeze his way through each time he ran into a hard spot. I caught occasional flashes of Farris’s platinum hair, but couldn’t catch a glimpse of either my sister or Lily.
“Neada, why don’t we stop for a second and give everyone a chance to catch up.”
She looked back at me, and nodded without saying a word. I studied her face, then pursed my lips and chuckled as something occurred to me. “You know I don’t even know what your first name is.”
Her jaw stiffened and I saw a flash of anger in her eyes before her features suddenly softened. “It’s Janet.”
Something was bothering her, that much was obvious and it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry? For what?” She snapped then gritted her teeth and let out a long sigh.
“You’d rather be back in the nest fighting with Rayland wouldn’t you?”
“Even if I did, orders are orders, it’s not my place to question them. I don’t really see how it concerns you.”
Clearly I’d hit a sore spot and I got the feeling that would be a bad idea to press any further. Instead, I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “This the only escape route? Seems like a pretty tough climb for people fleeing for their lives.”
“No, there are other ways out.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “But this one is known only to a few people Dahl and his lackeys are not among those people. It made sense to use a path they wouldn’t be guarding.
She leaned down, and craned her neck, and I did the same my eyes following her gaze. The doctor had made significant headway while Neada and I were talking and he was less than four meters behind me. “Everyone, doing alright?”
“Just, wonderful.” I heard Farris’s muffled reply. “Becca’s here too. Can’t see Lily, but Becca says she�
��s doing fine.”
Neada rolled her eyes, and looked away resuming her assent. “Come on, we need to hurry.”
I don’t know how many meters we traveled before we finally climbed up out of the tunnel, which by then was more vertical than horizontal, but we’d so spent so long in that damned hole that I was really coming to understand why Farris hated confined spaces so much. It was just good we’d had so many hand and foot holds or our ascent would have been much more unpleasant. There’d be too many close calls as it was. Lily and I had our symbiotes to heal whatever, cuts, scrapes and bruises we had developed as we climbed, but the others weren’t so lucky. Even Becca, despite being joined, had come up with raw and bleeding hands.
“This.” Farris panted collapsing face-forward to the ground just outside the exit. “Is the last freaking time you get me to climb through a damn tunnel.”
“We still have a ways to go,” Neada said casting her lights around the cave. “It’ll be a difficult hike, but there won’t be any climbing involved. We’ll take a ten minute break and then depart again.”
“Shit, ten minutes?!” Farris groaned then sat up. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Need I remind you, that we are on the run? It’s because of you people that we’re in this mess to begin with!” Neada rounded on Farris, her fists barred at her side ready to pounce on him.
“You’re blaming us?” I snarled getting so close that I could feel her breath on my cheeks. “You’re the ones that offered us shelter! What have you people been doing while good people died fighting the Qharr. I watched the gray-skins kill my parents and was forced to serve the bastard that murdered them. I lost my aunt, and the mother of my child. So don’t think you can lecture us about who’s to blame for this mess. If you had been out fighting with the resistance to begin with–”
“We’d have been killed off just like your people were.” She flexed her hands and backed away. “We’ve made mistakes, but… we’ll never get anywhere if we don’t cooperate. I know I haven’t exactly been the most pleasant traveling companion, but I’m willing to try if you are.”
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