by Terry Mixon
“Throw anything that we don’t need into the foyer leading toward the doors. That might keep them from getting in for just a little bit longer.”
Kelsey raced around the other side of the room and started digging through a pile. She was too far away from the foyer to throw anything into the tunnel, but Ralph Holstead was at her side, grabbing everything that she tossed away and racing back toward the tunnel to dump it.
A glance at the rest of the room showed that others were emulating his example so that the searchers weren’t slowed by having to also help barricade the doors. That was smart. If they could get some large, heavy items directly behind the doors, that would help wedge them shut, even if they did bring in a battering ram. The horde troops would have to completely demolish everything.
Captain Beauchamp was recovering the arrows they’d shot. She’d done that every time they’d been able to after fighting. Kelsey approved, because once they were out, they were left to fight at close range.
“We should take the biggest things and put them directly behind the doors at the hinges,” Kelsey shouted. Anything that gained them a few more minutes was worth doing.
In fact, the stone slabs covering what they hoped led to a vault below might be more massive than anything that had been brought from the pinnaces.
“Ralph, come with me,” she said. “I want to check something out.”
The stone edifice in the center of the room was even larger than it had looked from the entryway. It was at least three meters long and a meter and a half wide. It stood about waist high for a normal person, so chest high for her.
The top was unadorned, but the sides were heavily engraved with scenes of what looked like battle. A closer inspection revealed horsemen fighting against what certainly looked like Rebel Empire marines in powered armor.
Interesting, but she didn’t have time to examine it.
The top slab seemed to be unattached to the sides, so she pushed on it. There was the sound of stone grinding on stone as it shifted maybe a centimeter to the side. It was heavy. The slab was as thick as her fist and seemed to weigh a ton. Which might be the literal truth. Getting it to the foyer was going to be a monumental task.
She turned to face everyone else in the room. “Stop what you’re doing and come help me get this stone slab into the foyer. We’re going to lay it on the floor directly in front of the doors. It can be on top of whatever you’ve already put there.”
With a dozen people helping move the slab, it wasn’t impossible. Sliding it off where it had rested was a serious chore, but they finally had the thing off, revealing a dark pit below with steps leading down where the torchlight couldn’t reach.
The fact that they could move it still didn’t mean that it was easy. Everyone grunted and strained as they carried it toward the doors. Once they arrived, they discovered a problem. The opening in the stone wall was too narrow to get it in longways.
They settled for placing it at an angle, with one corner jammed into the door on the right-hand side, its adjacent corner right against the stone wall to that side, and the corner on the other end of the long side, braced against one of the massive stone blocks making up the left wall.
Jared grinned at her. “That’s going to make it a lot harder for them to get those doors open. Let’s see if the sides of that structure come off. A few more pieces like this, and we might just be able to keep them from getting in at all without demolishing the side of the building.”
The stone slabs on the side of the covered structure above the stairs were attached to the floor, except for one of the shorter ones at what would be the foot of the structure. It was removable so that people could use the stairs revealed below the structure.
The steps leading down were wide and somewhat shallow. They wouldn’t be easy to speed along. It was pitch-black below, but Kelsey could see that they went down a short distance and then began turning to the right.
That would be useful if they had to form a defense going downward. Frankly, that was probably why the turn had been designed into them. She’d seen something about this in a vid. Any archers going down the stairs would have their dominant hands obstructed by the wall to the right, so they’d have to expose themselves to fire. Any archers defending from below would have their dominant hands free and clear to fire up at their opponents and could use the inner stone wall as cover.
Of course, any lefties were going to get an advantage going down and be obstructed in defending. None of their archers were left-handed, so it wasn’t going to inhibit them.
As several of the others carried the removable block of stone away and tossed it into the entryway, the remainder of them put their effort into pulling down the still-standing stone slabs that made up the sides.
While they were secured, they weren’t that secure. Jared quickly ordered the slabs taken into the entryway and placed on top of the first slab, alternating the directions they were wedged. The smaller sections were placed on top of them.
“That was a great idea,” he said as he wiped his brow. “Everyone not searching, take the castoffs into the entrance and throw them on top of everything else. I want to get that foyer packed so full of debris that nothing is going to be able to move, even with a ram smashing into the doors. Anything that gains us time is worth it.
“Julia and Talbot, head down the steps and see what we’re dealing with. Get torches from the walls up here to light your way. Ralph, follow them down and be ready to be a courier to get us information or warning of what’s down there.”
Kelsey quickly returned to the pile she’d been working on. Even though her brother seemed to think they had plenty of time, she wasn’t so sure. The sooner they could finish, the sooner they’d be out of there.
She only prayed that they could find the things that they needed and escape with their lives.
If the scepter wasn’t here, then all of this was for nothing. If the spare medical kit Lily had left at the pinnaces wasn’t here, they’d never get their implants back online. The same went for Carl finding the tools that he needed. Those items were absolutely critical to their success and survival.
With a sigh, she gave herself over to the task at hand. They were committed, and the next few minutes were going to show if the gamble had been worth it or not.
35
Julia followed behind Talbot as he descended the spiral staircase. He had Kelsey’s sword out and was being wary of anyone coming up from below, not that she thought they needed to be that concerned about that. After all, the entrance to the crypt—because that’s just what this might be—had been sealed up tight and under guard. She doubted very seriously that anyone was down there.
Anyone alive, that was. This still might be a crypt. Hell, it might end up their crypt if things went badly.
She followed behind the large man with her bow out and an arrow nocked. She stayed as far to the left as she could so that she’d have as much range as possible, but with the relatively tight turnings of the stairs, that still wasn’t very far. If enemies rushed up from below, she’d have time for one shot before they engaged her doppelgänger’s husband.
As they were wielding their weapons, Ralph Holstead was holding three torches up high as he followed behind them. Their flickering flames cast more than enough light to see what was ahead, but the distortion in the illumination levels made her twitch every time she thought she’d seen something.
Julia tried to guess at how deep they’d come, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, it was impossible. She’d started out counting steps but had lost track somewhere along the way and given up.
Then she’d started trying to estimate how many full revolutions they’d made, but that led to the same outcome because she wasn’t sure what direction was what. In any case, whatever was below them was a long, long way down.
“I think I see something,” Talbot said a few minutes later.
Julia could see that he was right. The stairs had terminated into a flat space that was void of steps. Perhaps it
was the bottom or maybe only a landing. She couldn’t tell.
As they reached the flat area, she saw that it did in fact lead out of an alcove into a much larger space. This was no landing. This was the bottom of the stairs and their destination.
The torchlight didn’t extend very far, but it was more than enough to see that they were in the remains of one of the old tunnels that must’ve serviced the megacity. It had been greatly enlarged and the ancient flooring covered with paved stone that had been polished smooth, but the wall immediately next to them was made out of plascrete and still had a number of pipes and cables running along its length.
It also had a holder for a torch crudely mounted to it. A glance to the right showed a similar holder mounted to rough-hewn stone that had to have been added later. It looked much like the blocks that made up the building above, but these were much smaller.
If they’d needed to be brought in from the surface, they’d have had to come down the stairs, so that made sense. Stacked neatly next to the arch was a pile of unlit torches, a wedge of metal, and a rock. The last two things made no sense to her, but they had to serve some purpose, even if it was obscure.
“It looks like this started out as a tunnel,” Talbot said, mirroring her guess, as he stepped into the large room. “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to dig it out, though.”
The area closest them was empty, but out where the light was fading, she could see vague shapes in the darkness. Gray on black. That probably wasn’t an accurate assessment of the colors involved, but in the low light at the edge of the torches’ illumination, it was hard to tell. Nothing sparkly, so probably no gold, silver, or gems.
Whenever she thought of vaults, that’s what she’d always imagined: a room stacked high with wealth in physical form. This didn’t seem to be that stereotypical.
“Should I stay with you?” Holstead asked uncertainly.
“For a little bit, yes,” she said. “I want to get at least a basic description of what we’re seeing before you go back up to report. I’d also like to make sure there’s not anything hiding down here before I put my bow away. Put one of the torches into the holder by the arch and light another one for yourself.”
Once he’d done so, she and Talbot advanced side by side with Holstead right behind them until the shapes in front of them resolved into something that they could identify.
Wooden crates stood piled high enough that they rose at least four times Talbot’s height. The wood was roughhewn, so she didn’t think they were very old. At least not in the scheme of things on Terra.
Talbot stopped next to one stack and leaned over to examine the crates more closely. “I wonder what’s in them.”
“Something important enough to be this well protected,” she said as she eyed the stack to make sure it looked stable. The last thing they needed was to be crushed by someone else’s neglect. “There has to be some way of identifying what’s in them. Are there any markings?”
He walked around the side of the stack in front of them and grunted slightly. “Yeah. There’s a number carved into each crate. That must mean something to whoever put them here, but it’s not going to help us determine anything about them. If we want to know what’s inside, we’ll have to open them up.”
“We don’t have any tools, and we certainly don’t have the time,” she said as she turned toward Holstead. “Give us two of the torches and head back up to report.”
He handed them the torches as soon as they’d put their weapons away and retreated to the stairs, his bright torch dimming until it was just a glowing spot in the darkness, near the other torch positioned there. Then it vanished as he entered the stairwell, and they were alone deep under the surface of Terra.
“Should we split up?” she asked. “It looks like we’ve got a lot of ground to cover if we’re going to discover what’s down here, and probably very little time to do it. If there’s an exit that we can force to get out into the tunnel itself, we need to know about it before they break down the doors upstairs.”
The marine officer nodded. “Yes, but let’s keep an eye out for each other’s torches and make sure that we know where the other is. If one of us runs into trouble, we need to be sure that the other will come running when we shout.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think we’re going to run into trouble down here? I don’t see how anything could live in the dark.”
“Our entire stay on Terra has been filled with things that we never expected. Let’s just be cautious and make sure we don’t find another one.”
The man had a point.
“I’ll take the right, you take the left,” she said. With that, she headed off to see what she could find.
If everything was in crates, it was going to be a pretty boring search, but if she found an exit into the tunnel itself, that would be worthwhile.
Her side of the cavern was the one that had the wall blocking off access to the megacity. If there was an exit leading to it, it would be here. She knew it faced the megacity because it had been blocked off here as soon as the people digging down had found the tunnel. That showed the horde’s concern about the inhabitants of the megacity.
Talbot would be looking at the side of the cavern where the tunnel led away from the megacity. They couldn’t discount there being a door on that side, too. Or no door on any side. They might have to make their own.
While a lot of the things she was seeing as she walked were stashed in crates, not everything was completely obscured from view. As she advanced into the darkness, her eyes searching all around her, she spotted an area with tables holding what looked like chests on top of them.
Curious, she made her way over and examined one. The was made of polished wood that glowed yellow in the torchlight. It had a built-in lock, but she had the perfect lock pick for something like this.
She inserted the point of her marine knife between the lid and the body, using the palm of her hand to drive it in. Once it was wedged deep, she wiggled the blade through the locking mechanism itself. It took a little bit of strength to cut the metal, but not as much as it would have if her knife hadn’t had an almost monomolecular edge.
When she lifted the lid, she was greeted with the pile of gold, silver, and jewels she’d been musing about earlier. Everything sparkled and gleamed. Too bad stuff like this had absolutely no value to them right now.
She did stuff a handful into her pocket. If they lived, they would make for memorable souvenirs.
Closing the chest, she moved on to explore more of the room. The chamber was ridiculously large for being just a treasure room. If the horde had wanted something like that, they could’ve just left the tunnel intact and blocked off both ends.
As she walked, the scope of the area became clearer, just based on the echoes from her footsteps. This place was massive. What all did they have in here?
That really wasn’t something that she needed an answer to, she decided. Time was wasting.
She turned and made her way back to the area nearest the stairs. The stone blocks that filled in what had been the tunnel were perhaps as tall as her head and three times that wide. There was no telling how deep they were laid, but they had to weigh far more than even a pair of people could lift unassisted.
And they would be thick, of that she had no doubt. There was absolutely no way the horde would place a flimsy barrier between themselves and the megacity. Not if the people inside the damned place were as bloodthirsty as Beauchamp believed.
Walking up and down the length of the wall, she found no openings. That was exasperating and potentially deadly, but not really a surprise. They’d have to dig out the stones and make their own tunnel through whatever they found.
“Julia,” Talbot’s voice echoed from deeper inside the chamber. “I’ve found something interesting.”
She turned and trotted deeper into the chamber toward where she thought his voice had come from. Spotting his torch in the darkness, she shifted course. He was at least a couple of hu
ndred meters away. Her estimates of the size of this place kept growing.
The chamber was large enough to sit at least partially under the castle she’d seen in the way in. There didn’t seem to be any stairs on that side of the chamber—because surely they’d have sent guards down by now—which was decidedly odd. Shouldn’t the ruling class want handy access to their goodies?
Julia started to ask what he’d found as she approached but found herself jerking to a halt just before she reached him. Piled deeply on the floor beyond him were the remains of a number of suits of marine powered armor.
And by remains, she meant what was left over after the wearers had been killed with those damned antiarmor weapons. Everything was shredded and in pieces.
“Well, I guess the stories about them dealing with the Rebel Empire before were true,” she said as she stepped up beside Talbot. “This is certainly gruesome. I hope they at least took the bodies out before they left the armor here.”
“I’m not smelling anything,” Talbot said as he turned toward her. “If they’d left any human remains inside this pile, it would stink to high heaven. Maybe not so much after a period of years, but who wants to smell up their treasure room? What did you find?”
“Oh, the usual. Gold, silver, precious stones, that kind of thing. I also examined the wall blocking off the original tunnel leading to the megacity. I can’t tell how thick the blockage is, but there’s no door and those stones are stout.
“Not as big as the ones in the building upstairs, but they’re going to be a problem. I’m betting it’s also packed full of dirt and debris from excavating this chamber, too. After all, why carry it up those stairs if you can just pack the tunnel in? There’s probably two sets of stone barriers with fill between.”
“Good fences make for good neighbors,” the man said with a wry smile. “Yet another Kelsey saying that I don’t really understand. I found the other tunnel exit, and it looks exactly like you described.