by Terry Mixon
She slammed into the side of the second crate from the top of the next stack and barely managed to get her fingers onto one of the boards long enough for her feet to find purchase. That was good. A fall from this height might have seriously injured or killed her.
From the continuing sounds behind her, the falling crates had struck another stack and sent it falling over as well. As the noises continued, Julia became convinced that this was not going to stop with just a few stacks.
A glance over her shoulder showed that she’d been right. Spreading out away from her, piles of crates were being struck by other falling piles and knocked over. She only prayed that nothing came back around to knock her stack down while she was still on it.
It took a full minute for the chaos to stop. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell exactly how far the devastation had spread, but whoever was in charge of inventorying these boxes was going to be seriously pissed.
“Are you okay up there?” Talbot called from below.
“I think so,” she said as she edged along the side of the stack until she had a better grip. “Is everybody okay?”
“We’re good. Come down and help us look for the plasma rifle’s ammunition.”
By the time she’d carefully made her way to the stone floor, everyone was digging through the wreckage. There was all manner of salvaged materials scattered around, and it looked as if the crate they had been eyeing had broken apart, but at least its contents were on top of the rest. Mostly.
She threw herself into searching through the items along with everyone else. It looked like a lot of basic military equipment, but there were no weapons. Mostly it was what might be found at a campsite.
After digging for a couple of minutes, she found a single box labeled “tritium pellets, large.” It was exactly the same size box as she’d had during the ambush for her plasma rifle.
She held it up over her head. “Talbot!”
He waded to her side and took the box from her, opening it quickly. Inside, three pellets just like she’d used were carefully set in cavities in the shock-absorbing foam. It looked as if there had once been half a dozen—just like in her original box—but the other three slots were empty.
“Jackpot!” Talbot said. “This is exactly what I needed. Everybody, break off your search and let’s join the rest by the stairs.”
Getting down off the huge pile of debris wasn’t nearly as easy as she’d hoped, but they all managed it without injury. As a group, they quickly rejoined the rest of their party.
Everyone left at the stairs was crowded around the opening with their bows out. They obviously anticipated an attack from above. As they got there, Kelsey turned to face them and grinned at the sight of the huge plasma rifle.
“Now we’re talking! You have any ammo for that thing?”
Talbot held up the box with the plasma rifle ammunition. “Three shots. I sure as hell hope it’s enough. What’s the situation upstairs?”
Kelsey grimaced. “Just as bad as you’d imagine. They were just breaking the door apart as we came down. It’s going to take them a couple of minutes to clear the stone slabs and other junk we left in the foyer, but not that long. As soon as they get people through, I’m sure they’ll send them right down.
“We brought the pack horses down about halfway and tethered them. Now they’re sitting in the dark, and I’m sure they’re not going to be very cooperative about moving anywhere without the hoods we used to calm them. Still, once the horde gets past them, we’re going to be fighting down here.”
“Then we should get the hell out of here,” Julia said firmly. “Like right now.”
Just how right she was. A terrible screaming began coming from up the stairs, followed by the shouts of men. The horde was in the stairs, and they were killing the horses. They’d be here in just a few minutes. It was crunch time.
“Carl, I sure hope you have the tools to remove the lockout on this weapon,” Kelsey said grimly. “No pressure or anything, but I need this working right now.”
Thankfully, Carl did have the tools he needed and quickly had the plasma rifle opened up and reenabled. He closed it back up and looked at Kelsey. “You’re green.”
Kelsey pulled the torch out of the holder beside the stairwell and dropped it in the center of the barrier that she needed to shoot. She then led the entire group back into the cavern until she had a clearance of about a hundred and fifty meters. Safe distance for the explosion of the plasma was going to be a relative thing, but she hoped that would be enough.
If things went badly, they’d bring the roof down. At least that would probably be quicker than the end the horde had planned for them.
She took the ammunition from Julia and gestured for her husband to hand over the weapon. “Give it up, sport. I’ve got a lot more experience firing that sort of thing than you do. We’ve got to get the placement of the blast absolutely right, or we’re screwed.”
He raised an eyebrow and shook his head slightly. “You do remember how much of a kick that thing has, don’t you? Even with your augmentation online, firing that without a suit to back it up would knock you on your ass. If you fire it now, you might seriously injure yourself. Let me handle it.”
“We’re not going to get a second chance at this,” she said firmly. “It doesn’t matter if I get hurt so long as everyone gets away. Besides, I have a plan for that, and you’re absolutely going to love it. Now, give.”
With a sigh, Talbot handed her the plasma rifle, which she struggled to hold upright until she got it up onto her shoulder. She aimed it back in the direction of the wall she needed to blast.
“Somebody said we had two exits from this chamber,” she said as she removed the magazine and handed it to Talbot to load with pellets. “How sure are we that the one next to the stairwell is the right one? We absolutely can’t afford to waste ammunition opening up the wrong side of the chamber.”
“It only makes sense,” Julia said. “They dug the stairs down from the surface and broke into the tunnel right there. They’d want to seal it up as quickly as possible to keep any enemies from getting to them. That means they’d have sealed off the side leading toward the megacity before they dug much of the cavern out.
“They probably filled in after the first barrier with rubble they accumulated as they excavated and finally capped it off with more stone on this side, but they certainly didn’t dig down to the tunnel and then expand the cavern before closing off the end nearest the megacity.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” Kelsey said grimly. “If not, we’re screwed.”
She gestured for everyone to get behind her. The plasma weapon didn’t have a back blast, so they weren’t in danger of being incinerated. From their point of view, the danger was going to be purely kinetic. When Talbot said the weapon had a kick, he wasn’t joking.
“I want everyone to get behind me and be prepared to help absorb the recoil. For such a little bit of ammunition, this thing generates one hell of a kick. With everybody working together, we can minimize how much impact it has on me. Set your torches off to the side. We don’t want to set ourselves on fire.”
Everyone crowded close behind her and formed a kind of human barrier to try to hold her up and resist being thrown back when she triggered the weapon. At this range, she could see the torch she’d dropped clearly. Her aiming point became the spot just above it. She centered on that and waited.
After a few seconds, Talbot nudged her. “Are you going to shoot that thing? I thought you said we were out of time.”
“Wait for it.”
Time seemed to drag, and then she heard the sounds of men at the bottom of the stairs. The horde had arrived.
Kelsey smiled coldly as she saw the first of them come into sight with a sword drawn. Right next to the wall she was aiming at.
“Say hello to my little friend,” she murmured as she triggered the plasma rifle.
The impact of the discharge sent her slamming back into everyone else. It hurt like hell an
d her shoulder felt bruised, but the speck of intense brightness flew straight and true into the wall where she’d aimed it before detonating.
The savage brightness overwhelmed her vision, leaving spots in her eyes that she had to blink away. Her low-light vision was gone, and she couldn’t tell what had happened at the impact site.
What she could sense was the sound of falling stone and the lack of screams. She’d killed whoever had been stupid enough to come to the bottom of the stairs.
Hell, she’d probably collapsed the stairway at its base and killed most of the people that the horde had sent down.
“I need a scout,” she said. “Somebody go make sure I hit the tunnel blockage squarely. Toss another torch down on this side of the cavity so that I can see it, and then come back. I need to know if I have to adjust my aim.”
Chloe Laird ran in the direction of the blast and returned a minute later without her torch.
“You were spot-on,” the marine officer said. “The plasma detonation took out the stone wall and a good bit of the debris on the other side. The tunnel is still clogged with melted junk, so I’m hoping this next shot will clear it out.
“The ceiling of the cavity seems to have been fused, so it might hold up under all of this. The second shot will be taking a chance, but it’s not exactly like we have a lot of choice in the matter. On another positive note, it looks like you collapsed the stairway, so we won’t be getting any more uninvited guests while we work.”
Kelsey nodded. “Perfect. Everyone, brace me again.”
The second shot hurt even worse than the first but cleared out even more of the tunnel and revealed stone blocks on the other side. The bottom of the cavity was now rough and deeper than she liked, and also very hot, but their boots would allow them a little bit of time to examine the final wall, if they’d cleared the debris all the way to it.
“I don’t think we’re going to need that third shot,” Talbot said after he’d ventured in and returned. “Part of the far wall is ruptured, and I could see into the tunnel beyond. It’s clear over there. Given a couple of minutes, we can clear enough space to get through.”
“How long is it going to take for them to dig out the stairway and start after us?” Jared asked.
“They’re not going to be chasing us this way,” Kelsey said firmly. “As soon as we’ve got everybody inside the tunnel and safely away, I’m going to go use the last plasma charge to bring the ceiling of the cavern down.”
“You have to be on this side to do that,” Talbot argued. “You might bring it down on your head.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” she said. “Let’s get that wall broken out and get everyone on the other side. We’ll want to set up a defensive perimeter, just in case all of this noise brings somebody from the megacity to investigate.”
Over her husband’s objections, Kelsey got him and the rest moving through the blown-out cavity her plasma rifle had created. The stone under their feet was hot enough to put the scent of burning leather into the air and to heat the soles of her feet to an uncomfortable degree. Still, it was bearable.
Even if it hadn’t been, that wouldn’t have changed anything. They had to get through there.
As Talbot had said, the far wall was partially breached, and she could see the original tunnel in the darkness beyond. The hole in the stacked stones wasn’t that big, and that section of the wall around it looked dangerously unstable.
That didn’t mean it was impossible to get through, though. The stones were large and wide, obviously meant to be hard to get through or move. On this side of the original blockage, they were stacked five deep. That meant it would take them hours of sweaty labor to clear enough space to walk through.
Thankfully, the part of the wall that had blown out was near the roof of the tunnel and was big enough for even Talbot to wiggle through. They took the time to push the more precarious of the stones over, where they fell on the ones that already littered the tunnel with a crash.
The rope Carl had found allowed them to lower their party down to the rock-strewn floor one at a time. Each person took care in the rubble not to twist an ankle.
Once they had everyone on the other side, they started clearing the floor nearest the breach. When Kelsey had to run through here in a few minutes, the last thing she’d have time for was dealing with unsteady footing after she cleared the wall.
When they’d finally cleared that section of the floor, Kelsey made a shooing gesture with her hands. “I want you to get as far down the tunnel as you can in the next few minutes. I’ll use the floor in the cavern to brace the weapon and then haul ass after you as soon as I pull the trigger.
“We have no idea if the collapse of the cavern is even in the cards, but if it does come down, it might bring the tunnel with it, so I don’t want anyone nearby. Understood?”
Talbot gave her a tight hug before hoisting her up to the hole in the wall. Once on the other side, she made her way back to the cavern and stared around at the huge cavern.
The best odds of bringing the ceiling down were to hit it in the center of the ceiling. There was no support at any point along the interior of the cavern, so that would be its weakest point.
With a final sigh, she tossed her final torch into the tunnel. It was going to have to provide her with light while she ran for her life.
She braced the weapon on the floor just outside the radius of the first impact crater, where the surface was smooth enough to provide steady resistance, and aimed the bore of the weapon at the ceiling in what she judged was the center of the cavern.
Kelsey took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.
As soon as the plasma rifle recoiled against the stone and skidded past her into the cavity, she threw herself after it and raced after it toward the undamaged tunnel beyond the breach.
Kelsey didn’t see the plasma hit, but the bright flash of the detonation lit her way forward like a strobe going off. Then she heard rumbling from behind her. The cavern ceiling was coming down.
Kelsey dug her feet in and dove through the breached section of the final wall, hitting the floor of the original tunnel hard, rolling, and coming to her feet, still running for her very life.
Even as she ran, she heard the sound of the tunnel behind her cracking and collapsing. She might have overdone it. The whole thing might come down on their heads.
Ahead of her, she saw that the others had come to the same conclusion as they turned to run farther up the corridor. Unencumbered as she was, she made up a little bit of the distance between them before the tunnel behind her finally gave way completely and collapsed.
Imminent death was an excellent motivator.
A wave of choking dust engulfed her, making her cover her face and slow down as she coughed. The ceiling above her seemed solid enough, so she hoped they’d gotten clear of the collapse zone.
Weary, she walked forward until she’d rejoined the others. Everyone was coated with dust, but they were all grinning at her.
“You did it!” Talbot said as he snatched her up in a hug. A hug that was soon joined by all the rest.
“We did it,” she corrected. “That should keep the horde from following us. The danger behind us is over. We’re probably going to have trouble when we try to leave the megacity, because I’m sure that I’ve just stirred the horde up like a nest of bees. They’ll be looking for where we’re going to come up for air.”
“And we’re going to have to be careful of running into anyone in the megacity,” Jared said solemnly as they all broke apart. “With everything that Captain Beauchamp said, I think that they’re just as unfriendly as the horde. In this case, the enemy of our enemy is not our friend.”
“One life-threatening disaster at a time, please,” Kelsey said as she tried to wipe her face with her hands, succeeding only in smearing dirt and grit all over her exposed skin. “Let’s deal with tomorrow’s problems tomorrow. Right now, we need to find a place to hide and recover. It’s been a long day, and
we’ve still got a lot to do.
“Once we get ourselves situated, we’ll let Lily and Carl do their magic and see if we can get our implants back online. Then we have to figure out what we’re going to do to get out of the megacity, while avoiding its inhabitants, and also dodging the horde once we do.
“Then we still got fifteen hundred kilometers to go before we get to the Imperial Palace and find out who or what might be living inside it. Piece of cake, right?”
All of them stared at her for a few seconds and then started laughing. She grinned and joined them. At this point, that’s all they could do. This mission had gone bad early, and nothing had worked out the way they’d expected, but they’d made it this far.
Whatever it took for them to survive and get what they’d come all this way for, they’d do. The AIs would not win today or in the future. They’d overcome any obstacle in their path on the way to victory. They had to.
With the battle finally done, they turned as a group and began trudging down the old tunnel toward the megacity and their next challenge.
Epilogue
Leader Mordechai stood on the balcony and stared out from the top of the sacred tower toward the horde city. This structure was the tallest in Frankfort and had an excellent view of the primitive city that had been built next to it after the Fall.
He normally didn’t walk up the stairs because the building towered over the megacity and five hundred flights of stairs were hard on a man his age, but he’d needed to see this for himself.
There seemed to be a lot of excitement in the horde city. Smoke rose from its center in a huge column, and it looked as if the palace had collapsed into a large hole in the ground. The savage warriors that ruled that place with an iron fist were milling around like ants disturbed in their mound.
At first, he’d thought that whatever had occurred had been an act of nature, but as soon as the horde started sending out armed patrols into the growing dusk, he knew that there was something more afoot.