by Terry Mixon
Talbot felt good about what he’d accomplished so far. Not just the fighting and killing, but the building of trust between these people and his own. That would help them get to where they needed to be once they’d kicked the horde out of the city.
Julia stared at the pin in Mertz’s hand and felt her jaw drop. “Is that what I think it is?”
“If you think it’s a Marine Raider insignia, then you’re right,” Mertz said. “What I want to know is how it got here.”
She stood there with her hands on her hips, trying to imagine a set of circumstances in which someone would’ve lost something so rare and arcane down at the bottom of an abandoned megacity.
She failed.
“Leader Mordechai did say that the Marine Raiders were here back at the beginning of the Fall, but this pin doesn’t look like it’s been exposed that long,” she finally ventured. “Could it really have been down here that long?”
Jebediah shook his head, eyeing the pin suspiciously. “Unlikely. Remember that for the first four hundred years, this area was in use. Someone would’ve found that pin before now if it had been down here since the last Marine Raider was in our city. It had to have been dropped after the power went out.
“I can see a little bit of corrosion, so I don’t think it’s been here for more than a few years. That means it belonged to the people that stole the fusion plant. Exactly how that’s possible, I can’t imagine.”
“Well, we don’t have to solve this mystery right now,” Mertz said. “Our immediate objective hasn’t changed. We’ve got to go back down and figure out what to do next. These air bottles are a finite resource that we can’t afford to waste.”
As they walked down the stairs, Julia tried to figure out how the pin could be connected with the people that had stolen the fusion plant. What was their relation to the Marine Raiders? Were they descendants of some survivors? Or had the Raiders formed some type of organization that had survived all this time?
In the end, she probably wasn’t going to figure out the answer anytime soon.
They shut off their air as soon as they made it back to the area with functional life support. The walk down to the bottom of the stairs only took a couple of minutes, and no one said anything. Everyone seemed lost in thought. Like her, they were probably trying to figure out what this meant.
Once they’d reached the lowest level, she gestured at the rooms around them. “I think we need to find a place to sit down and have something to eat. I’m starving.”
Before either of the others could respond, there was a loud metallic clang from inside the lift shaft. All three of them turned and stared at it as if it might suddenly come alive.
For a moment, she considered that that might be exactly what had happened. If it had started working again, perhaps that noise was the lift adjusting itself.
“That sounded like something fell onto the lift car,” Mertz said. “We should take a look.”
Julia pressed the button to open the doors and quickly located the small hatch built into the roof. “Lift me up, and I’ll see what happened.”
The two men lifted her up, and she opened the hatch. As soon as she had her torso into the darkness beyond, she spotted a short metal bar lying about half a meter from her.
That made her wary. If one had come loose, another could come flying out of the darkness with no warning whatsoever. If so, it could maim or kill her in a heartbeat.
“Is anyone up there?” she shouted.
For a few moments, only the echoes of her shout floated back. Then another voice called down.
“Julia? Are you okay?”
It was Carl Owlet. Damn, but the man was resourceful. It seemed as if every time they needed a solution, he was there to offer it.
“The lift stopped working, and the stairs are blocked by a door that I can’t open. Other than being stuck down here, we’re fine.”
“You need to get out of the lift car. I’ve already broken off a couple of rungs and don’t want to hurt you. I’ve got some equipment with me that I might be able to use to repair the lift, but even if I can’t, I’ll wager that my cutting tool can get through your door. One way or the other, we’ll get you back up.
“Austin and Ralph are on the level where the fusion plant was, so if need be, they can bring more help or maybe use the rope we found to lift us out. Don’t worry. The cavalry is here.”
Julia dropped back down into the lift, and all three of them exited the car.
She raised an eyebrow at Mertz as soon as they were safely clear. “Is it just me, or does that man have a solution for every problem?”
“He’s got an answer even when there isn’t a problem,” Mertz said with a grin. “I’ve seen him do miraculous things. He’s young, but when he gets more seasoning, he’s going to be even more formidable. Why do you ask?”
“I was just curious. If I run into someone like Carl later, it would be good to know how he ticks so that I can form an alliance with them.”
She couched her language that way because explaining the truth wasn’t something that Jebediah needed to hear.
Mertz nodded, seemingly understanding what she was trying to say. “That’s sound thinking. If you can find someone like him, you’re going to have an ally that will stand with you through thick and thin. One who’s more than capable of achieving the goals you set out for him.”
Interestingly, it sounded as if Mertz approved. That shocked her a little bit. She’d have expected him to try and wave her off. Instead, he seemed to be giving her the green light to try and form a relationship with her universe’s version of Carl.
That gave her a lot to think about. Sadly, she still had a lot of time to work out a plan. They weren’t getting out of Frankfort anytime soon.
19
With the experience of the previous fight behind her, Kelsey was in a much better position to effectively attack during the second ambush. The moment the wall came down, she was firing.
The slide on the submachine gun quickly locked back once it had fired every bullet in the magazine. She’d been practicing with those too, so she was faster swapping out the expended magazine for a new one.
The group in front of her was in massive disarray. Someone had been firing rockets into the horde warriors and dropping grenades on them from what Kelsey could see. That had given her and the other ambushers the opportunity they’d needed to completely decimate the forces arrayed against them. In just a few minutes, the battlefield was empty except for the dead and dying.
While the rest of the defenders were gruesomely sorting the dead from the injured and seeing if any of the latter could be saved, Kelsey found the leader of her new group and asked the question that was most prominent on her mind.
“Is my husband okay? His name is Talbot. If possible, I’d like to see him.”
The short woman nodded. “He was involved in the ambush, or so I’m told. He fired rockets from the building across from us, so he was never in any real danger once the enemy decided that they couldn’t fire rockets back at him. I think we can credit some of our success to his skill. He seems like a great warrior. Much like yourself.”
That made Kelsey smile. “Oh, he is. Would it be possible for me to go see him now?”
The woman nodded her assent, and they quickly crossed the street to another building. Finding a clear path through the carnage was impossible, so she just held her breath and accepted that her shoes and pants would be bloody.
From there, they went up several floors and exited into what looked like a staging area for a sniper’s nest. If the sniper used rifles, grenades, and rockets.
Talbot was there, along with Chloe Laird and some people she didn’t recognize. As soon as he saw her, her husband headed her way, and she greeted him with a grin, her arms wide open.
“I hear you ran into a bit of trouble,” he said after he’d squeezed her tight and pushed her back to arm’s length. “You seem like you’re okay.”
She shrugged slightly. “The first
ambush didn’t account for how ferocious the bastards were. They came right in after us. We hurt them, but not badly enough to break them like you did. Good job, by the way. You really kicked their asses.”
“Chloe and I did okay,” he admitted with a grin. “That still leaves at least one column that hasn’t been bloodied yet. You think they’re going to react the same way as the group you ambushed, don’t you?”
“If they can,” she agreed with a nod. “I’d imagine that a lot of people got away from the two ambushes and will join them, so they’ll know what’s about to happen. It seems like we’ve made a good start, but I’m not sure if we can count on it happening again. It looks like you caught them completely unaware and blew the snot out of them. That was decisive.”
One of the men standing nearby came up and nodded at her. “Our people executed the third ambush just a few minutes ago. Just as you suspected, it wasn’t as effective as this one. Still, they achieve their purpose, and the enemy has begun retreating.
“I think that we’re going to have to be satisfied with them going back to the camp they’ve established just inside Frankfort. They lost one ambush and got hurt in a couple of others, so maybe that’s going to make them think twice about trying again today.”
“What do we do now?” Talbot asked. “How can we be certain which direction they’ll go next, and what do we do when they do it?”
The man shrugged slightly. “We have people watching them. Depending on the direction they head, we’ll move forces into place to ambush them again. They haven’t run into all of our traps yet, so we’ve still got a few surprises left.
“The biggest one is that we’ve got explosives planted underneath certain open areas between buildings. Substantially larger charges than we used here. They didn’t hit any this time, but if we play our cards right the next time, we might be able to lure them into a trap they didn’t see coming, even if they’re wary. If we can, that’ll be almost as effective as this attack was.”
“How many people are we talking about?” Kelsey asked, giving the man her full attention.
“We know that they’ve left some reserves to hold their marshaling area, so counting that, they’ve got at least two thousand people that are still able to fight, probably more. I’d imagine the walking wounded will total another fifteen hundred or so.”
Kelsey nodded slowly. “If they regroup, I think Talbot and I might be the best choices to lure them into a trap. It may not seem like it, but we can move very quickly when we want to. Given a good opportunity, I think we can draw them into one of the areas you’re talking about and get that decisive victory we all need.”
Talbot looked as if he wanted to argue, but instead, he shrugged. “What’s the plan?”
Kelsey smiled coldly. “We can taunt them with the fact that we’re the ones that blew up their castle and leaders. That’ll get them all excited. This may be our one chance to decisively engage them in a killing field of our choice. We can’t let this pass by.”
The people around them looked at her as if she were crazy, and she couldn’t blame them. The idea sounded insane.
Hell, it probably was.
It was risky, but they had to thoroughly thrash the horde if they wanted to get out of Frankfort. Not only because they needed the permission of the inhabitants to leave, but because it would be impossible to get away with an effective enemy still fighting all around them.
The horde had slaughtered her crewmates and friends. She wanted revenge, and with this plan, she could get it in a way that it served their purposes.
No matter how they played this, it was going to be dangerous. All kinds of things could still go wrong. Having several thousand enemies baying at one’s heels would be hair-raising under the best of circumstances, but that was really the only option if they wanted to end this fight decisively.
“Someone needs to show us where the traps are,” she said coldly. “We’ll take care of the rest.”
With only a few additional mishaps, Carl managed to get down to the roof of the lift car alive and unharmed. That was something of a relief, considering that he must’ve snapped a dozen rungs on the way down and knocked yet another one completely free just before he’d reached the lift car.
He certainly hoped that he could get the lift working again because going back up on the ladder was far too dangerous. He untied the rope and left it hanging there. He shouted up the shaft, telling Ralph and Austin to stand by.
Getting through the hatch in the roof of the lift car wasn’t a problem, and just a few moments later, he was standing in front of Admiral Mertz, Julia, and Jebediah. To his shock, Julia pulled him into a hug.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said. “We weren’t sure that anyone was going to realize that we were gone so soon.”
Her hug made him feel a little uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to intimate contact with women in general, and he wasn’t sure that his wife would approve in any case. In fact, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t like it at all.
When Julia let him go, he stepped back self-consciously and smiled as he nodded. “As soon as we realized that you weren’t back, we came looking for you. Austin and Ralph will head back up and start gathering a rescue party if they don’t hear from us in another hour. Hopefully, we’ll join them before then.”
Having said that, he reentered the lift and quickly had the control panel open. He plugged his equipment in and ran a brief diagnostic. The problem immediately presented itself.
“It looks like the main control board shorted out. I’m not going to be able to repair this without the right components—which I can salvage from another lift and swap out, given half an hour at some point—so I’m afraid that we’re going to have to use the stairs.”
Admiral Mertz grunted. “That’s not exactly the answer I was looking for, but I guess it doesn’t surprise me. Do you have something that can unlock a security door?”
Carl nodded. “I’ve got something in my toolkit that will help me get through just about any mechanical lock. I’ve also got a cutter that I can use if I have to.”
“Then I suppose we’d best be about it,” the admiral said. “I’d rather not waste any more air than we have to.”
The climb up only took a few minutes, so Carl was quickly looking at the security door in the stairwell. “It’s probably meant to make sure that only maintenance personnel can get down here. This isn’t something one can hack, so it’s secure in a technological society in a way that an electronic lock isn’t. Let’s see what I can do.”
He opened his toolkit and pulled out a set of lock picks that he’d recreated from a template he’d found in the ship’s library aboard Invincible. As he’d told the admiral, he very rarely ran into something like this, but when he did, it was nice to have the correct tools for the job.
Thankfully, they didn’t weigh very much, so having them in his kit didn’t cost him much extra weight.
Sadly, his skill with the picks was relatively basic. He’d only run into a few mechanical locks to practice with. Thankfully, he had some instructional vids stored in his implants that he could access now that they’d been rebooted.
He watched several in quick succession as he fitted the lock picks into the mechanism. In the end, it took him far longer than he liked, but he finally felt the picks catch just the way he wanted and rotated his wrists, turning the lock with a loud click.
“Gotcha!” he exulted as he stood.
That earned him a hearty back slap from Jebediah, which sent him staggering forward. “Excellent work, young man. Now, let’s go before we run out of air.”
The rest of the climb was uneventful though tiring. By the time they reached the level where the fusion plant had been, they’d used about forty minutes of the time that Austin and Ralph had promised to wait.
The two were pleased to see them, and congratulations were exchanged all around. They pulled the rope up, closed the lift doors, and set course back the way they’d come. They made it back into breathable
atmosphere with a healthy margin of air still left in the cache that he’d brought down.
If they were going to be here long, they couldn’t count on continually scavenging air bottles to use. He was going to have to tap into the power on the bottom level and get the life-support systems working in the areas that they had to traverse.
Basically, that was the stairwell leading down, the level where the fusion plant had once been, and the second stairwell. Until then, they’d have to harvest more air to be able to get up and down as needed.
More importantly, he had to focus his attention on the maglev train so that they could figure out how to summon it. It might be their ticket out of the city, and he wasn’t going to let it slip through his fingers.
“Any word on how the fighting is going?” Admiral Mertz asked.
Carl shook his head. “Nothing so far. I’m hoping that Kelsey and Talbot are okay, but knowing them, they’re in the thick of it. I really wish that we’d been able to salvage some operational armor or weapons. Too bad there isn’t a stock of weapons left over from when the Marine Raiders were here.”
He frowned and turned toward Jebediah. “Didn’t someone say that the Raiders went out on a mission and never came back? Surely they didn’t take everything they had with them. They must’ve left some equipment behind. I still might be able to salvage something from it that would make a real difference in the fighting.”
Jebediah nodded. “We’ve kept what they left behind secure. I’ve never been into the room itself, so I can’t really tell you much about the contents.”
“Could you take me there?”
The large man considered his request for a few moments and then nodded. “I’ll let Admiral Mertz and Julia report the situation we found below to my father. While they do, I’ll take you to the cache.”
Carl wasn’t certain that they’d find anything helpful, but it never hurt to try. Sometimes luck was good, sometimes it was bad, but if one didn’t check, one never knew.