Shockball

by S. L. Viehl

  Milass was snapping out orders to his men and barely glanced at me when I came up. “Move the children and the women into the quake bunker. Have the men destroy the perimeter tunnels, all except the ones to the village and the arena drop point.”

  “Excuse me.”

  Now he looked at me. “What?”

  “There are people out in those sewer passages. We need to get help to them, too.”

  “The unclean?” I nodded. “The chief already told you, let them die.” He turned his back on me.

  “No, I won’t.” I went around and planted myself in front of him. “Who came to me a few days ago, begging for help?”

  “That was different.” He got a besotted look in his eyes. “Ilona Red Faun is not cursed.”

  “She couldn’t stay here. Guess who I sent her to a few days ago?” At his gape, I nodded. “Uh-huh. She’s hiding out with them, and they don’t have a chance against armed League troops. They’ll all be slaughtered.”

  He hit me, and I went down. “How could you send her to them?”

  “Why?” I pushed my hair out of my face and glared up at him. “What else could I do? I didn’t see you volunteering to help me with the problem—and you’re the one who dumped her on me.”

  “They are cursed. Rico forbids us to go near them.”

  “They’re not anymore. I’ve cured their curse. I can cure everyone, now that I know what it is, and who’s spreading it.” I resisted the urge to tell him exactly who had been cursing the Night Horse. “You’ve got to send some men into the sewers and get them out of there.”

  “Even if I disobeyed the chief, my men couldn’t get to them. Your League pursuers have collapsed the western perimeter tunnels. They’re cut off, probably buried alive.” Hatred replaced the anguish in his expression. “You have her blood on your hands.”

  He kicked me out of his way and stalked off.

  Reever and Dhreen got on either side of me and grabbed when I would have gone after the demonic dwarf.

  “They’re trapped,” I said to Reever. “We have to get to them. Do you know a way out of here that will take us to them?”

  “No. But Hawk might.”

  We found Hawk outside the Night Way hogan, getting ready to destroy the last of his dry paintings. He listened, then shook his head.

  “Is that a no, you don’t know the way, or no, you can’t help us?” I frowned when he squatted beside the dry painting. “Hawk, this is important.”

  Dhreen got disgusted fast. “Let’s get out of here. Every minute we waste on him, she could be dying.”

  “Wait.” I watched Hawk’s patient sprinkling of the dried flower petals and stomped down the impulse to kick the ’ iikááh into a big smear. Then something caught my eye. “Reever, you said the tunnels were laid out like a web, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look.” I nodded toward the spiral pattern Hawk was creating on top of the dry painting mural. “This was finished. He doesn’t do that when they’re finished.”

  Reever studied the new design. “He’s drawing us a map.”

  It must have been the only way Hawk could help us without disobeying the chief’s orders. On a hunch, I crouched down beside him. “Where are the outcasts? Show me.”

  He stopped sprinkling the larkspur petals and discarded them on one side in favor of some red sand. Carefully he made a small dot on one of the outer “web” strands.

  “And where are we?”

  He sprinkled another red dot in the center of the web.

  Reever studied the dry painting for a moment. “I know where they are. How do we get to them safely?”

  Hawk sprinkled a thin blue line from our position, through the web of tunnels, and over to where the outcasts were located. I looked up at Reever, who nodded.

  “Would you take the cats up out of here?” Hawk nodded, and I squeezed his arm. “Thank you.”

  He started to chant as he added swirls of red along the outer ring of the design.

  “The enemy is everywhere,

  The enemy is inside us,

  The enemy is outside us.

  We walk the rainbow path

  To fight the enemy within us.”

  “He is marking the position of the League troops,” Reever said.

  I judged the distances. “God, they’re really close.”

  Hawk got to his feet, destroyed the entire dry painting with a couple of shuffling steps, and left the hogan.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Change of Course

  Since everyone had moved to the emergency bunker, we only had to slip past one of Rico’s guards. I suggested the smallest one might be the easiest to jump, but Reever overruled me.

  “That man.” He pointed to the largest of the guards.

  “Reever, he’s twice your size. Forget about it.”

  Before I could stop him, Reever went over to the big guard, and spoke in low tones with him. Then my husband turned and gestured for us to come to him.

  “This redeems my debt to you, Nilch’i‘,” the guard said, then he turned and faced the stone wall.

  Reever led us past him without incident.

  “What debt does he have to you?” I asked.

  “You are not the only one who has favors to collect. I took a penalty for him during a game.”

  “Copycat.” I glanced back at the guard. “So why is he facing the wall?”

  “Milass ordered him to see that no one went into the tunnels. By doing so, he was not disobeying the secondario‘s orders.” He stopped me when I would have turned toward Medical. “Where are you going?”

  “To get Shropana. You’re coming with me. This may be the only chance we have to get him up to the surface.”

  Shropana was unconscious again, thanks to the continuous sedation I’d been keeping him on. I hooked up the external pump to the side of the gurney and had the men carefully transfer him to it. His artificial heart was still operating smoothly, my subsequent scan revealed.

  “Whatever you do, don’t drop him.” I downloaded his chart onto a datapad and placed it by his side. “And don’t knock those pressure lines out of the pump, or his chest.”

  Dhreen and Reever handled the gurney while I packed a medical case. The outcasts had doubtless suffered some injuries from the explosions, and I hoped they wouldn’t be severe. There was only so much I could carry. I spotted the Lok-Teel, looked at Shropana, then slipped the ambulatory mold in my pocket.

  When I was finished, the men pushed Shropana’s gurney out into the tunnel and we began following Hawk’s route to the western sewer system.

  The tunnels were in bad shape. Loose rock had fallen everywhere, and the stone walls still shuddered with each new explosion. The closer we got to the sewers, the louder the booms grew. Dust and small rocks began raining down on us, and I held my case over Shropana’s chest to protect him. We edged around a couple of half-sprung traps until we got out of the interior tunnels and into the old conduit system.

  We emerged into the main sewer line, and discovered all the lights had been knocked out. It was too dark to see what lay ahead. I sniffed the air, and smelled smoke.

  Not fire. I’d been badly burned in the past, first during a mercenary attack on the Sunlace, then repeatedly branded on Catopsa. As a result, I had an enduring and understandable case of pyrophobia. Please, God, not another fire.

  “Wait.” I pulled an optical emitter from my medical case. “If memory serves me, we need to go left up here, then walk a hundred yards and turn right.”

  It wasn’t easy to do any of that. The damage from the explosives was much worse out here, and the fragile concrete pipes had partially collapsed. Mounds of soil and rock created a labyrinth for us to wade through.

  “Where are we?” I asked Reever.

  “About forty feet from where the outcasts were hidden.”

  I looked around. “There?” I pointed to a recessed area above the jumbled rubble that had been a processing station.

  Reever nodded.
>
  Small hills of debris blocked every possible approach to the recess. We could climb them, but there was no way Dhreen and Reever were going to be able to get the gurney through. “How can we get to them?”

  “We get them to come to us.” Dhreen walked over to the pile of loose rock and climbed up until he reached the top. “I can see some light from behind it. Duncan, help me clear this stone away.”

  An hour of moving rocks made enough of an opening for the outcasts to push through from the other side. To our disappointment, no one emerged.

  “Maybe they’re farther down the other way?” I tried to see, but the emitter’s power cells were starting to fade.

  “No, it has to be on this side.” Reever went around another hill and vanished. A moment later, he called back, “Over here.”

  I helped Dhreen maneuver the gurney around the rubble. We had to wrench Shropana through a tight spot, and I held my breath as more rock slid down and pelted us.

  The stench of something burning got worse.

  I tried not to panic, not to allow my lungs to solidify from it. Sweat broke out all over me, and I started to shake. My throat was closing up. Soon I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

  Images of the fire on board the Sunlace, when I’d lost Tonetka and very nearly the use of both of my hands, rushed into my mind. I hadn’t had a full-blown anxiety attack since leaving Catopsa, but I hadn’t been near any uncontrollable fires since then, either.

  “Reever, what’s burning?” I looked for signs of flame shooting out of some hidden recess. “Is this because of the explosives?”

  He helped me and Dhreen wrest Shropana’s gurney toward the next opening. “It is from the explosives. The League uses thermal detonator.”

  That should have reassured me. It didn’t. “Maybe I should sit down for a minute.”

  Reever climbed down and held out his hand. “Squilyp told us this would happen, and when it did, for you to confront it.”

  “What does that Omorr know anyway?” I grumbled as I threaded my fingers through Reever’s. Fear had clamped around my neck like an invisible bonesetter, so I tried to focus on the men and the reason we were trying to kill ourselves. “Do you see them? Are they close?”

  “There’s another one right up ahead. In there.” Dhreen pointed to a shadowy recess in a section of pipe a few feet away.

  “Leave Shropana here,” Reever said. “We’ll come back for him.”

  We had to climb and crawl over more rubble to get to the outcasts’ hiding place. I jerked a few times I felt something a little warmer than it should have been, but saw no fire. Which was a good thing. I think I would have started screaming hysterically if I’d spotted so much as a spark.

  The recess had once housed some kind of pumping station, judging from the remnants of the equipment. A crude door had been rigged and now stood jammed and inoperable.

  I felt the metal door, which was cool, then put my mouth by the small open space. “Is anyone in there?”

  A chorus of relieved voices answered me.

  “Step back, Cherijo.” Reever nodded toward Dhreen, and the two of them grabbed the door and wrenched. Metal groaned, some loose rock fell, and then they pulled it out, far enough for the outcasts to fit through.

  They started emerging, covered with dust and grinning. A few were injured, and I herded them to one side for a quick triage. Dhreen yelled and swept Ilona up in his arms the moment she appeared.

  “It is good that you came to find us,” one of the men said.

  “I’m sure you would have made your way out eventually. True love conquers all.” I watched Ilona cover Dhreen’s grinning face with kisses, and shook my head. “I can just imagine what kind of kids they’ll have. Short-tempered mercenaries. The universe may never be safe again.”

  While I dealt with the minor injuries, Reever gathered the outcasts together and decided with them how to proceed.

  “We have family on the surface who will help us travel to the Four Mountains reservation,” the oldest man said. “We have voted and decided to rejoin our Navajo clans.”

  That must have been a tough decision to make, seeing as every one of the outcasts still had family members among the Night Horse.

  “Weren’t these the same clans who were willing to let you crossbreeds be deported?” I mentioned.

  “We have made contact with the tribal council. They never wished us to leave, and will not turn us over to the authorities. The chief deceived us.”

  Another of Rico’s many sins. I finished wrapping a support around a sprained wrist and went over to the map Reever was scratching in the dirt.

  “You’ll need to get past the League troops, and they’re probably all over the subway system.” I pointed to the place on the crude map where the outcasts had helped me take Reever to Joe’s underground facility. “There’s a surface access hatch here, right before you enter the lab. It leads to the back maintenance shed on the estate. I doubt the League is watching Joe’s grounds. I’d take that.”

  “What about drones? As soon as they see us, we will be detained.”

  I thought for a moment. “Is it October twelfth or thirteenth?”

  Reever answered that one. “It is the twelfth.”

  “Tell the drones you’re architectural students from the University of California. A group of them comes on the twelfth every year to take a tour of the estate. Thank the drone for its hospitality, and Walk away.”

  The outcast looked down at his dusty garments. “We do not resemble students.”

  “On the contrary.” I smiled. “Native American fashion is the latest trend among young people. The drones won’t blip a sensor over your appearance.”

  “What about him?” Dhreen jerked a thumb in Shropana’s direction. “They’re not going to think he’s a student.”

  He had a point. “We’ll take him out another way.”

  We led the outcasts back through the opening we’d created and a couple of the uninjured volunteered to carry Shropana. Then we slowly and cautiously made our way toward the subway tunnels.

  “Stop,” Reever said as we reached the junction tunnel. “Be as silent as possible from here.”

  We could hear the troops moving on the other side of the walls, and everyone made an effort to be quiet as we filed in. Dhreen, Ilona, and I ended up toward the rear of the group, and we were the first to hear the approaching steps behind us.

  “Everyone, down!” I hissed as loudly as I dared, then shrank into the shadows. Beside me, Dhreen wrapped his arms around Ilona.

  A detachment of soldiers passed through the tunnels, just where we had been standing only moments ago. I stared at Dhreen, knowing one word from him would bring the League troops running. He had nothing to worry about, he’d only be deported. Terrans didn’t even jail aliens—they considered it inhumane treatment of human prisoners.

  He’d also get a hefty reward for turning me in—enough to give him and Ilona a start wherever they wanted.

  As if he could read my thoughts, I saw Dhreen flash me a smile. And he didn’t make a peep.

  The troops disappeared down the tunnel, and we all let out a collective sigh of relief.

  “You’ve certainly changed,” I said to Dhreen.

  “Maybe.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe not.”

  “No more talking until we reach the surface,” Reever warned in a barely audible whisper.

  We got the Night Horse out first, but Dhreen insisted on staying with us to help carry Shropana. Deliberately, we moved him to another access hatch on the other side of the estate, one I knew was regularly patrolled by security drones.

  He was beginning to come out of the anesthetic as we hauled him up the ladder and out of the small portal behind the front gate station. Shropana saw me and struggled for a moment, until Reever clamped an arm around his shoulders and pinned him to the gurney. I knelt beside it, and spoke close to Shropana’s ear.

  “All the details of your surgery and treatment are on the datapad beside you. Tel
l them to get you to a medical facility, as soon as possible.”

  “You … did … this?”

  “No thanks are necessary.”

  He closed his eyes and didn’t make another sound. Apparently he thought so, too.

  “I’ll stay with him,” Dhreen said. “I’ll point them in the wrong direction when they want to know where you are.”

  Now he wanted me to trust him again. Funny, but I was inclined to do just that. To a certain extent. “You just want the reward for recovering him.”

  He grinned. “I haven’t changed that much.” He looked at Reever. “Why don’t the two of you get out of here now, while you can?”

  “I can’t go. Not until I treat the infected members of the tribe. Especially the hybrids—they may never see another doctor.”

  “Still immolating yourself for your patients.”

  “Sacrificing, and yes, that’s part of the job.”

  He reached out as if to hug me, then thought better of it and offered his hand. “I’ll see you again, Doc.”

  I took it. “You still owe me free passage. When I’m done here, we’re going to need to get off this planet in a hurry.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t have a ship.”

  “So? When has that ever stopped you?” I took the Lok-Teel from my pocket and handed it to him. “Put on a happy Terran face, and go up there and steal one.”

  There were no guards left inside the cave when Reever and I returned. Kegide, however, appeared before us and made some urgent gestures.

  “Do you think the League will get this far?”

  “Possibly.” Reever scanned the area. “The tribe took whatever they could carry, and all the food stores are gone.”

  Kegide was hopping from foot to foot now and making the low, toneless sounds that indicated he was beyond agitated.

  “We’d better go with him.”

  Kegide led us past the emergency bunker, which was completely empty, and down a long, narrow corridor that ended in a passage up toward diffused light.