“Yes, Your Majesty. The team is here for the keys as we suspected. They possess a map drawn in Mycroft’s own hand. It says the key is situated in a cave near White River, in Canada.”
Jay licked cracked lips, tasting blood on her tongue. That’s bad, I need another dose of Sis-B, but I gave the last ampule to that sniper with the nice smile. What was his name? Philippe. She was in bad shape. Despite being out of the freezing wind, the cold seemed to have seeped into her very bones. It was frigid below ground and the last restless sleep she had involved a bear in another tunnel.
She disliked the cold. She hated the caves. She loathed the icy rocks. The feel of all that weight. The inky, oppressive darkness when she turned off the lights and tried to find some small comfort on the sharp, banded rock.
These weren’t pretty limestone caves with their wonderful flowing shapes and otherworldly beauty formed by gentle water. This was a maze cave of old rock. Water only had half a say in their formation.
During winter, snowmelt would flood the caves with mad abandon, fed from multiple entrances in this immense connected system of tunnels, galleries, and caverns, littered with small cliffs and steep inclines. The yearly flooding created long, smooth passages in the oat-colored stone, but would also loosen rocks. Like mobile angle grinders, they would smash and tumble during the flood, creating unexpected sharp edges that tore at exposed skin like a cheese grater and coated the floors in places with sand and grit. And so far, the squealer had identified fourteen miles of cave system.
The squealer had found the surface three times now and exhausted itself five times. She wasn’t sure this was the best entrance to find the key, if it was even here. The cold, wet conditions made her fingers feel like bloated sausages. She frequently had to tuck them into her armpits where they’d burn with pins and needles before manipulating the ropes or using an anchor.
The Inseminator must have been mad to think this was fun. Of course, Mycroft wasn’t climbing the caves one after the other with no rest. He’d probably leisurely explored these caves during the summer months where the caves would have felt cool and refreshing rather than cold enough that every breath expelled precious body heat in the form of moist clouds.
With the squealer out of battery, she’d been forced to search by hand, waiting until the batteries recovered. Laboriously she searched with hovers and ropes with that damned silly poem ringing in her ears. Most of it on hands and knees. Stretching into tortuous poses to get past rocks and overcome obstacles. Her shins still felt tender from the last fall. The skin itched where it was healing slowly and her ripped pants were sticky with her own blood.
The last time she fell, she’d caught herself with her TK. It was like trying to lift a giant. She couldn’t afford to do that again. If she exhausted herself from using her Gift, or worse, fell unconscious, she’d be defenseless and would waste precious time. It was better to have the ropes catch her; that’s what they were there for. The last thing she needed was overextension sickness.
She was tired, and tired climbers were dead climbers. She had to rest. One last push.
This just has to be the cave where Mycroft found the key, she thought desperately, giving herself more slack and sliding the static rope through the eight. She chalked her hands then stretched, arms and legs trembling as she felt the rough edge below her fingertips. With a grunt and a heave, she wriggled over the top of the rock ledge on her belly and rolled away from the edge.
If the key wasn’t here, that meant she must have missed something and she’d have to start all over again. She worried she didn’t have the time. The physical exertion didn’t take her mind off her parents and friends, risking their lives playing cat-and-mouse to give her time to search. Every second counted.
As her breathing returned to normal, she unhitched the water bottle from her harness with shaking hands and sank down, cold rock at her back. She took a huge drink and then brought out the squealer and display. He must have recovered some battery life by now. She could set him off and sleep while he mapped this upper gallery.
Tapping the motor to life, it hovered, taking a few seconds to power up its sensors. She pulled the display unit out and turned it on, the artificial light making her wince.
The squealer gave a sort of satisfied noise and moved away, small lights blinking as it examined the space around them and sent data back.
In the glow from the display she saw a pinkish hue to the water from the blood welling out of her cracked lips. She couldn’t continue, she’d make mistakes. One patch of black ice in the wrong place and she would snap an ankle or worse. She was done. She needed food and rest.
The supplies were at the bottom of the cliff she’d just climbed, tied off to her rope. She just had to pull it up. Jay tried to summon the energy to get to her feet and couldn’t do it. She needed sleep, and sleep felt like betrayal, but her body wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Not this time. She leaned forward and grabbed the rope with arms that felt like icy noodles made of sweat and lethargy.
“If you snag, I’m leaving you down there, you stupid backpack.”
Jay heaved like a Roman galley slave tied to an oar, feeling the burn across her shoulders. Hand by slow hand the rope pooled at her feet, and when she felt like she couldn’t do anything else, somehow, she did it. The bag scraped across the grit to end up at her feet within arm’s reach.
Another quickly eaten meal washed down with blood-flavored water. She used to like the taste of chocolate before this last week. The taste of it made her miss her family. She wiped away the tears that threatened to freeze on her cheeks.
Feeling half asleep despite her maudlin thoughts, she pulled the microbag out of the pack, before shutting down the display unit and turning off the hovers.
Jay really wanted to take off the harness, but the thought of undoing the straps and trying to take the damned thing off just wasn’t going to happen. She settled on unclipping everything—chalk bag, spare karabiners, row of anchors—and dumped them close to the rock face.
Good enough.
Jay struggled into the sleeping bag, like a butterfly in reverse, and clipped it to the ground to prevent her from rolling in her sleep. She closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come, even as the bag started to warm to her body heat. The squealer still hadn’t moved off, still collecting data about the ledge no doubt. There was no one here to talk to except his softly glowing blue eyed stare. She allowed herself a moment of weakness, and voiced her fear.
“What if the key’s not here?” Jay asked in a small voice. “What if he didn’t find it in one of these caves?”
At her voice the squealer turned in her direction as if listening intently.
“What if it is here, and it turns me as mean as Mycroft?”
The squealer just made a faint noise and moved off.
I can’t let that happen. No matter what, I won’t let it change me.
It was still cold when Jay opened her eyes, her back sore from the cold, hard ground. She’d drooled in her sleep. She sat up, feeling the pull of the restraining rope, and wiped her mouth. Something had woken her. She rubbed her eyes until the sandpapery feeling went away and turned bleary eyes to her surroundings. In the darkness a tiny, blinking light and soft beep caught her attention. The squealer. Stifling a jaw-cracking yawn, she grabbed the device, silencing the beeping.
Jay shook her head, trying to clear the fog of sleep from her mind. She didn’t think it had been the quiet beeping that had woken her. She was awake now, so she turned on the display. Woah. The holographic display expanded, showing the newly mapped tunnels. The squealer had managed to make it through the upper maze and discovered a large sinkhole on the other side. The long, straight tunnel penetrated deep into the mountain before opening into a cavern, deep underground.
As Jay started to zoom into the image with a motion of her wrist, just at the edge of hearing she thought she heard something. Jay closed her eyes, trying to tune out the faint crackling of the microbag and focus on the pre
sence of other minds. She sat unshielded, open and accepting, almost in a state of meditation. After a few moments she caught just a sense of three minds entering the cave system.
The minds were familiar: it was Snake, Mack, and Sarge. Had it been anyone else she would have been unable to sense them at such distance. Their thoughts were too unfocused to make out much. But she could sense the faintest of emotions. Strong emotion at that distance. Anger. A red haze seemed to cloud her mom’s thoughts.
“Where’s Dad?” She strained, but the serene sense of her dad refused to reveal itself.
A hint of pain in her fingers and she realized she was chewing her nails again. Her dad’s absence and her mother’s anger could only mean one thing. China had been captured or maybe even killed. Just the suggestion that her dad might be dead was enough to set Jay’s emotions whirling. Fear welled inside her, accompanied by hot tears. Spitting out the nail she quickly used the display to send the squealer to where she felt them. They’d need him to guide them through the maze of passages to where she was.
And she needed to know what happened.
What if we find the key and Heinrich wants to trade Dad for it? She wasn’t sure if it was a flash from her unreliable Gift of premonition, or just a dark thought from her subconscious rearing its ugly head.
Snake hoped this was the cave. Six bloody Xs, there was no way to check them all. They just had to hope that they’d chosen correctly and that Jay was in one of the three furthest from the White River settlement. Sheila was completely tapped out. Her batteries severely depleted, he madly tried to inject more energy into her, strumming chords mid-squeeze along tight tunnels.
Bloody hell, it’s brass monkeys down here. At least the acoustics underground reflect every scrap of harmonic back into Sheila, he thought, heedless of the pain in his cramping fingers. He was worried about the AI. He was worried about Sarge and Mack and Jay, and he was really worried about China.
Worry usually wasn’t in his character. Why worry about things you couldn’t control? But the four of them were run ragged by that damned frigate, never giving him the chance to recharge Sheila completely. It had been a stop-start desperate race of depletion and restoration.
As he passed by an obstruction, Snake leaned against the hard rock wall, trying to catch his breath. They needed to find Jay, and this cave system was enormous. He started the traditional cry of any Australian lost in the unfamiliar wilderness, moving his hands from the instrument to cup them around his mouth. “Cooo—”
“Stow it Snake,” Sarge interrupted angrily, stopping in her tracks and leaning against the opposite wall. Mack slumped to the ground beside her.
Sarge un-holstered the shinkari pistol, checking the charge level as a muscle in her jaw flexed and ground in anger. Mack pulled out a chocolate bar from her pack, unwrapping it, and Snake could see fresh tears dot the surface before she brought it to her mouth. She’d been silent since China was taken, and her grief was palpable. Maybe she blames herself.
Sarge stowed the pistol as if it had offended her personally. “What’s the charge?” she asked, glancing at the instrument as if wanting to smash the machine against the striated rocks that surrounded them.
Snake cradled Sheila protectively, glancing at the power dials. “Three percent. We can’t go back for him, Sarge. We can’t take on the frigate. Listen. That bloody bitch is flogging the Americans. It’s chewed them up and spit them out without missing a beat. Unless they try these nukes they mentioned, they aren’t going to stop it. One shinkari rifle, a few handguns, and a drained harmonic force emitter just isn’t going to cut the mustard. Our best chance is to find that damned key. Mycroft could snap a frigate like that like pulling the wings off a fly. That’s China’s best hope and you know it.”
Sarge looked like she wanted to argue, but kept quiet, cracking the knuckles of her left hand. She still looked angry enough to put her fist through someone’s chest. As long as China was missing and probably in the hands of King Heinrich, that wasn’t likely to change.
“We should split up. I can lay some ambushes, slow them down as they try and get into the caves. They can’t risk blowing the entrance. They’ll have to try and take it with ground forces. You two can go on ahead and find Jay and get to the key,” Sarge said, her eyes unfocused and features strained.
“What if they send that Gifted from Rio? Or if the Walker King comes himself? I know how good a shot you are, but even a shinkari rifle won’t stop them. You’ll die Sarge, and then Jay loses both her parents,” Mack objected. “Dammit, Sarge. If you get caught or killed as well, we are truly screwed. Who’s supposed to lead this mission then? Snake? Me?”
Snake shook his head as if denying the suspected reality that shortly the frigate was going to find them and there was nowhere else to run to. Sheila was drained, China was captured, four against who knew how many they would send once they knew the key was here. It was hopeless. He slumped to the ground, feeling defeated and worthless.
“I’m not important. I’m not the mission. Neither is China.” Sarge gestured in a cutting motion with her artificial arm. “We knew coming here was a huge risk. We weren’t even sure if we would survive the transfer, but we did. We got our chance. Just find Jay and get her to that damned key. Nothing else matters.”
Snake wasn’t sure if Sarge was trying to convince herself or not. Even now he still hadn’t gotten his entire memory back, but he knew what he was seeing. Sarge and China were a couple, bound together and living each day for each other and their daughter. They lived as if they expected to die, and now that her husband had been ripped out of the transfer bubble and left behind, she was feeling lost and coping as best she could.
Snake could see she felt defeated and so had returned to the mission at hand as a sort of defense mechanism. Soldiers. Always thinking of the damned mission. Snake wondered what he could say in the face of his commander’s determination to sacrifice her life.
“Sss … ssna … ake,” Sheila interrupted. Her vocals sounded awful, like a barely conscious patient. She was using as little energy as she could. “Ssss … quealer’sss en rou … oute.”
The distorted pronouncement from the instrument was the inspiration that Snake was looking for. “Listen, Jay’s here. At least say goodbye,” he said, hoping that might stop Sarge.
Sarge paused, silent and unmoving as she considered. She nodded as the squealer buzzed into view. “You’re right; Jay deserves an explanation. A chance to say goodbye.”
The prince stood on the prow, watching the transfer energies dissipate from around the ship. The glare of sunlight on the white landscape below caused him to squint. He loathed the cold. It was anathema to someone who reveled in heat and flame, and he brushed his hands together to warm them at the sudden drop in temperature.
The Asian shit had led them here. Another failure. It galled him. Followed by the threat from the king, it was all too much. Ahmed knew he was no match for the king’s power. The king made that plain after the events in the holding cell. Ahmed was in disgrace. To his surprise, his disgrace hadn’t eliminated him from going on the mission to retrieve the key.
However, that little toad Mister Delta had been put in charge. Unsurprising, perhaps, but what the king failed to realize was that the Elites his Father had sent with him would follow his orders first. Ahmed fumed as he studied the landscape below and fingered the missing chunk from his ear. This whole mission has been a disaster. After damaging the ship and failing at the interrogation of the prisoner, he itched to prove himself.
That bitch, Countess Anna, had been the savior of the mission. She’d shown him up at every turn. He damaged the ship; she used most of the attack craft to repair it. He damaged one of the main guns irreparably; she jury rigged the components she needed to make a cannonade. The cannonade had shredded incoming aircraft in the battle at Ilya’s Isles: a battle in which he hadn’t even been allowed on deck to use his ability. She’d used him like her own personal cutting and welding torch, ignoring his prote
sts about his overextension sickness after the skirmish in Rio. She had restored the reserve battery array. She’d restored the shields to operational effectiveness. And throughout it all, she addressed him in a curt, cold manner, as if personally offended that he’d damaged her ship.
He’d like to see her strapped to the x-frame, see if she could maintain that condescending expression on her face as he slowly burned his mark into her flesh. It was a mere daydream though. As the king’s favorite, Heinrich would make good on his threat if Ahmed so much as touched her. The prince had recognized his imminent death in the king’s steely blue stare during the botched interrogation. He knew the king would pronounce judgement on him for breaking the First Principle and summarily execute him if he tried anything with the blond countess.
But he could set all that failure and disgrace behind him. The Rebel had confirmed Heinrich’s theory. The Rebels had come to this timeline to acquire its version of the world keys. It was genius, really. Even now, the Rebels searched for the primary key.
This changes everything, the prince thought, his hands shaking as he moved forward to grasp the handrail, his burning expression fixated on the land below. If I can claim the key for Heinrich, all is forgiven, and glory will be mine once more—but the power …
The view through the cloaking wavered like a heat haze, although the air was decidedly chilly. The ground was a patchwork of white snow, interspersed with areas of gray ice and splashes of dark vegetation that riddled the ground like the footsteps of a giant in muddy ground. With this amount of water around, it wasn’t hard to imagine this area being riddled with extensive caves. In summer, all that ice would melt and seep into the ground.
His father never mentioned that in his youth King Mycroft had been an avid cave explorer. He’d discovered the key by pure chance somewhere down in the vista below. King Heinrich was probably already scanning the geology. According to Heinrich, King Barrett had found the key in a massive underground cavern after negotiating a deep maze of passageways and tunnels.
Suffrage (World Key Chronicles Book 1) Page 28