Deep inside the rock chamber, something moved.
"I see it." Ross slipped in front of Hallow for a better view.
Hallow said, "That's impossible. He's chameleoned."
There was another flash of motion deep among the chaotic rock formations.
Ross argued, "I'm telling you I see it in there."
Stew said, "I see it too. About fifty feet to the left."
"No," Ross corrected. "Off to the right. Much farther back."
Ross and Stew looked at each other. "Uh oh."
The sound of Ross shucking the scattergun echoed through the cavern. "Heads up. We're not alone."
A face flitted out from beside a rock pillar, then disappeared. A second one appeared in a different part of the vast chamber. There was another flicker of movement high up in the shadowy roof.
Mixed with the sound of water, the Rangers heard a faint, rapid slapping sound as if from many bare feet padding over wet stones.
"Move up," Ross ordered his Rangers. "Whatever's in here might not be friendly and if the syker gets it, we're all screwed. We won't find that assassin on our own."
"Might not be friendly?" Chennault said incredulously as she took a position off Ross's right flank. "Has anything on this planet ever been friendly?"
The Rangers spread out with weapons at the ready to cover the meditative Hallow. Their furtive eyes darted around the underground cathedral and its dreamlike rock formations. The beams from their flashlights bounced off the undulating rocks and sparkled through the watery mist that filled the air.
Shadows slipped all around them.
Chennault felt water dripping on her head. She brushed a hand through her short hair and it came away green.
She looked up.
A jagged toothed face leered only five feet above her.
Chennault shouted involuntarily and dropped to the side as a clawed hand swiped across her face. She landed hard on one knee and brought up her Hellrazor.
A heavy weight fell on top of her and smashed her to her back. Chennault felt a sharp pain in her left shoulder. The ex-Marine flailed with her fists and tried to kick. Something seized her from behind and she felt herself being dragged.
The roar of a shotgun blasted in her ears and sparks flashed in front of her blurred eyes. The weight rolled away from her so she instinctively scrambled upright.
She heard Ross's voice. "Chennault! You all right?"
The woman's ears rang and she angrily answered, "I'm fine!" She realized her hands were empty so she instinctively drew her Dragoon.
"Look at me!" Ross yelled with such force that she forgot what she'd been doing and turned toward him.
Ross's stern, bearded face reassured her. His scattergun smoked. He held up two fingers. "How many?"
"Two."
He pulled the bandanna from his neck and began to scrub at her face. She fought like a petulant child.
"Stop it!" he snapped. "You're bleeding and you're covered in goop."
Chennault took the kerchief from his hand and finished wiping her face. A mixture of glowing green mucous and red blood covered the cloth.
"What hit me?" She began to recover her wits.
Ross pointed behind her.
Chennault turned and on the stone floor was a sack of green goo. Then she saw it had two arms and a torso, and a head that was demolished thanks to Ross's scattergun.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I don't know," Stew called out, "but there are more of them."
They slithered on the walls, moving around the bubbling rock columns and scrambling across the ceiling. They were hideous dark green, crawling shapes. Their upper torsos were anouk-like with long muscular arms and hands with clawed fingers. Their heads were a bit more elongated than anouks to accommodate a wide, snapping mouth filled with teeth. Below the waist they were sluglike and glistening. The slapping noise that sounded like bare feet was actually the sound of their hands against the rocks as they dragged their misshapen bodies with alarming speed. The creatures made no sounds aside from the wet pounding of their hands on stone and the slurping of their ooze-covered thoraxes that left green, phosphorescent slime trails behind them.
The three Rangers opened fire. Stew laid down a stream of AP shells across the ceiling. When shot, the anouk slugs lost their adhesion and dropped like sacks of wet cements to the floor where they lay floundering in apparent pain.
One dropped a few feet in front of Ross. He thought it was dead and turned to blast another that crawled nearby. Then something grabbed his pant leg. The thing that had fallen dragged itself close and bit him in the left thigh. Ross gritted his teeth to suppress a scream and fired into the creature. The bullet created an eruption of green fluid. The thing flailed at its oozing wound and fell quivering.
As more green claws groped for him, Ross saw a slug-thing slipping down the wall behind Chennault. He fired while shouting, "Chennault! Behind you!"
Before the stocky Ranger could turn, the creature dropped from the wall and tackled her around the shoulders. Chennault's feet slipped on the wet rocks and she went down again. In an instant, two more things switched direction and padded for the struggling woman.
Pushing aside the remains of his last attacker, Ross drew his Peacemaker and ran for Chennault. He slipped and stumbled, his left leg aching sharply. A glistening hand grabbed his right ankle and tried to pull him deeper into the cavern. Ross wheeled off balance and shot through the thing's snapping teeth. The Ranger kicked free and tried to stand just as another large shape plopped down beside him. He aimed and fired. Then yet another hand scrabbled for Ross's head and shoulders, knocking off his hat.
Ross shot that one too.
They were all around. Clawing. Gnashing their teeth.
Ross felt a searing heat on his back. Slimy arms drew away. He took advantage of the pause in the attack and shot. The things were so thick on the wall and floor it wasn't a problem to hit one. But it was impossible to shoot them all.
Ross kicked past a dead thing and reached Chennault. The three creatures on top of her wriggled vigorously. Only her foot was visible under the quivering masses.
The Ranger Captain holstered his empty Peacemaker and pulled his long bowie knife from its belt sheath. He plunged the blade into the back of one of the creatures and sliced along its slug-like thorax. A river of green slime boiled from the long gash.
Ross shoved it off the pile with his boot and proceeded to gut a second one.
The third and last creature lay over top of Chennault's chest, shoulders, and head. It twisted to look up at Ross and opened its mouth threateningly. Now that Chennault's arms were free, she awkwardly brought her Dragoon up and shoved the barrel into the creature's tail. She pulled the trigger several times and the thing jerked and fell flat.
Ross rolled the dead thing off Chennault. She sat up convulsively and gasped for air through a coating of green slime.
Another massive flash of heat hit Ross from behind and caused him to stagger to his knees. He smelled the tangy residue of a phosphor grenade. He whirled around to see the smoking remnants of multiple slug-things, some hanging blackened and crisp from the roof. The phosphors had singed the air of the cavern and sucked up the moisture. Ross found it hard to breathe in the acrid fumes.
Stew was nowhere to be seen.
Then the sound of a Hellrazor rang out and Stew emerged from a cleft in the rocks firing at the creatures that still moved. The things began to crawl slowly away. Ross fed shells into his scattergun as he took this in.
When the scattergun was reloaded, Ross stood up and dragged the ooze-soaked Chennault with him. The two of them joined Stew in slaughtering the dried-out, lethargic creatures before they could scuttle for cover. A few escaped into the recesses of the cavern, but not many. Soon, piles of bloated monster corpses surrounded the exhausted, battered Rangers. The cavern floor was several inches deep in gore.
When nothing else was moving around them, Ross stopped firing. He immediately reloaded, as
did Stew and Chennault.
"Kinda close quarters for phosphor grenades, Stew," Ross commented. "You could've been killed."
Stew gave a half smile without looking up. "I was under cover. You could've been killed."
Ross grunted and reached down to pull his hat from the mire. He gave a futile attempt to scrape it clean, then gave up and slopped the dripping thing on his head. He noticed the hat didn't fit quite right, which he chalked up to ooze until his hand strayed to the back of his head where his hair was singed off.
He waded back toward Hallow and, as he passed Stew, muttered, "This better grow back."
Chennault followed, walking uncomfortably, soaked from head to toe in green ichor. She mumbled unhappily to herself.
Stew ran his finger along her chin and flicked away the goo. "I hear it's good for your skin."
She whispered, "Shut up or I'll pull out your rib cage."
Ross leaned against the rock wall next to the still-kneeling Hallow. The syker was unaffected by the battle, untouched by a drop of ooze or a hint of phosphor fire. Ross exhaled irritably through his nose and waited with the scattergun resting in the crook of his arm.
Hallow looked up. "I've lost him."
Tight-lipped and dripping with slime, Ross growled, "Beg pardon?"
The syker was mad and frustrated. "I almost had him. I was filtering out his chameleon signal. Now it's gone."
Stew watched Ross's face turn several shades of red even beyond the light flashburn from the grenades. He turned away and surveyed the oozing piles of creatures. They looked like mutated anouks, some sort of hellish abominations. Sticking out from under one of the draining slug torsos, Stew saw a blackened human foot. He used the butt of his Hellrazor to shove a dead slug-thing aside. Lying on the stone floor was a burned human cadaver.
"Hey, Ross!" Stew called out. "Over here!"
Hallow surged up screaming, "Get away from him! He's still alive!"
The burned corpse opened its eyes and grinned up with blackened teeth.
A geyser of energy threw Stew high into the air like a doll. The sudden violent eruption surprised Ross and Chennault. They raised their weapons as the smoldering zombie bounded to its feet. The Rangers' black needles pinged off a force screen. The undead Legionnaire's hand flashed to its belt in a blur and suddenly a long-bladed knife protruded from Hallow's shoulder. The syker fell back against the rock wall with a scream.
The zombie scrambled over slippery slug creatures and pulled the Hellrazor from Stew's limp grasp. He spun behind a rock column and brought the weapon up alongside the stalagmite.
"Take cover!" Ross shouted as he and Chennault both dropped.
The Hellrazor poured fire in their direction. The shells punctured the dead creatures' cadavers, ripping them to shreds. Ross rolled behind a rock pillar and returned fire while Chennault went as flat as possible in the ooze layer on the floor.
The zombie turned the pulse rifle toward Hallow. The syker's head snapped around to face the zombie and the Legionnaire froze. The two seemed locked together outside the reality of the cavern. Wisps of energy passed between them. Hallow began to quiver.
Ross stepped up and in rapid succession fired several black needles into the zombie whose force screen was down. The third time the Ranger fired, no needle emerged. He was empty.
When the two needles struck, the Legionnaire convulsed and then its head abruptly exploded.
The reaction startled Ross. Hallow dropped to his knees in exhaustion.
Ross called out, "Chennault? Talk to me."
The Ranger waved from the floor, her arm trailing slime. "Yeah, I'm fine. I've got Stew." She unsteadily pushed herself up.
Ross knelt next to Hallow who breathed heavily, clutching the shoulder where the knife protruded.
"You still with us?" Ross asked.
Hallow's mouth moved, but he couldn't speak.
"Take it easy. It's all over down here." Ross craned his head to check Chennault who was leaning over Stew. "Chennault?"
"He's alive," she yelled back.
Hallow gasped, "He'll live. I shielded him."
"Good work," Ross regarded the syker with newfound respect. "Let's get you out of here."
"No. You've got to find Martool."
"Easy. We got the assassin; everything's okay."
"No. Tekkeng."
Ross leapt to his feet. "Tekkeng? The Skinny? What about him?"
"He's inside the city. I can sense him."
Martool was still in great danger.
And Dallas was with her.
Chapter 21
Debbi followed Martool across a narrow bridge. The walls and cliffside structures of Castle Rock towered above and plummeted below in a dizzying effect that had Debbi wishing the narrow footbridge had rails or ropes or something to prevent the blustery wind from threatening to shove her off into the precipice.
Debbi ignored her quaking stomach and shouted over the wind. "Hallow said you were in danger. You should go inside where we can protect you and stay there until we get an all clear."
"I cannot," Martool responded. "I have duties."
At the far end of the bridge stood a short stone pillar that had a tannis sphere hovering several inches above it. The sphere was spinning. Debbi saw no mechanism holding or turning the stone globe. Martool paused and placed her hands around the sphere without touching it. It glowed brighter and spun faster. Satisfied, the anouk shaman started off again along the high terrace clinging to the side of a long, featureless wall.
Martool said to Debbi, "Sahrin can take you to my chambers. I will be there shortly."
"No." Debbi continued to follow with Sahrin and Fareel at her heels. "This . . . whatever you're doing should really wait. You're in danger."
"If it waits, the whole city will be in danger. This magic helps to keep the cursed ones below out of the city. It has to be maintained."
"Can't someone else do it? You can't swing a stick without hitting a shaman around here."
Martool kept up her vigorous pace. "Castle Rock is my responsibility."
Debbi appealed to Sahrin. "Can you talk to her? Make her understand the danger."
"She knows."
Debbi rolled her eyes and jogged closer to Martool. "Please, for once, put the mystical duty aside and be a realist. Think like a human if you can."
Martool emitted a rumbling sound that could've been a laugh.
The Ranger continued breathlessly, "I'm just asking for a few hours at most. Ross and Hallow are after the Legion assassin. Give them time to find it and kill it. What could a few hours matter?"
"It matters," Martool said simply.
Debbi bit her lip and groaned with anger and frustration. Why was Martool so difficult? What could you say in the face of such irrational intransigence? How could you argue with it?
"No wonder you people never invented the wheel," Debbi muttered under her breath, drawing another crypto-laugh from Martool. "You know, Ross is right about . . ." She stopped talking abruptly and let out an exasperated breath.
Martool glanced back over her shoulder with a faint smile. "You're so human."
The shaman stopped to re-energize another spinning globe.
Debbi took advantage of the pause to click her comlink for Ross. She got nothing but static.
Martool suddenly clutched her stomach and doubled over in pain. Her face clenched in a mixture of anguish and terror. Debbi grabbed the shaman's arm. Fareel and Sahrin raised their weapons and searched for enemies.
"What's wrong?" Debbi asked the stricken anouk.
Martool dragged in a breath between clenched teeth and struggled to say, "Tekkeng."
Debbi drew her Dragoon and poised her thumb over the black gun trigger. "Where?"
"Council chamber." Martool pushed herself up with great effort.
"Stay here," Debbi ordered and turned to Sahrin. "Let's go. Council chamber."
Martool's pained eyes blazed. "No! He'll kill you! I'll stop him."
As the
tall anouk shaman turned away, Debbi got a flash of her mother disappearing into the smoke and fire of Cabal station, never to emerge. The Ranger reached out and seized Martool's arm.
Everything went black. Debbi felt smooth, cold shapes rushing over her. It was completely dark. She had a sense of being suddenly deep underwater or buried alive. A loud hissing noise roared in her ears. She had a sense of others around her. She searched for the sliver of light that showed the way out.
Was this Tekkeng's work? Debbi wondered with surprising calm. Dammit! How did that thing get the drop on me? Why wasn't I more careful? What do I do now?
Then Debbi realized there was no air. She couldn't draw breath. And she couldn't move.
What now? Think!
Light exploded around her. Air too. Debbi collapsed to her knees and gasped in lungfuls.
"Breathe," she heard Martool's soothing voice over her and a calming hand on her shoulders. "You're lucky to be alive."
Debbi looked up at the shaman. Fareel and Sahrin stood behind her They no longer stood high on the windswept ledge. They were in a black chamber.
Martool said, "I didn't expect you to seize me so impetuously, so I didn't prepare you as I did Fareel and Sahrin. You could have suffocated in the rock."
"I nearly did." Debbi rasped. "You mean you took us through the rock?"
Fareel snorted derisively and muttered something nasty to himself.
Debbi eyed the warrior as she climbed to her feet. "All right, let's go get Tekkeng."
"Not you," Martool pressed a hand on Debbi's shoulder. "I will take you back."
"Every second you waste is more time with Tekkeng loose in your city."
Martool blinked with bitter resignation. "Very well. Prepare for the worst."
Fareel gripped his tannis atax in one hand and a war ax in the other. Sahrin hefted a broad-bladed sword. All their weapons glowed fiercely with violet energy fed into them by the wielders.
Debbi pointed to the Hellrazor pulse rifle strapped to Sahrin's back. "You'll do better with that. The black gun should stop Tekkeng long enough for us to put him down."
Fareel snarled and Martool said firmly, "We will stop Tekkeng without it."
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