The Rivers of Zadaa tpa-6

by D. J. MacHale

  My palms were sweating. I suddenly had the sick feeling that if my hands got too wet, I’d lose the stave. I wished I had a couple of batting gloves. There wasn’t time to stress about it, though. With a thump we hit the floor. The doors slid open. Without a second’s hesitation the five of us bolted from the elevator. We didn’t shout or scream out a war cry. Every extra second of surprise was precious.

  My target’s back was to us. He didn’t have a clue as to what was about to happen. I ran up behind the guy…and hesitated. It was the exact wrong thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t because of the whole “never make the first move” thing either. The first move was okay if your opponent was totally oblivious. In that case the first move would also be the last move. But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to whack a totally defenseless guy across the head.

  Big mistake. He wasn’t oblivious for long. As soon as he saw Loor and Teek sprint by, headed for the other guards, he got unoblivious real quick. The guy was good. He must have quickly realized that if the attackers were ignoring him, there had to be somebody else coming up who wouldn’t ignore him. Me. Without looking, the guy whipped out his steel baton and lashed back. It was so fast, he grazed the front of my leather armor. Another inch and I would have been hit with a jolt of electricity, and the show would be over before it even started. The adrenaline rush of the near miss shocked me into action. With my stave I knocked the back of his baton arm, forcing him to follow through and not backhand me. I spun, came around the backside, and cracked him across the back of his head with the end of the stave, sending him sprawling. He hit the floor and didn’t get up.

  I stood there for a moment, bombarded with emotions. I had hit the guy, hard. When I fought the Tiggen assassin at Mooraj, I had been tentative. I whacked that guy a few times with the stave, but never did any damage. I blamed that on the fact that I was more used to fighting with a bamboo stick and not a heavy wooden stave. The truth was, the idea of cracking somebody in the head with force went against the nature of my being. I wasn’t a violent guy. As I stood there over the unconscious Tiggen guard, the realization came to me that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was a violent guy after all. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  “Pendragon!” Loor shouted.

  Her voice pulled me back into the moment. I looked quickly to see that both of the other Tiggen guards on our side of the control platform had been knocked unconscious. Loor and Teek were already dragging them toward me, and the elevator. I saw that the Rokador elite had jumped out of their chairs and were cowering together, terrified. For all they knew, we were the first wave of the oncoming Ghee army and their murderous trap was sprung too late. I wasn’t about to tell them otherwise. The engineers stayed on the control platform, looking down on us in fear.

  We were quickly joined by Alder and the other Tiggen ally. They too had triumphed. All five Tiggen guards were unconscious. I looked up to the catwalk high above, where Teek’s other friend was waiting and watching. I waved. He waved back to acknowledge and ran off to lock down the doors. So far, so good.

  “We will bring them up in the elevator,” Teek said. “Once we have reached the surface, you can shut down the elevator from here.”

  “You have done the right thing, Teek,” Loor said. “No matter what happens from here, you must know that.”

  Teek nodded. I think he believed her, but he wasn’t happy about it.

  “Good luck, my friends,” Teek said. “I hope we will meet again and-“

  Teek suddenly stopped talking. An instant before, I heard a short, sharp hissing sound, but didn’t register what it was. Teek looked at us with wide eyes, then crumpled to the floor. Sticking out from his back was a silver arrow. We all quickly looked up toward the catwalk to see…

  Another Tiggen guard. It wasn’t Teek’s friend. Teek’s friend was dead. He lay on the catwalk, a silver arrow in his chest. Standing over him with both feet planted was his killer. He held a crossbow to his shoulder. He was aiming at us. He fired.

  We scattered, taking cover behind the vertical steel tanks. Loor and I jumped to one side, Alder and our Tiggen friend jumped the other way.

  “It’s him!” I shouted to the others. “The assassin from Mooraj.”

  It was Bokka’s killer. He was back. We were trapped. The instant one of us stuck our head out from behind the tank, the guy would fire another laserlike arrow.

  “Open the southern gates!” the assassin called from the catwalk. He was yelling at the engineers on the control platform. The engineers weren’t sure what to do. They were frightened and confused. The same went for the Rokador elite. They stayed huddled together in fear.

  “Alder?” I shouted across the floor. I made a shooting motion, as if to say, “Where is your crossbow?” Alder shrugged and pointed to the unconscious Tiggen guards we had attacked. Lying next to the pile of bodies was the crossbow.

  “I will get it,” Loor said, and made a move to run into the open.

  “No!” I shouted, and held her back. A nanosecond later another arrow shot by, barely missing her. If I hadn’t stopped her, she would have been skewered.

  “We must do something, Pendragon,” she said. “The flood!”

  It was a frightening moment. There was no way we could stop those engineers from flooding the underground from where we were hiding. But if we stepped out, we were dead.

  “We’ll all go at once,” I said. “He can’t get us all.”

  “Not you, Pendragon,” Loor said. She looked across to Alder and motioned that both of them would go. Hopefully one would get the crossbow.

  “We all go or nobody goes!” I shouted.

  I pushed by her, ready to jump out into the line of fire. I’m not a hero. I didn’t want to die. What I did wasn’t so much brave as the result of being hypercharged on adrenaline, knowing disaster was seconds away. I didn’t stop to think. I went.

  But I didn’t need to. No sooner did I leap out from behind the tank than I saw something nobody expected. Least of all the assassin on the catwalk. He was too busy keeping us pinned down to realize he hadn’t finished his first job.

  Teek had picked up the crossbow.

  He rolled onto his side, took aim, and fired. The arrow shot upward, darting toward its target. His aim was dead solid perfect. The killer still had his own crossbow shouldered when Teek’s arrow nailed him square in the chest. The force knocked him backward. He stumbled, hit his back on the rail, dropped his weapon over the side, and fell down after it. The assassin tumbled through the air and hit the ground with a sickening thud. We didn’t need to check to know he wasn’t going to be shooting at us anymore. Bokka’s killer was dead. It was a fitting end.

  We all ran to Teek. Loor got there first and knelt by him.

  He was on his side, the arrow still in his back. His white Rokador tunic was saturated with blood. There was nothing we could do to help him.

  “Hurry,” he whispered. “You must stop the flood.”

  “Bokka would be proud of you, my good friend,” Loor said.

  Teek gave her a small smile. “Do not let our deaths be for nothing.” Teek looked up at his friend, the Tiggen guard, and whispered, “Help them.”

  With those last words Teek closed his eyes and died. We couldn’t mourn his death. There would be time for that later, hopefully.

  Loor looked up to the last Tiggen and said, “Get the guards out of here.”

  The Tiggen nodded and began dragging the unconscious guards toward the elevator.

  “I will help,” Alder said, and grabbed two of the guards himself. He looked at us and said, “Go!”

  Loor and I each grabbed one of the guards’ baton weapons and ran for the first ladder that led up to the control platform. I was up first and saw that the engineers were all on the same side of the control board-the side with the small switches that opened up the southern gates.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  The guys looked terrified, but didn’t move. I may not have been enough of a force t
o intimidate them into backing off, but Loor sure was. One look at her charging toward them with her stave in one hand and the silver electric baton in the other was enough to get them to back away from the controls. The four of them huddled together like frightened children.

  “Close the gates,” Loor commanded, with her weapon held high.

  The frightened engineers looked as if they were ready to faint, but they didn’t budge.

  “Do not listen to them!” came a voice from below. It was one of the older guys from the Rokador elite-the only one who was brave enough to leave the others. “If you obey them it will be an act of treason!” the guy called up.

  The engineers did the one and only thing they were capable of at that point. They ran. Together they scurried to the ladders, climbed down, and ran to join the elite. The older guy stood there with his hands on his hips, looking up at us, smug. I ignored him. It didn’t matter what he thought.

  “We gotta stop it ourselves,” I said to Loor.

  We looked at the array of valves that controlled the gates to the south. It looked as if only a few of them had been opened. We weren’t too late. We had to focus. Quickly I grabbed one of the handles and turned it counterclockwise. The needle in the gauge above it instantly dropped down. I grabbed the other two handles and did the same. The southern gates were now all closed again. It was just that simple. Or so I thought. This wasn’t over by far.

  “Okay,” I said. “I don’t know how long we can hold out here. If the other Tiggen guards break in before the Ghee arrive, they’ll kill us and let those geeks back at the controls.”

  “What choice do we have?” Loor asked. “We must keep them away as long as possible.”

  Our victory was probably going to be a short one. We were in control, but for how long? That’s when I looked back to the array of switches and got an idea.

  “Or we can shut it down for good,” I said.

  “We cannot shut down an ocean,” Loor countered.

  “But we can make it so nobody else can take over.”

  “You mean destroy the controls?” Loor asked.

  “If a slew of Tiggen guards comes crashing in here, we’re done,” I said. “But if the controls are smashed, it might slow them down long enough for the Ghee warriors to arrive.”

  “That is risky,” Loor said. “We do not know anything about this-“

  At that very moment we saw something that made the decision for us. High above on the catwalk, Tiggen guards began flooding in from both sides. Our Tiggen friend who we’d left up there never got the chance to seal off the doors. The guards had a long climb down tall ladders before they would reach us, but they were on their way. We could put up a fight, but there were too many of them. They would quickly win back the control panel and turn it back over to the engineers to do their wet work.

  Loor looked at the long line of small silver handles, took her Rokador baton, slipped it through a handle…and yanked. The silver handle popped off like the cap of a soda bottle. She looked at me and smiled. I took my Rokador baton and did the same thing. It felt good. The two of us quickly worked to break all the smaller handles off the panel, hopefully making it useless, at least for a while.

  The Tiggen guards were halfway down the ladders to the floor. By the time they got to us, our work would be done.

  One of the engineers down on the floor must have seen what we were doing. He left the elite and ran back to the bottom of the platform, shouting, “No! Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  Yes we did. In no time, all the small handles that controlled the southern gates were gone.

  “Is that enough?” Loor asked.

  “Let’s make sure,” I said.

  I picked up my wooden stave and began smashing the gauges. It sure felt good. Loor joined me. Together we totally trashed the controls.

  “Stop! Ibeg you!” the engineer screamed as he climbed back up the ladder. Soon all four engineers were back on the ladders, headed up onto the platform. Their fear was gone. At least their fear of us, anyway. By the time they reached us, the controls were useless.

  “There you go, Poindexter,” I said. “Try to flood the underground now.”

  “Don’t you see?” he cried. “That is exactly what you have insured!”

  Huh? Two of the engineers ran to the controls on the other side, the side that controlled the northern gates. They tried to move the larger handles, but they wouldn’t budge. They checked the gauges and gave a grim look back to the first engineer.

  “We have never opened every gate to the north,” the first engineer explained frantically. “But it was the only way to carry out the plan. Now they cannot be closed again.”

  “Why not?” I asked, not liking where this was going.

  “It is the immense pressure!” the engineer said. “It would only be relieved once the gates to the south were opened. The timing had to be precise. After what you have done, the gates to the south cannot be opened in time.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “So the Batu are safe.”

  “But they aren’t!” he exclaimed. “Now the pressure in the ocean will build until it collapses the southern gates anyway. But not before Kidik Island sinks under the rising waters. You haven’t saved the Batu-you’ve doomed both tribes!”

  JOURNAL #23

  (CONTINUED)

  ZADAA

  Proofof what the engineer predicted came quickly. The powerful hum that filled the room grew even louder. The lights on the control panel starting going haywire. I heard hissing sounds coming from somewhere. It sounded like incredible pressure was building up inside the vertical steel tanks, which is exactly what was happening. An alarm sounded. It was a blaring horn that warned of disaster.

  We backed away from the controls to let the engineers try to reverse the damage.

  “It is futile!” the one engineer exclaimed. “We have no control.”

  A quick look to the Tiggen guards who were climbing down the ladders showed that they had changed their minds. Rather than streaming down the ladders to stop us, they realized what was happening and had changed direction. They were now desperate to climb back up and get the heck out of there.

  “What is happening?” came a voice from below. It was the older guy from the Rokador elite. The one who had questioned Saint Dane’s plan. He was joined by the others, who no longer wanted to be hiding in the corner anymore, or be anywhere near there for that matter.

  “Get out now!” the engineer called down to them. “We can no longer control the waters.”

  The Rokador elite all stood there, not believing. The statement the engineer had made was a bold one. Controlling the water is what the Rokador did best. It didn’t make sense to them that it was no longer within their power. Controlling the water was going to be their salvation, not their destruction. At least that’s what they thought. Any doubt they had was blown away a second later. Literally. The joints of the giant pipe beneath the control platform were held together by massive bolts. There was a huge hissing sound, then a loud pop. One of the bolts had blown out. It shot across the room like the cork out of a champagne bottle. It nailed one of the steel tanks with a loudclang, putting a huge dent in it. If it had hit somebody, they’d be history. The seam it came from was now tearing open, spewing out a stream of high-pressure water.

  The place was coming apart.

  The elevator doors opened, and Alder ran out.

  “The elevator!” screamed the elderly drooling guy, who had finally woken up. The ten Rokador elite charged for the elevator in a panic. The older people didn’t even help the little kids. They pushed the little ones aside to get in the elevator first. They were followed by the engineers, who were just as eager to get out of there. There was a definite “abandon ship” vibe. The engineers slid down the ladders and ran to the elevator, but they were too late. With plenty of room left, the elite closed the door on them, leaving them to wait for the next ride. Nice guys to the end.

  Alder quickly joined us at the control
panel. “What happened?” he asked, wide-eyed. “The ocean is rising.”

  “Because it’s got nowhere to go,” I said. “Let’s hope we do.”

  “The ladders,” Loor yelled. “I do not trust the elevators.”

  The three of us ran for the giant ladders that led up to the catwalk. There were two. Loor jumped on one and climbed quickly. I was right beneath her. Alder took the other one. It was a hairy climb. Through the metal rungs I could look back into the master control room. More seams popped open. The pressure must have been monstrous. Water sprayed everywhere, making the rungs slippery. I felt like we were in the bowels of a huge ship that was going down fast. There was no question, their machinery was not built to withstand this kind of pressure. The underground worked on hydropower. There must have been pipes snaking all over the place. This room was what controlled the flow. If this room collapsed, there would be nothing to hold back the water, anywhere. The Rokador world could explode from the inside out.

  I focused on climbing. It didn’t do any good to think about the fact that when we got out of there, we would still be miles below the surface, in the middle of the maelstrom. We had to take one step at a time. We all made it to the catwalk, where a quick check showed us that our Tiggen friend was indeed dead. I bowed my head quickly out of respect.

  “We must keep moving, Pendragon,” Loor said.

  Of course we did. But to where?

  “The cemetery,” Alder said. “That is where Saangi is to meet us with a dygo.”

  Of course! I had forgotten that Saangi’s part of this mission was to get us out of here. My spirits rose. If there was one thing Saangi was good at, it was bailing us out of trouble. I hoped she wouldn’t stop now. We ran off the catwalk, through the tunnels, and popped outside, back at the cemetery.

  Saangi wasn’t there.

  “She will come,” Loor said with absolute confidence. “I know she’ll try,” I said. “But if all hell is breaking loose, who knows what happened to her?”

  “My faith is in her,” Loor said. “We must not abandon her.”