In front of them was a great stone arch that Eustus instinctively knew must have been built before humans had discovered fire. How tiny we are in the scheme of things, he thought suddenly, momentarily overwhelmed by these constructs of a people who had been plying the stars long before a human hand had ever put down the first words on a clay tablet. How insignificant, how mortal we are, and yet we are here, perhaps at the mouth of a temple built to alien gods. Perhaps this was where the throne of the Empress stood, or maybe this was where the pulsating crystal heart had been taken. Perhaps…
“The Kreelan boat’s empty, Top,” Grierson, the First Platoon leader, reported.
With a twinge of regret, Eustus called his attention back to the here and now. There was work to do. “Okay,” he said. “Schoemann, leave a squad back here to cover our ass. The rest of us get to check out the tunnel of love here. First Platoon’s got point.”
The two platoon leaders, while inexperienced, were not hesitant or incompetent. With a minimum of orders and in short order the two platoons were moving into the mouth of the tunnel, with a small but potent force left behind to guard their avenue of escape.
“I hate underground work,” someone grumbled on the common channel.
“Stop bitching,” Eustus snapped, his skin prickling as they worked their way in. “Keep your links clear unless you’ve got something to report.”
The floor, the rounded walls and ceiling, were covered with runes like the great terrace outside. While he could not say exactly how, he was sure there was some kind of purpose to them; they were not random or just for aesthetics. In the illumination, which itself seemed to come from within the walls, as if the surface of the stone gave off its own light, the lines of runes twisted and turned elegantly, precisely, reminding Eustus of a sculpted tree he had seen once. A bonsai, it was called, he remembered.
Trees, he thought. Trees…
“Of course,” he said aloud as the realization struck him. “Trees. Family trees.” Raising a closed fist as a signal for his troops to halt, he knelt down to the floor. His suit light gave him a better look at the writing in the stone that seemed never to have worn, despite the sense of ages having passed since this place was built. He could not read the runes, but he could see how some of the characters repeated in the entries of a branch, much like names or parts of names of predecessors given to the newborn to carry on a tradition that had begun thousands of generations before. He noted where some branches ended, the last of the line having died, perhaps in some battle along a distant frontier, or against humans.
But there was one thing that struck him as terribly odd. All the entries in a branch seemed to have only a single root name, not two, as there would have been in any human genealogy for the mother and father of a child. All the names here, if that is really what they were, were of females, he realized, the mothers and daughters. All the countless sons that had been born in the time of these engraved scrolls must have lived and died only to preserve their race, for no record had been kept of their passing.
“Top?” Grierson asked tightly. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Eustus said slowly. “Yeah. Let’s move out.”
They moved cautiously up the great tunnel in time that was measured in the harsh breathing and rapidly beating hearts of forty-six humans in a decidedly alien place.
“I’ve got something!” the Marine on point called. She was carrying a tracking device that was occasionally known to work, and now it was telling her that someone – or something – had passed this way not long before. “Heat trace on the wall.” She examined it carefully, not sure what she was seeing. “Looks like a hand print.”
“Well,” Eustus said, “we seem to be going in the right direction. Let’s step it up a bit. We can’t afford to let them get away now.”
Moving now at a trot, the Marines hastened through the great tunnel as it burrowed deeper into the earth and then leveled out. Eustus was struck by a sense of déjà vu, remembering the tunnel that had led him and Enya to the crystal heart.
“Hold up!” the point Marine reported softly.
“What is it?” Grierson demanded.
“We’ve got an intersection,” she reported from her position, well forward of the others. She was the sacrificial lamb on this outing. Two other Marines followed behind her at an interval of a few dozen meters to report if anything untoward happened to her, hopefully in time for the main group behind them to react to the threat. “Another tunnel, same size as this one, crossing at a ninety-degree angle. Looks like more of the same in both directions. I don’t have a read on anything from the tracker. Cold scent.”
Eustus had been afraid of that. “Grierson, I’ll take your third squad ahead. You take the left tunnel with the rest of your platoon,” he ordered. “Schoemann, you take the right tunnel. Try to keep from splitting up any more than you have to, and let’s just hope that our communications don’t get screwed up any more than they are already.” They could just barely read the squad that had been left outside. “Hurry people, we’ve got to catch these ladies.”
Quickly the Marines split into three groups and started down the tunnels. Eustus hoped for a break soon, or they were sure to lose their quarry.
He did not have long to wait.
“Top!” the new Marine on point called excitedly. “I’ve got a trail! There’s blood on the floor up here!”
“Keep your eyes open!” Eustus ordered sharply as he and the others moved at a run toward the corporal who was standing in the corridor ahead of them, barely visible at this distance. “Grierson! Schoemann! Get back here on the double!” he ordered over the company net.
Eustus, who now led the squad of charging Marines, could see the corporal kneeling on the floor, his weapon trained ahead of him. Hearing the approach of the reinforcements, he turned his head toward them.
That was when Eustus saw the shadow detach itself from the wall where the tunnel bent to the right. Even at this distance he could see it for what it was: a Kreelan warrior.
“Down!” he screamed into his helmet even as he raised his rifle, his finger already pulling the trigger. “Get down!”
The young Marine reacted instantly, diving for the floor as he rolled and fired down the tunnel, but it was an instant too late. Even as the Marines began to pour a volley of blue and red energy bolts toward their enemy, the shrekka that howled from the dark warrior cut across the corporal’s chest, opening his heart and lungs to the cool air.
Eustus dived for the stricken Marine just as a second shrekka swept in from the chaos a split second after the first, slicing deeply into his upper thigh. The shrekka’s blades were so sharp that, at first, he felt no pain. He hit the ground hard, one hand pressing against his leg, the other vainly trying to aim his rifle.
But what caught his attention was the apparition that clattered past him, right for the Marines who knelt and lay behind him, firing into the smoke and dust-filled tunnel to cover him and their fallen comrade. Freed and given the gift of motion by the cutting blades of the first shrekka, the dead corporal’s munitions bandoleer and its six grenades skittered along the floor. As if looking at it through a microscope, Eustus could see that one of the grenades had somehow been armed.
“Grenade!” he screamed, throwing himself to the far side of the corporal’s body in the forlorn hope that his still warm flesh might provide some protection to his own body.
The other Marines gaped at the deadly bundle that came to a jarring halt in their midst.
The armed grenade exploded, setting off the other five. Fire and thunder filled the tunnel just before it collapsed, burying the shattered corpses the blast had left behind.
* * *
The first thing Eustus noticed was the smell of blood. He wrinkled his nose and was rewarded with the rupture of the brittle crust of coagulated blood on his cheek that released a fresh flow down the side of his numbed face. He opened his eyes, unsure what he would see, and not sure if he wanted to see it. He knew there would be a lot
more blood pouring out of his body than the little trickle from his cheek. There must be.
But, while he ached like hell and was completely deaf, he had suffered no major injuries except for the gash in his leg left by the second shrekka, and blood oozed slowly from the wound as it throbbed with pain. With trembling arms he pushed himself up onto his elbows, shedding dust and rocks like a sand crab emerging from a windswept beach. He looked from side to side, but the faceplate of his helmet, while more or less intact, was opaque with dust and a spider web of cracks. Reluctantly, with fingers like lifeless sausages, he undid the bindings, letting it fall from his head to the rock-strewn floor with a clatter that he felt more than heard.
The light that had glowed from the walls did so now with only a fraction of its former power, which, when he saw what he had been lying in, was probably for the best. Willing himself to hold back the nausea that fought to overcome him, he rolled out of what was left of the corporal who had been the first among them to die. But even in death, he had managed to help save another Marine’s life, miraculously absorbing much of the explosive force of the grenades.
Of the others, there was no sign. The tunnel had collapsed completely behind him, burying anyone else who might possibly have survived the explosion. Worse, there was no way for him to contact the platoon leaders: his comm link, as with everything else except the blaster at his hip and the knife strapped to his leg, had been smashed into useless junk.
Pulling himself unsteadily to the support of the tunnel wall, Eustus sat down, legs straight out, and took a look at the gash in his thigh. If he could keep it from bleeding too much more, he might be all right. Although it was deep, it was still only a flesh wound, having severed no major veins or arteries. He opened his first aid kit and rummaged around for the only thing left that was not bent or crushed: a tube of liquid bandage. Ripping the cloth of his uniform from around the wound, he brushed the dirt from it as best he could before squirting some of the gray paste into and around the gash, noting how lucky he was that the shrekka had not simply taken off his entire leg. The patch job was not going to win any medical awards, he admitted, but it should keep him together until he could get out of here.
And that, he thought dejectedly, was not going to be an easy feat. Knowing that he would probably need it again, he put the bandage tube into one of his cargo pockets.
“Well,” he said to himself, his own voice barely audible through a persistent ringing in his ears, “I guess I’d better get moving.” He had no illusions about digging his way through the tons of rock and debris behind him, and he had serious doubts about any survivors out there being able to dig through to him. They had no heavy equipment, no blasting charges (I think we’ve had enough of that, he thought darkly), and – most importantly – no time. While Commodore Marchand had been keen on catching the survivors from the Kreelan cruiser, she was loath to have her squadron stay here for too long. The Marines had been given exactly twenty-four hours to conduct their business and return before the Roving Raiders roved on without them. He also had to hope that the other Marines and the Navy boat crew would wait until the last minute in the hope that someone from in here would make it back out. But they could not wait forever, and Eustus had no idea how long he had been unconscious. If he was going to get out of here, he was going to have to find another way to the surface. And quickly.
Shedding the burden of his horribly abused armor and other now-useless gear, Eustus gathered himself up and began shuffling deeper into the corridor, toward where the Kreelan had launched her attack. He held his blaster at the ready, but felt vaguely ridiculous in doing so. His aim was so unsteady that he would be lucky not to shoot himself if he had to fire, and there was no way to tell if the weapon would still work without testing it. And that would give away his position for sure if his enemy were still about.
Slowly, painfully, he worked his way through the shambles of the once-beautiful tunnel, peering through the gloom toward its fateful bend.
As he got closer, he lowered his pistol. The Kreelan’s shrekka was not the only weapon to wreak havoc in the passageway. The fusillade from the doomed Marines’ guns had collapsed this section of the tunnel, as well. While not completely blocked, it was choked with huge sections of ancient stone that had been blown from their long-held positions in the walls and ceiling, and littered with countless other fragments of black obsidian and cobalt blue inlay.
But he saw no bodies. While it was true that any one of the huge stones could conceal several crushed warriors, he felt uneasy. He raised his pistol again, holding its wavering muzzle before him as he stepped into the maze of fallen slabs. He struggled from rock to rock, clambering up on top of a massive stone, scrabbling across it, and dropping down to the debris-strewn floor before starting the process over again.
After letting himself down from a crazily canted slab, he was sizing up the next climb when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Forgetting about his ripped leg as he reached for his holstered blaster, he turned toward the movement and dropped into a crouch. At least, it would have been a crouch had his leg not collapsed under him. Cursing in pain, anger, and fear, he fell into a heap among the sharp shards of stone, cutting himself in a dozen different places. His pistol fell from his grip, clattering to the ground in a puff of dust.
Sitting motionless, helpless, he stared uncomprehendingly at what had startled him: a hand. A huge Kreelan hand, with the biggest set of talons he had ever seen, protruded from the gap formed by the huge slab as it rested on another, smaller chunk of rock. The hand moved, clawing at the rock, as the owner sought to escape from her prison.
“Holy shit,” Eustus breathed, able now to hear his own curses beyond the slowly fading ring in his ears. Ignoring the pain in his leg, where blood again seeped from the partially stripped bandage, he moved closer to the hand and the dark aperture leading to the tiny prison of stone. He saw a pair of eyes glowering malevolently at him from a face that was shadowy, indistinct in the dim light. With an angry grunt the Kreelan assaulted the slab, pushing against it with all the leverage she could muster in her cramped position. He watched in awe as the enormous slab lifted as the warrior strained within, rising a few centimeters, then a few centimeters more.
But it was not enough. With a cry of anguish, the warrior gave up and the stone slammed home again, dust shaking from it like tiny flakes of snow. He could hear her harsh and ragged breathing through the persistent buzz in his ears.
He was tempted to just turn and leave her there, to die of thirst and starvation, or perhaps bleed to death if she was injured. But he knew Reza would not have approved. The Kreelan had done no more than her duty, he supposed, whatever that might have been. No, he told himself, it would not cost anything to put her out of her misery quickly. The Kreelans had killed many of his people, for whatever reason, but they had never sought simply to inflict pain on humans, as through torture; that seemed to be reserved for humans to do to themselves.
Turning away from her, he looked for his blaster in the rubble, cursing the fact that all of it appeared black and angularly shaped. He shuffled through the mess, kicking and prodding for his weapon. At last, he saw the stubby pistol, resting next to a smaller slab that had fallen from the wall. As he reached down into the odd bits of chipped stone to retrieve it, his thigh screaming at the effort, his fingers brushed against something soft, something definitely not stone. Curious, he took up the pistol with his other hand and began to brush away at whatever lay beneath the black gravel.
It was the face of a Kreelan child.
“This can’t be,” he murmured, shaking his head. In all the years that humans had fought the Empire, no one had ever encountered a Kreelan child. They were as mysterious as were the males of the species, of which Eustus had also been one of two humans to ever see, at least in mummified form. He wondered if the light might be playing tricks on him, but as he continued to brush away the dust and chunks of rock, it was clear that it was a child. But the face and shoulders we
re all he could uncover, for the rest of her body was covered by a fallen slab. It was smaller than the one entombing the adult behind him, but it had been large enough to crush the life from the child. Or had it?
Knowing that he was just wasting his own very limited time and strength, he carefully let himself down beside the child, leaning over her to see if he could see her breathing. He saw a bit of fine dust on her upper lip stir. Again. And again. She was still alive. He put a hand on her forehead and peeled back one of her eyelids. He was not sure what he might see, but he thought it might give him some clue as to how badly she was injured; there was a lot of blood on her face and head. Aside from the irises looking oddly dark and round in this light, he noted nothing that he could make heads or tails of.
“Kar’e nach Shera-Khan?”
He was startled by the plaintive voice that issued from the hole beneath the slab where the warrior was trapped. He had never heard the Kreelan language spoken, even by Reza, and certainly never by an enemy. “What did you say?” he asked, not knowing what else to do.
“Shera-Khan,” the warrior said, her hand pointing in the girl’s direction. “Kar’e nach ii’la?”
“She’s alive,” Eustus said quietly. My God, he thought, what the hell is going on here? Eustus had learned during his time in the service that you sometimes had to act on instinct. But there were other times when, regardless of how quickly you had to act, even one moment of concentrated thought was crucial. And this was one of those times.
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