by Paul Sims
“You’ve earned it,” Iain said. “Now, there are four pistols, so that’s one each for you, me, RD & Tanya – and there are enough combat knives for everyone.”
“Can I have a weapon?” Joseph asked eagerly.
“You can have this,” RD said, handing the boy the smallest knife they had. “Try not to cut yourself too badly. I’ll have this beauty…” He held up a large knife with a serrated 8-inch blade. “… and the boot-knife. Now, let’s get things together. Take the minimum necessary, and check everything – even what you’re wearing – for bugs. And don’t forget to leave your security communicators behind.”
They dispersed to their rooms, changed into suitable clothes and collected together what they needed to take and ferried it to the maintenance bay in convoy. Anoushka had packed Tanya’s stuff, and Bartes carried it with his own. As they passed through the guardroom, Tanya was looking strained, but still managed to smile her thanks.
:You’ll do anything to avoid hard work,: Bartes sent to her. She didn’t have the energy to reply. She just wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at him.
They slung their bags into the back of the smaller vehicle. Iain and Joseph set about plundering the cave for useful equipment and extra fuel, while the others returned to the living quarters with several holdalls to scavenge what they could. They took all the food, filled all the empty bottles they could find with water, and acquired most of the kitchen equipment and everything else that might be of use that wasn’t screwed down (and one or two things that were).
“What do we do about Peter?” Bartes asked RD as they checked around the kitchen for the final time.
“Leave him be. He must be a spy.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple. If he’s working for the Major, why was he abducted – willingly – from the Opera House?”
RD shrugged. “It’s nothing to do with us. We have to escape, and we can’t take the risk of taking him with us.”
“What if he wakes up and raises the alarm when we’ve gone?”
“We’ll tie him up.”
“But what if he’s as much a victim as we are?” It was Tanya, who had just climbed the ladder.
“What are you doing up here?” Bartes asked.
“I thought RD might try something like this,” she said wearily. ”We’re taking the boy with us.”
She and RD stared at each other for several seconds before the latter dropped his eyes. “Then he’ll be your responsibility,” he muttered.
Tanya sighed. “Very well. I’ll try to keep him asleep until we’re well away from here,” she said, “but I won’t be much good for anything by the morning. John, would you help me carry him down to the vehicle?”
“No,” said John. “I’m not coming with you.”
“What?” Anoushka asked, aghast. “Why ever not?”
“We daren’t put all our eggs in one basket,” he said. “If you’re honest with yourselves, you’ll see that you only have a slim chance of escaping this way. If I can persuade them that I’m still conditioned, I may get an opportunity to steal a flitter and get to Telphania. After all, I could have got away before, but I didn’t want to do it without you. Now, from what you’ve told me, it’s become urgent that one of us raises the alarm. I think that this is the best way to maximise the odds.”
“What if they don’t believe you’re still under their thrall?” Bartes asked.
John shrugged. “They’ll just re-indoctrinate me. Maybe you can rescue me later, if you get away. Now, you must tie me up and leave me here. I’ll claim that I’m loyal to the Republic, and you started spouting anti-revolutionary rubbish, and that you knocked me out when I threatened to inform on you – and if you do the job properly, they won’t suspect me.” Anoushka nodded dumbly. “I’ll try to rendezvous with you in Telphania, if I can. All the attention of the security forces should be on you, so I should be able to ‘borrow’ a flitter.”
Anoushka kissed him. “There’ll be more of that waiting for you in Telphania,” she promised. “Please, please be careful.” Then Bartes hit him over the head.
As he slumped into unconsciousness, Tanya psionically checked inside his skull. “There’s no permanent damage – though he’ll be out for a while,” she said with relief in her voice. “You’ve done that before.”
“I must have done,” Bartes replied, as they bound and gagged their unconscious companion and laid him as comfortably as possible on the sofa.
They made their way to the boys’ room, where Peter lay comatose. “Can you keep him asleep – as well as the guard downstairs?” Bartes asked as he carefully lifted the boy. “I could bind and gag him.”
Tanya shook her head. “That would most certainly wake him, but keeping him asleep will minimise the noise – and lessen the chance of alerting the guards outside. We can always tie him up once we’re safely away.”
Bartes passed the boy down through the hatch to Iain, and as they traversed the guardroom for the final time, Tanya’s control over the mind of the security private slipped, and he half roused. He reached out and took hold of Bartes as he passed by. “Oh, Talia,” he mumbled.
Tanya quickly slipped between them so that when the guard’s eyes opened, all he could see was her face. To Bartes’ surprise, she gave the young man a long, lingering kiss. :For God’s sake do something,: she sent to Bartes. :This is revolting!:
Bartes looked around desperately, and noticed a bottle of water on the card-table. He picked it up by the neck and sent, :OK, you can stop now,: and, as Tanya disengaged herself, Bartes clubbed the guard with the bottle. The latter promptly collapsed.
Tanya grabbed the bottle, swilled her mouth out and spat the contents over the unconscious youth and slapped his face – hard.
“Why’d you do that?” Bartes asked, as he bound and gagged the young man.
“He was dreaming about... No, I’m not going to tell you what he was dreaming about.” Tanya blushed. “Bleargh! My mouth tastes horrible. And I’m going to have to gargle with antiseptic. Come on, let’s go.”
“It’s still some hours before dawn,” RD said as they folded the camouflage net from the mouth of the cave. “We should to be long gone by the time the re-programming team arrives.”
“I’m checking everything for bugs,” Tanya said.
“And I’ve disabled the truck’s tracking device,” Iain added.
Bartes looked dissatisfied. “What about our auto-injectors? Couldn’t they have locators inside them? We shouldn’t be wearing them now, anyway.”
Tanya’s brow wrinkled. “There’s nothing I can do at the moment. I’m a bit busy. Anoushka, you’ll have to remove them. But keep the blood plasma that’s in them – it might prove useful.”
Anoushka swiftly removed their devices, starting with her own, drained their contents into containers from Tanya’s medkit and discarded them.
Iain was the last to climb into the vehicle, but as he was about to clamber aboard, he suddenly stopped, turned, and ran back along the tunnel. Bartes jumped down and followed him back to the monitor room, where he was busy unloading the videotape machines. “We don’t want them to know what happened,” he explained as Bartes joined in the task. “And if they saw these, they’d find out about John’s plans.”
When they carried the tapes back to the ATV, Tanya gave a look of chagrin. “Well done, Iain,” she said. “I should have thought of that.”
The path from the maintenance bay sloped gently down towards the road. RD released the brake and they coasted down onto the highway like a ghost. He engaged the gears and the vehicle’s diesel engine shuddered into life.
They held their collective breath in anticipation of shouts and a hail of bullets from the dacha, but nothing broke the silence of the night apart from the sound of their own progress.
“Would it be a good idea to get off the road?” Bartes asked. “This is an all-terrain vehicle after all.”
“We don’t want to leave tracks yet,” RD said. “Not this close to the dac
ha – it’d make it too easy to follow us.”
“Shouldn’t we have our lights on?” Anoushka asked.
“No. There’s a chance we could give ourselves away. I doubt there’ll be much traffic up here tonight, anyway – it’s pretty remote. My night sight is good enough to see the edge of the tarmac, and if we see the lights of another vehicle, I’ll pull in and park, and hope that whoever it is ignores us.”
“Hold on – look what I’ve found.” Bartes waved a map roughly in RD’s direction and fumbled for a torch. “I’ve got a compass, too – they were in that pocket by the door. We need to go...west – no, north-west. That’ll take us round the side of the lake.”
The road away from the dacha led roughly north-west for several miles before veering gently northwards. At that point, however, RD continued straight on, taking the vehicle off the asphalt and through a gap in the trees.
“The ground’s soft enough here to take tyre tracks,” he said, and they followed a roughly northerly course. “This should help fool those who come looking for us, and hopefully trick them into wasting time searching in the wrong direction. It’s a good thing that this vehicle was built for rough ground.”
Although there was no longer any risk of something coming in the other direction, their new path brought different perils: hillocks, rocks and trees. Bartes tried to feel ahead with his psionics in the hope of warning RD of potential obstacles, but he had very limited success, and Tanya couldn’t help him, as she was keeping Peter asleep with what little energy she had left. It was a relief to discover that, as well as good night sight, RD seemed to have some sort of innate danger sense, and – though they careened off one or two trees and the odd large outcropping – they soon managed to reach deep enough into the pine forest to risk lights safely.
It was now that Tanya’s will finally gave out. “Tie the boy up, would you, Iain?” she mumbled, “I’m going to –” She was asleep in her seat before she could finish the sentence. Iain did as he was asked while Bartes reached over to make Tanya as comfortable as he could.
“Leave her to me,” Anoushka said, as she guided Tanya’s drooping head into her lap.
They continued to travel north until an exposed rocky plateau ran across their path. RD drove onto it and, once they were no longer leaving tracks, he turned the vehicle south-west. Just before dawn, the ground fell away in front of them as they found themselves on the bank of a broad, fast flowing river, which they were forced to follow to the south.
Some miles further, RD stopped the vehicle and turned to Iain. “Something worries me about the path in front of us,” he said. “Could you scout ahead for a couple of hundred yards?”
“Sure.” Iain dismounted and walked forward in the pre-dawn light to spy out the ground. It wasn’t long before he returned. “Good call,” he told RD. “The bad news is that this plateau ends in a sheer drop about a hundred yards ahead, where this river forms a rather spectacular waterfall. The good news is that there seems to be a sloping path down the face of the cliff about half a mile to the east. I can’t be certain, but I think it’s wide enough for this beast.”
RD turned their transport away from the onrushing flood and they soon breached the slope that Iain had identified. The route they needed to take led down the face of the cliff toward the waterfall. The incline was quite steep, and rather narrow in places, but by common consent looked to be their only option. Twice they scraped against the rocky wall, and once one of the back drive wheels spun over the precipice and it took all RD’s strength to keep them on the path. About three-quarters of the way to the floor of the valley below, as they neared the cascading cataract, the ramp opened out onto a scree slope. RD was about to turn towards the valley floor when Iain put a hand on his arm.
“Look,” he said, pointing at the curtain of spray. “I think that ledge might lead to a cave behind the waterfall, which might be large enough to hide in. Let me go check it out.”
“Good idea,” RD said. “I don’t fancy being caught in the open in broad daylight, and the land down here looks a little too domesticated to hide in.” Indeed, in the growing light they could see below them a cultivated valley, complete with a village.
Iain again dismounted, and soon returned. “There’s plenty of room under there, but the entrance is a bit cramped.”
“It’s our best choice,” RD said, “Batten down the hatches.”
They made the vehicle as watertight as possible as he gunned the motor and moved slowly forward. Spray hammered on the roof as he managed to negotiate his way along the ledge and into the cavern successfully. He parked the vehicle as close as he could to the back wall.
Anoushka settled Tanya on their bench seat while RD and Bartes, with help from Iain and Joseph, spread the camouflage net over the entrance around the vehicle. They could only start a small fire, for fear of it or its smoke being visible from the valley floor, but it was enough to make some hot drinks. By common consent, RD, who had done all the driving, was assigned the other bench seat in the ATV, while the rest of them spread the mattresses they’d liberated from the dacha on the flattest part of the cave floor. Bartes was grateful when Iain volunteered to take the first watch, and fell asleep as soon as he lay down.
Chapter 20
Tanya woke with a demolition team working in her head and a black hole in her stomach. She sat up and groaned, and someone put a hot mug in her hand. “Thank you, Anoushka,” she said without opening her eyes, as she recognised her friend’s scent and felt her calming presence.
“You’re welcome, Tanya,” Anoushka said in her gentle contralto. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty bloody – and starving.” Tanya opened her eyes a little and was relieved to find herself in semi-darkness. “What time is it?” She raised herself on her elbows, slowly and gingerly swung herself into a sitting position, and sipped the blessed liquid fire.
“Late morning. You were exhausted, and I didn’t want to wake you. Here.” Anoushka sat down beside her and handed her a tin of warm soup and a spoon. “Sorry, but we’re having to rough it for the moment. We could only light a small fire, not enough to cook properly on, for fear of being seen.”
“Who by? And where are we?”
“We’re concealed under a rocky overhang behind a waterfall, which Bartes says is pretty much south-west of the lake. There’s a village in the valley below, and despite our camouflage net, RD says a large fire would be visible.”
“He’s right. How did we get here?”
“You’ll have to ask Bartes – he tracked our route, and maps and I have only a nodding acquaintance.” She grinned, and Tanya suddenly felt much better.
“So we’re on our way home.”
“Looks like you kept your promises, Tanya.” Anoushka squeezed her friend’s arm.
Tanya finished her meal and climbed down onto the floor of the cave. “There’s still a long way to go, though. Is there anything I can wash with?” she asked. “I feel really grubby.”
Anoushka held out a plastic bottle of water. “Don’t use too much of it – we haven’t got a vast supply.” She poured a little into Tanya’s hands and the latter rubbed it over her face and into her eyes.
As Tanya took the cloth that Anoushka proffered and dried herself off, she glanced up and became aware of a small cat looking back at her from just beyond the camouflage net. “Don’t I know you?” she asked the animal. “Weren’t you at the dacha at Plune?”
Anoushka followed her eyes and gasped. “You know, I do believe you’re right,” she said. “Her markings are very distinctive.”
:And I’ll bet you were the one who saved Bartes last night,: Tanya sent.
:That’s right. I’m Slimmest,: the cat announced smugly. :My mistress sent me to help you.:
:And your mistress would be Sophie. I’d guess that she’s a Beastmistress, and you’re one of her team.:
:Of course – her team prime, actually.: Slimmest preened herself. :You’d remember me if you didn’t have amnesia. We’ve me
t before.:
“It is the same cat,” Tanya told Anoushka. “She belongs to Sophie, who sent her to help us.”
“How can she help us?” Anoushka asked incredulously,
“Oh, she has a lot of hidden talents – you’ll see. Let’s give her some rations. She must have travelled hard and fast to keep up with us.”
“Why not?” Anoushka replied. “Here, puss,” she called as she selected a tin of fish from their food supply to feed the new arrival.
:I’ll catch my own,: Slimmest informed Tanya, her tail lashing slightly. The cat pointedly turned her back on them and stalked away.
“What’s wrong?” Anoushka asked.
:Please come back,: Tanya sent, and told Anoushka, “You shouldn’t call her ‘puss’. Cats like her have a very strong sense of dignity.”
“Then what should I call her?” Anoushka asked, dismayed.
“Just call her ‘Slimmest’ – it is her name – and try not to patronise her – she’s pretty sensitive.”
:I am not,: the cat stated imperiously, but at least she was now walking back towards them – in her most stately manner, tail held high.
“Pour the food into a bowl,” Tanya continued. “She’s not in the mood to eat out of the tin.”
“As you wish.” Anoushka located a china dish and tipped the provisions onto it. “Would you like some fish, Slimmest?” she asked the approaching feline, who gave a ‘mrowp’ and condescended to bury her nose in the pile of pluny pieces. “It’s a rather odd name.”
Tanya shrugged. “It has to do with the way telepathy works. You’ve had a little acquaintance with it now; how would you describe it?”
Anoushka wrinkled her nose. “It’s a bit odd. Some of it is like pictures in my mind, and some is like spoken words.”
“Exactly. And it varies depending on the ‘sender’. Some people think almost exclusively visually, some verbally, and most somewhere in between. What does seem common is the visual representations of people and places. When I saw John D’Arcy in your mind, I knew who it was because I know him, and though your perception of him differs somewhat from mine, there was enough commonality for me to recognise him. But think what it would have been like if I hadn’t met him – how would I have tried to work out who he was?”