Ranger

by William Stacey

She smiled, flashing her white teeth at him. "The real fun hasn't even started yet."

  Ylra grabbed Leela's wrist and pulled her over to Boko's rig. "We're gonna need to get you in the exo-suit if we're going to go home again."

  "I don't know how to operate this thing," Leela said in a panicked voice.

  "It's okay," Ylra answered, helping her into the rig, and adjusted the leg assembly. "It's easier than you'd think. Just walk and move. The servos and sensors will do the rest. But be careful. You'll be stronger than you can imagine, stronger even than a dwarven War-Forged."

  "If you say so," Leela answered.

  When Leela was as ready as she would ever be, they opened the black door, and Valentin and his crossbow-wielding soldiers led the way along the dark stone corridor. Alex followed just behind, with the others coming after him—including Leela in her gateway rig and the two men carrying the nuclear bomb. Torches burned in sconces every fifty yards. Every second that passed brought them closer to the moment someone discovered them. This couldn't last.

  Veraxia slipped along beside Alex, pointing out the way. Alex was a stealthy man, as were Valentin and his soldiers, but the dark elf moved like a wraith, slipping through the darkness.

  The others followed. It took three men to carry Kargin, while only one managed with Sharon draped over his shoulder. Leela, making too much noise in her rig, came at the back, with Ylra and two Russians for a rear guard.

  They saw no one as Veraxia led them through the dark underground passages. Several times, they came to intersecting tunnels or stairs, and each time, the dark elf pointed out the correct path. Once, a heavy black door blocked their route. Valentin and his men bunched near the door, with two of the men aiming their crossbows as Valentin knelt and yanked the door open. A surprised dark-elf guard, a woman in elaborate plate-mail armor and holding a two-handed sword, stood on the other side with her back to the door. As she turned in surprise, her yellow eyes widening, two crossbow bolts punched right through her helmet, sending her flying in a clatter of steel on stone. Valentin rose as the men reloaded and led the way, holding his silenced pistol before him. The dark elf had been guarding an intersection with a single set of twisting stone steps leading down. Alex peered at the other passages and saw nothing but darkness.

  Veraxia motioned toward the stairs, and Valentin moved to the top, with his men bunched behind him. The others hid the dark-elf's corpse farther back in the hallway then closed the black door behind them after everyone had gone through, including the men lugging the bomb, Kargin, Sharon, and the awkwardly moving Leela.

  Valentin and his men knew their craft, Alex admitted. Their room-clearing skills and easy stealth underscored professionalism to rival any Special Forces team that Alex had served with, including Task Force Devil.

  Alex hesitated only long enough to whisper into Leela's ear, "Be careful on the stairs."

  Her eyes betrayed her anxiety, but she smiled, anyhow. Ylra remained at her side, helping her.

  Alex and Veraxia followed Valentin down the twisting steps, with the others following at a larger distance. The steps led down and down, the air becoming moist and thick with the smell of the sea. They soon came out onto a natural cave with rough, irregular walls that dripped water from stalactites. There were fewer torches in sconces here, providing only a minimal light, so Alex activated his helmet's low-light enhancement mode. He glanced at Veraxia's face. Her gaze was focused ahead of them, her eyes shining in his enhanced vision like a cat's. If she saw him watching, she gave no sign. His intuition screamed in warning to him. This was far too similar to when she had led him and Leela into Arach Warren. Twice now, she just happened to know her way underground. How was that possible? If she visited the queen as an envoy, how did she know the cave system beneath her fortress? Was she leading them into a trap?

  Despite his fear, she had risked her life for them many times now—saving him, Leela, and Huck. Why save their lives just to lead them into a trap? She led them on, showing Valentin and his men the path to take, leading them along twisting stone corridors and past other caverns, many lit with glowing giant fungi and the odd flickering torch.

  The air became ever wetter. Soon, the water dripping from above was like rain, splashing and soaking them. Alex shivered. He touched a drop of the water to his lips. It was salty, seawater. Are we underwater? He heard the distant rumble of thunder.

  Veraxia halted and slid up against the side of the cave tunnel. Valentin and his men saw her sudden reaction and did the same, hugging the walls. Alex slid beside her, his hand resting on Witch-Bane's hilt. Even with his helmet's enhanced hearing, he had heard nothing, but obviously, Veraxia had. Seconds later, he heard the soft clink of chain mail against plate armor and the tread of footsteps.

  Veraxia's hearing was better than the electronics in his helmet, he realized just as the five dark-elf women, the queen's elite Storm Guard warriors, appeared around a bend in the tunnel ahead, less than ten paces away. They marched purposely, with the woman in front holding a torch. All five wore long, thick cloaks over plate- and chain-mail armor, with helmets that covered most of their faces, leaving only a Y-shaped opening for their eyes and mouth. They carried long two-handed swords. The dark elves and the Russians, seeing one another at the same moment, froze. Except for Veraxia.

  She launched herself forward, faster than Alex would have thought possible. Before Valentin's men could fire their crossbows, Veraxia slammed into the two closest warriors, crashing to the ground with them in a rattle of armor and weapons. Her knives rose and fell, and someone shrieked, but the cry was cut off a heartbeat later. Valentin's men fired their bolts. One warrior fell, with a bolt finding its way past the armor to bury itself in the flesh of her throat, but the other bolts struck sparks as they ricocheted off the dark elves' armor. Valentin fired his pistol, and another warrior dropped. Alex charged the last woman, Witch-Bane in hand. He leaped over Veraxia while she continued to stab at her opponents. The Storm Guard warrior lifted her two-handed sword above her head for an overhead strike, but its tip caught the rocks above her. Alex rammed into her, and they both fell, with Alex atop her. He tried to ram his knee into her groin—an attack that worked just as well on women as men—but her cuirass and chain mail absorbed his blow. She bared her teeth in fury and tried to smash the cross guard of her sword into his mouth but caught the side of his helmet. He tried to wedge Witch-Bane's edge against her neck, using both hands and holding the edge of the blade with his glove, intent on sawing through her neck. Before he could, she rammed her helmet against his, distracting him. Then she released her sword and quickly punched him twice in the kidneys. The MR suit absorbed the blows, but she used his distraction to flip him and pin him beneath her hip and leg. She was as good as any ju-jitsu practitioner he had ever fought. She held a dagger in her other hand now, having drawn it during the scuffle, and stabbed at his chest, ramming the point into his heart. It hurt—a lot—but his suit's magnetic fluid stopped the blade. Her yellow eyes widened in surprise, and she gripped the dagger with both hands now to drive it with enough force to get through his suit. He bucked his hips to dislodge her but failed. She drew back.

  With a sound like a thunk, Dimmi rammed the spike of his hand ax through the top of her helmet and into her brain. He wrenched his weapon free, and the dead warrior fell off Alex. He held his hand out to Alex and helped him up. Alex, his heart pounding, his breathing wild, looked about. The guards were dead. Farther back in the tunnel, the others were waiting. He saw Leela in her rig, concern on her face. He waved, showing he was all right.

  "Thank you," he said to Dimmi. "You saved my life. She was good."

  "Storm Guard," said Dimmi, as if that answered everything. "Best to kill them with guns when you can."

  Alex joined Valentin, who was staring back the way the dark elves had come, looking and listening for signs they had been discovered. Veraxia wiped her knives on a dark cloak that had belonged to one dark elf.

  "We don't have long," Veraxia whispered
. "When this patrol fails to return…"

  "How much farther?" Alex asked, staring at the dead dark elves and their weapons lying in the tunnel.

  "The bridge is just ahead. You can hear the waterfall and the waves striking the rocks, can you not?"

  The sound of thunder. He nodded. Waterfall?

  She led them farther on, and as they moved, the thunder increased. No wonder no one had heard the fighting, Alex realized. Then Veraxia lowered herself to her knees and motioned for Alex and Valentin to do the same. They crawled forward, approaching the end of the corridor and an entrance to a much larger cavern. Alex and Valentin lay at the entrance, staring down upon a natural cavern almost as large as the one containing Deep Terlingas. Darkness blanketed the cavern, but Alex's visor revealed that a black pool filled the cavern, several hundred meters wide at least. In the center of the pool, lit by torches, was a walled keep with towers in the corners. A gate blocked the entrance to the keep, and Alex saw dark-elf guards moving atop the walls and before the gate. From where they hid, rough-hewn steps led down, cutting back and forth, before reaching a black stone bridge. The bridge, only five feet wide, ran across the water to the keep's barred entrance. As impressive as the keep was, it was the waterfall on the far side of the cavern that commanded Alex's attention. At least a hundred feet above the pool, the water poured from a wide pipe set in the cavern's wall, cascading below and sending spray into the air—the source of the thunder. He removed his helmet and handed it to Valentin. The other man put the helmet on and examined the keep.

  "Seawater?" Alex asked Veraxia quietly.

  She pointed to the pipe from which the water jetted. "The ocean is above us."

  "Why doesn't the ocean fill the pool and the rest of the cavern?"

  "Crèche, not a pool, and it drains below, an elaborate dwarven construct. The water level is kept consistent. I'm told it's quite the impressive engineering feat, but then the dwarves have always been gifted with such creations."

  Alex stared at her in confusion. "Crèche? What are you talking about?"

  "Boggarts, Alex. This is how the queen forces them to fight for her. She holds their young, their unhatched eggs, as a guarantee. The same way she forced your manling friends to serve her. The waters cover thousands of boggart eggs."

  "In there?" Alex stared at the dark waters.

  "Where else?"

  Alex's throat tightened as he stared at the water. Unexpected and unwelcome emotions rose within him—shock tinged with shame, or at least something that felt like shame.

  Valentin handed Alex back his helmet, and Alex held it, his thoughts a tempest.

  "Okay," said Valentin, "I'm out of tricks. I say we rush in and shoot them in the face. We have just enough explosives left to blow that portcullis."

  "That's gonna take at least a minute or two," Alex said, forcing himself out of his apprehension.

  "We will lose some, but better some than all." It sounded as if Valentin were trying to convince himself.

  "You weren't listening," said Veraxia. "The fae seelie use the dwarven machine to control the water flow. The compound holding the hostages is below the water's surface on purpose. The guards can flood their cells in moments. Even I'm not that fast. If we attack, you're going to lose most of your people, maybe all of them."

  Alex stared at the keep. "How can we be certain they're even still there?"

  "Can you not smell them?" Veraxia asked in puzzlement.

  He shook his head, amazed at the dark elf's senses. The only thing he smelled was the overwhelming sweet stench of fish—well, not fish but something vaguely fishlike. It's the crèche, he realized. The boggart young.

  "I don't know what else we can do," said Valentin, his voice filled with indecision. "Someone will notice when the patrol does not return. We have only minutes—if that." He rose. "I'll give the word. The men will fight hard for their families."

  Alex grabbed his arm. "Wait. I have an idea. You're gonna like it. It's really stupid."

  53

  Alex, Valentin, Veraxia, Dimmi, and Dominika marched across the bridge. The four humans huddled together while Veraxia strode in front, holding a torch. Each wore a Storm Guard cloak and helmet and carried the two-handed swords upright before them in the fashion in which Veraxia had instructed them. Alex gripped the ends of his cloak tighter with one hand while holding the sword upright with the other, his eyes flicking toward the sentries standing before the portcullis. If Veraxia kept the guards' attention on her, this deception might work. Sometimes, victory favored the bold… or the foolish.

  Alex glanced at the pool on either side of the bridge, looking for the boggart eggs, but saw nothing more than black water. How many boggarts had he killed during this war… hundreds? He had been so filled with rage over his son's loss he had never considered why the boggarts fought for a woman who wasn't even the same species.

  "Open now!" Veraxia called in a regal, "Don't you dare disobey me" tone as she came within twenty paces of the portcullis.

  Alex's apprehension grew. The sentries in the towers were armed with crossbows and couldn't possibly miss them at this range. Could the bolts puncture the MR suits? If this doesn't work, we're going to die right—

  Nobody was more surprised than Alex at the sudden grinding of gears and rattling of chains. The portcullis went up, jerkily at first then faster. Well, I'll be damned.

  Veraxia strode forward before the portcullis had even finished rising. Alex, the familiar pre-battle high of adrenaline surging through his blood system, exchanged a quick glance with Valentin before they followed her.

  A pair of helmetless Storm Guard warriors met Veraxia. One raised a hand in greeting, but the words on her lips faltered when she came closer to the dark-elf priestess. Veraxia darted forward and drove one of her fighting knives through the woman's open mouth and into her brain, killing her before she realized she was under attack. Alex dropped his large sword, letting it clang from the stones of the bridge, and swept his Tac rifle, which was hanging from its sling beneath his cloak, up and into his shoulder. He thumbed the safety off and sent a short burst of caseless bullets into the face of the other Storm Guard warrior, shattering her head in a grisly pulp of blood, brain tissue, and bone.

  Dimmi and the others charged forward, bringing their own weapons to bear. Alex couldn't take time to look, but he knew the rest of the commando force was rushing down the stairs and over the bridge, hurrying to get to them before the keep's defenders overwhelmed the small party and closed the portcullis.

  Their cloaks and helmets discarded now, they ran past the portcullis winch and took up firing positions inside the inner-keep courtyard, which was perhaps twenty paces wide and surrounded by stone buildings with closed wooden doors on both sides. Steps led up to the walls and towers on either side, and a second gated entrance stood across the courtyard from them. That must lead to the cells, Alex realized. Racks of weapons, swords, pole arms, and spears sat against the courtyard's wall near the entrance. Alex saw a flash of movement in the towers, and Valentin and Dimmi fired their weapons at the same time—the rifle shots were impossibly loud without the ear protection of his combat helmet—and a dark elf fell back from the tower. A door on Alex's left swung open, revealing two Storm Guard warriors. Dominika extended her hands, and jets of fire streamed from her palms, washing over the warriors and engulfing them in flames. They screamed and fell back, spinning and spreading the flames, igniting the interior of the building. Dominika, still casting her fire, stepped back, moving closer to Alex. As she did, her flames faltered and died out. She stared in confusion at her hands.

  "Me!" he yelled. "Stay at least five paces away if you want to channel mana—or stick close to stay safe from their spells."

  She flashed him a smile. "Safe it is, then." She drew an automatic pistol and held it in both hands.

  Another door swung open on the right, and a lightning bolt arced out at them. The lightning disintegrated before it hit them, and Alex's return salvo of assault-rifle f
ire cut the dark-elf mage in the open doorway apart.

  The keep's defenders pounded a metal gong, the reverberations loud, and they screamed in warning. A pair of Storm Guard warriors sped past the bars on the other side of the far gate to the prisoners' compound. Valentin opened fire, sending a long burst at both elves. Many of his bullets winged away from the bars, but enough got past to cut down one dark elf. But the second disappeared from view.

  "The civilians!" Valentin yelled. "They'll drown them."

  They heard a loud grinding noise followed by the terrifying sound of water jetting through an opening somewhere below them.

  "Hold the gate," Veraxia ordered, running to the bars.

  Alex was about to tell her to stand back while they used explosives on the portcullis, but Veraxia grabbed the bars with both hands and, with a single screeching wrench of metal and shattered stone, ripped the gate away from its moorings then tossed it behind her to the courtyard with a clang. She rushed inside.

  Alex stared in confusion and saw the same shock in Valentin's face. Then dozens of the keep's defenders rushed out at them, spilling out of open doorways and rushing down the steps from the walls. Alex fired a long burst, sweeping his rifle's barrel across a knot of attackers coming down the stairs, sending them tumbling. The others opened fire, including Dominika with her pistol. The dark-elf warriors fell screaming. At this range, even a steel breastplate was no protection from an assault rifle. Other spells flashed at them, fireballs and lightning bolts, but the others kept near Alex, and the spells disintegrated into harmless sparks. The courtyard filled with dead and dying dark elves, and the next few seconds became a blur of firing and reloading that seemed to last forever. He shot one warrior point-blank in the face just as she was about to cut him down with a massive ax-bladed pole arm. Then the smoke and heat from the burning building obscured their aim and drove them back into the gateway with the portcullis winch. The gong had stopped, and the attackers, several dozen yet—including a pair of huge trolls—braced themselves for the final charge to overwhelm them. The only grace was that the sound of rushing water had ceased. Way to go, Veraxia.