“Some kind of acid. Chemical warfare on the most primitive level, but effective.” Mike was silent for a minute, pondering his options. “All right. We abandon the first floor and the second floor. Leave the astronomer on the second floor, by the stairs. The poison gas seems too heavy to diffuse very far beyond the door down here. Knock him out, tie him up. Let's go, now!”
As soon as Saium had accomplished the task, he and Mike scrambled to the second level. Mike closed the trapdoor behind them, and shot the bolt of the lock, harboring no illusions about the barrier holding for long, but each minute was precious, now they were into the final twelve hours of the rescue window he’d been promised. The Marines have to be on their way to us soon.
There was nothing to further anchor the trapdoor, which was a pity. Sending Saium ahead, Mike did a three-sixty on the second floor one last time, making sure they hadn't forgotten anything. Then he headed to the third level, bolting the trapdoor behind him.
Above his head on the roof, Mike heard occasional blaster shots.
“Status?” he asked Shalira, who was huddled beside the couch, clutching her Mahjundan gun in one hand and cradling the gaudy scepter in the other.
“Johnny’s on the roof. Everett is on the balcony with Saium. The guards keep poking their heads over the roof edge but haven't attacked again yet.”
“Good report.” He raised his voice, so Saium and Everett could hear him on the balcony. “Okay, people, we’re abandoning this level and moving to the roof. We can't defend ourselves in here once they break through to the second floor, which they’ll do once the acid eats enough of the door away at the entrance. Blasters don't do you any good in hand-to-hand combat, which is what we'll have if we stay here.”
Johnny provided covering fire while Mike handed Shalira onto the roof and Saium guided her to the safest possible spot, next to Everett.
Working quickly, the men took the big table that they’d salvaged from level two during the night and placed it across the opening for the stairs. Mike placed the smaller table at the far wall of the tower, to provide some shelter for Shalira in case the enemy attacked with archers.
Johnny grabbed his arm and held up a hand for silence. “Listen!”
Mike heard the sound of axes hacking away at the trapdoor on level two.
“Only be a few minutes now,” he said. “All right, let's move it!”
Five minutes later he’d done all he could to fortify their last stand. The table completely blocked the transition from the stairway to the roof itself. Mike and Johnny took their places behind it, somewhat sheltered by its width–six inches of hardwood. Saium and Everett took positions on the left side, commanding a field of fire on the staircase as it wound around the tower from the balcony they’d so recently been defending.
“I hope they can't bottle the acid stuff,” Johnny said. “Someone might get the bright idea of throwing it up here.”
Suddenly, two city guards in the maroon leather jerkins and helmets appeared on the balcony below. Saium and Everett fired within a breath of each other and both warriors fell. Unseen comrades hauled them back inside by the ankles.
“Testing us,” Mike said.
“Invasion coming across the roof!” Johnny pointed toward the opposite edge.
“Do you see what I see?” Mike exclaimed, his worst nightmare confirmed. “Archers!” He called to the princess, “Get as far back under the table as you can. They're going to be shooting arrows at us in a minute.”
“I'll be fine,” she said, flashing him a smile as she obeyed the order.
“Count off your remaining charges,” Mike said to his troops.
The result was disheartening. They were reduced to about a hundred shots each on the blasters, and then nothing was left but the projectile guns. Fifty men were massing across the roof, with more coming. A squad of ten archers was even now taking aim.
“Fire at will, gentlemen, but pick your targets. Try to disrupt the damn archers,” Mike ordered, drawing a bead himself on the officer in charge, killing him as the first volley was loosed. The arrows landed short of the tower by a good thirty feet. The remaining archers were already taking aim again. The group of fifty soldiers advanced across the roof, holding small round leather shields protectively in front of their faces and upper torsos. This was no impediment to a blaster shot, and many fell, but still, the group kept marching. Reinforcements mounted the slippery roof.
“Damn, they're full of fight today,” Johnny yelled. “Priests must have given them some heavy duty encouragement, what do you think?”
“Promises of some glorious afterlife,” Mike shouted back, firing, selecting a new target and firing again in a deadly rhythm, thinning the ranks of city guards. Saium and Everett made their shots count, targeting the archers. Nonetheless, the next flight of arrows came clattering on the tower roof, sending the defenders ducking frantically in all directions. Mike spared a glance back at the table sheltering Shalira. Several arrows were lodged deep in the wood, but none had penetrated. Suddenly Saium crumbled, knocking Everett off-balance as he fell.
Mike grabbed the old warrior, dragging him toward the princess’s makeshift refuge. “Cover my spot!”
A long maroon-shafted arrow had buried itself deep in the Mahjundan’s right shoulder, and he convulsed, eyes rolled back into his head.
“What the hell?” Suspicions aroused, Mike grabbed an arrow embedded in the table and pulled it free. The arrowhead was a gleaming, sharpened piece of translucent stone smeared with thick, green, viscous liquid. He threw the wooden shaft over the side of the tower, wiping his hand on his pants. “Poison. Johnny, the arrows have poison tips. Anything in the medkit to use on it?”
The sergeant shook his head, continuing to fire a steady barrage of charges down the roof. “We’ve got antivenom for those snakes we were briefed about. Maybe this poison works on the nervous system the way venom does? Best I can do. Want me to give it a try?”
“Sure, better than nothing. Change places with me. Give me your blaster.” Squeezing past Johnny, Mike took his place at the barricade.
Dragging his medkit out from the pile of their gear, Johnny searched through the contents, finally locating the set of injects he wanted. Hurriedly he shot the contents of the first directly into Saium’s heart, speaking to Shalira, as he did so. “I can't sit here and wait. Can you take this—” He shoved the second sealed hypo into her hand. “Count to one hundred, set it on his chest here and push this.” He demonstrated the necessary motions, placing her right hand where the drug needed to be injected, moving the thumb of her left hand over the tiny button.
Gun forgotten on the ground at her side, Shalira cradled her guardsman in her arms, tears coursing down her cheeks. She swiped one hand across her face and nodded. “Of course. Leave him to me.” She started counting.
Johnny slithered back across the roof to the barricade.
“I think we've gotten all the archers out of the way,” Mike said. “At least for now. Here's your blaster. The casualties got to be too much for whatever motivational technique the priests were using. Most of the survivors can’t get to the ladders fast enough.”
“The stairs!” Everett yelled. Johnny rose enough to see over the edge of the wall and knocked three more attackers off the narrow stairs with well-placed shots. Then his blaster flickered on the next shot and fell silent.
“Take Saium’s,” Mike said, handing it over. “I'm about out, too. Everett?”
“Same here.”
The three men slumped behind the wall and the barricade, taking a welcome breather while the enemy regrouped. Johnny was checking his blaster. “If the priests can whip their rabble into one more mass attack—”
“Yeah, I know. I can do the math. Maybe we can repel one more attack, but certainly not two. I think we're about out of time and luck, gentlemen,” Mike said calmly despite the cold knowledge in his bones that the end of the battle had come. He spared a moment to glance at Shalira, who’d given Saium his second injectio
n and was whispering reassurances into his ear. She was trying to keep him from doing himself further injury as he twitched and convulsed. His eyes were screwed shut and his teeth were clamped into his lower lip so hard he was bleeding.
Even with the antivenom injects, the prognosis looked grim for Saium.
Mike met Johnny's steady gaze. “I think it’s time to break out the antigrav disk.”
“No other choices left.” Johnny nodded. Tucking his blaster into his belt, he went to the pile of packs behind the table and rummaged for a moment before tossing Mike a black box.
“You realize this is a suicide run,” Everett asked. “I’m on board with the idea, but even if one disk can somehow support all of us, once the enemy realizes we’re not here anymore, they’ll rush the place. We’ll be pretty easy targets during the first part of the descent.”
Mike slid to the relative protection of the table barricade, Everett right behind him. “Yeah, I know, but we’re not going to be taken alive. We escape, or we die in the attempt.”
“What’s the plan?” Shalira asked, gazing from one man to the next.
Mike activated the antigrav mechanism with a flick of the wrist. Glowing as it took shape, a thin blue light flowed out until it was about the size of a small, two-inch-thick carpet. Strapping the controller to his palm, Mike directed the glowing blue sheet over the wall, leaving it floating next to the parapet. “We’re going to lower ourselves to the bottom of the canyon. Try to find some flat place big enough to let the drone set down. Hope we don’t run into any more locals.”
“But we can’t abandon Saium,” she said, taking a stronger grip on her guardsman’s shoulders as if Mike proposed to tear her away.
“Don’t worry, I’m not leaving anyone behind. We’ll carry him.” Mike stowed his weapons to have his hands free.
“I assume you only have the one disk or we’d have bugged out of here the first night?” Everett said.
Mike nodded.
The other operator jerked a thumb at the antigrav. “It won’t carry five people.”
“Well, it’ll have to,” Mike said. “Better to trust the antigrav than stay here and die for sure. Now let’s go. I’ll carry Shalira. Johnny, you get Saium.”
Obediently, the sergeant bent over Saium as Shalira rose and moved aside. Attempting to hook his hands under the old man’s arms, Johnny met with resistance as Saium fended him off with a shaking hand.
Staring past him to Mike, Saium beckoned to him. “Major.” Saium grabbed Mike’s arm with surprising strength, yanking him closer. Features contorted in pain, a thin trickle of blood leaking from one nostril, the old man looked every one of his years and could hardly whisper. “I’m dying, we both know the poison is too strong for even your medicines. Save my princess, save yourself.”
“We don’t leave people behind,” Mike said.
“We better get a move on,” Johnny reported, voice calm. “They’re regrouping for the next wave.”
“We’re out of time,” Everett said. “Come on, what are we waiting for?”
“Fools.” Saium’s voice dripped scorn. It wasn’t clear whether he meant the Outworlders or the Nathlemeru. He cleared his throat with visible effort and spoke louder. “Sergeant, do you have any more explosive? The stuff you used to seal the tombs?” Saium’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
Back to them, keeping his attention locked on the far edge of the roof, where the next attack would come from, Johnny grunted. “Yeah, why?”
There was a moment of silence as tremors rocked the wounded man’s body and he clearly struggled to breathe, much less speak. Blood leaked from the corner of one eye. Hand to her mouth in horror, Shalira stared at her guardsman and then at Mike. “I forbid this.” Voice rising, Shalira fell to her knees beside Saium. “I’m not allowing you to sacrifice yourself for me. We’re taking you with us. You heard Mike.”
With an indrawn hiss of pain, he reached out to pat her arm. “Child, it’s a sacrifice I make gladly.”
Mike evaluated the old soldier for a moment, then nodded. “Johnny, activate the detonator and give it to Saium.” He leaned closer to the trembling man, holding out his hand. “I appreciate your gallantry, sir. Proud to have served with you.”
“Get my princess to safety,” Saium answered, grasping Mike’s hand feebly. “I’ll set off the explosion when they breach the tower, fool the ignorant ones into believing we all died. You’ll be able to escape to somewhere this ship of yours can land.”
“Don’t wait too long, sir,” Johnny said. He placed a rectangular, gleaming package next to Saium and curled the old man’s fingers around a small red ball. “You squeeze this, or you drop it. Either way, the stuff will explode. No more tower. Hell, the whole temple might go, if we’re lucky.”
Wheezing, each breath laborious, Saium nodded. “Good idea. Either way, I blow them to hell. Thank you.”
Mike hunkered down next to the princess who had collapsed weeping, hugging Saium. Gently, Mike tried to loosen her grip, but she resisted him, shaking her head as she locked her fingers. Exerting more strength, he tugged her away from her guardsman. “Sweetheart, we have to go.”
“Give me a smile to remember you by,” Saium said, patting her back with his free hand. “Please, Your Highness. When I step into the afterlife, I want to tell your mother how brave you are, how proud I am.”
Caught in Mike’s arms, hiccupping, she swallowed. “Please, give me a moment.” Mike released her. Placing her hand over Saium’s heart, she said, “I love you. You are my father, if not by blood, then because of your love for me and my mother.” Eyelashes starred with tears, she kissed him on the cheek, brushing his hair back from his brow. Saium held her close for a heartbeat before giving her a gentle push.
“There’s no more time,” he whispered. “If the gods be kind, I’ll be watching over you always.”
Mike pulled her to her feet. “Hang on to me,” he said, picking her up. Tucking the scepter into her belt, she wrapped her legs around his waist, arms locked behind his neck, burying her face against his chest.
“We gotta go now,” Johnny said, voice calm as ever. “They’re taking formation.”
“Good journey,” Mike told Saium.
Coughing, he got a better grip on the detonator. “And to you.”
Battle cries sounded on the temple roof. Hugging Shalira, Mike stepped over the crumbling wall onto the thin antigrav disk, allowing the device to latch onto his boots, ensuring he wouldn’t fall off. Johnny and Everett stepped up, one on either side of him, locking their arms together in a tight grip with him and Shalira in the middle. The disk dipped alarmingly, moving sideways. Mike held his breath, but the unit stayed strong. Beginning the descent along the cliff upon which the temple had been built, he had difficulty keeping his balance. They were descending much too rapidly, their combined weight taxing the mechanism.
“Wish we could go faster,” Johnny yelled. “If we’re too close we’re likely to get hit with debris or thrown off-balance by the shock wave. I set a fucking huge charge for Saium to blow.”
Mike heard a spurt of gunfire from above as their dying companion apparently mounted as much resistance as he could, to buy them time. “I’m trying to vector sideways but she’s overloaded, nonresponsive.” With his fingertips, he guided the controller into taking them on a westerly course as they descended.
In the next moment there was a giant explosion from above. The observatory tower vanished in a fireball, flames shooting in all directions, shock waves spreading through the atmosphere. Mike tightened his grip on Shalira as they were buffeted, as if in a hurricane. The thin adhesion between the anti grav pad and the soldiers’ boots was the only thing keeping all four of them from plunging to their deaths. Large chunks of the temple flew past, bouncing off the canyon walls, starting small landslides, shattering into dangerous shards ricocheting in all directions. Mike tried to put more distance between themselves and the striated rock walls, but the overstressed anti grav unit was balky. He figured th
ey had several thousand feet to descend to the canyon floor.
Weeping, Shalira was clutching him. The damn scepter she insisted on keeping dug into his already painful ribs.
The rest of the trip to the bottom felt interminable. A small waterfall cascaded from the rocky ledges into the thin air at one point, rainbows shining in the mist as they floated past.
“I hope we’re not going to land in a river,” Johnny shouted.
“Not much I can do about it now.” The controller was overheating against his palm. Mike glanced down, evaluating the canyon floor, and hoped the surface was on the sandy side in case the antigrav cut off prematurely.
The unit’s humming sputtered and evened out again.
“I think she’s about done,” he yelled. “Brace yourselves for a fall.”
They were maybe ten feet above the dry riverbed forming the canyon floor when the antigrav unit gave out. Falling with the others in a tangled heap on the loose soil, Mike cushioned the impact for Shalira. Pain from his already broken ribs was so intense he nearly blacked out. Vision narrowed, vertigo assaulting him, he was dimly aware as Johnny and Everett carried him from the landing spot, into the shelter of a nest of boulders. Behind them a cavern stretched deep into the cliff.
The pain made it difficult to focus. Any attempt to inhale was met with stabbing agony. “We’ve got no idea what the situation is down here,” he said with as much strength as he could muster. “The Nathlemeru or their allies may patrol this area.” He could hardly hear his own voice. Clearing his throat, he said, “Stay alert. Take shelter in the cavern.”
Shalira sat cross-legged in the spot Johnny chose, next to Mike. Eyes misty, she stared at the canyon walls they’d descended, even though it was impossible to see to the top. Debris was still falling. “I hope it was quick. I hope he didn’t suffer.”
Mission To Mahjundar (A Sectors SF Romance) Page 27