Driven by the intensity of his instinct that Kesteluni was near, Tanavuna stalked to the door with an air that dared anyone to try and stop him. He knelt and probed the dirt with his fingers. He found the seam and felt the wooden slats, gauging their thickness at roughly two inches. As he’d assumed, it was much too heavy for a few men to lift. He inserted the beveled end of the broken strut into the seam, dug where the door met the frame, and gouged out a notch for leverage. Once done, he pried it open with the help of Ammaii, Kuun, and Unaa—enough to slide the butt of his M14 in to the gap to keep it from closing.
Dropping to his belly, Tanavuna peered through the crack into the darkness. The narrow shaft of sunlight gave just enough illumination to show a ramp of stone slanting downward. Getting to his knees, Tanavuna called for Moorefield’s man and the vehicle driver to join them. Reluctantly, they did.
Between them they rolled a small boulder into place beside the trap door. All five men then strained to lift the massive wooden platform, sweat pouring down their faces and turning the dirt on their hands into mud. When it was just over a foot above its frame, Tanavuna and Unaa shoved the boulder into place to prop it open.
They all leaned away and bent over, hands on knees, gulping the hot air. Despite his urgency, Tanavuna gave them a long moment to recover. Then, grabbing his rifle, he lay down next to the low opening.
“Tell the major we’re going inside,” he said to Moorefield’s man. Sliding sideways, he disappeared into the shadows.
* * * * *
Chapter 11
Yukannak stumbled out of the shattered doorway, barely avoiding the whinaalani’s swishing tail. Bracing against the wall with his right hand, he ran toward the tunnels, glancing over his shoulder in case the beast followed.
He twisted his head toward the gunfire coming from behind the buildings to his left, so he didn’t notice a man who appeared from the direction of the waterfall, raised a rifle, and fired. The bullet tugged at the collar of his robe. Only then did he realize the nearness of death in almost every direction.
Yukannak ducked left down an alley, hoping there were no more soldiers waiting for him at the other end. A second bullet zipped through the space he’d just vacated. The narrow passage opened onto a plaza, where he paused to get his bearings. Screaming people were running for doorways as militia men fired at unseen targets. A young woman fell as a bullet struck her in the back. She rolled and came to a stop at Yukannak’s feet; the spreading puddle of blood leaked between the cracks in the paving stones. Lifeless eyes stared up into his.
Bullets ripped into the wall beside his head. For the briefest instant, he froze, then he flinched away from the spray of sharp slivers. At his back was the same rifleman, still trying to kill him. Out of options, Yukannak sprinted across the plaza toward the relative safety of the tunnels.
* * *
The hardest part for Cutter was letting First Squad do its job. He wanted to go first, to take the biggest risk himself so they would stay safe. Having already lost a man brought memories of France into his mind’s eye, and he would rather substitute his own death for one of theirs. But he was the platoon commander, and taking all that risk personally was not only bad leadership, it was selfish. So, he held back as the point man moved into the streets of the Outer City.
They advanced with two fire teams forward and Cutter leading four men as a reserve. Scattered fires, smashed vendors’ carts, and empty shell casings were clear evidence of the fighting. Patches of dark blood didn’t bother him or his own men, though. He’d seen plenty of gore in Normandy, and living on R’Bak meant dealing with violent death on a daily basis—usually from animals, but not always—and the indigs didn’t give it a second thought.
Throughout the Outer City, clusters of adobe-and-stone shanties, some with roofs of wood or animal hide, huddled around communal wells. Bodies littered the narrow passages that served as streets, which reminded Cutter of St. Lô, France, after the savage fighting in July, 1944. Most were very young or very old, trampled in the panicked rush for safety when the shooting started. A few showed gunshot wounds, and the front of a dead fruit hawker’s robe showed powder burns; the close-range kill was evidence that some of the militia were already using the chaos to plunder.
The Outer City had a pattern; the densest parts were centered on community wells, with the cleared plazas around them serving as gathering spots for gossip, trade, romance, and general socializing. Positioned in houses along the way—if the ramshackle structures could be called houses—Moorefield’s men held the road itself as a path through enemy territory. Beyond them, however, Cutter and his men were on their own.
With only fifteen men, including him, it would take days to conduct a thorough house-to-house search, and experience showed there was nothing more dangerous in urban fighting than entering a house without using explosives to clear the entry. If you couldn’t toss a grenade through the window or go in shooting, you ran the risk of the enemy cutting you down in the doorway. He’d lost more than one man that way in France.
They were almost a quarter of the way to the gate that led to the Inner City when automatic weapons opened up along a narrow street that was half-clogged with garbage and debris. Ahead, the men of First Squad moved toward a two-story building with a half-collapsed roof, returning fire while moving in stages from cover to cover. Cutter and his four men covered the doorways that might conceal enemies, following the advancing men in case an enemy waited for them to pass so he could shoot them in the back. It was standard procedure, drilled into his platoon over and over again on the hot fields during their training, and it paid off almost immediately. A man in a dirty robe wearing the mustard yellow paint of a commoner leaped out of a doorway, raised his rifle to aim between Sergeant Riidono’s shoulder blades…and then jerked as Cutter poured a burst of .45 rounds into his torso. Tumbling back, the weapon fell at his feet, and the man slid down the house’s exterior wall and slumped over. Screams came from inside the house.
A second, smaller figure rushed out, picked up the dropped rifle, and began firing in Cutter’s general direction. He knew right away it was a child, and tried to tell his men not to shoot, but, in the confusion of the firefight, they couldn’t hear him. Blossoms of red appeared on his little chest as the heavy bullets hammered him back into the dark from which he had emerged—just as a third person tried to exit. Much larger, this person tripped over the toppling body and fell face down in the street.
“Blue paint, blue paint!” yelled the man next to Cutter, pointing. On impulse, Cutter ran forward, his Thompson trained on the man wearing blue paint. Gunfire from a nearby building struck the stones behind him, ricocheting with angry whines. The figure in the doorway got to his knees as, continuing forward, Cutter lowered his shoulder and hit him under the chin, like he’d done to the tackling dummy back in high school. Driving him back, Cutter glimpsed a full beard and drove the man into the floor. Cutter swiped the butt of his rifle across the man’s cheek, then swiveled it down to cover a knot of people huddling in the shadows. Dust swirled in shafts of sunlight pouring through holes in the roof, and he saw several children cowering against their mother.
“You’ve killed two of my children!” she said with a half shriek, half sob. “Leave me the rest, master; leave me the rest!”
Panting, Cutter swallowed and licked his lips. He’d come close to firing first and identifying his target afterward, which was never a bad idea in enemy territory. At least, that’s what he’d told his men in France, where innocent victims were part of the price for liberation. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Cutter couldn’t think about how close he’d come to killing the woman and her children, not now and probably not ever. Instead, he grabbed the stunned man with the blue mask and dragged him to the doorway, where one of Cutter’s men stood guard as he’d been trained.
“Hitler’s Buzzsaw is knocked out,” the man said, sounding much like a GI in 1944, his M14 never wavering from the terrified family inside the hovel. After Cu
tter had described the German MG 42 machine gun around the campfire one night, his platoon referred to every automatic weapon as Hitler’s Buzzsaw.
“They’re harmless,” Cutter said, nodding backward at the mother and children.
“No offense, sir, but these are my people. None of them are harmless.”
“Who is this guy?” Cutter said, shoving the quaking man with the blue mask forward. “The blue means he’s a militia leader, right?”
Sergeant Riidono had come back to rejoin them and heard the question. His reply held a palpable level of contempt. “It means his village supports the F’ahdn and will report on people who speak out against him.”
“I get it,” Cutter said. He pulled the man close. The blue paint obscured the lines and creases that were emotional giveaways, but no amount of paint could hide the terror in the man’s brown eyes. Through clenched teeth, Cutter substituted English words for those he hadn’t yet learned in the local language. “We called scumbags like this ‘snitches,’ and I hate snitches. The Nazis had ’em all over the place.” His men all nodded, more at the vehemence of his voice than truly understanding his words. “And just like the cowards back on Earth, this bastard sends his children out to fight in his place. If I could kill you where you stand, mister, I’d do it and enjoy every second of it.”
“I’ll do it for you sir,” said Riidono, with an intensity uncharacteristic for the usually laconic non-com.
“His people are your enemies?”
Riidono nodded, never taking his eyes off their captive.
“No, Sergeant, like it or not, this piece of shit is the reason we’re here. Assign two men to get him to the rear, and hand him over to the assault team as a prisoner, then double-time it back. We’re pressing on.”
“Yes, sir!” Riidono said.
“A living prisoner, Sergeant.”
Riidono’s glee deflated into a scowl.
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Tanavuna squeezed through the opening between the trap door and the dusty ground of the plateau. Once inside, the stone beneath his fingertips felt rough and pitted, not smooth. It fell away at a sharp but not severe downward angle into the dimness. At the foot of the ramp, there was a sort of landing, but the illumination wasn’t bright enough for him to make out details. Between him and there lay deep shadow.
Kuun came next and clicked on his flashlight. Tanavuna immediately reached out to block the beam.
“Don’t alert them we’ve found their secret entrance,” he whispered.
Kuun clicked it off as Ammaii and Unaa joined them. The slope forced them to lean backward as they moved down. That threw off their balance enough so they couldn’t keep their rifles trained ahead; if someone spotted them and started shooting, it would get bad in a hurry.
Creeping down, Tanavuna’s main concern was keeping silent. With solid rock walls on either side, even their breathing sounded loud, and he imagined gunmen taking aim at them from the foot of the ramp. Instinct told him to run to the bottom as fast as he could, and six months earlier that’s what he would have done…and it would likely have gotten them all killed.
Approaching the bottom, they heard voices from somewhere out of sight. The chamber at the bottom of the ramp came into focus: a large area cut from the solid stone. Twenty feet above the floor, Tanavuna and his men descended past the level of the chamber roof and the walls to either side ended. Lighting was a combination of lanterns, torches, and what appeared to be sunlight cunningly directed into the chamber from above.
Pausing, Tanavuna motioned his men to crouch as he studied the area. No sounds of battle penetrated so deep underground, which allowed him to trace the voices to their source. Various vehicles parked around the chamber confused him at first, but soon he spied one upon which two men were working. If they knew a fight was happening in the city, they didn’t show it.
Numerous tunnels led off in different directions, some big enough for vehicles, some not. Orienting his team’s position as best he could, Tanavuna judged the far left tunnel to the east was the large one that reportedly led to the cache of medicinals as well as the houses of the wealthy. He’d never actually been inside the tunnel, but he had seen its mouth from the Inner City several times. Four tunnels directly ahead ran to the south, toward the Inner City. The one far to his right, however, headed west, and he knew of nothing in that direction.
Using hand signals, he motioned for his men to follow and take out the mechanics working on the vehicles. They made it to the chamber floor without being heard.
Tanavuna froze. From his left he heard new voices, growing louder. They ducked behind a large vehicle missing two wheels and crouched down to wait for whoever was coming.
* * * * *
Chapter 12
Sweat dripped from Yukannak’s chin onto the mosaic floor of the house where he’d taken refuge. Early in his brief stay in Imsurmik, Zeesar had introduced him to the merchant who lived there, but with his face uncovered and unpainted, and wearing a plain robe, the man not only refused to believe he was the silci, but also shunned him and ran into the depths of his home. The higher social classes of Imsurmik not only wore cloth or masks as protection from sunlight, they also considered an uncovered face a grave social mistake.
Yukannak didn’t care about that now; the only thing on his mind was getting into the main tunnel and finding the archive. There was no way to know whether the Offworlders were raiding the town or conquering it, but it didn’t really matter; the archive would be a valuable bargaining chip. For all he knew, the Offworlders would kill a Kulsian or emissary of the satrap on sight. Even if they left, he still faced possible discovery by the Kulsians—with its potentially fatal consequences—or being caught up in the power struggle between the F’ahdn and the satrap. But if the Offworlders stayed, turning over such an asset would prove his seriousness about defecting. Whatever was in the archive had to have a special value, otherwise why hide it?
Fighting around the waterfall, gate, and wall had died down but not ended. Gunshots still rang out from both the Outer and Inner Cities. Without his identifying paint, he might alternately be thought too insignificant to shoot, an Offworlder to be killed on sight, or a target for anyone trigger-happy enough to shoot the first target to come along. Judging it better not to seem hostile, he returned his pistol to its holster. Closed shutters obscured the events outside the house, so all he could do was listen and wait for silence.
His patience didn’t last long, however. His pulse pounding in his ears, Yukannak decided he couldn’t wait any longer, and he threw the door open, turned right, and sprinted toward the tunnel mouth one hundred feet away. A knot of men rummaging through an overturned vendor’s cart saw him and opened fire for no reason. Kicking his knees higher and fueled by adrenaline, he ran faster than he’d run his entire life. Whether the men intended to kill him or were shooting to chase him away, it backfired. As Yukannak disappeared behind a house, behind him he heard the staccato sound of a sub-machine gun, followed by explosions and screams.
Between the last house on the street and the tunnel mouth lay fifty feet of open ground. To the right of the tunnel was the viewing platform where he’d first learned of the archive…but people running through a combat zone tended to attract attention, and he did.
A voice from the direction of the waterfall called out, “Stop! You there, stop running.”
Instinct told him soldiers would be better shots than militiamen, and he managed to dodge left an instant before he heard the crack of a gun. He went right, followed by another left, and then he was into the tunnel. His burning lungs begged for oxygen but he didn’t slow down until he passed two of Subitorni’s J’Stull guards. Normally, an unadorned man would not be allowed into the tunnel without a challenge, since it was the realm of the powerful and wealthy. With Offworlders assaulting the city, though, one man with no standing and no weapon represented no threat.
Few people were abroad now. The wealthy had shut their doors, and the
militia and J’Stull soldiers were caught up defending the city. The few people he saw weren’t walking, and desperation drove him to shout about the archive as they ran past. Nobody responded. He kept moving forward.
Echoing gunfire caused him to turn back to the tunnel mouth, now several hundred yards behind him. Several figures ran past, dark against the blinding light, but the gunfire didn’t come from them. Then he heard it again and realized it was coming from further inside the plateau, near the cross-tunnel leading to the cache site. That could only mean the Offworlders were attacking from the site itself, and that they’d already seized the medicinals.
Logically, the archive was highly likely to be somewhere near the entrance they’d brought him through: secret entrance, secret archive. If it wasn’t there, it could be anywhere, and he didn’t know the city well enough for a blind search. Now, though, if the Offworlders fought through to the main tunnel before he could get past it, he’d be taken prisoner with nothing to trade. They might even ransom him back to the satrap or the Kulsians.
Nearby voices rose above the sounds of battle. He looked up and saw a knot of figures near the tunnel. Winded, he paused. A series of muzzle flashes suddenly lit the faces and uniforms of Subitorni’s J’Stull forces, followed by the hollow echoes of their reports. Single shots followed: the distinctive sound of a pistol to make sure the victims were dead. Subitorni and his men ran into the passage leading to the underground parking area, the same place Yukannak was headed.
Yukannak redoubled his effort and ran after Subitorni. There was enough light to see the bodies were those of an entire family: four children, a mother, and the heavy-set father. All wore well-made garments and shoes, but none wore paint; the attack had come too early for masks to have been applied for the day. That made it easy for Yukannak to see the black patch on the man’s left cheek, the telltale disfigurement of the Bleeding Black.
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