The inheritance, p.23
The Inheritance, page 23
part #1 of Breach Wars Series
Twelve hours later
Elias stood on a stone bridge. Below him the recovery crew bagged the last of the assault team’s bodies and loaded them onto a mining cart.
Adaline’s prediction proved correct. Less than an hour after she exited the gate, the DDC arrived and whisked her away. He led the new assault team into the breach five minutes later, right after he’d informed London that he was fired with a Sontag code. Alex Wright didn’t even argue. He seemed shellshocked, as if the world had suddenly kicked him in the face.
True to Adaline’s word, they encountered no resistance in the breach. The way to the anchor chamber was well marked and deserted. They reached the anchor in three hours.
Considering the chamber’s proximity to the gate, he made the decision to shatter the anchor. They had three days before the gate collapsed, more than enough time to remove all of the bodies and mine the rest of the adamantite. The miners were already working, under much heavier guard this time and with all three northern tunnels collapsed to ensure their safety.
While the mining and recovery crew worked, he scoured the area around the anchor. Something had happened to Adaline in this breach, something that turned her from a regular person into a dangerous, calculating… he didn’t even know what to call it. Survivor seemed inadequate. Combatant didn’t do her justice. He wanted to know what she went through.
They’d found a cavern filled with dead monsters and some sort of weird device. He tried to detach it, and it disintegrated into dust. They found a pile of ash in the anchor chamber and the body of a massive feline-looking monster. He had seen hundreds of creatures in his time in the breaches, but nothing quite like that one. Jackson informed him that it died from being repeatedly stabbed, and that the puncture wounds all over its body came from canine teeth.
He glanced at the darkness at the other end of the bridge. She had come this way. Just her and the dog. Without weapons, without food or water. How did she manage it?
“We found something,” Samantha said at his side.
He almost fell off the damn bridge. There were twenty yards between him and the side passage she came from, and he neither heard her nor saw her approach.
The phantom ranger tilted her head to look at his face. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” Make some damn noise next time. “What did you find?”
“A doohicky. Leo wants you to see it.”
Elias followed her through the tunnels to a narrow side passage. A strange disk hung in the center of it. A dial of some sort made of concentric circles carved from bone or ivory with circles gouged in the rims. Leo stood next to it, pondering the dial.
Elias stopped next to him. “What is this?”
“It’s a forcefield,” Samantha told him.
Leo raised his hand. A thin tendril of lightning snaked from his fingertips and licked the space around the dial. A wall of light flashed, sealing off the tunnel, and vanished.
“Carver touched it,” Leo said. “It zapped him. Stopped his heart.”
“Is he okay?” Elias asked.
“He’s fine,” Leo said. “Jackson was right there, so he brought him back. Carver said it was the worst pain he ever felt. I tried overloading it, but it eats energy like it’s nothing.”
There were only two reasons to have a forcefield block the tunnel: to keep something from getting out or to keep them from getting in.
Elias pulled his sword off his back. Leo and Samantha backed away.
He concentrated on the blade. A pale red glow slicked the adamant sword, and vanished, sucked into it. The weapon turned translucent. A familiar feedback hummed against his hand, as if he was holding onto the rail of a rope bridge while people marched across it and the impact of their footsteps reverberated into his fingers.
Elias swung. The massive blade sliced through the barrier. The two halves of the dial clattered onto the rock, split in half.
Elias walked into the passageway. It opened into a roughly rectangular cavern about twenty-five yards long and roughly half as wide. Veins of jubar stone crisscrossed the ceiling and the walls, illuminating the rocky walls and floor. At the far wall, a creature sprawled on the ground. It raised its head, and he realized he was looking at a smaller version of the dead cat they found in the anchor chamber.
The feline beast stared at him with big green eyes. It was sturdy, with a broad squarish frame that reminded him of a jaguar or maybe a lynx, except it was the size of a cow. Dense fur sheathed it, rippling with black and red.
The two of them looked at each other from across the chamber.
The imbued energy in his sword would dissipate soon. If he was going to strike, now would be the time.
The cat made a noise. It sounded almost plaintive. It didn’t move.
“It’s tame,” Samantha said by his left ear.
Damn it. “Samantha, stop sneaking up on me.”
“The cat is tame.”
“What makes you say that?” Leo came up on his right.
“It has a collar.”
He saw it now, a metal collar wrapping around the cat’s neck. Something hung from it, some kind of metal device. Someone had locked this creature in the chamber. He didn’t see any food or water. It was probably thirsty and starving.
Elias sheathed his sword, pulled a canteen off his belt, opened it, and let a little water run out.
The cat rose jerkily, stumbled, and sat, holding its front paw off the ground. A deep cut split the flesh. Something with a very sharp blade had nearly sliced through the limb.
“Awww, it’s hurt,” Samantha said. “It’s very weak, Elias, and very, very thirsty. It’s been locked here for a while.”
The cat whined softly. It wanted water. Elias could practically feel the desperation rolling from it.
“A tiger’s paw swipe is estimated to generate over ten thousand pounds of force,” Leo said.
“So?” Samantha asked.
“This thing is three times larger. It’s dangerous.”
“One of us is a phantom ranger with a feral discernment skill that lets her evaluate breach monsters, and the other one is you. Elias, that cat is at the end of its rope.”
Elias crossed the cavern. Both Samantha and Leo followed, keeping a bit of distance. The ranger’s tactical crossbow was in her hands and Leo’s eyes had gone white.
The cat watched them come, its big green eyes sad.
Elias pulled off his helmet, poured the water into it, and offered it to the cat. The big beast crouched and lapped the water out of the helmet with a wide pink tongue. Its fangs were the size of Elias’ fingers.
“What a nice kitty,” Samantha said.
“This is a terrible idea,” Leo said.
“We should get Jackson to heal it,” Samantha said.
“No need,” Elias said. “I’ve been meaning to try this.”
He concentrated. A faint golden glow slid from him and clutched the cat’s injured limb. The bleeding stopped. The severed muscle began to knit itself closed. It wasn’t instant the way Jackson’s heals were. It was slow and Elias could feel his reserves draining from the strain of it, but it was healing.
“You can heal?” Leo’s jaw hung open. “Since when?”
“Since this morning."
For almost a year now he felt a vague stirring of something, some aspect of his talent that he couldn’t quite grasp. It was just like the time he learned to imbue his blade. He’d felt the ability building for months before he finally learned what it was and how to use it. This morning, as he watched Adaline hug her children, it came to him in a flash, like a door suddenly flung open deep inside his soul.
The cat leaned its massive head and butted him in the chest.
“Oh my God, how cute!” Samantha cooed.
Elias reached over and gently scratched the cat’s jaw.
“You’ve lost your minds,” Leo announced.
“Can we keep it?” Samantha asked. “Please, please, can we keep it, Elias?”
“We can’t take a beast out of a breach.” Leo shook his head. “It won’t be able to get through the gate.”
“It will,” Samantha said. “It isn’t part of the breach.”
“How do you know?”
“It feels different. More like that dog the assessor brought with her than a breach creature.”
“That was our dog,” Leo said.
Was being the operative term.
The cat stretched a little, trying to get more pets.
“You can’t abandon it here,” Samantha said. “This cat isn’t part of whatever this is. It will die on its own.”
“Where would we keep it?” Leo asked.
“In the HQ,” Samantha countered. “We have an R&D department. We can claim it’s for research.”
“No! The DDC would lose its shit.”
“The DDC doesn’t have to know. We can sneak it out tonight.”
“Sam!”
“’You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed,’” Samantha quoted.
“That’s great. When we are hauled before a congressional committee and the guild is in danger of being disbanded, you can tell them we did it because The Little Prince said so.”
The cat pressed its head against Elias’ arm and made a low rumbling noise.
“It’s purring!”
“It’s growling!”
“Keep it!”
“Kill it.”
The cat looked at him with big green eyes.
“You know, your kind usually doesn’t like me,” Elias told it.
The beast purred louder.
“Guildmaster?” Sam prompted.
“We’re keeping it,” Elias said.
“Yessss!” Samantha jumped three feet into the air.
Leo spun away waving his arms. “Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?”
“I can’t leave it here without food or water,” Elias said. “The wound is closed, but it will need time to recover.”
“This will end in disaster. Mark my words…”
“Leonard,” Elias said.
Leo stopped.
“What I say now stays between the three of us. Adaline mentioned spider herders. I didn’t get a chance to find out more, because getting our story straight before the DDC showed up took priority, but I’m certain she encountered sophonts in this breach.”
In nine years of gate diving, he’d only seen sophonts twice and even now he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d witnessed.
“The DDC actively suppresses any news of sophonts. I don’t know why. It may be political. It may be that someone somewhere up the chain of command decided that hiding their existence was in the interests of national security. That means they won’t tell us what they know until they absolutely have no choice about it. They are withholding information while we are risking our lives in the breaches.”
Leo and Samantha stared at him.
“This cat is evidence of sophont activity. It’s a working animal. It was left in this cave guarded by a piece of technology we’ve never seen before. It has a collar. We cannot rely on the mercy of the DDC to keep us informed. We must obtain our own intel. We’re going to gather everything in this chamber, including the cat, and we’re going to learn as much as we can from it. And we’ll need to figure out what this is.”
Elias reached over and picked up the metal device hanging from the cat’s collar. It was a sphere about the size of an apple. Something shifted under the pressure of his fingers. He heard a faint click.
A beam of light emanated from the sphere and flared into a massive image on the cavern’s closest wall, like a projector streaming a film. An anchor chamber, filmed from above, as if from a drone camera. Adaline Moore dashed across the floor, chased by a four-armed alien wrapped in some sort of garment. There was a sword in her hand.
Adaline stumbled, slowing. The four-armed creature threw itself at her. She dodged in a blur and sliced at his back, cutting through the garment. A chunk of it fell off onto the floor. The creature shrieked and fell to its knees. She yanked a rope off her arm and looped it around its neck. The creature tried to run, but she’d tethered it to herself, and she jerked it back and stabbed it in a controlled, cold frenzy. She severed its arms off one by one, dragged it across the floor to the pillar, and tied it to the anchor. She bent over it, doing something he couldn’t see, and then she hissed something in a language he didn’t understand and walked away.
The camera panned, following her. At the other end of chamber, Bear was fighting a massive cat. And there was something else there, something short and furry, and covered in blood. It had two pulse carver knives in its furry hands, and it lashed at the cat, screeching like a pissed off racoon.
Adaline moved in with the grace of a dancer. The cat swiped at her, but she was too fast. He saw her drive her sword into the beast’s throat. Blood gushed in a dark torrent. She watched it for a few seconds with a dispassionate look on her face, until it collapsed, then turned and walked back to the four-armed creature. She crouched by it, holding something suspended from her fingers. He heard her voice, cold and sibilant, shaping words that didn’t belong to any human language.
The camera streaked to her. He saw her raise her sword. The recording went black and died. The cave fell silent.
“Holy shit,” Samantha whispered.
I sat on the big couch in our living room. Noah sprawled next to me, asleep. Tia curled up on the other side under a blanket. Mellow sat on my lap, while Bear lay on the rug by my feet. The cat and the dog had sniffed each other once and declared a watchful truce. Mellow truly was a sweet cat, and Bear would never attack something I treasured. I had thawed two pounds of ground beef to feed Bear and shared a small clump of it with Mellow. I’d been low-key worried that Bear wouldn’t be able to eat regular food, but she liked the beef just fine. Tomorrow I would order a big bag of dog kibble.
After the kids arrived and I was finally able to stop hugging them, I spent another half an hour getting the story straight with Cold Chaos. I took the bracer off my wrist, slipped it into my bag, handed it to Tia and told her and Noah to take Bear to our house and wait for me. Elias ordered a guild car to take them home. The way Tia looked at me when she climbed into that SUV, as if she was terrified she would never see me again, made my heart hurt.
The DDC descended onto the site in two black Suburbans. I was whisked away under guard, examined, poked, prodded, my blood and vitals were taken, and then I was allowed to shower, given clean clothes, and brought before three interrogators to be debriefed.
I spent the next four hours singing praises to the heroic conduct of Cold Chaos leadership, who purposefully delayed entering the breach so their scouts could find me and bring me back after an unfortunate monster attack wiped out the mining escort and London bailed on us. I kept that part in.
Finally, I was cleared to go home. My tests had come back one hundred percent human. Once at the house, I finally had a chance to look at myself in the mirror. Someone who didn’t pay attention to me probably wouldn’t have noticed any changes. But I knew my body. I’d lost weight and gained muscle. It wasn’t the attractive muscle resulting from carefully structured workouts, but the kind one got from fighting for their life. It wasn’t pretty. I looked half-starved and almost feral. Even my face was sunken in.
I took another shower just because I wanted the comfort of my own bathroom and the familiar scent of my shampoo. Tia ordered pizza. We huddled together on the couch and talked. I told them a little bit about what happened in the breach, but I kept my breach mother and the gem out of it. They told me what happened while I was gone.
Apparently, the Cold Chaos HQ was the stuff of legends and a wondrous place of food brought to their door on demand, video game systems, and indoor pools.
After Cold Chaos brought them to their HQ, they’d called their father.
He didn’t take their call.
They left a message explaining that I was dead and they needed him. He never called back. Then Tia found the death folder on my laptop.
Noah had a rough time with it. In his mind, his father hadn’t abandoned him. He just left because of some weird misunderstanding and if only they could’ve sat down and talked, my son was sure that his father would see things his way and come back. This was Roger’s last opportunity for fatherhood, and he threw it away. Noah finally understood, and it hurt.
I’d met Felicia Terrell, and she was a cobra in a business suit. They wouldn’t let her into my debriefing with the DDC but she waited right outside until I emerged and then ran interference as the media swarmed me. Her services were expensive, but worth every penny.
Elias had taken excellent care of my kids. It was so unexpected.
I pushed away from the couch and carefully got up.
Tia stirred under her blanket. “Mom?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“You’re not leaving?”
“Of course not. I’m going to take Bear to go potty in the back yard and then go to bed.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. Don’t worry, kiddo. I’m here to stay. I’m still me.”
“I know,” she murmured. “I checked.”
What did that mean?
“What happens now?” she asked.
“We keep going. The crisis is over. I told the DDC I needed two weeks off to recover. I have a lot of leave saved up. We’ll have a little staycation, pick up the pieces, and go on with our lives.”
“Will it be okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her. “Everything will be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”
She sighed happily and closed her eyes.
I crossed the house to the back door. Bear followed me like a large silent shadow. I opened the kitchen door, and Bear bounded onto the grass, making a perimeter along the fence of our backyard.
I sat on the porch steps. Above me the night sky stretched, vast and beautiful. I was finally home. The nightmare of the breach was over.
I thought of Elias McFeron. There was a lot of power there, and willingness to use it. I asked him to lie to the DDC, and he didn’t even blink. He went along with my plan because he wanted to keep his guild safe. And all of that adamantite would ensure the DDC would abandon any disciplinary action against Cold Chaos. Before they took me away, I heard Elias tell someone that the families of the dead guildmembers would be entitled to their bonus. Money was cold comfort when you lost your husband or your mother. But bills didn’t go away because you had a personal tragedy. I knew that better than anyone.
