The handlers gambit, p.14
The Handler's Gambit, page 14
“She had an aura,” she said. “We were talking.” She repeated a frustrated, mournful groan.
Rordis and Gunner had returned from their scouting. Their report was not making Boone happy. “There was an entrance here a few weeks ago,” Rordis said. “It collapsed and flooded in. We’ll have to find another route.”
“Should I be worried about collapse when we’re inside?” Boone asked.
“Or standing on top,” Rordis said, pointing at their feet.
The hair on the back of Boone’s neck prickled. Being buried underwater was not a death he was looking forward to, but perhaps Elyon would get her wish.
The fog was returning when they boarded the hoverafts. Elyon was gone. Again. Boone swore, then regretted losing his composure. He called over to the other boats for the troopers to fan out and search for her while Rordis and Gunner stood in silence. They worked in pairs, one to search for Elyon and one to watch for the raptors.
A few moments later a call came from the far side of the mound where a trooper pointed across the water. Between the trees, Elyon was wandering away like a ghost.
“How did she get across the water?” a trooper asked as he joined them.
“I don’t know, but we’ll chase her in the hoverafts,” said Boone. “Let’s go.”
Here he was, pursuing her after he told her she was free to leave. He could shoot himself for having given her such an idea.
Climbing into the hoveraft, he directed Rordis. Rordis took the orders in stride. They had trouble catching up with her. On foot she was nimble, and there was something driving her. She didn’t respond to her name, and she didn’t veer from her path except to dodge objects. Even the water did not stop her—she walked across it as if it were land. The guides weren’t the only ones in awe.
Suddenly Elyon stopped, bent over as if she’d dropped something, and disappeared.
22 The Geode
They pulled the boats up to another pile of rubble near where Elyon had vanished. There was a doorway here, upended and only a half meter above the waterline. Elyon was nowhere to be seen in its dark depths. Boone’s voice echoed back at him when he called her name.
“Well, it looks like she may have found a way in,” Rordis said.
“Let’s go,” said Boone. He needed to find Elyon more than the geode.
They hitched together a grav line and secured it to the exposed keystone above the doorway. Boone dropped a glow bomb into the hole, and moments later, with a soft pop the room below was lit by globules of faint green light that had splattered on the floor and nearby walls. It was enough to see that the room was small and not too deep, and that Elyon was nowhere in sight.
Boone wondered if the others were thinking the same thing he was. How did she drop into the darkness and find her way out of that room without light? He worried she hadn’t dropped but fallen, and that he would find her crumpled form somewhere below, perhaps floating in a pool of water. Then Vindik’s words reminded him: If the geode is there… you will need her. He hoped this was for once a good sign.
Boone went in first. He secured a new line, tossed another glow bomb, and rappelled down into the next chamber. It curved into a long corridor so that the deeper they went, the more upright the original building was. As Rordis came down beside him, he asked, “How is it that we’re a good fifteen meters under the waterline and it’s dry as a bone in here?”
“The buildings were built with a pressure system to withstand the flooding if the levies broke,” Rordis answered. He was like a drone with all that information. “As it was, the bombardment broke nearly everything. We’ve found many buildings intact like this, and many others that might have survived if not for the geological instability.” Boone drew a deep breath, reminded of the imminent danger he was in. “Don’t worry, our seismic detectors have been silent for days. We’ll know if we should expect anything critical.”
Not the least reassured, Boone proceeded to the next level, where he walked with one foot on the wall and one on the floor until it curved enough for him to stand fully on the floor. He tossed glow bombs forward every ten meters. Something moved in the corners of his vision—slow, sluglike creatures the size of a human head. Beneath him the floor cracked like thin ice with every step. He turned to Rordis, who said, “They’re harmless. Just a bit messy. It’s what the raptors mostly feed on.”
The hallway opened up into a grand three-story dormitory. The walls on either side were lined with hundreds of doors on three levels, with occasional beams and structural elements exposed where stairs or walkways would have been. The light from the glow bombs was not enough to reach the ceiling of the massive hall, and Boone didn’t want to think about what might be hiding up there in the shadows. They did not need to go far; there were clear footsteps in the cracking floor, leading to a narrow stairwell. Boone sighed quietly. At least she wasn’t dead.
He left all but one trooper at the top of the stairs. The footsteps led them down to another narrow tunnel, this one damp and dank. They walked single file, still following Elyon’s trail with luxrods, until they came to another small, round room. The footsteps ended at the doorway to the room. Boone tossed in a glow bomb and heard sound of gelatinous blob hitting water, but no light.
“Those things don’t work in water?” Rordis asked.
“Not usually.”
Boone wished he had brought darkvision goggles with him, but it was too late for that. He tossed another glow bomb on the wall instead, and it filled the room with its faint light, revealing that the room was indeed filled with water, its depth unknown. Across the room was another tunnel, and standing in its doorway was the figure of a demon. Boone and Rordis both reflexively jumped back.
She peered at them from the dark tunnel, and when she spoke it was not the voice of the young woman he had come to know. “By removing the geode,” she said, reverberating in the small room, “I will unleash the flood. You will die.” Boone briefly wondered whether she was intending to kill them or if she was warning them of the effect of removing the geode. “Run, Turner,” she said, “I must unleash the flood.”
“Let’s go, Elyon,” he called back, his own voice reverberating. She disappeared into the blackness beyond. The ground began to shake, and Rordis conferred a small device he was carrying.
“It’s not seismic activity,” he said. “What is she doing?”
“I don’t know,” Boone replied.
“Run, Turner,” her voice echoed from a distance. “I can’t hold back the flood.”
Whatever she was doing, the rumbling increased, and the pressure changed in his ears. Some forty meters below the waterline, under thousands of tons of crumbling, ancient masonry, he was about to be crushed to death. He turned and began pushing the others back into the stairwell. “Run,” he shouted. “Get to the surface. Get to the hoverafts. Don’t stop! Go! Go!”
They ran up the stairwell in a panic as water lapped at their ankles. They ran up the curve of the dormitory hallway until they were running side-by-side on the walls, and still the water was keeping up with them. They climbed the lines and pushed and hauled one another up level by level until they were all out of the building. They leapt onto the waiting hoverafts, anxious to pull away. Boone was relieved to see that all his men were out. Everyone but Elyon.
His heart sank. She was dead by now, or somehow surviving… it didn’t matter, because he had neither the weapon nor the artifact, and he could not conceive of how she—or he—would come out of this alive. The mission was a failure, his first true failure. He had let Elyon kill herself and take the objective with her to the murky depths—a fitting farewell to the warlord she hated. He wasn’t sure which hurt more—his failure, or the loss of Elyon.
As they zoomed away, water spouted from the door with such force that the entire wall was blown out, followed by a complete collapse of that section of the building. Water rushed in, and waves came out. After floating in shock for a while, they pulled over onto a root mass and witnessed the cascading effect as building after building collapsed beneath the water, leaving only bubbly waves along the surface.
Boone began to run scenarios for how he would explain this to Vindik. He decided he should not return to the Lupis. Ever. Rordis might take him offworld, perhaps directly to Reia. This was his chance. But this was not the plan.
Abruptly, off to the left, away from where they had been following the train of collapses, water exploded. The shock wave knocked the hoverafts against the root mass and sprayed the onlookers with mist. Boone had to shield his face from the sting of the vaporized water. When he looked up again, the last thing he expected to see was a girl walking atop the water toward them. She was drenched from head to foot, but the water was steaming off, and she carried a smooth black object in her hands.
“What in the name of—” Gunner muttered.
“Impossible, even for a Saxen,” said Rordis.
Boone, relieved to see that both Elyon and the artifact were now within his reach, salvaged his professional sensibilities and stepped back, out of the sight of the guides. He regretted what he was about to do, but he had to go through with the plan.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” said Gunner to no one in particular as Elyon approached.
Reaching for his pistol, Boone walked up behind the two guides, putting a slug in the back of each one’s head while deciding whether to trust his own troopers to keep this incredible feat to themselves. Vindik wanted Elyon’s talents to be a secret. He would have to brief his troops on the way back.
He turned to one who doubled as their pilot. “Can you guide the shuttle remotely to this location?”
“I can, sir, if these giant trees don’t get in the way.”
Boone faced Elyon, who now walked up the root mound. Her pale blue eyes were almost without pupils, and she radiated heat that evaporated the water from her hair, skin, and clothes. He wasn’t quite sure whether she was herself or possessed.
“Elyon,” he said, extending a hand.
She took it and he helped her up. “I have his prize,” she replied, her voice her own again. She gave him a wry grin. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”
* * *
Surrounded by Boone and his troopers, Elyon held the geode in her lap. The shuttle launched itself into the sky. Although she felt at peace, she was anxious to approach Vindik with this new crystal—not because she wanted him to have it, but because she was certain she could channel its power to destroy him.
When she sensed its call above ground, she had no trouble winding her way in the dark to its location. An old stone bridge collapsed under her as she crossed to the chamber where the geode rested in its cradle. The closer she came to it, the stronger her attraction. Unlike the Life Crystal, which had drawn her in through her own anguish, the geode amplified the feelings she already had. Among those feelings was her hatred of the warlord.
Removing the geode from its cradle triggered a shock wave. When the walls imploded, the water flooded in. She channeled the geode to strengthen the shield that surrounded her, blocking the flood from passing into the tunnel, but it would not protect those who had followed her down. Encased in her bubble, she slipped through the broken wall and floated herself to the surface.
A new kind of energy erupted inside her. Now she was eager to return with this prize, because its power would enable her to kill the man she despised above all things in the galaxy.
As soon as she stepped off the shuttle, she collapsed under the sudden vacuum of a suppression field. It ripped the energy from her core, leaving only exhaustion. She stumbled down the ramp and rolled to a stop at Vindik’s feet. He pulled the geode from her grasp as she tried to right herself.
With his boot, Vindik knocked her back onto her seat. Their eyes met, both full of mutual hatred.
She steeped in the all-too-human emotions that had been frustrating her for too long. One of them would die someday, and she no longer cared which one.
22 The Geode
They pulled the boats up to another pile of rubble near where Elyon had vanished. There was a doorway here, upended and only a half meter above the waterline. Elyon was nowhere to be seen in its dark depths. Boone’s voice echoed back at him when he called her name.
“Well, it looks like she may have found a way in,” Rordis said.
“Let’s go,” said Boone. He needed to find Elyon more than the geode.
They hitched together a grav line and secured it to the exposed keystone above the doorway. Boone dropped a glow bomb into the hole, and moments later, with a soft pop the room below was lit by globules of faint green light that had splattered on the floor and nearby walls. It was enough to see that the room was small and not too deep, and that Elyon was nowhere in sight.
Boone wondered if the others were thinking the same thing he was. How did she drop into the darkness and find her way out of that room without light? He worried she hadn’t dropped but fallen, and that he would find her crumpled form somewhere below, perhaps floating in a pool of water. Then Vindik’s words reminded him: If the geode is there… you will need her. He hoped this was for once a good sign.
Boone went in first. He secured a new line, tossed another glow bomb, and rappelled down into the next chamber. It curved into a long corridor so that the deeper they went, the more upright the original building was. As Rordis came down beside him, he asked, “How is it that we’re a good fifteen meters under the waterline and it’s dry as a bone in here?”
“The buildings were built with a pressure system to withstand the flooding if the levies broke,” Rordis answered. He was like a drone with all that information. “As it was, the bombardment broke nearly everything. We’ve found many buildings intact like this, and many others that might have survived if not for the geological instability.” Boone drew a deep breath, reminded of the imminent danger he was in. “Don’t worry, our seismic detectors have been silent for days. We’ll know if we should expect anything critical.”
Not the least reassured, Boone proceeded to the next level, where he walked with one foot on the wall and one on the floor until it curved enough for him to stand fully on the floor. He tossed glow bombs forward every ten meters. Something moved in the corners of his vision—slow, sluglike creatures the size of a human head. Beneath him the floor cracked like thin ice with every step. He turned to Rordis, who said, “They’re harmless. Just a bit messy. It’s what the raptors mostly feed on.”
The hallway opened up into a grand three-story dormitory. The walls on either side were lined with hundreds of doors on three levels, with occasional beams and structural elements exposed where stairs or walkways would have been. The light from the glow bombs was not enough to reach the ceiling of the massive hall, and Boone didn’t want to think about what might be hiding up there in the shadows. They did not need to go far; there were clear footsteps in the cracking floor, leading to a narrow stairwell. Boone sighed quietly. At least she wasn’t dead.
He left all but one trooper at the top of the stairs. The footsteps led them down to another narrow tunnel, this one damp and dank. They walked single file, still following Elyon’s trail with luxrods, until they came to another small, round room. The footsteps ended at the doorway to the room. Boone tossed in a glow bomb and heard sound of gelatinous blob hitting water, but no light.
“Those things don’t work in water?” Rordis asked.
“Not usually.”
Boone wished he had brought darkvision goggles with him, but it was too late for that. He tossed another glow bomb on the wall instead, and it filled the room with its faint light, revealing that the room was indeed filled with water, its depth unknown. Across the room was another tunnel, and standing in its doorway was the figure of a demon. Boone and Rordis both reflexively jumped back.
She peered at them from the dark tunnel, and when she spoke it was not the voice of the young woman he had come to know. “By removing the geode,” she said, reverberating in the small room, “I will unleash the flood. You will die.” Boone briefly wondered whether she was intending to kill them or if she was warning them of the effect of removing the geode. “Run, Turner,” she said, “I must unleash the flood.”
“Let’s go, Elyon,” he called back, his own voice reverberating. She disappeared into the blackness beyond. The ground began to shake, and Rordis conferred a small device he was carrying.
“It’s not seismic activity,” he said. “What is she doing?”
“I don’t know,” Boone replied.
“Run, Turner,” her voice echoed from a distance. “I can’t hold back the flood.”
Whatever she was doing, the rumbling increased, and the pressure changed in his ears. Some forty meters below the waterline, under thousands of tons of crumbling, ancient masonry, he was about to be crushed to death. He turned and began pushing the others back into the stairwell. “Run,” he shouted. “Get to the surface. Get to the hoverafts. Don’t stop! Go! Go!”
They ran up the stairwell in a panic as water lapped at their ankles. They ran up the curve of the dormitory hallway until they were running side-by-side on the walls, and still the water was keeping up with them. They climbed the lines and pushed and hauled one another up level by level until they were all out of the building. They leapt onto the waiting hoverafts, anxious to pull away. Boone was relieved to see that all his men were out. Everyone but Elyon.
His heart sank. She was dead by now, or somehow surviving… it didn’t matter, because he had neither the weapon nor the artifact, and he could not conceive of how she—or he—would come out of this alive. The mission was a failure, his first true failure. He had let Elyon kill herself and take the objective with her to the murky depths—a fitting farewell to the warlord she hated. He wasn’t sure which hurt more—his failure, or the loss of Elyon.
As they zoomed away, water spouted from the door with such force that the entire wall was blown out, followed by a complete collapse of that section of the building. Water rushed in, and waves came out. After floating in shock for a while, they pulled over onto a root mass and witnessed the cascading effect as building after building collapsed beneath the water, leaving only bubbly waves along the surface.
Rordis and Gunner had returned from their scouting. Their report was not making Boone happy. “There was an entrance here a few weeks ago,” Rordis said. “It collapsed and flooded in. We’ll have to find another route.”
“Should I be worried about collapse when we’re inside?” Boone asked.
“Or standing on top,” Rordis said, pointing at their feet.
The hair on the back of Boone’s neck prickled. Being buried underwater was not a death he was looking forward to, but perhaps Elyon would get her wish.
The fog was returning when they boarded the hoverafts. Elyon was gone. Again. Boone swore, then regretted losing his composure. He called over to the other boats for the troopers to fan out and search for her while Rordis and Gunner stood in silence. They worked in pairs, one to search for Elyon and one to watch for the raptors.
A few moments later a call came from the far side of the mound where a trooper pointed across the water. Between the trees, Elyon was wandering away like a ghost.
“How did she get across the water?” a trooper asked as he joined them.
“I don’t know, but we’ll chase her in the hoverafts,” said Boone. “Let’s go.”
Here he was, pursuing her after he told her she was free to leave. He could shoot himself for having given her such an idea.
Climbing into the hoveraft, he directed Rordis. Rordis took the orders in stride. They had trouble catching up with her. On foot she was nimble, and there was something driving her. She didn’t respond to her name, and she didn’t veer from her path except to dodge objects. Even the water did not stop her—she walked across it as if it were land. The guides weren’t the only ones in awe.
Suddenly Elyon stopped, bent over as if she’d dropped something, and disappeared.
22 The Geode
They pulled the boats up to another pile of rubble near where Elyon had vanished. There was a doorway here, upended and only a half meter above the waterline. Elyon was nowhere to be seen in its dark depths. Boone’s voice echoed back at him when he called her name.
“Well, it looks like she may have found a way in,” Rordis said.
“Let’s go,” said Boone. He needed to find Elyon more than the geode.
They hitched together a grav line and secured it to the exposed keystone above the doorway. Boone dropped a glow bomb into the hole, and moments later, with a soft pop the room below was lit by globules of faint green light that had splattered on the floor and nearby walls. It was enough to see that the room was small and not too deep, and that Elyon was nowhere in sight.
Boone wondered if the others were thinking the same thing he was. How did she drop into the darkness and find her way out of that room without light? He worried she hadn’t dropped but fallen, and that he would find her crumpled form somewhere below, perhaps floating in a pool of water. Then Vindik’s words reminded him: If the geode is there… you will need her. He hoped this was for once a good sign.
Boone went in first. He secured a new line, tossed another glow bomb, and rappelled down into the next chamber. It curved into a long corridor so that the deeper they went, the more upright the original building was. As Rordis came down beside him, he asked, “How is it that we’re a good fifteen meters under the waterline and it’s dry as a bone in here?”
“The buildings were built with a pressure system to withstand the flooding if the levies broke,” Rordis answered. He was like a drone with all that information. “As it was, the bombardment broke nearly everything. We’ve found many buildings intact like this, and many others that might have survived if not for the geological instability.” Boone drew a deep breath, reminded of the imminent danger he was in. “Don’t worry, our seismic detectors have been silent for days. We’ll know if we should expect anything critical.”
Not the least reassured, Boone proceeded to the next level, where he walked with one foot on the wall and one on the floor until it curved enough for him to stand fully on the floor. He tossed glow bombs forward every ten meters. Something moved in the corners of his vision—slow, sluglike creatures the size of a human head. Beneath him the floor cracked like thin ice with every step. He turned to Rordis, who said, “They’re harmless. Just a bit messy. It’s what the raptors mostly feed on.”
The hallway opened up into a grand three-story dormitory. The walls on either side were lined with hundreds of doors on three levels, with occasional beams and structural elements exposed where stairs or walkways would have been. The light from the glow bombs was not enough to reach the ceiling of the massive hall, and Boone didn’t want to think about what might be hiding up there in the shadows. They did not need to go far; there were clear footsteps in the cracking floor, leading to a narrow stairwell. Boone sighed quietly. At least she wasn’t dead.
He left all but one trooper at the top of the stairs. The footsteps led them down to another narrow tunnel, this one damp and dank. They walked single file, still following Elyon’s trail with luxrods, until they came to another small, round room. The footsteps ended at the doorway to the room. Boone tossed in a glow bomb and heard sound of gelatinous blob hitting water, but no light.
“Those things don’t work in water?” Rordis asked.
“Not usually.”
Boone wished he had brought darkvision goggles with him, but it was too late for that. He tossed another glow bomb on the wall instead, and it filled the room with its faint light, revealing that the room was indeed filled with water, its depth unknown. Across the room was another tunnel, and standing in its doorway was the figure of a demon. Boone and Rordis both reflexively jumped back.
She peered at them from the dark tunnel, and when she spoke it was not the voice of the young woman he had come to know. “By removing the geode,” she said, reverberating in the small room, “I will unleash the flood. You will die.” Boone briefly wondered whether she was intending to kill them or if she was warning them of the effect of removing the geode. “Run, Turner,” she said, “I must unleash the flood.”
“Let’s go, Elyon,” he called back, his own voice reverberating. She disappeared into the blackness beyond. The ground began to shake, and Rordis conferred a small device he was carrying.
“It’s not seismic activity,” he said. “What is she doing?”
“I don’t know,” Boone replied.
“Run, Turner,” her voice echoed from a distance. “I can’t hold back the flood.”
Whatever she was doing, the rumbling increased, and the pressure changed in his ears. Some forty meters below the waterline, under thousands of tons of crumbling, ancient masonry, he was about to be crushed to death. He turned and began pushing the others back into the stairwell. “Run,” he shouted. “Get to the surface. Get to the hoverafts. Don’t stop! Go! Go!”
They ran up the stairwell in a panic as water lapped at their ankles. They ran up the curve of the dormitory hallway until they were running side-by-side on the walls, and still the water was keeping up with them. They climbed the lines and pushed and hauled one another up level by level until they were all out of the building. They leapt onto the waiting hoverafts, anxious to pull away. Boone was relieved to see that all his men were out. Everyone but Elyon.
His heart sank. She was dead by now, or somehow surviving… it didn’t matter, because he had neither the weapon nor the artifact, and he could not conceive of how she—or he—would come out of this alive. The mission was a failure, his first true failure. He had let Elyon kill herself and take the objective with her to the murky depths—a fitting farewell to the warlord she hated. He wasn’t sure which hurt more—his failure, or the loss of Elyon.
As they zoomed away, water spouted from the door with such force that the entire wall was blown out, followed by a complete collapse of that section of the building. Water rushed in, and waves came out. After floating in shock for a while, they pulled over onto a root mass and witnessed the cascading effect as building after building collapsed beneath the water, leaving only bubbly waves along the surface.
Boone began to run scenarios for how he would explain this to Vindik. He decided he should not return to the Lupis. Ever. Rordis might take him offworld, perhaps directly to Reia. This was his chance. But this was not the plan.
Abruptly, off to the left, away from where they had been following the train of collapses, water exploded. The shock wave knocked the hoverafts against the root mass and sprayed the onlookers with mist. Boone had to shield his face from the sting of the vaporized water. When he looked up again, the last thing he expected to see was a girl walking atop the water toward them. She was drenched from head to foot, but the water was steaming off, and she carried a smooth black object in her hands.
“What in the name of—” Gunner muttered.
“Impossible, even for a Saxen,” said Rordis.
Boone, relieved to see that both Elyon and the artifact were now within his reach, salvaged his professional sensibilities and stepped back, out of the sight of the guides. He regretted what he was about to do, but he had to go through with the plan.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” said Gunner to no one in particular as Elyon approached.
Reaching for his pistol, Boone walked up behind the two guides, putting a slug in the back of each one’s head while deciding whether to trust his own troopers to keep this incredible feat to themselves. Vindik wanted Elyon’s talents to be a secret. He would have to brief his troops on the way back.
He turned to one who doubled as their pilot. “Can you guide the shuttle remotely to this location?”
“I can, sir, if these giant trees don’t get in the way.”
Boone faced Elyon, who now walked up the root mound. Her pale blue eyes were almost without pupils, and she radiated heat that evaporated the water from her hair, skin, and clothes. He wasn’t quite sure whether she was herself or possessed.
“Elyon,” he said, extending a hand.
She took it and he helped her up. “I have his prize,” she replied, her voice her own again. She gave him a wry grin. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”
* * *
Surrounded by Boone and his troopers, Elyon held the geode in her lap. The shuttle launched itself into the sky. Although she felt at peace, she was anxious to approach Vindik with this new crystal—not because she wanted him to have it, but because she was certain she could channel its power to destroy him.
When she sensed its call above ground, she had no trouble winding her way in the dark to its location. An old stone bridge collapsed under her as she crossed to the chamber where the geode rested in its cradle. The closer she came to it, the stronger her attraction. Unlike the Life Crystal, which had drawn her in through her own anguish, the geode amplified the feelings she already had. Among those feelings was her hatred of the warlord.
Removing the geode from its cradle triggered a shock wave. When the walls imploded, the water flooded in. She channeled the geode to strengthen the shield that surrounded her, blocking the flood from passing into the tunnel, but it would not protect those who had followed her down. Encased in her bubble, she slipped through the broken wall and floated herself to the surface.
A new kind of energy erupted inside her. Now she was eager to return with this prize, because its power would enable her to kill the man she despised above all things in the galaxy.
As soon as she stepped off the shuttle, she collapsed under the sudden vacuum of a suppression field. It ripped the energy from her core, leaving only exhaustion. She stumbled down the ramp and rolled to a stop at Vindik’s feet. He pulled the geode from her grasp as she tried to right herself.
With his boot, Vindik knocked her back onto her seat. Their eyes met, both full of mutual hatred.
She steeped in the all-too-human emotions that had been frustrating her for too long. One of them would die someday, and she no longer cared which one.
22 The Geode
They pulled the boats up to another pile of rubble near where Elyon had vanished. There was a doorway here, upended and only a half meter above the waterline. Elyon was nowhere to be seen in its dark depths. Boone’s voice echoed back at him when he called her name.
“Well, it looks like she may have found a way in,” Rordis said.
“Let’s go,” said Boone. He needed to find Elyon more than the geode.
They hitched together a grav line and secured it to the exposed keystone above the doorway. Boone dropped a glow bomb into the hole, and moments later, with a soft pop the room below was lit by globules of faint green light that had splattered on the floor and nearby walls. It was enough to see that the room was small and not too deep, and that Elyon was nowhere in sight.
Boone wondered if the others were thinking the same thing he was. How did she drop into the darkness and find her way out of that room without light? He worried she hadn’t dropped but fallen, and that he would find her crumpled form somewhere below, perhaps floating in a pool of water. Then Vindik’s words reminded him: If the geode is there… you will need her. He hoped this was for once a good sign.
Boone went in first. He secured a new line, tossed another glow bomb, and rappelled down into the next chamber. It curved into a long corridor so that the deeper they went, the more upright the original building was. As Rordis came down beside him, he asked, “How is it that we’re a good fifteen meters under the waterline and it’s dry as a bone in here?”
“The buildings were built with a pressure system to withstand the flooding if the levies broke,” Rordis answered. He was like a drone with all that information. “As it was, the bombardment broke nearly everything. We’ve found many buildings intact like this, and many others that might have survived if not for the geological instability.” Boone drew a deep breath, reminded of the imminent danger he was in. “Don’t worry, our seismic detectors have been silent for days. We’ll know if we should expect anything critical.”
Not the least reassured, Boone proceeded to the next level, where he walked with one foot on the wall and one on the floor until it curved enough for him to stand fully on the floor. He tossed glow bombs forward every ten meters. Something moved in the corners of his vision—slow, sluglike creatures the size of a human head. Beneath him the floor cracked like thin ice with every step. He turned to Rordis, who said, “They’re harmless. Just a bit messy. It’s what the raptors mostly feed on.”
The hallway opened up into a grand three-story dormitory. The walls on either side were lined with hundreds of doors on three levels, with occasional beams and structural elements exposed where stairs or walkways would have been. The light from the glow bombs was not enough to reach the ceiling of the massive hall, and Boone didn’t want to think about what might be hiding up there in the shadows. They did not need to go far; there were clear footsteps in the cracking floor, leading to a narrow stairwell. Boone sighed quietly. At least she wasn’t dead.
He left all but one trooper at the top of the stairs. The footsteps led them down to another narrow tunnel, this one damp and dank. They walked single file, still following Elyon’s trail with luxrods, until they came to another small, round room. The footsteps ended at the doorway to the room. Boone tossed in a glow bomb and heard sound of gelatinous blob hitting water, but no light.
“Those things don’t work in water?” Rordis asked.
“Not usually.”
Boone wished he had brought darkvision goggles with him, but it was too late for that. He tossed another glow bomb on the wall instead, and it filled the room with its faint light, revealing that the room was indeed filled with water, its depth unknown. Across the room was another tunnel, and standing in its doorway was the figure of a demon. Boone and Rordis both reflexively jumped back.
She peered at them from the dark tunnel, and when she spoke it was not the voice of the young woman he had come to know. “By removing the geode,” she said, reverberating in the small room, “I will unleash the flood. You will die.” Boone briefly wondered whether she was intending to kill them or if she was warning them of the effect of removing the geode. “Run, Turner,” she said, “I must unleash the flood.”
“Let’s go, Elyon,” he called back, his own voice reverberating. She disappeared into the blackness beyond. The ground began to shake, and Rordis conferred a small device he was carrying.
“It’s not seismic activity,” he said. “What is she doing?”
“I don’t know,” Boone replied.
“Run, Turner,” her voice echoed from a distance. “I can’t hold back the flood.”
Whatever she was doing, the rumbling increased, and the pressure changed in his ears. Some forty meters below the waterline, under thousands of tons of crumbling, ancient masonry, he was about to be crushed to death. He turned and began pushing the others back into the stairwell. “Run,” he shouted. “Get to the surface. Get to the hoverafts. Don’t stop! Go! Go!”
They ran up the stairwell in a panic as water lapped at their ankles. They ran up the curve of the dormitory hallway until they were running side-by-side on the walls, and still the water was keeping up with them. They climbed the lines and pushed and hauled one another up level by level until they were all out of the building. They leapt onto the waiting hoverafts, anxious to pull away. Boone was relieved to see that all his men were out. Everyone but Elyon.
His heart sank. She was dead by now, or somehow surviving… it didn’t matter, because he had neither the weapon nor the artifact, and he could not conceive of how she—or he—would come out of this alive. The mission was a failure, his first true failure. He had let Elyon kill herself and take the objective with her to the murky depths—a fitting farewell to the warlord she hated. He wasn’t sure which hurt more—his failure, or the loss of Elyon.
As they zoomed away, water spouted from the door with such force that the entire wall was blown out, followed by a complete collapse of that section of the building. Water rushed in, and waves came out. After floating in shock for a while, they pulled over onto a root mass and witnessed the cascading effect as building after building collapsed beneath the water, leaving only bubbly waves along the surface.
