An Ancient Peace (46 page)

If they used their weapons, they'd hit each other.

“They've been programmed to recognize other H'san as . . .” Nadayki slid out of his pack. “. . . oh, I don't know, allies.”

Verr. Werst. Torin dropped the packs from against the wall. They still had to get out of the catacombs.

“Gunny! We're out of time!”

“Go!”

Binti sprayed rounds in both directions, then ran for the gap.

Two packs still to drop.

“Leave them!”

Good idea. The major's people had left supplies and extra packs in the cavern. They'd be . . .

One of the packs was hers.

Jamers. And Corporal McKinnon's DNA.

“Torin! For fuksake!” Binti stood by the engines and fired as the first guardians came around into the curve.

She grabbed a strap and ran for the gap.

They slid through side by side and rolled at the bottom. Torin's pack smacked the stone a centimeter from her head. Glancing up, she saw, not a guardian, but the wider end of a cone.

“Get away from the wall!”

Wen screamed, his right leg flattened against the floor as the H'san fired down from above. He screamed again as Verr dragged him back.

“Gunny!”

Torin caught the painkiller Werst threw her, jabbed one end against Wen's throat, and depressed the trigger.

Silence, except for the rustling of the H'san up above.

“I think I found part of Broadbent's head,” Nadayki whispered.

Below mid thigh, Wen's leg wasn't a leg anymore. It was bone—Krai bone, one of the strongest substances in known space, surrounded by a mess of crushed flesh in a wet fabric bag seeping blood because the ends of most of the blood vessels had been crushed closed. Given Krai blood pressure, that wouldn't last.

“We can't save it.”

“No.” It would have to come off to save Wen. “But we can't cut through Krai bone either.”

“You can't, Gunny.”

Torin turned to look where Ressk pointed. Verr sat by Wen's hip, her lips pulled back off her teeth. No point in asking if Verr was sure; they had no other option. “Get on with it, then. Ressk, give me the sealant. You hold him.”

Ressk moved in behind Wen and tucked him up against his body so his head lolled on Ressk's shoulder, holding him still with hands and feet.

Verr reached up to cup her fingers around her bonded's face, then she sat back, pulled her boot knife, and cut the fabric away. Most of the flesh dropped off when not contained. Nostril ridges open, Verr bent, one hand holding Wen's, the other holding his thigh. Her teeth crushed the bone. As she chewed and swallowed, Torin pulled the lower leg away and sprayed the entire canister of sealant over the ragged stump. Tossed the empty, held out her hand, and sprayed the second Werst threw to her.

“That'll hold until we find Craig and the kit.”

“Yeah, Gunny, about Craig . . .”

“Hey! there's a door. Oh.”

Torin turned to see Alamber at the foot of a flight of stairs, light spilling out into the blast bay. He rocked back onto his heels as Nadayki rushed forward and pressed against his side. “Hey, Boss.” Alamber buried his nose in Nadayki's hair. Frowned. Began to rub his hand
up and down the other di'Taykan's back. “Craig sent me to get you. There's a fukload of dead H'san gathering around the engines, so this isn't the best place to set up housekeeping. You okay?”

Her ears were still ringing from the major's explosion, but none of the blood soaked into her clothes was hers. “I'm fine.” She'd be carrying the major out with her. “Ressk, Werst, stay with Verr.” Height was a bigger factor in moving the injured than species although, in this case, species also. “I'll take Wen. Mashona, on our six. Alamber, grab Wen's pack.”

Bone density made the Krai heavier than they looked so when Ressk, grumbling about his pack being the only gear left behind, shrugged into hers, Torin accepted the help. Halfway up the stairs, Wen slid from semi to full unconsciousness and Torin, knees aching, climbed faster.

Craig waited at the hatch. “Put him there on the big rubber pad. It's both soft and firm, and I don't know what the hell it is.”

Torin laid Wen down and got out of the way as Verr slid to her knees beside him.

“Almost six hours, Torin.”

After six, he got to put himself into danger he'd never trained for and mount a rescue. It was a compromise they'd reached after a lot of yelling and some particularly energetic sex. “It seemed longer.”

“You said you were fine. What happened to your face?”

“Broken cheekbone. I'd forgotten about that.”

“You forgot about a broken cheekbone?”

“Hordes of zombie H'san.” She shrugged and found a few bruises. “I got distracted.”

“Fair enough.”

“What happened to your chin?”

“Cracked it sliding into the blast bay having been spotted by a patrolling zombie H'san.”

“Well, all right, then.” He was warm and solid and strong and understood. Torin tucked the uninjured side of her face into the curve of his neck and shoulder, and breathed him in for a minute.

Almost exactly a minute.

She straightened, her hands on his biceps. “What's vibrating?”

“The H'san are packed in around the ship, beating on the engines.” Alamber gestured at the screen. “Tah dah.”

From the angle, the lenses had been set into the edge of the ceiling. Torin squinted at the screen, mostly because it brought her right eye into line with her left, now starting to swell shut. “They're not beating on them. They're trying to climb them.”

“No way that could be part of their programming.” Nadayki leaned in. “Except it seems to be.” He looked up and grinned. “Hey, Ryder! How's the toe?”

Alamber dragged him out of the way before Torin could move, growling, “Have you got a death wish?”

She nodded her thanks, forcing muscles to unlock. Colonel Hurrs wanted Nadayki dead for the sake of peace and, for a moment, she'd have happily obliged him. The moment passed. Peace had nothing to do with her reaction, and the adrenaline spike eased back into the lesser though still heightened level she'd been riding for the last few hours. “Is the hatch secure?”

“Not exactly.” When she glanced over at Alamber, he shrugged. “I had to fry the controls to get it open. But don't worry, the H'san are too big to slide down into the blast bay and the stairs we used; they're the only way up here.”

“That we know of,” Craig amended.

“That we know of,” Alamber repeated, sighing. “And there's always the chance the dead have been programmed with full schematics of the necropolis.”

“The H'san are too big, but they're not the only zombies down there. The heavy gunner,” Werst pointed out when everyone turned to stare. “The major blew Toporov up, but we have no idea where the fuk Keo is.”

One of Ressk's hands twitched around his slate, the other closed around Werst's wrist. “Does this ship have any usable weapons?”

Craig and Alamber exchanged a look and smiled.

“Not exactly weapons, mate.”

He hadn't wanted to leave Torin in the control room, not after nearly six hours when he'd had no idea of what was going on, but he could
see that the idea of Gunnery Sergeant Kerr was holding everyone together and the whole zombie H'san thing, well, that was an excuse to fall apart in his opinion. Gunnery Sergeant Kerr would hold it together until she had time to be Torin, and he'd be there then.

Alamber hadn't wanted him to go alone, but as much as Torin could be rock steady through an apocalypse if she had to, he'd wanted another nontraumatized person in the control room and had cut Alamber's argument short.

“We've got two wounded, two distracted bonded—and, yeah, Ressk is faking calm like a champ, but he's still faking it—and an enemy who's willing to shit disturb for the sake of shit disturbing, voice of experience speaking. If I'm going to do this, I need you to keep an eye on things.”
Not entirely fair since Alamber's need to be needed was a big red “manipulate me” button, but every word was the truth, so Craig gave himself a pass.

Dropping down into the engine access, he pulled Alamber's curved-headed tool—median age of the universe, twelve—out of his belt. They'd wrapped another layer of insulation around the grip although they hadn't had time to test its effectiveness.

“No time like the present.”

How many dead H'san did it take to rock a shuttle? How many dead H'san were down here? How long would it take them to find another route?

He leaned against the conduit and slid the tool through the open space. One eye closed, he lined up the contacts and pressed the curve across them both.

The engines roared on.

Eyes shut, the flash threw the blood vessels on his eyelids into silhouette.

He could feel a new, cleaner vibration under his boots, the deck singing along with the engines. The tool vibrated at double time, but the extra insulation was doing its job. Until it wasn't. Warmth. Then heat. His arm began to shake. Locking his other hand around a length of conduit, he held himself in place. No point in not finishing the job.

Seemed Torin had become a part of him at the ethical level.

If his smile twisted into a grimace—either the insulation was sticky or blisters were rising and breaking—there was no one there to see it.

Just . . .

. . . a little . . .

. . . long . . .

His knees buckled as the deck rose and he slammed down, the tool torn out of his hand. The conduit held it in place for a few seconds longer, then it was tumbling over and over itself while the engines continued to roar.

The hell? Without the contact the engines wouldn't . . .

The deck bucked. His vision filled with a flash of red and white, a moment of black. Then he blinked to find Binti on one knee, leaning over him.

“Dumbass.” Her fingers ghosted over the back of his head.

“What did I do?”

“Where should I start?” She looked down at her fingertips, shook her head, and wiped them on her thigh. “You didn't mention how dangerous this was likely to be. You didn't seem to notice that the lower caverns were collapsing. You took us about four meters up. And you knocked yourself out when the engines shut off and we fell back down.”

“Yeah, yeah. You lot do dangerous shit all the time, this was my time. As for the rest of it . . .” He pushed himself up onto his elbows, right hand curled protectively. “I couldn't hear anything over the sound of the engines.” The caverns collapsing explained the noise continuing after the engines had shut off. “Everyone all right?”

“Given the landing, it was probably a good thing Wen was already unconscious,” Binti said as she stood, “but yeah. Few more bruises all around, and Ressk clipped his nose on a corner of a control chair. Bled all over. Werst was adorably concerned. Oh, and Werst's temperature has gone up another degree fighting the zombie H'san infection, so we have to haul ass.” She held out her hand. “Come on.”

“And the zombie H'san?”

“Eleven seconds at around 1400 degrees—they've been fried, crushed, possibly drowned, and no longer our problem.”

“Drowned?”

“Engines came on, water poured out of the fuk knows where, whole lot of steam. It was all very exciting. Nadayki tells me there used to be a pool in the cavern.”

The bulkhead of the engine access now appeared to be the deck.

“So, I flew this thing for four meters?”

She laughed. “Eight if you count the trip back.”

The ship had twisted as it came down, and the control room had twisted with it, remaining level, which was an impressive bit of engineering. Chucking back to the control room, however, had become a bit dodgy.

“Yeah, kind of has a height requirement now.” Binti pulled herself up into the passage. “Can you make it with that hand?”

“Not a problem. I can lift myself that far with one hand.” And an elbow once he was high enough.

They entered the control room by descending a spiral slide. He had no idea how the H'san would have managed with their physiognomy. Nor did he have any idea of where the slide had come from. He'd been in and out while waiting for Torin and had never seen it. As he landed, he saw that the exterior hatch now opened into the cavern over a three-meter drop to the floor. Torin waited for him by the . . .

“Rope ladder?”

“We had rope and we had Krai. This is baby stuff; it took them next to no time.” Torin directed his attention across the room to where Werst and Ressk were sliding loops of rope under Wen's pallet. “They've worked out a way to carry him comfortably.” She gently brushed her fingers over the rising bump on the back of his head and looked at the smear of blood for a moment much the way Binti had before meeting his eyes.

“Minor. And this . . .” He held up his hand. “. . . already coated in pain reducer.” He'd had the tube they'd previously cracked on his belt. “I keep from using it, it'll be fine in a couple of days.”