Salvaged Destiny (9 page)

“Let me go.” Lazlo tried to assert himself again but Del
just kept lightening her load. If she got started first he’d have to wait down
below.

“You just said you weren’t a climber.”

“Neither are you,” Lazlo shot back, grumpy lines on his
face. That was a first.

“I never said that. I can climb, I just don’t
want
to
climb,” Del admitted as she looked over the pile of equipment she’d discarded. She
wouldn’t need much for a quick look around and Lazlo could toss up anything she
might need.

“Why don’t you want to climb?” Lazlo asked as he circled
around her, watching her unbutton her shirt. His eyebrows rose and she tried
not to feel embarrassed to stall the flush she knew was covering her cheeks.
She could blame the heat at the bottom of this canyon. Del stripped off her
shirt and tossed it to him. She’d do better in just her tank without loose
shirtsleeves catching on things.

“None of your concern.” Securing a few anchors and some rope
to her belt and shifting her favorite hammer on her back, Del looked at the
rock overhead. Memories of her father’s fall were coming back fast and furious
now. Watching him nervously from below, that sickening moment when she saw his
grip falter, the numb terror as his body fell and struck the earth. The
horrible fear as she’d dragged him out, convinced that with every movement she
was hurting him more. And he had been in such pain, staying quiet so she wouldn’t
agonize.

No falling
, she ordered herself. Rubbing her hands on
her trousers to dry the nervous sweat, she walked up to the cliff, already
spotting how she wanted to approach it. Lazlo was right behind her, arms full
of her discarded gear, mouth a tense line.

“Be careful.” Del accepted his warning and nodded at him as
she reached for the first handhold.

Lazlo backed up and sat her things down on the ground,
watching her progress with slow movements up the cliff. He felt anxious and
unhappy with this development, his hands clenched as if he were climbing with
her. Del was cautious, testing each hand- and foothold before she moved on, but
he was still concerned.

Within a few tense minutes, she had pulled her small body up
to the ledge and disappeared from his view with a quick wave. He took a deep
breath and began to worry about how she would get back down. Del actually
discovering something wasn’t even on his mind.

She leaned out of the shadows above him and shook her head.

“Nothing?” Relief that she was safe disappeared as he
realized that they had wasted another day. The major was going to demote him.

“No. I found something, but not what we’re after. Do you
want to see?” Her voice echoed around the little canyon.

Lazlo sighed and nodded agreement. Del disappeared again and
he heard her hammering away, then a long trail of rope spiraled out from above
and landed nearby. He grabbed the end, secured it to a carabiner on his belt
and glanced up to see her pointing to the path she’d taken.

Slowly and steadily, Lazlo made his way up. The pink stone
seemed fairly sturdy and there were plenty of hand- and footholds. He wedged
the toe of his boot in a crack in the rock and heard Del shout a warning not to
use it.

Lazlo was almost to the top and he shook his head at her,
sure it would hold. Just as he put his weight on the fissure, it crumbled and
he twisted and slammed into the rock face, causing his head to ring and vision
to blur. The rope held him with a twanging sound and he felt Del’s thin fingers
wrap around his wrist.

Looking up as he scrabbled his feet against the rock, Lazlo saw
Del’s pale face filled with determination as she tightened her grip on him. First
one toe, then another wedged into the cliff face and he pushed up with his
thighs as Del leaned back, dragging him up and over the ledge with a grunt. Kicking
his legs, he crawled on his belly over the rock surface and exhaled with relief
once he was on solid ground. That had been fairly exciting. Del released his
wrist and began to poke and prod at his back.

“Are you hurt? Did you break anything?”

Shaking his head, Lazlo rolled onto his back and she
crouched next to him, looking him over with concern pinching her face. “Nothing
permanently damaged. You’re strong.”

“Abrasions? Bruises?” Del looked him over, pulling at his
clothes and peering at his skin. It was a ticklish sensation, even through the
receding adrenaline still pumping through his body.

“You’re making me jump. Stop,” Lazlo scolded her as he sat
up, batting her hands away. “I told you I’m ticklish.

“Just checking for breaks in the skin. That’s how the fungus
likes to get started. Cooperate,” Del ordered him and he submitted to her
inspection for a few minutes. Her touch was quite pleasant as she stroked his
hands and face.

“You look well enough.” Del drew back from him with a frown.
Lazlo thanked her and tried not to wonder if she found him at all attractive.

With a shrug, Del stood and offered her hand to help him up.
He took it and released her quickly, feeling as if he shouldn’t have touched
her at all. They were standing on a ledge about two meters wide, extending
irregularly along the dark-red cliff for at least another ten meters.

From this angle, he could clearly see gouges in the rock
where something hard and heavy had rested and probably rocked back and forth
many times. It was shadowed and cooler than the canyon floor. With the angles
of the rock, it would be hard to see anyone moving up here from below. A good
position for an ambush.

“What did you find?”

With a final brush of her hand against his shoulder, Del
pointed to the back of the space where there was a metal frame around a dark
opening. Pulling out a handlight, Lazlo crouched down to take a look inside.
Del was by his side with her own light, which revealed a large, roughed-out
cavern about ten meters by ten meters carved in the rock, walls rough, floor
nearly level.

“What is it?” Lazlo asked as he looked around.

“More like what was it. My guess is that it was a military
cache, but everything was taken out long ago. The dust is fairly uniform on the
floor.”

“Why military?” Lazlo wondered if he’d missed some clue. This
was just a big stone ledge with an old metal frame in the back wall.

“No one else would be out here and these frames were
standard issue until about fifty years ago.” She kicked at it with her worn
boot, sending billows of dust filtering around them.

“So you’ve seen something like this before?”

“Yes.” Del was quiet, avoiding his gaze. She clearly had
some expertise with salvaging military castoffs and Lazlo was again grateful
she had agreed to help him. It was a relief to know that his instincts had been
accurate about her. His other, more personal instincts about her were something
he would consider later, when they were finished with this assignment.

“So what have you found in them?” Lazlo asked, curious about
what sort of salvage might be lying around. So far they hadn’t discovered
anything of note and he wanted some cheering anecdotes.

Shaking her head, Del obviously tried to divert him. “I
never said I found anything.”

“I don’t care what you salvaged. I’m not going to arrest you
or anything. According to Congressional code, surface finds of materials more
than fifty years old are permitted on territorial worlds. You don’t need to
declare anything under the estimated value of one thousand marks. Of course,
you have to declare anything sold as income for taxation purposes.” Lazlo
concluded his little speech with a smile, wondering if she was impressed.

“You looked all of that up.” Del shot back, looking far from
amazed. He figured it had been worth a try. She was a cagey individual.

“Of course I did. I had to be prepared. I’m just curious
about the sorts of things you find out here. How you do what you do.”

Del entered the cave and scuffed her boots along the floor
as she checked the ceiling and corners carefully. “My father and I, we have
found some equipment—tristeel bars, tire rims, crates of corro decking. Buckets
of dried-up synthboard. Unexciting things like that. Debris too heavy and cheap
for the military to bother hauling away.”

“Did you and your father haul it away?”

“As quick as we could,” she replied with a grin and Lazlo
smiled back. He really liked this woman. She was sharp and funny and completely
natural. “It was hard work, but we made some marks.”

Lazlo wanted to ask her about her father and why he wasn’t
still exploring with her, but she knelt and rubbed her hands along the rock
floor of the chamber, handlight beam directed downward.

“What are you looking for?”

“Sometimes these clever military types put in trapdoors. Let’s
see if we can find one.”

“If we find some tires, do I get half the salvage?” Lazlo
teased her and was rewarded with a small grin as she kept brushing her hands
along the stone floor.

“Only if you haul them out,” Del replied with a tone as dry
as the sand they’d trudged through.

They searched for a while, running their fingers along the
gritty surface, trying to detect an edge or angle that might lead somewhere.

Reaching the farthest corner, Lazlo was almost ready to turn
back when his fingers hit something straight. He called out for Del and she
scuttled over, leaning close as she brushed the sand dust away. Soon there was
a meter and a half square revealed, its surface carefully constructed to
resemble the rock it sat in.

Before he could ask how to open it, Del had her rock hammer
out and was wedging the chisel end along the seam, working it in, making a tiny
gap for Lazlo to slide his knife blade into. The trapdoor wasn’t too heavy and
he lifted it easily once he could get his fingers around the edge. Del raised
her eyebrows as he set it to the side, cool air gusting up from below.

“What?”

“It would have taken me half an hour to get that thing
wedged up and out of the way safely,” Del admitted.

“Glad to be useful.”

She grunted and looked back into the hole, handlight
flickering. “Smells musty.”

Lazlo agreed. There was a vaguely organic aroma seeping out
of the hole. He hoped there wasn’t a dead body down there. Del stretched out
full length on the floor and he quite deliberately did not look at her rear end
as she wriggled into position. Lowering her head in the hole, Del beckoned to
him.

“Get down here and take a look.” Her voice echoed out. Lowering
himself to her side and being careful not to touch any part of her, Lazlo
peered down into the murk, his handlight illuminating much more of the chamber
than hers.

“You need to charge your handlight,” Lazlo mentioned and Del
huffed out a cynical laugh.

“No, mine’s at full power. Not everyone gets to carry
military-grade equipment.”

The room below was smaller and filled with mysterious coils
of pipe and metallic containers on collapsed tables. The more Lazlo saw, the
more confused he got. Del began to giggle then laugh next to him. It was
disconcerting to have a female lying next to him and laughing. It made him
think of beds and sex and teasing, which wasn’t at all what he should be
imagining.

Chuckles dying away, Del rolled onto her back and heaved out
a contented sigh. He stopped looking in the secret chamber and rolled to his
side to watch her. And not her breasts moving under her tank with each hitching
breath she took.

“This is amusing you in a way that has escaped me.”

“Oh Lazlo, well…” She grinned at him, her gray eyes dark and
shining. He had the strangest feeling that she’d looked at him like that
before, or was going to again. The memory or premonition sent a chill over his
warm and dusty skin and he shivered.

“It’s funny because I was hoping to find your weapons and
get this over with and instead we found this,” Del huffed out with a knowing
grin.

Lazlo nodded, still confused. “I agree, I was hoping to find
the weapons, but what have we found instead?”

“It’s an old still. Someone was out here making alcohol
about forty years ago, by the look of it.”

“A still for alcohol?” Lazlo stopped looking at Del and took
another look down at the debris. Once he started to look at it piece by piece,
it made sense. The coils of tubing, large tanks, even a crate of empty bottles
in one corner that would never be filled.

“Yes, a secret inside another secret.” Del wriggled closer
to him and looked down. Lazlo tried not to notice how nice she smelled. Stars,
this assignment was growing complicated.

“The commander mentioned there is a problem with illegal
distilling, so I shouldn’t be surprised.” Letting out a sigh of disappointment,
Lazlo rolled onto his back and tried to accept defeat, at least for today. He
listened to Del breathe and felt calmer. “So are we done?”

“Definitely done. But I’m going to document this place. There’s
lots of good copper and ceramic down there.” She pulled her paper maps out of
her pack and made a few notes. He’d taken a look at them earlier and couldn’t
decipher the code she was using, but her handwriting wasn’t what he’d expected.
It was loose and freeform, the complete opposite of her stern persona.

“Do you want some help with the salvage?” Lazlo asked and
Del peered over at him. He couldn’t imagine how she was going to lift those
bulky pieces out of the cave and then down the cliff.

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.” Lazlo did mean it and now he knew he was just
looking for an excuse to spend more time with this woman in dusty clothes who
made him laugh.

“We’ll see. It might not bring in enough marks to be worth
the trouble. Let’s just not get hurt on our way down.” She sounded tense as she
stowed her papers back in her mended pack.

“Are you afraid of heights?” Lazlo knew he was prying. Del
was so fearless about thermal vents and hiking around dangerous terrain that it
had to be a phobia making her so agitated.