“Looks like we’re guarding the only route to the lab,” Duck said. “Those storage tunnels dead end.”
“Nothing above us or below us?” Cas thought of the volcano lab, where defenders had attempted to crawl through ducts above the ceilings to attack them.
“Unfortunately, this map is only of the ground floor here. Guess there aren’t any crow-like cartographers in this crew that could figure out how to display different levels.”
Cas raised her brows. “Crow-like?”
“Sure, crows are smart.”
“Smart enough to make maps?”
“Nah, they don’t need maps. Got it all in their heads.”
“There aren’t ducts,” Sardelle said, nodding toward Cas. She must be remembering the other lab too. “But I do sense that there are other tunnels around here, above and below us. Most dead end and are filled with sarcophagi, but it’s possible they could get fairly close to us. Still, these blocks are all ridiculously large. And dense. Without Jaxi to burn holes, it’s hard to imagine how they could reach us or slip behind us to reach the lab.”
“But they’re up to something, aren’t they?” Cas asked. “There are only a couple down there, where there were several before. Maybe we should push through to deal with them. Before they have time to use their crow wiles.”
Duck snorted. “I told you, they’re not as smart as crows. Maybe robins.”
“I’m reluctant to go far from the lab,” Sardelle said. “In case there is another way around. I—”
One of the Cofah fired at the barrier again, and Cas thought that might be why Sardelle had paused, but after a moment she said, “Tolemek needs Jaxi. He has an idea.”
“About curing people?” Duck asked.
“About curing the dragon.” Her lips thinned. “We’re hoping one will lead to the other. Somehow.”
“Sardelle,” Duck said, “you have to help him come up with a fix for the colonel. He can’t die out here. Not like this.”
The haunted expression in Sardelle’s eyes said that such thoughts hadn’t been far from her mind. “I will.”
“Wait,” Cas said. Given the somber topic, she felt awkward speaking up, but they had to think of survival and of dealing with the enemy. “Can you do something to those men before you go?” Cas waved to the intersection past the barrier, where the two soldiers were keeping themselves out of sight except when they leaned out to fire. “Knock them out, maybe?”
“It’s difficult to force people to fall asleep when they’re in a highly alert state,” Sardelle said.
“Can you try? Now that there are only a couple left, maybe it will be easier? I want to go find out where the rest of them went, and it will be easier if I can get past those two.”
“Go find out?” Duck frowned at her. “By yourself?”
“I’m sneakier alone.” She might not have her father’s gift of stealth, but she had more skill at it than the average pilot. “Besides, someone needs to stay and guard the lab entrance.”
“That’s both of our jobs.”
“It’s our job to keep the Cofah off Tolemek’s back while he works on a cure. That’s what I plan to do.”
“But—”
“What if some squad blows the walls open in the lab and charges in, shooting at everyone? Give me your map, please.”
He scowled at her. Cas expected an argument from Sardelle, as well, but she had her eyes closed. When she opened them, she said, “They’re unconscious, for the moment. I trust they won’t be killed while they’re sleeping.”
“I can find some rope to tie them,” Cas said.
Sardelle inclined her head, then walked toward the lab.
“Stay here, Duck.” Cas plucked the map from his fingers—he didn’t try to keep her from taking it, but he didn’t relinquish it easily, either. “Don’t let anyone in. I won’t be gone long.”
He scowled at her but didn’t object.
Cas trotted to the intersection. It was empty except for the two soldiers slumped on either side of the corridor. Since she had left her pack outside, she didn’t have any rope with her, but she carved up their clothing and used the fabric for the task. She would have preferred to lock them away somewhere, but aside from the two lab entrances, the ziggurat was short on doors and locks. She studied the map briefly and decided an opening to her right was most likely to parallel the corridor Duck was guarding.
Soft footsteps sounded in the corridor behind her. Assuming it was Duck again, she turned, intending to remind him that she outranked him, if only by a month.
“Going exploring?” Zirkander asked. Duck was peeking around the corner behind him.
Cas grimaced. She shouldn’t have mentioned her plan to Sardelle. She must have told Zirkander right away.
“There were eight or ten men here a few minutes ago,” Cas said. “If they’re gone, I’m assuming they left to plot something. I’d like to look for them.” She watched the side passages as she spoke, aware that they were in the open, vulnerable to anyone who walked out of a doorway.
Zirkander must have been thinking the same thing, because he stepped back and waved for her to do the same. Cas slumped. He wasn’t going to let her go. Didn’t he see the folly in sitting there, waiting and reacting instead of going on the offensive? If they were in the air, he would never succumb to such a strategy.
“You’re not going hunting for your father, are you?” he asked.
“What? No. I mean, if I see him, I can try to stop him, but…” She hated to admit it, but she finished with, “I’m not sure that’s within my power.” She searched his face, trying to guess what had prompted the question. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, and she couldn’t read anything beyond that he was tired. And sick. “Did you see him, sir?”
“He was in the lab. He destroyed the device keeping the barrier over the dragon, but he was gone before I spotted him.”
“That’s how his interactions with people usually go.” The dragon. Was that what her father was here for? It made sense, now that she thought about it. If Tolemek or even Sardelle had been his target, he could have waited until they returned to the city to strike. That didn’t necessarily mean they were safe, but she would be less distressed if he killed the dragon than one of her friends.
“Go,” Zirkander said. “If you find them and need help, come back and get us. I’ll be with Duck. Jaxi is about to possibly blind everyone in the lab, so it seemed a good time to leave.” He smiled weakly.
Cas didn’t understand the joke, but she nodded, glad he trusted in her abilities enough to let her go. She hoped to live up to that trust. She also hoped Zirkander would still be alive when she got back. He looked like a half-drowned rat with his damp hair clinging limply to his head.
“Thank you, sir.” She thought about giving him a hug, but lieutenants didn’t hug colonels, even dying ones. She nodded again, then jogged down her chosen route.
Before turning the corner, she glanced back. Zirkander was dragging one of the unconscious men back up the corridor. Yes, good idea to lock them up in the lab instead of leaving them out to be found or wake up and free themselves.
The passage Cas entered wasn’t lit. She didn’t know if that made it more likely or less that the men had gone in this direction. Her father could have navigated it without light, but she removed a lamp from one of the sconces and lit it before starting down the passage. She left the glass open, so she could blow it out quickly if needed.
Cas passed several alcoves holding sarcophagi, but she only glanced inside them long enough to ensure nobody was crouching behind them. During one of these checks, she spotted a dark smudge on the floor. She touched her finger to it and held it up to the lamp. It wasn’t a smudge; it was gunpowder. Had the soldiers come this way carrying explosives?
She told herself not to assume anything, that it might have been dropped during any of the months that the Cofah had occupied the ziggurat, but it was dry when she rubbed it between her fingers. In this humid climate, that wouldn’t
have been the case if it had been lying there for long.
She crept forward, searching for more signs that men had come this way recently. Cobwebs stretched across the upper corners of the tunnel, but those that might have dangled lower had broken off. She quickened her step, hoping she had time. If men had come this way with explosives, they could have only one thing in mind. If they blew their way into the lab, who knew what damage it might do? Hurl heavy furniture onto people? Cause volatile chemicals to explode? Either way, Tolemek and Sardelle would be in trouble, especially if they were preoccupied with the dragon.
The light bounced off a wall ahead of Cas. A dead end. She stared at it, disappointment filling her. Maybe the gunpowder hadn’t meant anything, after all. Maybe they had been storing kegs down here and had simply knocked some of the powder out when they had moved them. Except she didn’t see any sign that this corridor had been used for storage. She patted the stone wall. Maybe those ancient architects had built in trapdoors. But after a minute of groping around and finding nothing, she sighed, defeated. She would have to go back and check other nearby tunnels.
“You sure this is the spot?” a distant voice asked.
Cas froze. It hadn’t come from her tunnel. It sounded like it had come straight out of one of the walls.
“I’m sure. Now climb.”
Cas touched the wall, resisting the urge to knock on it to see if it was hollow. If she could hear those speakers, they would also hear any noise she made. Instead, she slid her fingers along the wall, again searching for hidden doors. She reached the first alcove without finding anything. A single sarcophagus rested in the center of it, positioned parallel to the tunnel. The carved stone box rose higher than her waist, with less than a foot of air between it and the low ceiling. There wasn’t much room on either side, but she squeezed around one end to look behind it. She almost snorted. A dark, square opening awaited her, with more spilled gunpowder dusting the floor in front of it.
She poked her lamp into the opening, identified another tunnel, albeit a much lower one, and crept into it. She listened intently, wondering if she should cut off the lamp. The last thing she wanted to do was alert the soldiers to her presence. On the other hand, the idea of crawling through the tight passage in pitch blackness made her uneasy too. It shouldn’t, but who knew what ancient booby traps might be waiting for her? Or what spiders and scorpions.
Cas grunted silently at herself. Some brave sniper she was.
“Where should I set the charge?”
Though it was soft, she clearly heard the voice. It couldn’t be far away, but sounded like it came from a higher elevation. Rustling noises drifted to her, too, along with the grinding of boots on sand. How many men were up there? Two to set the explosives, but then more to rush through after the bomb went off?
Her light glinted off something metal up ahead. A ladder.
They weren’t going to blow their way into the side of the lab. They were going to bring down the ceiling. Her stomach tightened with anxiety. She had to hurry. But she had to be careful. She had to have the advantage of surprise. Even then, in these close quarters, she wouldn’t be able to get many shots off before they saw her and fired back.
Cas blew out the lamp and set it by the base of the ladder. Blackness swallowed her. She couldn’t see any light coming down from above, so she hoped she was as close to the men as she thought. What if passages wound around back here, and it took a long time to reach them?
“Here? All right, that should do it.”
“Ssh. They’re right below, boar licker. Let’s not alert them, eh?”
Cas slung her rifle across her back and climbed up the rungs. In the dark, she had to feel her way up, and she kept patting above her, expecting the ladder to end. She rose higher than she expected and would have kept climbing, except the voices sounded again.
“Back everyone up. We want to go through after we blow a hole, not as we blow it.”
She gaped. The voice had come from below. She must have missed a passage leading away from the ladder shaft. Hoping she wasn’t making a mistake, that she had to go up and over something and then down, she retraced her steps. A hint of light came from somewhere, lessening the depths of the darkness around her. There. She had missed a hole in the wall. She felt around the edge with her hand. It was ragged, with the stone cut away recently. She could climb through it, but the soldiers must have struggled.
The silhouettes of men came into view as soon as she poked her head through. They weren’t straight in front of her, but hunkered off to the side. Here and there, pipes and ducts rose up from the floor, and a soft hum reverberated through her boots. It took her a moment to realize they were on top of the lab. This space must have been made so people could install and maintain those fans and deliver a water supply to the scientists.
Cas crept forward and hid behind a vertical duct pipe. She counted eight men up ahead, two off to the side and six others waiting and watching them. Some of their backs were to her, but some would see her out of the corners of their eyes if she moved much. The darkness should hide her now, especially since they were all looking at the flame of a lamp—a lamp about to light a fuse to a pile of explosives. She gulped as one of the men shifted, and the kegs came into view. If those were full of gunpowder, they would not only blow a hole, but they might cause the entire ceiling to collapse. And the stone above, as well. Even though this structure must have been built sturdily to last for centuries out in this jungle, Cas couldn’t imagine the original architects had been thinking it would have to withstand explosives.
As the enormity of the situation came to her, the unlikeliness that she would survive eight-to-one odds, Tolemek’s face appeared in her thoughts, his dark eyes full of concern as he gazed down at her. She wished she had given him a kiss before walking out of the lab. More than that, she wished she had told him good-bye, just in case something happened. Or maybe she should have told him… that she loved him. If she didn’t, would she worry so much every time he was out of her sight? Would she wonder what he would think before she did something reckless? Would thinking of never seeing him again—and of him never knowing what had happened to her—bring tears to her eyes?
Cas blinked those tears away before they could fully form. There was no time for regrets now. She had to stop these men.
She slid her rifle off her back, preferring its accuracy to that of her pistol. The problem was taking care of all of those men before they returned fire. Even in the dark, she could tell they were well armed. Rifles and pistols protruded from their silhouettes.
If she were in her flier, she would have a machine gun with incendiary bullets. She might blow up the kegs before they were ready and take a number of them out in the blast. Except that would still bring down the ceiling, most likely. Cas slid her hand along her duct, wondering if it was thick enough to protect her if they shot at her. No, the metal felt thin. A bullet would rip right through it.
“Ready.”
“Light it.”
Cas cursed to herself. She wasn’t ready, damn it. A plan, she wanted time to come up with a smart plan. But all she could do was rely on instincts—and hope they were good enough.
Her last thought, as she squeezed the trigger, was that the others should at least hear the gunfire and have time to get out of the way down there.
She shot the man lowering the match to the fuse and was firing at the second before anyone reacted. But once they understood what was happening, they spun toward her as one. Cas rolled away from the duct, stopped on her stomach, and shot twice more. Bullets were already flying in her direction, slamming into stone and tearing through that flimsy ductwork. She rolled again, hoping they couldn’t see her in the shadows, not the way she could see them. Not that it mattered. A wild shot blasted into the darkness could kill her as easily as a well-aimed one fired at her heart.
Something slammed into the back of her head. A piece of stone? She wasn’t sure. She scrambled to a stop behind a pipe, doing her best to sta
y silent, so they wouldn’t get a bead on her, and took a second this time to make sure of her aim. Three forms were either unmoving or rolling and gasping on the ground. That meant she had missed once. She couldn’t afford to miss. The Cofah were on the move now, the same as she was, and they had rolled out of the light’s influence. Even as she was taking aim at a flash of orange from someone’s firearm, one of the other men shot out the lamp. Cas fired, then rolled away again.
A bullet slammed into the pipe she had left. Water sprayed everywhere, spattering her cheek and back. She hoped the sound would dull any noise she might make. With the light out, utter darkness had descended. Smoke clogged the air and tickled her nostrils. She would not sneeze.
More rounds pounded the wall behind her and skipped off the stone all around her. They knew she was on the ground, and they were aiming low. The next pipe she bumped into, she climbed. It wobbled precariously, but supported her weight. They were still firing, four men, she guessed. She found her way to the ceiling and groped about, hoping for a support beam. There wasn’t one. She would have to fire from the top of the pipe. It wouldn’t be the first time she had shot one-handed. But she needed a target. Unlike the Cofah, she didn’t have ammo to waste. She had two more shots before she had to reload.
She listened, trying to pick out heavy breathing or whispered words. The soldiers had stopped shooting. She hadn’t fired for a moment. Maybe they thought they had hit her.
The soft clanks of someone loading rounds drifted across the room. She leaned away from the pipe, listening and aiming. Right about… there. She shot, and a cry of pain erupted.