Chapter 7
Six
Another explosion from the direction of her living quarters meant the intruders had breached Gus’s last defense.
“Don’t look back,” Gus ordered as Anandra’s hand pulled against hers, his focus on what was behind rather than what was ahead. Seeing his hood had slid down, Gus adjusted it for him. “You never look back.”
That was how you survived.
Caius sent Gus a thoughtful glance that made her feel like she’d revealed something important. “Where to?”
Shaking off her reservations, Gus took the lead. “This way.”
Their enemies were coming from multiple directions.
Through the greenhouse at their back, while another contingent was even now in the process of working their way around the container bank.
It wouldn’t be long until this position was overrun.
Luckily, it wasn’t far to one of the backup escape routes that Gus had seeded throughout the docks in case of emergency.
Anandra and Caius shadowed her as she turned away from the sounds of pursuit, heading for the opposite side of the container bank.
An overly eager human male barreled around the corner as Gus reached it, forcing her to dodge.
He was young. About twenty. Not even out of the pimply face phase and already with a soul as black as coal.
He was also inexperienced.
“They’re here! I found them!” he shouted over his shoulder.
Gus tsked.
It would have been better for him to use the rifle he was holding before calling for backup. Maybe he would have lived longer.
She reached for him, her hand already primed with one of the fast acting poisons she kept on her knuckles.
A pair of garden shears flew past her face.
The human fell back with a surprised gurgle. The shears buried in his throat.
“When did you—?” Gus trailed off, staring at the shears.
She hadn’t felt Caius remove them from her pocket. Now why would a high ranking member of a major House have such a low born skill as pickpocketing?
“Never mind.” Gus set aside her question before skirting the dead body, trusting the other two to follow. “Come on.”
Anandra scurried after her, but Caius paused long enough to collect the shears from the human’s neck and a blade from the man’s boot before sauntering after them.
Gus kicked herself. She should have done that. Now Caius was armed and she was not.
Caius squinted as the rumble of a ship’s engine came from overhead. “Their preparations are quite thorough. Is that going to be a problem?”
Gus glanced up as a small ship, one of those models common among salvagers, maneuvered through the openings of the dock’s upper levels to hover overhead. Its body and wings had been painted a bright shade of pink.
A calling card, of sorts.
Gus stopped in front of a narrow gap between two containers. “No.”
“You sure?”
Gus allowed herself a very small, slightly mysterious smile. “They’re in my territory.”
That gave her the advantage. No one knew this place as well as she did.
For instance, the narrow channel beside her that led into the heart of this bank of containers. It was just wide enough for an adult Gus’s size to slip through. The Tombs were riddled with these types of errors. Over time, they’d formed a maze within a maze.
“Come on,” Gus said, plunging into the space between containers.
She’d only made it a few steps before she realized that Caius wasn’t behind her. She looked back to find him standing at the opening, his thoughts easy to read.
“You’ll fit,” Gus promised.
It would be tight, but if he turned sideways, he should be able to make it.
Probably.
Caius grumbled something about claustrophobia but didn’t argue as he squeezed himself into the narrow gap.
Following a map that existed only in her mind, Gus led them through the labyrinth.
Down one narrow passageway after another.
The drone of the ship above and the shouts from their pursuers echoing from the other side of the containers.
Startlingly close. Only a few slim metal walls separating them from death or capture.
“Almost there,” Gus called.
With a quick look overhead to make sure the coast was clear, she darted out from between the containers and over to the next bank where she waited for the other two to catch up.
Anandra and Caius reached her just as the ship swung into view.
“All this effort will be wasted if we can’t lose our eyes in the sky,” Caius commented.
Gus cut him a look but didn’t respond as she disappeared into the next passageway, leaving Anandra and Caius to follow if they wanted.
It turned out they did. Caius’s grunts as he squeezed into the narrow space a familiar refrain that soon faded into the background as Gus concentrated on remembering the right path. It had been years since she laid out the maze so it took a moment to orient herself.
Coming to a crossroads of sorts, Gus slowed.
Which way was it again? Left or right?
After a moment of hesitation, Gus turned left. “It’s this way.”
She was almost sure of it.
A few turns later, she was proved right when she spotted the small belladonna flower etched into the bottom right of a container.
Trite as it was, she’d adopted the belladonna flower as her symbol. Her own way of marking the territory that belonged to her. Usually, its presence was subtle. An actual plant grown somewhere in the vicinity. More often, it was an etching like the one in front of her.
Technically, Gus had three such symbols at her disposal. Belladonna, oleander and ba-bane, a particularly toxic plant from House Danai’s homeworld. Though belladonna was by far the most common. The last two were usually reserved for those that Gus considered essential.
It was rare for anyone to earn the mark of an oleander. Ba-bane was even rarer. Only ever used when things were not only considered essential to her survival but had also become something she cherished.
To date, she’d only used ba-bane once.
“Why did we stop?” Anandra panted, coming up behind her.
The boy looked tired. His features were pale with exhaustion. Gus didn’t think he could go much further. The food she’d given him had only done the bare minimum in restoring his energy levels.
Caius wasn’t faring much better. He was running on fumes and the energy the choko tree had bestowed to him.
If they carried on like this, they might collapse.
Good thing they’d arrived at their destination.
Gus crouched, pressing her thumb against a petal of the belladonna. After a moment there was a faint hiss and the outline of a door appeared next to her.
Gus rose. “We’re here.”
The door gave way easily when Gus pushed against it, allowing her entrance into a container that at first, second, and third glance would be indistinguishable from pretty much every other container sitting on Titan’s docks.
Perhaps a little emptier than most but nothing a raid by one of the pirate clans dominating the station couldn’t explain.
Anandra and Caius hovered by the entrance as Gus walked over to a set of crates stacked haphazardly in the corner. Spotting the one with a belladonna flower stamped on its front, Gus reached around to its back, searching for the lever she knew was there.
After a moment of fumbling, her fingers brushed against something hard. She grabbed it and pulled.
The ground rumbled.
Gus hurriedly stepped back as the stack of crates started to move. Caius and Anandra joined her as they slid to the side to reveal the hole waiting beneath. And a ladder conveniently leading down into the gaping maw.
“No wonder you weren’t worried about the ship,” Caius remarked, taking in her escape hatch. “Very clever.”
“I’ll go first,” Gus volunteered, wanting to put a little distance between her and the commander right now.
“You’re quite good at that.” When Gus looked at him, Caius elaborated. “Running away.”
“If I wasn’t, you and the boy would have already been recaptured,” Gus pointed out, maneuvering her way onto the ladder.
“Prickly, prickly—just like a cute, harmless efji,” Caius murmured.
Gus pretended not to hear that as she started her descent.
The efji, like its cousin the tijit, was part of the rodent family.
Only unlike the tijit, it possessed no natural defenses.
It relied on foraging for sustenance and was known for its lack of fear or sense, scolding predators much larger than themselves whenever they ventured too close to their burrows or food reserves.
By comparing her to one, Caius was saying Gus was someone who talked big but didn’t know her own capabilities.
He was awfully mouthy for someone who’d been saved by her not just once but twice. Where did he get off comparing her to an efji? She wasn’t the one who’d gotten captured by pirates.
Mentally grumbling to herself, Gus descended the ladder a little faster than necessary, reaching the bottom in no time. Anandra was next on the ladder as Gus took stock of the tunnel.
Big enough for the three of them to stand side by side, it had large pipes running overhead and along the sides.
Algae had grown across the walls and ceiling.
A product of the moisture that had accumulated on the surfaces.
Something was also growing over the metal grates of the floor, a moss of some kind that provided a carpet of green and yellow for them to walk over.
The only source of light was the dim glow provided by the motion triggered emergency lighting lining the walls.
“What is this place?” Caius asked, looking around as he joined Gus.
She started forward. “Maintenance tunnels.”
“What happens if they follow us?” Caius asked, falling into step with her.
Anandra was the straggler, plodding at the rear as they stepped carefully over the floor. There were a few patches of the original, uncovered grates left. Everything else had been consumed by the moss and algae, turning the tunnel into its own miniature ecosystem.
“They won’t.”
Caius eyed her. “You seem certain of that.”
“I am.”
“How?”
Gus’s earlier resolve to speak less was already being tested. “For starters, they don’t know this tunnel exists.”