Chapter 34
There was no one around, and Fee was really glad because she didn’t know which way to go.
She felt turned around in here. She tried to remember where everything had been last time, but the Balcoans had made some major changes, probably working with whatever was left.
What she did know was that she had to go down.
Bart had said the lower two floors had survived the laser strike, and there was a way out from the lowest floor. She and Hal had broken into and out of this base using the air flow tunnel.
If she could find it and it wasn’t blocked off, she’d be out of here.
What she’d do once she was out was another matter. She had no water, and no way to travel except by foot.
The alternative was to try to sneak across the amphitheater, climb the stairs, and steal a runner, and she didn’t think she’d get away with doing that unseen. Besides which she didn’t know how to fly a runner, and while Bunny was useful, she didn’t think he was able to pilot a vessel.
The tunnel seemed like the most viable option.
She headed away from the main entrance, following the curve around. This had to be the living quarters, because she passed door after door.
Eventually she reached the end of the built in rooms, where the corridor widened to the full width of the space like it had at the entrance, except for one small room against the back wall.
Fee opened the door, and felt a wave of relief when she found what she was looking for.
A stairwell.
That they had sealed the stairs off, when theoretically they could have let it open straight out into the corridor was informative.
Like maybe they were trying to stop things coming up from below. Like friens.
She and Hal had found evidence of frien burrows in the air flow tunnel last time. It sounded like they were still very much an issue here.
What had Bart’s friend said? They went through anti venom like water.
Bunny was riding her shoulder, and she twisted her head to look at him. “I’m counting on you to protect me from friens, big and small. I don’t think the anti venom works on me, and even if it does, I don’t have any.”
She closed the stairwell door behind her and went down the stairs cautiously.
These seemed new, or newly recoated.
When she reached the floor below, she opened the stairwell door cautiously, and then crouched in surprise, watching through a tiny gap.
This floor was the storage area.
There were massive sheets of metal, pipes, and cable, all lined up neatly.
It made no sense they would be transported up to the amphitheater via the stairs—they were too narrow—so it came as no surprise when sunlight suddenly flooded the gloom as a part of the ceiling seemed to lower down, and four workers stepped off what was clearly some kind of massive, open-sided elevator.
The workers headed for a pile of pipes and began loading carts she’d only just noticed.
From her angle, crouched low to the ground, Fee could see the frame of the Class 5 in the open area above.
She closed the door silently and backed away, then started down the next set of stairs.
If things were as she remembered, the bottom floor contained the systems that kept the base powered and the air fresh.
She hadn’t heard any signs of life so far, but she was very cautious as she pushed open the door at the bottom. The stairs went no further, at least, not from this staircase, and Fee guessed she’d reached the lowest level.
She stepped into warm air that hummed with the sound of machinery and cooling units.
There was a quick-set layer on the floor, rather than a solid foundation, and even that, if she remembered correctly, was a step up from what it had been before, which was nothing but desert sand.
The quick-set had been sprayed on, and there were patches where they’d either missed a spot, or where the layer had crumbled away, and the sound as she walked forward was almost like walking through hard-packed snow. Slightly squeaky.
She edged past large pipes and rattling units, and stopped in dismay at a wall of fine mesh across the air tunnel.
This was definitely new.
She stepped closer, and found there was a door set into it, and when she tried the handle, it opened easily.
Probably there to keep the baby friens out, she guessed. She stood on the safe side, studying the darkness up ahead of her, wondering if she really wanted to risk getting bitten.
Escape was one thing. Being poisoned was a whole extra level of risk.
Bunny ran down her arm and then looked back at her.
“I’m being a wimp,” she told him. “I looked a frien in the eye once, and it was not a pleasant experience. The adults are about the same size as me, but long and low to the ground.” She shuddered, then straightened her shoulders.
“The tunnel had motion lighting last time I was here, so if that’s still working we should be able to see where we’re going once we get walking, and I’m going to ask you to be your most vicious self if we meet up with a frien. ”
And she wasn’t completely without weapons of her own.
She jerked the silver rod off her necklace, which no one had even seemed to notice, let alone considered confiscating, thank goodness, and flicked it to extend it. She was still wearing her bracelet. The Balcoans had left her with all of her defenses. Not that she’d had a chance to use either one.
She gripped the rod tightly, opened the door, and stepped into the tunnel.
There was a relatively steep incline with the compacted sand floor she remembered from last time. No quick-set had been wasted along here.
To her relief, the lights flickered on as she walked, and while they were low-level, it was a comfort to see where she was going.
There were definite burrows in the walls, though.
She hesitated when she came to the first one, then forced herself to walk past it.
There were two more in the same stretch of passage.
A wind was blowing in, hot and dry on her face, sucked into the base from the desert above, and she kept blinking fine dust out of her eyes.
Bunny suddenly squeezed her arm, and she stumbled to a stop, eyes watering a little. It took her a moment to notice the frien.
It was staring at her, body angled across the tunnel, head turned toward her, mouth open and teeth bared.
Shit.
She’d passed a burrow a minute or so back, and she wondered if she was blocking the frien from its home.
Maybe the thing to do would be to reverse and give it a shot at its hole in the wall, wait for it to get in there, and try again. She could attack with the silver rod, but that would be unpredictable.
She decided to keep that as a last resort.
She began to ease back, step by step, keeping her gaze on the frien.
Bunny had been looking at it too, but he ran up her arm and perched on her shoulder, looking behind her, and suddenly dug his forelegs into her shoulder.
“Ouch.” She stopped, and glanced back, but she couldn’t see anything.
The passage beyond was in darkness, the only light coming from two low-level fittings set into the tunnel wall on either side of her.
“What is it?” she whispered to Bunny. “I don’t see anything there.”
But Bunny wasn’t exactly prone to flights of fancy. Quite the opposite.
If he thought there was something back there, there was something back there.
Maybe it was the frien’s babies.
Double shit.
That would be a fun development.
And then the darkness seemed to move, and a whole new level of fear was unlocked.
Fee pressed herself up against the wall and tried to get her breathing under control.
If she hyperventilated and passed out, she would be easy prey.
Maybe it wasn’t the grahudi. She hadn’t actually seen it.
But then she did.
It came out of the darkness like a death wraith, and she locked her jaw closed to stop herself from making a sound.
Bunny sat sentinel on her shoulder, keeping watch as the creature edged along the opposite side of the passage.
It looked different.
It had been injured in the explosion, she could see now. One of its six limbs had been blown off, and was now a stump, hanging uselessly at its side.
There had been damage to its back and shoulder, healed now, almost a year later, but she could see the scarring and patches where its fur hadn’t grown back.
It stopped directly opposite her and hunkered down, and not wanting it to see her as a threat, she lowered herself to the floor.
She looked into its slitted eyes.
She had once shielded the grahudi from a second shockgun shot during a chaotic escape attempt—not to save the grahudi but to save Hal, but the outcome had been the same.
Could the fact that it wasn’t automatically on the attack now mean it remembered the incident?
They had eyed each other afterward, and then gone their separate ways, and she’d never seen it again. Until now.
It was thinner than it had been. Mangy. Life since the base exploded had not been kind.
Imogen, who’d lived in a cage next to it for months, had found out that the grahudi were close to higher sentience, due to some illegal tweaks the Fitali had made to their planet. Their intelligence level was a dark secret the Fitali had tried to hide, and the Tecran had used to blackmail them.
Knowing that, and with it simply staring at her now, it didn’t exude the same menace it had before. It looked . . . diminished. Sad.
And most compelling of all, Bunny was not attacking it. He seemed content to observe, and that meant he didn’t think it was a threat.
“Do you remember me?” she whispered.
It made no sound, and she realized it never had. Not once had she ever heard it make a noise.
There was a slithering sound to her left, and the frien came into view.
There would be no reasoning with that.
Fee pushed her back against the wall and levered herself up, silver rod out.
Bunny ran down her arm, and leaped forward, and the frien, confused, lifted its front feet, about to rise up as it had when she’d come across one in the desert, using its tail and back legs for balance.
Bunny was quick. So quick he’d freaked the Grih out when they first encountered him. Before she could work out what her role needed to be, Bunny’d jumped up, slashed the frien’s underbelly, and then disappeared behind it.
It began to thrash, twisting as it fell, and Bunny appeared on the top of its head and plunged a razor sharp foreleg into its eye.
Alrighty, then.
The frien dropped down, twitched, and then lay still.
There was movement from the side, and Fee moved back against the far wall, giving the grahudi space as it slunk forward.
It poked the frien and then looked at her.
“Help yourself, if that’s your thing,” she said.
She edged around the frien and kept walking, and Bunny ran beside her.
She glanced back, but the grahudi seemed to have vanished, and she wondered if there was a way for the Fitali to come and take it back to its home, because it was not better off here, that was for sure.
It could have left the base, but it hadn’t, and that gave her pause. Because she bet it had tried, but it had the same issues she had. No water, no easy transport out.
She saw the glimmer of light up ahead that was from more than just the tunnel fixtures and sped up.
And there was the grate across the tunnel entrance that she and Hal had used before.
She approached it cautiously and tried the door that was built into the grate. It was locked.
She stepped back. She didn’t have the code this time, and no access to Eazi to discover what it could be.
There were holes in the wall around it, and she guessed it was used by the grahudi and the frien when they wanted to come and go.
The air from outside was furnace hot now that the sun had passed midday, pressing against her like heat from an open oven.
Even if she could get through, would it be wise without a runner waiting to pick her up?
And given the only possible route without the codes was to try to squeeze through a frien tunnel . . .
Hard no.
She assumed if Bunny could open the grate for her, he’d have done it already.
She leaned against the metal bars, to think through her options, and jumped back.
“Ow.” The grate was so hot it burned her.
Time for a change of plan.
By now, someone had probably found Bart and his friend, and they’d be looking for her.
She’d need to come up with a new way out, or pretend not to have gotten too far in her escape.
She turned to face down the tunnel, and started walking back.