20

Hunter Height

crescendo poco a poco

gradually becoming louder

In MaxSec’s bustling thirty-fifth-floor hallway, a man in Thyrian blue saluted Ellet Kinsman. Briefly puzzled, she returned the gesture. He looked familiar. He must’ve gone through college either before her (he was built older, tall and well muscled) or after (but the face was so young).

“Captain Kinsman.” He shone a cordial smile. “Air Master Damalcon Dardy, Thyrian Alert Forces. I’m looking for General Caldwell, and the secretary sent me to you. Is he on a security assignment?”

He was older, then, and he ranked her. Ellet kept her static shield thick. “Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

“I just checked in from following up a Shuhr incident, and I’m only passing through. I wanted to introduce myself. However—” He touched her arm. Both pressed against a wall to allow a man steering a service cart to pass. “Since this obviously isn’t a place for private discussion, would you join me for lunch in the officers’ lounge?”

“Sir, the MaxSec lounge is expensive.”

His even-toothed grin softened her reserve. “Then I’ll take it out of my vital contacts budget.”

He did precisely that, presenting his ID disk to the host and insisting on a private booth with a north view. For half the hour, while she savored a salad of genuine Thyrian shellfish, he asked only about her interpretive work, and she found herself warming to him.

“Caldwell, then.” He spread garnetberry jam on his roll and switched to silent subvocalization. I mentioned him at the SO office, and I was given the impression Regional has been overloading him, hoping he’ll break or resign before they have to promote a Sentinel up to High command. What’s wrong? Where is he?

I don’t know precisely, she responded tightly, and it was enough of the truth to pass. He has gone with the Netaian woman, Firebird Angelo.

Dardy set down his roll and leaned across the booth. “What do you mean?”

Ellet remained stoic. When he turned up missing from duty, I put in for med leave to cover him and made a check at the depot. He took a ship, but they seem baffled too.

Dardy tapped a finger on the tabletop and eyed the hilly horizon. Well, they wouldn’t ask him any questions, he sent back. SO is SO. Have you reported him?

“Not yet,” she said aloud. She clenched her folded hands against the table.

“You’re not telling me everything about this Netaian woman.”

“No.”

Ellet sensed a slight apprehension. She’s connatural with him? he asked privately.

For one moment Ellet wished for the long, slow period of making acquaintance that outsiders experienced. No one but another Sentinel would expect to be shown so much, so quickly and intimately—but that was their way. It had made the starbred a people who couldn’t easily be divided or fooled. “Apparently so, sir.”

“That’s too bad.” Dardy made a wry face.

She kept her response as stony as she knew how to make it. “This is not the end of the matter.”

Dardy picked up his fork, speared a last mouthful of smoked fish, and chewed thoughtfully. The lounge quieted briefly as Mister Lithib rode in on his mobility chair.

“Tell me, then.” Dardy laid down his fork and pushed back his plate, now entirely sympathetic. How much do you know about where they’ve gone?

She frowned. Firebird’s people aren’t taking occupation well. She raised Brennen’s suspicion that certain action needed to be taken there on Netaia, although Tierna Coll herself ordered otherwise. She played on his pride and won. Ellet raised her head to meet the air master’s eyes and sent the painful admission. She won, sir.

Counter to orders? Dardy looked—and felt—stricken. Express or implied? Can the codes justify his action?

Express orders. I saw them given. As to our codes, I can’t say. That’s for the masters to judge.

Dardy shifted his muscular shoulders to lean sideways in the booth. “It might not be too late to make him stand back and think the issue through. Could they be intercepted? –The woman apprehended for escaping custody and Brennen called back for questioning? Or . . . is there someone there on Netaia who respects our kindred but might hold the woman there at home, to pacify the regime?”

“Governor Danton.” Pleased with the idea, Ellet sipped her kass. “He worked well with Brennen and wouldn’t want to see him in trouble, but Danton’s also close to the royal family. I assume that the queen wants her back.” Ellet felt no compulsion to tell Dardy what that return might mean to Firebird.

“Perfect,” he said. “Regional could alert Danton by the next messenger ship.” And we could maintain Thyrica’s hopes to get a Sentinel on the High command, he added silently.

Despite having found a genuine supporter, Ellet felt a pang of loss, for Brennen’s actions had declared his choice: Firebird, unless she refused him. Holding her emotions under tight rein, Ellet raised her kass cup.

Firebird was glad for the thermal suit and stiff teknahide boots as they picked a way down slick, frosty rubble and scree toward the woods. Underfoot, little alpine plants clung to pockets of soil, turning red and brown with the onset of cold weather. Many glistened, edged leaf by leaf with delicate frost crystals.

Just above the evergreen forest, Brennen stopped and waited for her. She slowed her pace to scan the Height again before they entered the trees. “There.” She pointed with a gray-gloved hand. “By the south wall. And another beyond the back gate.”

He followed her gesture with his eyes.

“And there’s another, walking along the west end of the grounds. See them?” she asked.

He nodded. “Three guards on morning duty.”

“And infrared scanners we can’t see. I think we’d better try that side tunnel first. It’s farther to walk, but the house is well covered.”

“Lead on.”

Another hour’s trudge took them up onto Thunder Hill, but at the entry site Firebird remembered, they found only a huge jumbled pile of stone. “Squill,” she exclaimed softly. “They blocked it. Recently, too.” She eyed the crushed vegetation, still green. “Can you . . .” She swept out her fingers as if levitating the rock pile aside.

High above her, Brennen peered down from the top of the pile. “That would take too much time and energy.” He step-jumped down to join her.

“And we’d better save our explosives for the laboratory. Still want to try the kitchens?”

“Infrared alarms fail sometimes,” he said. “If I can shoot one out over the service doors, we might have time to get in before they reactivate it.”

“We’ll have to get close. These are tiny ones.”

He dug into the pack and handed her two energy cubes, and she chewed them dry. “Here.” He dropped two more small, hard lumps into her hand.

Citrene! She popped both onto her tongue, then drank a gulp of water from his bottle. He shouldered the pack again and turned back down the hill.

They walked in silence, just to the right of a chute scoured bare of trees by avalanches. Wood smoke faintly perfumed the air, and the afternoon sky over the treeless swath was purest autumn blue.

As she watched a hunting kiel soar on rising air currents, a roaring silver streak sliced the sky. She ducked into the trees.

Brennen joined her, hands on her shoulders. “It’s an active place, all right.” Peering back, she saw him smiling. His apprehension must’ve run its course. He looked almost eager.

In a copse of barren, prickly bushes they rested out the afternoon, and they moved down at dusk. The high wall, once worked elegantly smooth, now wore the cracks of antiquity, and here and there stones had fallen, affording Firebird all the footholds she needed after Brennen boosted her. Lying flat atop the wall for a few seconds, she spotted house lights through the trees, warm yellow in the lower windows and dim blue above. A scent of roasted meat made her mouth water. Convinced no one was near, she slipped down inside, rested her feet on the heavy iron handrail that circled the wall’s inner surface—installed centuries ago by an elderly inhabitant—and then jumped backward down to the ground. Brennen followed.

When they reached the manicured tip of the forest, Firebird could see clearly into the kitchens. Lights still burned, and white-gowned cook staff hurried back and forth in front of southwest windows. She turned to Brennen, who stood in deep shadow behind another evergreen tree. He made no sign.

She looked up, startled by the almost starless twilit sky. Netaia was a splendid recluse at the Whorl’s end. The brightest points of faint, familiar constellations winked down as she hid and waited. She spotted Tallis in the rising Whorl. Tallis looked somehow different now. She’d lived under that star as a sun.

The kitchen lights went out. Firebird shot Brennen a quizzical look.

He shook his head, and they waited in stillness a few minutes longer. Slow, even footsteps approached. A guard passed, vanishing around a broad corner.

Brennen flung himself prone and steadied his blazer on one hand. Firebird held her breath and averted her eyes from the energy pistol’s muzzle.

He took a deep breath. Then another.

Then he touched the stud. A single flash fled out the corner of her eye. She waited a moment longer, until Brennen led out at a run.

She came close behind. As Brennen tried the handle, she flattened herself beside the kitchen door. The iron latch clicked as it released. He started to open the huge wooden slab, but before they could steal through, it ground on its hinges. Brennen froze.

Firebird bit her lip.

He pressed up and pulled the door outward a little farther, then motioned her inside.

The great kitchens stood empty, lit only by cracks below inner doors. Firebird followed the outside wall left a few meters to the kitchen store.

Brennen zipped the gloves off his suit, then knelt and pressed an open hand to the lockbox at waist level. Firebird watched, intrigued. In a moment, she heard another soft click inside the mechanism. Brennen pushed the door open. They squeezed into the pantry and closed the heavy panel behind them. A dim, pale green light sprang up beside her, Brennen’s pocket luma. The tiny cube illuminated a ghostly green sphere around them as they threaded their way between shelves of foodstuffs and cooking equipment.

At the end of the pantry, a palm lock guarded the cellar stairs. Brennen dropped again to his knees.

“Wait,” Firebird whispered. She pocketed her own gloves and pressed her bare right palm to the panel.

The door slid away.

Firebird smiled and murmured, “Well. They haven’t changed the locks.”

She led stealthily around the wedge-shaped stone steps that she remembered so well. They widened into the tunnel system, where cool air made her face tingle. After circling once, she could see an orange glow beneath. Brennen pocketed the little luma. She steadied herself with her fingertips on the left wall. In a few steps more she came out in an alcove that led to a cross tunnel. Its left branch passed eastward, toward the area they’d agreed to search first for Cleary’s laboratory, but Firebird recalled a large chamber at the center of the system. It would have to be crossed if they traversed this level. Brennen motioned her to remain in the stairwell. He drew his shock pistol. Stealthily he walked forward into what seemed an unnatural brightness, then disappeared left.

She edged along the right wall to the end of the shadow, drew her own pistol, and waited. Brennen returned, shaking his head. She pointed the other way. They scurried down the right branch, then made another quick right turn, down into darkness.

After they spiraled down another stone stair past the second level, he stopped. “She’s here,” he whispered.

“Phoena?”

“Yes. There were men in the main chamber, talking. They mentioned both her and Cleary.”

“As if we had any doubt. That chamber would’ve been risky to cross anyway. Let’s go without light, as long as we can still cover ground.”

Edging downward in total darkness, Firebird found his firm handhold reassuring. The wall vanished beneath her skimming fingers. “Here,” she said softly. “Eastbound.”

Firebird led now. As they drew on, a yellow glow grew stronger. At last Brennen whispered, “Stay here,” and crept on alone. She watched in dim light, a little aggravated at being left behind. He paused, listening with some epsilon sense, then went on.

Straining her ears, Firebird heard footsteps from the west. “Brenn!” she called in a penetrating whisper. Before he could join her, she drew and aimed toward the steps. Her tiny ted targeting beam showed movement. She fired. There came a surprised shout from up the corridor, and then silence. An afterimage of her weapon glowed faintly in her eyes.

“Quick!” he said. “There’s a guard up ahead. He’s sure to have heard.” They sprinted back westward, as silently as two people wearing boots can run.

A north-branching corridor left the straight hall. “Here,” breathed Firebird. She turned right in the dark and plunged downward only moments before laser fire lit the passage.

This tunnel’s floor was more broken. Brennen tripped after only a few steps. She heard the scuffle as he caught himself, then the luma sprang back to life. Again she pushed herself to run. The faint greenish glow made her bare hands look sickly and pale but sped their progress around the long curve east toward the main northbound tunnel. Several side passages led off into blackness. Their shadowy depths mocked the intrusion of light, faint though it was. Here and there, mineral crystals caught the emerald light and glittered eerily.

Once the curve had been put behind them, protecting them from following fire, they stopped to rest.

Panting, Firebird leaned against a smooth spot on the wall. “Unfortunately, now they know someone’s here. If they split up they can have us like slinks up a tree.”

Brennen was listening again. “No one’s coming.”

“He’s reporting, then. Now we worry about fumigation.”

“We have chem suits and sniffers.”

“There’s also that spur up under Thunder Hill. I was here once when they gassed for rodents, and I remember they talked about how heavy zistane vapor is, and how it sinks. The spur might be safe for a while. But it’s a dead end.”

“I do have an idea—” He killed his luma. “Get down.”

Firebird dropped onto the hard stone and rolled against a wall, fumbling blind for her shock pistol. Nearby, a stealthy step broke the stillness. Then another, quieter yet. She held her breath. Then rocks, pistol, and Brennen gleamed crimson as he fired.

She heard him breathe deeply, and then the luma shone out again, held high in his left hand as he aimed his blazer steadily up the tunnel. Cautiously, she got back to her feet.

“I felt something alive back there,” he whispered.

No sound flowed down the shaft toward them. Brennen slipped her the luma and backtracked warily up into blackness.

When he came back, he shook his head. “There’s no body. But I don’t feel it anymore.”

“Something from down one of those side passages?” She shivered.

“Does anything live down there?”

“I don’t think so. But the staff used to tell us monster stories that kept Carradee awake for nights on end.” She moved a step closer, and he reached for her hand. “Let’s go,” she urged, stepping out.

“Wait a minute.” He pulled her back.

“You said you had an idea.”

“It’s risky,” he whispered.

“It couldn’t be riskier than waiting to be fumigated. What is it?”

“To split up. I’d like you uplevel, out of the danger of gas. We have to find the researchers’ main data base. You’ll recognize the scientists.”

“Yes. But—”

“If Phoena fumigates, the researchers should evacuate uplevel, especially if they have ground-floor offices. I’ll suit up and keep working.”

She stiffened, suspicious. “This is something you’d thought of already, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. It was always a possibility, but I hoped we wouldn’t have to try it. You’ll be in particular danger if we separate.”

“I can take care of myself. I know Phoena pretty well, and the Height even better.”

He drew her shock pistol and blazer from their belt holsters, checked both charges, then handed them back. “Can you kill, if you have to?”

“Not with this.” She holstered the shock pistol on her right side, for an easier draw.

“They’re deadly at point-blank range,” he reminded her, “but the blazer is better. You could have to kill in self-defense. Can you?”

“Brenn, of course I—”

“Face to face?” He pressed her hand. “Even from a cockpit, you tried to put down the Verohan interceptors, not the pilots.”

“I see your point. I—” She sometimes dreamed about the pilots she’d shot down at Veroh. She did hope they’d survived. “To save my life . . . yes, Brenn. I think I could. If I’m careful, I won’t have to.” Finally, it hit home: “Phoena would kill me now, if I gave her the chance,” she realized aloud.

“Remember that,” he said.

“Yes.” She wrested her mind back to their plan of attack. “The only real trick will be getting into the tubes.”

Shipboard, they’d discussed the Height’s hydraulic network, drilled through granite walls in a previous century to carry solar-heated water into freshing rooms, kitchens, and lower-level labs. As a child Firebird found the abandoned hollow system, far wider than the pipes it held, and explored it over a series of summers. It made an ideal hiding spot from Phoena, something she frequently needed. Painstakingly she’d cleared away obstructions until she could negotiate the entire system, and she kept it her own secret in this carefully guarded place. Assuming she hadn’t changed shape too much as she matured, she should still be able to use it.

“Listen, then,” he said. “If those researchers have data desks uplevel, destroy them. Any way you can. A shock pistol can fatally surge a main drive, too.”

“I suppose it could.” She wondered what kind of situation he’d survived to bring back that trick.

“Give me an hour to lay charges, then half an hour to get clear enough to detonate them. When I’m away, I’ll send off a quest pulse homed on your feelings, as I did on Tallis.”

She nodded.

“If you’ve destroyed the uplevel offices or confirmed there aren’t any, and gotten off the Height, concentrate on something strongly pleasing when you feel that probe. I’ll touch off the charges.”

“Off the Height,” she repeated. “Airstrip?”

“Perfect. Get a plane ready while I’m on my way. But if you’re not clear when you feel me call, answer with fear. I’ll feel it. I’ll come for you.” He opened a side pocket of the black pack while he spoke. “And here’s one more thing.” He handed her a palm-sized touch activator card. “I’ll carry the explosives close to the lab and arm them before I do anything else. Blow them if I don’t call.”

She touched the card with one finger, shaken by his trust. He was putting himself at her mercy. “But you might be close. Surely it won’t come to that, Brenn.”

“It could. Could you do that, too?”

“I . . .” She swallowed. “No.”

He slipped the card into her hip pocket. “I’d make it an order if I were your superior officer. Think. If it comes down to that, I want you to. The activation sequence is V-E-R-O-H.”

“I won’t forget that,” she murmured.

“We can’t let them devastate another world.”

Abruptly she realized he carried his ancestors’ world on his conscience, just as she carried Veroh. She nodded.

Within minutes, they cautiously approached the main tunnel north to the airstrip. Firebird peered out into its breadth. Everburners gleamed, imbedded in glossy black walls. Its floor had recently been scored by vehicular traffic. Even Brennen sensed no one nearby.

She met his eyes for one last time. “Thank you for everything, Brenn. I hope it works.”

He took her in his arms. “Go with His protection, Mari.” He kissed her, started to draw away, then reached for her again. She clutched him, wishing uselessly that their paths had crossed in peaceful, trustful times.

He stepped away. “Start timing now. An hour and a half.”

He turned back down the side passage, and Firebird headed upward at a quiet jog. The paved lane was as still as a tomb, and she knew it could soon be hers, if something went wrong.

Where she reached the first level, the tunnel ended in a chamber just east of the main hall. She remembered a maintenance hatch in there, the nearest hydraulic access. Drawing her shock pistol, she stepped out into the chamber and listened hard. Elevators pulsing, a distant shout, her own heartbeat: she heard nothing immediately threatening, so she took half the ten meters to the opposite wall at a dead run.

Bootsteps clattered off to her right. She dropped, rolled, and came up shooting. A red-collared figure fell heavily. She dashed to the floor-level access panel, knelt down, and started popping out tracker bolts. The smooth rectangular slab loosened in her fingers. Meticulously she slid one edge outward, lifting as she moved it, leaving no mark on the black stone floor. Then she squeezed herself into the hollow beyond. Two white polymer pipes ran up and down along one side of a shaft that could’ve held eight—was intended for eight, she guessed. It was snug, particularly at shoulders and hips, but she fit. As she pulled the panel home, voices echoed out in the chamber.

Extending her arms, she grabbed one pipe, wedged her feet against opposite sides, and shinnied upward in utter darkness.

Thick stone dampened all sound above her, below, and on all sides. Not even the occasional scuttering of small trapped creatures livened the hollow tonight. She wrenched herself upward another three armlengths, then rested a minute. Now that the first claustrophobic minute had passed, she felt safer in this dark sanctum than she’d felt since leaving Brennen.

Brenn. She twisted her arm and checked the time-lights on her wristband. She’d already used fifteen minutes. She had to hurry.

But the tube was slow going, particularly after she wriggled over into a horizontal cross passage. At one point it narrowed so tightly that she shimmied back a meter, eased out of the heavy thermal shirt and pants, and pushed them ahead of her, shivering and collecting scratches from the cold granite, until she passed the constriction. After that, she struggled back into the garments but left them unfastened, and soon she was glad she had. Three more times, she needed to shed every millimeter.

Finally, scraped and stinging, she judged that she had nearly reached the safest place to pass into the house. Another five minutes’ creep put her at the end of that hollow with an upward passage directly overhead. Once, it had held the feed tube to the collectors. Trying not to stir a deep pile of dust and small skeletons at the bottom of the drop, she worked herself up into a standing position, then patted the wall for a remembered crack between wood and stone.

After a minute’s search she located it, and then the widest prying spot, two hands lower than she expected. She’d grown since first finding it. Cautiously she wedged two fingers inward. Gripping the wooden panel, she pushed it a centimeter. Then she waited. Watched. Listened. Just past this wall had been a walk-in wardrobe used primarily by staff. No light came through the opening. She pushed gently again and met squashy resistance. Linens, she hoped. She gave it another shove.

The wardrobe was silent, but shouting and heavy running steps echoed in the halls. Cautiously she squeezed out of the hollow into a dark north bedroom.

Movement caught her eye, the hall door slowly opening. She dashed across the room toward the inner wall and pressed behind the door’s path of swing. A shadow cast by the hall light appeared on the floor. Another House Guard slunk toward the open wardrobe.

She drew her shock pistol. One silent shot left him senseless and Firebird armed with another Netaian service blazer. She tucked it into her gun belt, then eyed the unconscious guard. She didn’t think he’d seen her, but she didn’t want to take the risk. She dragged him into the wardrobe and barricaded him in with the heaviest looking chair in the room. Then she crept out into the yellow-lit hall.

The sound of footsteps sent her dashing for a utility room on the inner wall. Someone passed by and out of hearing. She tiptoed on, zigzagging between inner and outer rooms. What luck Phoena hadn’t thought to reprogram the palm locks against her! Undoubtedly the House Guards thought they’d secured this hall already. Even Phoena hadn’t expected her to come back.

Behind the fourth outer door she heard Dr. D’Stang and Baron Parkai, arguing loudly about having been dragged from their downlevel beds. She smiled grimly. If they’d gone to sleep without complaining, they would’ve been harder to find.

She pressed her palm to the slick black panel and heard the latch release. Then she secured her grip on her shock pistol and elbowed the door open wide.