Hunter (14 page)

"Of course,
Inspector, but I've found something you might need." Doctor Dunwood
looked at them, his eyes flicking between Nova and
Briggles.

"Well? Do I
have to throttle it out of you?" Briggles said. His face was still
red, although Nova suspected it was more from anger and frustration
than from exhaustion.

"No, sir.
It's just that at the moment the underground is their domain; it's
dark, we may as well be fighting them at night time."

"Very good,
Dunwood. Why are you telling me things I already know?" Briggles
wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and looked up at the
thin doctor.

"I just mean
that if we can find a way to get light in there then things will be
back in our favour."

"I already
knew that," Briggles said with a resigned sigh. "The problem is we
don't have any way to get enough light in there. Our torches aren't
enough and there are so many tunnels and turns we could never get a
light to shine everywhere."

"Maybe not,
but what if it was enough to light up say, the main corridors. From
there your men could shine their torches into the side rooms and
check for lecheons."

Briggles
frowned and looked over his officers. They were scared and
worried.

"I don't know
if they'll go back down there."

Nova grunted
and kicked the ground with her left foot. "It's not their decision.
You're the Inspector. Now is as good a time as any. I think Corvus
is injured, maybe even fatally."

"What?"
Briggles and Dunwood turned to look at her with their mouths
hanging open.

"I managed to
get him with a wooden spike," Nova said with a shrug.

"If their
coven leader is down, then it's the best time to strike!" Dunwood
said.

"You're
right," Briggles said with a decisive nod. "I'll get
every—"

The ground
rumbled and heaved beneath them. The dirt all around them lifted as
if it was caught by a wave and Nova was thrown into the air. When
she fell back down, she landed with her knees bent and managed to
stay on her feet.

Some of the
others weren't so prepared. They sprawled across the ground, their
arms and legs splayed, their bodies landing with dull thuds. Some
cried out in pain as elbows and hips were thrown against the
dirt.

The
well-manicured lawn had suddenly become an uneven tumble of dirt
and grass, lying in dips and ridges, and chaos erupted.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"My lord! What happened?" Selene cried as Corvus
stumbled down the corridor.

Corvus
groaned but didn't say anything. He clutched the bloody wound in
his chest. It oozed blood and his shirt and arm were stained red
with it. Pain radiated out from the wound, pumping to every
extremity of his body with each beat of his heart. He felt the
poison spreading. For the moment it was confined to his upper chest
but it wouldn't be long before it took over the rest of his
body.

Selene
glanced at his wound. "Oh," she whispered.

Corvus didn't
need to look. He knew how bad it was; if the pain wasn't enough,
Selene's face said it all. He ignored her and kept shuffling down
the corridor. Selene fell into step beside him and without a word
slipped her arm around his waist, taking some of his weight. He
breathed through his nose in an effort to keep calm, to slow his
heart rate, and stop the poison from spreading so
quickly.

He walked
with Selene through the hotel. What the inspectors hadn't found was
the adjoining tunnel. The lecheons had been busy in their time on
Boullion Five. There were tunnels snaking through the whole city.
They could take a traveller almost anywhere, if that traveller knew
what he was doing.

"Set it off,"
he whispered.

"Are you
sure?" Selene said, her eyes were wide, "Not everyone has been
accounted for."

Corvus
gritted his teeth. "Set it off. They're not coming."

Selene nodded
and slipped her arm out from around Corvus's waist. She turned back
the way they had come and her footsteps disappeared down the
corridor. Corvus continued forward on his own. He pushed himself as
hard as he could; he couldn't afford to go any slower. Angry blood
pumped through his face as he thought of his coven. They should
have waited for him! But no, he'd given them the instruction to
retreat to their hideout if things got bad.

Things had
got bad.

"Come on.
We've got to make it to the end of this tunnel," Selene said as she
sprinted back down the corridor after him. She grabbed hold of his
arm and pulled.

Corvus winced
at the pain that shot through his body from her touch. He didn't
curse her; she was right. They had to get moving out of this place
or they would die anyway. He hobbled down the corridor. The bend
was just in sight. A few more feet and they would be in safety.
Just a little further.

The ground
heaved.

A deep boom
rocketed through the catacombs and Corvus hurtled forward, slamming
into the opposite wall. Selene went with him and their bodies
toppled over one another. He ducked his head in close to his chest
and kept his left hand locked around his chest. The worst thing he
could do was let go of that wound. Without the pressure the wood
residue would see him dead in no time.

After a few
seconds the ground calmed down. The rumbling slowed and Corvus's
ears began to recover from the initial blast. He struggled onto his
knees and then pushed himself back to his feet. The tunnel ahead
was still clear.

"At least the
explosives still work," Selene said, using the wall to haul herself
up.

They
staggered on down the tunnel.

The
explosives would keep the inspectors busy while he and his coven
made escape plans. They had a hard choice. They could give up now,
leave Boullion Five and go back to the home-world or one of the
far-outer galaxies; or they could make a stand here. Staying would
be a risky choice; Byzant's coven could reappear at any moment and
the bitch helping the inspectors was good; too good.

Corvus
groaned as another burst of pain shot into his limbs. Why was he
worrying about their decision when the odds were good that he
wouldn't even make it back to the hideout? The poison was already
seeping out of his wound and into other regions of his body. There
was almost no cure for a wood poisoning this severe. The shallow
ones could be dealt with; his immune system would take care of it.
But a deep chest wound was usually fatal.

"Just a
little further," Selene said, laying her hand on Corvus's
back.

He glanced
down at her out of the corner of his eye. "You know you make a good
leader," he whispered. "Why didn't you fight to be prime
female?"

Selene
shrugged and a sad smile split her face. "Would you have chosen me
if I had?"

Corvus was
quiet as he thought on that. "Probably not; Laticia and I were
meant to be."

Selene
nodded. "I've always thought that we get exactly what we deserve in
the end. If I was meant to be a coven leader then one day the
opportunity would come, without me having to fight tooth and nail
with someone like Pamielle."

"You believe
in fate?" Corvus said with a croaking chuckle. Fate was a very
human concept.

Selene
shrugged and kept her eyes on the tunnel in front of them. "Who can
say? But look at it this way. I am now prime female of one of the
most powerful covens, so at least for now my theory is
working."

Corvus nodded
and the corner of his mouth flipped up. He couldn't argue with
that, for the moment at least her strategy
was
working. There were many females
who would kill, and in fact had killed, for the opportunity, while
Selene had fallen straight into it.

"What
happened?" Winton ran out of the shadows.

"Wooden
spike. Tell Ravyn he needs help now," Selene said, unable to hide
the relief on her face when Winton appeared.

Winton dashed
back into the shadows. There were voices from the darkness and then
the sound of activity.

"We're here
already?" Corvus said. Even through the agony and suffering he
hadn't realised they'd covered enough ground to reach the
hideout.

"Yep. Just
take a seat here; there you go," Selene said as she lowered him
onto a mattress. It smelt of dust and age. He didn't mind. He was
so tired; the exhaustion seeped into his bones. At least now he was
free to sleep. To drift away…

***

"No doubt
about it boss," said a young man in dirt-stained overalls.
"Explosives. They were set about the tunnels deliberately, made
them collapse. It would have killed anyone who was
inside."

"But were
they inside Gerry? That's what I want to know," Briggles
said.

They stood in
a make-shift tent beside the upturned grass which was the sight of
the explosion. Nova stood off to one side, watching the exchange.
The man in the overalls was a hired explosion specialist; he and
his team had been crawling over the rubble all
afternoon.

"We haven't
seen any signs of bodies. Also, it looks like there is more to the
tunnels than your building plans suggest," Gerry said, scratching a
dirt-covered hand through his equally dirty hair.

"What do you
mean?" Briggles asked.

"Just here,"
Gerry said, pointing at the blueprint of the tunnels, to a region
of solid wall. "It looks like there's another tunnel leading off
from here; it heads back towards the city central."

"More
tunnels," Briggles groaned.

"It's not the
first time I've seen this kind of thing," Gerry said. "All the
sites I've been to, there have been tunnels under those too. It's
like there's a whole other city underground."

"Bloody
lecheons," Briggles swore.

"Do you need
my boys for anything else?" Gerry said. "They don't like messing
around with lecheon business."

"No, they can
go. Thank you," Briggles said, waving his hand towards the
door.

Gerry nodded,
sauntering out of the tent towards the throng of people gathered
outside.

"So, they got
out," Nova said.

"Yes."

"We can't do
much more tonight. I say we get a good sleep and start again in the
morning. They could be anywhere in the city by now. We'll have to
start the search again tomorrow."

"You're
right," Briggles replied. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Nova nodded
and followed Gerry out of the tent.

***

"You have no
idea," Nova said as she shovelled another mouthful of stew into her
mouth. "We're running around in circles. These lecheons have got
control of this planet; the people here just haven't realised it
yet."

Tanguin
looked at Nova from Crusader's large front screen. She had a bowl
of green in front of her which she was delicately spooning into her
mouth from time to time.

"There's no
way to track them?" Tanguin asked.

"Just the
usual; heat signatures and stuff, but that's no good because they
look just like humans in a heat scan. They're hiding in the city,
we just don't know where."

"Damn," said
Tanguin.

"Tell me
about it." Nova grimaced. She'd only been on Boullion Five for a
few days and yet it felt like a lifetime. All she felt now was
frustration at the ridiculous case; even the reward was becoming
less appealing.

"You can
always just leave," Tanguin said. "The space-race isn't far away
and if you win that, the money will be the same as what you're
getting there."

Nova nodded.
She'd had the same thought multiple times since running into the
lecheons.

"I started
it," Nova said. "If it wasn't for me the lecheons would only kill
one or two people every now and then. Now it's a war. I've got to
see it through to the end."

Tanguin
sighed. "I know."

"I should get
some sleep," Nova said. "I'll talk to you later."

"Later.".

Crusader's
front screen went blank and Nova collapsed back into her chair with
a sigh.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Nova blinked her bleary eyes as she rolled over
and hung her legs over the edge of the bed. She glanced at the neon
blue time display and groaned. Five am.

"Who's
calling me this early?" she mumbled as she stumbled out of her
sleeping pod towards the pilot's chair.

"Communication from the Inspector," Crusader said as Nova sat
down.

"Put it
through," Nova sighed, a sinking sense seeping through her tired
body.