Mission To Mahjundar (37 page)

The sergeant shook his head, continuing to fire a steady barrage of charges down the roof. “We’ve got antivenom for those snakes we were briefed about. Maybe this poison works on the nervous system the way venom does? Best I can do. Want me to give it a try?”

“Sure, better than nothing. Change places with me. Give me your blaster.” Squeezing past Johnny, Mike took his place at the barricade.
 

Dragging his medkit out from the pile of their gear, Johnny searched through the contents, finally locating the set of injects he wanted. Hurriedly he shot the contents of the first directly into Saium’s heart, speaking to Shalira, as he did so. “I can't sit here and wait. Can you take this—” He shoved the second sealed hypo into her hand. “Count to one hundred, set it on his chest here and push this.” He demonstrated the necessary motions, placing her right hand where the drug needed to be injected, moving the thumb of her left hand over the tiny button.
 

Gun forgotten on the ground at her side, Shalira cradled her guardsman in her arms, tears coursing down her cheeks. She swiped one hand across her face and nodded. “Of course. Leave him to me.” She started counting.
 

Johnny slithered back across the roof to the barricade.
 

“I think we've gotten all the archers out of the way,” Mike said. “At least for now. Here's your blaster. The casualties got to be too much for whatever motivational technique the priests were using. Most of the survivors can’t get to the ladders fast enough.”
 

“The stairs!” Everett yelled. Johnny rose enough to see over the edge of the wall and knocked three more attackers off the narrow stairs with well-placed shots. Then his blaster flickered on the next shot and fell silent.
 

“Take Saium’s,” Mike said, handing it over. “I'm about out, too. Everett?”
 

“Same here.”
 

The three men slumped behind the wall and the barricade, taking a welcome breather while the enemy regrouped. Johnny was checking his blaster. “If the priests can whip their rabble into one more mass attack—”

“Yeah, I know. I can do the math. Maybe we can repel one more attack, but certainly not two. I think we're about out of time and luck, gentlemen,” Mike said calmly despite the cold knowledge in his bones that the end of the battle had come. He spared a moment to glance at Shalira, who’d given Saium his second injection and was whispering reassurances into his ear. She was trying to keep him from doing himself further injury as he twitched and convulsed. His eyes were screwed shut and his teeth were clamped into his lower lip so hard he was bleeding.

Even with the antivenom injects, the prognosis looked grim for Saium.

Mike met Johnny's steady gaze. “I think it’s time to break out the antigrav disk.”

“No other choices left.” Johnny nodded. Tucking his blaster into his belt, he went to the pile of packs behind the table and rummaged for a moment before tossing Mike a black box.

“You realize this is a suicide run,” Everett asked. “I’m on board with the idea, but even if one disk can somehow support all of us, once the enemy realizes we’re not here anymore, they’ll rush the place. We’ll be pretty easy targets during the first part of the descent.”

Mike slid to the relative protection of the table barricade, Everett right behind him. “Yeah, I know, but we’re not going to be taken alive. We escape, or we die in the attempt.”

“What’s the plan?” Shalira asked, gazing from one man to the next.

Mike activated the antigrav mechanism with a flick of the wrist. Glowing as it took shape, a thin blue light flowed out until it was about the size of a small, two-inch-thick carpet. Strapping the controller to his palm, Mike directed the glowing blue sheet over the wall, leaving it floating next to the parapet. “We’re going to lower ourselves to the bottom of the canyon. Try to find some flat place big enough to let the drone set down. Hope we don’t run into any more locals.”

“But we can’t abandon Saium,” she said, taking a stronger grip on her guardsman’s shoulders as if Mike proposed to tear her away.

 
“Don’t worry, I’m not leaving anyone behind. We’ll carry him.” Mike stowed his weapons to have his hands free.

“I assume you only have the one disk or we’d have bugged out of here the first night?” Everett said.

Mike nodded.

The other operator jerked a thumb at the antigrav. “It won’t carry five people.”

“Well, it’ll have to,” Mike said. “Better to trust the antigrav than stay here and die for sure. Now let’s go. I’ll carry Shalira. Johnny, you get Saium.”
 

Obediently, the sergeant bent over Saium as Shalira rose and moved aside. Attempting to hook his hands under the old man’s arms, Johnny met with resistance as Saium fended him off with a shaking hand.

Staring past him to Mike, Saium beckoned to him. “Major.” Saium grabbed Mike’s arm with surprising strength, yanking him closer. Features contorted in pain, a thin trickle of blood leaking from one nostril, the old man looked every one of his years and could hardly whisper. “I’m dying, we both know the poison is too strong for even your medicines. Save my princess, save yourself.”

“We don’t leave people behind,” Mike said.

“We better get a move on,” Johnny reported, voice calm. “They’re regrouping for the next wave.”

“We’re out of time,” Everett said. “Come on, what are we waiting for?”

“Fools.” Saium’s voice dripped scorn. It wasn’t clear whether he meant the Outworlders or the Nathlemeru. He cleared his throat with visible effort and spoke louder. “Sergeant, do you have any more explosive? The stuff you used to seal the tombs?” Saium’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

Back to them, keeping his attention locked on the far edge of the roof, where the next attack would come from, Johnny grunted. “Yeah, why?”

There was a moment of silence as tremors rocked the wounded man’s body and he clearly struggled to breathe, much less speak. Blood leaked from the corner of one eye. Hand to her mouth in horror, Shalira stared at her guardsman and then at Mike. “I forbid this.” Voice rising, Shalira fell to her knees beside Saium. “I’m not allowing you to sacrifice yourself for me. We’re taking you with us. You heard Mike.”

With an indrawn hiss of pain, he reached out to pat her arm. “Child, it’s a sacrifice I make gladly.”

Mike evaluated the old soldier for a moment, then nodded. “Johnny, activate the detonator and give it to Saium.” He leaned closer to the trembling man, holding out his hand. “I appreciate your gallantry, sir. Proud to have served with you.”

“Get my princess to safety,” Saium answered, grasping Mike’s hand feebly. “I’ll set off the explosion when they breach the tower, fool the ignorant ones into believing we all died. You’ll be able to escape to somewhere this ship of yours can land.”

“Don’t wait too long, sir,” Johnny said. He placed a rectangular, gleaming package next to Saium and curled the old man’s fingers around a small red ball. “You squeeze this, or you drop it. Either way, the stuff will explode. No more tower. Hell, the whole temple might go, if we’re lucky.”

Wheezing, each breath laborious, Saium nodded. “Good idea. Either way, I blow them to hell. Thank you.”

Mike hunkered down next to the princess who had collapsed weeping, hugging Saium. Gently, Mike tried to loosen her grip, but she resisted him, shaking her head as she locked her fingers. Exerting more strength, he tugged her away from her guardsman. “Sweetheart, we have to go.”

“Give me a smile to remember you by,” Saium said, patting her back with his free hand. “Please, Your Highness. When I step into the afterlife, I want to tell your mother how brave you are, how proud I am.”

Caught in Mike’s arms, hiccupping, she swallowed. “Please, give me a moment.” Mike released her. Placing her hand over Saium’s heart, she said, “I love you. You are my father, if not by blood, then because of your love for me and my mother.” Eyelashes starred with tears, she kissed him on the cheek, brushing his hair back from his brow. Saium held her close for a heartbeat before giving her a gentle push.

“There’s no more time,” he whispered. “If the gods be kind, I’ll be watching over you always.”

Mike pulled her to her feet. “Hang on to me,” he said, picking her up. Tucking the scepter into her belt, she wrapped her legs around his waist, arms locked behind his neck, burying her face against his chest.

“We gotta go
now
,” Johnny said, voice calm as ever. “They’re taking formation.”

 
“Good journey,” Mike told Saium.

Coughing, he got a better grip on the detonator. “And to you.”

Battle cries sounded on the temple roof. Hugging Shalira, Mike stepped over the crumbling wall onto the thin antigrav disk, allowing the device to latch onto his boots, ensuring he wouldn’t fall off. Johnny and Everett stepped up, one on either side of him, locking their arms together in a tight grip with him and Shalira in the middle. The disk dipped alarmingly, moving sideways. Mike held his breath, but the unit stayed strong. Beginning the descent along the cliff upon which the temple had been built, he had difficulty keeping his balance. They were descending much too rapidly, their combined weight taxing the mechanism.

 
“Wish we could go faster,” Johnny yelled. “If we’re too close we’re likely to get hit with debris or thrown off-balance by the shock wave. I set a fucking huge charge for Saium to blow.”

Mike heard a spurt of gunfire from above as their dying companion apparently mounted as much resistance as he could, to buy them time. “I’m trying to vector sideways but she’s overloaded, nonresponsive.” With his fingertips, he guided the controller into taking them on a westerly course as they descended.

In the next moment there was a giant explosion from above. The observatory tower vanished in a fireball, flames shooting in all directions, shock waves spreading through the atmosphere. Mike tightened his grip on Shalira as they were buffeted, as if in a hurricane. The thin adhesion between the anti grav pad and the soldiers’ boots was the only thing keeping all four of them from plunging to their deaths. Large chunks of the temple flew past, bouncing off the canyon walls, starting small landslides, shattering into dangerous shards ricocheting in all directions. Mike tried to put more distance between themselves and the striated rock walls, but the overstressed anti grav unit was balky. He figured they had several thousand feet to descend to the canyon floor.

Weeping, Shalira was clutching him. The damn scepter she insisted on keeping dug into his already painful ribs.

The rest of the trip to the bottom felt interminable. A small waterfall cascaded from the rocky ledges into the thin air at one point, rainbows shining in the mist as they floated past.

“I hope we’re not going to land in a river,” Johnny shouted.

“Not much I can do about it now.” The controller was overheating against his palm. Mike glanced down, evaluating the canyon floor, and hoped the surface was on the sandy side in case the antigrav cut off prematurely.

The unit’s humming sputtered and evened out again.

“I think she’s about done,” he yelled. “Brace yourselves for a fall.”

They were maybe ten feet above the dry riverbed forming the canyon floor when the antigrav unit gave out. Falling with the others in a tangled heap on the loose soil, Mike cushioned the impact for Shalira. Pain from his already broken ribs was so intense he nearly blacked out. Vision narrowed, vertigo assaulting him, he was dimly aware as Johnny and Everett carried him from the landing spot, into the shelter of a nest of boulders. Behind them a cavern stretched deep into the cliff.

The pain made it difficult to focus. Any attempt to inhale was met with stabbing agony. “We’ve got no idea what the situation is down here,” he said with as much strength as he could muster. “The Nathlemeru or their allies may patrol this area.” He could hardly hear his own voice. Clearing his throat, he said, “Stay alert. Take shelter in the cavern.”

Shalira sat cross-legged in the spot Johnny chose, next to Mike. Eyes misty, she stared at the canyon walls they’d descended, even though it was impossible to see to the top. Debris was still falling. “I hope it was quick. I hope he didn’t suffer.”

With difficulty, Mike looped his arm around her waist. “You allowed him to die the way he wanted, as a warrior in battle, saving all of us. Death by poison arrow would have been agonizing, drawn out.” He struggled for air. “No dignity.”

“Orders, sir?” Everett said, sliding the last few feet to take shelter behind the boulders with them.

“You can’t travel, Mike.” Johnny’s voice was tight, betraying his worry. “We can’t move you, likely you punctured a lung in the fall, given the symptoms. And I’ve got no meds.”

Through a haze of pain, Mike glanced at the terrain beyond the jumbled boulders providing them temporary shelter. “Bring the drone in here, probably enough clearance. Keep a sharp watch. There could be roving patrols.”

“Or more villagers,” Johnny added. “Plenty of tracks in the loose soil along the stream, as if regular traffic goes through here.”

“Just our luck on this damn mission,” Mike said. His chest was tight. He couldn’t draw in enough air no matter what he did, and the pain on each inhalation was crippling. Lack of oxygen in his bloodstream was making him lightheaded.