The 6th of Six (The Legend of Kimraig Llu) (36 page)

Hunter Cullen helped his brother Curtis settle Breen’s head on his shoulder, next to his right cheek. She blocked when she felt them probing her mind, sending a message of searing pain to burn each of them. Hunter Cullen quickly lifted her higher, closer to his ear. She whispered.

She felt Kimraig probing as well. Weak, damaged, but there none the less, letting her know he was leading their column regardless of the price. How had he managed to gain control once again? She felt his anguish at each step as he climbed using his hand on the stair rail to ease his effort. His pain could give her a road to drain him of every thought.

She would not relax her block. He would be inside her head if she let it slip one small notch—it happened before. Instead, she nuzzled up to her son’s ear and playfully nipped as she had done since birth. A substitute for a kiss, an old wet nurse had said, lamenting the loss of her own offspring sent to the training camps at birth. Breen knew how to kiss; she just never kissed her sons.

“Once Kimraig shows us his safe place, set Yates on his errand,” she whispered to Hunter Cullen. “Give him the words ‘Mistress Ann,’ tell him to repeat it twice as if it were one word. That code will bring troops here in a rush. He will know what to do.”

Hunter Cullen did not bother to answer. He let her see the success he had achieved when he had found her. His pride rebuilt by Kimraig when he had praised him for saving her. It was not only him personally, he had explained, who needed Hunter Curtis to use his strength, but all of them. When he knew his mother understood, his thought block went up immediately, protecting his instructions. He felt no loyalty to Kimraig only to his mother.

Brody-1, barely standing, was waiting at the door to the stairwell. She motioned them to fall in line. There was one Trooper with her, only one. These two would have their back as they climbed stairs to the floor above. Their original goal was on that floor.

Strong arms cradling her weight was not enough. Each step jarred the healing wound, jolting a moan she could not control. At the halfway landing, her sons attempted to switch her from one to the other. She held on with her one arm, fearing the transfer would be brutal. It turned out to be no worse than it had been the first time.

They all went up the stairs, one painful step after another.

Soon they were standing in the middle of the short hallway across from the elevators in the middle of the building. Blessed light streamed its warmth from the broken windows at each end of the high, wide passage. A neat pallet of familiar rags lay arranged just past the last elevator doors.

No,
she screamed inside as Hunter Cullen lowered her. She would not lay in that ragged filth.

These rags are clean—by the bubbles,
he assured her.

The slight comfort to her bottom as he sat her down helped, and if he could find more of these rags, it would be okay. As the curious odor of the seashore cloyed about her, she relaxed and lay back..

“Courtesy of your former Hunter,” Hunter Cullen said as he stood above her.

Of course it was. Kimraig was such an enigma, always thinking of her regardless of her attitude to him. Never once thinking of backing away when they disagreed, he simply arranged her demands to his interpretation. Whether she was his Queen, Leader, Mistress of his Building or lover, he was more than competent. Above it all, he owed his allegiance to the Wicca first, not her. Pity, he had to understand they would cut his throat on a whim, but he never once wavered. Before the cutting, he would get a hearing in front of the council—one chance to argue his case.

She remembered his attitude when she had warned him of assassins in the hallways the night before their trip to One Nine.

“I will take my chances in the hallways.”

“This is the place,” Kimraig’s voice announced, chasing her musings away.

Standing in front of a tall section of marble, floor-to-ceiling wall, Kimraig called out again. “On your toes now, let us hope there are no surprises inside.”

Breen had to rock herself back to the present to keep up.

Marta and Luna were at his side as he pressed firmly on a section near the middle of the wall, looking no different from the whole. Panels in the marble tiles opened out, right and left, like small cabinet doors. He stepped back and motioned to the two Crossers, who then moved forward. Each pulled one large handle out of the cabinet and pushed the huge sections of wall without luck. They used their shoulders and pushed against the marble. Each side creaked once and began to move. The twin Hunters had to help.

The first large door opened with a pop, releasing the vacuum inside. The space filled with air from the broken windows in the hall, almost taking them into the room with it. They righted themselves, and began to force the remaining door to the opposite wall.

The doors hinged, like big brothers to the little flaps that hid the handles, which they had pulled to release the locks that held the two together. They cantilevered perfectly, their four-foot thick bulk fitted seamlessly against each wall. Steel catches slid out of the hidden recesses clamping each four-foot thick, twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot slab, into place. The vestibule inside, long in the dark, reluctantly gave way to the light from their hallway—no end, only darkness at the bottom of a funnel.

Although the entire end of the room was open, the hallway light seemed reluctant to enter.

“LaJay, open the far doors. We need light in here.” Kimraig wobbled a little as her weight brushed past him and disappeared into the funnel.

“I will light a torch and join her. That might help.” Hunter Cullen offered.

“No need. She sees quite well in the dark.” Kimraig smiled, blue lights indeed.

An echo reached them, of metal rasping and swinging heavily. The same rasping came again, turning to clatter as chain banged hard on the marble floor. LaJay had obviously thrown the chain aside to clear the way. Metallic tinkering, then a faint double click ushered a thin shaft of vertical light from the late afternoon sunshine. Her tall form blocked less than half.

She slipped inside leaving the light as only a long sliver. Returning quickly, she slid the door, and its twin, open until her tall thin form walked easily through.

“All clear,” the sound wave of her shout echoed hungrily back to them.

It was not all clear. The left side of the huge room held piles of rags. Trooper clothing along with their weapons scattered in a tight arc around more piles. Hunter’s armor and clothing bunched just behind. Against the wall, the hollow armor of two Queens, a gruesome portrait of their defensive position failing against superior force.

“Brody-1, post guards please. Hunter Curtis, move the wounded inside to the far room.” Kimraig waited for the remainder of their combined troops to pass, wondering if he could make it to the door himself. No need to worry, LaJay appeared mysteriously at his side taking part of his weight. It was as if she belonged there—part of him.

“We found your missing troops,” she said.

Chapter 15. About Those Doors

With LaJay’s help, Kimraig felt a little stronger. As always, he wondered if he would know which battle would be his final test. This one was shaping up to be just that. If their enemy communicated in any way, he would try negotiations first. With him in this battered condition, a battle with a child could be tough.

The waiting turned his thoughts inward. One thing he had not considered was the presence of two women protecting his back. Breen owned him. The other a woman he wanted to be there, LaJay, a child woman, just old enough for her Mating Ritual. He knew he could not get past her youth, but he wanted her with him just the same. Her presence allowed him to remember the unconditional love of his wet nurse.

LaJay had not been two feet from his side since they left the outside rubble to attack One Nine. Without her, the successful rescue of Breen would have been in doubt.

Breen lay behind the doors they were protecting, still recovering from her ordeal and almost forgotten, by him at least. Her distant attitude towards him was hard to accept. She ran hot and cold—unpredictable. LaJay was another story all together. The only thing he could figure was that the absolute disdain that Breen left in his path the last few days, had allowed him to accept affection from this tall woman.

No time now. In the next few seconds, he would know exactly what he was doing.

He had prepared for this battle. On his first recon visit, he had searched this whore of a building for that “sweet spot,” a spot almost impossible to take with any type of force. The key words for his safe room were—
almost imposable to take.

Now he was defending the only entrance to that half size office space with this large room in front with its low concrete overhead. This space had no wire-way above a false ceiling where the Ergot blobs and their bubbles could hide, and crawl along, then drop down on their heads. He had torn them away himself on his first visit.

No large windows in the room where Breen lay, only row after row of floor to ceiling three-foot squares throwing an imposing amount of light from the morning sun. During this morning’s attack, that light had poured through the open double doors to blind the hallway. The light had blunted the Ergots advance, sending them back to the dark followed by their bubbles.

The sun was already up, no longer jamming blinding light into the hallway: disadvantage, defense. Now, too many shadows filled the room.

The space around the open double doors packed instantly with bubbles bulging like the side of a balloon manipulated by a toy artist. They were attacking again.

There must be no end to these new Ergots,
Kimraig thought.

That is what these little bubbles were. Their swarm hid blobs—man sized blobs—like camouflage. Every building had recorded sightings of these creatures. They seemed willing to spend their resources attacking into this narrow entrance despite the deadly barriers his defenders had built from the old false ceiling stacked along the wall. The bubbles flowed over and around, with only minor popping against sharp edges. The blobs had a harder time. At least, dropping those big blobs from a distance with their spear throwers, worked for once. Darts harried them all as they retreated. There were no Outsiders hidden in the bubbles.

Trouble was that they were almost out of darts. As his force slowly backed closer to the double doors, Breen issued orders from her bed of rags inside the safe room—leave the dead. Ergots dragged them away. A few large blobs did not wait to feed, tearing at the soft center of each dead Trooper, and then dragging the remains with them.

One Trooper fell, badly wounded from a piece of concrete hurled by a single large Ergot, the bubbles covered her instantly. They could not go back.

When the bubbles withdrew, she lay where she had fallen—unconscious, but in one piece.

“Curtis, Cullen.” When Kimraig had their attention, he continued. “You have the last darts for the launchers, four each.” Their names, without their rank, lay rank on his tongue.

Their nods came as one. They both knew that once these were gone, their last stand would be behind the double doors at their back, if they could make it that short distance. If not, they would be piles of rags like the force who had worn those clothes now folded and stacked neatly against the wall.

A force killed while fighting in neat formation, in a battle that never happened,
Kimraig believed. Those uniforms smelled of nothing more than the people who wore them, not the cloying odor of sea or choker weed. A layout put together by a devious mind trying to hide desertion. No one else appeared to notice.

Curtis turned a shoulder to the double doors, looking for Brody.

Kimraig ignored his breach of discipline, watching those eyes set just a beat apart. Eyes that normally seemed dead were squinting with humor as he mouthed an exaggerated “idiot” toward Brody.

Curtis glanced back one more time, then laughed happily and faced front. No doubt, she had flipped him off again.

Kimraig turned his attention back to the impending attack, as if ignoring the fact that one son would not retreat with the largest portion of their group behind the double doors.

He will stay with Brody regardless of orders—
one less to hold the doors from inside. Kimraig would not go inside; he preferred to finish his last battle here in the open.

There would be four of them then, himself, Curtis, Brody and the Crosser Marta: she was bearing up well after her loss of Luna that morning. They would hold outside until the survivors withdrew inside to the safe room. All form of caste stripped from their names before first light—they had each voted to be equal. Except the Crossers, there were no castes in their world.

They would be the last line, guarding the doors that would close behind them. With their light wounds, they would have just half a chance of stopping the unstoppable.

The wounded lay close inside their safe room, near the open entrance, ready to be stacked against the door to form the final barricade. If the Ergots wanted any of them, they would have to force that weight of their bodies from the padlocked double doors. The wounded were not finished fighting.

This meager force of four, plus ten badly wounded behind the doors, and his group, was all that remained of a combined force of ninety seven Crossers and Builders.