Aegis Rising (45 page)

Nageau nodded at the sky. “Until it brightens a little more. Tikina told us that the beasts are usually put away at first light.”

“She never did say what the beasts were.”

“That is because they are like no other creature she has ever seen.” Nageau looked back down and scanned the site in silence for a couple of minutes. Then he stiffened. “Kody, come. I think those are the creatures.”

Kody slithered closer to the Elder and stared down. “I can barely see a thing,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Remember what I taught you, youngling. This is a wonderful opportunity to use the skills you have learned.”

Kody rubbed his eyes and squeezed them shut for a few moments. In the stillness, he felt a brightening in his mind’s eye. When he opened his eyes again he could see what lay below them almost as clearly as if it were in daylight, except for a bluish glow in his sight. “Wow,” he murmured. His gaze skimmed over the site. He saw something on the left side of the vehicle shed that frightened him even from this distance. “Found the beasts. They’re like really big, really muscular dogs . . . Wait—” His vision zoomed in on one of the beasts as it turned around. “Those jaws look like they belong to a velociraptor!” He shuddered. “What are they?”

Nageau quickly shushed him. “I do not know, but Tikina has said that these creatures have incredibly keen senses. There must be a reason why they are only brought out during the night.”

One of the villagers sitting behind them, a man who possessed the omnilinguistic ability, was listening to their conversation. “If you can see those beasts now, why can we not put them away for good?” He held up a crossbow and quiver with immobilizing darts attached to the tips of the arrows. The regular darts were meant to immobilize a person or animal for no longer than a few minutes, but among the other weapons and contraptions he had designed for this mission, Magèo had created these new darts that were higher in dosage. These could potentially kill if the bodies of the targets were unable to handle the increased quantity of tranquilizer delivered by the darts.

Nageau looked back down. “There is a burly man with the creatures. If we strike the beasts now, he will notice and most likely sound an alarm.”

“I cannot wait to let these arrows fly,” the villager said, gently shaking his quiver. “These
men
down there are destructive and are not above murdering our friends.”

“We are not looking to kill these men,” Nageau said sharply.

“Of course not. But I believe we have the right to give them something to remember us by.”

The Elder wore a wry grin. “Oh, I think we will.”

“Will we have a chance to get down to the site?” Kody asked.

“Not unless the others cannot handle it. We are their eyes up here.”

“Where are the others, anyway?”

Nageau indicated to his left. “Tikina and her group will emerge from behind the miners’ barracks.” He pointed straight ahead. “Tayoka will emerge from behind those buildings with his team.” He then pointed to his right. “And finally, Saiyu will proceed from behind that lone building.”

“And Elder Ashack?”

“His group will be coming through the tunnels.”

After that, not a word was spoken as everyone waited. Nageau and Kody watched the miners go about their business. Nageau was watching a couple of the workers when Kody whispered, “I think that guard is taking the animals back.”

Nageau’s eyes cast around until they found the large man walking behind the four creatures. The animals slunk toward the single steel building and soon they and the guard disappeared inside.

“Is it time to signal the others?” Kody asked quietly.

“No, not yet.” Nageau watched the steel door like a hawk until it opened again and the burly man walked out. He made his way to the large building where the workers went to grab their meals.

Kody’s eyes trailed the guard until he was out of sight. “Now?” he whispered.

The Elder exhaled and nodded. “Now.”

Down in the abandoned tunnel, Ashack and his group were seated on the beams of the partially collapsed underpass. The Elder looked around, noting how accurate Rikèq’s description of the place was. Without telling the others, he had searched around the rubble and debris earlier for the remains of the two men who had died there. He had found nothing except for a single torn moccasin boot.

As he looked around, Nageau’s voice entered his mind.
Ashack, they have put the creatures away
.

Good. We are on our way.

Ashack motioned to the villagers, who were waiting patiently. They quickly got to their feet, grabbing their packs with the items Magèo had sent them off with, and hastened up toward the other end of the tunnel that opened to the mining site. Some of the men stuck green cube-shaped gels the size of their palms onto the sides of the tunnel where the wall appeared less sturdy. The cubes contained high-impact explosives. They had three indents on one side of the surface that were designed to function as timers. The villagers pressed the third one down, which set the cubes’ delay mechanism for two hours, the longest setting available. Once the time expired, the cubes would explode, causing the tunnels to collapse. The plan was that Ashack’s group would have completed their tasks and escaped before the devices timed out.

Aari jogged beside his mentor up the sloping tunnel until they could hear and feel the slight vibrations of the tunneling machine in the other tunnel. Ashack poked his head out of the opening. To his left was the miners’ supply storage, just as Tikina had described it. To his right he could see the tunnel that was being mined. Retreating back into the abandoned tunnel, he silently pointed at two of the men. The men, who knew their roles, crept forward, staying in the shadows. Ashack and Aari followed. Right inside the entrance of the mining tunnel were two parked machines—Bobcats, Aari realized. The four of them crouched, hidden by the darkness of the tunnel and the cover that the machines provided.

Two workers in coveralls were across from them, shoveling ore onto a conveyor belt. They had their backs to Aari and the villagers. Ashack gently urged the two men out into the open. As the men cautiously walked toward the workers, Aari and Ashack focused their minds to bend the light around them, causing the villagers to vanish from sight.

A couple of Bobcats were rotating around as they lifted and dumped the heavy chunks of ore for the workers to scoop onto the conveyor. The workers continued with the job at hand, oblivious to their surroundings. Suddenly, they both felt something grab them around their necks from behind. They tried to twist around to face their assailants but saw nothing. The villagers, still invisible as far as anyone could tell, performed a rear chokehold on the miners. The miners dropped unconscious in their arms. The villagers hurriedly dragged their bodies to the abandoned tunnel and switched clothes with the miners. Ashack and Aari released the two from invisibility and joined them in the other tunnel.

Suddenly they heard one of the workers from the other tunnel shouting into his radio. “Joe! Grant! Where are you guys?”

Aari turned to the villagers who were hastily putting on the coveralls. “I think one of the miners inside is looking for those two,” he whispered.

The men nodded. They pulled on the respirator masks and hardhats, then strolled back to the mining tunnel. The worker who had called out was a man in one of the two Bobcats. “You guys tried to sneak off for a smoke again, didn’t you?” Aari heard him say accusingly. The villagers said nothing, but one of them raised his hand to put the worker at ease. They picked up the shovels the miners had been using and continued scooping ore onto the conveyor belt.

Ashack turned to the other two men from his team and nodded. They snuck out to repeat the process. Aari, with the extra confidence he’d earned when helping Ashack cover for the first two villagers, focused to bend the light away from the second pair.

One of the Bobcat drivers was returning to the conveyor belt with the machine’s loading bucket full. He squinted when he saw something shimmering directly in front of his machine. He blinked quickly but saw nothing now. Shrugging, he thought,
Milroy, you’ve gotta quit drinking when you’re this tired from work. It screws with your head, buddy.

Suddenly he saw the shimmer again and almost let out a yell when a face appeared out of thin air in front of the Bobcat. Aari, hiding in the shadows near the entrance of the tunnel, scolded himself. Quickly regaining his focus, he bent the light around the villager again and the man disappeared once more. The worker tried to scramble out of the Bobcat, but was instead dragged out onto the ground as soon as he stepped out of his machine. The villager stuck an immobilizing dart into the man’s arm, knocking him out, and quickly dragged him away to exchange garments.

The driver of the second Bobcat turned his machine around to head over to the conveyor belt and saw the other machine idling with no one in it. “Mil, you jerk,” he muttered. “Where the hell did you go?” He sat back, impatiently waiting for the other driver to return so he could dump his load. As he waited, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as he became aware that he wasn’t alone. He turned to his left and bleated in surprise when he saw a large, tan-skinned man with a bald head and a long scar running from the side of his temple to his jaw. The next thing he knew he was pulled out of the Bobcat and slammed onto the ground. He felt something sharp stab through his coveralls and into his skin. In moments he was unconscious and the snickering villager hauled him into the other tunnel.

Saiyu and her team were crouched some ways down the eastern flank of the mountain, reviewing their plan. Mariah had become quick friends with a seventeen-year-old girl with rosy cheeks and ice-blue eyes. She and her twenty-year-old sister had volunteered to plant an incendiary device among the barrels of leaching compound that had been found stored away behind a rock wall next to the conveyor belt.

The girl held up a pyramid-shaped gel to her face. “This will not affect us when it erupts, will it?” she asked in her language.

“No,” Saiyu assured her. “But you will not want to be around it when it does.”

Saiyu
, the Elder suddenly heard in her head.
You may proceed.

Will do, Nageau. Thank you.
Saiyu nodded at her team. Besides the two sisters, there were two men in the team, one of whom was blind in one eye and wore an eye patch.

Saiyu cautiously led them up to the mining site and they remained hidden in the tree line as a guard holding a rifle strolled by. They watched him walk into the open-faced building.

Saiyu saw their opportunity and quietly ran across the open space to the vats, the rest of the team following close behind. They crept under the platforms that held up the vats and tiptoed to the four-foot wide entrance to the left of the main tunnel. A moving belt snaked from the mining area, carrying mounds of rocks to a machine where they were crushed, and another belt carried crushed ore to the vats outside.

The team risked a peek through the opening. A worker stood only a few feet away with his back to them. Another worker stood beside the conveyor belt not too far in front of the first man, directing a cone-shaped device attached to a rotating cuff so it could swivel from side to side to prevent the rocks from piling up in one spot. Mounds of ore were piled up to seven feet in height.

The team couldn’t see the actual hydraulic crusher as depicted in Tikina’s sketch, but they still knew where it should be; toward the left side of the chamber, if they could only see further in. Saiyu gestured for her team to step back from the opening and looked at them. “There should be four other workers inside. We want to try to keep this as quiet as possible, but if one of them makes any loud noise, by all means silence them. If one of them attempts to escape, do what you must.” She looked at each member of her team. “Is everyone ready?”

They looked both nervous and excited as they nodded. Saiyu smiled. “Then go!”

The two men on the team crawled under the conveyor belt. The first one, a freckly villager known as “The Spring”—as he was constantly jumping around with exuberant energy—immediately pounced on the closest worker and slapped a hand over his mouth. Before the worker could react, The Spring stuck an immobilizing dart into his arm and the miner fell limp.

The man operating the cone-shaped spreader must have sensed the commotion behind him. He turned and saw his co-worker on the ground. A stranger dressed in buckskin stood over his co-worker, grinning. It was a genuine, disarming smile, as innocent as a child’s. Nevertheless, the worker charged at the intruder. As he neared the trespasser, he felt a thud on his chest. He stumbled and dropped to the ground, unable to move any part of his body. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the dart that had pierced his coveralls, protruding from his chest.

Four other miners continued working behind the mounds, unaware of what had just happened, as Saiyu and the three other adults in her team stealthily climbed over the mounds and disappeared.

Mariah stayed behind with the seventeen-year-old and they peeked inside from the opening. They heard only sounds of machinery for a minute, and then a couple of deep voices shouting out in English before being silenced abruptly.

Mariah tucked her hair behind her ear and deliberated over entering the crusher area. Making a quick decision, she tugged the arm of the girl beside her. The girl looked over at her and saw Mariah crawl under the conveyor belt and into the crusher area. She followed eagerly, obviously wanting to get a glimpse of the inside too. They carefully stepped over the first worker that had been rendered unconscious, then looked around. There were battery-powered lamps hanging around the area, providing illumination so that the workers wouldn’t have to constantly use the lamps on their hardhats.

Mariah heard a buzzing noise and turned her head to look for the source. It was the spreader attached to the conveyor. It was still swiveling. As she watched it, she realized that no one had moved the unconscious worker who had been manning the spreader—and the spreader was about to unload large amounts of rocks onto him. She would never reach him in time.