Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (70 page)

MANDALON CAME TO his senses some three hours later. He didn’t know exactly where he was, but he recognized the tunnels under the Valhai Voting Dome straight away. It was the second time that he had been left for dead here. He felt a throbbing, dark pain in one of his hands, and tried to bring the hand closer to his face, to examine it. It wouldn’t move. He blinked, trying to clear his foggy mind.

Then, all of a sudden, he realized where he was. He was tied to a metallic gate, in a small opening in one of the tunnels. He turned his head to the right. His hand was secured to the gate, and there was a space where one of his fingers should have been. He stared at the gap. It had been crudely cauterized by some sort of acidic tar, and so had stopped bleeding. But it hurt. It throbbed with waves of anguish which made him grit his teeth.

He pulled at the manacles, but they held. He began to cough. There was a great deal of dust in suspension in the atmosphere, and it irritated the lining of his lungs.

After a few minutes, he realized that it was useless to pull at the shackles. He moved his head as far around as he could, but his spirits dropped. There was now no way out. He was trapped, and the one person who could find him instantly wouldn’t be able to, because the nail of orthogel was missing.

But Mandalon didn’t give up. He might be only 12, but he knew a thing or two about survival. He opened his mouth, and started to shout.

At first only a groan came out, but then he managed to put more volume into his throat, and a reasonably strong call for help sounded. He repeated it again, and again, refusing to give up. Then he rested his voice for a while before resuming his shouts. His only hope was that somebody would find him.

PETRA HEARD A faint voice calling her. It penetrated the chemical fog which covered her mind, and all of her senses told her that something was very, very wrong. She tried to move, and then panicked. The space she was in was extremely reduced, and her arm hurt abominably.

With her other hand, still very woozily, she felt around her, trying to fix her surroundings. There was only solid rock on all sides. Her right arm was trapped under one large boulder, and one of her legs felt crushed too, although she couldn’t get her hand far enough down to confirm this.

She gave a whimper, and then determinedly suppressed it. She was Namuri. That was synonymous of valour, of fortitude, of resolution. She suppressed the small whisper of fear that had entered her heart, and turned her mind to the problem at hand.

Then she heard the call for help again. It was faint, and weak, but she would have known it anywhere.

“Mandalon? MANDALON? Is that you?”

“PETRA?” The reply was incredulous, suddenly blazing with hope.

Petra noted the direction of the voice. It was coming from behind her. She tugged inefficiently at the arm under the boulder, and gasped at the pain which swept through her.

“I AM COMING!” she shouted back. “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

“YES!” The voice was almost sobbing with relief. “I AM TRAPPED ON SOME SORT OF GATE THING, AND CAN’T MOVE. YOU?”

Petra thought of her arm and her leg. “I WILL BE FINE. I AM ON MY WAY.” She turned her attention to the boulder. That was the first obstacle. She would do this thing one step at a time. One goal after another. And the first thing to do was to free her arm.

She was dimly aware of panic setting in. She knew that the air around her would be limited, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. She had signed a blood oath, and that meant saving Mandalon or dying in the attempt.

She bit her lip, and threw her weight at the boulder. It moved slightly. Encouraged, she tried again.

And again.

And again.

It took her many attempts before the boulder shifted enough for her to extricate the trapped arm, but she managed it. She drew the shattered bone out from under the rock with a sharp sense of fulfilment. She had done it! That was the first goal achieved. Now ... she had to get back, back to Mandalon 50.

In the tiny confined space of her rocky prison, she dragged herself around, so that she was facing the direction of the voice. Her leg came free quite easily, she found to her surprise, and the crushed tissue still functioned, if it did scream at her to stop. She grimly ignored all the pain. Lucky, she thought, that the damaged hand was the same one she had broken a couple of weeks ago, so she still had some strength left in the other arm. With her one good hand, she began to tear at the boulders blocking the tunnel. When she realized that she couldn’t get a handhold on some of the rocks, she wrenched the blue namura stone from around her neck, and began to hack at the rock, using it as a tool.

Mandalon continued to shout for some hours, but the quiet periods between his voice were longer and longer. Petra was worried for his safety. Although all her energy was focused on inching herself closer, the lack of headroom was causing her to feel as if she were in a dream, and the sweat was pouring down her face at the effort she was having to make.

She was repeating over and over again one of the Namuri chants she had learnt as a child in the clan.

‘I will not stop, I will be a river.

I will not pause, I will be light.

I will not waver, I will be the earth.

I will not give up, I will be death.

I will not fail, for the blue stone is in my heart.’

She muttered the words as she hacked at the unrelenting rock, pebble by pebble, stone by stone, cubit by cubit. Tears of frustration mingled with the sweat, but she ignored it.

And slowly – agonizingly slowly, she began to make a way through the rock. For some reason the charge had detonated more in one direction that the other, and she was finding smaller rubble to one side of the passage. Here, it was easier to pull the offending stones out of her path, easier to make progress towards Mandalon.

She shouted in his direction, but this time there was no answer. She redoubled her efforts. She HAD to get to the head of Sell. She HAD to. Namuri didn’t fail.

Every time her will faltered and prompted her to rest, she went back to the chant.
For the blue stone is in my heart. For the blue stone is in my heart. For the blue stone is in my heart.

There would be no rest. Rest was for others. The clan never rested. The namura stone never rested. She thought of her brother. He would have kept going, she knew. He would never admit defeat, and neither would she. Shaking her head from time to time, in an attempt to clear it, she persevered.

Day turned to night, and night to day again. She wondered why Arcan had not found her. Even without the bracelet, he should have been able to sense where she was. And where Mandalon was. Something was interfering with his quantum powers, then. She was on her own.

But she was making progress, and as she did, she found the going easier. The main blast had been around the area she had been in. As she crawled closer and closer to Mandalon, she found that she needed the namura stone less and less, and the air was clearer, so that her mind became sharper too.

Suddenly she found she was able to pull herself into an undamaged part of the tunnel. She thanked the blue stone, before putting it carefully back around her neck. Then she struggled upright, and made her way into the opening.

“Mandalon?”

“Petra? Is it really you?”

“I said I would come.”

“It took you long enough!”

She grinned. “It did. But I am here now. Keep talking, will you, I can’t see a thing in here.”

“We are trapped in one of the tunnels, and I am shackled to a gate of some sort. They cut off one of my fingers, the one with the orthogel.”

“Yes. They removed my bracelet, too.” She bumped into the bottom part of the gate, winced, and then moved up the metal with her good hand, until she felt one of the shackles. She fiddled with it for a bit, and then was relieved to hear a click as it opened. “There you are!”

The boy gave a sigh of relief. He leant over with his free hand to open the lock on the other side, and then the ones at his feet. Then he slid down until he was standing beside Petra. “That is better. What now?”

Petra was feeling the gate. “There must be a reason they tied you to this thing. My guess is that Arcan can’t detect anything near it. They left you to die on it, and I was to be the scapegoat, for when your remains were finally found. They placed me as if I were escaping, after tying you up here.”

Mandalon nodded. That made sense. “That means that Arcan will not be able to find us here – they have planned this whole thing with that condition.”

“And we only have enough air in this closed-off dead end for a short time.”

“—Which leaves us no alternative but to hack our own way out.”

Petra swayed slightly, and Mandalon grabbed at her arm. “Are you all right?”

There was a long silence before she was able to speak. “Please,” came a small, tight voice, “please don’t touch that arm. It is broken.”

Mandalon snatched his hand back. “Cian! I am sorry!”

“You didn’t know.” She made an immense effort to dominate the black wall of pain which his touch had caused. “It is of no consequence.”

“You are very brave.”

“‘I will not fail, for the blue stone is my heart’.”

“I’m sorry?”

She gave a long sigh. “It is just a saying. Come on, we must get started. I will go first, because I know the way.”

They felt their way around the small chamber until they found the wall, and then followed the curving rock to check possible exits. There were none, until they found the tunnel that Petra had spent so much time clearing, the tunnel which had been blocked by the explosion. It was clearly the only possible way out.

Petra wondered how much rock had come down in that tunnel. Had she been at the epicentre of the explosion, or did the collapse extend far beyond her position? The answer might mean the difference between them living or dying.

“I have changed my mind about you,” said Mandalon.

“You have?”

“Before, I thought you were one of the best bodyguards in the system.”

“And now you don’t?”

“Now I
know
you are the best in the galaxy. Nobody else would have hacked their way back to get me out.”

“Any Namuri would.”

“Then I would like to be a Namuri.”

Petra found herself giving a grin in the dark. “In that case, I will teach you the chant ...” she turned towards him, “... the chant that will help us get free.”

The Sellite leader smiled to himself in the blackness of their surroundings. “If a chant is to get us out of here, it must be some chant!”

Petra touched the blue stone at her neck, and then she slid it over her own head and placed it around his. “You must take this,” she said. “The namura stone will protect its wearer.”

“No! I am a Sellite.”

“You are my emptor. You will wear it.”

But he shook his head. “You are Namuri. You should take the namura stone.”

She hesitated. It
was
true that the real strength of the stone would only be released to a member of the clan.

“Let the stone protect you, so that you can protect me,” he said.

She considered. “Very well. But I will still teach you the chant.”

He dipped his head in the dark. “I shall be honoured.”