“Not much of a target,” Tolemek said.
“It’ll have to do.” Sardelle had her eyes closed as the balloon dipped down.
Ridge decided not to find that alarming. Sorcerers could see with their minds, right? “If you land us on it without tipping the basket into that pool, we’ll make you an honorary Wolf Squadron pilot.”
Another geyser erupted, this one farther out and not as boisterous as the first. Maybe they were simply natural occurrences after all. Ridge still didn’t see a road or path of any kind leading to the metal double doors, but he couldn’t imagine venturing out there on foot even if there had been one.
The corner of the basket scraped against the rocky side of the miniature mountain, jostling everyone against everyone else. Sardelle was erring on the safe side, and Ridge couldn’t blame her for that, but he hoped nobody on the other side of that wall would be able to hear the scrapes and bumps.
“When the colonel promised butt touching, he wasn’t kidding,” Duck said. “Watch out for Raptor. Her guns are poky.”
“As the commanding officer, and presumably the most mature person present, I’m going to resist the urge to make a lewd comment,” Ridge announced. They scraped the wall again, but they were only eight feet from the ground now. Almost safe. From the balloon flight anyway.
“Who told you that you were mature, Zirkander?” Tolemek asked.
“Perhaps I should have said advanced in years.”
“Perhaps.”
With another soft scrape, the balloon settled onto the ground. The corner was tilted upward, resting on the slope of the mountain, but Ridge couldn’t fault Sardelle’s aim, not when a bubbling and gurgling pool lay less than a foot away in the other direction.
He climbed out first, landing on packed gravel. Sardelle had said nobody was out here, but he kept a pistol in hand, nonetheless.
“How does one deflate the balloon without having it smother the basket and fall into the water?” Tolemek wondered, eyeing the black-and-gray material above them. It hadn’t yet lost the swell of its shape, but it probably would before long. “Do we need to leave someone here to make sure we can get away again once we’re ready to leave?”
“There must be something inside that can take the workers away from here if need be,” Ridge said. “After all,
this
thing came from somewhere in there.” He didn’t want to separate the team and start leaving people behind anyway.
Tolemek didn’t question him further.
While the others hopped out of the basket, Ridge walked along the base of the mountain toward the alcove that held the doors. They were tall enough and wide enough that a two-seat flyer could have navigated through them, though he couldn’t imagine landing and taking off without a runway, unless that was built into the mountain itself somehow.
He froze as soon as he poked his head around the corner for a better look. Clearly what Sardelle had meant was that there was nobody
living
out here. He gulped as he stared at two bodies hanging on hooks on either side of the closed doors.
Though Ridge wasn’t certain he wanted to see better, he had to know who the people were—who they had been. He dug into his utility pouch for his small tin of matches. He lit one, the flame flaring and reflecting off heavy rivets on the steel door. It also illuminated the bodies.
On both of them, the skin had been flayed—no burned—off, leaving the facial features unrecognizable, but the shredded remains of gray-and-blue Iskandian army uniforms were all too familiar. Much of the hair had been removed—burned or melted away, but from the sizes and shapes, one clearly feminine, Ridge was fairly certain he was looking at the bodies of Captains Nowon and Kaika. He let the match fall to the ground and dropped his chin to his fist, guilt and regret gnawing at him. If he hadn’t left that posturing colonel behind, was it possible the mission would have gone more smoothly? That the elite troops team might still be alive?
“Oh hells,” Duck whispered, stopping beside Ridge. The others soon gathered in front of the doors too.
Tolemek shook his head slowly. Sardelle closed her eyes and looked away. It was a disturbing image. Ridge was glad the sulfurous scent all around them overrode the butcher-house smell that had to be lingering around the bodies.
“Should we cut them down, sir?” Ahn asked.
“If we can get them on the way out, we will.” Ridge would like to give the officers burials somewhere, but the sooner they finished what they had come for, the sooner they might escape with their own lives intact. He didn’t want to see the rest of his team suffer this fate.
Ridge took a breath and walked up to the double doors. There wasn’t a handle, latch, or even a keyhole. He looked back at Sardelle.
“Tolemek has a knack for opening doors or making them where they don’t exist.” She sounded weary, like she would prefer to hand this task off to another.
“Yes, he does,” Ahn said.
If there was an alternative, Ridge would gladly save Sardelle’s powers for when they truly needed them. “Tolemek?”
“It will take a couple of minutes.” Tolemek stepped forward, and the satchel he always carried clanked as he dug into it.
Ridge tried pushing and pulling on the doors while he waited. He didn’t expect them to budge—and they didn’t—but one had to try. In the darkness, he wasn’t positive what Tolemek was doing, but he seemed to be drawing a circle on one of the doors. After a moment, he stepped back.
Ridge shifted his weight from foot to foot, resisting the urge to demand what was supposed to be happening. Eventually, Tolemek planted a boot on the center of the circle and shoved. To Ridge’s surprise, the movement dislodged the metal. With a resounding clang that made Ridge wince, the circle fell through, landing on a stone floor on the other side. Light spilled out from within. Ridge dropped to his knee to the side of the hole, pistol in hand, and leaned in, prepared for a firefight if legions of guards were descending on the door.
But the chamber inside, a cavernous space with ceilings so high he couldn’t see them from the doorway, was silent. Black marble tiles stretched out in all directions. There were doors to what might have been a lift at the far end of the space. He glimpsed alcoves and recessed doors in the side walls, too, though they were also a long walk from his observing point. Everything was. This chamber looked to take up most of the ground floor of the mountain base. Maybe it
was
a hangar. Many of the tiles were chipped or cracked, and he spotted a couple of old oil stains.
The only sign of humanity was a guard in a crimson Cofah uniform lying on the floor a couple feet from the big metal circle. Ridge’s first thought was that he had been crushed by the massive falling disk, but no part of his body was trapped beneath it.
“Looks clear, sir,” Ahn whispered. She had knelt on the other side of the hole from him, her rifle at the ready.
Without taking his eyes from the room, Ridge stepped through the hole. The large chamber was lit from above, dozens of bulb-shaped paper lamps hanging suspended from the ceiling at all different heights. Some were even moving about. Strange. Ah, but no, they weren’t hanging at all but floating. The candles or whatever fuel was burning must be heating the air within the lampshade, like the burner had heated the hot air balloon outside.
Interesting, but not the ultra modern technology they had been sent here to learn about. Ridge shifted to the side, so the others could enter, and so he could check the guard. It was one thing seeing dead enemies of the Cofah hung up as a warning in front of their secret laboratory, but one didn’t expect the guards to be dead too.
The man’s neck had been slit. No need to check the pulse, but Ridge touched his skin anyway, trying to get a gauge for when this had happened—and who might have done it. If his people had both died, did this mean they had some other ally in here? Or maybe the Cofah had some other enemy worried about secret bases and dragon blood. The guard’s skin was faintly warm.
“This didn’t happen long ago,” Ridge said, then chastised himself for stating the obvious. Of course, it had to have happened after the balloon observer left, or the man wouldn’t have gone out on his normal rounds. Then again, Ridge couldn’t prove the balloon man had left through these doors. He couldn’t imagine where else such a craft might be launched, but there weren’t any other baskets lined up along the walls.
By now, the rest of the squadron had entered the chamber, and everyone was looking at him. That didn’t normally faze him—he was in charge, after all—but he had no idea where they should start searching. He turned three hundred and sixty degrees, seeking inspiration from the chamber. He halted to stare at notable decorations, ones he hadn’t registered on his first inspection because they were so big as to seem like part of the architecture.
“Uhm?” Ridge muttered, stepping back and nearly tripping over his heels as he craned his neck to see into the shadows above the lanterns.
What he had mistaken for columns were the legs of enormous blocky statues. With patchwork metal bodies of bronze, steel, and more alloys Ridge couldn’t identify, they looked like some child’s project composed from junkyard scraps, except on an enormous scale. They were humanoid with rectangular torsos and square heads that sat flush against the broad flat shoulders, with nothing resembling a neck. They had simple faces, rectangular holes for mouths, circular holes for noses, and vertical rectangles for eyes, the latter appearing closed, metal lids drawn down in sleep.
“I believe those represent the Tangula Tarath from Cofah mythology,” Apex noted. “The ambulatory statues protected the gods’ sky palaces from dragons, back when humans were dwelling in caves and hunting mammoths with stone-tipped spears.”
“Whatever they are, I really hope they don’t come to life,” Duck said.
Ridge almost snorted. Come to life. How could they? But he caught himself before he expelled that breath. If unmanned aircraft could be powered and directed by dragon blood, what if giant statues could be too?
“Let’s get moving before they decide to,” Ridge said. “Sardelle, any idea of where the stash of blood might be?”
Her eyes stared off into the distance. He was starting to recognize that expression as the one she wore when she was discussing things with her sword. With Jaxi, he amended. Somehow it sounded less odd to his mundane little mind to think of Jaxi as a person rather than a pointy stick.
Good for your mind. I’m less likely to harass people who use my name.
Before Ridge could reply, or decide if he should flush with embarrassment, Sardelle was answering his question.
“The heaviest concentration is up there.” She pointed toward the ceiling.
“Let’s try that way then.” Ridge pointed toward the far wall where sliding metal doors waited—all of the other exits from the chamber were single doors. “It looks like a lift.”
Nobody objected to his assessment. Either they thought he had a clue, or they didn’t have any better ideas. Inspiring.
He, Ahn, Duck, and Apex walked on either side of the group, their rifles cradled in their arms and pointed toward the perimeter, ready to shoot if any guards trotted out of those doors. Ahn looked alert and unintimidated, her calm gaze roaming about, taking in everything as they advanced. Duck and Apex didn’t look quite as professional. Their boots clomped a little loudly, and their shoulders were tense, as were the fingers on the triggers. Ridge tried not to think about how Kaika and Nowon, true professionals when it came to sneaking into places, had been discovered. He had Sardelle and Tolemek. That ought to give Ridge an advantage they hadn’t had, no matter how skilled they had been at stealth, attack, and evasion. Still, the lack of columns or any sort of features that could be used for cover in a firefight made him nervous as they traveled across the very large, very open chamber.
The group had walked halfway to the lift when a soft clink-clank-clink-clank sound came from behind them. It reminded Ridge of the drawbridge being raised back in the king’s castle. Or of a clockwork machine being wound up. He and his pilots spun in the direction of the noise, their rifles ready. Sardelle and Tolemek faced in that direction, too, though they didn’t reach for weapons, as if they knew that whatever they might face wouldn’t be harmed by mere bullets.
Nothing back there was moving, save for the floating lamps that drifted lazily on currents of air, but the mechanical noises continued. Then Ridge spotted something that had changed: the eyes on the statues were open. And they were glowing red.
“You still not sensing any magic, Sardelle?” Ridge pointed to the eyes.
“Not magic, in the traditional sense, but there is dragon blood in those statues.”
“You didn’t think that was important to mention before?” He regretted the sarcasm immediately, but there was no time for apologies. “Back up, everyone. Keep heading to the lift. Let’s see if we can get out of here before we get a demonstration of what those things can do.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hardly needed to give the order—no one was charging down the room to engage those things. Half of the team turned and ran for the lift doors. Ridge backed away more slowly, watching those statues. What had Apex said? Ambulatory? They looked too top-heavy to move, but he wasn’t willing to make a bet against that.
The tone of the clink-clanks shifted, as if smaller gears were moving than had been before, and the left arms on both of the statues began to rise. The next step before the metal contraptions started walking?
“The doors are locked again,” Duck said, reaching the lift first.
“Tolemek?” Ridge prompted.
“If it is indeed a lift, burning through the doors may render it inoperable.”
“Sardelle?”
The arms of the statues had risen to roughly forty-five degree angles and stopped. Ridge didn’t like the way they seemed to be pointing at his team. If something crazy happened, they could still escape through the front doors, but they would have to run a hundred meters to reach them.
“It’s a lift system, yes,” Sardelle said. “I can sense that there’s a vertical shaft behind the doors. There’s not a cage or cabin or anything on the other side, though. It might be at the top.”