Satan's Forge (Star Sojourner Book 5) (24 page)

“That's great, Joe.” A sense of relief washed over me. “That's great. What's happening in the tower?”

“A firefight between the slaves and the guards. That's all we know.”

“Joe. Mack sent in some renegades dressed in leathers, posing as Sarge's warriors. I killed two of them. If you spot any more, take them out. They're killing slaves. Gotta go.”

“Jules! Where the hell are you going?”

“To Perdition's Gates, Dad.” I broke the link.

It was a long climb down to a narrow, dark tunnel. I was below ground level and the air felt damp, and stuffy with the smell of clay. I kept my stingler drawn and swept the twists in the tunnel with the pale comlink light, while I listened for footsteps ahead. But they would be silent, I realized, like my own on this earthen ground. If Slade were close, though, I would have smelled his foul bitterroot odor. I didn't.

I lowered my shields, probed for his enraged thoughts, and probably his seething desire to kill me.

Pritcull,
I sent, to see if I could locate him with a tel-link,
one of us isn't coming out of here alive.

Instead of the malicious thoughts I expected, I encountered a soft, gentle mind.

Jules. Do you read my thoughts? I feel your presence within my mind. Where are you, my love?

Oh no! I focused my probe back toward the staircase.
Sophia!
She was not a sensitive, but she must have intuited my presence, the way we know when someone is near.

I trotted back toward the staircase, my weapon still drawn. My light picked her up in the pale gloom. She was holding a stingler by her side. She raised it hesitantly. “Jules?”

“Yes!” I came up to her. “What the hell are you doing here?” I whispered and shoved my stingler behind my waistband. “How did you get in? Are you
crazy
? Slade is somewhere in this tunnel!” I shut off the light, grabbed her shoulders and turned her toward the staircase. “Now climb back up. I can't protect us both!”

She turned to me. “I'm armed and I've come to help you find him, and execute him. Two of us have a better chance than one.”

“Dammit, Sophia, it's too dangerous!”

She touched my face. “For you too, my love.”

“How did Joe and Sarge let you do this?”

“They didn't know.”

“Goddamn it…how's Chancey?”

“He has a concussion, but Bat said he'll be all right. He's awake and talking.”

I let out a long breath of relief. “Yeah, takes more than a concussion to shut him up.”

I turned back to the dark tunnel and probed, in case Slade was sneaking up on us. But I didn't feel his presence. “How did you get down here?”

“The battle's over, Jules. The guards are all dead, the visiting officers too. It's horrible. There are bodies all over the place.”

I held her close. “And the slaves? How many did we lose?”

“I think maybe thirty… maybe more. I'm not sure. I couldn't look.” She rested her head on my chest. “It was a high price to pay for their freedom.”

“It usually is.”

“Huff wanted to follow you down here, but he couldn't get through the trap door. He tried to rip it apart, but it wouldn't rip. He's pretty distraught over it. Where does this tunnel lead?”

“To Slade. Other than that, I don't know.” I kissed her forehead. “Soph. Please go back. For me? I can't track him down and worry about you too.”

“You do what you have to, Babe, and I'll be behind you, there if you need me.”

“You're a damn stubborn woman!”

She reached up and kissed me lightly. “I know.”

“Promise me one thing.”

“If I can.”

“If things go bad and I…I mean if he…”

“Kills you?”

I nodded. “Will you just get to safety however you can, and not try to kill him? Promise me that.”

She nodded. “I promise,” she said softly.

I sighed, and hugged her again. “You're a ball and chain.”

“Yes, I am. You'll have to get used to it.”

“Then stay behind me.” I drew my weapon and started down the tunnel again, tel-probing.

Nothing.

Except the thick, bubbly Altairian sounds that passed for their music, emanating from a side tunnel. We turned into it and came to a chamber that had to be an Altairian's delight.

I'd seen holomentaries of their homeworld. This was a replica, with slick, stark gray and charcoal mud, dotted with slime. Green ponds rippled in a breeze from wall vents. Sculptures from different Alliance worlds lined alcoves like a museum. My enemy was an art connoisseur. The walls were painted with Altairian buildings, those bent crosses, leaking green light down grooves in the clay.

“It's surreal,” Sophia commented.

I nodded and watched a silver chandelier with lit pearl droplets rotate and cast splashes of shadows on the walls and rough ceiling. “All the comforts of the privileged Altairian class,” I whispered as we quietly padded through to another side tunnel.

She clasped my hand. “I suppose,” she said, “even fiends like Slade get homesick.”

We passed a bedroom, I think, with a large slime-covered pond. “Look at that!” I said. Two Altairian android females, by their bright green painted scales and glass, faceted eyes, stood motionless near the pond. “For when the Lord of Overseers gets lonely,” I said. “Everything a crocodile could ask for.”

“A monster's ménage à trois,” she whispered.

I scanned for Slade's thoughts, but only encountered Sophia's anxiety. Was she blocking me from reaching Slade just by being so close? Could be.

We went through his office. A bio- computer sat on a desk next to comlinks, and a star positioning system to reach his bosses on Alpha, I imagine.

Where the hell is he? I wondered. Was he watching us from hidden cameras with his thoughts reduced to subliminal?

The sound of claws on hard clay made me jump. I heard Sophia gasp. I put out a protective arm as I swept the light across the floor. An android lizard with a rhinestone necklace scurried up and bit my boot. I kicked it away. It landed on its back and went into off mode. “I don't like this,” I told Sophia. “The croc might be watching us from cameras.”

“These tunnels are a labyrinth.” She held my hand tighter.

The next side tunnel opened to a large, lit chamber, and there, in the center, was a pit filled with silver lithium. Nearby, two hovair trucks were parked with chutes extended into the pit.

“Damn!' I exclaimed.”Slade's private cache. He's got his own business." I gestured toward a wide tunnel with tire tracks. “Could be he already escaped.”

A whirring sound behind us.

I spun, and faced a three-foot high quadruped mirror-plated spider robot. “Uh, oh.” Hot beams would just bounce off that reflective surface.

Six eyes lit up atop a turret on its back. A door slid open and the barrel of a weapon protruded.

“Run, Sophia!” I shouted and got between the robot and her as the barrel aimed at me. “Run!”

Instead, she fired at it. The beam bounced off harmlessly.

I fully expected to be shot, but the barrel retracted. The slot closed. The spider moved toward me. “C'mon!” I grabbed Sophia's wrist and we ran toward the side tunnel. I heard a whir and glanced back. Wheels had protruded from under the spider's body and it rushed forward.

We would never outrun it. “The tunnel,” I shouted to her. “I'll distract it and follow. Go!”

She ran into the tunnel and I headed around the lithium pit, hoping the robot would go through to get at me, and sink in the soft alkali metal.

But it stopped at the edge of the pit, turned and started around it. I scooped up handfuls of lithium and coughed on the toxic substance as I threw it across the embankment between me and the advancing robot. Then I beamed it and it burst into flames in front of the spider. I didn't wait to see the result, but headed for the side tunnel at a full run.

I glanced back once and saw the spider spinning in circles in the flames. “Got you,” I muttered, turned back and fell over another robot spider emerging from the tunnel. I rolled and aimed for its eyes, but it lifted to its back legs and retracted the wheels, presenting a solid, mirrored belly.

It leaped.

I covered my head and yelled as it slammed into my chest. Air rushed from my lungs as its heavy weight hit full force. I tried to lift it off, couldn't. I attempted to slide out from under it, but it planted its four legs and I was trapped. I gritted my teeth as I waited for whatever form of death was at hand, but it just held me there.

I heard Sophia scream. Why was she still
here
? I twisted my head around and froze.

Boss Slade had a grip on Sophia's arm and was dragging her back into the cavern.

No!
I screamed within my mind as he dragged her toward the lithium pit. I had no time for a deep tel-probe. “Slade! Let her go. Take me! If you have any honor, let her go and take me.” Tears of anguish slid down my cheeks as I drew in hard breaths and struggled to free myself from the spider.

It lowered itself and pressed against my chest until I was gasping for air.

“Hareg!” I squeezed out. “It's me you want. She never did anything to you…please!”

He pointed a clawed finger at me and slammed down his tail. “Ye have destroyed me, ye human garbage! Everything I owned, ye have taken away. I curse the day I sent for ye. Now will I take away what is precious to ye.”

“Jules!” Sophia shrieked as he dragged her close to the pit.

“Oh, God, no!”
Spirit,
I sent.
Spirit, please.

I see your distress, Terran,
Spirit sent,
but I cannot influence your enemy without influencing much of the planet's human population. You know that.

“No, don't!” I squeezed out to Slade as he unholstered his weapon and beamed the pool of lithium.

The volatile substance burst into flames that raced to the edges of the pit, exploded, and breached the embankment. The curved cavern was bathed in flickering shadows that threw grotesque images across the walls. Flames licked up to the ceiling. Sophia and Slade took on a ruddy hue and I thought that only Satan himself was missing from this nightmare scenario.

I gripped one of the spider's legs and yanked. It never moved. “Hareg,” I called hoarsely, “I'll do whatever you ask, just don't kill her.”

“Oh, ye will, human. Ye will watch her burn. Ye will live to see her scalded eyeballs turn black before her screams die. Then ye will join her in death.”

Sophia fought him as he dragged her to the edge. Her screams cut into my soul like blades of fire.

“Sophia…” I gasped.

From a dark alcove, I saw a movement. Zora, Slade's secretary, huddled back in shadows and watched.

“Zora!” I cried. “Help her! Please!”

But she was not here for us.

Sophia's screams were pierced by a guttural shriek. Slade jerked back and staggered. Sophia broke away and ran to me. She tried to lift the spider, but couldn't.

Slade slid to his knees, his arms waving, reaching for his smoking back, and sprawled to the ground beside the burning pit.

I looked around. “Who…?”

Azut came out of the wide tunnel, a stingler in his hand. He strode to Slade, who was convulsing, his blood pouring into the pit. “Know this, master,” he said to Slade. “I kill ye as ye got my brother killed in a rebellion caused by your brutality and greed. Never will ye see the green ponds of homeworld again. This pit of fire will be ye home!”

Slade tried to crawl away, but Azut kicked his body and he rolled down the embankment, clawing at clay and wailing as he went.

Azut followed and kicked him into the flaming pit.

“Don't look, Sophia!” I cried.

But I could not block out his unearthly shrieks as the flames consumed him, like the cries of the damned reaching up from the Inferno itself. His moans faded to a whimper. Then there was silence. Except for Zora, who emerged from the alcove dancing and slapping her tail against the clay ground. I guess it was payback for Slade's cruel treatment of her. I had seen the scars of whip lashes across her back, where the scales were ripped off.

And then she was gone, lumbering through a dark, narrow passage. Only her hollow laugh echoed and followed her.

I laid my head back and stared at the ceiling as Azut approached us. What was his intention? He reached out a hand to my chest and I didn't know if it were in friendship or rage.

“Don't hurt him,” Sophia begged. “Please!”

I flinched as Azut shoved his flattened hand between me and the spider. I heard the click of a switch. The spider rose to its feet. Its lit eyes blinked out, and it remained still.

I crawled out from under it and lay there, gasping in breaths. Azut extended a hand. I took it and he helped me to my unsteady feet. Sophia took my arm and I hugged her tight. “I'll never let you go!” I whispered, while tears slid down my cheeks. “Never.” I put out an arm to Azut and drew him close. “I'm sorry about your brother, my friend.”

He nodded, and I heard his teeth clack and the whimper in his throat. I held Sophia against me so she wouldn't see Slade's blackened bones drift in the flames.

* * *

We came out of the dark tunnel into morning woods like Orpheus with a rescued Eurydice from Hell, and a friend.

I pointed at our parked hovairs in a clearing and we made our way toward them. Huff, with his keen hearing, was the first to notice us as we came out of the trees. He howled, dropped to all fours and galloped toward us.

“Easy, Huff!” I yelled as he approached. He skidded to a stop on leaves, rose to his full height and embraced me.

“Never did I hope in my liver to see you again,” he cried. “Never did I hope to smell your bitter Terran aroma again.” My chest was still sore from the spider's weight, but I said nothing as he lifted me off the ground. “Never did I hope to see your smile that shows blunt teeth, or hear your squeaky human voice call my name. Oh, Huff. Huff! I am blessed by the Ten Gods of Kresthaven.” His eyes leaked tears that wet his cheek fur as he licked my face.

“Jules!” Joe cried from the clearing and trotted toward us, followed by Bat and Sarge.

“Dad,” I said as Joe hugged me. “Dad…I –” My knees trembled as the shock of what we'd just been through finally took hold. I sat down, scraped up a handful of leaves, and smelled the pungent aroma of living things. Sophia, Huff, Joe, Bat, and Azut sat down around me.