Someone shot one of the creatures in the eye, and it toppled to the floor. A ragged cheer went up.
Tikaya eased around sacks of corn meal and rice. A couple steps and she would be out of the camp. She resisted the urge to hop the few couple obstacles and sprint for the wall. That would likely draw someone’s eyes. Stealth would serve her better.
“ The linguist is escaping!” someone yelled.
So much for stealth.
She bolted. Her boot caught on the uneven ground, and she slammed to her knees even as a shot fired over her head. They would rather shoot her than let her escape back to the others?
Gulping, she leaped to her feet and sprinted to the wall, lantern and bow banging against her legs with every step. That was the first time her clumsiness had saved her life-she could not count on it happening again.
Tikaya plunged into the darkness, using the blurry crimson runes as a guide. She reached the wall and stood to the side, not wanting to be silhouetted against them for the shooters.
Footsteps hammered the floor behind her.
She jabbed the symbol that opened the cabinet, but nothing happened. Growling, she slowed her movements and added a rotation. The cabinet popped open.
The footsteps neared. Lancecrest. She didn’t have enough time.
Then a black shape blurred in from the side, crashing into him. The remaining beast.
Lancecrest yelled and flung his arms up.
As soon as it finished him, it would be on her. Tikaya pulled out a cube, praying it would not activate while she held it. Arms laden, she started toward the tunnel.
“ Over here, you ugly pisser!” someone cried and a psi wave pulsed through the air.
It struck the creature full on, hurling it twenty feet. The edge of the wave caught Tikaya and smashed her against the wall.
Lancecrest patted the floor for his rifle. His men poured out of the camp and moved to surround the creature. And her.
She sprinted for the tunnel.
An arrow clipped Tikaya’s sleeve and shattered against the wall. Fear surged through her, and she ran faster.
Someone conjured a yellow orb of light, and it spun her direction, illuminating her, making her an easier target.
“ Stop!” A man pointed a pistol as he ran at her, his face a rictus of determination.
She had to keep going, hope his aim was poor.
A shot fired, and Tikaya dove, knowing it would not be fast enough. But no blast of pain came. The man’s musket hit the floor with a clatter, and he collapsed a heartbeat later. Tikaya scrambled into a crouch and squinted into the gloom behind him. A tall blurry figure in Turgonian black stood in a tunnel entrance on the far side of the cavern. Rias?
She stepped that direction, but he waved her toward her closer tunnel.
“ Starcrest!” Lancecrest fired his rifle.
Rias flew back with a grunt. Tikaya gaped. It looked like he had been hit, but, curse her eyes, she could not tell. He ducked back into the tunnel. Lancecrest raced after him.
Tikaya took a step that direction, but an explosion roared, and the ground heaved. She was thrown onto her side, and the lantern flew from her grip. The cavern filled with confused yells and cries of pain.
A stalactite plunged to the floor where it shattered and hurled shards everywhere. A second explosion ripped through the earth. A sinkhole opened up in the floor, and rock poured in like water over a fall.
Tikaya scrambled for the nearby tunnel, hoping the alien walls would hold up better than the cavern. She had no idea where the lantern had gone. Even as the floor pitched, she clutched the cube and the bow, determined not to lose anything else.
Blackness smothered the tunnel. Three steps in, another concussion boomed, hurling her against a wall. Her breath whooshed out with a pained grunt. The bow and cube flew from her hands. She crumpled to the floor and barely had the presence of mind to curl into a ball with her hands protecting her head as further booms rocked the tunnel.
Nearby, rock shattered and cracked like gunfire. Tikaya cringed, expecting the ceiling to collapse at any second. Finally, the explosions ended, but rubble continued to pelt the floor. She kept waiting for rocks to hit her, but her tunnel seemed secure. Secure, but dark. Lifting her head to peer about was worthless since blackness pressed in from all sides. Worse, dust clogged the air and invaded her throat. She coughed and wheezed as fine particles smothered her tongue.
Distant, muffled yells made it to her ears, but she could not pick out words. She shifted to get to her feet. Her fingers bumped a hard edge. She jerked back. The cube. If ever there was a mess, surely an earthquake-or whatever that had been-qualified. She held her breath, expecting the cleaning device to flare to life, for the orifice to glow red, the beam to lance out.
But the cube remained inert.
Whatever the reason, she thanked her luck and hunted for the bow. She found it wedged under a pile of rubble. Rubble that blocked the mouth of the tunnel from floor to ceiling. Cave-in.
She hoped there was another way back to the cavern. And that she could find it in the dark.
Tikaya stood and started to brush herself off, but a new concern made her freeze. How far did the cave-in extend? What if it covered part, or all, of the cavern? And the tunnels beyond? Her heart lurched. What if Rias or Parkonis had been caught? She still didn’t know if Rias had been shot. Damn, damn.
She clawed at the rubble, trying to dig a hole. She had to get back in and check.
A minute later, her fingers were bleeding and she had made no progress. Breath rasping in her ears, she backed away. She would not get in that way. She needed to find another way around. She needed to-
No. Tikaya wiped sweat from her face and forced herself to calm down, to think. Rias would want her to continue with the mission, not tear off, hunting for him. For all she knew, he might have set this all up. She remembered the clinking. Had the marines been crawling around in passages beneath the floor, placing blasting sticks?
She turned around and felt her way along the wall, trying not to feel guilty for walking away from Parkonis and Rias. She had to ensure those weapons were destroyed, and she could not assume the cave-in had done that. In fact, she would be shocked if it had.
The darkness made the trek feel longer, but she doubted she had walked far before she came to a four-way intersection labeled with glowing runes. Three possible directions, three labs. Biology, alchemy, and… She touched the last one, a new combination of symbols. Mechanical? That sounded promising, but she ought to let Rias know which way she had gone. She dropped her hand and snorted because her bloody fingers had already smeared a sign on the runes.
She padded down the hall. A door whispered open, and she stepped onto a landing. She expected darkness inside, but low blue lighting pulsed from the walls. Some kind of backup illumination, perhaps.
This lab was larger than others she had visited and had an upper level as well as a lower. She chose the upper, less out of any notion of what she might need, but because it would not be immediately visible to someone walking in.
Upstairs, blurry cabinets lined the walls and high stations dominated the center. She had to wander close for the edges to sharpen. They reminded her more of woodworking benches than alchemy stations. Intricate black tools she could not identify were mounted to the table tops and hung from the ceilings on articulating arms. Rias would probably be fascinated by them.
Her gut twisted with concern at the thought of him, but she forced herself to focus on the one thing she could accomplish here. She dug her notes, the sphere, and a pencil out of her pocket.
Tikaya put more obstacles between herself and the landing before stopping at a countertop that was not too high for her purposes. She thumbed the sphere on and identified the rest of the numbers from the door pad. More primes, but not the first sixteen as she had guessed. The sequence skipped a few: three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, sixty-one, sixty-seven, and seventy-three.