With the Simes leading, they wound their way through the crates and bales of supplies. The door was locked but gave under the impact of three Simes. The other storeroom was also pitch-dark, and so was the corridor when they found it. Gunfire and explosions told of the battle in progress.
They had no weapons. Without instructions, the four Simes moved to the front, the four Gens bunched at the rear. They came to a bend, the last leg of the corridor to the hangar. Bright flashes strobed through the dark, loud cracks echoed when guns went off. Zlinning, Azevedo reported, "Five Gens with their backs to us. A barricade of large potato sacks. And beyond the Gens, two of Yuan's Simes holding the five off with rifles."
"They're probably shooting drug darts," supplied Jarmi. "But they might have live bullets."
There was a roar as a helicopter revved engines inside the hangar. The feel of the air changed as the big doors opened.
The two gypsy Simes, blond hair and pale skin making them all but invisible in the smoky darkness, touched Azevedo. They seemed ready to pounce on the Gens. Azevedo gathered Laneff into a huddle.
"The Simes won't shoot at us. We can approach the Gens silently and knock them out. But we must not harm them."
His firm order was directed more to the gypsy Sime who seemed near turnover, but it was clear that, as was traditional with gypsies, Azevedo would not permit them to injure any Sime or Gen seriously.
Renewed billows of smoke belched from the air circulators and a distant whump marked another explosion. Jarmi smothered a cough. Laneff returned to explain their plan and ended, "Hug the wall and dash through as soon as the fighting stops."
Then, with all the craft of the wild, the three gypsy Simes led the way around the bend, advancing stealthily on the Gens who were shooting randomly into the smoke. Laneff’s throat felt raw from the smoke, but she went hypoconscious anyhow, ignoring the coughing prickle, intent on not feeling Gen shock and pain.
The defending Simes zlinned them coining and held fire. The Gens hardly noticed that before the four Simes fell on them. Laneff’s target went down as she got a hold on his throat, cutting off circulation to his brain. He went out quietly. The two defending Simes joined the fight, taking out one of the Gens. Before Laneff could turn around, all the Gens were unconscious.
Azevedo dropped his target Gen and whirled across the barricade of potatoes to where one of the defending Simes had dragged a Gen. The poor Sime's need had driven him to hunting mode, and he was now intent on a kill. But Azevedo swept the Sime's grip away from Gen arms before it was properly seated. Just as any Tecton channel might, Azevedo lured the Sime into accepting channel's transfer.
For one instant, the two of them were surrounded by a blurred bubble of privacy. Laneff was transfixed, duoconscious, remembering how, at Digen's funeral, she had been willing to fight for a transfer from this channel. Now what she zlinned reminded her achingly of Yuan's selyn flow. And the expression on the Sime's face, together with the singing in the man's nager, made her wish she hadn't taken that transfer from Jarmi.
As Azevedo dismantled his grip, the Sime looked down in astonishment at the channel's tentacles, as if he hadn't known he hadn't killed.
Then they were both coughing at a new, blacker smoke. Azevedo, showing no signs of being in recovery after giving that transfer, pulled the defending Sime with him as he called, "We've all got to get out of here!" Their Gens had joined them, Shanlun's field brightening the scene for all the Simes. "How long will Yuan keep the hangar doors open?"
"They're broken. Never close again," answered a defender.
Meanwhile, the two gypsy Simes had each hefted a Gen body. Azevedo chose another, saying, "Come on."
Laneff picked one of the smallest, a woman, and slid the limp body onto her shoulder. Still, the hands dragged as she made for the open doors. Shanlun came up behind her and picked up the woman's hands.
There were no more machines left on the hangar floor. Overhead, the doors which had been camouflaged as a hedgerow sagged inward, spilling dirt and thorned plants onto the floor. They found a side exit stair that led up and began to climb. Laneff struggled, aware that the others behind her could not get out if she fell and blocked the narrow stair.
And then they were out in the moist winds, chill with oncoming storm. Clouds darkened the night, but Gen nager hazed the whole farmstead like city lights.
And that haze was lurid with battle lust. Shanlun helped Laneff set her burden down and placed himself next to the gypsy Sime who was too near turnover. "Laneff, can you zlin any sign of Yuan?"
She scanned. The farmhouse was in flames. Craters pocked the once neat rows of crops. A stand of trees near a brook masked another emergency exit, and many Simes and Gens were gathering there. A wrecked chopper lay burning with no one alive inside. Other aircraft circled, some with Sime pilots—and some Gens. Laneff couldn't tell Diet from Distect and said so.
Azevedo observed, "He could be anywhere by now. Even dead. But he said he might have to blow the whole warren up. So I think we'd best get off the tunnels."
Jarmi said, "The nearest safe ground is that grove there."
Agreed, they moved in that direction. Before they'd covered half the distance, a fast plane swooped in from above the clouds and dropped something into the stand of trees they were headed for. In the split instant between the delivery of the object and the explosion, Laneff had time to yell, "Selyn bomb!" and to slide her burden to the ground, throwing her own body on top of Shanlun.
She nearly cracked heads with Azevedo, who'd also thought to protect Shanlun. And then the world exploded. To the Gens, it was a loud bright wall of power that swept over them. But to the Simes, it was also a flash of selyn movement so powerful it lit up their nerves even if they were staunchly hypoconscious. The blast turned everything transparent and died off so quickly it stunned like transfer abort backlash.
"Shenshay!" spat one Sime, naming it not swearing.
Bits of tree and rock, wet sand, splintered fence, and bloody shreds of flesh rained down. As it stopped, one of the gypsy Simes said, "This Gen is dead. A rock hit him."
"This one, too," said one of the defenders. "He'd taken three or four darts, and it only now got to him."
Three of the Gens survived. Hurting with shock, Laneff gathered her feet, holding to Shanlun. "We've got to move," she said. "When Yuan says he'll do something, he does."
"Yuan may be dead," said Azevedo.
"Where can we go?" asked someone.
"Into the bomb crater," said Laneff. "They won't hit there again!"
They staggered over the shock ripples in the ground around the explosion, then climbed and slipped in a mixture of soil, blood, and water, and scraped themselves on stones and splintered wood, until they scrambled down into the center of the bomb crater.
Mercifully, much of the gory mess was buried. And at the center, there was enough clear space to sit down. The war around them was
undiminished, though, and Laneff followed Azevedo back up to the rim of the crater.
"Laneff, do you know the other emergency exits?"
"No." She turned and called, "Jarmi! Come here!"
The Gen scrambled up the loose slope, swearing at the splintered branches that caught at her. "What?"
"Point out to me the locations of the other emergency exits," commanded Azevedo.
Orienting herself, she pointed out six more locations. And with each one, Azevedo shook his head. "Bombed also. No one living."
"They've shut us up down there!" said Jarmi, horrified.
"Next will be the hangar bay. I don't know why they—"
At that, another sere explosion lit the night, from the direction of the hangar, but muffled underground. When rubble ceased falling, Azevedo said, "Defective bomb? Where has the Diet gotten these monsters?"