Encrypted (30 page)

Well, maybe not the worst thing.

Rias had mentioned strange predators in the
tunnels. Predators that would probably find a single man an
appealing target. Best not to dwell on that. Tikaya turned her
attention back to the journal.

A mile or two passed with no side rooms or
cross corridors forcing decisions. With her mind and her eyes
locked on the pages, she failed to notice Bocrest stopping, and she
crashed into his back. The journal slipped from her fingers as he
spun and scowled.

“
Didn’t you see the
sign?”

“
Sign?” Tikaya blinked and
glanced about. They had come to a six-way intersection, where the
scouts had stopped to wait. Large symbols in groupings of threes
glowed a soft red above eye level at each corner. “Oh, yes, signs.
I just read about those.”

Bocrest sighed noisily, while she picked up
the journal.

“
Not those signs, the hand
signal.” He demonstrated by raising his hand, fingers spread. “That
means ‘squad halt,’ not ‘librarian run into the captain’s back.’
You need to pay attention in here.”

“
Do you want me to pay
attention or do you want me to be able to translate the writing on
the walls?” she asked.

Bocrest folded his arms. “Yes.”

She snorted but pointed to each sign as she
relayed them: “Biology labs, alchemy labs, physics, animal
experiments, labs for something Lancecrest didn’t recognize, and
living quarters.”

“
What is
that
?” A marine pointed
to a calf-high scat pile in the middle of one of the
corridors.

“
Sorry,” Tikaya said, “I
don’t translate poo.”

“
Koffert.” Bocrest
gestured for the tracker.

The man knelt to examine the pile. He rubbed
some between his fingers and sniffed it. “Predator, unknown. Large.
Passed this way less than an hour back.” He stood, wiping his hand
on his trousers, and Tikaya made a note not to share meals with the
man.

Bocrest faced the scouts. “Any sign of
Starcrest?”

“
No, sir,” Agarik said. He
met Tikaya’s eyes, and they shared a grimace.

Bocrest grunted and waved toward the
symbols. “Komitopis, which way?”

“
Which way do I think Rias
would go if he was wondering which way I would go?”

Agarik smiled faintly. Bocrest did not.

“
Alchemy?” she
guessed.

“
Fine. Someone mark the
wall.” Bocrest waved the scouts forward. “Go. You boys in the back,
stay alert. Watch for monsters creeping up on our
asses.”

As the squad headed the new direction,
Tikaya cast a longing gaze at the corridor that led to the living
quarters. If any personal affects remained after all this time, she
could learn much about the people from studying them. After they
found Rias, perhaps they could go back.

Soon, doors marked the passage, taller and
wider than normal, and without knobs or latches. Symbols denoting
laboratories adorned some while others remained plain.

Someone walking closer to the wall than the
center of the tunnel triggered a door to slide upward of its own
accord. The man cursed and lurched back into line. Tikaya glimpsed
a landing overlooking what she guessed to be lab stations—all the
furnishings were oversized by human standards. A hand on her back
encouraged her to hustle forward and catch up with Bocrest.

“
Should we check some of
these?” she asked.

“
I’m not exploring
anything until we catch up with our lovelorn guide,” Bocrest
said.

Up ahead, the scouts stopped before a closed
door. Agarik and another knelt to check something on the floor
while the third man stood guard. After a moment, Agarik jogged back
to the group.

“
What is it?” Bocrest
asked.

“
Blood.” Agarik glanced at
Tikaya. “A lot of blood.”

Her hands tightened around the journal. If
Rias was hurt—or worse—because he had charged in here to look for
her, it would be her fault.

When they reached the spot, the size of the
dark puddle only increased her dread.

“
Human blood,” the tracker
said after a taste. “Plantigrade print over there, but definitely
not human.”

He pointed to a second puddle halfway under
the door. A bloody print more than twice the size of Tikaya’s foot
lay beside it. Dots at the end of the toes suggested claws.

“
Bear?” Bocrest
asked.

Tikaya, remembering Rias’s tale of the
tunnels, said, “I doubt it.”

A man screamed somewhere beyond the door.
Rias? She lunged for the door, triggering the opening mechanism,
but Bocrest caught her before she crossed the threshold.

“
We’ll get him,” he said.
“You wait here.”

He waved two fingers, and the scouts slipped
in first, fanning out on a landing with their rifles raised, ready
to fire. Tikaya shifted her weight from foot to foot and eyed a bow
stave and quiver attached to a rucksack. The man carried a rifle
and pistol too; surely, he could spare the weapon so she could—

“
Clear on the landing,”
Agarik said.

“
Sergeant Karsus.” Bocrest
nodded for the man to take over the lead.

Without words, and faster than Tikaya
expected, the marines shucked their rucksacks and split into two
teams. They filed down stairs on opposite ends of the landing and
disappeared from her sight. Only Bocrest remained with Tikaya.

Ignoring his hiss of annoyance, she twisted
free of his grip and stepped inside. The landing overlooked a
cavernous room that stretched a hundred meters or more. Thick
thirty-foot-high columns supported the unadorned black ceiling.
Empty floor dominated the front third of the room, and she could
only guess at the furnishings beyond. She decided to think of them
as lab stations and storage cabinets, though even the lowest
counter rose taller than the approaching marines. The height and
arrangement blocked much of the floor view as the stations created
a maze of sinuous yet symmetrical aisles, some wide, some
surprisingly narrow. As with the tunnel, light from an
indiscernible source illuminated everything.

A cry of agony echoed from the center, and
she glimpsed a blur of black before it disappeared behind a row of
twenty-foot-tall cabinets.

“
Sprites-licked idiot,”
she cursed, whirling to look for a bow amongst the discarded gear.
She was not sure whether she meant Rias or herself. If, after all
he had lived through, he died to some random animal
attack...

Tikaya spotted the bow stave she eyed
earlier. The marine had left it in favor of the rifle. She stuffed
the journal into her rucksack, then untied the bow with fingers too
irritated to fumble with fear. She yanked the quiver free as well.
Stringing the weapon was a struggle, and she prayed the draw
wouldn’t be too heavy for her.

“
Let my men do their job,
Komitopis.” Rifle crooked in his arms, Bocrest leaned on the wall
by the door, which had slid shut again. His voice was more
sympathetic than she had ever heard it, and he did not try to take
the weapon from her, but he did add, “You’re staying with me,” in
an implacable tone.

She succeeded in looping the string over the
limb of the bow. “I’m not going to—”

“
I’m
not going to lose you as well as Starcrest. We need someone
to read this grimbal shit.”

Noise in the corridor made them spin toward
the door. Tikaya nocked an arrow while Bocrest raised his rifle. In
the lab behind them, the men stalked in silence, and she had no
trouble hearing the fast, heavy footfalls outside as they grew
louder—closer.

Bocrest cursed, probably regretting that he
had sent all his men below. The footfalls thundered to a stop
outside the door. Tikaya drew the arrow, ignoring the strain
between the backs of her shoulders. At least her shoulder no longer
vexed her.

The door slid open. She held her breath.

The tunnel was empty.

The tip of her arrow wavered as her muscles
quivered from the effort of holding the draw. She glanced at
Bocrest, a question on her lips.

Then a head popped around the jamb and
disappeared again. It happened so quickly she doubted her sight.
Then a familiar voice spoke with wry humor.

“
Can I come
in?”

“
Rias!” she blurted, even
as Bocrest shouted, “Curse you, Starcrest.”

Rias slid out from behind the wall. “I hope
that’s a yes.”

They lowered their weapons as he joined them
on the landing. First Tikaya noticed a garish black eye and
fingermarks bruising his neck, then saw the sweat bathing his face,
saturating his hair, and dripping from his chin. His chest, framed
by the straps of his rucksack, rose and fell with rapid, deep
breaths. He wore all his weapons too—in addition to the rifle he
carried, pistol, cutlass, and knife challenged the ammo pouches and
powder tins for room on his belt. He must have been back to camp
since the fight.

“
I can’t believe you left
without me,” Rias said, eyes darting as he took in the
lab.

“
But I saw you with
Ottotark,” Tikaya said. “He said—I thought you went in the tunnels
looking for me.”

Rias dragged a sleeve across his brow, not
quite hiding a grimace of shame. “No, I didn’t believe him. I just
had to... I almost lost it with him. I needed to get away, to
think.”

Tikaya sagged against the railing with
relief.

Disgust curled Bocrest’s lip throughout
their exchange, and he finally jabbed his rifle toward the lab
below. “If you were behind us, who in the empire are my men trying
to rescue down there?”

“
I don’t know.” Rias
glanced at Tikaya. “Maybe someone we can question if we recover him
alive?”

Bocrest raised his voice for the benefit of
the men below. “Starcrest accounted for. Continue with retrieval
operation.”

“
Treat them like
grimbals,” Rias called. “It takes a cut to the neck or shot to the
eye to kill. And, above all else, do
not
break anything in
here.”

The last command seemed strange when a man’s
life was at stake, but the grimness in Rias’s mandate kept Tikaya
from questioning it.

A shot fired, and a roar came from the
center of the lab. Something crashed against a cabinet, and Rias
winced. “Not good. Wish I’d had time to do a briefing.”

He glared at Bocrest who in turn glared at
Tikaya.

“
This is your childish
sergeant’s fault,” she said, “not mine.”

“
Why couldn’t the
cryptomancer have been a man?” Bocrest glowered at Rias. “Though
after all that time on Krychek, you probably wouldn’t have
cared.”

Rias raised an eyebrow. “I am armed, you
realize.”

Another roar answered the first, and
Bocrest’s head snapped back toward the lab. “There’s a second?”

“
Back corner.” Rias headed
for the stairs. “Who’s coming with me?”

“
You’re not going
anywhere,” Bocrest said.

“
I’ve fought these before.
Better me than them. But I could use backup.” He offered Tikaya a
tentative smile.

More gunfire and a spatter of curses sounded
in the lab, but she stared at him for a long moment. “You want me?
After last night?”

“
Nothing’s changed
for
me
,” he said
with a sad smile. “Besides, you’re a better shot with that bow than
my other option.”

Bocrest sniffed. “I am armed, you
realize.”

But Rias was already heading down the
stairs. “Third team advancing along the south wall,” he called.

A strangled groan of pain whispered through
the aisles. Before she could think better of it, Tikaya slung the
quiver across her back and followed Rias. She could figure out her
feelings later.

They descended floating steps too deeply
spaced for human comfort. Bow at half-draw, she trailed him across
the open area toward a narrow gap along the south wall. As they
approached, claustrophobia tightened her chest. The backs of
cabinets and lab stations loomed in the same black as the wall,
with the counters well above Tikaya’s head. She and Rias would have
to walk single file.

Sweat dampened her grip and slithered down
her spine. She had been ready to throw herself into the fray for
Rias’s sake. Going on a monster hunt for uncertain stakes was
another matter. Why had she followed him down the stairs? Surely he
would have been better off with Bocrest. Despite her trepidation,
she kept following. It should not matter, especially now, what Rias
thought, but she could not bring herself to complain or back
out.

He pressed himself against the wall and
gestured for her to go ahead. “Since I can fire over your shoulder,
you can lead.”

Just when she thought it couldn’t get
bleaker.

“
You know,” Tikaya said,
struggling for nonchalance as she slid past, “some men protect the
women they care about by keeping them
away
from danger.”

Rias raised an eyebrow. “Sounds
stifling.”

“
Perhaps so.”

“
Military officers like to
challenge people to encourage growth.”

“
I’ve been six feet tall
since I was thirteen; growth hasn’t been my goal for a
while.”

“
You could grow a bit more
before you got too big for Turgonian tastes.”

She smiled a bit at the double meanings, her
mind distracted from her fear. As on the ship, his steadiness
calmed her. She could worry about whether it should or not later.
In the meantime, she wiped her palms dry, and padded forward, bow
ready.