Starfist: Blood Contact (42 page)

Before Bass could tell him to stay low and not fire unless he was discovered, Pasquin said, "Oh, shit,"

and flamed one of the skinks. It flared up. The three of them were so close together it ignited the other two. Their combined heat was great enough to explode the acid canister of the one he shot. Globules and droplets of greenish fluid sprayed all around the room and into the tunnel.

"I think they knew I was here," Pasquin reported, his voice shaky. "One of them pointed its weapon at me."

"Anybody else in there?"

Pasquin gave a nervous laugh. "I don't think so. That acid sprayed around too much when the tank went off. Anyone else in there had to be hit by it." As he spoke he was drawing his knife to dig out a globule of acid that was eating its way to the bone of his left arm. He glanced quickly into the tabled room. His nose was assailed by a sharp odor, and the floor was coated with a film of green. He didn't think he'd be able to safely cross the room to get back to the entry chamber for Doc Horner to see to his injury.

"Unless they've got some way of protecting themselves, nobody's following us from that direction until the acid neutralizes." Smoke was beginning to waft from the walls near the vaporized skinks.

Bass, unaware that he had a casualty, rolled over to look the other way. The only threat he saw was his own Marines. "Hammer?"

"Let's go get 'em," Schultz snarled. He'd heard Pasquin's report. If they didn't have to worry about their rear, they could move faster. He assumed the skinks had a bolt hole and were headed for it, so the Marines had to move fast.

"Move it out," Bass said. He hurried into position behind Schultz, in front of third fire team.

Second fire team continued to bring up the rear. Pasquin was the last man in the column. He was walking backward, watching the rear—he didn't want anyone to see him working on his wound, didn't want anyone to know he'd been hit. He grimaced when he looked at the wound, where flesh was bubbling and fizzing into a viscous liquid. It drained when he tipped his arm to let it run and there was almost no blood; the acid effectively cauterized the walls of the wound. The pain was decreasing; he figured the acid was destroying nerve endings. He wondered if cutting away the flesh at the sides of the wound would get rid of the acid more effectively than simply digging out the green fluid.

The tunnel beyond the room with the high ceiling had no openings off it. It quickly turned left, then right again after a few meters, then right again, then sloped sharply down. From the top it looked like it leveled off when it reached a depth below the floor of the tunnel they were in. Bass wondered why it wasn't filled with water; it had to be far below the water table. He touched the side of the tunnel. The woven covering resisted the pressure of his fingers. He guessed it had an impermeable layer under it to keep out water.

He wondered if that tunnel began as a natural formation like the rest of the complex or if the skinks had dug it, then he discarded the thought as immaterial.

The tunnel leveled out for several meters and began to rise. Second squad was coming down the other slope.

"You're positive you didn't overlook a passageway they could have gone down?" Bass asked Hyakowa after getting his report. They had their screens up so they could see each other's faces.

"Damn right I'm positive. Are you sure you didn't miss any?" There was a touch of heat in Hyakowa's voice. "Besides, they were in front of us the whole time."

"Only the one going in the opposite direction." Bass knew Hyakowa wouldn't miss anything. He hunkered back on his heels, wondering where the skinks could have gone. He had climbed the other slope and held a squad leaders' meeting to bring all four leaders up to date on everything. Both squads had followed skinks, both squads had been shot at, and both had killed skinks. No casualties—Bass still didn't know about Pasquin. The complex was roughly circular, with a continuous tunnel cutting through some rooms, and other rooms branching off it. The only place they hadn't checked was the tunnel off the tabled room, and that was in the opposite direction from where the skinks had gone. So where were the skinks they'd both followed?

"Teleportation?" Bladon asked.

"What?"

"They seem to have something superior to a Beam drive. They seem to be able to detect us even in our chameleons.

They've got guns that fire an acid our med-sci team says can't exist. They've got both lungs and gills.

Why not teleportation?"

Bass looked at Ratliff. "When this is over I want you and Sergeant Kelly to straighten him out.

Teleportation smacks too much of the occult." Still, he wondered if Bladon could be right. Teleportation, no matter how wild the idea was, sounded like the only explanation.

"Nah," Bladon said. "Forget about teleportation. None of us saw anything that could be a transponder station."

Bass glared at Bladon, wondering if he could get away with slugging him.

A shout from the bottom of the tunnel snapped him back. "What is it?" he called back, already on his feet and heading down.

Goudanis was at the bottom of the tunnel looking at a spot low on the wall. Bass looked at it and didn't see anything to catch his attention; it was simply the same weaving that covered the rest of the interior of the complex.

"Listen," Goudanis said, and smacked the palm of his hand against the wall near the top. Then he hit the wall near the floor. The top of the wall sounded solid, the bottom gave a dull thump—it sounded hollow.

"How...?"

Goudanis shrugged. "When I was a kid, I was fascinated by medieval history. I remembered reading stories with castles that had secret passageways—with doors so cleverly hidden you couldn't see them even when you knew where they were. We should have caught the skinks in a pincer, but they weren't here. They had to go somewhere. Why not a hidden passage?"

Bass looked at him with admiration. "I knew promoting you was a good idea." He squatted down and used his magnifier screen to look at the wall. After a moment he noticed a faint break in the weave. He traced it around. It made a near-perfect circle that began more than half a meter above the floor and overlapped the floor. Even though he probed, he couldn't find a latch or hinge.

"It's just big enough to let one of the big skinks through," he said.

Bass called Hyakowa and the squad leaders down to see what Goudanis had discovered. He marked the circle with a stylus so it was clearly visible, then told them, "Everybody on the upper level. I want one man from each squad in a position to see this. On my signal they're to flame it, then back off. We don't know what's on the other side, so it's important for them to get out of the way as soon as they fire. Got it?"

They all nodded.

"Do it."

A couple of minutes later everyone was on the upper level. Schultz was halfway down on one side, Kerr on the other. Both were far enough upslope that they couldn't see each other. It was Kerr's responsibility to tell Schultz when to fire. "Ready, Hammer?" Kerr asked.

"Always," Schultz growled.

"On three. One, two, three!" They fired simultaneously and leaped up the tunnel, out of the way of whatever might happen next.

At first there were just a few crackles as the weaving around the hidden doorway burned.

"Take a look," Bass ordered.

Schultz went headfirst, down far enough to see the hidden doorway. "It's gone," he reported. He stayed in place, blaster to his shoulder, ready to flame anything that emerged. "I see smoke."

They heard a snapping and crackling and tensed, ready for action.

"It's burning," Schultz said after they listened to the sounds for a moment.

"What?" Bass asked.

"Where we blasted it. The matting's burning." He paused. "So's the dirt behind it."

Bass dropped to his belly and slid down to see for himself. Small flames flickered around the edges of the burnt matting. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the flames and began easing up the ceiling of the tunnel.

Bass swore. The smoke would rise and drive the Marines out of the underground complex, but would leave the skinks untouched, wherever they were. Then something about the burning dirt caught his eye and he used his magnifier and light amplifier. He'd been right about the walls of the lower tunnel being permeated with a waterproofer. Water was beginning to seep through the walls where they were scorched by the plasma bolts. He saw something else as well—a dense smoke was dribbling from around the charred area where tiny flames flickered, smoke dense enough to sink rather than rise. The waterproofer was volatile and could burn.

"You see what I see inside?"

Schultz grunted.

"Come on." Bass slithered down to the opening. Schultz passed him on the way down and already had his blaster aimed into the hidden passageway when Bass reached it. This tunnel led down at an acute angle and seemed to widen at the bottom. Is there a room down there? Bass wondered. Is that where they are? The heavy smoke was spreading and thinning along the widened area. He heard a muffled cough.

"Let's scorch the walls," he whispered. "Don't hit them directly, I don't want to go far enough into the walls to start the water coming through, just get the waterproofer burning."

"Good," Schultz said. He readied his blaster to give the wall a grazing shot and waited for Bass's command.

"Now," Bass said, and pressed his blaster's firing lever.

Two bolts of plasma skittered along the mid-line of the downward tunnel walls. The matting flamed up along the path of the bolts and burned with tiny flames at the scorched edges. At the bottom more matting sparked into tiny flames. The exposed dirt began to steam and more smoke dribbled from the walls.

"Do it again," Bass ordered. Both of them raised up slightly and burned swathes just above the first.

"Again." They dropped and fired bolts along the bottom of the walls. In seconds thick smoke was flowing slowly from the entire length of both walls.

They heard more coughing. A skink voice rose in demand. Another voice snapped back. More coughing. Many voices shouted. Great coughing. A scream that might have been an order. Then the sound of movement and shadows swiftly grew at the bottom of the tunnel.

Bass and Schultz each fired one bolt, then scrabbled back up to where first squad waited. Light and heat blasted up the hidden tunnel. More smoke flowed up from below, and soon the overhead was covered with a drifting cloud. The Marines waited.

Bass knew he'd have to send someone down there to make sure the skinks were all dead, and to find out if they had another exit from whatever space was down there. That was going to be dangerous. Not only because of any skinks that might lay in wait, but because of the dense smoke that had to be filling the lower chamber. He had no idea what effects that smoke could have on a man. The chameleon uniform would provide some protection from it, unless it was acidic enough to eat through the fabric. He'd have to send someone back into the entry tunnel to retrieve a breathing unit because the smoke might damage lungs. Better do that now, he decided.

"Wang," he said into the command circuit, "send someone back to retrieve a breather from the water."

"Roger," Hyakowa replied.

Bass waited with growing apprehension for the breathing unit to arrive. Smoke was filling the tunnels, and the light in the connecting tunnel wavered as the flames ate at the weaving. He wondered whether the man Hyakowa had sent would get back before the smoke filled the tunnels and they had to withdraw.

His thoughts were yanked away from the breathing unit and the growing smoke by jabbering from below. Live skinks were still down there. He heard the thud of feet, then a giant skink burst out of the hidden tunnel and turned left, crawling very fast toward Hyakowa and second squad. Bass fired at it, but the skink was out of his sight almost before he pressed the lever. But his bolt did hit a second giant skink that was just pulling itself out of the tunnel and turning toward him. The wave of heat from the flaring giant took away his breath and almost knocked him back. More of the matting flamed up. Then there was a chain-reaction of flashes from the tunnel to the lower chamber, and a few screams were sharply cut off.

The tunnel must have been filled with skinks, he thought, all of whom flashed. He clearly heard the crackle of fire, then flames leaped out of the lower tunnel followed by a dark plume of acrid smoke.

"Out!" Bass roared. "Everybody get out!" Instantly, all the Marines turned and raced back the way they'd come. Behind them flames shot along the tunnels, hungrily eating at the walls and giving off billows of smoke.

"What's happening?" Doc Horner asked when MacIlargie reached the entry chamber.

"We had them trapped, maybe all killed," MacIlargie gasped. "The Gunny wants the breather." He barely noticed the dead skink laid out next to the entry pool, where it could be easily pulled into the water and out and given to Dr. Bynum.

"I'll get it," said Quick. He removed his helmet and stepped into the water. He was back in a moment, tossing the jury-rigged breathing unit out of the water, when his eyes popped wide and, still in the water, he shouted a warning.

The servant huddled in the service room. She had gone demurely when dismissed and waited patiently to be ordered to bring more food or drink. The drip of water soothed her during her wait. Then the Master had shouted and she heard the leaders prepare to fight. She heard a blast that could only come from one of the Earth barbarian's forever guns, and she heard feet running away from her. She cowered with fear as feet thudded into the Master's quarters. Her side receptors told her one of the barbarians looked into the serving room, but she was in a corner and he didn't see her in the darkness. Then the feet thudded away, following the Master and the leaders who had been dining with him. They went in the direction of the leaders' quarters. Forever guns shot and shot again. Soon after, she heard the three fighters in the hidden chamber move into the Master's quarters to follow the barbarians, then the horrid, horrid, sound of a forever gun. She saw the brilliant flash as the three fighters went into oblivion. Then the barbarians thudded farther away and she heard no more.