Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 39

Maggie opened her eyes. She hadn’t heard the ground shake for a while. She wondered how long it had been since Gallen left. She finally realized she could simply ask her mantle the time; silently she questioned the mantle’s AI.

“It is 2:2l P.M.,” her mantle answered.

When did Gallen leave? she asked.

“At 9:l4 A.M.,” the mantle said.

Five hours. He’d been gone more than five hours. He’d promised to be back in four, or he would never come back at all. Maggie’s heart began racing. She shook slightly and began to sob.

She looked about. Off in the deep shadows, at the far end of the tunnel, Zeus appeared to have fallen asleep, head hunched over. His light had gone out. Orick and Tallea were nowhere in sight.

She got up, called “Zeus?” He didn’t stir.

She stepped forward, held up her glow globe. What she’d thought was Zeus, leaning forward with head bent over his knees in the shadows, turned out to be only a crimped limb. Zeus had left.

“Zeus?” she called louder, toward the tunnel leading out.

An uneasy feeling assailed her. Zeus had gone, following Gallen. She should have known he would, by the way he’d watched longingly after Gallen.

Orick and Tallea were gone, too. She’d last seen them heading to the back of the tunnel. She followed their trail, found them beside the water, lying asleep, Tallea’s glow globe wedged under a rock so that it maintained enough pressure to keep it lit.

“Orick, Tallea-Gallen isn’t back yet. And Zeus has gone.”

“What?” Orick asked, startling awake.

“Gallen isn’t back, I said. He promised to be back in four hours. He’s late.”

“And Zeus went after him?” Tallea asked.

“I don’t know. He crept out while we slept.” Maggie didn’t want to accuse him. She hoped he’d gone in search of Gallen. But she didn’t trust the man. Despite his handsome features, his lordly air, she could not dismiss the way he’d tried to seduce her.

“He must have been worried,” Orick whispered, as trusting as ever. The big bear lumbered over on all fours, looked up, and nuzzled Maggie’s hand, trying to comfort her. “It will be all right. There’s not a sfuz or a dronon that can stop Gallen. Maybe he just got held up for a bit.”

“Maybe,” Maggie whispered, trying not to cry. Her voice broke, and she stifled a sob.

“Maybe we should go find him,” Orick said. “Without his robe, I should be able to track him fine. Would that make you feel better?”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “Please.” She went back to her pack, fumbled about as she began putting away her food, getting out some weapons. Maggie was so nervous, she could hardly think. A cold chill seemed to dog her. Her thoughts came disjointed. Searching for Gallen would be dangerous. She’d always relied on him to protect her, Gallen with his knives and his swords and guns and mantle. The idea she might be able to help him seemed absurd.

But even if I can’t help him, she thought, even if I go only to find his body, this is something I have to do.

She wished Zeus were here. Orick and Tallea had great hearts, and would fight beside her no matter what, but she’d been in one little firefight with the sfuz, and she knew how fast those things could move.

She wouldn’t be able to pull her trigger fast enough in a concerted attack. Before, she’d had Gallen with his mantle and intelligent pistol and grenades, and she’d had Zeus backing her up when her clip emptied. This time, she’d have nothing to protect her.

All her defenders were being stripped away.

When everything was packed, Maggie took her glow globe and squeezed it tight so it would blaze as brightly as possible, then held it aloft in her left hand while gripping her pistol in her right.

Orick took the lead, and Tallea followed, both of them hurrying along. They went several hundred meters, found where Gallen, followed by Zeus, had departed from their old trail, then taken a new track up a steep incline.

It was tough climbing, along a narrow ledge of stone cliff, through a chasm where water had once tumbled down from above. Orick could barely squeeze through the opening. They’d seen this little cave before, but Gallen thought they could not get through. Obviously, on the trip in he’d taken the easier trails only out of concern for Maggie.

Now that need drove him, he’d taken a more precarious track.

As they hurried along, Maggie crawling on her hands and knees, she tried to still her breathing. After a long and treacherous climb up the narrow tube, it opened into a wider chamber, where the air seemed thick and close: Everywhere she could now smell the scent of smoke and burning detritus.

Something about this passage frightened her. Partly it was the strong smell of fire ahead. She detected more than the burning of humus-she could also smell cooked flesh. Up ahead, somewhere, there had been a battle, a fight with incendiary rifles unleashing their deadly plasma. Something had died.

But it was more than the knowledge of the carnage ahead that frightened her. No, the thing that frightened her was this: she had an overwhelming sense that this little passage, this sinkhole where water had once gouged a channel through the forest floor, led someplace she did not want to go.

It was the sense that as Gallen had kept searching for a passage into the Teeawah, hoping to enter the lair of the sfuz, he’d suddenly found a good tunnel, one that headed precisely where he wanted to go. And she did not want to follow.

The smell of smoke grew stronger, the charred flesh and burning hair.

The passage suddenly opened wide into a much larger chamber. At the mouth of this passage, Gallen’s and Zeus’s footprints lay deep in the dirt-a large beetle had fallen into one, and it struggled to climb out.

Maggie felt frigid, disjointed, as if a stranger were manipulating her own body like a marionette.

Gallen’s path led through a narrow defile where the sloping timbers of an old tree gradually dropped lower and lower, again forcing them to crawl, until a side passage opened to a larger chamber.

Here the roiling smoke suddenly became overwhelming. Here the smell of bodies was strong. Orick and Tallea stopped at the mouth of this chamber, wary, but Maggie could not slow, could not stop-ahead, in the dim shadows, she saw lumps on the ground. Her Iight glinted off the carapaces of dead dronon Vanquishers-dozens of them, sprawled on the floor.

Maggie’s heart pounded. So Gallen had met the dronon at last, down here in the tangle.

The bears held back, but Maggie had to enter, had to know how Gallen had fared.

Maggie held her light aloft. She could not see the roof of this chamber, it was so high, but ahead-encircled by dozens of dead Vanquishers, she could see a human figure lying facedown in the dirt. Even as she held the light up, the man raised up feebly, head lolling, and she saw a pale face, bruised and bloody, the golden hair.

“Gallen!” Orick shouted, and the bear bounded forward, leapt over the corpses of Vanquishers.

Gallen looked up, his long golden hair falling down around his face. With a start, Maggie saw that his mantle was missing. His eyes were black, his nose and chin covered with dried blood. He struggled to raise his head, to push himself off the ground. His mouth was swollen, teeth knocked out.

Unsteadily, he gasped, “Or-Or-Go back!”

Gallen collapsed, and Maggie rushed to him, choking back her horror. Tears streamed from her eyes. As she neared, she looked down at his right leg. It was mangled, covered in blood, and a stout chain held it pegged to the ground.

Suddenly light blared around her, and Maggie raised her pistol, tried to aim, but the lights blinded her. On the far side of the cavern, a dronon voice clicked, a translator buzzed.

“Welcome, Maggie Flynn, O great and honored Golden Queen. We bring you greetings and a challenge from Cintkin and Kintiniklintit, Lords of the Seventh Swarm.”

High up, all around, wings buzzed, and with the movement Maggie saw dronon Vanquishers by the score, clinging to the ceiling, ready to drop. But where was Zeus?

Then she knew. Then she knew death had come. With her husband and protector broken at her feet, the Lords of Seventh Swarm threatening. She raised her gun, tempted to shoot the dronon, but there were so many, so many, and she knew if she opened fire on them, she wouldn’t just be committing suicide, she’d be killing her friends, Orick and Tallea.

Silently, she screamed, No!