The Mutineer's Daughter Page 7

  Mio lay on the floor, opening her eyes once the pain was under control again. She had fallen a couple of inches from the wall, and she watched as green-tinged dust motes drifted in front of her eyes. It took her a second, then she realized—I can see. How is that possible?

  She rolled onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. Two glowing strips of jade ran the length of the passageway in two directions. She could see the way she had come, as well as the direction the tunnel continued after making the 90-degree turn to the left at the doorway. In the excitement of finding a doorway, she hadn’t noticed the passageway continued.

  Although she wanted to continue pushing the buttons on the larger key pad, she knew it was probably pointless; she would likely die before she hit the right combination. With a sigh, she staggered to her feet and stumbled down the new corridor, determined to get as far as she could before the lights went out.

  * * *

  Mio made better time with the lights on, and she hobbled as fast as she could along the passageway. After what seemed like a long walk, a cross-passage spurred off to the left. She couldn’t see anything different along it, and she wondered where it went, but she continued straight ahead, guessing the current corridor ran along the perimeter of the underground…whatever it was.

  ‘City’ was the wrong word. There weren’t any signs that people (or anything else) lived there. In fact, there weren’t any signs of anything resembling civilization throughout the tunnel system, aside from the tunnels, themselves, and the lights.

  After a second side-corridor, Mio began to tire. Sore, hungry, and thirstier than she had ever been in her life, she continued on, the fear the lights would go out driving her to use reserves of strength she didn’t know she had. Any other time, she might have been proud of her determination; now, she was too tired to care.

  She stumbled on past a third junction and promised herself she would rest a moment if she came to a fourth, never believing she had the endurance to make it there. When she arrived at the fourth passage, she collapsed, intending to rest for just a few minutes.

  * * *

  Mio sprang awake, knowing something was wrong. In addition to the unintended nap, she realized the lights had dimmed significantly and were barely more than a verdant glow.

  Terrified of being lost in the dark, she climbed to her feet and set off again. She passed a fifth cross-passage, then she almost fell into a crevasse which was all but invisible in the gloom. Conditioned to keep going, the disappearance of the passageway’s floor took a second to register, and she had to use her bad leg to stop her momentum, eliciting yet another hiss of agony. She fell to the ground, inches away from the yawning abyss, then rolled away from it.

  When her heart slowed to a somewhat normal rhythm, she rose and inspected the giant crevice. The fissure split the tunnel from side to side and was almost 20 feet across. There was no way she was getting across it.

  She sighed and looked longingly across the gap; there stood the door. It was easy to see, it was ajar, and the light from outside outlined it like a beacon of hope in the darkness of the tunnel.

  It wasn’t fair! She had come so far, only to be stopped, with the end in sight, by a giant crack. Mio wailed in anguish as she fell to the floor, dry-sobbing, her body unable to produce any further tears.

  When she was able to think again, she sat up. Her position wasn’t any better, as she was still on the wrong side of the crevice, but she realized that after days of stumbling around in the dark, she was finally close to an exit, and it was open! She wouldn’t have to decipher a code, if she could just figure out a way to get there.

  The side tunnels, she realized. If they branched from all the perimeter tunnels, she might be able to find another way which, hopefully, wouldn’t be blocked by a giant chasm.

  The light in the tunnel was barely enough to see by as she turned and started back the way she’d come; she longed for the light she had seen coming from the door and promised herself if she got out of the tunnels alive, she would never come back. Ever.

  She reached the side passage and hurried down it as quickly as she could limp. After only a couple of minutes, she came to another side passage that cut across her line of travel. Success! This had to lead to the perimeter tunnels…as long as the fissure didn’t extend to this passage as well. Several minutes’ travel led her to a drop off. She peered through the gloom. The crack wasn’t a chasm like in the other tunnel; here, the shifting ground had broken the hallway and raised her side. She would have to drop and slide almost 15 feet to reach the floor on the other side of the break, but at least there wasn’t a yawning abyss like there had been earlier.

  The rock thrust upward at a steep angle, but it wasn’t completely vertical; she could do this.

  Mio laid down on her stomach and slid her legs over the edge, then continued to work her way backward. She dropped, hoping to catch the edge, but her shoulder couldn’t take the weight, and she fell, sliding down the rough surface faster than she had intended. Bending her right knee slightly, she took most of the impact on her left leg and fell backward into a sitting position as the lights went out. Out of habit, she pulled out her memory cube and pressed the activation stud, but nothing happened. She sniffed and put it back in her pocket.

  You can do this, she urged herself. You’ve already done it once, and you’re so close to getting out. She slid over to the right-side wall and climbed to her feet. Placing her hand on the wall, she began working her way along it, praying the floor wouldn’t suddenly drop out from under her.

  She reached the corner and turned toward the waiting door. Her speed increased as the urge to just get out overcame the fear of another fissure. Two minutes later, she could see a glow ahead of her. The door! Realizing it was now bright enough in the tunnel to see any drop-offs before she fell into them, she released the wall and headed straight for the light, hobbling as quickly as she could.

  Unlike the previous door, this one was tucked back in a little alcove, not flush with the tunnel wall. She noticed the difference peripherally; all of her focus was on the light streaming in from the edge of the door. She reached it and pulled back as hard as her battered joints would allow. It was heavier than she was used to, and the hinges had stiffened since the last time they were used; the door emitted a squeal that could have raised the dead as she pulled it open.

  Mio didn’t care. As soon as it was open wide enough for her to pass, she slid around the side and ran out…right into a firethorn bush. The plant was native to Adelaide and protected itself with a poison that oozed from thorns along its branches. While it wasn’t deadly to humans, the poison burned like fire, and Mio screamed as she went headfirst into the enormous bush that stood in front of the exit.

  “Hey, what do we have here?” a voice asked.

  “Sounded like a woman,” another voice answered.

  As Mio backed away from the bush, she realized she had heard those voices and that accent before; it sounded like the soldiers who had killed the Rogers. The Terrans were nearby!

  A whimper escaped her lips; the thorns burned her face so badly she couldn’t help it.

  “Over here, somewhere,” the first voice said. It was closer.

  “There’s nothing there but some of them damn thorn bushes,” the second voice replied.

  “Well, she must be inside it,” the first voice said.

  Mio’s back bumped into the door to the tunnel. Her teeth were locked on her lower lip to keep her from crying out again.

  The muzzle of a laser rifle poked through between two bushes, and the soldier holding it used it to push back one side of the bush while he used a gloved hand to push back the other. He looked in, and his eyes met Mio’s. It was the soldier from the Rogers’ house—the one who had killed Mr. Rogers and Jimmy.

  Unable to help herself, Mio screamed again. She was trapped. She didn’t want the soldiers to get her, but she also didn’t want to go back into the mountain.

  “I see her!” the soldier exclaimed. “It�
��s the girl that got away from the farmhouse. Nubile little thing, and she’s all ours now!” He swore as some of the thorns hit his unprotected flesh. “Help me with these damn bushes, corporal!”

  Another rifle poked through the bush, and the two pulled the sides far enough apart to make a passage for the soldier to squeeze through. The threat of the soldiers overcame her fear of the dark, and Mio spun and ran back through the door. Back in the tunnels, she tried to push the door shut. It squealed in protest, but it only closed back to where it had been when she found it. No matter how hard she pushed, it wouldn’t shut.

  Mio knew she couldn’t outrun the soldiers, nor could she hold the door shut against them. They were stronger than she was, even if she hadn’t been exhausted and battered. She didn’t want to run down the passage in the dark, anyway. There was the one fissure nearby; who knew how many more might be close.

  “Where’d she go?” the second voice asked.

  “Into some door that’s back here,” the first voice replied.

  “Help me through, and we’ll go find her.”

  Mio knew she only had a few seconds before they came in. The soldiers were faster and stronger; they held all the advantages. The only thing Mio had going for her was that she knew where the fissure was, and the soldiers didn’t.

  “All right, I’m through,” the second voice said.

  “Good; let’s get her. She owes us for making us chase her.”

  “Yeah, she owes both of us.”

  “Probably several times,” the first voice agreed. Both men laughed.

  Mio quickly pulled her shirt over her head as the men approached the door. When it started to open, she threw her shirt as hard as she could, biting her lip to keep from crying out.

  The men opened the door the rest of the way, and she stepped back to the side, hiding behind it. “There she goes!” the first soldier said, his eyes catching the shirt’s movement. “Get her!”

  Both men charged into the tunnel, racing after the shirt. It had fallen next to the lip of the crevice, and there was just enough light for the two men to see the abyss yawning in front of them before they fell into it. Both flailed their arms and dropped their rifles as they tried to keep from going over the edge.

  Mio slammed into the first soldier from behind, and he lost his balance and went over the edge, grabbing the second soldier’s leg armor with one hand as he fell. The second soldier instinctively tried to pull back, but the first soldier’s grip was too strong. His leg went out from under him, and he went over the edge.

  The second soldier turned as he fell, and he saw Mio out of the corner of his eye. He made a wild swipe to grab her, but missed, and his hand fell instead on her shirt, reflexively grabbing it as he was drug over. As it started sliding toward the edge, Mio saw the bulge in the pocket that was her father’s memory cube, and she dove forward to grab it with both hands.

  The weight of the two soldiers was more than she could hold, and she was dragged toward the edge as one hand tried to work the cube out of the pocket while the other held onto the shirt. The cube sprang out of the pocket as it reached the edge of the fissure, and Mio released the shirt to try to catch the little device. Her left hand hit it, then it bounced off her right hand, falling forward over the edge. Mio dove forward again and reached over the edge to swat the cube back onto the tunnel floor.

  Before she could pull back, a man’s hand reached up from the crevice, grabbed hold of her wrist, and started pulling her forward again. She struggled against his grasp, but he held on like a vice. Her head went over the edge, and she saw the second soldier. One hand held onto a rocky outcropping, and the other held onto her wrist while his legs dangled over the void.

  “If I go, you’re going with me, Bitch,” the soldier said, grunting with the effort of holding himself up.

  Mio twisted her arm, trying desperately to free herself, while she continued to slide forward. Her chest went over the edge, and she could feel herself about to fall. Pulling back with all her strength, she suddenly leaned forward and bit the soldier’s fingers as hard as she could. His grip loosened, and the soldier fell, unable to support himself with one hand.

  Mio scrabbled back away from the edge, barely able to breathe. Finally, her heart stopped pounding, and her breath returned to normal. She climbed to her feet and walked over to pick up her cube. She didn’t have her shirt anymore, but she was still alive, and the soldiers weren’t.

  As the adrenaline left her system, the fatigue hit, and she crashed, tired and sore beyond her ability to describe. All she wanted to do was lie in the sun for a year or two and drink several gallons of faux apple juice. The thought brought a smile to her weary face, and she limped to the door. She didn’t have anything to drink, but she could rest in the sun for a little while and recover some of her strength.

  She walked out the door and looked at the firethorn bushes. It was obvious why no one had found the doorway; no one would have pushed past the bushes without a good reason for doing so. From experience, she knew she could slide underneath the bush’s thorns if she was careful to brush away any that had fallen to the ground. She got down onto her stomach and slid forward under the tallest bush, using a dead stick to sweep aside several branches in her path. Better to be safe than sorry, especially where the thorns were concerned.

  She worked herself the rest of the way out from under the bush and was about to stand up when a boot appeared next to her face and a sack was thrown over her head. A hand as big as her head covered her mouth, while another arm looped under her arms and lifted her to her feet.

  “Scream and you’re dead,” a voice whispered in her ear.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Five: Benno

  The Puller was silent and still. Ortiz had at last grown bored with his jeering laughter and resigned himself to lying back on his cell’s cot and reading his pad. He still occasionally looked over at Benno and gave him a rueful chuckle, but that was easier to ignore than the donkey-like braying of Ortiz’s laugh. Their jailer, Master at Arms Chief Ellen Dufresne, ignored them both, doing paperwork at her desk beyond the stark cells. Aside from the changing-out of the Duty Master at Arms every four hours, no one came to check up on them.

  None of his fellow officers. None of his old friends and shipmates among the Chief’s Mess or the crew. Not even WEPS or the XO, with the unlikely word that the captain had changed his mind.

  Benno did not hope for word of his reprieve. No, he had damned himself as surely as anyone could. The only thing he could hope for was that either the CO or someone far, far above him in the fleet would reconsider and send a fast task unit back home to kick the Turds off Adelaide and the other worlds.

  But no one came, and the silence deepened.

  That silence was relative, of course, and quite noisy from an absolute perspective. From the sound of ventilation, the hum of energized components, the burble of liquids in pipes, the vibrations of nearby boost pumps and the rumble of the distant dark matter conversion engines, the destroyer was alive with activity, motion, and noise. Layered atop that noise were the sounds of human life. There were a hundred different murmured conversations, rising and falling, as people passed by the brig on duty, making repairs, or just gabbing. He could hear the ship’s general announcing circuit, or 1MC, calling out the events on the day’s schedule and the rotation of watches, or telling specific crewmembers to get in touch with other crewmembers or to go to this or that place. Footfalls walking and running over, under, and around the brig, like corpuscles passing through the body of the Puller, sounded around him.

  All of them lived and worked on, heedless of Benno’s unknown fate, seemingly unconcerned about the calamity now taking place on six of their home worlds. Surely that had to have affected them as profoundly as it had Benno!? Yet, he was the only one in the brig for it.

  Had they quenched their desire for action upon seeing Benno’s example?

  Or did they just not give a shit?

  With nothing to distract him,
Benno’s mind wandered into scenes he would much rather have avoided. Unbidden, images of Adelaide flashed into his mind’s eye, of Mio, of his long-passed wife, Yume, of their land and the hearty people and rural places of their hard-scrabble colony. Adelaide was a beautiful world, with a near-circular orbit, smack dab in the center of the UV and liquid water habitable zones around HD-207129, a young sun-like star in the southern constellation Grus, the Crane, approximately 51 light-years from Earth. The oxygen-rich planet already had its own ecology, and fortunately for them, the biology there had been mostly non-reactive with Earthly biomatter. It was an easy and quick terraform job, ready for ALS habitation a mere 25 years after its discovery. Benno and Yume had been part of the third wave of colonists emigrating from the central system worlds of Beta Hydri 20 years after that. Mio had been born there less than a year later.

  But pleasant memories of their start on Adelaide could not distract him for long. Too quickly, the painful memory of Yume’s death flashed before him, a horrifying bout with one of the few indigenous virus-analogs to successfully make the jump to Terran biology. He had been away on one of his required ALS Navy Reserve activations when she was struck down, along with nearly a tenth of the other colonists. Mio had been so young, not even a worldly pre-teen, an innocent kid of eleven, and suddenly she was all alone. The Rogers had watched over her and Benno’s farm until he could get the Navy to send him back, whereupon it had fallen to him to manage their homestead and raise their girl all by himself…along with producing enough to pay off their still-considerable colonization debt with one less laborer.