The 6th of Six (The Legend of Kimraig Llu) (12 page)

Three silent figures trapped like fish wriggling on a line.

Ahead, about eye level, a pinprick of white blinked on. It first moved restlessly back and forth along a pre-set path, back and forth. Stopping, the pinprick grew to a thin white beam that sought, and found the canister on the leader’s chest. An extension of the beam wound over the large hose to the canister on his back. Steadying, the beam crackled, turned green and faded.

Twice more the beam crackled, turned green against each female’s canister, sought her back and then faded. Satisfied, the white pinprick blinked out, leaving a glowing bar where it had traveled back and forth—a beacon.

Identification was complete. Somewhere someone was watching.

Strobes turned off, the three walked toward the beacon. Each carefully picked their way down into a wide trench, and across steel rails twisted beyond use, that disappeared into the darkness. There was no subway anymore, long gone to salvage. Carefully they fought their way up the far side towards the glowing bar. The curved tunnel wall stopped them.

Pitch black as strobes switched off. One female turned, guarding their backs. The wall slid aside revealing dull metal doors. An elevator opened. Inside, a hidden strobe, white, pulsed only once leading the way in. They were home. —
Across the Street
.

When the doors closed on the three, the white pinprick blinked on again, racing from one side to the other, like a frantic animal fighting against its cage. Instantly the white beam swept down the tunnel. Piercing the darkness at the bend, pair after pair of green luminescent ovals impaled themselves on the thin shaft. Flashing crimson, the beam pulsed and snapped. No crackle this time, one set of ovals disappeared. Its companions retreated, trailing the scent of the ocean and good stiff drinks from the illicit bar two buildings over.

A frail female shadow watched from the fissure where the three had entered the tunnel. She turned and disappeared when the tunnel slipped back to darkness.

At the same time, three floors above the tunnel, a telephone rang. Before the second ring, Chief Loyal Richards answered.

“Chief, Commander Budge and his team have returned. All are safe including the three canisters. They are coming up the elevator now. No injuries to the team.”

Sergeant Nancy Edwards knocked the words out in steady even tempo. She was always afraid her emotions would blurt out the love she felt for this man on the line.

Fine, go ahead! Obsess over someone old enough to be your father’s father!

“Call the Prime Minister, please. Then see that team members and all support personal exit the area immediately.”

He heard Edwards gulp.

“What, Sergeant Edwards?” Loyal said, an edge creeping through his voice.

“Commander Budge refused to leave, Chief. He is coming to you.”

“Colt decided to come up here?” Loyal knew something had gone wrong. Maybe the Builders had discovered the theft of the three children. No, there had been no alarm. One more day like today and he would pull out his gray hair—if he had any left. He could feel one more wrinkle adding itself to his sagging brow.

“Yes sir, about now.”

Loyal grabbed a metal water bottle and quickly headed for the stairwell, knowing that Colt would never take an elevator. Tired, Loyal’s tall, lean frame drooped every one of his seventy years. His fugitive hair, escaping from his scalp, rearranged itself in manicured gray stubble outlining his jaw.

“Christ, do not get old,” he said to the pale tan, freshly painted hallway.

As he rounded the last hallway corner, his six-foot momentum almost floored one of his wife’s male nurses. If he had, it probably would have mashed the little male right between the clean floor tiles.

“Ah, sorry Chief, I was just sneaking a smoke in the well.”

The man gestured back towards the closing door leading to the stairs. Flashing a too-quick smile, he hastily slipped a white object into the pocket of his worn white scrubs as he rushed on to turn the corner.

Lot of white on that boy
, Loyal observed.
Damn, should have asked him how he kept that burnt tobacco smell off him. Must be those new leaves the bio team grows.

Their agriculture team found a spot down on the cliffs where the sand and ash mixed. They had enough smokes for about three months. His wife made sure he did not get even one.

Limping now, Loyal caught the hallway door before it creaked closed. Inside, the stairwell was almost dark. Only a flickering sulfur strobe flashed at intervals from below.

Ex U. S Marine Special Operation Forces Commander Colt Budge, General of the small Crosser Army took the last step to the landing a few minutes later. His gait remained light for having rapidly climbed three flights of stairs. His battle helmet, tucked under one arm, continued to strobe mutely. No stair rail for Colt—ignored in favor of a free hand. The round canister was gone from his chest, the small breathing tube tucked neatly into the side of his breather.

The two old Troopers embraced. Friends, fearing each meeting would be their last.

“Morning, Chief. That water for me?”

“Back at you,” he said holding out the bottle. “You bring Marta and Luna back safe?”

“Nah, they brought me back. My two ladies take care of me good, left ‘em down in the nursery with all the little ones.”

Loyal knew the team looked after each other and operated as a well-oiled machine. “So, what happened over there in Builders land?”

“When we went for the babies, Troopers blocked the stairwell.”

Colt paused for a minute, took a quick pull from the bottle, and continued. “This old woman guides us up ladders and between walls ‘till we is up three floors, then back down a different way.”

Colt paused again, crabbing the fingers of his free hand, front to back, over the white-black stubble of his buzz cut.

When Colt had been a fifteen-year old boot Marine, swinging on a fake I.D., Loyal had watched him preparing to deliver reports. Remember, discard and then catalog each useful fact into the simplest outline. When the question of this new Marine’s birth certificate came across Loyal’s desk, one interview with the boy convinced him to approve his forged paper. Once Commandant Whiteside’s stamp was on the query, no one would question a lost certificate.

“The stairwell and three floors was all jammed with troops.” Colt paused, waiting for questions. He had more, but never mixed subjects.

“Were those troops in Battle Groups?”

“Builders always use male Hunters in Battle Groups. These was all females. Ain’t no judge, but they looked like what them Builders call Others. You know, them females was huggin’ on each other.” He paused, crabbing those fingers again. “Plenty of females wearing Hunter’s armor, they looked capable enough to get the job done.”

“They are setting up a trap. The question is, for whom?”

Loyal knew he would have to wait to find out what Colt held back.

“Best we do not take chances on these troops going to that new building of theirs.”

Loyal knew that his wife, Dr. Missy Painter-Richards, the Prime Minister of their Crosser Government, had an alliance with a faction of the Builders, called the Others. That alliance could be in jeopardy.

“Builders cannot be trusted with a force that large so close to our home.”

“Something else, my girls can take us back in that building should you want.”

“Okay, we might need that. Meantime, you and your two ladies dump those breathers and get downstairs to the Congress Hall as quick as you can. Missy will need body guards when she meets with the Opposition Party to debate why she should remain Prime Minister.”

With that, Loyal clasped his friends shoulder and started to turn away.

“You will need me and my ladies to keep the odds even when you meet up with all them different folks at that building they call One Nine,” Colt said.

He was hoping he would not miss the fight he had predicted.

“Once she is done with the political bull, she will fill you in on what she wants,” Loyal breathed a deep sigh, he dreaded the next part.

“We briefed Teams Two and Three. They will go with me.” Loyal expected, and got, Colt’s instant acceptance of his command decision. Now he would start his good-natured bantering to hide his disappointment.

“I get to steal babies and you take all the fun.” Colt looked down to his helmet.

“Tell me something old man, Dog and Cat still with Missy?” He was not trying to hide his smirk.

“Yeah, be careful, they have been edgy lately. And no, I still do not let them in the bedroom at night.”

Loyal could not stop his hand from rubbing the deep furrows on his buttocks. Cat sure could scratch out a wild party.

“Soon as those two mangy animals sniff my ladies, it’ll be the four of them together again. They did train them after we found them in the tunnels.”

“Yeah, and you had them trained to protect Missy only.”

Loyal grinned and continued. “Sometimes my butt wishes their parents had died instead of escaping from Central Park Zoo.”

A handshake and quick nods ended their meeting. Loyal stopped for a moment in the hallway. Colt’s dry palm had contained a mini computer disk. Information passed with their parting handshake. Now he would find out what his friend’s hidden data had been.

He slipped the disk into the reader slot in his ancient phone. The large block letters appearing on his screen were brief.

BOY BABY AFTER ONE NINE—RECORDING DEVICE HERE ON STAIR—GOOD AIR IN TUNNELS—

In a flat ten seconds, Loyal was back behind his desk, watching his closed door. The next few minutes would be critical. He must do nothing to agitate his wife’s protectors.

As if on command, the door bumped open. One hundred plus pounds of black, male canine padded quietly into his room. Nose to tile floor, it completed the circuit of the room. Sitting back on its haunches by Loyal’s desk drawers, the timber wolf looked back to the entry and snarled softly.

A thin, stately woman glided quietly through the portal on a squat four-wheel riding platform. She stood proudly upright, supported by a square extremity poking up from the platform’s deck: it might look like an oak timber if it did not gleam. Three large clamps, the timbers scaffolding, held her from mid-thigh to below her shoulders. Missy was too proud to allow someone to push her in a wheeled chair.

A long tan shape followed, obviously feline and the same weight as the wolf, yet sleeker. The female cougar cleared the doorway, turned and looked back to the hall.

Both animals relaxed as the automatic door closed, but not Loyal.

He could scratch the wolf’s ears, but no way would the animal let him up. Slowly he eased out the bottom drawer of his desk. Dog sniffed, teeth lunged into the drawer and withdrew two identical fuzzy toys.

Dog moved around the desk, carrying the toys to the feline, offered both by dropping them at her feet just in front of their water bowls. The cougar, with the pretentious name of Cat, daintily picked up one toy then dropped it quickly, hissed at Dog, and bared its claws. Loyal wondered if animals could think. If so, he would bet Cat made an observation:
you slobbered on my toy, fool.
Yes, she is every inch a female.

“Well, well, Dog,” the Chief leered. “Who is this fine looking piece you brought me this morning?” With the animals engrossed by toys, he was free to move.

“Loyal Roberts, you really should think about something besides sex.”

“You seemed perfectly happy with those thoughts last night, Missy.”

“Yeah, well, this is today.” Prime Minister and Dr. Missy Painter-Richards blushed. She was twenty years younger than Loyal yet she appeared frail, an old women of eighty years. The garish bandana she insisted on wearing to cover her baldness, did not succeed in its job of hiding her advancing sickness.

The bombs came first, then her birth. Her mother, trapped on the top floor of this building, gave birth to Missy while the nuclear winter raged. Breathing toxic air interfered with a body’s normal growth.

Missy pushed free of the platform’s obscene extremity and took the first step from her riding platform. Her new canes—she had designed them herself—worked perfectly. They adjusted automatically to changes in terrain. They would be her stability just in case she had to stand up straight for any length of time.

“Guess I’ll have to call Sergeant Nancy Edwards to relieve me.”

“Do you have a dictionary?” Missy asked sweetly.

“There’s one in my bookcase, dear heart. Should I bring it to you?”

Visibly amused, Loyal moved around his desk and stood before her.

“Look up the word ‘eunuch,’ and then ask the Sergeant her opinion.”

With a short chuckle, careful of the watching animals, Loyal crouched and reached to hold her. His arms moved under hers as he tenderly lifted her torso. One thick hand pressed where spine and hips met. The other arm supported her shoulders. She was too thin, a rail supported by faulty ties. He began to raise her to a straight, standing position. The thick grating of bone on bone rumbled under his hand. Her canes adjusted automatically.