The Catalyst (Targon Tales) (16 page)

“You’ve been here before?”

He ran his fingers over the scar on his forehead. “Locked up for a few weeks. I may have annoyed the wrong people. It happens.”

“This is a prison?”

“Tharron’s version of it, yes. It’s a place for people to disappear. Or for safe storage. The Delphian might not be in terrific shape, but he’s not been here for very long so there is hope.”

“Maybe some of the other people from the
Dyona
are here.”

He had bent to tie his boots but now looked up, concerned. “Don’t lose sight of the job, Nova. Unless the others had value beyond saleable goods, they would not be kept here. Don’t make trouble. You’re off duty, remember?”

“I can’t walk away if they’re holding prisoners.”

“You can and you will. Those prisoners are mostly rebels, anyway. The bad kind even Tharron doesn’t want around. You don’t care much for those, if I recall.”

She bit her lip before some unfortunate retort passed them.

They exited the Dutchman and were immediately buffeted by a strong wind cutting through their layers as if they weren’t there. Nova stomped her feet to drive away the biting cold while Seth secured the ship and then hurried ahead of him to the structure he had pointed out.

Nova’s teeth were chattering when they burst into the building and slammed the door behind them. The ripe curse that escaped her formed a cloud of breath in the air; the interior of the shack was only a few degrees warmer than the outside.

Rough laughter greeted this. Nova removed her goggles and burnoose to get a clearer view of one of the short, dense Aramese natives and two Centauri slouching around a heater, sharing a bottle of something while they had waited for their visitors. “Girl is the delicate sort,” one of the men said, standing up. “Too cold for you here? Need some warming up?” He reached experimentally for the hem of her jacket.

Nova’s gun was pressing against his throat before he had quite finished the sentence. “Touch that and you never touch anything again.”

“Better not irk the lady,” Seth said, watching the Centauri take a step back again, assured that Nova would not be taken lightly. “Where’s Pramman?”

The rebel scowled at them, chafing under the mocking grins of his companions. “Below. Said to take you down when you got here.”

“Then how about you do that?”

The Aramese gestured for them to follow into the rear of the building where a trolley sat on a track of questionable workmanship. He took a seat near the front where the only mechanism seemed to be a brake handle designed to prevent the planet’s gravity from hurtling the cart into the depths at terminal velocity. Neither Nova nor Seth felt especially confident when they climbed into the vehicle.

Their journey commenced at a reasonable speed along a narrow tunnel dug into the side of the canyon. The walls were close enough to touch and Nova kept her hands clasped in her lap. The cart jolted around a sharp turn and then the track began to angle downward, snaking its way along a cave system that ranged from vast halls to roughly-hewn passages. Nova was reminded of her trip through Targon’s bowels and wished for some of the bundles of laundry to cushion this one, as well.

By the time the trolley came to a halt in a dimly lit cavern her stomach seemed to have turned a few degrees and she closed her eyes for a moment. At least it was warmer down here.

Seth nudged her with his elbow. “That’s Pramman over there. Watch your step around that one. He’s a tiny man but he’ll cut you before you see the knife coming.”

“Can’t I just shoot him?”

He blinked and turned to her, about to say something, when he realized that she was joking. He gave her what felt like the first real smile in days.

“What’s that smell down here?” She wrinkled her nose as they climbed out of the trolley and walked to where the Human waited for them.

“Bad air and Rhuwacs,” he said. “Lots of them.”

“Rhuwacs? Down here? And you couldn’t mention that earlier?”

“They’re all right as long as you don’t try to pet them.”

They came to halt by a metal door set into the stone wall. Pramman inspected them silently, most of his glower directed at Seth. The whites of his eyes shone brightly in his dark face. “Takes guts to show yourself here again, Kada,” he said in a surprisingly melodious voice. “If you weren’t here on Pe Khoja’s orders I’d have you chopped up and fed to the lizards by now. You and your friend.”

“Those are harsh words,” Seth said. He half turned to Nova. “Prammy and I are old friends.”

Pramman turned to unlock the metal door, moving awkwardly as he did so with a hand that was badly mangled and missing several fingers. “It’s because of you I’m stuck in this hellhole, Centauri. Never did learn to shoot with my other hand. So now I’m a fucking gatekeeper.” He waited for them to step through the door. “You’ll pay for that some day.”

“Are you going to get our prisoner or just throw idle threats around?” Nova said. “Pe Khoja’s waiting.”

“Your girlfriend needs to learn manners, Kada,” he said without taking his eyes off Nova. She saw that his teeth had been filed to points.

“My
girlfriend
knows who’s paying your rent, Pramman. Where is the Delphian?”

The jailer turned and walked through a narrow passageway. Widely spaced lamps along the damp walls offered just enough light to show the hazards of the uneven ground. “With the slaves.”

Nova frowned. “You hold slaves here? I thought this was a prison.”

Pramman laughter was an unpleasantly staccato giggle. “Do you think you can get anyone to actually work in this place? Voluntarily? Where did you find this child, Kada?” He leered at her. “They’re mostly women. For the guards. And for some of the prisoners.”

Nova saw Seth wince and felt her own stomach lurch at the thought. But what had she expected in a place like this? She gritted her teeth and did not let her disgust show on her face.

“They tend to get damaged. The Delphi’s pretty good with fixing them up again. We’ll miss that around here.” Pramman stopped to unlock another door. All of them looked around themselves when an eerie howl traveled through the stone passages, echoing for a long time before falling silent again.

“Is that what I think it was?” Nova whispered.

“If you thought that was a Rhuwac shouting for his dinner, you’d be right.”

“Sounded like it was dying.”

“Possibly.”

Nova shuddered. She had seen Rhuwacs on a few occasions, usually from a safe distance. Brutal and without empathy, the massive, lumbering brutes were easily trained to obey the orders of their handlers. Most were capable of rudimentary language skills and some even bore arms. Barely sentient, these creatures were used like foot soldiers by Tharron and often as little more than cannon fodder in ground battles. Massive jaws and upper bodies gave them monstrous proportions. This, combined with unevenly tufted and often cracked, scaled-looking skin invariably instilled terror in anyone unfortunate enough to encounter them.  Many of Nova’s squad mates called them ‘target practice’ when chased down from the safety of a fighter plane but in close combat they were nothing less than tanks.

“They’re bred here, trained here. This is just one of a few places where this happens.” Seth said. “Hard to find places that’ll let you keep this sort of zoo.”

“True,” Pramman said. “We’re overcrowded here with almost three hundred of them. But they’re being shipped off to the Mrak sector soon. They’re running a bit low over there and I hear Pe Khoja has something special planned for Mrak Four.” He giggled again, unaware of Nova’s raised eyebrows as she made a mental note of that information. He pulled on the heavy door which opened faster when Seth pitched in. “Here you are. Your Delphi is in there somewhere. Come knocking back here if you find him.”

Nova and Seth walked through the crude doorway and into a large subterranean cavern. It was fairly level and illuminated by vague light sources along the jagged walls. They stepped carefully around boulders and stalagmites and then crossed a stagnant water channel via some metal plates placed across it. Something dripping somewhere nearby was the only sound.

“Spooky.” Nova drew her gun and peered into an empty antechamber. “Where is everybody?”

“Hello?” Seth called out, his gun also in his hand. “Caelyn?”

Nova spun when another howl rang through the corridors outside. It was a haunting, tormented noise that seemed to cut through to her bones. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to get out of a place as badly as this one.”

“That makes two of us,” a voice to their left made itself heard.

A tall, lanky shape emerged from the shadows and stepped over a boulder toward them. The man’s clothes were torn and stained but nothing in his tranquil expression suggested incarceration in a rebel prison. His face was clean and the blue hair hung in a neat braid over his back. When Nova looked past him she saw a few ragged prisoners, mostly females, stare at them suspiciously from the recesses of the cave.

The Delphian stopped to observe the new arrivals for a few moments, his hands clasped serenely behind his back. “I’ve seen you before,” he said to Nova with the clipped accent common among his people. “You were on that ship that was pirated. One of the guards.” His gaze shifted to Seth. “And you were with the pirates. And now you’re brought down here by that rebel jailer. I’m not sure that I quite know what to make of you.”

“Well, it’s all very complicated,” Nova said. “But we’ve come to get you out. Shan Celessa sent us. Come quickly.”

A slow smile stole over the Delphian’s face. “How is my Elder Sister?”

“Time for that later,” Nova said. “We have to go.”

“No, I cannot,” he said. He turned to gesture at the captives now cautiously drawing closer. There were Humans among them and also Centauri and a number of Bellac. They were gaunt and haggard, dressed in cheap one-piece suits and layers of rags against the cold. “I’m needed here. I have a little healing ability. Their lives are terrible.”

“Delphians!” Seth sighed. “You’re also needed on Naiya.”

“That is true.” Caelyn seemed to ponder this for a moment. “Then we must take them with us. Some of them are sick and will not recover in this place. You have guns. Obviously you are not prisoners.”

Seth lowered his voice. “We can’t take them. We don’t have the means to do that. Or a ship large enough. We can send for help, perhaps.”

“I’ve already tried,” Caelyn said. “That Bellac woman over there, Kala, stole a data unit that I was able to reset to send a transmission some days ago. No one came.”

“Maybe no one heard. You are far underground here,” Nova said.

Caelyn smiled. “Don’t underestimate a Delphian’s ability to tamper with your simple technology. As long as you can find the correct frequency, these walls still hold enough crystal for amplification.”

“Really?” Seth said, interested. He looked up at the cave ceiling to see the veins of crystal glittering in the fitful light of their lamps.

Nova cuffed his arm. “Can we leave the science to the Delphian and get back to this?”

He shrugged. “We don’t have any choices here. We don’t even know how to get out of this place other than the way we came in. And we can’t do that with all these people in tow.”

“There are only sixteen now,” Caelyn said.

The woman he had pointed out earlier stepped closer to them. “There is another way out, but it’s through the Rhuwac holds. It leads to shipping doors at the base of the cliff. They used to take ore out that way, before this place was made into a prison.”

Nova looked to Seth. “That could work.”

“Nova, we don’t have room for them all on the Dutchman! Or air.”

She pursed her lips. “Is there no safe place nearby? Some town? Other caves?”

The woman shook her head. “None I know of that won’t have you frozen to death by the time you reach them. We barely have enough to keep us warm down here.”

Nova frowned. “This discussion isn’t getting anyone out of here. I’m a Union officer and will be able to reach someone in authority at Air Command. We are going to take Caelyn back out with us, as planned. Once we’re off planet I am going to advise Air Command about this place and that you are trapped down here. They’ll want to know about the Rhuwacs as well. It won’t be long before they get here.”

There were a few hesitant nods and, finally, one from Caelyn.

“Do you hear that?” one of the women standing a little apart from the others said.

“What?” Seth said, listening to whatever it was that had startled her.

There were voices down along the corridors, some of them shouting. Distantly a few explosions reverberated through the stone. Nova and Seth exchanged a worried glance, familiar with the sounds of battle. More shouting, louder now, reached their ears and they hurried to the door.

Nova blasted the lock and kicked at it until the door sprang open. Seth handed a pistol to Caelyn. “Does anyone here know how to use a gun?”

His question was met only by wide-eyed bewilderment among the already traumatized prisoners. Then Caelyn shook his head and handed the weapon back to Seth. “I’m a navigator. There are not a lot of warriors among my people.”

Just then Pramman rushed toward them. “Union soldiers. On the ground. And with air power. They’re at the west exits and we’re cut off from the tunnel to Ge’er as well. They are blasting everything. Some of the shafts are filling with gas.”

“They’re incinerating the Rhuwacs?” Caelyn gasped.

“Who cares about the damn lizards! They’re going to incinerate everyone else, too!”

“Caelyn, where is that transmitter you said you had?” Seth snapped.

“Transmitter?” Pramman exclaimed. “You have a transmitter? You brought this hell upon us, Delphi?”

Nova’s eyes narrowed. “I am really,
really
tired of you.” She raised her gun and shot him squarely in the chest. He was thrown backwards, out into the hall. Some of the women shrieked.

Seth looked at the crumpled heap. “I suppose you’ve been wanting to shoot a rebel for days.”

“Does everything have to be so violent with you Union people?” Caelyn said. He reached under his ragged vest to pull out a thin tablet. “No wonder Delphi prefers to keep you away from our planet.”