fate holds for the rest of our tribe, we will join them and face it together.”
Loor nodded and said, “That is both wise and noble. It is the way it should be.”
“Okay,” I said. “How are we gonna do this?”
Loor’s plan was a simple one. We weren’t worried about the engineers, or the elite. We had to go right for the Tiggen guards and get them out of the master control room. If anybody else wanted to leave, that was fine by us. The idea was to move fast, take charge, and lock ourselves in before they knew what hit them. And definitely before they started to flood the underground. Teek explained that there was a single entrance on the ground level. That is how we would enter. We decided that one of Teek’s friends would remain on the catwalk to seal off the entrance from above. That’s as far as our plan took us. After that we’d have to wing it.
With a quick “good luck” to the Tiggen guard who would remain, Teek led us out of the building. We had to quickly move across an open field, away from the sprawling complex, to get to the entrance that would lead down deeper underground to the floor of the master control room. Teek explained that the catwalk entrance and the ground entrance were kept separate in case of emergency. I didn’t know what kind of emergency they were planning for, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t it.
The entrance was nothing more than a small building, no bigger than a garage. We had gotten halfway across to it when we all heard an odd sound. I was going to keep going, because everything I saw and heard was odd, but Teek stopped short. Whatever was making that sound, it wasn’t something he was expecting. Same with the other Tiggen. They stopped abruptly and looked at the sky. Actually, there wasn’t any sky to look up at. Above us was the rock ceiling of the immense cavern that held the Kidik Ocean.
“What is that noise?” Alder asked.
I realized that it sounded familiar, though I couldn’t place it. Nor could I tell where it was coming from. Since Teek and the others were looking up, I figured it was coming from above. But how could that be? There was nothing up there but a rock ceiling. The sound was a steady, rumbling noise that came from everywhere and nowhere. It actually sounded muffled, as if something were masking the true sound.
“Could it be?” Loor asked, looking up.
“Could it be what?” I asked.
A second later I had my answer. The sound suddenly grew louder, as if whatever was muffling it had been pulled away. The sound instantly became high-pitched and sharp. I realized where I had heard it before.
“It’s a dygo!” I shouted.
The reason it was no longer muffled was because it had been drilling through rock and had now broken through. For a second I thought Saangi had found the dygo and was coming to join us. I couldn’t have been more wrong. High above, off in the distance, a dygo had broken through the ceiling of the cavern.
“No!” Alder shouted. “They do not know they are drilling down into a cavern!”
“How can a Rokador not know there’s a cavern here?” I asked.
“Because that is not a Rokador,” Loor said solemnly. “The Batu have arrived.”
The sick truth hit me. Whoever was piloting that dygo was drilling down, expecting to hit a tunnel. Instead they hit air. The drill came through first, followed by the familiar silver sphere of a dygo. A moment later gravity took over, and the dygo fell for what had to be a couple of hundred yards. The only minor luck was that it wasn’t directly over Kidik Island. It was over water. The dygo plummeted down, its drill spinning uselessly. It was hard to watch. It only took a few seconds, and the dygo splashed down like a space capsule returning to earth without a parachute.
I winced. I couldn’t imagine what the passengers were going through.
“Can they survive that?” I asked.
Teek answered, “It’s possible. If they were securely strapped in.”
Alder said, “But they will drown!”
“No,” Teek answered. “The dygo will sink to the bottom. If they are alive and aware, they can drive it across the bottom. There is enough air inside for a short while.”
We were still trying to get our minds around what had just happened, when things got worse.
“Look!” one of the other Tiggen guards said.
We all looked up to see the points of six more drills poking through the roof of the cavern. The Batu were arriving in force-and were going to meet with the same fate as their friend in the lead.
“This is horrible!” I shouted. “Is the whole invasion going to crash?”
“No,” Loor said. “The plan is to come from many directions. Those Ghee have picked a most unfortunate route.”
One by one the dygos drilled through the ceiling and tumbled through the air to splash down into the sea. I couldn’t help but watch in horror and hope that the Ghee inside would survive. It was then that another horrible thought hit me.
“If the invasion is here,” I said, “we’re out of time.”
JOURNAL #23
(CONTINUED)
ZADAA
Teek led us into the small building that was the topside entrance to the master control room. Inside was an elevator that took us straight down.
“The doors will open directly onto the control-room floor,” Teek explained.
Loor added, “The moment they open, the surprise will be over. We have to move quickly and decisively.”
I grasped my wooden stave. This was it. My by standing days were over. I hoped I was ready. Loor had given us each a target. From the catwalk above, we counted five guards, two on one side, three on the other. If the guards were still at their same posts, we would come out on the side with the three guards. I was to take the first Tiggen guard to the right of the control platform. It was the easiest assignment. If we were fast, the guard wouldn’t know what hit him. It would be different with the others. Loor and Teek were to move past me to knock out the guards farther along the platform. Those guards would have more time to react and protect themselves. Alder and our other Tiggen friend would have the toughest job. They had to cross to the far side to take out those two guards. By the time they got there, those guards would know something was going on and be ready. A second, one way or the other, could mean the difference between success and failure.
My palms were sweating. I suddenly had the sick feeling that if my hands got too wet, I’d lose the stave. I wished I had a couple of batting gloves. There wasn’t time to stress about it, though. With a thump we hit the floor. The doors slid open. Without a second’s hesitation the five of us bolted from the elevator. We didn’t shout or scream out a war cry. Every extra second of surprise was precious.
My target’s back was to us. He didn’t have a clue as to what was about to happen. I ran up behind the guy… and hesitated. It was the exact wrong thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t because of the whole “never make the first move” thing either. The first move was okay if your opponent was totally oblivious. In that case the first move would also be the last move. But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to whack a totally defenseless guy across the head.
Big mistake. He wasn’t oblivious for long. As soon as he saw Loor and Teek sprint by, headed for the other guards, he got unoblivious real quick. The guy was good. He must have quickly realized that if the attackers were ignoring him, there had to be somebody else coming up who wouldn’t ignore him. Me. Without looking, the guy whipped out his steel baton and lashed back. It was so fast, he grazed the front of my leather armor. Another inch and I would have been hit with a jolt of electricity, and the show would be over before it even started. The adrenaline rush of the near miss shocked me into action. With my stave I knocked the back of his baton arm, forcing him to follow through and not backhand me. I spun, came around the backside, and cracked him across the back of his head with the end of the stave, sending him sprawling. He hit the floor and didn’t get up.
I stood there for a moment, bombarded with emotions. I had hit the guy, hard. When I fought the Tiggen assassin at Mooraj, I had been tentative. I whacked that guy a few times with the stave, but never did any damage.
