I blamed that on the fact that I was more used to fighting with a bamboo stick and not a heavy wooden stave. The truth was, the idea of cracking somebody in the head with force went against the nature of my being. I wasn’t a violent guy. As I stood there over the unconscious Tiggen guard, the realization came to me that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was a violent guy after all. It wasn’t a good feeling.
“Pendragon!” Loor shouted.
Her voice pulled me back into the moment. I looked quickly to see that both of the other Tiggen guards on our side of the control platform had been knocked unconscious. Loor and Teek were already dragging them toward me, and the elevator. I saw that the Rokador elite had jumped out of their chairs and were cowering together, terrified. For all they knew, we were the first wave of the oncoming Ghee army and their murderous trap was sprung too late. I wasn’t about to tell them otherwise. The engineers stayed on the control platform, looking down on us in fear.
We were quickly joined by Alder and the other Tiggen ally. They too had triumphed. All five Tiggen guards were unconscious. I looked up to the catwalk high above, where Teek’s other friend was waiting and watching. I waved. He waved back to acknowledge and ran off to lock down the doors. So far, so good.
“We will bring them up in the elevator,” Teek said. “Once we have reached the surface, you can shut down the elevator from here.”
“You have done the right thing, Teek,” Loor said. “No matter what happens from here, you must know that.”
Teek nodded. I think he believed her, but he wasn’t happy about it.
“Good luck, my friends,” Teek said. “I hope we will meet again and-“
Teek suddenly stopped talking. An instant before, I heard a short, sharp hissing sound, but didn’t register what it was. Teek looked at us with wide eyes, then crumpled to the floor. Sticking out from his back was a silver arrow. We all quickly looked up toward the catwalk to see…
Another Tiggen guard. It wasn’t Teek’s friend. Teek’s friend was dead. He lay on the catwalk, a silver arrow in his chest. Standing over him with both feet planted was his killer. He held a crossbow to his shoulder. He was aiming at us. He fired.
We scattered, taking cover behind the vertical steel tanks. Loor and I jumped to one side, Alder and our Tiggen friend jumped the other way.
“It’s him!” I shouted to the others. “The assassin from Mooraj.”
It was Bokka’s killer. He was back. We were trapped. The instant one of us stuck our head out from behind the tank, the guy would fire another laserlike arrow.
“Open the southern gates!” the assassin called from the catwalk. He was yelling at the engineers on the control platform. The engineers weren’t sure what to do. They were frightened and confused. The same went for the Rokador elite. They stayed huddled together in fear.
“Alder?” I shouted across the floor. I made a shooting motion, as if to say, “Where is your crossbow?” Alder shrugged and pointed to the unconscious Tiggen guards we had attacked. Lying next to the pile of bodies was the crossbow.
“I will get it,” Loor said, and made a move to run into the open.
“No!” I shouted, and held her back. A nanosecond later another arrow shot by, barely missing her. If I hadn’t stopped her, she would have been skewered.
“We must do something, Pendragon,” she said. “The flood!”
It was a frightening moment. There was no way we could stop those engineers from flooding the underground from where we were hiding. But if we stepped out, we were dead.
“We’ll all go at once,” I said. “He can’t get us all.”
“Not you, Pendragon,” Loor said. She looked across to Alder and motioned that both of them would go. Hopefully one would get the crossbow.
“We all go or nobody goes!” I shouted.
I pushed by her, ready to jump out into the line of fire. I’m not a hero. I didn’t want to die. What I did wasn’t so much brave as the result of being hypercharged on adrenaline, knowing disaster was seconds away. I didn’t stop to think. I went.
But I didn’t need to. No sooner did I leap out from behind the tank than I saw something nobody expected. Least of all the assassin on the catwalk. He was too busy keeping us pinned down to realize he hadn’t finished his first job.
Teek had picked up the crossbow.
He rolled onto his side, took aim, and fired. The arrow shot upward, darting toward its target. His aim was dead solid perfect. The killer still had his own crossbow shouldered when Teek’s arrow nailed him square in the chest. The force knocked him backward. He stumbled, hit his back on the rail, dropped his weapon over the side, and fell down after it. The assassin tumbled through the air and hit the ground with a sickening thud. We didn’t need to check to know he wasn’t going to be shooting at us anymore. Bokka’s killer was dead. It was a fitting end.
We all ran to Teek. Loor got there first and knelt by him.
He was on his side, the arrow still in his back. His white Rokador tunic was saturated with blood. There was nothing we could do to help him.
“Hurry,” he whispered. “You must stop the flood.”
“Bokka would be proud of you, my good friend,” Loor said.
Teek gave her a small smile. “Do not let our deaths be for nothing.” Teek looked up at his friend, the Tiggen guard, and whispered, “Help them.”
With those last words Teek closed his eyes and died. We couldn’t mourn his death. There would be time for that later, hopefully.
Loor looked up to the last Tiggen and said, “Get the guards out of here.”
The Tiggen nodded and began dragging the unconscious guards toward the elevator.
“I will help,” Alder said, and grabbed two of the guards himself. He looked at us and said, “Go!”
Loor and I each grabbed one of the guards’ baton weapons and ran for the first ladder that led up to the control platform. I was up first and saw that the engineers were all on the same side of the control board-the side with the small switches that opened up the southern gates.
“Stop!” I shouted.
The guys looked terrified, but didn’t move. I may not have been enough of a force to intimidate them into backing off, but Loor sure was. One look at her charging toward them with her stave in one hand and the silver electric baton in the other was enough to get them to back away from the controls. The four of them huddled together like frightened children.
“Close the gates,” Loor commanded, with her weapon held high.
The frightened engineers looked as if they were ready to faint, but they didn’t budge.
“Do not listen to them!” came a voice from below. It was one of the older guys from the Rokador elite-the only one who was brave enough to leave the others. “If you obey them it will be an act of treason!” the guy called up.
The engineers did the one and only thing they were capable of at that point. They ran. Together they scurried to the ladders, climbed down, and ran to join the elite. The older guy stood there with his hands on his hips, looking up at us, smug. I ignored him. It didn’t matter what he thought.
“We gotta stop it ourselves,” I said to Loor.
We looked at the array of valves that controlled the gates to the south. It looked as if only a few of them had been opened. We weren’t too late. We had to focus. Quickly I grabbed one of the handles and turned it counterclockwise. The needle in the gauge above it instantly dropped down. I grabbed the other two handles and did the same. The southern gates were now all closed again. It was just that simple. Or so I thought. This wasn’t over by far.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know how long we can hold out here. If the other Tiggen guards break in before the Ghee arrive, they’ll kill us and let those geeks back at the controls.”
“What choice do we have?” Loor asked. “We must keep them away as long as possible.”
Our victory was probably going to be a short one. We were in control, but for how long? That’s when I looked back to the array of switches and got an idea.
