The first thing Eustus noticed was the smell of blood. He wrinkled his nose and was rewarded with the rupture of the brittle crust of coagulated blood on his cheek that released a fresh flow down the side of his numbed face. He opened his eyes, unsure what he would see, and not sure if he wanted to see it. He knew there would be a lot more blood pouring out of his body than the little trickle from his cheek. There must be.
But, while he ached like hell and was completely deaf, he had suffered no major injuries except for the gash in his leg left by the second shrekka, and blood oozed slowly from the wound as it throbbed with pain. With trembling arms he pushed himself up onto his elbows, shedding dust and rocks like a sand crab emerging from a windswept beach. He looked from side to side, but the faceplate of his helmet, while more or less intact, was opaque with dust and a spider web of cracks. Reluctantly, with fingers like lifeless sausages, he undid the bindings, letting it fall from his head to the rock-strewn floor with a clatter that he felt more than heard.
The light that had glowed from the walls did so now with only a fraction of its former power, which, when he saw what he had been lying in, was probably for the best. Willing himself to hold back the nausea that fought to overcome him, he rolled out of what was left of the corporal who had been the first among them to die. But even in death, he had managed to help save another Marine’s life, miraculously absorbing much of the explosive force of the grenades.
Of the others, there was no sign. The tunnel had collapsed completely behind him, burying anyone else who might possibly have survived the explosion. Worse, there was no way for him to contact the platoon leaders: his comm link, as with everything else except the blaster at his hip and the knife strapped to his leg, had been smashed into useless junk.
Pulling himself unsteadily to the support of the tunnel wall, Eustus sat down, legs straight out, and took a look at the gash in his thigh. If he could keep it from bleeding too much more, he might be all right. Although it was deep, it was still only a flesh wound, having severed no major veins or arteries. He opened his first aid kit and rummaged around for the only thing left that was not bent or crushed: a tube of liquid bandage. Ripping the cloth of his uniform from around the wound, he brushed the dirt from it as best he could before squirting some of the gray paste into and around the gash, noting how lucky he was that the shrekka had not simply taken off his entire leg. The patch job was not going to win any medical awards, he admitted, but it should keep him together until he could get out of here.
And that, he thought dejectedly, was not going to be an easy feat. Knowing that he would probably need it again, he put the bandage tube into one of his cargo pockets.
“Well,” he said to himself, his own voice barely audible through a persistent ringing in his ears, “I guess I’d better get moving.” He had no illusions about digging his way through the tons of rock and debris behind him, and he had serious doubts about any survivors out there being able to dig through to him. They had no heavy equipment, no blasting charges (
Shedding the burden of his horribly abused armor and other now-useless gear, Eustus gathered himself up and began shuffling deeper into the corridor, toward where the Kreelan had launched her attack. He held his blaster at the ready, but felt vaguely ridiculous in doing so. His aim was so unsteady that he would be lucky not to shoot himself if he had to fire, and there was no way to tell if the weapon would still work without testing it. And that would give away his position for sure if his enemy were still about.
Slowly, painfully, he worked his way through the shambles of the once-beautiful tunnel, peering through the gloom toward its fateful bend.
As he got closer, he lowered his pistol. The Kreelan’s shrekka was not the only weapon to wreak havoc in the passageway. The fusillade from the doomed Marines’ guns had collapsed this section of the tunnel, as well. While not completely blocked, it was choked with huge sections of ancient stone that had been blown from their long-held positions in the walls and ceiling, and littered with countless other fragments of black obsidian and cobalt blue inlay.
But he saw no bodies. While it was true that any one of the huge stones could conceal several crushed warriors, he felt uneasy. He raised his pistol again, holding its wavering muzzle before him as he stepped into the maze of fallen slabs. He struggled from rock to rock, clambering up on top of a massive stone, scrabbling across it, and dropping down to the debris-strewn floor before starting the process over again.
After letting himself down from a crazily canted slab, he was sizing up the next climb when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Forgetting about his ripped leg as he reached for his holstered blaster, he turned toward the movement and dropped into a crouch. At least, it would have been a crouch had his leg not collapsed under him. Cursing in pain, anger, and fear, he fell into a heap among the sharp shards of stone, cutting himself in a dozen different places. His pistol fell from his grip, clattering to the ground in a puff of dust.
Sitting motionless, helpless, he stared uncomprehendingly at what had startled him: a hand. A huge Kreelan hand, with the biggest set of talons he had ever seen, protruded from the gap formed by the huge slab as it rested on another, smaller chunk of rock. The hand moved, clawing at the rock, as the owner sought to escape from her prison.
“Holy shit,” Eustus breathed, able now to hear his own curses beyond the slowly fading ring in his ears. Ignoring the pain in his leg, where blood again seeped from the partially stripped bandage, he moved closer to the hand and the dark aperture leading to the tiny prison of stone. He saw a pair of eyes glowering malevolently at him from a face that was shadowy, indistinct in the dim light. With an angry grunt the Kreelan assaulted the slab, pushing against it with all the leverage she could muster in her cramped position. He watched in awe as the enormous slab lifted as the warrior strained within, rising a few centimeters, then a few centimeters more.
But it was not enough. With a cry of anguish, the warrior gave up and the stone slammed home again, dust shaking from it like tiny flakes of snow. He could hear her harsh and ragged breathing through the persistent buzz in his ears.
He was tempted to just turn and leave her there, to die of thirst and starvation, or perhaps bleed to death if she was injured. But he knew Reza would not have approved. The Kreelan had done no more than her duty, he supposed, whatever that might have been. No, he told himself, it would not cost anything to put her out of her misery quickly. The Kreelans had killed many of his people, for whatever reason, but they had never sought simply to inflict pain on humans, as through torture; that seemed to be reserved for humans to do to themselves.
Turning away from her, he looked for his blaster in the rubble, cursing the fact that all of it appeared black and angularly shaped. He shuffled through the mess, kicking and prodding for his weapon. At last, he saw the stubby pistol, resting next to a smaller slab that had fallen from the wall. As he reached down into the odd bits of chipped stone to retrieve it, his thigh screaming at the effort, his fingers brushed against something soft, something definitely not stone. Curious, he took up the pistol with his other hand and began to brush away at whatever lay beneath the black gravel.
It was the face of a Kreelan child.
“This can’t be,” he murmured, shaking his head. In all the years that humans had fought the Empire, no one had ever encountered a Kreelan child. They were as mysterious as were the males of the species, of which Eustus had also been one of two humans to ever see, at least in mummified form. He wondered if the light might be playing tricks on him, but as he continued to brush away the dust and chunks of rock, it was clear that it was a child. But the face and shoulders were all he could uncover, for the rest of her body was covered by a fallen slab. It was smaller than the one entombing the adult behind him, but it had been large enough to crush the life from the child. Or had it?
Knowing that he was just wasting his own very limited time and strength, he carefully let himself down beside the child, leaning over her to see if he could see her breathing. He saw a bit of fine dust on her upper lip stir. Again. And again. She was still alive. He put a hand on her forehead and peeled back one of her eyelids. He was not sure what he might see, but he thought it might give him some clue as to how badly she was injured; there was a lot of blood on her face and head. Aside from the irises looking oddly dark and round in this light, he noted nothing
