Valkyrie Hunter
Chapter 9

The tunnel behind the door was rough-hewn and very dark.

“I can’t see a thing!” I grumped uneasy about the dark. Thoughts of being trapped underground flittered through my mind. I shifted trying hard to fight my fears. Being trapped by a cave in wasn’t a pleasant way to die. I’d nearly done that before on Saros.

“Here,” Miranda’s voice came out of the darkness.

I felt something long, metallic and thin thrust into my hands. I was momentarily blinded by the sudden influx of light as she turned on her flashlight.

“They’ll see these?” I questioned her but I still turned on the flashlight she had given me. I guess it was easier for my nerves if I could see where I was going. I didn’t want to stumble around in the dark.

“They’ll have to get in first.” Miranda sounded upbeat for a woman fleeing for her life.

Had I known about the tunnel I’d taken my chances fending off the enemy. “I know the door is quite substantial but I doubt it will hold them for long?” I had to admit I’d been impressed at the thickness of the door. It was at least a meter thick. “And it is rather obvious?”

Not if it’s been hidden by a holo.”

Hence Miranda’s idea of trailing a rope into the fissure. It hadn’t made much sense at the time but now it did. “Oh sorry,” I apologised. “I didn’t know.”

“Not you fault,” Ella supplied. “Sometimes she’s too clever for herself.”

I noted like Miranda, she was upbeat about our situation.

“If they do find it they’ll need a lot of explosives to breech it and if they do they’ll bring the dome down on their heads. Less and they’ll feel the bite of Scylla,” Miranda stated firmly.

“About that?” I was confused as why she had left the rock in place. We had to work our way around the fissure to get to the door. “Why not just remove the rock?”

“Because no one will believe that a diamond that size existed.”

I stared at her shocked. I wasn’t certain she was joking. “Wait that was a diamond. It is huge?” It was certainly taller than me and five times wider.

“A badly stained diamond only good for enhancing tools and certainly no good to be made into jewellery.”

“And you are just sitting on it?”

“I never sat on it,” Miranda responded with a smile. “Anyway I get your point Gwen. Any stone cut from it is only useful in commercial tools.” She gave me a look. “Or would you rather it gathered dust in some museum?”

“Sorry,” I apologised. I shouldn’t really be hard on her she was fleeing her home, mine was far away.

“Don’t be,” Miranda waved aside my apology. “Come on you two we’ve a long way to go.”

Miranda’s tunnel wasn’t straight it twisted and turned more times than I could count. Finally it opened into a wide cavern the roof of which rose high above the reach of our flashlight beams. There were a number of exits leading off from the cavern. I noted the rock floor was as jagged as the rest of the cavern.

“Which way?” I queried Miranda. I wasn’t sure how much further I could go myself I’d been limping the last few metres I had developed a blister on my heel like I’d thought it would.

“Not yet,” she replied sitting on the nearest rock outcrop. “These old bones of mine aren’t used to all this walking.”

“Are you going to be ok?” Ella asked her sounding concerned.

“I will be after a short rest.”

I was concerned myself. She might not look it but she was ancient compared to us. Heck she was older than the Empire.

“Stay here with Gwen,” Ella announced. “I’m going to scout our rear.” Her tone of voice brooked no decent. She rummaged in her pack and pulled out a pair of goggles. “Image intensifiers,” she explained putting them on and turning off her flashlight.

“Do we all have night vision goggles?” I asked.

“Yes,” Miranda said.

“So why didn’t we use those instead of the flashlights?”

“And miss the wonders of the geology in these rocks.”

Ella gestured to Miranda. “I’ll take the gun.”

Miranda grimaced, unclipped the coil rifle from her chest and handed it to Ella. “Never liked guns,” she stated.

Once Ella had gone Miranda leaned back against the rocky outcrop and sighed. She suddenly sat straight and pulled off her pack. She pulled a camping lantern out of it and set it on floor turning it on. Switching off her flashlight she spoke. “Take off your boots Gwen.”

I eased off my boots wincing slightly I had developed a blister on my right heel.

“Here,” Miranda said passing me a tube of cream. “It will numb the pain.”

I brushed it aside hoping the machine that cleaned the radiation from my body hadn’t cleaned the nanobots from my blood. Despite the Imperial in me I’d come to rely on the nanobots to quickly heal my injuries. “No keep it we might need it later.”

“You sure?” Miranda queried me. “Don’t go all stubborn on me?”

“No I’m not.” Now wasn’t the time to tell Miranda about what the Keepers had done to me. A stray thought occurred to me. Mouse had once said I had Keeper DNA I wondered if Miranda had it too?

“You ok?” Miranda suddenly said.

“What?” I answered.

“You had a faraway look in your eyes?”

“I was just thinking.” I had to be that honest with her. I just wasn’t ready to tell her about the Keepers.

“Thinking is ok,” Miranda replied. “I know things look bleak but we’ll pull through we are Martin.” She opened her pack and took out a ration pack. “We’ll might as well eat while we wait for Cinders.”

I had to have my say. “I worry about her. Does she know what she is doing?”

Miranda looked pensive in the camp light. “Cinders will be fine.” Miranda assured me. Something in my expression made her speak up. “You’d rather be doing what she is doing. Rest assured she knows these tunnels better than the back of her hand.”

We sat and waited I started to become anxious. It seemed a long time. I became restless. Just as I was about to get up to go looking for her. Ella appeared jogging effortless out of the tunnel.

“I’ve bought us some more time,” she announced as she approached. She held out her hand to Miranda and pulled her to her feet. “We best get moving.”

I got up relieved to at last be doing something.

“Come on Gwen,” Miranda said then as I was about to put my foot on the floor, which was gravelly she added. “Walk along the rocks. We don’t want to tell them which way we went.”

It felt a little odd as we hopped from boulder to boulder. I took note that a number of boulders had been flattened making it easier to cross from one to the other. Finally we stopped by an exit tunnel.

Miranda indicated the entrance. “This one leads to the surface about fourteen k’s by my reckoning.”

I groaned at that.

“There a problem here?” Miranda’s words were mild but there was an undercurrent to them.

“Tell you later,” I told her quickly.

“Later then.”

I took note that she would query me later. I’d rather put it off until then.

We walked down the tunnel. I kept my teeth gritted the whole way feeling as if the mountain was pressing down on me. I wasn’t sure how far we had gone but my flashlight started to pick up glints of bright yellow shining on the walls. The yellow glints grew into seemingly what looked like gold, great seams of it.

“Gold!” I blurted out my voice sounding loud in the silence.

“Only to a fool,” Miranda replied.

“What do you mean by that?” I demanded. I shouldn’t have shot my mouth off like that. I just wanted to be out of this tunnel and into the open. I seemed I was developing a strong phobia on top of my other problems.

“Fools gold, iron pyrites. It only looks that way because of the sulphur in the iron. It’s fooled a lot of people in the past. Heck if I was a shyster I could have passed this off as a gold mine.”

“Shyster?” Another of those words she used I’d never heard of.

“A fraud, charlatan, someone who makes money out of the gullible.”

“Ok,” I said and filed the word way.

“Come on Gwen, not far now…”

“I thought you said about 14 kilometres. We haven’t walked even half of that?” I interrupted her.

“To the way station we can rest there,” Miranda said.

“And our pursuers?” I had been on my mind as much as the thought of the tunnel collapsing on my head. “Surely they’ve found the entrance to the tunnels by now?”

“And died,” Ella said cryptically.

“Died?”

“I set up a number of demolition charges on the way. Enough to bring the tunnel down on them.”

I shuddered at the thought. That had nearly been me.

“You ok Gwen you look as if someone walked on your grave?” Miranda asked sounding concerned.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“We’ll talk once we get to the way station,” she said firmly.

With a sharp gesture she motioned us on. We walked down the tunnel.

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