Crystal Conquest (19 page)

Figuring she was trapped on the other side of the rock pile,
Cheryl called Grace on her com. She didn’t receive a return signal and searched
for other links to see if the failure was her equipment or a complete shutdown
of communications at Lunar Base. She found about a dozen signals, but Grace’s
wasn’t among them.
Why would she disable her com?
thought Cheryl, not
registering that her own device should have found a thousand signals nearby.

She lifted a chunk off the pile and tossed it to the side.
After moving a few more pieces, she concluded that digging her way to Grace was
a huge job and she would need help. She picked her way across the cracked floor
to the door, but when she tried to open it, it didn’t budge. She scanned the
edges and seams around the frame and couldn’t see any obvious damage.

“Sergeant Ravalli?” she yelled, banging the door with her
fist. She called him on her com. His signal was live, but he didn’t respond. A
realization flooded her thoughts.
I’m trapped.

Activating her com’s emergency beacon, she looked at the
wreckage around her and wondered what had happened and how much damage Lunar
Base had received. Both of those would dictate her priority in receiving help from
the response crews.

Returning to the rubble pile, she shifted pieces with determination.
Emergency should have checked in with her in seconds. It had now been minutes.
As she worked, she reasoned that, whatever had happened, it was big. Her two
best guesses were a catastrophic failure of a weapons platform in the defense
array, or the criminal syndicate had done something terrible to wreak its revenge.

After thirty minutes, she was exhausted, thirsty, and hurt everywhere.
She sat down and looked around her, wondering if fresh air was feeding the
space. Tilting her head back, she rested against the wall. She closed her eyes
and tried to think, but her head pounded, making focusing difficult.

She took deep breaths and willed herself to relax. Using her
com, she checked the oxygen levels in the room and found they were below
normal. She called up a chart showing the oxygen levels around her since she’d
entered the cage area. They’d started a slow but steady decline about two hours
earlier.

She knew she could extrapolate forward based on this steady
decline and determine when she’d pass out from lack of oxygen, and when she’d
die of asphyxiation. Instead, she turned on some music, closed her eyes, and
rested for a moment. She needed a solution to her dilemma, but it was hard to
concentrate.

She smiled as she conjured a memory of the time Geo had
leaned in and surprised her with a kiss. They were walking home from school. She’d
just turned thirteen.

Juice hid behind an oak tree and watched
the Kardish soldiers outside their landing craft. The two aliens looked much
like what she remembered from her time on the Kardish vessel, and it sparked
more bad memories. They had the familiar long blond hair and wore the ornate
clothing and ceremonial swords of royal guardsman. And that meant a king or
prince was in orbit above Earth.

If they came for a fight, humanity didn’t stand a chance.
This was a warrior race able to blacken the skies with drones and rain murderous
energy bombs across the planet surface. She sat down, slumped back on the tree
trunk, and toyed with a twig as she struggled to come to terms with a new
future. Like awakening after a devastating accident, she feared life would never
be the same.

Leaning around the tree, she gazed at the farmhouse through
the brush. Seeing no signs of life, she said, “I’m glad I sent Marco and Anna
to live in their city apartment.”

Crispin looked at her.

“They’re the caretakers that live in that house. I had them
move to the city when I had Criss ask the Crystal Research employees to stay
home.”

Crispin returned to studying the activity on the field, then
leaned forward and visually traced the edge of the property where it bordered the
forest. He crouched down, turned, and started crawling back the way they’d
come. She followed, and when they were a safe distance into the woods, they
stood and continued walking away from the farm.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“Stealth will not get us to the barn. They will detect us.”

His eyes darted as they walked, then he stopped and slid the
pack to the ground. He crouched and brushed away some leaves to expose a small
cache of pebbles that had accumulated in a rain wash. He ran his hand across
the collection.

“We need to create a diversion. One that will buy us time.”

He picked up one stone after another, examining each, and
discarding all but one.

“What are you looking for?”

He placed his prize in his open palm and held it for her to
see. “I seek several more about this size. They should have a smooth, balanced
shape.” He rolled it in his palm with his finger so she could see all sides. “Jagged
edges and lopsided contours will cause it to curve at high speed.”

She scrunched her brow. “I’m lost.”

Crispin stood and pointed in a direction with an open line
of sight out some distance. “See the tree in the middle, halfway up that far rise?”

She saw lots of trees and several places that might be
described as rises. “No.”

He moved next to her and put his arm near her head. “I will
point. Down this slope. Up over the rise. Down again. Then halfway up the next
rise. I see a maple tree on the edge of that clearing.”

She didn’t know much about trees and couldn’t tell a maple
from an elm, but she believed she had it narrowed down to one of a handful of
specimens. “Yup,” she said. His eyesight was better than hers, and she wanted to
move this along to see where he was going with it.

He stepped away from her, turned so his left side faced the maple,
and hefted his perfect stone. “There are five leaves hanging at the end of a
branch.” He wound up like a major-league pitcher and threw the stone.

Juice didn’t know much about team sports, but she knew
athletes. His form was perfect, and his delivery was far faster than anything
she ever imagined possible. The stone flew through the air at such a high speed
she heard a whizzing noise and then a faint snap. A group of leaves fell to the
ground a good two hundred paces away.

“Is that what you were aiming for?”

“Yes.”

“How many leaves fell?”

“Five.”

“Whoa.”

“At the speeds I can throw, imperfections create uncertainty
in the path a stone travels. I am confident in my ability to take down those
two soldiers if I have balanced, smooth stones.”

“Smooth stones it is,” said Juice, kneeling down and pawing
farther down the wash from where Crispin had been looking.

They’d been searching for about ten minutes when the hum of
an approaching drone patrol interrupted their work. Juice curled on the ground
near some rocks, spread the blanket over her, and waited until the sound faded.

Twenty minutes later they had a pile of about thirty
candidates. Crispin sifted through them and found five he accepted. He brushed
them clean and polished them against his shirt.

While he was doing this, Juice asked, “So your plan is to
knock those two out and run for the barn?”

“Yes.”

“What about drones? Or other soldiers inside the transport?
Or other transports nearby?”

He slid five stones into his pocket and looked at her.

She started pacing. “I wonder if we need something bigger.
Something that will draw their attention and maybe even blind the drones.”

“Diversions can be helpful.”

“I’m thinking fire.”

He looked at the landscape around them. “You want to start a
forest fire?” He scooped a handful of leaves off the ground and crumpled them
in his fingers. “I believe it would take many hours to get a flame big enough to
catch their attention.”

“The art of misdirection is to make them look where we want
them to,” said Juice. “Let’s put it in front of their faces. Let’s set the
farmhouse on fire.”

“Marco and Anna’s home?” He picked up the backpack and
started walking toward the farm. “The materials of construction are not
flammable.”

“But the books and old furniture inside are. And we have
accelerants—cooking oil, rubbing alcohol and, of course, Marco’s whiskey. At
the moment the first soldier drops, I’ll run to the house and set a fire in the
front. When it’s going good and has everyone’s attention, I’ll run out the back
to the barn. You meet me there.”

He walked for a bit in silence, then stopped and turned to
her. “My conclusion is that we have a higher probability of getting to the barn
undetected if we do not start a house fire. And our exit strategy after we get
Criss will be complicated by the certain attention a house fire will bring.”

She’d been brainstorming out loud and recognized the flaws of
her plan after he pointed them out. And the fact that he’d thought ahead to
their exit boosted her confidence in him. She couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling,
though, that she was putting her life in the hands of a relatively simple
crystal, albeit one trained by Criss.

“Okay. Step me through your idea.”

“We circle around the perimeter of the field so you are
positioned for the shortest run to the barn. I will be on the same side as you,
but positioned so I have the shortest throw to hit the soldiers. You watch and
as soon as one of them drops, you run to the barn, open the secure vault entry,
and wait inside. If anyone other than me comes through the barn door, close the
vault immediately, get to Criss, and ask his help on what to do next.”

“How long will it take you to get there?”

“After I throw, I will run through the woods and then across
to the barn. I expect to be less than a minute behind you. There are many eventualities
that are unknowable in advance, making it difficult for me to be precise.”

They saw the farm fields up ahead and, staying under cover
of the forest, began the trek around the boundary of the field. They’d been at
it for just minutes when the drones made another pass. In a now-practiced
motion, Juice moved near a large rock and hid under her thermal blanket.

They resumed walking, remaining in the forest as they traced
the perimeter of the clearing. The back field was deceptively large, and the
journey took longer than she’d anticipated. They reached a spot on the far
side, and Crispin stopped and studied the Kardish.

The sun, low in the sky, cast long shadows. She tried to
imagine hitting the soldiers from where they stood. It would take an amazing
throw, but then again, no more amazing than knocking the leaves off the tree.

Moving back into the cover of the forest, Crispin said, “I assess
this as a good spot from which to throw. I will wait two minutes for you to get
into position.”

She looked skyward and scanned back and forth. “We should
wait for the next drone pass before executing.”

He followed her gaze. “Yes, that will give us the largest window
of time after I throw before they return.”

“Good luck.” Juice put her hand on his arm and gave a quick
squeeze. In her heart, she still saw him as Criss and was not ready to accept
Crispin as a permanent reality. She moved through the trees to a point nearest
the barn and picked her way to the edge of the clearing. The barn stood
comfortably close, but when she looked back at the Kardish transport, she
realized a corner of the building blocked her line of sight to the aliens
standing guard.

Slipping back in the woods, she moved in Crispin’s
direction. When she peeked out again, she could see the soldiers, though the
gathering dark made them appear as silhouettes. Looking at the barn, she gauged
the longer sprint she’d have from this spot. She’d be exposed for a couple of
seconds more, but she didn’t see that she had a choice.

She found a shallow rock overhang near the spot and, squatting
beneath it, covered all but her head with the blanket. The minutes passed
slowly as she waited for the drones. With her com disabled, she didn’t have a
clock. She counted off minutes in her head and became certain the patrol should
have passed. She waited some more.

Something’s changed
. Climbing out from beneath the
overhang, she peered through the trees, trying to remember exactly where Crispin
was hiding. As she stepped toward him, she heard the hum of the drones flying
above the horizon.

Scrambling for the overhang, she stumbled in the gathering
dark. With no time to spare, she fell to the ground, curled into a ball, and pulled
the blanket over her as best she could. The drones passed above, and she held her
breath, listening as the sound faded in the distance. Sitting up, she gathered
the blanket into a compact size and gripped it in her left hand.

She moved to the edge of the clearing to watch, but it had
grown so dark she couldn’t see the soldiers.
If I can’t see them, can they
see me?

Not sure if Crispin had thrown yet, she crouched low and strained
to see, hoping for some glimpse of something that would serve as a signal. She
heard shouts, lights flashed on, there was a metallic clang, and then silence.

The lights were bright, and she squinted as a natural reflex.
Shielding her eyes, she sprinted to the side of the barn. She moved down its
length, and as she rounded the corner to the front of the building, her toe
snagged on something jutting up from the ground.

“Oomph,” she grunted, falling hard onto the dirt and gravel
surface. Scrambling to her feet, she dashed for the entry. As she looked for
signs of pursuit, she grabbed the handle of the old-style sliding door and
pulled to the side. It didn’t budge, and her right hand protested in pain.

Working as fast as she could, she tucked the thermal blanket
under her chin and used both hands to force the door to the side. She cringed as
the door squealed and squeaked, but kept at it until she could slip inside. Turning,
she pushed the door shut.

Wow, it’s really dark,
she thought as she got her
bearings. She’d visited the secure bunker several times in the past two years
and was familiar with the layout inside the barn. Taking careful steps with her
hands out in front, she moved until she felt the rough-hewn fence slats of the
first goat pen. The barn now stored equipment and supplies, and she was
grateful there were no animals to contend with.

Juice moved sideways along the fence, counting her way to the
third stall. She stepped through the stall gate, placed her hands at her sides,
and lifted her head. The security system identified her, and a section of the
back wall slid away to reveal an imposing vault door. A soft glow from the door
entrance provided enough illumination for her to take her final steps with
confidence.

Moving up to the vault door, she stopped so her identity could
be confirmed a second time. A latch clicked and the heavy door glided silently
to the side. She stepped through the opening and turned to watch the sliding
door at the front of the barn. Holding her palm above the manual close button,
she shifted her stance to hug the wall and reduce her exposure to anyone
entering.

C’mon
,
Crispin
, she fretted, counting the
seconds in her head. The area near the barn door was impossibly dark. Time
passed and she imagined the worst, wondering if she should proceed without him.
She waited, though, because the synbod provided more options going forward. And
she didn’t want to be alone right now.

The barn door squealed and her heart jumped. The darkness
was so complete that she couldn’t even see a silhouette. She shifted her hand
so it touched the button and started a countdown.
Three…two…

Crispin stepped out of the darkness and through the doorway.
As he did, he pushed the top of her hand, closing the vault door behind them.
Though they couldn’t see it, the section of wall outside the vault slid back into
place, returning the barn to its previous bucolic state.

They stood next to each other, the backpack at Crispin’s
feet, as the lift carried them deep below the surface. Neither of them spoke. Juice
used the moments to fold the thermal blanket and tuck the thin material into
her waistband at the small of her back. Holding her right hand up in front of
her, she studied the nasty scrape across the heel of her palm.

The lift doors opened, and they stepped out into a main
corridor that served as the central artery for an underground system of storage
chambers. As she looked down the long hallway, Juice recalled that on her first
visit, Criss had explained that the warren of caves and tunnels had originally been
created to store a collection of seeds that someday might serve to jumpstart civilization
if a doomsday event ever struck the planet.