If All Else Fails Read online

  Nobody had a good argument as to why not.

  Alexis grinned and waved them on. “Then let’s get moving before we run down the clock talking.”

  There was a hairy moment when they left the safety of the trees and ducked across the street to the nearest manhole.

  K’aia and Boden hauled the heavy cover out of the way while the others kept watch on either end of the alley and the roofs of the surrounding buildings. Then they slipped into the darkness one by one.

  Jentek dropped down last, his progress slowed by his effort to replace the manhole cover.

  Chapter Six

  The Leath blinked while his helmet HUD adjusted for the darkness, then he cast his gaze around the pipe. “How come it’s so big?” he asked. “When you suggested we came down this way, I expected to be crawling through on my hands and knees.”

  Alexis shook her head. “If we were in the suburbs, maybe, but this isn't even the main pipe for the city. It’s probably going to get nasty once we hit the main sewer line, but we shouldn’t have to crawl at any point.”

  “Amen to that,” Trey put in, clasping his hands in gratitude. “But you can bet the specialists know that, too. We should be careful.”

  Gabriel double-checked that his air was being recirculated rather than drawn from outside his armor, glad for the barrier his helmet gave him against the stench of the sewage. “Agreed.”

  He looked around the pipe to check on the others. He felt bad for Pootie and Boden since the two of them weren’t wearing armor.

  K’aia was thinking the same. “Hey, Pootie. You wanna ride on my back?” She stuck a toe into the running water at their feet. “Don’t want you drowning down here if it gets deep.”

  “That’s pretty decent of you, K’aia,” Pootie told her. She climbed up gratefully. “Next time, I won’t refuse the armor.”

  Slash snorted. “Why does she get special treatment? What about me? I’m short, too.”

  Alexis raised an eyebrow, dropping her hands to her hips. “Seriously? Armor!”

  K’aia chuckled as she indicated the spunky Noel-ni's full armor with a wave. “I’m pretty sure you’ll be just fine.”

  She gave Boden a sympathetic smile. “Sorry you can’t fit on my back as well.”

  Boden flashed a grin at K’aia. “I’ll be fine. Nothing a good sandblasting won’t fix once we get out of here.” He folded his wings tightly around his body. “See? All good.”

  “Then we’d better get going,” Alexis told the group. “Everyone ready?”

  They moved down the pipe in a loose formation, keeping to silent communications in case they were wrong about the sewer system being beneath the specialists’ notice.

  Alexis kept the map up in her HUD to track their progress against the streets above their heads. They’d been walking for about an hour when they arrived at a nexus point where their pipe, along with eight others, fed into an even larger pipe.

  The group came to a halt on the jutting ledge at the end of the pipe where the water flowed over the edge into a churning river that half-filled the channel below.

  Trey searched for the next part of their path and spotted the narrow walkways on either side of the river. “How do we get down there? It has to be a fifty-foot drop if one of us falls.”

  “Not to mention that current will sweep us right out of the city,” Jentek added.

  Boden spread his wings. “I can carry Pootie down there. Slash, too. The rest of you are too heavy for me to fly with.”

  Alexis got on her hands and knees. “Hold my feet,” she told Gabriel.

  Gabriel obliged, and Alexis inched out over the edge to get a look at the underside of the ledge.

  “What do you see?” Trey asked.

  “A ladder, I think,” Alexis replied, pulling herself back onto the ledge. She shone her light on the grooves cut into the wall beside the ledge. “This side. No need to carry anyone, Boden.”

  Boden smiled. “Suit yourselves. I’ll see you down there.” He took off with a grace that belied his stocky frame.

  Trey let out a low whistle of admiration.

  “Shhh!” Slash hissed. “If there’s anyone down here, they’ll hear you!”

  “I doubt they will,” Trey refuted. “How are they going to pick anything up over the noise the water is making?”

  Alexis rolled her eyes as she carefully hopped onto the ladder. “Because they’ll have equipment. The same as us.”

  They descended in silence and continued heading deeper into the city.

  Gabriel found his attention drifting with the monotony of their surroundings after a few more miles of featureless pipe. Even the danger posed by the river faded to a dull roar after the first couple of times they were startled by a sewage drop from the feeder pipes above.

  Alexis spoke up in his mind. Do you think it’s going to be this easy the whole way?

  Gabriel groaned internally. I hope not. I might just die of boredom.

  Relief from possible death-by-boredom came in the form of a tight mesh gate blocking their way out of the main pipe.

  The teams stood at the foot of the obstacle and searched its face for any clue as to how to open it.

  “I think we’ve found the reason there were no specialists waiting down here,” Trey commented unhelpfully.

  K’aia grunted. “We’ve got an explosives expert with us, haven’t we?” She looked around to locate the Leian member of their party. “Pootie, you’re up.”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice,” Pootie told them amiably.

  Pootie made her way to the gate with delicate steps and looked at it for a long moment. Then she dipped into her various pockets, bringing out and rejecting one plastic-wrapped package after another. Finally, she settled on the left inside pocket of her robe and brought out a package the size of a nut. “Make some room. In fact, you might want to back riiiight up. This stuff isn’t for playing with.”

  They all did as instructed while Pootie shaved off a thumbnail’s worth of the substance and stuck it on the metal grate. Then she returned to rummaging in her pockets. “Dang it. I’m out of det-cord.”

  Alexis manifested a spark of Etheric energy. “I can help with that.”

  Pootie looked at the spark uncertainly for a moment, then lifted a shoulder and walked over to join the rest of the group taking shelter behind one of the buttresses. “It should work. Go for it.”

  Alexis released the spark and sent it to ignite whatever explosive Pootie had stuck to the gate.

  The resulting explosion shook the pipe, throwing the water up in a tidal wave and causing the team to be knocked off their feet.

  Only K’aia remained standing. She picked Gabriel and Alexis up by their arms, then turned her attention to locating Trey.

  Sibil and Gorrak let go of each other and called for Trey.

  “I’m here,” he replied, emerging dripping wet from farther back up the pipe. “But I can’t see Pootie or Slash.”

  The Leian emerged from the recess of the buttress. “I’m fine.”

  Jentek was also unharmed. “Boden? He’s gone, too. Are they lost?”

  The Chrlič’s wingbeats filled the pipe with an eerie whoosh. He flew over their heads and deposited a grumpy Slash on the ground before circling and making his landing. “I do not get lost. Our friend here was washed into the river and had to be rescued.”

  “Would have been fine,” Slash grumped.

  Alexis shook her head. “What would you have done? Swum up-current to get back to us?” She turned to Boden. “I’ll thank you, even if she won’t.”

  Gabriel was no happier with the Noel-ni’s apparent ingratitude, but unlike his sister, he knew that it was more a case of bruised pride than anything for them to get offended about. He swept an arm toward the hole in the gate. “We have the ingress we needed, and we’re all alive to joke about it. Let’s go.”

  They climbed through the hole one at a time and paused briefly to check their maps before moving on.

  Navigating th
e pipes was easy enough until they reached the end of the pipe, where it let out into the central processing plant.

  Gabriel reached the mouth of the pipe first and called a halt, hearing voices despite the echoing thunder of water running through the many filtration tanks in the vaulted space beyond the pipe.

  Trey got onto his stomach and cautiously peered over the edge of the walkway at the secondary tank below the main tank. “Specialists. Six of them.”

  “Well, we couldn’t expect it to be empty the whole way,” Sibil conceded. “What are we going to do?”

  K’aia studied Trey’s camera feed in her HUD. “They seem to be focusing on everywhere at once. It’s not going to be easy to sneak past them.”

  Slash made her way to the front of the group. “I can get around out there without being seen.”

  Before anyone could stop her, Slash darted out of the pipe and leapt onto the rim of the main tank. She crawled along, aiming her helmet cam at the gantry midway up the tank to capture the specialists waiting there for the team.

  “Are you getting this?” Slash whispered into her comm.

  “Everything,” Alexis confirmed.

  Everyone examined the camera feed from Slash’s helmet. The open floor between the tanks was set up to funnel any passersby into weapons range of the six specialists positioned on the gantry.

  “I’m guessing they figured out we came down here,” Trey remarked.

  Gabriel furrowed his brow. “Come back around, Slash. Can we get to the other side?”

  “Good question,” Alexis murmured. “If we’re lucky, they’ll be expecting us to charge through and won’t have prepared for any other eventuality.”

  Slash did as she was directed, moving slowly so she didn’t draw the attention of the specialists. A few tense minutes later, her camera revealed a descending walkway leading from the rim of the main tank into a maze of filtration tanks. “Looks like we have our route.”

  K’aia saw a problem. “How do we get across to the tank without being seen?”

  “We need a distraction,” Pootie decided.

  Alexis wrinkled her nose as she thought. “Do we?” She met the expectant stares of the others with a small smile. “Nothing in the rules said we can’t engage.”

  “You want us to fight our way through?” Sibil exclaimed. “Didn’t you learn anything from the last time we tried that?”

  “Let’s see them gas us down here,” Gorrak countered, puffing out his chest.

  Jentek chuckled as he put two and two together. “It was your unit who beat the crap out of the SIs at the Corral?” he asked. “I don’t remember that going too well for you.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Yeah, but this is different. We’re supposed to do what’s necessary to get to the endpoint. I’m with Alexis. Let's do this.”

  Trey got to his feet. “Alexis can take out the walkway. That will give us the chance to get across without the specialists catching us.”

  Alexis moved back from the edge. “We have to be careful not to cause them any injuries that can’t be healed quickly. We don’t know if they’re due to be deployed after the exercise.”

  Gabriel nodded in agreement.

  She had an idea percolating, however. “What if we cause a flood and wash them away?”

  “How are you going to do that?” Pootie asked.

  “Like this,” Alexis retrieved the block of plastic explosive Pootie had given her as a meeting gift and used her nail to open the wrapping. “How much should I use to blow the outlet to the secondary tank?”

  “How are you going to get it down there?” Boden asked before Pootie could reply.

  Alexis held up a hand. “We’ll get to that in a moment. Pootie?”

  “I'm going to say keep it minimal after the mess we made of the gate,” Pootie told her. “Especially if you’re going to zap it instead of using a proper detonation method.”

  She watched as Alexis peeled off a thin curl and wrapped it in inert Etheric energy. “Maybe a bit more than that. You want to make sure the valve is destroyed but avoid blowing a hole in the tank.”

  Slash returned to their side of the main tank. “I don’t know if you realize how bad the smell is.”

  “That’s why we’re targeting the secondary tank,” Alexis assured her. “We want to cause a distraction. We don’t want to make the specialists wade through unprocessed waste.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’d make us pay for it if we did,” Sibil murmured unhappily.

  The group watched intently as Alexis guided the translucent energy ball over to the valve that controlled the flow of water from the main tank to the secondary tank.

  Alexis made the ball adhere to the valve and waited for everyone to get into position. “Ready?”

  Gabriel kept his eyes on the walkway. “I’ll say when.”

  Boden picked Pootie up and settled her onto his back in the space between his wings. The others lined up, ready to make the jump.

  Alexis twisted the composition of the energy ball, triggering a sharp explosion that ripped the valve away.

  Semi-processed water rushed from the open outlet and washed over the edge of the secondary tank, knocking the specialists off their feet.

  “Move!” Gabriel commanded.

  Boden took flight at the same instant the others leapt the gap between the pipe and the edge of the tank.

  They heard angry yelling from below but didn’t pause to find out whether they’d been seen. Alexis led the team along the wide curve of the rim at a sprint, aiming for the walkway Slash had found.

  They tore down the walkway and into the maze, with the recovered specialists hurrying to catch them.

  “Climb up!” K’aia called between heaving breaths. “We need to get to the surface!”

  The team scaled the nearest tanks and continued running hell for leather along the top of them, utilizing the walkways that joined them.

  Alexis remained in the lead, searching out the path of least resistance as they pounded along the walkways leading up and out of the central treatment plant.

  Trey almost overbalanced when a suppression round hit his shoulder. He regained his equilibrium after a few sketchy steps and continued running.

  The walkway gave way to a circular platform with a caged elevator. Boden swooped overhead without landing. “We haven’t got much time!” he called to the others. “The specialists are gaining on us!”

  Gabriel glanced around the platform and spotted an emergency ladder. “This way,” he told them. “If we use the elevator, they’ll just shut it down.”

  “Pootie, you’re with me,” K’aia told the Leian.

  Pootie hopped down as Boden alighted and she jumped onto K’aia’s back. “I owe you for this.”

  “Talk later,” Gabriel told them as he mounted the ladder. “We have to keep moving.”

  Alexis took the rear, giving the others space before she collapsed the tunnel below her to block the specialists’ pursuit.

  The race continued as the team scaled the ladder double-time, ignoring the exits leading to the subterranean levels as they headed straight for the top of the tunnel.

  The whine of the elevator followed them as they ascended, reminding them that the specialists were still chasing them.

  “That’s giving me the creeps,” K’aia complained as she concentrated on the awkwardness of maneuvering all four legs on the ladder. She craned her neck to see Alexis, which caused Pootie to curse.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” Alexis panted. “Just keep moving!”

  They reached the top of the ladder and emerged into an office building, scaring the workers into fleeing at the sight of ten mostly-armored combatants bursting into their workspace.

  “Don’t mind us!” Trey called cheerfully as he hurdled the desks in his way.

  Gabriel noted that the elevator was already on their level and pulled up his map. “We’re headed into an ambush,” he told the team as they left the office and dashed along the corridor to the buil
ding exit. “Slow down.”

  “We don’t have time to slow down!” Alexis argued. “We have less than twenty minutes on the clock until we fail.” She skidded to a halt at the exit and peered out the barred window.

  “Do you see them?” Sibil asked nervously.

  Alexis nodded as she scanned the open street. “Yeah. Not just the ones who were after us, either.”

  K’aia joined Alexis at the window. “It looks like every specialist they have is out there. How did they get here so fast?”

  Gabriel felt unaccustomed anger rising as he realized they were mere hundreds of feet from the endpoint. “They cheated.”

  The newer members of the team shrank back as the corridor was washed by the red light from Gabriel’s eyes.

  “They didn’t cheat,” Alexis told him softly. “But they’re not playing fair, and what does Mom always say?”

  “Mostly she says ‘fucksticks' in this kind of situation,” Trey chipped in. “Then she blasts them to dust and gets on with her day.”

  “I don’t think that’s an option,” Alexis told him with regret.

  Gabriel snorted and his eyes returned to normal. “Maybe not, but I’d feel good about it for a minute or two.”

  Alexis screwed her face up since she calculated the chances of them being able to fight their way through without losing anyone as being ridiculously low. “Gather in. I have an idea.”

  She grabbed Gabriel’s hand to give herself a power boost and drew hard on the Etheric. The corridor lit up again as she concentrated on wrapping a shield around them all.

  Jentek, Pootie, Boden, and Slash gaped as the energy encapsulated the team.

  “Good call,” Sibil enthused. “I wondered if you had any defensive skills with all that pew-pew you can do.”

  “Won’t it break when they start shooting?” Jentek asked.

  Alexis ground her teeth with the effort of stabilizing the shield. “Just don’t step outside the bubble, and we should be fine.”

  She sent a flare out from the shield that knocked the door off its hinges. “Let’s go.”

  The specialists opened fire the moment they stepped into the light.

  The shield rippled, but it held. Alexis poured more energy into it as they walked toward the specialists. “Help me,” she called. “I can’t focus on walking while I’m holding this.”