"How far is the next exit?" she asked in that too-even tone.
"The nearest official gate operated by the Guild is only about a mile away from the mansion aboveground, but down here it would take us a couple of hours. These sleds are slow. Top speed is just a little faster than the average person can run. The real problem is that there are no direct routes between any of the entrances."
"We're going to be down here for the next two hours?"
"Take it easy," he said. "I know another hole-in-the-wall. It's only about twenty minutes away. It opens under an old, unused warehouse."
She nodded once, but she did not relax her grip on the edge of the seat.
"How's the claustrophobia?" he asked.
"Is my face the same color as the tunnel wall?"
"Not quite."
"Take that as a good sign. I should be okay as long as we're in motion."
"I'm not planning to hang around down here for any length of time, believe me."
She seemed to relax a little. "I trust you won't tell any of your Guild pals about my little problem. It's embarrassing to be married to the boss and not be able to go underground without having a panic attack."
He smiled. "Don't worry. It'll be our little secret."
He punched the coordinates of the hole-in-the-wall into the amber-rez locater. Out of long habit, he also checked his compass. You couldn't be too careful underground.
He steered the sled down one of the hallways. The locater flashed. He made another turn.
"Good heavens, this place really is a maze, isn't it? " Sierra whispered. "I wonder how the aliens navigated it."
"We'll probably never know, but it must have had something to do with their paranormal natures. They obviously needed a psi-heavy environment in which to live, so they must have had a lot of ways to manipulate that kind of energy."
"Compared to them, we humans barely dabble our toes in psychic waters," she said softly. "We live mostly through our normal senses, not our para-senses."
"On the other hand, we're still here, and they aren't."
"Good point. We must be doing something right."
"I'm not sure that's the explanation," he said. "The thing humans have going for them is that they are just flat-out stubborn when it comes to stuff like surviving."
That got a tiny smile from her. "I believe the experts refer to it as an ability to adapt to changing conditions."
"Right." He nodded. "Stubborn. Like I said."
The heavy push of raw dissonance energy struck hard an instant later. He eased his foot off the sled's accelerator.
Sierra reacted immediately, stiffening.
"What's wrong?" she asked tightly. "Why are we slowing down?"
"Ghost coming up. Big one."
She gave him an anxious glance. "You can de-rez it, I assume?"
"Let's review. What do I do for a living?"
"Oh, right." She drew a breath. "Sorry. I'm a little tense."
The tunnel curved sharply to the left. He slowed the sled to a crawl. The last thing he wanted to do was blunder into a ball of ghost fire.
But it wasn't the familiar acid-green of normal ghost light that confronted them. Instead, a hot barrier of tightly seething ultraviolet energy blocked the corridor.
Two shadowy figures with bulbous heads were just barely visible on the other side of the wide beam.
"They found us," Sierra said without inflection.
He brought the sled to a halt and studied the rippling, pulsing barrier of ultraviolet light. "How the hell can they keep dissonance energy so symmetrical? The stuff is inherently unstable."
"It's so strong that even I can feel it," Sierra whispered, amazed. "It's like a psychic storm."
He glanced at her and saw that her hair was lifting and stirring in response to the energy in the atmosphere. Elvis's fur was sticking straight out in a spiky halo. The dust bunny gazed straight ahead at the wall of light, watchful and cautious, just as they were.
"Oh, jeez," Sierra whispered. "The beam is moving. They're coming toward us."
"We've got a problem," he said.
"You can deal with that thing, right?"
"Maybe. Assuming it responds to dark light the way regular ghost light does."
"That is not reassuring, Fontana."
"The problem is that even if I can de-rez it, I'd have to pull a hell of a lot of psi to do it."
"So?"
"So, I won't have much in the way of reserves left afterward to deal with whoever they'll have waiting for us in the warehouse."
"How did they know that we would come this way?" she whispered.
"Good question. But this isn't the time to answer it." He turned the sled around and started back the way they had come. "Sorry, but there's no choice now. We're going to have to head for the official Guild gate. It's a two-hour run. Can you handle it?"
She reached up to touch Elvis. "I'm a Guild boss's wife. I can handle anything."
"Right answer."
She twisted in the seat to look back the way they had come. "The energy beam is picking up speed. The two Riders just climbed into a sled."
"Can you tell how many of them there are?"
"Just the two of them, I think, but I can't be absolutely certain. It's like trying to look through a waterfall."
He glanced back and saw that she was right. The beam of ultraviolet psi was pursuing them down the corridor at sled speed.
"We've got a lead on them," he said. "We should be able to maintain it. With luck, we may even be able to lose them in the catacombs."
"Can't they track us with one of those new amber-rez locaters?"
"Yes, but I know a few tricks that can fool a locater."
"I thought those things were supposed to be foolproof."
"The Guilds like to keep a few secrets."
"Remind me to ask you about that later," she said.
"A Guild boss is always happy to grant interviews to members of the press."
He was halfway around the curve in the tunnel when his over-rezzed senses picked up another blast of alien psi. The low growl to his right told him that Elvis had sensed it, too.
"I think we've got another ultraviolet ghost coming up ahead," he said.
She gripped the edge of the seat. "Ambush."
"I take back everything I said about how no one else could possibly know about my private escape route." He did a quick survey of the curving tunnel in front of them. "A million intersecting hallways down here, but never one nearby when you need one. Probably why they chose this section. Okay, we've run out of options. I'm going to have to de-rez one of these monsters."
"Which one?"
"The one up ahead. No point going back the way we just came, because even if we make it through, there's still the problem of dealing with whoever will be guarding the warehouse exit. By the time we get there, I'll be only half conscious."
"So we go forward."
"There's a shovel in the back. Get it."
She looked at him, startled. "Why?"
"It's the closest thing we've got to a weapon besides the jungle knife under the seat. Better dig that out, too. If we make it past that energy barrier, we're going to have to face whoever rezzed it."
Without another word she turned in the seat and reached back. Elvis scrambled off her shoulder and bounded up onto the dashboard where he had an excellent view.
There was a clang and a couple of thuds from the rear of the sled. A few seconds later, Sierra turned around. She gripped the long handle of the shovel.
"If you have to use it, think of it as a lance," he said. "If it gets snagged on the other vehicle or if someone tries to pull it out of your hand, let it go immediately. Otherwise you'll be yanked out of the sled."
"Okay."
"Don't forget the knife."
Obediently she reached under the seat and came up with the jungle knife. She slid the long, heavy blade out of its sheath and placed it on the dashboard next to Elvis.