Quickly the Marines split into three groups and started down the tunnels. Eustus hoped for a break soon, or they were sure to lose their quarry.
He did not have long to wait.
“Top!” the new Marine on point called excitedly. “I’ve got a trail! There’s blood on the floor up here!”
“Keep your eyes open!” Eustus ordered sharply as he and the others moved at a run toward the corporal who was standing in the corridor ahead of them, barely visible at this distance. “Grierson! Schoemann! Get back here on the double!” he ordered over the company net.
Eustus, who now led the squad of charging Marines, could see the corporal kneeling on the floor, his weapon trained ahead of him. Hearing the approach of the reinforcements, he turned his head toward them.
That was when Eustus saw the shadow detach itself from the wall where the tunnel bent to the right. Even at this distance he could see it for what it was: a Kreelan warrior.
“Down!” he screamed into his helmet even as he raised his rifle, his finger already pulling the trigger. “Get down!”
The young Marine reacted instantly, diving for the floor as he rolled and fired down the tunnel, but it was an instant too late. Even as the Marines began to pour a volley of blue and red energy bolts toward their enemy, the shrekka that howled from the dark warrior cut across the corporal’s chest, opening his heart and lungs to the cool air.
Eustus dived for the stricken Marine just as a second shrekka swept in from the chaos a split second after the first, slicing deeply into his upper thigh. The shrekka’s blades were so sharp that, at first, he felt no pain. He hit the ground hard, one hand pressing against his leg, the other vainly trying to aim his rifle.
But what caught his attention was the apparition that clattered past him, right for the Marines who knelt and lay behind him, firing into the smoke and dust-filled tunnel to cover him and their fallen comrade. Freed and given the gift of motion by the cutting blades of the first shrekka, the dead corporal’s munitions bandoleer and its six grenades skittered along the floor. As if looking at it through a microscope, Eustus could see that one of the grenades had somehow been armed.
“Grenade!” he screamed, throwing himself to the far side of the corporal’s body in the forlorn hope that his still warm flesh might provide some protection to his own body.
The other Marines gaped at the deadly bundle that came to a jarring halt in their midst.
The armed grenade exploded, setting off the other five. Fire and thunder filled the tunnel just before it collapsed, burying the shattered corpses the blast had left behind.
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 (I think we’ve had enough of that, he thought darkly), and – most importantly – no time. While Commodore Marchand had been keen on catching the survivors from the Kreelan cruiser, she was loath to have her squadron stay here for too long. The Marines had been given exactly twenty-four hours to conduct their business and return before the Roving Raiders roved on without them. He also had to hope that the other Marines and the Navy boat crew would wait until the last minute in the hope that someone from in here would make it back out. But they could not wait forever, and Eustus had no idea how long he had been unconscious. If he was going to get out of here, he was going to have to find another way to the surface. And quickly.
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.