Before Staffa could open his mouth, the car flashed down the tunnel.
"Please," Bruen called, seeing the stiffness in Staffa's face. "Close the door. Master Wim is nervous given the current Regan harassment. Do forgive him. Enemies do not become allies overnight without a few problems; and we do have a long way to go yet today."
Staffa looked at the old man, struggling to balance his violent emotions, and ducked gracefully through the crawl space before sealing the hatch. The place smelled musty with the odor of damp rock. The air carried a chill. In the
darkness, he could hear Bruen shuffling. Lights flickered to life in the ceiling.
"Now, let's see," Bruen mused as he tottered down the cement-lined tunnel, ducking under thick bundles of cable and conduit. "Oh my, it's been so long." His voice carried a note of confusion. "Who would have thought. "
Staffa had to crouch in the narrow space. He looked nervously behind him at the closed hatch. Kaylla moved in Bruen's wake, bent low to keep her head out of the thick nest of wiring.
"Allies?" Staffa asked uncertainly.
"But, of course," Bruen added amiably. "It appears that one of our people, u, you'd know him as Nyklos, had the misfortune to follow your Skyla Lyma into an alley in Etams. Alas, he should know that any man who follows a beautiful woman into a dark alley is in trouble beyond his means. To our chagrin, she managed to slip a little Mytol past Nyklos' resisting lips — and, of course, you know the inevitable result of that! Worse, his self-destruct didn't work. He babbled like a baby."
Staffa grinned maliciously to himself, imagining the scene, as Skyla took matters into her own hands. Odd, Nyklos had appeared to be in one piece when Staffa saw him on Etarus. Perhaps Skyla was slipping in his absence?
Bruen continued chattering, "Lyma considered the fact that we, too, were seeking you, as was Minister Ily Takka. At that juncture, Lyma, through her control of Nyklos, placed herself in contact with me. It seems she had a favorable opinion of the Seddi for some reason and wanted to open a dialogue to determine our mutual interest."
Staffa cocked an eyebrow. "So you told her you were trying to assassinate me?"
Bruen scowled at him. "That would hardly have been appropriate. She informed us that you were bound for Targa to find your son. We informed her that, for the moment, we would consider ourselves allied with the Companions to get you here. I considered it worth the risk. If nothing else, I wanted to find out why you suddenly went off on a tangent. At best, you'd be safely in our control. With Skyla's help we got you free of Ily, and Stailla, here, told us—"
"Magister," Kaylla's voice came low and firm. "You will
no longer call me that. I am now Kaylla Dawn. That other woman died on Maika."
Bruen's bald head gleamed in the glare of the overhead bulbs. "Of course. Yes… I suppose she did. Very well, getting on with my story. Kaylla, here, vouched for you." He shook his head. "I must say, that set us back some. Nevertheless, since we had been trying to get at you for years—"
"Trying to get at me?" Staffa asked. "That's something of an understatement for assassination, isn't it?"
Bruen ignored the comment as he brushed dust and grime from a brick. He chortled as he fingered the corners and the piece slid back into the wall. More Stygian darkness lay beyond the tiny square. Without hesitation or attention to white robes, he dropped to all fours in a cracking of ancient joints and crawled painfully into the darkness, mumbling under his breath.
Kaylla gave Staffa a measuring look and scurried through after Bruen. Staffa shook his head with resignation as he, too, ducked into the hole. He had to hunch his broad shoulders through the limited space. Once passed, the square of stone moved easily back into place.
"Drat!" Bruen's rasping voice grunted. "Light's dead. Hum. Seems we've forgotten so many of our practices over the years. Safety is a curse that way. It lulls, causes a person to forget the old precautions."
Kaylla's voice came from the darkness, "Do you have some sort of vehicle in here?"
"That's right."
Staffa started to stand up, cracking his head on low-hanging rock. He felt around, grumbling under his breath, "Should have had Skyla meet us with the fleet! Could have gone anywhere we wanted that way!"
"And started a war," Bruen informed absently from the darkness.
"A war? Who would dare fire on a Companion ship in Regan space?"
"Any other Regan ship," Bruen muttered. "Oh! Yes, you've been out of contact. Indeed, you have a lot of catching up to do."
"I don't understand. You mean—"
"Ah-ha! Here it is!" Bruen cried from farther away.
Staffa, one hand warily placed over his head to trace the rough cold stone, the other feeling through the darkness, moved toward the sound. Smooth plasteel met his groping fingers. Another groundcar? Here, in this impossible darkness?
Something thumped and the vehicle trembled under his fingers before humming to life. The headlamps dazzled in the darkness, as they pointed into a black forever. To either side, irregular rounded rock confined them.
"Targa," Bruen informed as he climbed into the driver's seat, "was once a highly volcanic planet. Several millennia ago, humans first located the system and noticed the extremely high carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. Vulcanism does that, you know. Frees C02 from the rock. Their predictive models indicated that with the introduction of certain terrestrial species, they could reduce the greenhouse effect and make Targa habitable. They began by seeding the atmosphere with algae. No one expected such quick success. This world became the first human foothold in the area we now call Free Space. Of them all, Targa is the oldest human planet. All the plant and animal species here come from Earth."
"I thought Earth was a myth." Staffa climbed into the cramped vehicle to sit next to Kaylla.
"Oh, no myth," Bruen waved a hand, the movement eerie in the instrument glow of the control panel. They started moving forward in the damp darkness. "We don't know exactly what happened; the records were severely censured, but Earth lies out there, somewhere beyond the Forbidden Borders. "
"So whoever controls Earth controls the Forbidden Borders?"
"No. They came later." Bruen told him. "At least we think they did. We don't know why or bow or when. Something cut us off, purposely-but I miss my point.
"What I was saying is that the planet was volcanic, Tunnels like these used to be vents where hot gases rushed to the surface, bearing, among other things, the carbon dioxide so necessary for life. The first Seddi priests made good use of them not only to locate minerals for mining, but also for transportation corridors since the upper atmosphere was unpredictable at best in the early years."
"So you can go where you will without anyone in orbit knowing," Staffa mused, remembering how no Seddi had been found when he'd razed the planet almost twenty years ago.
"You begin to see the advantages," Bruen agreed, sending them down a narrow
side tunnel. "From here we coordinated the entire Targan revolt-even to the point of moving troops in enclosed personnel carriers so they couldn't divulge our secret."
"And yet you say this Fist person has defeated you?" Bruen's head bowed slightly, as if lost in thought. Lumpy knobs of rock flashed by, polished from thousands of years of gases. They cast irregular jumpy outlines in the headlamps of the car. The air whistled past cool and damp, a bracing sensation against Staffa's skin. Kaylla had pulled her arms tight about her to keep warm.
Bruen's voice came uncertainly, as if the subject made him nervous. "His name is Sinklar Fist. He rose through the ranks from total obscurity. What matters is that he has single-handedly destroyed not only the Targan resistance, but he also decimated and devastated five veteran Regan Assault Divisions. "