Orson Card - Empire

Cat came back into the cabin. “Nothing else on this island. Nobody even bothered to shoot at me. I think they think we can’t get through their door.”

“Maybe we can’t,” said Cole.

“You can’t,” said the rebel.

Cole pushed on the crowbar. The wood splintered a little, but it also moved. The trap door had slid about a half inch.

Which meant it would probably slide farther. Far enough for the door to open.

“The question,” said Cole, “is this. Do we open it enough to toss a grenade down and kill anybody waiting for us? Or do we hope they trusted their mechanism here so much that they aren’t even bothering to defend it?”

“We throw a grenade and they aren’t there,” said Cat, “the grenade tells them we made it through and they come running.”

“On the other hand, we open this and they are there, they just toss a grenade up here and we’re dead.”

Cat pointed his thumb at the rebel. “One consolation is, he’s dead, too.”

“Collateral damage,” said Cole. To the rebel he said, “But your team doesn’t believe armies should ever cause collateral damage, don’t you?”

The rebel just glared at him.

“Safety first,” said Cole. “I’ll shove, you toss.”

Cat got out a grenade.

“Of course, I’ll be right here where the blast will still hit me,” said Cole.

“Well, don’t be there,” said Cat.

“I can’t open the trap door if I’m standing on it,” said Cole.

“You could try,” said Cat.

Cole went over to one of the dead rebels and dragged his body over to the set of slight gaps marking the end of the trap door. Cole shoved the crowbar under the body and lodged the angled end of the crowbar into the gap. Then he stepped over the body and started pushing on the other end of the crowbar. “Is it moving?” he asked.

“Are you pushing?” asked Cat.

Cole pushed hard enough that his feet slid on the floor.

So he tipped over a table and ran it up against the far wall. By bracing his feet against the end of the table, he kept himself from sliding. And now the trap door started to move.

“Anytime you feel like it,” said Cole.

He pushed farther. The trap door began to move smoothly.

A burst of machine-gun fire from inside the trap door shuddered the dead body in front of him and shoved it back into Cole’s face.

Cat flipped a grenade down the gap.

It exploded. There was no more firing.

Now the two of them opened the door the rest of the way. It went rather easily.

Steep stairs led down into a small concrete room with an elevator door on one side and the top of a spiral staircase on the other. There were pieces of body armor scattered on the floor, some still containing fragments of flesh and bone. The pieces didn’t come out even, so some of them must have blown off the edge and down the spiral stairway.

They went back up into the cabin and put on their packs. Cat quickly finished his coffee. “Shouldn’t drink this,” he said. “I’ll just have to pee later.”

“You didn’t put on your catheter?” said Cole with mock surprise.

“Can’t find any that fit me,” said Cat.

Cole turned to the miserable-looking rebel. “We probably won’t come out this way, so… I’ll see you at your treason trial.”

No smart remarks. The guy just looked away.

Down on the elevator landing, Cat pushed the button for the elevator.

“Oh, come on,” said Cole.

“Ain’t gonna ride it, man,” said Cat. “Just want to see if it comes when I call.”

They waited, weapons trained on the door. It opened. The elevator was empty.

“We could put that guy inside and send it down,” said Cat. “Then it’s friendly fire that’ll kill him.”

“Being an ignorant jerk who believed a lot of lies shouldn’t get you the death penalty,” said Cole.

“Not even sometimes?” Cat was holding the elevator door open.

Cole leaned close to him and whispered. “Push the button for the bottom floor and let’s go down the stairs.”

Cat pushed the button and scrambled back out of the elevator before the doors closed.

Then, as quietly as they could, they started down the stairs.

They were about halfway to the bottom when the rebel in the cabin shouted, “They’re coming down the stairs!”

Should have killed him, thought Cole.

No. We should have closed the trap door from the inside.

Fortunately, there was a good chance nobody at the bottom could understand what he was yelling.

They heard gunfire below them.

The elevator door must have opened. But the sound was muffled. They must have built a heavy door between the stairway and the elevator landing at the bottom.

But now that they knew Cole and Cat hadn’t come down the elevator, they were bound to think of the stairway. If it was a grenade they tossed, Cole and Cat should stay high on the stairs. But if they opened the door and fired, they should be down there to shoot back.

Cole didn’t remember seeing any of the rebels armed with grenades.

He sat on the railing, leaned a hand on the center pole, and slid down. As he neared the bottom, he tipped himself off the railing and out of Cat’s way. He landed on the floor, and flung himself into the corner, his rifle pointing at the door just as it opened. He shot once, lining the door and knocking it farther open.

Cat hit the bottom of the stairs with the pin already pulled on a grenade, rolled it on the floor through the gap in the door, then pulled the door shut. It went off.

A moment later they had the door open, and this time there was no attempt at conversation—everybody they saw in that space, alive or dead, they fired at quickly. There started down a bare concrete tunnel—which, from its placement, could only be a tunnel leading under the lakebed toward the mountain where Verus’s arsenal was.

“I hope that grenade didn’t weaken the concrete of this tunnel,” said Cat. “Don’t want all that water coming in.”

“Too bad,” said Cole. Because at that moment water did start coming in. But not from any damage caused by the grenade. The rebels were flooding the corridor themselves, water gushing through a two-foot-diameter tube at the other end.

They could either go back and climb the stairs to the cabin and wait for reinforcements, or charge straight into the gushing water and try to get above the level of the tunnel before it completely flooded.

Cat didn’t hesitate, so Cole followed him.

They stayed to the edge of the tunnel where the force of the thick stream water wasn’t so strong. But the tunnel was filling rapidly—knee level, then hip level by the time they forced their way past the stream and realized they were on the wrong side—there was no door here. Cole could just make out the door shape on the other side through the thick gush of water.

“Swim under?” said Cat.

“No time to go back,” said Cole.

“Get my weapon all wet,” said Cat.

Cole took the Minimi out of his hand as Cat shrugged off his pack. Cat swam under the stream. Cole threw his pack over the rush of water, then his weapon. Cat caught them both.

Now Cole threw his own weapon and his own pack. But the water was shoulder height. Harder to dive low enough to get under the stream. He felt it sucking at him, churning him out away from the door.