D. MacHale - The Rivers of Zadaa

It was a frightening moment. There was no way we could stop those engineers from flooding the underground from where we were hiding. But if we stepped out, we were dead.

“We’ll all go at once,” I said. “He can’t get us all.”

“Not you, Pendragon,” Loor said. She looked across to Alder and motioned that both of them would go. Hopefully one would get the crossbow.

“We all go or nobody goes!” I shouted.

I pushed by her, ready to jump out into the line of fire. I’m not a hero. I didn’t want to die. What I did wasn’t so much brave as the result of being hypercharged on adrenaline, knowing disaster was seconds away. I didn’t stop to think. I went.

But I didn’t need to. No sooner did I leap out from behind the tank than I saw something nobody expected. Least of all the assassin on the catwalk. He was too busy keeping us pinned down to realize he hadn’t finished his first job.

Teek had picked up the crossbow.

He rolled onto his side, took aim, and fired. The arrow shot upward, darting toward its target. His aim was dead solid perfect. The killer still had his own crossbow shouldered when Teek’s arrow nailed him square in the chest. The force knocked him backward. He stumbled, hit his back on the rail, dropped his weapon over the side, and fell down after it. The assassin tumbled through the air and hit the ground with a sickening thud. We didn’t need to check to know he wasn’t going to be shooting at us anymore. Bokka’s killer was dead. It was a fitting end.

We all ran to Teek. Loor got there first and knelt by him.

He was on his side, the arrow still in his back. His white Rokador tunic was saturated with blood. There was nothing we could do to help him.

“Hurry,” he whispered. “You must stop the flood.”

“Bokka would be proud of you, my good friend,” Loor said.

Teek gave her a small smile. “Do not let our deaths be for nothing.” Teek looked up at his friend, the Tiggen guard, and whispered, “Help them.”

With those last words Teek closed his eyes and died. We couldn’t mourn his death. There would be time for that later, hopefully.

Loor looked up to the last Tiggen and said, “Get the guards out of here.”

The Tiggen nodded and began dragging the unconscious guards toward the elevator.

“I will help,” Alder said, and grabbed two of the guards himself. He looked at us and said, “Go!”

Loor and I each grabbed one of the guards’ baton weapons and ran for the first ladder that led up to the control platform. I was up first and saw that the engineers were all on the same side of the control board-the side with the small switches that opened up the southern gates.

“Stop!” I shouted.

The guys looked terrified, but didn’t move. I may not have been enough of a force to intimidate them into backing off, but Loor sure was. One look at her charging toward them with her stave in one hand and the silver electric baton in the other was enough to get them to back away from the controls. The four of them huddled together like frightened children.

“Close the gates,” Loor commanded, with her weapon held high.

The frightened engineers looked as if they were ready to faint, but they didn’t budge.

“Do not listen to them!” came a voice from below. It was one of the older guys from the Rokador elite-the only one who was brave enough to leave the others. “If you obey them it will be an act of treason!” the guy called up.

The engineers did the one and only thing they were capable of at that point. They ran. Together they scurried to the ladders, climbed down, and ran to join the elite. The older guy stood there with his hands on his hips, looking up at us, smug. I ignored him. It didn’t matter what he thought.

“We gotta stop it ourselves,” I said to Loor.

We looked at the array of valves that controlled the gates to the south. It looked as if only a few of them had been opened. We weren’t too late. We had to focus. Quickly I grabbed one of the handles and turned it counterclockwise. The needle in the gauge above it instantly dropped down. I grabbed the other two handles and did the same. The southern gates were now all closed again. It was just that simple. Or so I thought. This wasn’t over by far.

“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know how long we can hold out here. If the other Tiggen guards break in before the Ghee arrive, they’ll kill us and let those geeks back at the controls.”

“What choice do we have?” Loor asked. “We must keep them away as long as possible.”

Our victory was probably going to be a short one. We were in control, but for how long? That’s when I looked back to the array of switches and got an idea.

“Or we can shut it down for good,” I said.

“We cannot shut down an ocean,” Loor countered.

“But we can make it so nobody else can take over.”

“You mean destroy the controls?” Loor asked.

“If a slew of Tiggen guards comes crashing in here, we’re done,” I said. “But if the controls are smashed, it might slow them down long enough for the Ghee warriors to arrive.”

“That is risky,” Loor said. “We do not know anything about this-“

At that very moment we saw something that made the decision for us. High above on the catwalk, Tiggen guards began flooding in from both sides. Our Tiggen friend who we’d left up there never got the chance to seal off the doors. The guards had a long climb down tall ladders before they would reach us, but they were on their way. We could put up a fight, but there were too many of them. They would quickly win back the control panel and turn it back over to the engineers to do their wet work.

Loor looked at the long line of small silver handles, took her Rokador baton, slipped it through a handle…and yanked. The silver handle popped off like the cap of a soda bottle. She looked at me and smiled. I took my Rokador baton and did the same thing. It felt good. The two of us quickly worked to break all the smaller handles off the panel, hopefully making it useless, at least for a while.

The Tiggen guards were halfway down the ladders to the floor. By the time they got to us, our work would be done.

One of the engineers down on the floor must have seen what we were doing. He left the elite and ran back to the bottom of the platform, shouting, “No! Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Yes we did. In no time, all the small handles that controlled the southern gates were gone.

“Is that enough?” Loor asked.

“Let’s make sure,” I said.

I picked up my wooden stave and began smashing the gauges. It sure felt good. Loor joined me. Together we totally trashed the controls.

“Stop! Ibeg you!” the engineer screamed as he climbed back up the ladder. Soon all four engineers were back on the ladders, headed up onto the platform. Their fear was gone. At least their fear of us, anyway. By the time they reached us, the controls were useless.

“There you go, Poindexter,” I said. “Try to flood the underground now.”

“Don’t you see?” he cried. “That is exactly what you have insured!”

Huh? Two of the engineers ran to the controls on the other side, the side that controlled the northern gates. They tried to move the larger handles, but they wouldn’t budge. They checked the gauges and gave a grim look back to the first engineer.

“We have never opened every gate to the north,” the first engineer explained frantically. “But it was the only way to carry out the plan. Now they cannot be closed again.”

“Why not?” I asked, not liking where this was going.

“It is the immense pressure!” the engineer said. “It would only be relieved once the gates to the south were opened. The timing had to be precise. After what you have done, the gates to the south cannot be opened in time.”