Edward Grant - Rebellion

“Are you really going to take me to be tortured?” she said.

Something was glowing faintly in the distance. “Can you see the stars?” he said, as much to distract her from her fears as to confirm what he was seeing.

“Where?”

“Up ahead. At the end of the pipe.”

And he could definitely see them now. The pipe was still open, and he could see the sky through the hole at the end. Just a few more seconds, and he was slowing for the end of the pipe as it reached the cliff. He stopped just inside, then leaned out of the pipe and looked around them. No sign of anyone waiting, and the only sounds were the running water far below them, and the wind whistling through the valley.

He grabbed the edge of the pipe, and swung his legs around, down onto the ledge.

“Careful,” he said. Then helped her out. He nodded to the left. “There’s a ladder that way. You probably don’t want to look down.”

Though she wouldn’t see much if she did, other than the faint starlight reflecting from the river. All he could see was the ledge ahead of them, in the helmet lights.

She grabbed his waist, and he turned toward the rock face and helped her along it. He clambered onto the ladder, then climbed up a couple of steps before leaning over and helping her grab the rungs. He climbed higher, pointing his face down so the lights cast an oval glow beside the ladder that she could use to get onto it.

He stopped as he approached the plateau, turned off the lights, and looked over the edge through the goggles, toward the mine entrance. The truck was gone from the plateau, and the only life he could make out in the starlight was a horse chewing something grassy at the edge of the lake.

He climbed the last couple of rungs, then helped the girl up. There was something he still had to check before they moved on. He slid the rifle from his back and led the girl across the plateau, toward the mine entrance. Then looked in.

“Do you see the others?” the girl said.

The wooden supports holding the tunnel up had collapsed, and rocks were piled up inside the mine entrance, blocking it completely. He and the girl were alone now. They could forget any help from Bairamov and Desoto any time soon. The two Legionnaires were buried under there somewhere.

“Bairamov? Desoto? Can you hear me?” he said.

There was no response from the helmet speakers. Nor any signal from their suits shown in his helmet display. And there was nothing he could do for them right now, without a suit of his own to help dig them out. If they were still alive, his only chance was to find the Legion and return with help.

The horse had taken a step into the lake while they peered into the tunnel. The reins dangled down over its neck as it tapped its front hooves against the ground, and sucked up water from the lake. Logan turned the helmet lights back on, and helped the girl toward it.

The horse looked up as they approached. He’d never ridden a horse before. But how hard could they be to drive?

“I need your horse,” he said. “I have to find those damn Panzergrenadiers, and warn the Legion. If you head back down the road, you can be in Saint Jean before sunrise.”

The horse returned to drinking, and ignored Logan as he approached it. He patted the animal’s neck. Maybe that would help keep it calm.

Then he put his foot into one of the stirrups, and hauled himself up, throwing his leg over the far side of the saddle. The horse continued to drink, and its head was so low that the reins had slid half-way down its neck. Logan leaned forward and grabbed them, then pulled them back up. As the reins pulled its head, the horse puffed air through its nose, and twisted its head against them. It chewed on the bit, with a metallic rattle.

“I’m coming with you,” the girl said.

“This is probably a one-way trip.”

He hadn’t really thought about that until he spoke, but it was true. If the Montagnards and Panzergrenadiers didn’t get him, the sun would be up in a few hours, and he’d be out in the open for the next solar storm. The odds really weren’t good.

He looked up at the sky. Earth must be there somewhere, but, without his suit, he couldn’t even tell which star it might be orbiting. It was strange to think he’d be buried such a long way from home, if the Legion ever found him. And, odds were, no-one he knew on Earth would ever even know.

Still, if he stopped the Panzergrenadiers, maybe someone would write a marching song about him. A grand one, that went well with a bottle of wine and a pint of beer.

The girl stepped up beside the horse’s neck, and stared into Logan’s face. She seemed to be losing some of her fear now they were out of the tunnels.

“They killed my aunt. I want to stop them too.”

“And they’ll kill you as well, if you’re with me.”

She grabbed the reins, and adjusted them in his hands, then shifted his boots in the stirrups.

“Besides, you really don’t know what you’re doing. You need someone to help you.”

She put her foot on top of Logan’s boot in the stirrup, then grabbed the saddle and his waist, and hauled herself up behind him. Logan slung his rifle around across his chest as she put her arms around his waist. Then she leaned forward, far enough to look past his shoulder.

“I thought you said it was slow with two?” he said.

“Not as slow as you’d be, trying to figure it out by yourself. Now, press your legs against her sides to get her going, and steer with the reins.”

He pressed his boots against the horse. It shook its head, then began to move forward. Its legs sloshed through the lake toward the dirt banks around it. Logan leaned forward and clung on with his feet as the horse climbed out, and its back tilted beneath him.

A wide trail of metre-long footprints from the Panzergrenadier suits, and rough gouges from the truck and trailers, ran up the hillside near the mine entrance.

“How fast can this thing go?” he said.

“Not as fast as men run in those suits.”

“Then I guess we’d better get moving.”

He pulled hard on the right rein. The horse’s hooves stomped on the hard dirt as it turned toward the tracks. Then he kicked the horse’s side, and tried to hold on as it accelerated beneath them.

Logan might not have known much about horses before he climbed onto this one, but, with the girl’s help, he’d learned a lot about them as it raced across the hillsides following the trail the Panzergrenadiers and truck had left behind them. The horse was panting beneath them now, and running noticeably slower than when they’d left the mine. Logan’s legs ached, his arms ached, and his butt ached. Death would almost be better than another minute trapped on the back of this thing.

The horse approached a field of rocks as it descended the hillside ahead. Logan clung on tighter as the horse crouched slightly, then jumped forward, stretched its legs out as it flew over the rocks, then lowered them again as it hit the ground on the far side. The girl twisted on the saddle behind him, and he reached back and grabbed her to hold her in place.

“How much further,” she gasped, pulling tighter on his waist and pressing her head against his back.

The first glow of dawn lit the sky behind them. The sun would be rising above the hills before long.

He could finally see the Panzergrenadiers and the truck a little more than a kilometre ahead. He was lucky they’d taken the truck, because it had slowed the suits down. They must have needed a way to transport all the Montagnards, who didn’t have suits to protect them against radiation.

But he’d missed any chance of warning the Legion before the insurgents arrived. He could hear the crack of rifle fire and the thump and boom of grenade and RPG explosions up ahead.