“Run!” he ordered and picked up his pace.
“What do you think is going on here?” Tory asked, now struggling a bit to keep up with him as Gurminder made his way down the corridor back towards the drop shaft they entered through and the hell away from this place.
“Over my head,” Gurminder told her. Sure, the fact that Earthers had just given him a nuke was utterly wrong and likely would have terrible consequences, but that didn’t matter, not now. They had the weapon and they had to get out of here before they were caught by somebody who didn’t want the bornehere’s this kind of weapon. “What matters is we’ve got what we came here fore, we’re going, if we stay Marsec military will catch us. Do you want to be caught? With this?”
There was more sound of firing, but he wasn’t sure of the direction any more.
He stopped before the next T intersection when he spotted a swirl of smoke drifting into sight, turned, then held the case out to her, its green readout glowing in her face.
“No,” she said in a small voice.”
“Hold it,” he told her. “I need to check ahead.”
“What do you think’s there?” she asked worriedly.
Gurminder just shook his head, then turned and moved to the T, slowly leaned forwards to glance around the corner left where some smoke was drifting into the T.
What the-?
There were bodies lying in corridor, wearing some kind of armored suits he’d never seen before. Their suits had holes in them, huge ones, burned through. Fuck! What kind of weapon did that? What in all the black pits there was going on here?”
Shaking a little, he turned around and stepped back to the girl who was still holding the nuke.
“We can’t go that way, and we can’t go back the way we came,” he told Tory. “Give me the bomb. You have to find us another way out! And on a different level.”
“What did you see over there?” she said, now scared as hell.”
Gurminder grabbed the nuke out of her hands.
“NO QUESTIONS! Map!” he ordered.
After staring at him for a moment, Tory finally got to checking her spreader.
“Okay,” she said after a couple minutes, pointed back to a cross passage they’d just passed. “We go that way. Down, and then up.”
“Then move it short legs!” he yelled.
The last dig probably wasn’t necessary of fair, but there was no way he was going to let a kid set eyes on what he’d just seen, newer or not.
That was why he had gone back to carrying the NFB, well that and he wasn’t going to trust it in the hands of a scared fourteen year old.
It was a long hour before they were back on the surface, under the stars, and loping for the rig. Minutes later, he had it turned around and programmed to head them back south towards The Hole with the two of them breathing easier. Not entirely easier, but as easy as one could with a 50 megaton explosive as a third passenger.
“What happened back there?” Tory asked.
“We got what we went for and got out alive,” he told her. “You ask me that question again and I promise I will throw you out of the rig while it is still rolling.”
He knew she didn’t believe he’d do that, but thankfully the girl didn’t press further.
She glanced back out into the dark Martian night.
“Then... how long before we can we say we did it?” Tory asked from her perch on the passenger’s seat, sitting like she was about to jump out of it.
“We keep going,” he told her. “We don’t get stopped or bombed, then we’re okay.”
She did start asking again and again when they would be okay, so a few minutes later he said: “Okay, I think we’re clear.”
Tory turned to him and said, “Now to the Elysium Field, right?”
“Are you insane!” he yelled at her. “I’m going to The Hole and getting rid of that damn thing, and sure as hell I am not going through Marsec security with it.”
“I can’t go back there,” she told him. “Please. Tell me you aren’t taking me back there. I’m pretty much the reason you have that thing, right?”
Gurminder sighed. No, he couldn’t do that. He did have an idea of where he could leave her, but she still wasn’t going to like it. He’s make her agree, though, because that was the only choice he was going to give her.
