The Assault

19. THE SHAFT



“GO!” CHISNALL YELLED, PUSHING BROGAN UP OUT of her chair. Monster grabbed her arm and pulled her with him.

Fleming didn’t move.

Chisnall stopped at the doorway that led to the science labs and looked back.

“I won’t fit—you heard that,” Fleming said.

“But—”

“Get out of here,” Fleming said. “I’ll do what I can to give you more time. Here, you’re going to need this.” He handed Brogan’s coil-gun to Chisnall, then moved behind a desk and aimed his own weapon at the doorway. “See you in another life.”

Chisnall didn’t stop to argue any further.

“Wilton,” Chisnall yelled on the comm as they ran through the lab. “Get the Pukes to lie down on the floor with their hands on their heads. Get the kids in a group. We’re heading in your direction.”

Behind he heard the sound of firing—Fleming engaging the enemy. Pinning them down in the entranceway.

“What’s going on?” Wilton asked.

“There’s an exit in the plant room, an air shaft,” Chisnall yelled. “We’re going to try and get the women and kids out of here before the warhead goes off.”

“How long have we got?”

“Maybe forty mikes,” Chisnall said. He heard a muffled curse on the other end of the comm.

They reached the maternity ward, and he raced to the first cell, examining the glass door. It was locked, but he hammered on the glass with the butt of his sidearm until it shattered. He knocked out the jagged pieces of broken glass and climbed through into the chamber.

“Ma’am, we’d like to take you home,” he said.

The staring eyes didn’t even turn to look at him.

He touched her face, and she responded to the touch, turning as if to look at him, but her eyes remained unfocused.

“Ryan, they’ve done”—Brogan stopped and dropped her eyes—“we’ve done something to these women’s brains. They’re not much more than vegetables. They can’t walk and they sure as hell can’t climb a ventilation shaft.”

“They’re humans too,” Chisnall said.

“Leave them, Ryan. Help me save the kids,” she said.

She was right. He knew she was right. But that didn’t make it right.

With a last look backward, he climbed out of the cell and ran with the others. As they ran through the empty nursery, he hit the release on his coil-gun and it sprang into his arms. Ahead of him, Monster had done the same.

The sound of Fleming’s gunfire came from the hallway behind them as they burst into the schoolroom. Then there was an explosion, and the gunfire was silenced. Fleming had done what he could. But now there was nothing to hold back the angry Puke army.

“Monster, get back to the first dorm,” Chisnall said. “It’s the only way in. Anything comes that way, shoot it.”

He ran into the recreation room. The adult Bzadians were nowhere to be seen, but terrified children huddled by the doorway.

“Where are the others?” Chisnall asked.

“Found a storeroom for gym equipment at the back.” Wilton grinned. “Stuck ’em all in there and told them there was a grenade attached to the outside door handle.”

“Is there?”

“Nope. Didn’t want to waste a grenade.”

“Okay, go help Monster.” Chisnall turned to Brogan. “Get the kids out of here. We’ll try and hold the Pukes off as long as we can. Price, go with them. Watch her. If you think she’s trying anything, shoot her.”

“Gladly,” Price said.

Chisnall reached up to his left shoulder and unclipped the ID tube. He handed it to Price. “This is my data recorder. It’s recorded everything we’ve done or said over the last few days. It has a built-in transmitter. As soon as you’re out, press here to trigger it. We have to get this information back to base. And it’s our ride home. They’ll use the transmitter to find us.”

She tucked it into a pocket and turned to the kids.

“Price,” Chisnall said.

She glanced back.

“I’m sorry that I thought it was you. That I didn’t trust you. It was just …”

She shook her head. “Get us out of here alive and all is forgiven.”

Chisnall nodded, then ran back to the long dormitory.

Monster and Wilton had taken up defensive positions. Monster was in one of the doorways; Wilton was crouched behind one of the potted plants, the long snout of his sniper rifle extending through the leaves. Chisnall lay on the ground in the middle of the passageway and trained his coil-gun on the door at the far end.

They didn’t have to wait long. The door began to open, then slammed shut as Wilton’s rifle cracked. The bullet ricocheted inside the dorm.

Chisnall shoved a frag canister into his grenade launcher.

The door opened a fraction and two objects dropped through. Smoke filled that end of the room.

Monster began to fire blindly into the smoke, and answering fire came immediately from invisible opponents. Chisnall raised his gun and fired the grenade launcher. He miscalculated—the grenade hit the ceiling about halfway down the dorm and exploded. He tried again, lowering the angle. This time, the explosion lit up the smoke from within.

A dark rectangular shape appeared through the swirling smoke: a door, ripped from its frame. The Pukes were using it as a shield.

“Fall back, fall back, to the school!” Chisnall yelled as the aliens surged forward. “You first, Wilton, then Monster. I’ll cover you.”

He emptied his clip into the smoke, then replaced it with a fresh one.

“Brogan, Price, how are you doing?”

“We’re in the shaft, climbing up,” Brogan answered. “One of the older kids has done this before and knows how to open the air filters. He’s gone up first. But a couple of younger ones didn’t want to climb into the shaft. We had to convince them.”

“Price?”

“Just what she said,” Price said. “Don’t worry. One false move and I’ll get some revenge for Hunter.”

Chisnall didn’t doubt it.

“Okay, keep them moving. We’ll be right behind you.”

Chisnall rolled sideways across the room to the passageway. He jumped to his feet and ran, reaching the school just after Monster. Wilton was already inside, covering them from the doorway. He moved aside as they ran in and then kicked the door shut.

“What now?” he asked.

“We need to slow them down. Give ourselves time to get into the air shaft,” Chisnall said. “Get the prisoners. We’ll send them out. They’ll have to deal with them.”

Wilton disappeared to the back of the room. Chisnall opened the door a fraction to an immediate flurry of shots.

“We have hostages,” he yelled. “Stop shooting.”

A couple of shots seemed to disagree, but they stopped quickly when a voice that Chisnall knew sounded out loudly.

“Chizna?” Yozi called.

Chisnall turned to the others and muttered, “Does this guy ever give up?” Then he called out, “Yes.”

“There’s no way out. Send out the hostages.”

“If I do that, you’ll kill us,” Chisnall said.

“Surrender, and you won’t be harmed. You have my word,” Yozi said.

Chisnall wasn’t sure whether that was true or not, but in any case it didn’t matter. They were just buying time. He shut the door.

Wilton approached with the alien scientists and other staff. He and Monster covered them with their sidearms.

“Who’s in charge?” Chisnall asked.

One of the Pukes raised his head, the Bzadian equivalent of raising a hand.

“We’re going to let you go,” Chisnall said. “But listen to me. We have hidden a powerful bomb inside this complex. You have”—he looked at his watch—“a little more than twenty minutes to evacuate. Head for the entrance and run for your lives. If you are not out of the monorail tunnel when it explodes …” He let that thought sink in. Then he opened the door a crack again and called out, “Hostages are coming out now. Do not shoot.”

The hostages started to surge forward, panicked by the thought of the bomb. That was exactly what Chisnall wanted. He flung the door open and stepped back. There were no shots; the Bzadian soldiers were too well disciplined for that.

The hostages massed at the doorway, pressing to get out: out of the schoolroom, out of the complex, out of Uluru.

“Okay, we are Oscar Mike,” Chisnall said quietly on the comm. He tapped Monster on the arm and nodded.

It would take the Pukes a few moments to deal with the panicky group of hostages. They ran back through to the doorway at the end of the recreation area, which led to the utility passageway and into the plant room.

Wilton wedged his M110 under the handle of the door.

“Won’t be needing that anymore,” he said.

They found the air shaft at the rear of the plant room, a large round tube that disappeared into the rock of the wall. An inspection hatch was open on the side of it. A couple of crates were stacked below it, and Chisnall signaled for Wilton to go first. He climbed up and disappeared into the shaft.

He tried Brogan on the comm but got no answer. Hopefully she was outside the rock and out of comm range. He prayed she hadn’t betrayed them again, alerting the Bzadians somehow or blocking the entrance so they’d be sealed in the shaft when the bomb went off. But if she’d done either of those things, there was nothing he could do about it now.

He climbed into the shaft on the heels of Wilton and turned back to see Monster move the crates away behind the machine, hiding them from view. Then Monster leaped and pulled himself halfway up into the shaft. Chisnall grabbed him by the collar and hauled him the rest of the way inside.

Monster pulled the hatch shut behind them.

“I don’t think that will fool them for long,” Chisnall said. He checked his watch. They were twenty minutes away from a massive explosion.


Yozi cursed and pushed his way through the last of the terrified scientists who were crushing through the narrow doorway.

The scumbugz were gone.

Alizza appeared beside him. “We need to evacuate,” he said.

“You evacuate,” Yozi said. “I’m not letting those scumbugz get away.”

Yozi ran to the recreation room and scanned around, seeing no one. A doorway was located at the rear and he took it, realizing that Alizza was still at his heels.

He tried the closed door at the end of the passageway. The handle moved, then jammed. Blocked from the inside. He kicked at the door a couple of times, but it was too solid for that.

“Out of the way,” Alizza said, pulling a grenade off his belt.


An explosion sounded down below them, and Chisnall looked back.

“Keep moving,” Monster said.

That was easier said than done. After the initial horizontal shaft into the wall, there was a short vertical climb with metal rungs. Then came a long, steep slope. In places, the shaft widened out enough that they could crawl on their hands and knees, and at other times it was only just wide enough to squeeze through narrow gaps. The rock walls were rough. He wondered how Monster was managing with his wide shoulders.

They reached the first air filter, a fine mesh grille that clipped to both sides of the shaft. It had been left unclipped and was leaning back against the left side. The shaft was a little wider here to accommodate the size of the filter. Monster reached down and clipped it back into place after he passed through.

Eighteen minutes.


It was Alizza who spotted the hatch on the shaft leading into the huge air pump. Two bolts that should have held it shut were hanging loosely. He flung the hatch open with a metallic clang and gave Yozi a foot up into the shaft. Then Yozi reached back down and helped Alizza up.

There were sounds ahead of them. Sounds of scuffling, scrabbling hands and feet, echoing through the narrow tunnel back to them.

Yozi wasted no time, propelling himself forward with Alizza close behind. They climbed the rungs in the vertical section two at a time and stopped only when a dark barrier blocked the way. Yozi risked a flash of his utility light. An air filter. Clips at all four corners held it in place.

Yozi unclipped three of the clips when the filter slipped from his grasp and clanged to the floor.


The sound of the filter falling was like an alarm bell to Chisnall.

Someone was coming up the shaft behind them. How close were they? Chisnall wasn’t waiting around to find out. He could see light ahead of them, a glowing hole that grew larger as he approached the end of the shaft.

Then he was out, grabbing at the rocky edge and hauling himself onto the red rock of Uluru. He was on top of the rock—no, not quite. Sloping, rocky walls hemmed him in on three sides. He was in a huge cleft in the top of Uluru. The air shaft behind him was just a hole in the rock, protected from the elements by a hood and a metal grille that now lay on the ground. Some scrubby trees stuck at awkward angles out of boulders in a river at the base of the cleft.

A river?

That was when he realized it was raining. The rain was constant and heavy, with huge droplets that exploded off his visor. Gushing water ran down the slope, disappearing around a sharp corner in the rock. It seemed incongruous, here on the top of this normally dry red rock.

The children were sitting in a group, holding on to each other, huddled against the rain on the flattest part of the slope. Brogan sat with them, playing a simple hand game with two of the younger ones. Price stood behind Brogan, covering her with her sidearm without making it obvious. Wilton was starting to climb up the rocky face of the cleft, no doubt to get a better view of what was around them. Price held up the transmitter when she saw Chisnall.

“I’ve been pressing it for ten minutes and nothing,” she said.

He looked up, suddenly worried. Could the walls be blocking the signal? He examined the cleft. Could they climb up with the transmitter? How long would that take?

“Press it again,” he said, but there was no need.

From the top of the rock, a dark shape emerged. It was a Bzadian rotorcraft, a giant metal umbrella giving them brief respite from the rain, although the downwash of the blades bent back the trees and threatened to blow them all from their precarious perch. Then it passed over and dropped down, lower and lower. The markings on the side of the craft came into view: a giant red cross. A medivac rotorcraft. It nudged closer and closer until the edge of the outer ring was touching the rock.

“Wait here,” Chisnall yelled over the roar of the machine.

He scrambled down the cleft to the rotorcraft and leaped from the rock onto the slipway over the blades, running up and into the craft itself.

The two pilots, humans, looked around as he stuck his head up into the cockpit.

“I’m Chisnall,” he said.

“What’s with all the kids?” one of them asked. “We came to pick up eight soldiers, not a freaking school trip.”

“Change of plans,” Chisnall said. “We need to take them all.”

“Can’t take that many,” said the copilot. “These things only hold about fifteen people; there must be forty of them.”

“They’re little,” Chisnall said.

“I won’t get lift,” the pilot said. “Not with all of you.”

“Then just take the kids,” Chisnall said. “And this one.” He pointed to Brogan. “Lock the cockpit door and don’t let her in under any circumstances. She’s a traitor and dangerous.”

“That’s still too many—” the copilot began, but the pilot cut him off.

“We’ll try,” he said. “What about you?”

“We’ll find our own way out of here,” Chisnall said.

The pilot shook his head as if he thought Chisnall was crazy. “We’ve got a backup rotorcraft waiting over at Lake Amadeus. Wait here, and I’ll get them to pick you up.”

“There’s no time,” Chisnall said. “It’s only minutes before that warhead explodes. We’ll try and get clear of the rock first.”

“Okay. I’ll let them know to come for you.”

“Understood,” Chisnall said. He ran quickly back down the slipway to the rock. The edge of the craft dipped slightly as he stepped carefully off onto the damp, slippery rock.

“Get them on board,” he said. “Just Brogan and the kids. The rest of us are going to have to find our own way home.”

“What the hell?” Wilton said. “She killed Hunter, and she gets a free ride home?”

“The rotorcraft can’t take us all,” Chisnall said. “If we’ve got any shot of getting out of here alive, it won’t be with dragging Brogan along.”

“Easily solved,” Price said. “Just throw her off the edge of the rock. Then there’s one more place on the rotorcraft.”

“And who gets that?” Chisnall asked. “You?”

Price looked at him steadily for a moment, then looked away.

Chisnall pointed to the transmitter that Price was holding. “They know everything. She’ll be put on trial. And who knows, maybe they’ll get information out of her that can help win this damn war.”

“And we’re still expendable, right?” Price said.

“Yes, but we’re not expended yet,” Chisnall said.