Hunted [The Flash Gold Chronicles] (9 page)

The tunnel broadened into a small room filled
with... Were those potatoes? She peered closer. Several crates
lined the wall. Though they must have been harvested months
earlier, they appeared fine, preserved by the surrounding
permafrost. But why were they in a mine?

A rusted, decommissioned boiler stood in the
corner while rows of ceramic jugs lined the opposite side of the
chamber. A clunky metal contraption rose against the back wall. It
was the source of the reflection she had noticed. The
object—machine?—might have been anything; the mishmash of parts
comprising it reminded her of something she would create out of
scrap metal. It was only when she opened a box that emitted a
yeasty smell that the pieces clicked together.

“Oh.” She rolled her eyes, feeling foolish
for taking so long to get it. “Alcohol. Right.”

A thump sounded near the entrance. Someone
jumping down.

Kali cursed under her breath and cut out the
lantern. She had dawdled too long.

“Kali?” came a soft call.

She blew out a relieved breath. “Cedar, back
here.”

“We have a problem,” he said, voice drawing
near.

She relit the lantern. “You’re mad that I
shot up your fancy sleeping blanket?”

“All right, two problems.”

Cedar jogged into view, water sloughing from
his clothes and matting his hair to his head. He bore a rifle in
one hand while his sword dripped blood in the other. A second rifle
poked over his shoulder, scraping against the wall as he
approached. He also wore his packsack. No, wait. That was her
packsack. Her
tools!
Excellent.

“Your old beau is gathering his men, and he’s
about to search in here,” Cedar said, letting her help him out of
the packsack. She tore into it as he continued to speak. “I
apologize for my ineptness, but it’s getting light, and he spotted
me when I went for your gear.”

“I’ll think of something.” Kali pulled tools
out of her pack. “Can you guard the entrance?”

“Yes, but, ah...” Cedar cleared his
throat.

Kali glanced up. “What?”

“On account of people shooting at me, I had
to choose between your pack and mine.”

“So...no fresh smallclothes until we get back
to town?” She tapped a pickaxe leaning against the wall. Maybe she
could dismantle it and—

“No fresh
ammo
,” Cedar said. “I have a
box on me, but I won’t be able to hold an advancing army off for
long if they’re enthusiastic with their siege.” He leaned her
Winchester against the wall. “I don’t suppose you have any?”

Kali fished in her pack, groping around the
bottom, and pulled out a fistful of cartridges. “Sorry, I’d usually
have a full box, but I had to make room for my pliers. And my
wrench set. And—”

“Never mind.” Cedar grabbed the cartridges
and shoved them in his pocket. His gaze fell upon the potatoes.
“Too bad those can’t be used for ammo. They’re probably frozen
harder than cannon balls.”

“Technically, I suppose you could make some
sort of spud launcher.”

His eyes brightened. “You could? Now?”

“No, not now. I don’t have time to do that
and
get us out of here.”

“Oh.” Disappointment tugged down the corners
of his mouth.

“Just do the best you can with the rifles,
huh?” Kali grabbed her wrench and tore into the piping on the
ceiling to rip a segment free.

Sand and rock dribbled into the hole that
marked the entrance to the mine. Cedar whirled, raising his rifle
and firing before Kali spotted anyone.

A yelp came from above.

“Yup, they’re down there,” a man called.

Kali grabbed one of the pickaxes and kicked
the iron end off, figuring she could turn it sideways to use as the
bit in a hammer drill. The tool she had in mind would be clunky at
best, but it only needed to work long enough to dig a way to the
surface, preferably from the end of a tunnel far from the entrance,
so the gunmen waiting outside would not hear her.

The drill would need a lot of power, and she
did not have the time to build a steam version. She pulled out one
of the vials in her sock and eyed the glowing flakes.

Cedar fired again. “I better go up front and
see if I can discourage them from getting so close. Sooner or later
one of them will think to try and smoke us out. Kali?”

She lifted her eyes from her growing pile of
tools and salvaged equipment. “Huh?”

He hesitated. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.
I’ll keep them away as long as you need.”

Jaw set with determination, he strode toward
the entrance. Kali worked. Much to do, little time.

Shots fired while she twisted metal and
hammered her casing into shape. Cedar shot at anyone who came
within his field of vision, but she knew he could not poke his head
out of the hole, lest someone shoot it off. The gunmen could creep
dangerously close, as evinced by more than one bullet ricocheting
into the tunnel. One bounced off the rock-hard floor, hit a wall,
and skidded all the way back to her chamber. Any one of those
bullets could hit Cedar. Or her.

“Work,” she told herself. “Focus.”

While thumps, groans, and gunfire continued
at the mine entrance, her fingers flew. The drill itself was easy,
but the motor took a steady hand and a lot of squinting, given the
poor light. More than once, she fumbled a small screw, and it
bounced onto the uneven floor to hide in a crevasse. At least she
had all the parts she needed.

A clash of steel announced the end of Cedar’s
bullet supply.

Kali lunged to her feet, remembering he had
taken her cartridges but not her rifle. She grabbed it and darted
to the front of the mine. She almost stumbled over an inert body on
the way. A bullet had taken one of Sebastian’s men in the eye. She
gulped and stepped over him.

Cedar stood a few feet from the hole, his
back toward her, his sword poised and ready. Blood spattered his
shirt. Not his, she hoped.

“Cedar,” Kali said, not wanting to startle
him, not when he held that sharp blade. “Here’s my rifle.”

Before he even turned around, she was leaning
it next to him. She had to get back to the drill so they could find
a way out of there.

Thunk!

A tin can bounced off the wall and landed on
the ground. Fire spat and hissed at the end of a fuse.

Cedar lunged, snatching it and hurling it out
of the mine in one motion. Inches above the entrance, it exploded
with a flash and a bang that thundered in Kali’s ears. The walls of
the mine shuddered, and dirt and rock rained down. Black powder
smoke hazed the air, and its pungent smell flooded the tunnel.

Before Kali could scramble back from the
entrance area, Cedar grabbed her rifle. With smoke blanketing the
entrance, he used the opportunity to stand straight, his head and
shoulders above the hole in the ground. The rifle cracked several
times.

Outside, screams of pain erupted.

Kali closed her eyes and reminded herself
these men had intended to hand her over to gangsters—or worse. She
had no idea how Cedar could see his targets through the smoke—they
must not have moved after the explosion—but she was glad for his
accuracy.

“Pace yourself,” she said. “I need five more
minutes.” She ran back to her workspace.

Gunfire answered her, and she glanced back in
time to see Cedar duck low. Dirt knocked loose by the bullets
spattered his head and face, but he gave her a somber nod and waved
for her to go.

Kali dropped to the floor before her drill.
The construction was complete. It just needed a power source.

She slipped a flake of flash gold out of her
vial. Despite the need to hurry, she took the time to cap the
container and tuck it back into her sock. If the goons outside
found that vial, it would end up in the hands of some criminal.
It’d be hard to deny the existence of flash gold after that, and
she would have even more people hunting her.

The flake pulsed as she tucked it into a slot
she had etched for it next to the motor.

Streaks of lightning coursed up the
metal-reinforced wooden shaft, merging and sparking above the drill
head. The air crackled around the tool, and energy hummed up Kali’s
arms.

“You could be less obvious about your
presence,” she told the gold chip.

It throbbed in response, and one could almost
believe it sentient. Not for the first time, she lamented that she
had not inherited either of her parents’ gifts for sensing and
manipulating otherworldly elements. She could instill commands into
the gold, something her father’s research said most people could
learn to do, but she could never make more of the substance.

Kali pressed her thumb against the flake and
closed her eyes to concentrate. With such a small piece of gold, it
did not take long. It could not accept a complicated imprint, but
it would do what she needed.

“Spin and hammer,” she whispered to it,
imaging the actions she wanted the drill to perform.

The pickaxe point twitched, then rotated.
Though slow at first, the revolutions soon picked up speed. It
hitched with each revolution, thanks to the haste she had used on
the chuck, and the perfectionist in her growled at the hiccup, but
she reminded herself the tool need not last for long. It was
working. That was all that mattered.

Kali touched the drill bit to the closest
wall. The hitch grew more noticeable, but stone sheered off as
reverberations coursed through her body. Tiny shards pelted her,
reminding her of the shrapnel from her smoke nuts.

She dug out her snow goggles, grabbed the
lantern, shouldered her pack, and ducked into the three-way
intersection. Cedar knelt beneath the entrance, like some knight
from centuries past, his sword point pressed to the ground before
him, his hands atop the hilt, ready. It had grown quiet outside.
The men must have paused to concoct some plot—or build another
grenade.

“I’m going to make a backdoor.” She hefted
the drill.

He gaped at the tendrils of lightning
streaking along the tool’s shaft. She wished she had time to build
more of a casing to hide the telltale signs of the magic, but, with
luck, nobody except Cedar would see the drill.

“If you could arrange some extra noise,” Kali
said, “I’d appreciate it.”

He dabbed at a cut dribbling blood into his
eye. “You don’t want much, do you?”

Kali winked. “I just want to make sure you
earn
your
fifty percent.”

Cedar tilted his head, listening to some
conversation outside, and she left him to his work. Later, she
could ask him if his spying had given him a bead on Cudgel
Conrad.

With the whirring drill in one hand and the
lantern in the other, Kali delved deeper into the tunnels. A
labyrinth of passages spread out around her, and she soon wondered
if the owners of the claim had mined beneath the adjoining parcels
as well. If so, she hoped they had scraped all the gold out of
Sebastian’s land. Had that bastard even intended to mine, or had
this all been a setup to capture her and turn her over to some
gangster? He must think her a delightful idiot for showing up and
sleeping ten feet away from him. If not for Cedar’s scheme, she
never would have come up here, but even with that excuse she wished
she had been too vigilant to get caught.

A likely dead-end opened to Kali’s right and
she stopped, figuring she had better choose her spot before the
tunnels wound her around so much she ended up drilling out right
beneath Sebastian’s toes. She thought she was under the trees now,
several dozen meters from the river, but the permafrost kept roots
from piercing the ceilings anywhere. She hoped the tunnel had not
slanted down, putting a dozen feet of earth above her head. Cutting
through more than a couple of feet would be a tall order, even for
a flash-gold-powered tool.

She lifted the tip to the low ceiling. Though
it lacked the grooves of a typical drill, the pickaxe “bit” spun
and pulsed so rapidly it ate into the dirt and stone anyway. Being
on the other end of the tool jarred her to the core; her teeth
rattled, her body quaked, and her joints ached as if she were the
one being drilled, not the rock. Dust filled the passage and soon
coated her tongue and nostrils. Clumps of dirt and rock fell,
pelting her on the head. Too bad she did not carry a helmet as well
as goggles in her pack.

Too slowly for her tastes, a concave hole
formed over her head. She went slower than she wished, conscious of
the noise the activity made. If Sebastian heard the drill and had
men standing at the top when she broke through, she would have made
their situation worse, creating two entrances to guard instead of
one.

She should have created something capable of
issuing loud booms and given it to Cedar to use as a diversion.

“Kali?” his voice came from the tunnels
behind her. “Which way did you go?”

Unease roiled in her stomach. If he had
abandoned the entrance, that must mean it had been breached.

“Back here.” She lowered the drill.

“Don’t stop,” he whispered, appearing out of
the darkness. “If I did it right, your distraction is coming.”

Shouts echoed through the tunnel. Lots of
shouts from lots of throats. Just how many men had Sebastian lured
into helping?

“A stampede of invaders wasn’t the
distraction I had in mind.” Kali returned to drilling, certain they
only had seconds before armed men swarmed into their tunnel.

Then a massive explosion boomed, pounding her
eardrums like a steam hammer. The earth heaved and hurled Kali
backward.

She would have hit the floor, but she crashed
into Cedar, and he wrapped his around her, keeping her upright. How
he
remained upright, she had no idea.

A thunderous roar filled the tunnels. Another
explosion? No, a cave-in. Multiple cave-ins maybe. Screams added to
the cacophony, but they sounded distant, as if piles of rubble
divided them from Kali and Cedar.