Ella was already practically vibrating with excitement. “So… explosives?”
Ashley patted the charge in her hands. “On it. Let’s make this quick and clean before these big idiots change their minds.”
I glanced at Thyros one last time. His eyes were locked on me, furious, protective, and burning with something far more dangerous than anger.
I turned away before the golden thread could pull me any closer. Not my harvest, not my reaping, I reminded myself again. As if it had done me any good the first time.
Because here I was, walking straight into the tunnels with three human women, my own crew, and four overprotective alien males breathing down our necks. And the worst part?
Some reckless piece of me was actually looking forward to it.
I went first, landing lightly in the narrow tunnel below. The air was cooler, thicker, laced with the scent of old earth and stale sweat. My men dropped down after me, followed by Ella and Nadine, while Ashley made up the rear.
Rylan landed behind me, dusted off his hands with a cocky grin, and actually elbowed me into the side. “Just like old times, eh, Commander?”
I turned on him so fast he took a half-step back. “This is the last time I’m telling you this,” I snarled. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Or you’re staying topside with the big angry aliens.”
He grumbled something under his breath but wisely shut his mouth. His survival instincts were stronger than his smarts.
The tunnel was painfully narrow. Even my three human crew members had to turn sideways in places, their shouldersscraped against the rough walls now and then, loosening dark dirt. I could only imagine how impossible it would have been for Thyros, Zapharos, Dravok, or any of the Pandraxians. They never would have fit. The thought gave me a small, petty flicker of satisfaction.
Silver drones hummed ahead of us, casting clean blue-white light along the cramped passage. Ella was in front, palmtop glowing in her hands, practically vibrating with excitement as she led the way.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe we’re about to find a lost civilization millions of years old,” she whispered, half-laughing, half-reverent. “Can you imagine? We’re going to be the first people to see their culture in two and a half million years. The first to breathe this air, the first to touch whatever they left behind…”
She kept going, her voice bubbled with pure archaeological joy. I tuned her out after the first thirty seconds, more interested in our surroundings. This wasn’t a proper structure. It was flimsy, half-assed, hasty reinforcements slapped together with scavenged metal and crumbling stone. Support beams looked like they’d been cut from whatever was handy. It was amazing that the whole thing hadn’t collapsed years ago. Whatever these rebels were, they were neither organized nor bright.
Ella suddenly stopped. “Here,” she exclaimed. “The resonance is off the charts. The chamber should be right down here.”
I stepped up beside Ashley, eyeing the cracked floor and the way the walls bowed inward.
“I don’t know about this,” I confided quietly, low enough so Ella and Nadine couldn’t hear us. “This whole tunnel could collapse on top of us.”
Ashley grinned with that reckless soldier sparkle in her eyes I’d seen too many times before, generally right before a missionwent sideways. “And here I thought you were the adventurous type.”
“Adventurous, yes,” I shot back. “Suicidal? No.”
She laughed softly and patted the small charge in her hand. “Trust me. I’ve done tighter breaches than this.”
I shook my head, already regretting every life choice that had led me here. “I’m so going to regret this.”
Behind us, Nadine murmured, “Readings are strong.”
Ella looked back at all of us, eyes shining in the drone light like a kid on her birthday. “Ready?”
I exhaled slowly, flexing my fingers on the grip of my blaster, almost wishing for more rebels to show up. I’d rather fight them here than have Ashley blow a hole into this ground. I’d never told a soul, but I abhorred small, confined, dark spaces. The golden thread in my chest tugged sharply as if Thyros, somewhere far above, could feel my discomfort. He was no doubt pacing like a caged beast and cursing my name. That thought perked me up a bit.
“Let’s do it.” I could hardly believe I was encouraging this.
Ashley dug a small hole and pressed the charge into the dirt. “Fire in the hole!”
We all turned our faces away. A small, anticlimactic poof followed—more dust than explosion—and a neat, perfectly circular hole appeared in the tunnel floor. Just big enough for a person to drop through.
Ashley was already uncoiling a thin, high-tension rope from her pack. She scanned the ceiling for an anchor point. I stepped up beside her without being asked, grabbing the other end and helping her loop it securely around a reinforced beam that looked marginally less likely to collapse.
The drones hummed forward and dropped through the hole one after another, their blue-white lights flooding the space below.
Ella bounced on her toes. “Let me go first! Please, this is my dig?—”
