Page 63 of Warrior’s Mate

"That is more than I know. Come with me."

They had twenty-eight people including Maelis. Two were seriously injured. Three were children under ten. One woman was late in pregnancy and had been trying very hard not to make that fact anyone else's problem.

The security officers wanted to stop and wait for rescue. Maelis understood why.

Their communications were unreliable, the tunnels behind them were blocked, and no one knew whether the sealed vault had another exit. Moving injured civilians through an unmapped underground complex could turn a survivable entrapment into a fatal mistake. Waiting had its own arithmetic.

Sargans were somewhere behind the collapse. The tunnel system had already been breached. Air quality would worsen if ventilation failed. And every military unit capable of reaching them was fighting to keep hundreds of other people alive.

"We move," Maelis said.

The senior security officer, Lieutenant Haren, studied her face. "You're sure?"

"No."

He blinked.

"I am sure staying here gives us fewer options every minute. Those are different things."

Haren considered that, then nodded. "Lead."

There was no argument about rank and no performance of military certainty. She appreciated him immediately.

The older woman introduced herself as Sava Merin and remembered enough of the vault to identify the original central corridor. Together they reconstructed the facility from fragments: where seed was received, where moisture-control rooms had been, where service lifts once connected to the surface.

"There was a drainage passage," Sava said. "Western wall. We used to dare each other to go down it."

"Where did it lead?"

"Out, eventually."

"That is a very imprecise word."

"I was nine."

"Then I forgive you."

They found the drainage passage behind two collapsed shelving units. It was narrow, sloped, and coated with mineral residue, but air moved through it. Moving air meant an opening.

Maelis sent one security officer ahead while the rest of the group reorganized. The medic splinted a farmer's broken wrist and bound a deep cut on another man's thigh. The pregnant woman finally admitted she was having contractions.

"How close?" Maelis asked.

"Not close enough to be convenient."

"That is becoming a theme."

The woman laughed once and then pressed both hands against her abdomen until the contraction passed. They moved.

The drainage passage was too narrow for stretchers, so they improvised sling carriers from cargo straps and clothing. Maelis's injured knee protested every step. She ignored it until the pain sharpened enough to threaten her balance, then accepted a support brace from the medic without argument.

Competence, she was discovering, included knowing when refusing help became vanity. The passage descended for nearly a kilometer before opening into a natural water channel beneath the ridge. A narrow maintenance walkway ran beside it.

Sava stopped. "This wasn't here when I was a child."

"The channel was," Maelis said. "The walkway belongs to the north irrigation expansion."

She pulled up the offline infrastructure map stored on her terminal. Live positioning and network access were gone, but the old local schematics remained cached.