Read The Battle for Terra Two for Free Online Page B

tumble of hand-dressed granite. Further back, a mountain of broken stone towered—marble angels, gargoyles, saintly visages poking out of the wreckage. He halted by a half-buried brass cross and waited.
    Sensing a presence, John whirled, finger curling around the minimac's trigger.
    A boy stood there. A small, thin boy in worn corduroys, ragwool sweater, sneakers and a pair of nitespecs. John's weapon didn't waver. "You have something for me?" he asked softly.
    The boy extended a torn piece of cloth. Fishing in his jacket pocket with his free hand, John withdrew an equally torn patch. Together they formed a compass rose with bayonet-fixed rifles, rampant. "OK," John nodded as each repocketed his half. "What's your name?" he asked, lowering the minimac.
    Turning noiselessly, the boy disappeared behind the gargoyle-topped mound. Following, John saw the hole yawning amid the rubble, a great slab of stone looming to one side of it. Monkey-agile, the boy scuttled down metal rungs set in the shaft's concrete. With a wary glance at the thick slab, John followed.
    The shaft dropped a hundred yards, opening onto a large tunnel. The rungs ended in a tiled wall, just above one of a set of railway tracks. The only illumination was in infrared.
    The boy did something to one of the cracked wall tiles. High above, the slab swung silently down, sealing the shaft with a faint hiss. Without a backward glance, John's guide set off down the tunnel.
    They walked a long time, the crunch of their feet in the gravel sending the big sewer rats scampering, squealing in protest. Once they forded a rushing stream where it'd washed out the railbed, collapsing a section of wall. A graceful, frail gazelle, the boy leaped nimbly along a row of eroded, half-submerged cinder blocks, gaining the opposite bank with dry feet. Burdened by uniform, starhelm, equipment belt and weapon, John plowed through the cold, tugging water.
    His guide led on through a final series of cross tunnels, then up a ladder identical to the first, emerging from behind a false bookcase into a library: deep burgundy carpet, mahogany paneling that reached up to the high ceiling, ornate kerosene lamps, red-leather sofa with matching armchairs and a crackling fire in the fieldstone hearth. A balcony with more books girdled the room, breached by a spiral metal staircase.
    The ganger came from the other side of the fireplace, silken red hair cascading over the shoulders of her black UC battlejacket, a chunky, stainless-steel magnum holstered at her slender waist. Extending John a crisp, dry hand, she sized him up with cool, green eyes. "Welcome to Viper Command, Major Harrison. I'm Heather MacKenzie, lan's sister."
    The Heather MacKenzie in his briefing should have been in a physics lab on the West Coast.
    "Heather," he smiled, taking her hand. His eyes flicked to her coiled-rattler shoulder badge. "Where's Ian?"
    Ignoring his questions, she turned to the boy. "Jorge, Tomas left your supper upstairs." She pointed to the balcony. "We got some chocolate bars in today."
    Face brightening, Jorge bounded up the stairs.
    Heather watched him go, then turned back to John. "He hasn't spoken since his mother was killed in a skirmish, three years ago," she said quietly, shaking her head. "If we only had somewhere decent to send him.
    "Sit down, John, please," she said, indicating one of the chesterfield chairs flanking the hearth. They sat.
    "Any trouble getting to St. Mark's?"
    "No," he said. "I found your note and half a CIB shoulderbadge yesterday, in my boot." The note, disintegrating after he'd read it, gave only a time and place. "I checked out a recon chopper, landed it near St. Mark's and met Jorge."
    "And how are you going to explain all that to Aldridge?"
    He shrugged. "A G2 has to have some autonomy. Engine trouble forced me down near turf. I repaired it and returned. I've arranged for engine trouble if they look."
    "They'll look," she said.
    "Where is Ian, Heather? And why aren't you back