The Way Back (Champions of the Crystal Book 4)

Chapter 3.2

Sabrina paused as her comlink bleeped discreetly for attention inside her helmet. "Sabrina here."

"It's Ford. We made it down safe. The capsule's cloaked. This area's deserted. We're going to work our way toward your location; it seems to be more heavily populated."

"We're working our way up," Sabrina said. "Any word from Scotty?"

"I'm going to check in with him now. I don't like the feel of this place. Keep your head down, Cousin."

"If it was down any lower, I'd be slithering."

"Good," he said, and signed off.

Sabrina turned to look at Lndor, who was sweeping the area with a hand-held scanner, more powerful than the ones built into their suits. "That non-Stanosian lifesign's still there, with four or five Stanosians. Do you want to wait, in case the Stanosians leave?"

"No. Time's not on our side," Sabrina said. "If there's only a handful, we can take them; they haven't got energy weapons. We'll stun them all, even if we have to stun whoever we're rescuing too."

"Which setting?"

Sabrina hesitated. She hadn't had a weapon the first time; she'd never fired on a Stanosian. Scotty'd had a small blaster, which Tirqwin had appropriated and later used to explode the vat in the laboratory. "They're reptilian; I don't know what setting, really. They seem pretty tough."

"Let's go one higher than normal, then," Lndor said. "Sometimes reptilian races are harder to stun with an energy blast."

"Right," Sabrina said, making the adjustment. "How much further?"

"About twenty meters."

"Some of these walls have pretty big holes in them. Let's see if we can spy out the territory from an adjoining room before we go in," she suggested.

"There's a small room beside it. There's no connecting door, but it should be easy to get into unnoticed."

"Let's go, then."

They made their way down the dusty corridor carefully and ducked into the room Lndor had mentioned, then began examining the wall next to their target. Like the rest of the palace, it was made of interlocking, mortarless sandstone blocks, worn with time and the sand always in the air. Sabrina found a promising gap about a half meter above her head; Lndor gave her a hand up so she could peer through it. After a moment she shook her head. "I can't see anything in this helmet," she told him. "I can't get my face close enough. I'm going to take it off and try again. We can't speak after I do; they might hear us."

"Right," Lndor agreed.

Sabrina took a deep breath and removed her helmet. The air hit her, dusty and tainted with the nauseating chemical tinge she remembered. The smell brought back the memories more strongly than anything else had.

She set her helmet down carefully, and Lndor cupped his hands for her foot again. This time she was able to put her eye up against the gap, blinking against the light in the other room.

Her field of vision was narrow, but she was looking down into the room, which helped. At first all she could see was the broad back of a Stanosian, standing far enough from the wall to block most of her view. He seemed to be bent over some kind of table. Then he stepped to the side, and Sabrina stiffened as she caught a glimpse of ivory-colored fabric. She tried to vary her angle of view a little, nearly losing her precarious balance in Lndor's cupped hands.

A harsh, deep voice in the other room startled her, and she realized she was hearing Stanosian with no way to translate it. The com unit in her helmet could probably translate, but she was cut off from Khediva and Mara, who had translated for her last time. I wonder if the Crystal's translating for Lndor?