Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) T.E. Bakutis (read my book .txt) 📖

into what was obviously an ancient men’s room. Dust choked its urinals, now filled with unidentified sludge. The dirty mirror on the wall, in the light of Kinsley’s flashlight, showed three people as dusty and annoyed as Jan felt.

Kinsley clutched one heavy-duty flashlight in addition to her own. At least Tiana had planned ahead. Kinsley handed the other flashlight to Jan, and it was then that a rather terrifying thought hit him.

“So.” As Jan took the flashlight, he did his best to keep his voice casual. “How long, by your estimate, will it take to walk from here to the Hole?”

“To the gear that’s going to put you in a coma?” Kinsley flashed her light around, counting urinals. “Four hours.”

“Shit,” Jan said.

He didn’t have a gun on him. All he had were knives. Could he stab himself to death with just knives? What if he didn’t kill himself in time, and the nanos paralyzed him? No, he’d just cut his own throat. Nobody survived a cut throat.

“That’s assuming the tunnel schematic I pulled from the library is accurate,” Kinsley continued, “assuming we do not encounter collapsed sections, and assuming we are not attacked by giant lizards. If we detour, it could take longer.”

“I won’t be detouring at all if I’m busy chewing off my own tongue,” Jan growled, but then he frowned and almost missed a step. “And when did lizards move into the maglev tunnels?”

Kinsley pushed open the door. “Just a rumor I heard.”

Jan followed her out of the men’s room onto what looked to be an underground maglev platform. He swept his flashlight around the darkened interior with trepidation to match the thought of chewing off his own tongue. Many colorful tiles remained on the station’s walls, but there were plenty of holes there as well. Anything could be hiding in those.

“Kinsley,” Jan said, choosing his words carefully, “someone informed you there are now giant lizards nesting in the maglev tunnels?”

“Well, not in the active tunnels.”

“You’re making that up.” Emiko was now standing almost on top of Jan. “This is not the time to fuck with us!”

“Not doing that.” Kinsley walked to the edge of the platform and pointed her flashlight down, highlighting a dusty but otherwise intact single rail. “Lacerta giganteus have been adjusting to human settlement for decades now. It was inevitable they’d move out of their desert caves and find succor in our lovely underground tunnels, or so the report I read claimed.”

“So just how big are these lizards?” Emiko demanded. She never really had gotten out of the city much.

Kinsley hopped down onto the track, flashlight aimed back toward the Prospector’s District. “What data the maintenance division has puts them about a half-meter high.”

“Oh,” Jan said.

“And maybe two meters long.”

“That’s a human-sized lizard!” Emiko shouted.

Kinsley’s head bobbed as she moved off, the rest of her body obscured by the maglev platform. “Which is giant, by standards from old Earth. What about this is hard?”

“Because I don’t like human-sized lizards!”

Jan paused at the edge of the platform and ran his flashlight’s beam quickly across the single large track used by maglev trains back when the station was open. “We need to go.”

“And what do they eat, anyway? Giant bugs?” Emiko sounded more panicked than Jan liked, but she always had been a herpetophobe. “Are there giant bugs down here?”

“No!” Kinsley shouted, already at the end of the platform. She passed her flashlight beam over the rounded entry to the tunnel. “Now come! We’ve got an appointment Jan can’t miss!”

Jan dropped down onto the track before he could talk himself out of it. He looked up at Emiko standing above him on the maglev platform. “Em,” he said quietly, “please.”

She grimaced, huffed, and hopped down beside him. “You aren’t going to kill yourself.”

Jan shined his flashlight beam down the tracks. “Right.”

“I’m serious. You can handle an hour of torture.”

Jan couldn’t, actually, but he knew arguing that point with Emiko was pointless. “Let’s just hurry.”

“Giant effing lizards,” Emiko muttered, still following way too close. “And me without my needle pistol.”

Jan took off at a decent jog, Emiko falling into pace right beside him. The packed track and the metal rail running down its center remained in excellent shape, and Jan had no problem keeping his balance on the largely flat mixture of biocrete and rock. He was moving. It felt good to move.

Maybe if they jogged the whole way, they’d make it back to the Hole, and Kinsley’s coma equipment, in less than three hours. Maybe Kinsley had estimated a walk. Kinsley sometimes did things like that, giving the information she thought was pertinent instead of the information Jan thought was pertinent, though he doubted that was the case this time.

Maybe they’d find a shortcut. Maybe they’d find an operable vehicle. Maybe Jan would trip and knock himself out.

Kinsley joined their light jog once they caught up with her, and the three of them made decent time down the abandoned tram tunnel. Tiana had suggested the tunnel had been shut down years ago, but Ceto’s first settlers had built these tunnels to last. They probably even cleaned it from time to time, just in case they ever decided to rehabilitate the Sledge and open things back up. Be a shame to waste a perfectly good tunnel.

Everything went fine until they were attacked by giant lizards.

It was only once Bharat stood inside his recently purchased safe house, in the company of Fatima Blaize, that he allowed himself to recognize how much he hurt. It wasn’t merely the physical pain of having the shit beat out of him by those Truthers — his PBA’s pain-nullification protocol had dealt with most of that — but the emotional