Page 61 of Warrior’s Mate

For several seconds she had no idea which direction was down. Sound returned first: stone settling, someone coughing, a child crying somewhere nearby. Then pain.

Her left shoulder burned. Her knee was wedged beneath something heavy. Dust filled her mouth.

"Lights," she managed.

A portable lamp came on. The main tunnel was gone.

A section of ceiling had collapsed between Maelis's group and the forward evacuees. Behind them, another collapse blocked the route back to Junction Seven. They were trapped in a pocket of tunnel with twenty-three civilians, one medic, two security officers, and no obvious exit. Maelis's comm emitted a single burst of static.

Then Kaiven's voice, distant and broken:

"—Maelis, report—"

She grabbed the unit.

"Kaiven?"

Nothing.

"Kaiven, I have twenty-eight people cut off below Ridge Three. Repeat, twenty-eight cut off. Main freight tunnel collapsed."

Static. One of the security officers crouched beside her and lifted the slab from her knee enough for the medic to pull her free.

"Can you stand?"

Maelis tried. Pain shot through her leg, but it held.

"Yes."

Her comm crackled again.

"—can't reach—hold position—"

"Negative," Maelis said immediately. "Do not divert. We will find another route."

"Maelis—"

The signal vanished. She stared at the dead comm for one dangerous second. Then she put it away.

"Registrar?" the medic asked.

Twenty-seven faces had turned toward her. She wanted Kaiven.

The truth was simple enough that denying it would have been childish. She wanted his steady voice, his irritating questions, the security of knowing someone stronger than she was stood between these people and whatever hunted them. But wanting him was not the same as needing him to solve this. Maelis looked at the exposed wall where the collapse had torn away newer construction and revealed an older stone arch beneath it.

Her grandfather's maps surfaced in memory.

They were not maps exactly but stories and complaints, the kind of local knowledge no military database kept because no one imagined it would matter during an invasion.

"There used to be a seed vault under this ridge," she said.

One security officer looked at the stone arch. "Used to be?"

"Before the current storage network. They sealed most of it eighty years ago."

"Does it connect anywhere useful?"

Maelis limped toward the wall.