there. We’re just coming up beneath the building.”
He halted and listened but could hear nothing.
He murmured a word and the light went out, leaving them in complete darkness; there was obviously no one else down here. He turned the light back on and she blinked.
“Do you know where your cell is?” he asked.
She sniffed. “My room you mean.” She raised a hand and waved it straight ahead. “Down there, close. But this isn’t the direction the men with the boxes were going in.” She turned and headed a little way back, then took a fork in the tunnels. After a few minutes, she stopped again and waved a hand at a door. “My luxurious quarters.”
He hadn’t even recognized the place.
“They were coming from that direction,” she said, waving a hand down the corridor, “and heading that way.” She pointed in the opposite direction.
They didn’t have to walk far until they came to a black metal door that blocked the tunnel. A newly installed door by the look of things, with a big padlock.
“It’s locked,” she said, sounding disappointed. He had an idea that she craved adventure.
He stepped closer, pretended to fiddle with the lock, and whispered an unlocking spell. “Not any longer,” he said, then gave a shrug. “I had a somewhat misspent youth.”
“Very impressive.”
“I’m good with my hands,” he said.
“I noticed. And I wondered how you had gotten into my cell that night. Let’s see what’s inside.”
He pushed open the door. It led into a big chamber where the tunnel widened, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet. The room was stacked with boxes. Some big, some small. He crossed to the nearest, pulled his knife from the sheath at his waist, and forced the lid. It was full of automatic rifles. No doubt the rest would be full of weapons as well. An arsenal for Kinross’s army.
“Here,” Destiny said, handing him a piece of paper. “This was stuck to the wall.”
It was an inventory, itemizing the location and contents of all the boxes in the room. He cast his eyes down the list: rifles, pistols, hand grenades, gas grenades, C4 and other explosives. And something marked NW. According to the inventory it was in the far corner of the room and he glanced over. A stack of twelve boxes, bigger than the rest, maybe around six feet by three feet, by two feet. He forced open the lid of the closest, then stepped back and swore.
“What is it?” Destiny asked.
“Nuclear warheads.” Enough to destroy a planet at a guess. He remembered the rocket launcher he’d seen parked in the docking bay of the Trakis Four. Was it for launching nuclear warheads? What would the range be?
“That’s not good, is it?”
“Not good at all.” He needed to get back and report in. Decide on their best course of action. Maybe destroy the lot, but if they blew up the store, likely they would destroy the whole planet. Maybe they could remove some vital component, render the bombs harmless. Or he could do a spell, shift the warheads to the shuttle, take them with them. Hold them as a deterrent in case Kinross tried to come after them. But he didn’t trust his magic enough on this planet. And he didn’t think there was an immediate threat. They had time enough to come up with a plan and get safely away.
“I don’t suppose you know how to disarm a nuclear warhead?” he asked.
“No, but we can probably find out in a book.”
She was right. He’d get Rico on it. He closed the lid and knocked it back into place, then glanced at the list again. He crossed the room and came to a halt in front of another pile of boxes, smaller this time. He opened the lid and grinned. “You never know when a grenade will come in useful.” He filled his backpack with as many as he could carry and then closed the lid. “Time to get out of here.”
“Is this what you expected to find?” Destiny asked.
“Maybe not nukes, but weapons of some kind. People are going along with him for now, but he can’t assume that will last forever. He needs to be able to back up any threats he makes.”
“You need to stop him.”
“I’m not a goddamn hero, Destiny. Stop mistaking me for one. It’s not who I am.”
She stood her ground. “I never said you were a hero. I’m not that naive anymore. But you helped me. I thought you were a decent human being.”