Alternative Directions: Options
Chapter 51
Mars Colony
Base Dome
Date: 1st March AC 198
Time: 17:57 MST [Mars Standard Time
Zechs
There were no sounds of movement in the undergrowth of the dome that surrounded him. No hints that he was not alone in this forest of vegetation that was native to another world. It was, he admitted, most likely that he was alone in this dome, the ESUN Sleeper agents having done their dirty work and moved on. Yet something, some sense of danger would not leave him and warned it was too easy.
While he had not experienced in vision form the possibility that he would be taken down in this dome, he knew enough to know not to rely on that lack of vision. It was all too possible for it to happen. His visions were not infallible. He had proven that inaccuracy to himself time and again. His even being in this dome now, soaking wet, sick to his stomach and wishing he could curl up safe and warm in his bed, was clear evidence of that.
Not to mention, of course, his utter failure to see this vision of the massacre of the colony before it might be too late to avoid it. He had witnessed the killing of the terra formers. Or at least he had witnessed some of them being killed. Never before, though, he was certain, had he glimpsed that vision of the battle cruiser sending its forces to wipe out the population. They would allow no witnesses. No, he had not seen that before.
He watched the main doors of the hydroponics dome that, if he took that route, would lead him out into the greater enviro dome. Out there, somewhere in that maze of buildings, domes and equipment, was Noin and the Sleeper agents of the ESUN. Out there, somewhere, were the agents who had come with the shuttle.
He needed to establish contact with the Alpha Dome to ascertain with certainty the major threat of the agents there had been neutralized. He needed to know the Alpha Dome was secured and not likely to be experiencing this slow murder of its population. He needed to know how many agents were loose in the Base Dome, and if they had any confirmed numbers of kills amid their own people, be it at the Base Dome or the Alpha Dome. Was it only four or five here? Could he hope for that few to die?
Eagle and his three agents had Mako's help, and the assistance of the three agents he knew Une had managed to slip onto the shuttle. It was not many to fight this battle, especially considering just how many of the new arrivals might be ESUN agents was unknown, but with the element of surprise on their side it had to be enough. He had to operate, for now at least, on the assumption the ESUN agents at Alpha Dome had been neutralized.
Those agents had to be out of the equation or he was fighting a losing battle. He could not do this on two separate fronts. If the precautions he had taken to ensure the numbers of combatants were more even had failed, then there was very little hope he could work a rescue for those who should never have had to become involved in this.
The airlock style entry to the hydroponics dome stood only meters from his position. It beckoned to him, looking safely deserted, no doubt just as it had beckoned to who ever had bled all over the floor not so long ago, and not so far in front of him. Someone had walked into something nasty. An attempt had been made to clean up the incident site, and that was worrying.
Why would they bother removing the evidence of the kill? The ESUN agents were planning on killing everyone who was not one of their own, so why remove the body and make an effort to hose away the blood? Perhaps to have any casual passerby not look twice and worry for their life? An easier, unsuspecting target was desirable when you were seriously out numbered.
They were out numbered, the ESUN agents. They had to work from the shadows, picking their targets carefully, stalking their prey. If they were discovered then they would be taken out of the picture, leaving fewer of their number to accomplish the mission. Their advantage was their secrecy. Their silence. While they were unknown they could strike, choosing to kill quickly and quietly. In a situation such as this they were more dangerous than a fully armed mobile suit on a rampage.
The itch that it was all wrong was growing worse.
He eased back from the edge of the undergrowth, putting a boulder between himself and the doors, something a little more solid than a few plant fronds. He wedged his back into a crevice in the rock, taking a moment to think this through. Where would they have hidden the body? Why would they have hidden the body?
He had come across four kills in the time it had taken him to work his way across the dome. Four victims, each one personally known to him, and all of them service gardeners for the dome systems. All had been killed by knife wounds in the back, or had had their throats slit. Someone was very methodically walking up to people, no doubt chatting to them to keep them off their guard and casually killing them.
Someone was a cold hearted bastard who really would not, surely, be a big loss to the worlds of the ESUN? This cold hearted killer had to die. There had to be justice for those he, or she, had already killed. He had to be able to give the dead some form of justice.
//If I need to be I will become Judge, Jury and Executioner. It would be easier if I had some help, but such is not necessary. I can operate as effectively on my own as they can. Noin, where are you? Are you still active? Are you still alive? Be alive, Noin. Don't you dare let these bastards kill you. I tried to warn you.//
He had tried to warn her. To make her understand the fallibility of his curse. By not telling her who he knew to be ESUN agents, he had sought to arm her against all of them. The truth was he did not know who she had to be wary of, and the best defense he could give her for that, was to warn her to beware of everyone. If she trusted no one, she was less likely to get a knife in the back from one she assumed was a friend.
It was the best defense he could give her. Now he could only trust she would not turn her back to anyone.
No time to think the worst thoughts, he berated himself. No time to allow the visions of possibilities building up within him to break the dam he had so carefully formed within his mind. He could feel the stir of vision, and he just could not deal with it again. As incomplete as the range of vision he had witness obviously was, he just had to go with what he already had seen.
He could not afford to disregard this vision of the wholesale slaughter of the colony personnel. It had felt different to so many of his visions. Something about it had felt different. When he thought about what had thus far occurred, and the corpses he now was finding, he had no choice but to believe the build up to those visions was now inevitable.
It had to be happening, else why so many dead? All the easy kills, the trusting souls of the colony. Somewhere out in the vastness of space he was very much afraid lurked a killer that had turned its nose in the direction of Mars.
The Sleeper agents took out the easy kills and the ESUN forces yet to arrive on Mars would be the hunters of those who were, just like him, cursed or blessed, with a greater survival instinct. Or just dumb luck. What ever it was, it meant they would fight for the right to live. They would not go down easily.
No, he could not afford to allow the visions of possibilities to sweep him away again. The simple truth was that if he did he might not recover a third time, if he allowed it to slip his control. He lost too much time as he forced himself back to face reality. He just had to pray, to what ever god there was out there, that he got it right, and did not make matters worse by turning his attention away from more possibilities.
He had to take a chance and make a stand somewhere.
The massacre of the Terra Forming Team was the absolute worst result of this entire mess that he could think of. He had to see it did not happen.
The door he sought was to his left, hidden in the undergrowth a little further around the dome. He only hoped that, when he reached it, it did not give him the feeling of a trap that the main door roused in him. While he could see nothing wrong with this main entry to the dome, he did not trust it. It seemed entirely too easy. Too innocent. He could still see the colour of the blood spilt here not so long ago. He had no choice but to use that other door. The only other options open to him were to go out the main door or go back into the water pipes, and that just was not a realistic option. He would be useless if he had to use the pipes again.
His head snapped around.
Something ... was that ... Blue eyes narrowed and he crouched lower, sinking behind a shrub growing close enough to the boulder to shield him from view from that angle. It, that small noise or movement that had alerted him, had come from the far side of the clearing. The opposite side from the main entrance to the dome, he noted. Yes, something was moving over there. Something. Someone.
They were taking great care in the way they moved through the undergrowth, succeeding in moving quietly. It was only the occasional twitch of a plant frond, or the scrape of foliage on cloth, that gave any clue to their presence. He might have missed it if he was not so keyed for disaster to drop on him.
Zechs slipped into the thicker foliage, edging around the boulder after first surveying the far side of the clearing. Just the barest twitch of plant fronds leading away from his position and he moved slowly, careful with the branches surrounding himself, trying in his own turn to not allow any great movement. It was impossible in the heavier sections of the plantings to avoid moving fronds and branches, but one could keep the movement to a minimum if one tried hard enough. He could only hope the one he followed was too focused on his, or her, own quest for quiet movement.
He breathed a little easier when he had a few metres of foliage between himself and those doors behind him. He felt as though his back was exposed , an open target. He began to move more swiftly now, but chose his course through the foliage with care, and expended every effort in being silent. The other who moved in here was just as silent, and to his despair seemed to be angling toward that other, small, unused door. This could complicate matters and he was loath to go back and use the water pipes, the better of his other options.
There was a clearing ahead. He glimpsed it through the undergrowth and he paused, hesitating, unwilling to entertain any thought of crossing that cleared area. He crouched down deeper in to the undergrowth, glancing around him, placing his location. He remembered this now. Remembered in this area a small water course flowed. A streamlet, with a cleared picnic area on its banks. With a soft gasp he realized he had lost the one he tailed. Thinking curses he dared not voice, even in the softest of whispers, he edged forward until he could crouch in a thicket and carefully tilt leaves aside to allow himself a view of the clearing.
Silently he cursed, painfully aware that another body was stretched out near the stream, at its side a small pouch of seedlings lying in a pool of blood. Another of the gardeners who had been planting undergrowth seedlings, as so many had been slated to do today, had met a grisly end.
Not liking his cover at all, he glanced around and then edged slowly to his right, intending to skirt the clearing and put as much distance between this clearing and himself as possible. Movement caused him to freeze before lowering himself closer to the ground, crouching. He watched as yet another plant twitched and swayed that tell tale little bit. There was no wind or air currants in the hydroponics domes. If the plants moved, someone caused them to move. Some one moved not so far ahead of him, and was very well hidden from his present location.
Too close for him to dare move without chancing drawing attention he did not want. // Come on, who ever you are. I don't have all day to waste, and I can't move until you are out of my way.//
"Justine?"
His head snapped around to his left, and he watched as from the opposite side of the clearing and to his left, a figure emerged from the undergrowth. Crouching, cautious, looking around carefully before hurrying to kneel beside the fallen gardener.
"Damn. Damn the bastards."
The man knelt beside the body of the woman, reaching to check her for a pulse and Zechs noticed there was blood coating his right arm. The engineer he recognized and with the woman identified as Justine he knew them to be a married couple, Ron and Justine Howick. The engineer reached out to close the dead woman's eyes, his own streaming tears as he collapsed on the ground at her side. He rested a bloody hand on her breast and closed the dead woman's eyes, shaking his head in combined sorrow and disbelief. Shock.
Zechs glanced around, frowning in concentration. This was not right. It might have been his justifiably prejudiced view, but he did not trust the location at all. This area was surrounded by fairly thick undergrowth and now that he thought of it, Justine Howick was a gardener, a horticulturalist who had been on the lists today for duty in this dome. The gardeners had been selected to plant undergrowth foliage plants in a new section of the rainforest they were creating.
A section that was near half the dome away from this location. Just what would the woman have been doing here, when this section was already planted? He surveyed the undergrowth suspiciously, not trusting the situation at all, and realized with dread whoever had been ahead of him had moved while he had been preoccupied watching the drama in the clearing unfold. He had lost the location of the one he had followed to this point.
It was ripe for an ambush.
He caught the glitter of the thrown blade in the air just before it buried itself in the back of the man kneeling over the body, and even as he sucked in a deep breath, marked the location it had come from. He was shaking in rage, incensed at the coldness of the ambush. The poor bastard had not stood a chance.
A moment of silence, broken by the coughed last breath of the victim as he fell over the body of his wife, fingers clenched, and then relaxed after a final spasm. Zechs closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly, counting silently to ten before he dared open his eyes again. He so needed to...
The killer broke cover, glancing casually around the clearing, a coldly smiling, silent, dark haired man who strode forward and knelt beside the pair of corpses. He checked for a pulse before retrieving his knife from his latest targets back, looking at the bloodied blade with a small, satisfied smile as he pulled it from his victims back.
Zechs edged forward carefully, rage building into a cold, hard core that fed his adrenaline and seemed to guide him unerringly toward his target. Justice screamed to be satisfied within him. Justice and the memories of cowering in a ruined, burning building while uniformed men leaned over bodies, killing the weeping wounded who could not get away from them.
He had been helpless then, a child whose world had been torn apart in flames and noise and blood. He had not understood what had been happening to him, or to his world, but he had known in some deep, primal place, that to make a noise would be a very bad mistake. It had not been terror that had kept him silent then, but something deeper. Primal. His body and mind had known then to be silent and survive, despite the horrors he witnessed.
Here and now, in this rainforest dome on Mars, his body knew to be silent not to survive, but this time to be the hunter, not the prey.
The killer straightened from his victim, cleaning the knife blade on a scrap of cloth he pulled from a pocket, careful to clean all blood from the blade, before glancing down at his victim one last time. One less that would have to be dealt with to clean up this mess that was steadily getting out of hand. He had not thought it would be necessary to reveal himself. Not thought that he would have to kill so many of these people who had been known to him for so many years.
He must not allow it to bother him, though. His training had allowed him to separate himself from any personal attachments and kill dispassionately. He was rather disgusted at the necessity for this action, as he had thought the so called professionals brought in to collect the packages would have the know how, and expertise, to accomplish this mission with a minimum of disruption.
If these agents sent in by his superiors were the best they had to draw on, then the ESUN was in serious trouble. Who in their right minds had thought this elite squad would be capable of accomplishing such a simple mission? Useless. He did not think much of the elite squad.
Some miniscule warning alerted him to danger. Whether it was a glimpsed movement in peripheral vision or the slightest sound, he was not certain, but he spun, only to meet a blade in the neck, and ice blue eyes that burned with an unholy rage.
"See you in hell." A sibilant hiss was whispered in his ear as the world went dark, and a solid body drove him to the ground.
Zechs shook with rage, rolling from the corpse, blood singing in his veins. Far from ready to stand down; looking for another target. He retrieved his knife and cleaned the blade, using the Sleepers own cloth, eyes scanning the foliage for any hint of movement. After a moment he turned to search the agent's weapons, pockets and equipment for anything that he might find useful.
He confiscated the three throwing knives, finding them perfectly balanced and not doubting they would likely come in handy, adding them to his arsenal. He chose to discard the automatic pistol in the stream after confiscating the ammunition. Guns were simply too noisy for the type of action he needed. He considered the electronic pager for a moment, weighing the pros and cons, and then pocketed the device as something that might be in use by the agents who worked against him. Perhaps their means of communications, if they feared a problem with radio frequencies or security.
He would investigate its use when he had the chance, taking it now in the event it might be of use at some point. He glanced around the clearing, scanning the undergrowth one final time before slipping quietly away, hurrying now toward the door. He needed to put distance between himself and the bodies. He doubted they worked alone.
In minutes the door was before him, half covered by equipment leaned up against it. Never having actually been used as a door, it had become something of a storage area, he noted. Bags of fertilizer, garden rakes and tools, even gardening gloves, knee pads and watering cans were dotted about the area. Some items hanging on the door, other things leaned against it, and some resting on a bench set half over the door itself.
Generally, it could be considered something of a mess.
"So much for safety first. Don't they ever clean up around here?" A whisper.
Or was it meant to look so well used but neglected?
He forced calm, taking deep breaths, crouching amid a thick cluster of plants. Second guessing himself and the Sleepers. Wonderful. He could not allow himself to make stupid, careless mistakes, neither could he allow himself to become paranoid. His training said the door should have been secured for an emergency exit, kept clear and serviceable at all times. It seemed an affront to all he had been taught that the equipment had been allowed to obscure the exit.
In an emergency that could cost lives.
To a slow count of one hundred no one moved. No noise hinted at anyone in the vicinity and he had spotted nothing suspicious in the undergrowth, or around the door. Not in the least reassured he cautiously made his way into the open and glided up to the door. While he felt tense, keyed, he did not feel alarmed. He did not feel as though someone was stalking him.
No, for the moment his senses told him he was clear and he had to trust the sense that, to date, had not failed him.
He dragged the bench clear of the door, ignoring the pain that was fighting the adrenaline induced endorphins to be recognized. There was no time to feel pain, only to get his butt out of this horror story that had once been a place for a pleasant outing. He and Noin had come here for picnics on their roster days off. This place being the closest they could come to the idea of a picnic on Earth, but those good memories were gone now, replaced by the blood and gore of death.
Deliberate, cold blooded murder had been committed here. Multiple murders, in the name of the ESUN. He just wanted to leave the place far behind him, but even that option was not open to him.
He dragged the bench just enough to allow him to get the metal hatch open, checking it carefully for any hint of a device that would either do him damage, or alert anyone that it had been used.
Clear.
He could find nothing to suggest it had been trapped, or that an alarm was in operation. Satisfied he crouched behind the bench, eyes moving to the undergrowth, searching, listening, seeking, but no sense alerted him that he was not alone. With a deep breath he returned to the door and reached for the control bar, finding it stiff from disuse, but he would not allow it to defeat him.
He needed out of this place and this was his means of exit. No stiff bar or door would stop him. Stiff from disuse the door screeched a protest, dry, un oiled hinges protesting use, and he swore under his breath. Hoping that he was just too keyed and it really did not sound so loud, he pulled the door open enough to peer into the space between the domes, and winced at the distance to the other dome.
He had not remembered it being so far to cross between the two domes, but back then he had not felt as if he had a target painted on his back. With a muttered curse and deep breath, he glanced nervously at the undergrowth behind him, expecting anyone in the dome could not have failed to hear that piercing screech and come running.
Silence.
No movement of fronds to suggest he was to have company. He slipped out of the door, pulling it closed behind him and glaring at it in angry betrayal as it repeated its ear splitting screech. He turned, walking, heart pounding and walked casually toward the dome ahead of him.
He was one of many men wearing the tan work uniform of the colony. Just one of many. What were the chances of anyone seeing him from a distance and knowing him at a glance?
Okay, to be honest, his hair was distinctive, but he was walking in a shadowed area and anyone running here would be more likely to attract attention than someone walking, right? He certainly hoped so. One of the most basic points in his training had been that if you looked uncomfortable in your surroundings, you were more likely to be noticed as being out of place.
In all honestly there could not be too many here in the colony who were agents of the ESUN. He would have to be damn unlucky to run across another one while crossing this little gap between the domes. If he could just have a little luck and gain the dome with no one the wiser, then that was a very good thing, and why should it not happen to him?
He refused to even consider Murphy's Law.
The door was only a few steps away from him. He forced himself to even out his breathing, controlling the urge to run those last few steps and draw any eye that had not been alerted by a man walking in shadows. He was just a tech out for a stroll, in the middle of an alert, while enemy agents were running around shooting every one they came across.
Perfectly natural.
Then it was there, before him, and he was pulling it open and stepping inside, swinging the door shut as he did so, taking the chance that no one was waiting for him in the maintenance shed the door opened into. The truth was he could not afford to leave the door open behind him, and when he got it shut he just wanted to slide down its length and take the chance at a breather. No such luck there, survival was the key. With a low sigh he turned and surveyed the maintenance shed, half expecting there to be someone here with a drawn gun.
All thoughts of taking a break fled from his mind.
Someone had not died easily here. The place was a shambles of overturned benches and potted plants. Potting mix made up of the native Martian soil mixed with fertilizers, was strewn about the building, with splatters of blood gluing it to walls and floor. Tools were in disarray, fallen from their usual neat storage pegs. He noted a shovel with blood on the blade, lying nearby, and the door into the dome ahead of him stood ajar.
// Wonderful. They have started killing here, too. I wonder if any of the others have survived? The law of averages would have to be against everyone going down easily. Surely the Sleepers have not had it all their way?//
There was no time to think about it now. He slipped to the door, carefully avoiding upsetting any of the fallen equipment and peered out. The less people who knew someone had come this way the better. Not just for his own chances of escaping this blood bath, but for anyone else who was trying to escape. The fewer people moving about the more chances there were that he would find the Sleepers actively killing.
On reflection he supposed the hydroponics domes would have been an easy and likely place for the Sleepers to start the killing. Not many of the terra formers working in the domes would be any where near a radio to sound the alert. The domes were large enough to allow for a reasonably private killing ground, provided the killer used silent means to accomplish their kills. Not once had he found evidence of a kill with anything other than knives.
Yes, there could be up to twenty five or thirty people working in any of these domes at one time. In the recreation dome on this day there were at least that many, attending to the mass plantings of undergrowth seedlings. In a few days this second dome would have been a hive of activity as they harvested the ready crop. None of the gardeners, or horticulturalists who worked here permanently, to his knowledge had combat experience. Yes, they would have been easy targets for a trained killer.
Hydroponics Dome Two was the grain producer of the colony. Here five varieties of wheat, three species of corn and various lesser variant types were reared to feed the colony and assist in oxygen production and water filtration. Recently the fruit trees planted on the far side of the dome had begun to bare fruit in decent quantities, allowing them to process and store it as preserves. The genetically modified fruit trees had taken well to Mars, better that their expectations had first predicted.
The more time one lived on Mars, the more the luxuries people in the remainder of the Earth Sphere took for granted, were becoming common place. The first year the colony had been started, in the original tiny dome outside the Base Dome, they had had nothing to eat but ration packs, until the first hydroponics green house had been successfully coaxed into production. He was fortunate to have come into the project after the bulk of the Base Dome had been completed by the first of the Terra Forming Team to have arrived three Terran years before.
At this time much of the crop in Dome Two was ready to be harvested, and golden wheat fields spread out before him in neat plots divided by walkways. Surveying the scene he considered the best course to be followed to reach the far side, and the door that connected to a maintenance building leading into the oldest of the hydroponics domes. While the array of wheat before him looked impressive, it was nothing compared to the great hydroponics fields of the Alpha Dome. It also bore an astonishing resemblance to a killing ground, he reflected.
//Not good. Too open. Too easy to be seen.//
With a sigh Zechs slipped from the maintenance building and into the dome itself, easing his way around the building and into a nook, where the shed met the dome wall. He crouched there, allowing himself time to survey the dome from this wider view point. He did not like the idea of walking out into all of that open space. It was begging for trouble, and the interior of the shed gave clear evidence that there were hunters in the vicinity.
Blue eyes flicked up, toward the heights of the dome and his lips curved into a small smile, just a tilt of fine lips as he surveyed the system of pipes and walkways strung up there. The oldest two domes had much of the pipes carrying water overhead, with maintenance walkways companioning large clusters of pipes. The newer, third dome had the pipes rigged underneath the floor of the dome.
That aerial walkway had potential if he could get up there unseen. From memory there should be a ladder to his left, a small distance away. He would need to tread softly once he was up amid the walk ways and pipes, to avoid the walkways ringing very audibly in the open dome. One down side to the domes was that acoustics in the dome's roof would make an Opera House blush in shame. He would have to be careful of noise.
He surveyed again the open wheat fields and the broad paths separating the beds and shook his head. No, he did not trust taking the low ground. Shoulder or no shoulder, he was going to have to go up.
Decision made Zechs slipped from his nook and headed for the ladder that would allow him to take to the upper area. He intended to be as quick as possible crossing this dome, and this seemed the best option, a fact that gave him pause.
If he found the upper scaffolding desirable then it was possible that there might be a Sleeper agent up there, looking for more prey. A chance he would have to take. They might have already finished in the dome, as it was slated to be harvested in five days, and only a skeleton staff would still be at work here, maintaining the beds and preparing for the harvest that likely now would not take place.
The upper way was perfect for a sniper.
There was no clear indication of how many Sleepers were at the project, but if he had faith in his vision, there were ten. At least ten, not counting anyone on the recently arrived shuttle from Earth. Ten people were not many to take down a population of over two thousand people, but it could be done.
Strategically placed incendiary devices, gas in the air ducts, selected hunters running around taking out the innocents who had no idea their own friends and work mates were their worst enemy. Well, he had dealt with one lot of incendiary devices, and he had used the gas in the ventilation system himself at the Alpha Dome to good effect.
Base Dome did not have one linked ventilation system, however, owing to the manner in which it had been constructed, section by section over the years. Filling the airways with gas here would not knock out the entire population. The sub surface installation would be relatively safe from that means of control, since the babies they wanted were down there, and an uncontrolled amount of gas in the system could kill such young lives quickly.
Exactly what the ESUN did not want. He was counting on them wanting his children alive and well.
The upper complex, however, might just be subject to that method, but if so, he would have expected them to already have initiated it. That they had not, he believed, was due to the fact that there were four separate duct systems, each independent of the others, feeding the upper dome its life giving air. No, they would not use gas to contain this situation.
All they needed to do was contain the population into nice neat sections, kill them off slowly, and wait for the Wellington to arrive. The Wellington's arrival was the death knell of the entire colony, Alpha Dome included.
//Bastards. There has to be some way to avoid this. I have to be able to make it change. Raydon ... He has others to think about. I don't know if he will do anything about this. I don't know if he is capable of making a difference here.//
Station One was a long way from Mars. Yet Raydon had said his Captains would be on alert to take action if they received that transmitter signal. That help and a lift would be two or three days away. Perhaps too far to make a difference. An armed Raider ship would have a chance against the Wellington, but lives would be lost ...
//Stop it. You'll bring the visions back and you just can't afford to. It's time to do, not see, and just pray you get it right.//
The ladder was situated where he had thought it would be, and he crouched at its base, looking around carefully and then peering up into the scaffolding surrounding the pipes and walkways. A climb of some twenty feet to the lower level of the support structure would not be too taxing on his shoulder, and it really was not much of a decision to make.
His options were simple. Go across the dome at ground level and possibly meet a hunter in the long growth, little to no warning of their approach. Or go up, into the support structure to cross the dome, and possibly meet a hunter up there, maybe even a sniper watching the ground level for easy prey.
With a sigh, Zechs set hand and foot to the rungs and began the climb, every few rungs pausing to look around before reaching again for the next rung. Sometimes you just had to take chances.
t.b.c.
Karina Robertson 2004
