Page 22 of The Inheritance (Breach Wars #1)

It was all pouring out. They broke him.

“We can split hairs all day, but in the end, all of us in this room know that the ultimate responsibility lies with the assault leader. As the escort captain, I must maintain a good working relationship with the assault leader. That is the system that you put in place. You put Malcolm in that position, and you put me in my position.”

Shifting the blame again. If it wasn’t his fault, it was Malcolm, and if it wasn’t Malcolm, the system, the guild, and Elias were to blame.

“Malcolm and I respected each other. I was not going to go behind his back, because I had to work with him in the future. I brought three people out with me, three people who otherwise would have been dead. I am not going to take the blame for what happened. This outrage and scrutiny are disingenuous. A fatal event happened; people died. People die in breaches every day. This was no different. Either get used to it or get out of the game.”

London’s brain finally caught up with his mouth. He shut up.

Nobody said anything.

“You can judge all you want,” London said.

“But you weren’t there. You didn’t see them.

The speed… They were so fast, they blurred.

My reaction time is half that of an average human and I couldn't follow it. Elias, seriously, whatever assault team would have been in that fucking cave, none of them would have made it. You want me to say I ran? Yeah, I did. Like I told you, I saved who I could and got out.”

Elias leaned forward. “Look me in the eye and tell me that everyone else in that cave was dead when you threw the grenade.”

“They were dead. All of them. The miners, the K9, the scout - everyone was dead. I saw the DebrA cut to pieces. You have my word.”

They hounded London for the next ten minutes, but they didn’t get anything else. Elias knew they wouldn’t. In the end, they told him to stay put at the site and let him go.

Elias leaned back in his chair. London was lying. It was in the eyes. That direct unblinking stare when he said, “You have my word.”

“It wasn’t the gold,” Leo muttered.

“It wasn’t.”

London’s demeanor confirmed what Elias already deduced from the record of the survey meeting. He didn’t know about the gold, and he didn’t see it as relevant.

No, this problem ran deeper.

Leo steepled his fingers, his tone methodical, almost clinical.

“Assault Team 3 is the best performing team in the yellow and orange tiers. Malcolm and London worked together frequently. London saw Malcolm as his professional equal. In his mind, they were laterally positioned. If he pushed against Malcolm, there would’ve been tension and conflict.

London abhors tension. He didn’t want to rock the boat.

Was it a misguided professional courtesy? ”

“And professional arrogance,” Elias said. “You heard him. Nothing larger than a stalker was found. Breaches are unpredictable. Nothing can be taken for granted. He’s grown complacent.”

Leo’s eyes flashed with white. “He’s lying. I can’t prove it, but I feel it.”

“It’s the lack of guilt,” Elias told him.

People who lost their teams in the breaches came out fucked up. Some were manic, others catatonic. He had to put divers on suicide watch before. That’s why they had a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and several therapists on staff.

“London is too aggressive, too confrontational,” Elias said. “He’s absolved himself of all responsibility. He’s right about one thing – I put him in that position. The buck stops with me.”

“It’s been three years since Lansing,” Leo said. “He hasn’t fucked up until now.”

“That we know of. One of two things happened in that breach. Either London is telling the truth, and he is a hero who saved three miners, or he’s a coward who abandoned his team to their death.”

“Which do you think it is?” Leo asked.

“I think he saw something that terrified him, and he bugged out. The only way to prove what happened is to examine the mining site and the bodies, assuming there is anything left of them. I need cause to remove him from his position.”

“And with Melissa backing him up, we don’t have any.” Leo frowned. “If we demote him, it will look like we made him into a scapegoat.”

“That’s not our biggest problem. If we demote him without proof, he will jump ship to Guardian or any other guild willing to take him.

He looks good on paper. He will aim for escort captain again, because he likes that job, and the next time shit hits the fan, more people will die.

” Elias exhaled. “We need to get into that breach ASAP.”

“Agreed,” Leo said.

“Did you find Jackson?” Elias asked.

“Not yet. We’re doing everything we can.”

“I know.”

Sitting on his hands was driving him out of his skin, but going into that breach without Jackson was suicide.

It was both about the speed and the potency of healing.

Two years ago, he was stabbed in the heart and lost his left hand, and because Jackson was there, he pulled the spike out of his chest and kept swinging, while his hand regrew itself in minutes.

Something took out Malcolm’s team and terrified London so much that he fled for the exit. They couldn’t risk any more lives.

“You need to rest, sir,” Leo said quietly.

Elias looked up. Outside the window the morning was in full swing. He’d slept four hours in the last forty-eight.

“We have bunks set up downstairs,” Leo said. “If anything happens, if I hear anything, I’ll wake you up.”

Elias didn’t feel like sleeping, but his body needed it, and he knew he would pass out the moment his head hit a pillow.

“Wake me up as soon as you find Jackson.”

“I will, sir.”

* * *

Flex.

The stream didn’t glow. I stared at it some more, but I was getting only clear water. It flowed from a gap in the rock, forming a narrow but deep current that ran across a massive cavern.

Chomp, chomp…

“Will you please quit doing that?”

Bear raised her bloody muzzle from the stalker’s body and gave me a puzzled look.

“I mean it.”

She licked her lips.

We’d been moving through the tunnels for hours.

We ran across two silverfish bug things and took them out.

They turned out to be slower than I thought.

Or perhaps Bear and I had gotten faster.

I lost count of how many stalkers we’d killed.

This latest trio of two females and a male died a couple hundred feet into the passageway and I carried the largest body to the stream.

Bear had developed a disturbing liking for stalker meat.

Every time we had a fight, and I got distracted, she chomped on bodies like they were premium dog food.

She tried to eat the bugs too, but they must’ve tasted foul because she took a bite and never went back for seconds.

I had stuck to my supplies so far, but both the energy bars and the KitKats were a distant memory. We had run out of water hours ago.

I looked at the stream again. Bear padded next to me, looked at the water, and whined. She’d tried to drink already but I stopped her.

In a perfect world, I would have boiled the water, but I didn’t have any way to make a fire.

And even if I could, my plastic hard hat was the only vessel we had.

It would melt. Well, I could probably boil water in a canteen…

It was moot anyway. I didn’t have a lighter or any fuel.

What I had was two empty canteens and a very thirsty dog, who was currently dancing on the bank in anticipation.

Fuck it.

I nodded at the stream. “Go get it.”

The shepherd bounded to the bank and began lapping up the water, splashing it all over the place.

I smiled. “Is any of that actually getting into your mouth?”

Bear paused to give me a look and went back to drinking.

I scooted upstream and dipped my hands into the breach water. The stalker blood faded a little. I scrubbed my fingers. There was dark grime under my fingernails, and I shuddered to think what kind of bacteria was breeding there.

I cleaned my hands as best I could, cupped them, and brought some water to my mouth. It tasted clean and cold.

I filled both canteens, filled my hat, and poured it over my coveralls, trying to wash the dried blood from the Magnaprene. It took forever. Finally, I straightened. Bear lay next to the water, twitching her left ear.

“We drank, we showered, it’s time for a feast.”

I walked over to the stalker’s corpse, crouched, shifted my sword into a knife, and paused. Bear had been eating them along the way every chance she got, and so far she didn’t have any shivers.

Mmm, raw alien meat.

I didn’t have any choice. If we had found some plants or fruits that were safe, I would have eaten that, but the caves offered mostly fungi. They were conveniently glowing and hellishly poisonous.

“Stalker. It’s what’s for dinner.”

Bear panted.

I stabbed the stalker and gutted it. I was never a hunter. The only skinning I had ever done was limited to removing the skin from chicken thighs I bought at a grocery store. Getting the pelt off took a while. Finally, I cut a ham free and tossed it to Bear. The shepherd chomped on it.

I carved a paper-thin slice from the other leg and sniffed it.

It smelled kind of gamey. Disgusting. It smelled disgusting.

Back home, I bought a special composite cutting board just for raw chicken, because I could put it through the dishwasher.

All of my wooden cutting boards were scrubbed after each use, and all of my meat was cooked to the correct temperature. I owned three cooking thermometers.

This meat was raw. Not rare. Just raw.

“Tacos would be so nice right now. Or shepherd’s pie. I make really good shepherd’s pie, with creamy mashed potatoes and a crust of melted cheese on top.”

Bear chewed on the stalker ham.