Chapter 64

The dust and debris continued to swirl and fall after Amnon’s grenade exploded.  For a long time, all Saw Yatha knew was the high whine of a siren in his ears.  He lay still amid chunks of wall and ceiling motivating his mind to remember how he ended up in such a state.  The ground was hard and uncomfortable, the air dusty.  Over minutes Sawstitched his memory back together.  The flinch in Amnon’s eye right before the grenade dropped.  The flash of fire and sound that launched Saw backward and landed him where he lay.  At least he was still alive.  Was he alive?

Saw cracked open his eyes.  He was alive.  The room, while chared and mostly demolished had the ring of familiarity to it.  Bits of disembodied equipment was scattered around the space and here and there Saw made out the uniforms of the guards that had helped him secure Amnon Saxe to his fate.  Then the thought occured to him that if he was still alive, was it possible that Amnon was too?  Saw forced his body to push off the floor and get a better view of things.

As soon as he was verticle, Saw’s vision put the room into a slight spin.  Not enough to knock him back down, but enough to keep him from focusing on what was before him.  Saw placed a hand on a near by collum to remind his brain that the world was still solid.  He closed his eyes until the uncomfortable moment passed.  He opened his eyes again.  The room, which had never been very colorful, was now coated in a light gray.  Sparking wires dangled like angry vipers from the ceiling and when Saw dared to look up, he could see into the next story if not two.  There was a slight breeze brushing his face brought in by the man-sized hole in the outside wall.

There was so much debris, Saw was sure if Amnon Saxe wanted to remain hidden, he could do so for days.  Still Saw needed to know where his enemy was.  He took careful steps around the many obstacles on the floor and avoided the hanging wires.  Slowly getting his bearing on how the was aranged just before the explosion, Saw made his way to an estimate of where Amnon’s chair had been.  Then, knowing how the blast had lanuched him backward, he assumed something similar must have happened to Amnon.  So, Saw began to survey the area of the room between where he stood and the now non-existent interior wall.

Eventually he located it.  It started with the hint of a dusty hand in the rubble.  Then, after removing several ceiling chunks, Saw uncovered the face of Amnon Saxe.  There was a line of dried blood and dust across his forehead and a cut on his bottom lip.  Saw checked Amnon’s breathing.  There was none.  So, that’s that, Saw thought and stood back to his full height.

The black-clad Yatha reassessed his situation: Zungher Dol was dead.  He still needed to figure out how to release that news in a way that didn’t get him executed.  Keetha Cata, and with her the annoying Nova, was dead.  So, no more threat of the stirring of a rebel uprising.  Amnon Saxe, the high-ranking mole withinthe Merlain government was also dead.  As far as Saw could assess, all the major obstacles of his proper assumption of power had been neutralized.  There was that pesky Evan Gold and his wife, but they weren’t likely to be much more than an annoying bug that could easily be squashed.

Saw’s attention was captured by the sound of a mechanichal engine whine coming from the plaza outside.  He left Amnon to his eternal rest and stood in the hole the explosive had opened.  All he saw was fire and chaos.  Citizens and soldiers running this way and that with no one to lead them, the fore he’d started in Dol’s tower continued to burn and the black smoke gave the illusion that the time was later than it was.  But where was that whine coming from?  Then he saw it.

Coming through the clouds he saw a Coellum craft hover over the buildings just outside the plaza.  Suddenly all of Saw’s plans of dominance and power evaporated.  If the Coellum were here, Merlain’s defenses were compromised.  Given the state of the military activity he could witness, there was no leader and it would take unfortunately long to gather the troops into somethign that resembled order.  The best he could hope for was to survive long enough to fight another day, but first he would need to survive until tomorrow.  Survival, Saw foresaw meant getting out of the prison building, out of the plaza, and probably out of the city undetected and unharmed.

Something caught Saw’s eyes, Coellum soldiers.  Thier cobalt uniforms stood out brilliantly against the gold and white of the Merlain surroundings.  Where the Merlain folk were scattered and disorganized, the Coellum, Saw observed, were in tightly coordinated communication.  He noticed one soldier look up and point right at Saw, but it was unclear if Saw was even noticed and the attention was at the building generally.  Still, Saw thought, all the more reason to make a daring daylight escape.

The sound of many footsteps in the hallway stopped Saw before he ever started.  He could tell from the cadence of talk and speed of movement that these were soldiers scouting the building for who knew what.  Knowing that he would be captured or killed as soon as he was noticed, Saw decided that his only course of action was to, how he hated that it had come to this, play dead.

Saw quickly laid back down on the floor and placed dust and debris over him to camouflage his consciousness.  As the sounds of the troops got closer, Saw made every effort to slow his breathing and calm his pulse.  For a long time he lay like that, and for a short moment thought the soldiers might pass the room by, but then he heard the crunch of boots scraping and breaking building material underfoot.

“What happened here?” a soldier said.

“Better check for bodies,” ordered another.

Agonizing minutes passed as the Coellum team sifted through the wreckage.  Eventually, Saw felt fingers pressed on his neck and heard the words, “This one’s alive.”  He remained still, feigning that he was still knocked out.  More steps came close to him.

“We can’t move him yet,” said one.  “We need to assess the rest of the floors.  Still, we can’t leave him.”  The soldier gave orders to one of his team to call down for a medical team and to stand guard until they arrived.  Then, once the medics could transport him, the soldier could join back up with the forward team.

Saw heard the team leave.  Then he heard the remaining soldier call a request for medical assistance.  One body is currently unconscious, injuries unknown.  Saw waited many minutes.  He had to make his move, but that move needed to be timed well.  Trying to make the assessment in his head, Saw tried to wait for the most distance he could between his position and the soldiers sweeping the building and the medical team’s arrival.  He needed the soldier to be the furthest away from aide as possible when Saw made his move. 

In his current state, he wasn’t sure how diminished his strength was, and it had been a long time since he’d needed to go hand-to-hand with a fully trained and toned soldier. Still, he waited, imagining the position of every person and the route he would need to take should he be successful. Then, he opened his one good eye and noticed the soldier’s back was to him.  Saw took a deep breath of confidence and slowly, slowly began to get to his feet.