Free Single Combat by Dean Ing

the faint odor of ozone.
    At the bottom stairwell door was a woman. No, only half a woman. He kept going, eased the heavy door open and jammed it with a hunk of debris. He studied the faint glow in the quiet dank hell of the lowest sub-basement for long seconds. It wasn't entirely quiet; as he stood in the scant protection of the doorframe, a desk-sized chunk of concrete slithered a few centimeters down a pile of debris in muted warning.
    "Bottom level, Control, facing East. Either Mirovitch planted some chemlamps
under
debris, or there's been more settling since he was here. Don't suppose you could send him down…"
    The desexed voice was distant now. "Mirovitch was rotated out after he reported what he found, Q."
    "Mustn't risk the prettyboys, huh?" But he knew better. The less a regular knew about weapons caches, the less he would speculate.
    "Say again, Q," the faint voice requested.
    "Forget it." He drew two chemlamps from his backpac, energized them, snapped a teat on one and squeezed carefully against its slender length. Bright gobbets of liquid light splashed near his feet, a trail he could follow later. With stealthy caution he skirted the collapsed segments, moving into deeper gloom.
    He felt the faint tremor through his bootsoles, saw dust sift through another rent in the concrete above to his left. Several levels above him—endless tons of hair-trigger-balanced junk above him—something big had let go.
    "Report, Q." It must've been a beaut. Now Control was loud in his noggin.
    "Proceeding East, Control. I'm still suckin' wind, if that's what—wups. Well, Mirovitch was right." In the dim dazzle of his chemlamp was a welter of cartons. They had fallen from a stack against the East wall to reveal the top of a trapezoidal opening. It hadn't always been trapezoidal; it had been forced awry by the building's collapse. It hadn't been part of the original concrete pour, either.
    The cartons weighed little, obviously just a mask for the portal beyond. Quantrill eased several of them away; stood shaking his head as he studied the skewed opening. He squirted the chemlamp fluid into the black maw before him, saw the spatter outline a stack of fiberite casings and, farther back, more military storage canisters. He wished then for an incandescent lamp but thrust that wish away. He'd seen what happened when an electric bulb cracked in an atmosphere full of dust. Usually nothing happened. But at times that dusty mixture supported combustion, and then what happened was of no further interest to the bulb user.
    Some idiot had opened one of the sealed fiberite cartons, as if by leaving a live round in sight he could remind himself of its potency. Dumb… "We've got a cache of rockets, Control—could be old Hellfire ATM's they put on attack choppers against armor. Prewar stuff; I see a 1987 stencil. Estimate two hundred rounds," he said, easing his head into the opening to peer past the hole in the foundation wall.
    Someone had run an earth-borer through that hole and hollowed out one hell of a room, without more than the flimsiest kind of wooden mine-shoring to keep the earth roof in place. The damned stuff had already fallen nearby, he saw with a grunt of fresh surprise. All of that overburden could let go at any second, right on top of two hundred rounds of stolen antitank missiles. And old munitions were touchy.
    It was then that he heard the rustle of fabric.
    He tossed the chemlamp onto a distant pile of soft earth; fumbled for another. After a moment he catfooted through the hole to kneel in the dirt under that half-assed mine shoring. "Control," he said, "I've found a live one."
    Silence in his mastoid, but ragged breathing from beneath a splintered plank. Half buried, left wrist flopping, hell of a bruise spanning cheek and forehead—but a steady pulse despite shallow breathing. Poor sonofabitch was just a kid. "Control? Verify, Control." Now he spoke louder, but into his cupped hand to minimize the echo. No