Free The Battle for the Ringed Planet by Richard Edmond Johnson Page B

exclaiming, “Pa!”
     

Chapter 6: Nightmare
    As father and daughter embraced, Torian waved his pistol threateningly at a few others who lingered motioning for them to move off. Siiri’s father was a stoic proud man, wiry with graying hair on the sides and dark brown roof. He brandished a dark thick moustache and limped using a cane, giving Torian a wary glance.
    “Thank you for saving my daughter, I’m Davin Lauronen.” He half mouthed while she turned him around to face the tall young man wearing a navy blue flight suit.
    “Anyone would have done the same.” Torian replied casually.
    “But not a Sky Demon.”
    “Sky Demons are not all what you think they are.”
    “It’s getting late, Pa, can we go home?”
    “Certainly, Siiri.” Then he extended his hand to shake Torian’s, “My home is yours, of course.”
    Word spread about the Sky Demon that was not going to fry them all and that he had returned Siiri, not entirely welcomed in the village. The homes were tunnels or natural caves built into the sloping walls of the wide rolling valley, with entrances concealed by screens of thick brush and trees. The path to Siiri’s home wound through pines and deciduous oak and birch trees to a vertical log door with an iron ring pull handle.
    Inside Torian stood back while her tearful mother and younger brother embraced the blonde girl, though her sister was hesitant. Glancing around it was hard for Torian to believe that the home was a tunnel. It had wooden panel walls, excellent lighting from stylish lamps, and comfortable manufactured furniture, obviously salvaged from the city.
    Then Siiri took his hand, “Torian McCallum, sky warrior, this is my family … my mother Krystin, younger sister Serina and my brother Daniel.” Siiri’s mother held her age well, with youthful eyes and smooth skin and only a few stands of grey in her white blonde hair. Serina was a younger slightly prettier version of Siiri, though it was hard to compare the two when the older girl had lived through Hell for the past few days. Her curly blond-haired brother stared with his bright blue eyes at the soldier, in either awe or fear; Torian was not sure. In fact, there was an awkward silence over the family; they were meeting their first Sky Demon while still in their flesh.
    Finally, Torian’s rumbling stomach broke the uncomfortable quiet and Siiri spoke up, “Sky Demon’s need to eat like everyone else!”    
    Lowering his backpack, he frowned, “What happened to sky warrior? I kinda liked that one.”
    The tunnel home resembled more of an apartment than a house and had two large stone fireplaces, one in the living room and another in the kitchen. Torian had a hundred questions for Davin as the man limped along explaining how the smoke was first filtered, then dispersed in small ducts that cancelled out the heat signature. Pipes with hand pumps brought water from the river into the home, filtered for drinking or bathing, and for human waste disposal. Torian knew that the power generator under the waterfall they had seen earlier supplied the electricity. Every few months, teams of salvagers would venture into the city for supplies they could not manufacture on their own, but generally, the village was self-sufficient. Travelling into the city was sometimes dangerous and Davin received an injury years earlier when a building wall fell and crushed his leg.
    Grondalle, designed to be invisible from Sky Demons, boasting an advanced network of tunnels that ran in every direction underneath the valley and the Norstrom River connecting both sides of the village. Siiri’s home had a door to the outside and another door to enter the vast underground tunnels. There were large meeting rooms underneath built for wood shops, metal smiths, food processing, and the typical tasks found in any farming village. Each tunnel apartment had skylights; round perforated transteel plates on the surface with trapdoor shutters that opened and closed, and