Even compared to the Outrider, the dig site was a mess. Markath followed Dieter into the depths of the cave, shocked by how bad the devastation was. The basecamp the humans had set up inside was largely buried under fallen rocks, their supply stockpile crushed. Whatever generator they'd brought for power had failed, too — the only lights they had were flashlights.

He found himself surprised that the humans had survived as well as they had. This was a disaster, and one he couldn't understand.

What the hell happened here? He couldn't fathom it — Marsquakes weren't common, and the sensors at the Dragon Palace should have picked up anything that caused this much damage. Unless it was somehow localized, and that didn't make sense unless it had been artificial.

And the damage seemed to get worse the deeper into the cave they went. The humans had set up a portable airlock against a wall, but the quake had twisted and broken it.

"What did you find down there?" he asked Dieter as the two of them pushed their way inside. Now that the airmaker was set up nearby, the damaged airlock wasn't a problem, and that was a relief. Though Markath wasn't that familiar with human technology, even he could see that this was beyond repair.

Dieter looked at him, seeming to weigh his words before answering. "We're not sure," he said eventually. "Some kind of settlement, buried a thousand years ago. Not too big, but there's a fair bit of crystal down there."

Beyond the wrecked airlock the cave floor evened out, and Markath knew he was standing in the entrance to a dragon ruin. But the damage of a thousand years was dwarfed by the fresh rockfall, the roof bowing in dangerously and parts of the cave sealed off by fallen stone. The oppressive weight of stone over their heads weighed on him, and he wondered how stable the roof was now.

Dieter gestured into a corner of the makeshift chamber, showing Markath a pile of blue crystals. Old technology of his people, dug up by these scavengers as a treasure for sale. His fists clenched involuntarily, and he took a deep breath to relax. I knew that was what they were here for, he reminded himself. It's not a surprise that they're robbing the graves of my people. And they have imperial permission.

If it was up to him, he'd drive off all the human scavengers... but the emperor did have a point. Rewarding humans for bringing this technology back to the palace would be far quicker than trying to recover it all themselves. There were simply too few dragons for the job, but they needed to have the crystal if they were ever going to rebuild and go back to the stars.

That it was necessary didn't make it any easier to accept.

Markath turned away, not wanting to look at the crystals for long enough to recognize what exactly they were. He wasn't sure whether he could control his temper if any of them came from implants. Bad enough that this place was being pillaged at all; if the humans were digging through the corpses of his fellows that would be intolerable.

While he'd been distracted, Dieter had approached a tunnel leading deeper into the rocks. It looked to Markath as though it had, long ago, been the main corridor though this place. It had once been large enough for a dragon in warform to get through. Now, after it had collapsed and been blasted open again, it would a tight fit for him in his humanoid form.

"Jones? Any word from below?" Dieter called into the dim interior of the cave.

"No luck, boss," another speaker answered him. His voice sounded flat and drained, emotion buried under despair and fatigue. "If anyone's still down there, they aren't talking."

Markath pursed his lips and shook his head. "Your primitive radios won't work well around our technology. Just because you can't contact them doesn't mean that they aren't trying to reach you."

A new face emerged from the dark, looking at him with shock. The human stared for a second before turning to Dieter. "Holy shit, what's—"

Dieter snapped something in another language, one that Markath didn't know. Jones replied in the same tongue before speaking in English again.

"Sorry, sorry, wasn't expecting you that's all," he said to Markath. "Yeah, you're right, but we took precautions. Chained relays should pass the message out despite the interference, and that was working before the quake. Maybe the rocks took out too many of the relays, or maybe there's no one left to use them. I don't think there's anyone left."

That wasn't an acceptable answer.

"I am here for Hannah Cain," Markath said. "And I will go and get her."

"No, no, you can't!" Jones looked panicked at the very idea, and Markath frowned. Before he could interject Jones continued. "Look, she's not the only one trapped here, we've got eight people unaccounted for. Cain was the last, the lowest down. If you dig all the way to the deep tunnels, you'll destabilize everything. If anyone's still alive down there, you're more likely to kill them than save them."

"Our sponsors are coming with proper digging equipment," Dieter added. "Most of ours is damaged or destroyed. We're all best off sitting tight and waiting for rescue, rather than risking their lives and ours."

That gave Markath pause. The last thing he wanted to do was bring down the tunnel roof on his mate's sister. But the situation was more urgent than the two men seemed to think, and their fear was misplaced.

"Anyone under the rocks will run out of air before the rescuers arrive," he pointed out. "Unless they're going to get here in the next few hours. Better that we try to save them first. If you don't want to risk your lives for your companions, that is your business — but I am willing to take the chance."

He wasn't quite sure about the air. Humans had primitive spacesuits, but he didn't know exactly how long their air would last. Still, their technology had its limits and it had already been a long time since the cave had collapsed on them. Markath was confident the suits wouldn't last until the RyaTech rescue expedition got here. The airmaker might save the buried humans, but only if they were near the surface so that the air could reach them. Even then, they'd need to be conscious and able to take off their helmets to breathe the fresh air. If they weren't talking, they probably weren't up to that.

The two humans looked at each other, Dieter impassive and Jones nervous. "You might be right, but we can't shift this stone with the gear we have left," Jones said, pointing to the collapsed tunnel. "Not safely. Our explosives expert was the worst hurt in the quake."

There was something strange about the look he shot Dieter as he said that. Markath couldn't read human expressions well enough to understand it, but he looked upset, almost as though he blamed Dieter for that fact.

Let them blame who they like, he thought. I have no time for human squabbles.

"You might not be able to move it," Markath said, baring his teeth and striding to the opening. The rocks on the surface weren't so large that he couldn't shift them, he thought. Picking the largest that blocked the entrance, he braced himself. "I, however, am a dragon warrior. And I will not be kept from my mate's sister by some rocks."

The last word came out in a hiss as he heaved. His muscles were taut as iron cords, and the stone weighed a lot. Almost too much to move, but not quite. With a roar of effort, Markath pulled it aside and sent it crashing into the space beside the scavenged crystals. The two humans stared at him, awestruck, and when he grabbed the next rock they hurried to help him.

All they could do was guide the stones he pulled aside, and brace the opening he made as he pulled the stones out of the way. But between the three of them, they managed to dig a narrow path, one barely big enough for Markath to squeeze through. And somewhere under the rocks he heard motion. Someone tapping on the stone, trying to get their attention. With renewed energy, the trio dug in the direction of the sound. They fell into a pattern, Jones running to fetch extendable poles and Dieter using them to brace the tunnel behind Markath.

The stone groaned above him, and he knew this fresh tunnel wouldn't be stable. But it only had to last a short while, only had to allow him to rescue Hannah and whatever other humans were trapped beneath these rocks. And as he went he found pockets of space, areas that could have contained a human. They were empty, but they gave him hope.

"There!" Jones cried out, his fatigue forgotten as Markath pulled aside a slab of stone. Under it was a spacesuited arm, moving weakly. Markath grinned, sweat running down his body as he worked with renewed strength. Soon they were pulling their way into a tight gap that had survived inside the falling stone.

It was barely big enough for the three humans inside it. Not quite big enough, in fact — one of them was half-buried by the stone. But all three had the strength to look up as Markath levered a slab of stone aside and uncovered their hiding place.

His triumph faded slightly when he saw that none of them was Hannah, but only a little. The trio would live, because of him.

Strange, he thought as he looked at them. None of the three had their helmets on. Not that they needed them, now that he'd brought the airmaker, but one of them didn't even have a helmet clipped to his belt. How were they breathing before I arrived?

This wasn't the time to ask questions, though. The three men were near tears from their rescue, and one had a crushed arm. Markath picked him up carefully and edged his way backward, trying not to do the human any more harm on the way out. Jones and Dieter helped the other two up and soon all six of them were free of the collapse.

More casualties to be treated, and no news of Hannah — that wasn't how he'd wanted to return to Amanda's side, but he could hardly abandon this man.

Behind them, the stone creaked and shifted. Markath hoped that the new tunnel would hold until he returned. He'd have to go deeper if he wanted to find his mate's sister.

* * *

The next hours were spent in hard work for less and less return. The deeper Markath dug into the collapsed tunnel, the harder it was to make any progress, and they didn't find any other survivors as they went. Under the pressure of the stone above, it became almost impossible to dislodge any of the fallen rocks. Worse, there was no space to put the rocks he could move. Each one had to be laboriously dragged back to the opening, which was barely wide enough for Markath to fit through.

The further he went, the smaller the space he could clear, and it was already too tight for comfort. Markath felt a sudden empathy for the humans he was searching for, trapped and stuck in a space too small to move in. As awful as this felt for him, it must have been a hundred times worse for them.

At last, they found two more members of the expedition. It wasn't a happy reunion. The first had been struck on the head with enough force to smash his skull, and the second had been crushed too tightly to breathe.

Digging them out was grim, slow work, but necessary. They couldn't be left here, that was neither practical nor respectful. But as he shifted the rocks from on top of one of the crushed bodies, Markath felt a faint breeze.

That's strange. There shouldn't be air moving down here, not unless there's a working airmaker further down. And that would be a treasure of a find for the humans, far more valuable than the stash of crystals they'd gathered. The number of airmakers on Mars was a serious limitation on anyone's ability to spread out and colonize the airless planet.

It also raised questions. Airmakers required a lot of power to operate for any length of time, and the atmospheric shields that kept air in took even more. The portable one that he’d brought along did both, and even with the biggest battery available it would only work for a few months. If the airmaker here had been operating for a thousand years, there had to be a power source too, and that would be even more valuable.

He could see the crack through which the breeze blew, just beyond the hollow he was excavating. The rocks were tightly braced against each other, too heavy to move without blasting and risking the whole roof falling in. But between them was a narrow gap, so narrow he doubted he could fit through. Maybe, possibly, with great effort, but he'd risk getting jammed and being unable to free himself.

First things first. Pulling the bodies back to the surface, Markath handed them over to Dieter and Jones. With a grim solemnity, the humans took their dead and laid them out beside the Outrider, covering them with sheets. Markath was relieved to see that neither of them was Hannah, but nonetheless it was a sad moment.

There were two other bodies already there, recovered before the arrival of the Golden Kite. Which only left four members of the crew unaccounted for, Hannah amongst them.

"I'm going back in," he said after a respectful silence.

"You can barely get through the gap you've dug," Dieter said. "And that tunnel's not stable. We're very grateful for the work you've done, Markath, but this is too much of a risk."

Markath just looked at him. The humans didn't understand, and perhaps they couldn't understand. Amanda needed to know what had happened to her sister, and he wasn't going to fail his mate. That was all there was to it.

"I thought I felt air moving, beyond where I found these two," he told them, sticking to the practicalities. "There was a crack between the stones that I could follow."

The two humans looked at each other, and Markath frowned at the expressions on their faces. They looked more afraid than hopeful at that revelation.

"How big was the crack?" Jones asked. Neither of the humans had come in far enough to see it for themselves.

"Not wide, but I may be able to fit through if I try," Markath told him. In truth, he wasn't sure. If only he could get at them in his warform, he'd have no trouble shifting the rocks apart, but there was no way he could fit down there. And clearing the whole tunnel enough to get a full dragon down it would certainly bring the roof down again.

Jones looked as though he was about to say something, but then he stopped and looked at Dieter. Dieter, in turn, seemed frozen. Finally, just as Markath's patience was about to give out, he spoke.

"If you are almost at the opening to the cave itself, you really shouldn't risk destabilizing the tunnel any further," he said carefully, as though he was trying out each word before saying it. "It sounds like the settlement is intact, and there's air. Anyone alive down there will be okay for a while longer, and the rescue team should be here soon. They'll be able to clear their way through that blockage much more safely."

"But Hannah and the others might be injured on the far side," Markath said. "You're right that they have air, but what if their injuries need urgent treatment?"

"And what if, forcing your way through that gap, you collapse the roof on them? Look, digging out the injured was definitely a good thing and you may well have saved three lives today. But this is different. Now, you'd be as likely to kill the people you're looking for as you'd be to save them."

That gave Markath pause. He had to admit that the human had a point, and the risk to Hannah might not be worth taking. Not when there was another option. But there was something about the humans' reactions that didn't fit properly, and he wanted to know what it was.

He could see that he wouldn't get the answers from them, though.

"I need to rest anyway," he said, which was true enough. All of him ached from the work he'd done moving rocks, and his skin was scraped in a dozen places despite the protection of his scales. And he hadn't seen Amanda in far too many hours.

The two humans looked relieved at that, and he shook his head as he took his leave of them. Was there something down there that they didn't want him to see?

He found Amanda resting against the hull of the Golden Kite, looking out at the Martian horizon. She looked as exhausted as he felt, and no wonder. Both of them had worked a long, hard day.

Her expression brightened when he came into view, though, and Markath felt his heart lift. At least they were working on the problem, and working together they'd saved lives. That had to be a good thing.

"Any news?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"Nothing about Hannah," he told her, quickly filling her in on the two bodies he'd recovered. Amanda shook her head and sighed unhappily.

"I suppose no news is good news, then. How much deeper can you dig?"

"I don't know if I should go deeper," he said with a frown. "There's a path to the deeper caves, and I think they're clear for the moment. If Hannah's back there, she is probably not in danger. Forcing my way through a gap that narrow would be risky."

Amanda looked away, and Markath settled himself on the ground near her. For a moment, they sat in silence.

"I'm not sure about that," she said quietly. "There's something odd going on here, something the Outrider's crew won't talk about. And I'm not sure that all the injuries I saw were caused by a rockfall, Markath. Maybe Hannah is on the far side of that gap but in some other danger."

Markath looked up at the stars shining high above them, drawing in a deep breath and thinking. That wasn't comforting, but it fitted with the odd reactions he'd gotten from Dieter and Jones.

"There is definitely more going on here than I thought," he agreed. "But that doesn't mean that it's a good idea for me to try and force my way through that gap. I left a light on our side of it, though. If Hannah is on the far side, she might be able to see it and get through herself."

Amanda brightened at that. "You mean a human could fit through it?"

Markath sat up immediately. "No, Amanda. Absolutely not. You are not going to go through there on your own, I forbid it."

He regretted his choice of words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but it was too late to call them back. Amanda's eyes narrowed. "You forbid it? Oh no, Markath, you don't get to do that. I'm not yours, remember?"

"Whether you're mine or not, I won't let you go into danger like that on your own," Markath insisted. "It's too dangerous, and we don't even know what dangers you'll face on the other side."

"I don't care," she said simply. "I have to rescue Hannah, Markath. I'm not letting Mars take her from me. How would you feel if I was trapped on the other side of that gap?"

Fire burned in his heart at the thought, and he pulled himself up to face her. He had to make her understand. "If it was you, I'd pull this whole place down to get you out. You know that, Amanda. But that doesn't mean it would be a good idea. Please, don't do this."

He reached out to take her by the shoulder. "It will only be a day, perhaps two, until RyaTech gets here with proper digging gear and we can get through that blockage safely."

"And Hannah could be dead by then! She might need my help now, Markath," Amanda insisted. He looked at her intently and shook his head. He could see Amanda's point, but he wasn't going to let her go into danger on her own. Especially not when they had no idea what she'd be walking into.

"Amanda, you are needed here. I will keep working on widening that gap tomorrow, once we've rested, and I will keep searching. But you must promise not to do anything foolish on your own, my mate. Please."

She looked at him, her eyes serious, and seemed to be on the verge of arguing before she relented.

"Okay, Markath," she said, looking away. "I promise."