The Quarry

[Rage Menelas]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]Down the collapsed corridor about twenty yards was a body lying on the floor, legs pinioned beneath a pile of rubble that used to be a ceiling. It was Quang; he could tell by the color of his E-suit, a duplicate of the one he was wearing! Ryan rushed to his side. The man had a broken left arm, obvious by the crazy angle that it was perched at. His two legs, caught under a section of the ceiling, prohibited Ryan from moving him. He ran back out to get his tool, praying that he could accomplish what he had in mind without bringing any more of the roof down on their collective heads.

He came back with the metal brace, gingerly placed it under the stone slab covering Quang's legs. The man was out cold, thank God, but Ryan had found a pulse... So now his main concern was getting him out of there before the rest of the place folded like a bad poker hand.

He pushed up gently on the slab, easing it ever so slightly off the trapped legs. Four hands would have been useful but he was short by half, so he would have to improvise. He moved into the lever and jacked it up onto his right shoulder—which hurt like hell! It did, however, leave him with his hands free. In spite of that fact and, strain as he would, he couldn't quite reach down far enough to grab the trapped man. Suddenly, an idea occurred to him. He moved into the lever, closer to the broken slab, sliding his shoulder along the underside as he did so. Continuing like this until he was able to touch Liu's knees, he grabbed one in either hand and pulled backward gently but firmly. That earned him a grunt.

“Ryan...! What took you so long...?”

He pulled the man again, this time from a point a little below the knees. “I was... pacing myself...” he explained without turning around.

“Ah... good plan...” Quang acknowledged, assisting his efforts by using his good right hand placed flat against the floor to push off in tandem with Ryan's pulls.

Working thusly, they were finally able to extricate the marine's broken legs, for once out they realized this to be the case—compound fractures in both. He would do no walking on his own for quite some time.

Ryan caught his breath for a bare second and then grabbed the two hundred pound dead weight of the marine by his collar, sliding him out backwards. It was the longest twenty yards of Ryan's life. It was not the weight, the exertion of dragging him, but rather the trepidatious certainty that fate would somehow intervene at the last moment, caving in the ceiling. He was wrong, she didn't.

“Go! Bring me my ship... bring Pam-sae to me...” Quang ordered in a commanding tone. Ryan wanted to say: I don't work for you,but realized it was not the time to get pugnacious.

“Right... I was looking forward to making that hike again right away...”

“Here.” Quang handed him a thin piece of black metal he had fished from his E-suit pocket. “It will allow you access to Pam-sae.”

“Right... I'll need that...” he agreed, pulled Quang a short distance from the ruins, propped him into a sitting position and started his torturous trek back.