[Lothithil]

Garnished with the editing talents of MacBeth**

The Rainmakers, ch 15
Native Guide

From the moment that she had heard the tapping echo of their imminent rescue, Barbara had been consumed by a desire to get to the surface. She wanted to put the horror of that day behind her, and let the fresh desert air and sunlight wipe away the memories of the missing and the dead from her mind. She had done all she could do, and she had just enough will power and energy left to leave this place and its ghosts behind. She tried not to think about the terrible loss to the scientific community—she couldn’t bring herself even to name him—but deep in her mind she suffered, believing that he was now dead, buried with his brilliant research and unspoken ideas in the ruin of the KIVA.

Then this man had slithered into the room in a rockslide and a cloud of dusty but welcome fresh air, and Barbara was as startled and bemused by his voice as she was by his appearance. He spoke with a Midwestern accent and a matter-of-fact tone that seemed as out of place as a lawnmower on a spaceship.

“Anybody hurt seriously?”

Barbara had been about to ask him if he was all right, but he was already pushing himself up to his knees. He was looking around, taking in every detail of the room and the occupants, while his hands wandered to his belt, bag, and pockets as if searching for missing items.

His eyes swept across her, and Barbara was taken aback at how handsome he was. She blushed profoundly, ducking her chin and trying to focus on Dobbson’s injury to hide her embarrassment. She was annoyed with herself; how could she react like such a schoolgirl—at a time like this!

When she glanced up again, she saw that he was looking at Dobbson, and she realized that he was evaluating the man’s condition—he was clearly the most injured of all the scientists in the group—and she felt a flutter of disappointment.

Which made her even more annoyed with herself.

⌂

As MacGyver looked over the group of weary survivors, he noticed one woman in particular. She had striking blonde hair, but what caught his attention the most was the fact that compared with the other people in the room, she and the man she was supporting were more disheveled, their clothes noticeably more soiled. They had obviously been through a lot more hell than anyone else. But they also seemed tougher. The woman wore a determined, almost grim expression, and her face was flushed. MacGyver decided that she must be very relieved to be rescued.

The others were certainly relieved. One of the men came forward with an eager step to answer MacGyver’s question. “Some of us, but we can all walk.”

MacGyver lunged to his feet. “Well, all right! Let’s getcha out of here. One at a time, up through that hole.” He gestured to the pile behind him, eager to get them out of the room in case of further cave-ins. He didn’t relish the idea of having to dig his way out, too. “Make your way to the corridor from there.”

A couple of the scientists scrambled to obey, fear having set flight to motion. They were followed more slowly by the others, the unhurt supporting the injured so that they could make the awkward climb to freedom.

The blonde woman assisted her companion, holding a bloodstained cloth to his forehead. “Do you think you can make it up that?” she asked him.

The man smiled at her. “After what we’ve already been through? I expect this will be a piece of cake.” He took the cloth from her hands and tied it around his head, then proceeded to climb up the pile of rubble. One of the more able-bodied men waited at the top to help people through. She didn’t follow immediately, but lingered to lend a helping hand to those who were still shaken and unsteady on their feet.

MacGyver watched them filing out; he would wait until they were all out before he proceeded. “Colsen, you got a whole buncha people comin’ your way. A rope ladder in the elevator shaft oughta get ‘em topside.” Some of the people waiting to evacuate glanced at MacGyver uncertainly before they realized he was talking into a radio.

“We’ll see them out from up here. Thank you!” was Burke’s relieved and grateful answer.

“Well, we got lucky. Let’s just hope it holds, huh?” MacGyver replied.

“Sure you can go on, Mac?” Gantner said.

“Well, unless you got another way to get to Marlow and Steubens. I’m just gettin’ lazy.”

Barbara’s turn had come and she had just begun to scramble up the pile of dirt when she overheard MacGyver speaking. Her desire for escape fled up and out of the hole at the sound of Steuben’s name.

She turned back toward MacGyver, hope smeared on her face along with traces of dirt. “Marlow and Steu – you’re not saying they’re still alive, are you?”

“Yes, ma’am. In a lab on the Third level?”

Barbara’s face lit up with excitement. “I know where! I – I mean, I was just about to join them again in his lab when the first explosion hit. Are you going down after them?”

“Yeah, well, that’s the plan. It sure would be a big help if you could tell me how you made it all the way back up here,” MacGyver asked eagerly. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a trial to get down to the third level, if just one of these survivors had made it up this far on their own!

Barbara’s bright expression hardened and changed. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you. I’m going with you.”

Oh, boy. “No, whoa – whoa, whoa, no, no. I’m sorry, but the only place you’re going is up through that hole to the surface,” MacGyver said, trying to be simultaneously gentle of her feelings but firm that she should not remain in danger.

From the way she glared at him, MacGyver could tell that she wasn’t going to back down that easily. She didn’t cross her arms or clench her fists; it was more of something in the way her eyes threw sparks, and the way the dirt on her fair skin failed to darken the fierce light of determination in her expression.

“Oh, no. Not without Karl Steubens.”

MacGyver tried another tactic. He couldn’t let her proceed with him without being fully aware of the situation, and certainly not if he didn’t know more about her.

“Uh, look, uh – ” he wiggled his fingers to invite her to share her name with him.

“Spencer. Barbara Spencer.”

MacGyver sighed. “Barbara. What if I were to tell you that if I can’t stop an acid leak down there, in a few hours they’re gonna flood this whole complex with sodium hydroxide. Hmm?”

“Then I’d say we’re wasting time,” Barbara responded with a challenging gleam in her eyes.

MacGyver accepted the inevitable. “Ah, guys – we got a little change of plan here. I have a Barbara Spencer on my hands –” as he made this announcement through his radio, he returned Barbara’s regard, softened with a wry grin, “– she’s comin’ with me.”

⌂

Up on the First level, Pete Thornton was listening to the two voices coming quite clearly over the radio. He covered his eyes with one hand as MacGyver capitulated to Barbara's demand. That boy never could learn to say no to a woman, he thought wryly.

Gantner noticed his expression. He covered his mike and whispered, “What’s wrong, Andy? Andy?”

Pete recovered quickly, remembering who he was supposed to be, and covered his own mike to respond, “I’m fine – I’m fine. Just one more complication. I sure hope she doesn’t get in MacGyver’s way.”

Burke’s assistant Gus was kneeling down at the service panel of a nearby computer console and had overheard the conversation. “Barb really knows her way around the KIVA,” he volunteered helpfully, looking up from the naked circuit board that he was testing. “She’s Steuben’s right-hand man … so to speak. She’s familiar with all his research and she knows the labs inside and out.” Then he blushed, realizing he was wearing a silly grin that might be considered inappropriate when speaking of a colleague– particularly one of the opposite gender – and he hastily turned back to his task.

Gantner sighed. He leaned in so that only Pete could hear him, and softly he spoke his confession, “I was really hoping that somehow Steubens and Marlow were with those survivors, and that Mac could come back up right away.”

Pete nodded but said nothing. He knew that MacGyver would have gone on anyway … there was still the acid leak to stop. Until he ran out of time, the ruined KIVA laboratories were MacGyver’s playground. Pete was as worried about MacGyver as Gantner, but he couldn’t express as much without compromising his cover.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Pete settled for lighting up another cigarette—borrowed from one of the engineers—and filled the air with smoke instead.

~~~Link to Chapter 16

[Astra]

And another poetic line -"hope smeared on her face along with traces of dirt". Wonderful!

Well, now things start to get into motion!