by P. R. Adams
And then he was over the top, panting over the open channel.
Stiles rubbed her back. “What’s up there, Sergeant?”
“Looks like…” He groaned, as if exerting himself. “Shit. Collapsed buildings, maybe?”
She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. “Any sign of trouble?”
“None that I can see. Looks pretty much fallen down and burned out from here. This an Azoren city?”
“No. We think it was Zeofal.”
Kohn’s head twisted around. “Forerunners?”
“It’s just a guess. We can’t get archaeologists in here, obviously.”
He nodded, and a second later, the rope fluttered down to coil slightly at the base of the wall.
Carruth whistled. “All right, Corporal Grier, time to see how you climb.”
Grier chuckled. “Better than these old derelicts.”
She tested the rope, then shot up it. She had a marvelous physique, and seeing her climb was proof it wasn’t just sculpting. There was power and endurance in her muscles. When she went over the top, she whooped.
Stiles stopped Halliwell. “Let me be another anchor.”
The staff sergeant made a disapproving face but handed her the rope.
Her back protested, throbbing and at one point threatening with spasms. She paused and let her boot tips rest in toe holds, then finished the climb. Grier stretched over Carruth and offered a hand, then pulled the lieutenant up the rest of the way.
The corporal had been sitting on the stone, legs raised, thighs locked around the sergeant’s hips. Stiles did the same, pressing her chest against Grier’s back. Apparently, the corporal was too winded to crack wise about that.
They pulled the weapons up fairly quickly after that, followed by the other three. Once everyone was at the top, Carruth pulled the rope up. Odds were good they would need it at some point in the ruins.
Grier checked her weapon. “I got point.”
Halliwell patted his chest. It was where he kept the piece of shrapnel. “You stay close. Eyes wide.”
The corporal nudged him with a shoulder. “I got it. Trust me.”
She hunched low and jogged toward the jagged, black walls and rubble piles lining the outer edge of the ruins. There was an almost serpentine motion about her movement, except there was a more random appearance to her shifts left and right.
Halliwell watched her for several seconds, then turned back to Lemke. “You follow me. Lieutenant, you and Kohn next.”
Carruth waved. “On the rear. Spacing?”
“Three meters. Anyone sees anything, shout a warning and drop.”
They followed Grier’s path, which Stiles could barely make out—cleated scrapes in the ice. It was a good indication how confident the Marines were that no one was hidden in the ruins.
After several minutes, they were moving along the outskirts. Deeper in, there were actual structures rising meters above the ground. Most must have once been towers, but a couple looked like they might have been lower rectangular buildings or compounds of connected rectangular buildings. Even those were charred black, and as they drew closer, it became clear they weren’t as intact as they appeared. Sections of walls were gone. The materials in spots had been liquefied and dripped into the broad avenue to pool with other parts of the ruins.
Stiles pulled the tracking device out and turned it on. She pinged, and as she suspected, nothing came back.
They would’ve set the base up somewhere deeper inside, if at all possible.
Grier’s path took them wide around the worst of the melted slag puddles and crumbled piles of shattered and burned materials. In places, the debris completely cluttered the broad avenue, forcing them to pass through skeletal frameworks. Even the foundations of those were charred and slick.
On the fourth ping, something flashed on Stiles’s tracking device. “Staff Sergeant Halliwell, we need to adjust course.” She sent him the coordinates.
He signaled a halt while he brought Grier back and got her on the new course. The corporal had them on track quickly. It would be easy to say she was a natural at it, but Stiles had seen the other woman’s records during the training for insertion aboard the Pandora. Grier had grown up disadvantaged and had made some bad decisions early in her career, but she was a hard worker and had changed with Halliwell’s help. The young woman’s scouting was the result of all that hard work.
Stiles took another ping. “Staff Sergeant, two hundred meters out. A little southeast.”
“All right. Corporal Grier, adjust southeast. Two hundred meters.”
The whole place felt like a ghost town to Stiles. Their steps echoed off the dead structures. Their lamps caught shadows that danced tauntingly. The alien designs—destroyed by something horrific—made everything worse. It only took a small stretch of the imagination to sense the ghosts of the ancient inhabitants stalking the streets of their ruined home.
Grier’s voice startled Stiles. “Halt!”
Halliwell held a clenched fist up, then waved them down. “What is it?”
“Hold for a second.” Grier gasped. “Shit. Okay. One of ours.”
“Ours? You’ve got a body?”
“Parts of one. Frozen solid.”
Stiles pinged the tracking device. “She’s about fifteen meters from the signal.”
Halliwell’s head turned left and right. Scanning. “Corporal Grier, anything around you look like a good hiding place?”
Seconds passed. “Yeah. I think I’ve got something. Let me check.”
Now that they were still, Stiles’s back quivered and ached. She needed a relaxant, maybe a massage. Maybe worse. Kohn had been good with massages. He took his time and followed her guidance.
“Hey!” Grier’s voice was almost lost in static. “You hear me?”
“We do now.” Halliwell looked to the others; they all nodded their heads. “You’ve got static over your connection.”
“Well, that’s fucked up. I found the way down to what I think’s their hideout. Doesn’t make much sense to have interference down there, does it?”
Stiles frowned. “It could. They’d need to have hard lines running out.”
“Oh. Okay. Yeah. I found some cables. They seem to run to little transmitters.”
“That would do it. They’d use signal blockers to hide their location from scans. Run the signals over shielded cables to directional transmitters. It makes it hard to spot them.”
“Well, then I found our people. But there’s a problem.”
Halliwell held up a finger; he wanted to take over. “What is it?”
“More corpses. Cut up. Frozen. And the hatch that was probably being used to cover this place up? Open.”
A chill ran through Stiles’s gut. It would be hard to heat a place on a moon like Jotun. Leaving a hatch open…? “Corporal, are there any signs of heat coming out of that hatch?”
“Not a bit. The place looks as frozen as these corpses.”
Which probably meant everyone was dead.
Stiles swallowed. “We need to move, Staff Sergeant Halliwell.”
The tall Marine nodded. “Corporal Grier, we’re heading in.”
Grier chuckled, but it was an anxious sound. “I’ve got you covered. Unless there’s ghosts out there, then you’re on your own.”
As they sped along the path Grier had marked for them, Stiles wondered if that was all they were going to find—the dead and their ghosts.
Or was something worse out there?
Something that had killed the SIGINT team and now waited for them.
23
Through Stiles’s infrared imaging, the GSA listening post showed the same cold blue-black as the ground above. There were no heat marks on the ladder leading down or on the visible walls or floor. Grier was right: The hatch had been open for some time.
A moaning sound brought the lieutenant around.
The wind, she realized. Just the wind.
Stiles lowered herself to a knee. The ladde
r was a narrow, telescoping metal device, part of the gear the team would have brought down with them. Everything would be lightweight, made of advanced composites, and space efficient. They had chosen a basement in a building with three partial walls still standing near the hatch and a broken set of stairs that stopped just short of the largely collapsed second floor. The hatch had been fastened to an entry that must have been fairly intact, possibly a maintenance access.
A chill caused her to shiver, and her back muscles spasmed.
Halliwell dropped to a knee beside her. “I can check it out.”
“No. Not yet.”
She poked her head through the hole and shone her lamp around. Ice sparkled on the surfaces near the opening. There was a fast-plaster wall almost immediately to her left, and to her right a long hallway, with an open doorway on the right not far down and an intersection at the very edge of her light. Thin cables snaked from the doorway, down the hall, and up the wall behind the ladder, then through a sealed channel next to the hatch hinges. She checked again: There were security cameras along the hallway ceiling.
It was competently put together.
“You seeing this, Staff Sergeant Halliwell?”
“Hall, a doorway, an…intersection?”
“Looks like.”
“And that wall next to you—that’s our work, right?”
“Fast plaster. Great for reinforcing or sealing things off. A place like this, they probably brought in several tubs of it.” Stiles edged away from the ladder. “I’m worried more about Azoren tracking us into here than waiting for us down there.”
“Okay.” He pushed up and rotated slowly. “We’ve got three areas to watch. I’ll check those stairs, maybe reduce it to two areas if I can get high enough. Worst case, we’ll have eyes up high.”
“I’ll take Sergeant Carruth and Petty Officer Kohn with me.”
Halliwell frowned. “I don’t like it.”
“Whatever happened down there was days ago.”
“Yeah, and whatever happened down there involved cutting soldiers to pieces. That sound like Azoren to you?”
“No. That doesn’t mean we walk away from our assignment.”
“Be careful.”
The staff sergeant waved the two corporals over and pointed them to positions at the edge of two walls, then headed for the stairs. They didn’t look stable enough for someone Stiles’s size much less a big man like Halliwell, but he took the unsteady steps halfway up before going prone against them.
Stiles waved Carruth toward the ladder. “Sergeant, make sure we’ll be alone down there, please.”
Carruth checked the ladder, stuck his head in the hole, then slung his weapon over his back and descended. The ladder ended about half a meter from the bottom. He dropped and quickly unslung his gun, then tossed a flare down the hall, washing everything in a ghastly red light. After leaning forward, perhaps listening or straining to make out visual details, he crept up to the near doorway and disappeared inside.
From behind Stiles, Kohn sighed. “It would be better if he had someone watching his back.”
She didn’t turn. “Are you volunteering?”
“We’re a little short of Marines.”
“We are.” She tried to connect to Carruth. “Let me tell the serg—”
Hissing filled the channel she’d tried to create.
Kohn knelt at the ladder, fiddled with his carbine, then awkwardly curled up enough to fit through the small opening. “Everything okay?”
“No comms from up here. The interference system they used must be the new passive plates.”
“I’ll try when I get down there.”
She grabbed his hand before he was too far down to reach. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
He smiled and maybe even blushed. “But I do for me.”
Carruth backed out of the room and wheeled around, weapon raised, then froze when Kohn raised his hands. The sergeant pushed past the petty officer, got up to the ladder, then connected to Stiles. “Hey, Lieutenant? Next time you send someone down when I’m checking things out, how about warning me?”
Stiles nodded. “I tried. Looks like the only comms we’ll have will be line of sight.”
“Great. Well, I found your comms intercept room.” He pointed toward the open doorway. “Looks intact, I guess.”
The comms center! “I’m coming down.” She connected to Halliwell. “We’ve found the equipment.”
“All clear up here so far. Nothing but darkness as far as I can see.”
“We’ll be out of touch. There might be a relay once we’re inside, but it’s line of sight otherwise.”
“I’ll check on you in five.”
“Thanks.”
The ladder shuddered with each step, but she kept her grip. Her back tightened up from being curled up so tight; she stretched when she was on the floor.
Carruth had his weapon pointed down the hall. “Your petty officer always get excited by technical gear?” There was a slight buzz on the line, but he was intelligible.
“He likes to solve problems.”
“Great. Maybe he can figure out how we get the hell out of this little trap.”
“That’s my burden.”
The sergeant grunted. “How about we start with our next step then?”
“The intersection. There should be a generator system. Batteries. Something. People lived down here. They had heat.”
He led her past the room where Kohn was inspecting equipment.
She signaled for Carruth to wait, then slid in beside Kohn to examine some of the gear herself. The room was tiny—a fold-down table to the right of the door crammed with systems and displays, a rack of more systems that acted as a back wall. His chair barely had room to move. “You going to be okay alone?”
“I-I like it better when you’re around, but I’ll be okay.”
Stiles squeezed his shoulder. “You weren’t just a job for me. Not like Parkinson.”
“Thanks. I guess?”
She leaned in and hugged him despite the awkwardness, then stepped back into the hallway.
Carruth stretched his arm out. “Maintain this distance, okay?”
“Got it.”
He edged up to the flare and kicked it into the four-way intersection. A little more detail was revealed by the glow—another hallway as wide as theirs, on the left ending in maybe fifteen meters at a collapse that had been plastered, on the right ending at a plaster wall. There were doorways on either side. Straight ahead, the hallway continued as far as the flare lit.
She didn’t wait for him to ask. “Left.”
There were three doorways, one of them partially blocked by the collapse. Carruth signaled for her to check the right, then poked his head into the left. The room to the right held bunks that had the same sort of makeup as the ladder: telescoped poles for frames with sleeping bags piled on top. There were four double bunks in a wide “U” shape and four footlockers. Two carbines leaned against the wall. A personal computing device rested on one of the top bunks. Rebreather masks like the one she wore hung from the ends of the bunks.
The floor was clean. Everything was orderly. Tidy.
She checked one of the footlockers. It was split in two, with uniforms and underwear folded inside both halves.
They wouldn’t have brought a fabricator with them, or at least not one capable of printing out enough clothes to keep them going. The weapons showed no sign of use. Magazines were stacked against the wall.
Full.
She grabbed a gun and a couple magazines for herself.
Carruth poked his head into the doorway. “Generator and heater in here. Construction tools, too.”
“Can we bring them online?”
“Maybe your genius can.”
“He’ll need them if he wants to find the important data. Wait for me in the intersection.”
She hurried back through the intersection to the comms room doorway.
Kohn spun around as she scra
ped to a stop, and reached for his gun.
“Chuck!” She held up a hand. “We found the generator.”
“Oh.” He sagged. The carbine shook in his hands.
“Go to the intersection, take the left, first room on the left.”
“O-okay. I’ll see if I can get it running.”
“We won’t be far.”
Carruth was waiting for her like she’d asked, back pressed against a corner, eyes locked on the long hallway ahead. He swiveled around at her approach. “Straight on or—”
“Take the right.”
“Right it is.”
They found two more bunk rooms, one of them a mess, with unmade beds and sheets on the floor. The wall at the end of the hallway seemed to have been sloppily erected with the plaster; the brick forms were uneven. Across from the bunk room, there was a crude bathroom with a shower, sink, and toilet. A drip of water hung frozen from the sink faucet. Blood spatters covered the shower floor and walls.
The sergeant tapped a finger against the blood, which was dark. “Whatever happened, this was while they had heat.”
“Why’s that?”
“Cold like this, blood would’ve frozen before taking on that color. It’s pretty much dry.”
“Where’s the body?”
Carruth pulled his lamp out and shone it on the floor, revealing a dark trail. “I think we’ll find it if we follow this.”
The trail took them down the long hallway, which had a doorway on the left and right side and ended at a third straight ahead. The left and right doorways revealed storage rooms with more plaster walls, this time with nice, smooth brick forms. The room at the end of the hall was large, and looked like a Day Room.