by Dan Abnett
Preben had made a bad choice. Instead of swinging right and running the SOBild through the acreage of the machine park in the east of the site, he had kept going straight along the edge of the flooded quarries and therefore rapidly run out of places to go. The SObild was stopped at the end of a muddy causeway between a quarry pool and a row of storehuts, its route blocked by a semiextended bulk conveyor. The conveyor had the head of its scaffoldwork processor sloping down into the dark water of the field quarry, so that it resembled a rusty yellow sauropod taking a drink from a lake.
"Fuck are they doing, man?" Valdes shouted. "Back up! Back up this way!"
The truck was three hundred feet away, a long, lonely run along the quarry edge. Valdes started towards it, but Falk grabbed him. As soon as the Black Butterflies, or whatever the fuck they were, came around the side of the site refabs, Falk and Valdes would be clean targets.
One of the Ka-18s appeared, banking tightly as it came around two rusty-green ore hoppers. It skimmed in across the quarry, summoning clouds of spray from the water surface.
Valdes shouted out. Falk dragged him into cover behind the storehuts. They scrambled along down a rough, wet gully lined with drainage pipes.
The Ka-18 had read the heat of the SObild. It pulled up halfway across the quarry lake and lit off its chin cannons. There was a harsh, grating noise, like a coffee grinder full of nails. The SObild began to shake, vibrating on its springs. Then it shredded. Torn metal fluttered in every direction, glass sprayed like water. Large, dismembered chunks of the truck's chassis, transmission and engine block lurched into the air, turning over and over, shedding debris, freed from the truck-shaped shell that had once confined them. Something in the heart of it all ignited and lit the destruction with a gas-jet puff of flame.
Pieces of the disintegrated vehicle rained down on the hut roofs, on the mud, peppered the quarry pool.
Valdes screamed. Falk wanted to scream too, but he knew it was far too late. He seized Valdes tight and stopped him from running out into the open.
They reached the end of the storehut row, passing through the dispersing cloud of acrid smoke spilling off the truck's wreckage. Valdes clambered under the support stand of the conveyor and Falk followed. They heard the gunship chopping away, repositioning. If it had painted their heat, it was holding off.
And if it was holding off, that meant the Bloc ground troops were close.
Two or three shots burned down the gulley and spanked into the heavy metalwork of the conveyor. The metal struts boomed like a gong. The wind, relentless, was keening around the upper framework of the huge machine. Falk glimpsed two or three figures in black, coming down the back of the huts the way he and Valdes had run. Closer and closer.
Falk and Valdes ran clear of the conveyor, across a small, muddy yard and between two refab workshops. Falk wondered where they were actually running to, in the end. Heligo was a finite area, surrounded by ancient cliffs. The best they could hope for was somewhere to hide.
Beyond the weatherboarded workshops, the site floor shelved down into a more significant cut in the red soil, where a broad shelf ran alongside a much deeper quarry beneath the overhanging wall of cliff. Metal duckboards paved the shelf, and a set of temporary metal steps linked the two levels.
The quarry pit where the SObild had been killed must have been a shallow, exploratory cut to have been so full of water. The one they were approaching was a huge, stepsided cistern, cut into the ground with a giant spade. Metal staircases and scaffolding platforms lined the side below the causeway. A giant ramp of packed earth, like something raised to aid the construction of pyramids, filled the western side, providing access for the heavy machines. Far below them, the bottom level of the pit was full of dark water. It was a vast excavation. Seberg really had been a good way into his work when the SO stopped him. They ran down the steps, clanged across the decking and onto the walkway of the shelf.
The cliff overhang gave them a little shelter. Three Bloc soldiers appeared at the top of the steps and paused to snag off shots with their Kobas. Falk felt the rounds smack into the chin of rock above the walkway. He saw the puffs of dust that the hits drilled out. Valdes, boiling with inexpressible rage, turned and lined up, fast and fluid. He got an instant red flag via his glares and fired. His piper barked. There was a wink of hot, distorted light and one of the Bloc troopers was knocked flying. Falk was sure he glimpsed sky through the hole Valdes made in the man's torso. The other two men ducked, fired some more shots. Falk had to tug at Valdes to get him running again.
The Ka-18 came in over the earth cut and the banked wall, and rotated into the airspace of the vast quarry. The chopwash of its rotors filled the resonating hole of the huge pit. Far below, the surface of the dark sediment of collected rainwater whipped and swirled.
The rotorcraft came in low, cautious, inquisitive. It was on a level with the main shelf, nose towards the cliff, hunting for targets. Falk kept running. The walkway had to fucking lead somewhere. He realised Valdes wasn't with him.
Valdes had stopped. He was standing up straight on the shelf walkway, making no attempt to hide or find cover, lining up his M3A at the hovering Kamov.
"Valdes!" Falk yelled, skidding and turning back. "Valdes, you're fucking crazy!"
The h-beam piper was a hell of a weapon, but a Bloc rotorcraft gunship was in another class. It had composite reactive armour, ablative plating, heatsoak laminates. It was a bastard killing machine, and something that a man on the ground with a gun, no matter how much of a gun, didn't have a prayer of bringing down.
No one, it seemed, had explained any of that to Valdes. He had three things going for him. Expert operator rating on all M3 weapons, ridiculously close range, and an almost incandescent fury. The Ka-18 was right in front of him, its rotors tilted upright and thundering, so close they could see the pilot and gunner through the smoky cockpit bubble.
"Eat it, motherfucker!" Valdes screamed.
He fired. The hardbeam punched a fist-sized hole in the bubble and decapitated the pilot. Control vanished instantly as the pilot's nerveless hand or foot spasmed. The gunship hurtled forward on full throttle.
It didn't hit Valdes. It drove head-on into the quarry wall directly below him, folding and crumpling and shredding the way the SObild had shredded. There was a huge pressure clap as a raging fireball expanded out of it. Debris whizzed through the air like glitter. Falk felt pieces striking the walkboards, the wall, the cliff shelf. The head of an entire rotor assembly tore off, spinning wildly, chopping the air like a lethal, unleashed wind turbine. It bounced once, off the shelf between Valdes and Falk, its blades ripping up metal walkboards and strewing them into the air. Then it splintered off the cliff overhang and whirled away into the quarry.
The rest of the machine, the bulk of it, on fire and deformed, fell back, slipping and scraping down the face of the quarry wall, ripping away walkway platforms and metal stair flights as it dropped. Most of the scaffolded superstructure lining the quarry side came down with it. And hit the dark, cold water in the base of the pit. Falk heard the suck-rush as burning metal met chilled liquid, like the crash-draw of an ocean hitting a shingle beach.
Burning scraps were raining down around them. Valdes got up off his knees.
"Fuck, man! Fuck it, Nes!" he shouted, immeasurably proud of himself. "Did you fucking ever see shit like that, man?"
The first of the Black Butterflies onto the shelf behind Valdes put three rounds through his head. Falk flinched and yelled as red mist blew out the side of Valdes's skull.
Valdes didn't buckle. It was probably the weight of his piper. Straight and stiff, he just tipped forward and plunged off the shelf, head first, limbs limp.
Falk fired wildly along the shelf. He couldn't seem to hit anything. He loosed three shots before he made a contact, and then it was only the cliff overhang. He brought chunks of it crashing down, driving the special-ops team back a few steps.
"Come on! Get into cover, you fucktard!" Rash yelled. He
got down on one knee beside Falk and loosed two bursts with his PAP, followed by a pair of AP grenades from the undermount. The grenades blew in amongst the hostiles, killing at least one of them with a storm of highdensity shrapnel shot.
Rash grabbed Falk and dragged him back along the shelf. There was a cavity ten yards along, a square cut opening in the rock like a cave. Rash pulled him into it.
"How the fuck are you alive?" Falk asked.
"We ditched the truck," said Rash, "nowhere to go. We figured hiding was a better idea."
"All of you got out?"
Rash didn't reply. He didn't have to. Rash didn't leave people behind.
They ran deeper into the cave. It was a tunnel, a side spur drilled and beam-cut into the rock. An exploratory channel? A lot of effort had been put into it.
"What is this?" Falk asked.
"It's better than outside, is what it is," replied Rash. "It was the best option."
They ran on. There was no immediate sound of pursuit. There was a barrier ahead of them, a serious, heavy-duty glass door installed at great expense.
"What is this?" Falk repeated.
"I'm guessing work access to one of the specialist mines," replied Rash. He had already forced the lock of the glass hatch to let the others through. He held the hatch open for Falk. It was heavy, like an airlock seal. Inside the hatchway there was a ring of sensor panels.
"I think they found a seam of something pretty fancy down here," said Rash. "Extro-transition, something like that. They must have been scanning the engineers in and out to make sure they didn't exit with pockets full of the good stuff to make a little on the side."
There was no power. The cut had been abandoned and sealed with the hatch. There was still a lingering afterscent of Insect-Aside in the cold air, as if the place had once been pressurised and ventilated. Falk guessed that was to pump water out and clear the workface.
They caught up with Preben and the girls. Only Preben and Tal, wearing glares, could see them in the low light. Tal quickly reassured Milla and Lenka. They were struggling with Bigmouse.
Falk and Rash took over, taking an end of the sling each.
"Where's Valdes?" asked Preben.
"Not coming," replied Falk.
"Someone is, though," said Rash. Far away and behind them, they could hear activity.
"Keep going," Falk said, struggling with the weight. "We'll find a defensible position. Halt there. Maybe then we can find another route out. This place was pressurised but there was no pipework or venting at the mouth. There could be another duct in, maybe a service port for heavier machines or ore extraction."
"It gets bigger up ahead," said Tal. "A bigger space."
The square-cut shaft opened out into the bigger space, a natural cavity in the rock. There was a route through it, walkboarded, which led to an even larger natural cavern, a vast and echoey chapel of rock. In the entrance area, sorted and stacked neatly, was mining equipment, toolcrates, spoil carts and other excavation kit.
They carried Bigmouse in, set him down and made him comfortable. Falk had almost forgotten what Bigmouse's voice sounded like. He didn't expect to hear it again. He looked at the immense cavity surrounding them.
It was cool and black, with a faint hint of damp. Falk had never felt so hidden, so enclosed. He closed his eyes to escape the green glow of the low-light vision for a second.
He had found peace and security, if only for a few minutes.
"What the hell?" said Tal.
Falk opened his eyes again and looked for her.
She had gone further into the underground space, right up to a metal safety rail positioned to prevent workers blundering off the rock platform of the entrance area and falling into the bottom of the main cave.
He limped over to reach her. Rash came with him. They stopped at the rail alongside her and looked out into the body of the main cavern. They saw what was lying there in the cave, half-buried, half dug out.
They saw it, but they didn't really understand it. It took a moment before they realised what the thing they were looking at had to be.
"Oh my God," said Rash.
It was right there in front of them, in the rock.
Embedded.
THIRTY-TWO
"There's some fucking weird noises coming from up there," Preben said.
"What do you mean?" Rash asked, too preoccupied to be really interested.
"Sounds like a fucking firefight," said Preben. "A full-on shoot up. You didn't leave Valdes up there fighting a crazy fucking rearguard action, did you?"
"No," said Falk.
"Well, I'm telling you, there's something going on. What are you all looking at?"
"Well, that," said Falk.
Preben looked.
"I don't get it. What is it?"
"I'm not entirely sure," said Falk.
"So who the fuck cares? It's just rock."
"I don't think it's rock," said Rash.
"I think everyone's going to care," said Falk. "And that's the whole point."
He turned and looked at Rash.
"I'm going back up. See what's happening. Keep everybody here."
"I can come with you."
"Keep everybody here, safe, Rash. And keep an eye on
this. I'm going to do everything I can to get us all out of this."
"What, now you can do that?" asked Rash. "Why couldn't you do that before?"
"Because the game just changed," Falk replied. "Everything just changed. Now we know what's at stake."
He headed back up the long, sloping tunnel from darkness towards the light. There was probably, he decided, something terribly symbolic about the walk he was taking, something he could work effectively into a later account. He didn't honestly care.
"Did you hear any of that?" he asked.
"Are you freeking® kidding?" Cleesh asked. "That was all a joke, right? A freeking® joke. Right, Falk?"
"No joke, Cleesh. No joke. Feed it to Noma, all of it. Feed everything from me to her until I stop sending."
"Why the freek® do you think you'll stop sending, Falk?" Cleesh asked.
"Because I don't know what's waiting for me up there," he said.
He pushed through the glass hatch. He could smell outdoor air, smoke. He could feel a breeze. There was a square of pale light ahead. When he came out onto the shelf walkway over the pit, he felt the rain on his skin again, smelled the damp. Columns of filthy black smoke were pouring into the air from behind the refabs. Stuff had happened over in the site yards. Now and then, the flames were big enough to dance into sight above the line of the roof.
Falk heard chopwash. He pressed into the cliff wall, wary. In close formation, two boomers droned overhead. They approached through the curtain of black smoke, rippling it, unveiling themselves, and flew on over the quarry towards the southern part of the site. A third Boreal followed them a few seconds later.
SOMD troopships.
He was approaching the metal steps when his glares began to tag aura codes. Bodies were moving in, approaching him. He saw twenty or thirty ID tags, clustered, dancing, moving towards him from the yards.
"SOMD!" he yelled. "SOMD friendly over here!"
Troopers appeared, dressed like him, armoured like him, but all much cleaner and fresher. The first of them fanned out at the top of the metal steps, covering him with their weapons.
"SOMD!" Falk repeated, in case his brooch wasn't working.
Their aim didn't waver.
"Put the weapon down!" one of them ordered. "Put it the fuck down beside you, kneel, and raise your hands."
"SOMD!" Falk protested.
"Do it! Comply, or we drop you!"
He bent down, laid the M3 on the ground and settled onto his knees despite the pain in his hip. He put his hands on his head, his fingers laced against his wet scalp.
Some of the troopers scurried down the steps and surrounded him.
"SOMD," he repeated. "Private Nestor Bloom, Team Kilo out of Lasky."
"You alone, Bloom?" asked the squad leader. His tag identified him as Essley. "Anyone with you?"
"I've got people with me, Essley," he replied.
"How many? Where are they?"
"I want a guarantee of their safety before I tell you where they are."
"Fuck's he think he is?" asked one of the troopers covering him.
"I think I'm SOMD personnel, and I think I'm a little fucked off at the treatment I'm getting," said Falk.