“I should be able to deter any others we come across now,” Sedge said.
“What did you do?” Kalish asked.
“Before we came down, I took the liberty of downloading a copy of the operating system for the craft we saw that first night in the compound. They have only a simple encryption program masking the transmissions between their home station and themselves. I convinced them that they were being called back to their hangar.”
“You could have said that three seconds before Gregor obliterated that one,” Val said dryly.
“Wouldn’t Commander Thatcher be upset if he didn’t get to obliterate something during the course of the mission?” Sedge asked.
“You’re thinking of Lieutenant Frog. Gregor only needs to prove that he’s the most talented pilot on the field. He can do that without explosives.”
“Pressing onward,” Thatcher said, his shuttle veering for the same passage the mining ships had taken. “Time is not in excess, please recall. Thomlin, will those ships continue to ignore us if we pass them?”
“They should. Unless someone is paying attention back in their control hub and deletes my command.”
“Let’s pass them quickly, then.”
“Quickly,” Tia grumbled. “As if that’s so easy for this ship.” She dragged her sleeve across her brow.
“You’re doing well,” Kalish said quietly.
Even if she had taken her sister along on missions before, avoiding enemy fire was rarely required, and as Tia said, the Divining Rod was not the most maneuverable craft out there. Someday, Kalish might be able to afford something more sophisticated that would still offer the space and tools she needed, but she had other matters to worry about first.
12
The sides of the cavern looked like the recipients of more than a few nuclear blasts. Sedge shook his head, wondering if the original map of the area had been made before the miners started working. As the group had flown closer and closer to the entrance to the mines, the subterranean landscape had grown more and more devastated. Even the walls of the purely limestone caverns, which offered nothing in the way of precious metals and had been largely ignored by the alien prospectors, had been pulverized. Sedge was surprised the ceilings had not caved in anywhere, given the vast chambers made even larger by the mining operations.
Kalish still sat beside Tia, who was yawning and talking about overtime bonuses, but she had not spoken in hours, other than to nod or grunt at something her sister said. Sedge had remained in his spot by the hatch, not speaking much either. He wondered if she worried, as he did, that coming this direction had been a mistake. With the walls so thoroughly chewed away, it seemed impossible that the miners would have left an ancient tunnel unmolested.
“Ten minutes to destination,” Thatcher said. If the man ever grew tired of piloting, it was not apparent in his voice. His personality was not the only reason crew members called him a cyborg or android behind his back.
Val cracked a noisy yawn in response.
Tia snorted, yawning herself, albeit more quietly.
“That is not an acceptable acknowledgment, Lieutenant Calendula,” Thatcher said.
“Does that mean you’re not willing to come over here and give me a neck rub?” Val asked.
At first, Thatcher did not respond, and Sedge assumed he wouldn’t, but then he said, “Perhaps it is fortuitous that the Albatross remains unresponsive to my hails. Captain Mandrake might not consider this comm chatter appropriate.”
Sedge snorted. It was nothing compared to the conversation he had walked in on earlier, back in the cargo hold. Tick and Striker had finished cleaning their weapons and had moved on to discussing less military matters, such as speculation of the age of Kalish’s sister and whether she liked mercenaries. Tick, thank his parents for instilling within him a scruple or two, had been arguing that she was too young for them. Striker had rather crudely said that a girl old enough to have breasts was old enough to rub them up against a man and have some fun. Sedge might have punched him for that comment, but he hadn’t needed to, since Kalish’s mother had overheard. She might be a finance specialist these days, but she could throw a knife across a cargo hold with enough accuracy to land it in the canteen a man happened to be holding in his lap. Of course, it was possible she hadn’t noticed the canteen and had truly intended to castrate Striker. The conversation had turned much cleaner after that.
“Five minutes,” Thatcher said. “Once again, I do not detect any mining ships.”
They hadn’t since Sedge had unleashed his program. After successfully sending the last two ships home, he had plugged into the Divining Rod’s mainframe and transmitted the commands over a longer distance. The remaining automated craft in the tunnels had headed for home long before the group reached them. He would allow himself to feel smug, but that wouldn’t work with those manned Fleet fighters, once they showed up. And if this turned out to be a dead end, and the team had to turn around and fly back the other way, encountering them would grow far more likely.
“Destination reached,” Thatcher said quietly.
Quietly, perhaps, because there was absolutely nothing remarkable about the decimated cavern. He, too, had to be wondering if they had spent the last eight hours flying in the wrong direction and would have to retrace their route.
“Looking for a pool,” Kalish said, leaning over the sensor display.
“There are several along the floor,” Thatcher said.
His shuttle swooped down, and its lights were soon playing across piles and piles of rubble that apparently had not held enough ore to be worth carting out. It was as if a miniature mountain range sprouted from the cavern floor.
Kalish had the oval relic out, map side up. She alternated examining it and looking out the view screen. She pointed and murmured something to her sister.
“You’re the boss,” Tia said.
The Divining Rod headed off in a different direction, though it also followed the floor, as closely as the rubble heaps allowed. Here and there, water and sludge lay in the valleys between the mounds, but none of the large puddles had the appearance of an ancient pool that had not been disturbed for eons.
“This is where your map led you?” Kalish’s mother asked from the hatchway. She wore a tool belt, in addition to her weapons belt, and frowned darkly at everyone as she leaned into the bridge. Judging by the bags under her eyes, she had not slept in some time.
“Yes, Mom,” Kalish said.
“Well, the hull is fixed, if we need to get out of here.”
“There’s little point in leaving until we find what we came for.”
“Listen,” her mom said. “I’m worried about your father, too, but if we all end up in jail, we won’t be able to do him any good. This does not look like a promising site for ruins.”
Kalish did not look back, but Sedge could see part of her profile from his spot, the grimness of her face and her clenched jaw. She probably needed a neck rub, but he dared not try it with her mother looking on.
“I’m not finding anything promising,” Val said over the comm.
“Nor I,” Thatcher added.
The Divining Rod was heading straight for a corner—a dead end.
Kalish brought her knuckles to her mouth, watching the view screen intently.
“There,” she breathed, rising out of her seat as the ship crested the last of the rubble mounds.
“It’s a pool of water,” Tia said. “Dirty looking water, at that. You make it sound like we’ve found some grand treasure.”
Kalish must not have shared her suspicions with her sister. Sedge came forward to stand behind her, not caring if the mother glared at him.
“It’s larger than it appeared on the map, and it looks deep, like something that’s been there a while.” Sedge pointed. “There’s a pump on that end, but it’s rusty and long-forgotten, it looks like.”
Kalish slumped back into her seat. “Does that mean they pumped out the pool at one point? If they did, they would
have found any tunnels down there.”
“It’s worth checking anyway. Maybe the water filled in too quickly, and it ended up not being worth draining for them.”
“Checking the sensors,” Kalish said, “but they’re not able to probe very far into the water. That’s surprising. If we were in the atmosphere, I could get readings all the way out to the nebula. Why would ten feet of water be an obstacle?”
“I don’t know, but the fact that it is might mean something,” Sedge said. “Maybe this isn’t a normal pool.”
Kalish’s mother snorted. “You’re as idealistic as she is.”
“My idealism has proved fruitful in the past, Mom. We wouldn’t have this business otherwise.”
Her mother sighed. “I know. You’re right.”
“If the aliens didn’t want their secret shipbuilding facility to be found,” Sedge said, “they might have used a sensor-dampening material to block out probes.”
“Underwater sensor-dampening material?” Kalish asked, though she turned in her seat, her face hopeful rather than skeptical. She wanted him to be right.
“Why not? Lots of ships today have such a mesh built into the hulls.”
“I wonder if that’s why the mining ships zeroed in on the Divining Rod,” Kalish said. “We don’t have anything like that.”
“Perhaps.”
“Does that mean we’re going to have to go underwater and take a look with our eyes?” Tia asked.
“Is this ship seaworthy?” Sedge asked. The pool was large enough for the combat shuttles to dive into, and even the bulkier Divining Rod could make it with plenty of room to spare. So long as the pool did not end up being five feet deep, and they hit the bottom as soon as they entered.
“Seaworthy?” the mother asked. “I’ve been working to make it space worthy. Nobody said anything about water.”
“The hull will be airtight, naturally,” Kalish said, “and I’ve landed the ship in a lake before. The engines weren’t damaged by a little water. The only problem would be if we went down too deep. Spaceships don’t have to withstand all of the pressure that submarines do.”
“I doubt that pool is that deep,” Sedge said dryly.
“Navigating could be a challenge too. We don’t have ballast tanks, so we would actually have to fire the thrusters.”
“Maybe someone should just get out and stick her head underwater,” Tia said.
“Do you have underwater suits?” Sedge asked. “Or even spacesuits? That might—”
“We have company,” Thatcher said.
“More mining ships?” Sedge guessed.
“No. Eight Fleet fighters just showed up on my sensors.”
“What?” Sedge said at the same time as Kalish.
“They’re supposed to be two days behind,” she added.
“They’re flying swiftly,” Thatcher said. “They’ll enter this cavern in less than two minutes.”
“What do we do?” Tia asked.
“Try it now.” Sedge pointed at the pool. “We have to find out if there’s anything worth defending, or if we should get out of here.”
Kalish scowled at his last few words, but all she said was, “Do it, Tia.”
“Anyone care to speculate on how they found us?” Val asked.
“It’s possible Ms. Blackwell’s ship was tagged with a tracking device,” Thatcher said. “The mining ships were also zeroing in on the craft.”
“We’re not tagged with anything,” Kalish snapped. “We just don’t have a sensor-dampening hull. It’s been weeks since we’ve seen Fleet ships, and until a few days ago, they had no reason to have an interest in me.”
“What about pirates?” Sedge asked. “Did you communicate with them only from afar, or did any of them get close?”
“The only ones I’ve been close to are you people.”
Tia manipulated the controls as the conversation went on around her, and the pool grew large on the view screen. They dipped into the water, their thrusters going from keeping them aloft and hovering to pushing them below the surface. The running lights thrust through the murky water ahead of them. Even with the heavy sediment dulling visibility, deep, twisting passages stretched ahead of them instead of the shallow bottom that Sedge had feared they would encounter.
“Which way?” Tia whispered. “Neither of those tunnels looks large enough for a big ship. We might be able to squeeze through that one.” She waved toward a side passage that yawned, dark and serpentine, the end impossible to see.
“Can the sensors read it now?” Sedge asked, leaning over Kalish’s shoulder.
“The sensors are completely bonked out.” She pointed at the panel. “Look, they think we’re half sunk in rock at the bottom of the lake.”
Tia cursed, her hands darting across the controls. “Hurry up and decide. This is—it’s a real struggle not to let us float back up.”
“Spaceships are designed to be light, like airplanes,” Sedge said. “Submarines are heavy. I know of craft that can be both, and I believe the combat shuttles are actually rated for limited underwater operations, but I agree that getting through here as quickly as possible is necessary. Although, we’ll be lucky to navigate that tunnel. This isn’t the kind of navigation a ship is designed for.”
Tia snorted. “I’ve got the shields up. We’ll just fire the thrusters and bump along, bouncing off the walls and going in the direction we want.”
“I... guess that could work.”
“You find anything in that pool, Sedge?” Val asked, her voice breaking up, as if hundreds of thousands of miles separated them instead of a couple hundred meters. “We’re about to get a visual on those ships, and picking fights with Fleet fighters isn’t going to be healthy for Mandrake Company, either now in the moment or long-term.”
“Follow us in,” Sedge barked. “Quick, before they’re close enough to spot you.” A vain command, most likely. If his people could detect the fighters, the fighters would be able to detect them. Unless the sensor-dampening qualities he had theorized could make them seem to disappear once they entered the water.
“Into the tunnel. That one.” Kalish pointed at the opening yawning in the side wall.
Tia turned into the passage, bumping against rock, sending shudders through the craft. Air bubbles burst upward in front of the view screen, making it difficult to see the route ahead. Their lights flooded the passage, a lumpy natural tube that had never seen a miner’s drill. Sedge had no idea what they would do if they hit a dead end.
“Thatcher, Calendula?” he said. “We’re far enough in that you should be able to follow us.” Assuming the fighters had not already blasted into the cavern to harry the shuttles.
Nothing except static and fuzz answered him over the comm.
“What’s going on up here?” came Striker’s voice from the corridor.
“Are we underwater?” Tick asked. “I thought I heard—”
The shields bumped against a rounded chunk of rock hanging down from the ceiling, and more bubbles arose around them, the swishing of the currents just audible.
“Yup, that’s what I heard.” Tick stared at the view screen.
He and Striker pushed onto the bridge, though there was scarcely room to breathe with everyone up there.
“We’ve lost contact with the others,” Sedge said.
“Oh?” Tick tapped his comm-patch. “Thatcher? Val?”
“Our comm is fine,” Kalish said. “It’s something in the rocks. Our sensors aren’t working, either.”
“So we can’t tell what’s ahead?” Striker asked. “Or if anything is ahead?”
“Just visually.”
The passage bent downward, then swung to the left. Sweat gleamed on Tia’s forehead as she navigated the tricky route.
“Kalish?” Sedge asked softly. “Does any of the information you gathered imply what size spaceships the aliens might have been building here?” He remembered that the wreck that had been found had been large, what remained of it, more like a colony
ship than a scrappy little freighter.
“No,” she said.
He kept his thoughts to himself, that it seemed unlikely that such a passage as this could have led into and out of a secret shipyard. Even if the water had not been here ten thousand years earlier, this course would not have allowed anything except small ships through. Even the Divining Rod was having trouble, a thought emphasized when they bumped against another rock in the ceiling, bounced downward, and scraped along the lumpy floor. The shields should protect them from damage, so long as they did not get stuck.
Sedge grimaced, trying to decide if the passage was growing narrower or if that was his imagination. It continued on much farther than he would have expected, and as the minutes and rocks rolled past, he worried about Thatcher and Val. As capable as Thatcher was, Sedge did not know if they could beat four-to-one odds, especially since they would be reluctant to risk killing shots. They would most likely try to disable the ships instead, while the Fleet pilots would be shooting to kill. What did they care about scruffy mercenaries that might very well be breaking laws by being here?
“There’s no sign of the shuttles behind us, is there?” Sedge asked, hoping the others might yet zip into the tunnel behind them.
“Sorry, no,” Kalish said.
“They probably took off,” Tick said, “up the caverns and out the miners’ entrance. Might be leading them away from us, or just getting out of the tunnels. Once they make air, the shuttles are every bit as fast as anything Fleet has.”
Sedge did not answer. He hoped his comrades found a safe escape instead of fighting a losing battle against the Fleet, but either scenario meant the Divining Rod was all alone now, to face whatever fate awaited it.
“We’ve descended three hundred feet,” Kalish said. “Looks like we might be rising now. I hope so.”
A groan came from within the belly of the ship, some support protesting the water pressure—or the bumping and jolting ride through the tunnels.
“Me too,” said her mother. “I don’t have unlimited parts and patches.”
Another ten minutes passed, and the tunnel grew wider, the walls less lumpy and more even.
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