She was relieved to finally see a race she recognized when she spotted a party of Selroth digging a trench in the seabed.
Or so she thought.
As they drew closer, she wasn’t so sure what they were.
The laborers were humanoid and clad in wetsuits that sealed at the neck to leave the head bare…kind of. The waving seaweed-like hair that grew from the crown of their heads progressively stiffened as it fell around their faces to form a grille-like structure, which glinted with flecks of mineral. It was as if a Human deep-sea diver from an earlier age, wearing the classic bronze helmet, had merged with their diving outfit and become a permanent underwater denizen of Davy Jones’s Locker.
Weird.
Stranger still was that her pinplants unexpectedly identified these aliens. There was no translated Human word for them, so she named them herself as the Ghost Divers. They had been admitted to the Galactic Union on a probationary basis five centuries ago, but for some reason had never opened up trade and were never seen off-planet.
Just like the Tyzhounes Blue had encountered on her first real mission for the Midnight Sun Free Company.
They were thriving here, though.
A little farther on, the town traffic was stalled to avoid a party of what seemed to be school children being led between buildings by a pair of adults.
What she guessed was the teacher was another jellyfish, but the children…Holy hell, the children!
She magnified the display and did a double take.
Shit!
The children were humanoid with a long, bony tail and little spikes on their backs. If she added a long swept-back crest to their skulls, then this was a species she had encountered once before.
Tyzhounes.
She thought of the display alcove in the bulkhead of her Midnight Sun quarters where their most sacred religious artifact was displayed. It was possible they were still peeved about her taking that trophy.
Tyzhounes. Here!
Which meant…oh, crap. On their home world of Tyzhou, she’d encountered a mysterious third-party meddling with the accession of the Tyzhounes to the Galactic Union. Those meddlers must have been the Goltar.
Of course it was. Always the damned Goltar.
Gloriana was right. Her people had been in the background of Blue’s life for years. Manipulating her. Grooming her.
A knuckle rapped on her outer casing. She switched the Tri-V back to the view inside the dropship’s troop compartment.
“Everything okay in there?” The Zuul gave her a curious sniff. “Your vitals just spiked.”
“I’m okay,” Blue replied. “I was just imagining a sexy threesome between me, you, and our pilot.”
The armorer flicked his ears. “They warned me that you Humans are weird, but…seriously? With the pilot?” He snuffed. “Just keep it in your pants, Private Garbo, until you’re out of my charge. We’re nearly there.”
“No problem, Specialist—” her pinplants brought up the Zuul’s name, “—Specialist Lexrath. Maybe I’ll look you up later.”
Lexrath stepped back, his ears flat against his head. “You will do no such thing. Filthy Human. Entropy! The beings I work with for the credits.”
“Docking in one minute,” announced the Goltar pilot.
Blue put aside thoughts of Zuul, Goltar, and, for the moment, the implications of why the Goltar had recruited the Tyzhounes to act as…what? A secret army to defend this underwater fastness? Even that question she put aside. She was going into a potentially dangerous situation.
Long ingrained habit made her run a final set of equipment checks to be sure she was ready to meet it. 25mm auto cannon right arm—diagnostics green. Both ammo drums registered full 3,000-round loads of AP cut with tracer. Underwater seals—status green. The underwater maneuver pack on her CASPer’s back—status green. Snapblade, left arm—sharp.
Satisfied she was ready for whatever the universe could throw at her, she returned her Tri-V goldfish bowl to the external dropship view. The tentacles now hung loosely behind the craft as it drifted through the water into a powerful floodlight beam. The beak that she’d seen used to open up breaching holes in enemy hulls was now aimed directly at a line of underwater docking hatches. One opened, and the beak slipped into a sealed hatch bringing the dropship to a cushioned stop.
The fit between the dropship and the hatch was perfect. Whatever the hell this remote island complex really was, on this obscure world in a dead-end nebula, this section at least had been designed and built for the Goltar.
Blue wasn’t leaving until she understood why.
* * * * *
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“Spread out,” Jex ordered the squad. “But no more than two signal repeaters between you and the next CASPer. Get to know the lay of the land. Bolt holes, weak points, possible access points through 360 degrees. Don’t forget up and down—check a full threat sphere, people. I don’t trust the map I’ve been given, but I do trust what my gut tells me.”
Under their squad leader’s orders, the CASPers assembled in the water-filled hall began to radiate out to the side passages.
“What’s your gut saying, Sergeant?” asked Private Carnobene, one of the new pilots they’d picked up on Station 5.
“That there’s going to be killing work here very soon, and the better we know our ground, the more killing we’ll be doing, and less dying.”
“Maybe we’ll finally find the Golden Rat, Sarge,” suggested Plunger. The squad laughed so hard Blue thought she saw some CASPers rocking with laughter.
“Golden Rat?” she queried.
“Our latecomer speaks,” Jex chuckled. “Yes, Private Garbo. The Golden Rat. The Human boss says the Veetanho are behind the enemy we’re fighting here. If one of them space rats is really running this show, then I’m the King of Spain’s daughter. Veetanho, my backside! The only reason we’re here is to safeguard whatever dirty credit-making operation the pollywiggle boss has squirrelled away in the arse end of nowhere.”
“Did the boss take a bad contract, then?” Blue asked. She noticed that within a few moments, only she and Jex would remain in the hallway. She hurried for the nearest exit.
“Hold still,” Jex bellowed and jogged through the water to her. “Don’t you worry about Captain Blue. She spends so much time with her peachy royal ass locked up in her CIC station that she has no idea whether it’s a bad contract or not. Probably couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is.”
He grabbed a device from a utility pouch and waved it over the knee joints of her CASPer.
“What the hell are you doing, Sergeant?”
“Does the Captain really think the Veetanho are behind this?”
“What? How the hell should I know what the captain thinks?”
Jex grunted and replaced the device in its pouch. “Let me restate, Sarah Jane Garbo.”
“It’s Mary Jane.”
“So you say, Private. You know, it’s right peculiar strange what this here depth radar thingamajig’s telling me. Reveals the woman inside the suit, if you like.”
“And you like what you see, Sergeant?”
“No, I bloody well don’t. I see one of the daintiest little CASPer pilots around. The only Midnighter pilot I know of that small is our sorely missed Major Sun—whom we hope to welcome back into the bosom of our hearts as soon as possible. But you aren’t acting like the major, which leaves me with a tiny CASPer lady with a name I’ve never heard before and a faked service record. And she’s been assigned to my squad on faked orders that make no sense at all. So, I ask again, Private Garbo, does the captain in her royal CIC cocoon believe the Veetanho are running our opponents in the Spine Nebula?”
“Not anymore, she doesn’t.” Blue sighed with delight. “Which is why she sent Private Garbo to take a look see on her behalf.”
The risk of being discovered always gave her a special fluttering in her stomach, but there was another slice of deliciousness all of its own when her disguise was penetrate
d, and she was revealed. She should get out and do this more often.
“Ma’am. So far, we’ve been reviewing the defensive outer walls of the island. On our next sweep, we’ll head directly inside. Maybe you’ll find something there? My map only covers the outer half klick or so of the island. My guess is that the entire interior has been hollowed out and turned over to whatever they produce here.”
Entropy! Jex could be right. But the island was as large as…Her pinplants understood her request and drew out the nearest analog that made sense to her. Cuba. An operation the size of Cuba? No wonder there was a city outside with workers to operate it and a hidden underwater army to guard it.
“If you’re correct, Jex, that would take the entire Midnighter company weeks to do even a basic check of the place. No, keep your squad on mission and leave it to me. I have an instinct for trouble. A superpower of sorts. Just ask my sister. Keep your squad in this zone and I’ll rejoin you when I’m done.”
“Oh no you won’t. Boss, you can’t wander off into this vast alien factory all alone. What would Top say?”
“Top won’t find out. Will he, Jex?”
Jex said nothing. It was interesting he’d called it a factory. Smart boy. She assumed this was the F11 synthesis plant, but Jex didn’t know any of that.
There was something industrial about the place. The throb of power transmitted through the water-filled tunnels, the vast functional scale of the place. On the other hand, she saw no signs of the logistical operation that would feed in raw materials, warehouse the output, and freight it up to orbit. Maybe the F11 was made someplace else.
“I don’t like this,” said Jex finally.
“Duly noted. It’s time I got my royal peachy ass out of its cocoon and got it dirty.”
“At least leave a repeater trail. Here”—Jex picked up his own repeat units and stuck them to the utility panel on her CASPer—“If you get out of range, I’m telling Top. I swear.”
“Are you seriously afraid of First Sergeant Albali more than me?”
“Damn right, ma’am.”
“I see. I really have been stuck in my cocoon too long. Very well, Jex. I’ll lay repeaters. Now, do your job and learn the lay of the land, because I’m sure you’re right. There will be killing work here soon. I just haven’t decided yet who we’ll be killing.”
* * * * *
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Blue soon pushed past the outer skin of the island complex and delved deeper within, speeding her progress through the water-filled passages by picking her CASPer’s feet off the ground and making good use of the turbine attachment on her back. However, the increase in speed wasn’t matched by increased maneuverability. Twists and turns and dead ends mostly involved slamming against the walls with her 800 kilos of advanced metal and carbon fiber alloys, with a woman inside burning up with curiosity. The impacts released clouds of hardened dirt and pulverized bivalves, but the hexagonal tiling that covered walls, floor, and ceiling shrugged off her impacts without so much as a scratch.
While the outer tunnels were largely empty, and any equipment she’d seen was Galactic Union standard, now that she was deeper inside it was becoming very different.
Inert access points were recessed into wall alcoves at regular intervals. They had flat screens, multiple holes that she guessed were for inserting hands or tentacles, and what she suspected were power and data ports, but not shaped to the ubiquitous Union standards.
She passed banks of heat exchangers releasing bubbles and warming the water, then through a chain of what she guessed were superconducting hoops, thankfully unpowered.
Ten minutes after the first access point, she saw her first gun.
Without thinking, she cycled the auto cannon mounted on her right arm and pushed her turbine motors to the max, but the gun, she realized, was no threat.
It was a tube enclosed by fat metal bands and encrusted with minerals and ancient clusters of shellfish. She would have classified it as a coil gun, but the barrel flared out like a blunderbuss, which made no sense to her at all.
Blue cut her turbine and sailed through the baffle of a defensive position, where the corridor zigzagged with more gun ports built into the angled wall. There was a matching gun on the other side of the passage. She hadn’t realized it at first because its barrel had snapped off long ago and was half-buried beneath silt that had piled up against the embrasure.
After making it to the far side, she slowed to a halt and pushed through an open blast door behind one of the embrasures. Under the stark illumination of her CASPer’s flashlights, the interior glinted with extensive mineral build up but told her only that this place had been abandoned long before.
Beyond this defensive checkpoint, openings began to feed off the corridor. They were sealed with fleshy orange bulges. She passed several before she halted by one that was marked differently.
The wall here was covered in the same crust of mineralized shells and dirt as the rest of the corridor, but a symbol had been carved into it. At least, that’s what she thought at first, but on closer inspection, she realized that the symbol hadn’t been carved. The crust had built up over the wall but hadn’t attached itself to the symbol.
It resembled a Venn diagram with three circles and the tiniest of intersections between them.
“Let me guess,” she told the deserted corridor. “This represents the three types of people who think they know what the hell is going on in the Spine Nebula, and that little dot in the middle, that’s all the people who really do understand. That’s where I’m gonna be.”
She contemplated the opening beneath the three-ringed symbol.
Like the other exits, it was sealed by inflated sacks attached to the outer wall, which left a central aperture like the vertical slit of a cat’s eye. A network of veins pulsed silently in the plump lining, giving it an organic aspect. In fact, she decided, it looked like inflated Besquith scrotums stitched together. Maybe they were. She’d encountered stranger shit in the nebula.
The opening wasn’t big enough for her Mk 8, but Blue guessed this was an access passage. An airlock perhaps? There should be a way through. And Besquith were robust, right?
“You know what they say,” she told the uninviting opening. “You should try everything once.”
She walked to the opposite side of the corridor and then ran at the opening. At the last moment, she leaped forward with mech hands stretched out before her, adding a short burst from her underwater maneuver pack to push through the opening and out to the other side.
In her mind, she imagined performing an agile underwater glide, but CASPers, it turned out, were even less graceful under the water than above it. The hands she placed in front of her didn’t link up like a high board diver, instead they acted more like brakes, and the aperture itself was tight and would not yield to her.
With her CASPer’s feet barely inside the opening, her progress stalled. She was stuck.
She tried gripping the sides of the opening and pulling herself through. It worked…for about two meters. Then the opening began to secrete slime and she couldn’t get any purchase. She slithered and fought but she only managed to squirm in place.
She forced herself to calm and cease moving. Passive awareness sensors in her chain of signal repeaters reassured her that the signal strength connecting her to Jex remained strong. But she didn’t want to risk pulsing a cry for help because the passive link would turn active and she might be discovered.
Besides, she didn’t relish the recordings that would go viral through Midnighter enlisted social channels. Footage of Obadiah Jex sticking his CASPer hands inside the aperture and delivering her slimy mech like a farmer delivering a calf…it would not be good.
She may have no choice though.
Suddenly, her haptic suit conveyed pressure on her lower legs.
Now she panicked.
The damn thing was trying to crush her!
The pressure was not coming from all sides, though. It pulsed from her f
eet to the top of her clamshell canopy, before repeating.
It was kneading her. Squeezing her…through the aperture.
She relaxed and marveled as the strange passage seemed to learn her shape and mass, pushing her with ever more efficiency through its length until a couple of minutes later, out she plopped, dripping with slime, onto a dry passageway.
“Eugh! Gross.”
After wiping the worst of the slime from her CASPer and checking to make sure her weapons and sensors were not impaired, she prepared to secure a comm relay, but found none was necessary. The signal back to Jex was actually stronger on this side of the weird airlock.
She stuck a repeater to the wall, anyway, while she assessed her new location.
The floor and ceiling had the same tiled surfaces she’d become used to, but the walls resembled the orifice she’d squeezed through, though harder, less pneumatic. The same green and blue veins cut through them, pulsing gently.
It was like walking through living curried brains.
The thought that this place was alive worried at her, but at least she was getting somewhere interesting now.
Alive?
Could the entire island be an enormous living being? She considered the idea as she marched deeper into the island, but it didn’t seem very likely. She had carted around some ancient Raknar, so she’d come face-to-face with the idea of things operating on an immense scale. But a living being the size of Cuba? That was a whole other level altogether. Gigantism reached a limit where bones can no longer support mass, where air was insufficiently oxygenated, and all that annoying laws of physics stuff Jeha Jenkins would explain at length if she let him.
Her pinview reported that a hot wind was blowing through the passage, carrying air so richly oxygenated that it warned of a serious fire risk from sparks and flames.
“Good thing I’m not packing a laser rifle,” she muttered as she continued along what could be an air passage in a breathing system.
Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3) Page 31