Since Adan had skimmers and the somatarchs were on foot, they wouldn’t be able to catch him, even carrying Sierra, but he couldn’t just take off without any idea of where he was going. He quickly compared the schematic in his head with the layout of the mine.
Two of the passages exiting the cavern had caved in and were now impassible, including the one they needed to travel down to get to the vault.
“We need to find a way to get into that blocked tunnel,” he said.
“There.” She pointed at a tunneler. It was tilted on its side near the entrance to the caved-in passage, propped up by the remains of some overturned carts, but it was not as severely damaged as some of the others.
“Let’s hope it’s still operational.”
Adan skimmed above the wreckage as the pounding feet of the somatarchs on the bridge reverberated across the cavern. He reached the elongated vehicle and sized up its condition. It had been dented up badly, but the hatch was still intact, as was the drilling ring in front. He connected to the device with his mind and saw that it still had power. The hatch whisked open with a thought and they flew to the opening. He let Sierra slide off his back and down into the vehicle. He followed her in and the hatch closed shut behind them.
Inside, there was space for four operators. Adan and Sierra connected to the tunneler’s sensors so they could see what was happening outside as if the entire hull were semi-transparent. The somatarchs were picking their way through the wreckage, leaping over large machines and twisted hunks of metal, closing in fast.
Adan planted himself next to Sierra in one of the white plastic chairs, then ripped off his skimmers and tossed them aside. Sierra’s eyes glazed over as she brought the tunneler up to full power. Before she engaged the lev generator, she brought up a map of the mine which Adan could see as well. Using the ship’s own modulator, they scanned the cavern for zoetic pulses. A hollow feeling welled up inside Adan, but it wasn’t from the six red pulses closing in on them.
“There are no other survivors,” Sierra announced, her emotions as empty as his own.
“They must have gotten out in time.” Adan tried to convince himself. “I only saw a few bodies in the rubble.”
With the somatarchs almost upon them, there was no time to go back and search for their friends. Sierra engaged the drill cone. It burst into brilliant yellow light in front of them. The tunneler’s lev engaged and the vehicle shuddered and shook free, righting itself and plunging forward. It floated to the entrance of the caved-in tunnel as the first of the somatarchs arrived. The locus cone plunged through the remains of a large, overturned hauler blocking the tunnel, ripping it in half. A moment later their tunneler was drilling into the rock-filled passage.
Rocks clanked against the fuselage, but as they passed through them into the open tunnel beyond so did something else.
One of the somatarchs had reached the tunneler. He was running beside them with a rod.
“Those fractal rods—the ones they were using to pulverize the rocks—they must be using them to try and break down the hull.” Sierra increased the speed, but the somatarch matched them. Another somatarch came up on the other side with another rod and did the same. The sides of the vehicle quivered and shook. Pops and hisses came from the paneling.
“We can’t outrun them in this. It’s too slow.” Adan had thought they would be safe inside this giant machine, but now it felt like a death trap.
“Then we’ll just have to go where they can’t.” Sierra drove the tunneler into the debris strewn floor. The locus cone pulverized everything in its path. The somatarchs fell behind, but kept coming.
“What are you doing?” Adan wondered if Sierra still had control of the machine.
“Covering our trail.”
They passed deeper into the bedrock. lLoose rocks above caved in on the ship, but the hull held against the weight. Surging forward, the falling rocks filled in the new tunnel behind them, burying the somatarchs and ensuring they could not to follow.
A few moments later the tunneler pivoted back upwards until it re-emerged into the passage.
“Great thinking,” Adan told her, “Now we can get out of this ship and make our way to the vault.”
“Actually, I was thinking this vehicle might be a better way of getting into the vault than following that assessor’s map. We could just drill our way straight into the prison cells from below.”
“It would save us an awful lot of time,” Adan acknowledged. At the same time he wondered what they would do if the Devs seized control of this ship the way they had with the hauler. After mulling it over, he decided saving some time was not worth the risk of being trapped inside this vehicle if it was taken over. “I don’t think—” he began, but a flash of alarm in Sierra’s thoughts cut him short.
“Adan, we’ve got to get out of here,” she said, disconnecting her thoughts from his.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, though the question was more like a reflex since he already knew the answer.
“The Devs have control of the ship.”
Adan stared at their position on the modulator as the tunneler rushed forward at ever increasing velocity.
Twenty-Five
Clean
Adan tried to connect to the tunneler but it was nothing more than a moving hunk of metal now.
“How are we going this fast?” Adan asked.
“I don’t know, this is way faster than it should be able to go.” Sierra pulled on the hatch’s emergency lever. “It’s locked down. I’ll have to open it with the cutter.”
“Hurry. There’s no telling what they might do next.” Adan shoved the skimmers into his garrick and came up beside her.
Sierra put on the cutter and the energy blade shot out from the end. She threaded the beam around the seal of the hatch. In moments the round door came crashing to the floor. The ceiling of the tunnel sped by above them in a blur of blacks and grays. It was not an inviting sight, but there appeared to be enough space for them to crawl out on top of the vehicle.
Sierra shimmied up the ladder and eased herself out through the hole. Adan climbed up after her, crawling out onto the roof with gripping fingers, keeping his head down. They held onto the rim of the hatch to keep from slipping on the curved fuselage.
Adan could feel the tunnel ceiling rushing by above him, suffocatingly close.
“I guess we’re supposed to jump?” He hoped Sierra had a less risky idea.
“If we use the skimmers, they should kick in before we hit the ground.”
The locus cone had disengaged, but the neophosphorous coating Adan’s clothes and body lent a considerable amount of light to the otherwise pitch black tunnel. He could see enough of the floor to tell it was not much of a jump in terms of distance, but the tunneler was going three times faster now than what Sierra had it at before. Even with the skimmers there was no guarantee they would land safely.
“Let’s hope this works.” Adan let one hand go free of the hatch to hunt for the skimmers inside his garrick. It was an awkward business slipping them onto his feet with one hand while gripping the rim of the hatch with the other. All while the tunneler plowed blindly ahead in the dark, jostling him around on top of the fuselage. Once he got the second skimmer in place he shifted into position for the jump.
“Don’t think about it,” Sierra advised, looping her arms around his chest. “Just jump.”
White lights flared out from beneath Adan’s feet. He pushed himself over the edge, bracing for impact. His feet hit the cushion of invisible energy generated by the skimmers and his arms shot out to steady himself. His knees buckled and he felt himself start to lose his balance. Sierra squeezed him so tight he could hardly breathe. He pitched forward towards the tunnel wall, but his bioseine kicked in and spread his legs out and righted his torso. A moment later, he was bouncing softly on the skimmers in the middle of the passage as the tunneler sped away in the dark.
“We made it!” Sierra shouted, her words echoing down the tunnel into the d
arkness. “Oops,” she added, “I hope no one was listening.”
Adan let out an airless chuckle. “Could you let go a little?” he asked.
“Oh, sorry.” Sierra realized she was cutting off his air and relaxed her grip. “Where do we go now?”
Adan took in a deep breath, enjoying the freedom to breathe again.
“I don’t know. Let’s skate down this tunnel and we’ll figure it out on the way.”
Adan skimmed down the tunnel with Sierra holding on not quite as tightly from behind.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Sierra’s thoughts came into his. “They know we’re in this tunnel. They’re bound to come looking for us.”
“I was wondering if we should go back and try to find the others.”
“Part of me feels like we should. But there weren’t any signals on the modulator. And the plan was to flee and meet back up at the vault. If we go back and look for them, we might not get to the vault in time.”
She was right, but it still felt wrong, like the way he’d abandoned Senya in Hull. “They’ll probably be sending more somatarchs to investigate what happened there. The mine wouldn’t be safe to go back to even if we wanted to,” he added, half-heartedly. It felt like there was no way to salvage the mission now. Too much had gone wrong.
“We just need to get to the vault. Everything will work out somehow,” Sierra told him. She was struggling, though, just as much as he was.
To take his thoughts off the mine, he examined the map of Manx Core in his mind. The tunnel they were in ran through the lowest levels of the complex. It looped back around at the end and connected to the tunnel leading to an access shaft where they could reach the upper levels. A water reservoir sat between the tunnel they were in and the access shaft tunnel, but there was no way for them to get in on this side.
“I don’t see any way out of this tunnel, except to go all the way to the end, and since that’s the way the tunneler went, they’ll probably be expecting us.”
Sierra was studying the map as well.
“We could cut our way through the reservoir,” she suggested. “The walls aren’t that thick and the tunnel we need to get to runs along the other side.”
“But skimmers only work across solid surfaces.” Adan reminded her. “How would we get across all of that water?” From Adan’s time with the Welkin he had formed the idea that falling into deep water was deadly, but as he searched the information in his bioseine he saw this was not necessarily the case. Falling into it from a great height such as the upper reaches of the Basin would prove fatal, but they could carve a tunnel with the cutter that would bring them into the reservoir only a short distance above the surface of the water.
“Your bioseine knows how to swim,” Sierra assured him.
Swim…This was something else that was new, but she was right, he already knew how to do it. Despite this realization, the idea still made him nervous.
“What about carving a passage to the vault from here so we can avoid the tunnels altogether?” he asked.
“That might work if we started from the other tunnel. It’s too far from here, though. The cutter doesn’t have enough of a charge left.”
“We could try to find some more bismine,” Adan suggested, though he doubted there would be any this far down.
“No time. If the others survived, we have to get to the vault as quickly as possible.”
“All right, we’ll try swimming, then,” Adan acquiesced, shaking his head. The thought of plunging into the water still gave him chills.
Their course set, they skated down the tunnel until it ran parallel to the reservoir. Adan eased onto the ground. He slipped off the skimmers while Sierra engaged the cutter and made her first incision.
She made this hole much smaller than the one she had made in the quarry. It would be big enough for them to crawl through one at a time, but that was it.
Adan popped one of the bismine chips out from the chronotrace to see if he could sense any more nearby, but as he expected there was nothing. He returned the chip to its housing and started helping clear out the rubble from the tunnel Sierra was making.
It took about five microslices before they broke through. The hole came in at exactly the position they were aiming for, but the water level was much lower than expected. The dark water lurked more than three body-lengths below. It was a straight drop.
The reservoir was lit by a or so dozen lumins, but they were only about half as bright as the lumins Adan was used to. This only added to his reluctance to jump. All he could see were the edges of the walls and the endless, night black liquid beneath.
“Ready to lose that glow of yours?” Sierra asked, glancing at his brilliant skin and clothes.
“I suppose so.” He had forgotten all about his appearance while obsessing about the water. “That jump looks higher than I thought it would be.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sierra said out loud. To prove it, she dove in head first, hitting the water with a grayish ruffle. Her head bobbed up a moment later, pale and dripping. “It’s okay. The water is a nice temperature.”
Adan knew it was no use waiting on the edge. They had to get to the prison and see if any of their friends had survived.
He closed his eyes and leapt feet first into the darkness.
The water slapped his body like a giant hand, one made of rock. Liquid shot up his nose and darkness surrounded him on all sides. He gyrated every part of his body that would move in an effort to escape the oppressive heaviness surrounding him.
Just when the pressure was starting to build in his lungs, his head emerged above the water. As he recovered his breath and expelled the water from his nose, he found himself treading in place as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“See? I told you there was nothing to it,” Sierra told him, bright-eyed and calm, as if she were enjoying this. “Now are you ready to get going?”
He wanted to tell her he wasn’t ready at all, that it would be better if they looked for a way to climb back up the smooth rock wall to the opening and take their chances in the tunnels, but he knew that would be foolish.
“Let’s just get out of here as quickly as we can,” he said.
Sierra started out across the water. Adan followed, doing a modified breast stroke so that he kept his head perpetually above water. As they slipped through the placid pool, he had to admit the brisk temperature of the water was rather refreshing. The taste of the drops which slipped into his mouth were delicious as well. In the back of his mind, though, he still felt vulnerable suspended in the midst of this dark expanse. Who knew how far down it stretched or what might lay beneath? He kicked a little faster and soon caught up and even moved past Sierra.
They were over halfway across the reservoir when Adan felt a slight current start to run through the waters. Over time it grew stronger, threatening to pull them off course. They started swimming harder to compensate, but soon even that was not enough as the current picked up speed.
“What’s going on?” Adan asked, “I can’t get through this.”
He sensed Sierra’s mind struggling to figure out what was causing it as well, but neither of them could unravel the mystery. Along the walls nothing had changed. The lumins stared back at them, lidless and impassive eyes watching their struggles.
Adan increased the speed of his strokes, his hands knifing through the water. His legs were kicking so desperately it seemed as if his own efforts must be causing the waters to churn even more. Whatever he tried it was no use; he and Sierra were being pulled back further and further towards the center of the pool, directly opposite the direction they needed to go.
By now the waters were starting to foam. Adan felt as powerless to stop the pull as if he had been falling through the air. Even worse, the currents were tugging from below, trying to pull him under.
“They must be draining the reservoir,” Sierra conjectured. The next moment she was gone, dragged under by the current.
He could
sense her position with his bioseine and dove towards her. He latched on to her hand as the current mounted.
“Use the cutter,” he told her, “We have to be able to see what’s going on.”
There was no use fighting the current now. It was too strong. Sierra let go of his hand. For a moment fear gripped him at the thought that he might lose her, but then the yellow blade flared to life underwater.
In that flash of light, Adan saw they were only a couple body-lengths from the bottom of the reservoir. He also saw what was pulling them under, a large transparent tube running along the floor, wide enough for a large person to fit through. It was sucking water into it at an incredible rate.
As they rushed towards it, Sierra thrust the cutter below her legs. The next moment she was sucked into the tube. Adan had no time to be horrified. He was sucked in right behind her. His arm and then his head banged against the hard casing. Then he flipped over and started sliding on his back.
Light gashed his vision as his swirling world came to an abrupt stop. Something yanked him upwards. The current shifted suddenly and continued pushing him back up. Sierra was floating beside him, the yellow light from the cutter’s blade shimmering beside her in the water. A mangled opening was visible in the tube below them.
“It’s all right,” Sierra gestured upwards. “Swim up now.”
She kicked her feet and shot towards the surface, the cutter flickering like a beacon, beckoning him to safety.
He swam with burning urgency, his lungs dense pockets of pain inside his chest. The two of them broke the surface together. Chunks of the sliced up pipe bobbed in the water around them. The current still swirled, but its grip no longer had sufficient strength to pull them under.
“You cut your way out of the pipe!” Adan spit out a mouthful of water, amazed they were still alive.
She nodded. “I’m starting to actually like this cutter.” She gave him a soggy smile. She swam to one of the larger pieces of tubing and threw her arms on top of it to get a break from swimming. Adan did the same.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 57
