The medical diagnosis proved a greater concern. Despite the armor's dense gelpack lining, the Marine had lost over a pint of blood from blunt-trauma injury. His major muscle groups suffered from deep-tissue bruises and torn fibers. A stress fracture ran across his left collarbone, adding to a list that included cracked ribs, strained tendons, and one hell of a concussion.
Ridgeway grunted through clenched teeth, "Today's menu, pain."
The DCS had already dumped a jolt of neuro-inhibitors into his bloodstream, enough to dull the debilitating edge and allow him to carry on until he could get formal medical attention. Infrared-assisted healing could help but that, along with repairs to the armor, would have to wait.
Ridgeway took a deep, slow breath. Given the holocaust he had just come through, things could have been a helluva lot worse. He hoped the rest of the team had fared as well as he ordered the TAC to run a perimeter scan.
The world remained an azure field, but familiar icons appeared one by one against the haze. With no reference map, the TAC simply generated concentric rings around Ridgeway's position, graduated in meters. Heading vectors radiated from the center point to each glowing symbol. Not as good as sight, but distance and heading were enough to get from one point to the next.
Sweeping the display, Ridgeway counted off the pulsing icons.
Merlin was twenty meters off, moving at a crawl. His icon flickered in and out like an old neon sign. Taz looked to be some twelve meters beyond, moving toward Ridgeway. Stitch and Darcy were off to the right, both motionless. The sniper's icon alternated between red and black. He could see no sign of Monster.
Gritting his teeth, Ridgeway forced himself to sit up. Pinwheels of light flared across his vision, driving another punishing wave of nausea. Ridgeway's equilibrium rolled like a ship in high seas.
He braced himself and breathed slowly, willing the pain to pass. The DCS cycled a second dose of painkillers but Ridgeway cancelled the action. "Gotta keep my head straight," he muttered, "gotta stay clear." Swallowing back the taste of vomit in his throat, the words held little conviction.
Elbows planted on armored thighs, Ridgeway allowed his vision to clear. As the optical fireworks coalesced, he realized with a start that it was the environment, not his imaging system, that was awry. A hazy sapphire fluid swirled around him with a ghostly slowness, thick with sparkling particles.
A pool?
Thoughts of Hex flashed to Ridgeway's mind, but he discarded them just as quickly. Hex was sludge-brown, the color of burned motor oil. This stuff was like liquefied blue crystal. Thick and viscous, it radiated a gentle luminescence. He was damn sure it wasn't Hex.
His teeth grinding, Ridgeway stood, surprised when his head and upper torso broke through the surface of the lake. He wobbled, forced to rely on the armor's stabilization to keep him upright.
As he weaved in the unearthly glow that rose from the surface of the pool, Ridgeway gazed at a natural cavern of immense size. The radiant lake stretched on for at least a couple hundred meters in all directions. A dense white fog spread across its surface like a blanket of gauzy cotton.
Wicked spikes of black rock jutted up through the haze, many extending into the darkness above the glow. Each dark spire was coated with ice. Ridgeway struggled to focus on the bladelike tip of the nearest stalagmite. The conical spike reached lethally towards a sky it had never seen.
That would have left a mark, Ridgeway thought dully, imagining what would have happened is he'd fallen onto the spike instead of the pool.
Even with light-amplification, Ridgeway could find no hard measure of the cavern's actual size. The TAC estimated it at two to three times larger than Cathedral, but even that was a guess. They'd need a hell of a lot of light to see into the distant corners.
Ridgeway gave a brief thought to the powerful searchlights mounted in his shoulderplates, but forestalled that action. The TAC could assemble a decent composite based on passive sensors, enough for the moment at least. A spotlight would not only burn precious power, it could draw unwanted attention.
Lights point in both directions, one of Grissom's many axioms. Far better to quietly find out who might be in the neighborhood before appearing at one end of a sixteen million candlepower beam.
Turning in a slow circle, Ridgeway came to face a mangled metal frame lying dead in the mist. It took him a long moment to recognize the remnants of the truck.
The vehicle looked to have fallen ass-end first, its crumpled nose pointed skyward. The cab gaped open and Hex-eaten metal framed a gaping wound where the passenger seat would have been. Aft, the heavy chemical tank was a tangle of steel. Parts of the upper shell were recognizable, but even these were bent and corroded. The blue light of the pool rippled silently across the decimated vehicle, casting eerie shadows through the gutted carcass.
Ridgeway turned from the truck and waded through the thick fluid toward the cluster of blips on the TAC. He could see Taz climb unsteadily onto a flat island of rock. The Aussie knelt stiffly and scanned the perimeter with his CAR shouldered. By the looks of him, Taz had come away reasonably intact. Most of the obvious armor damage was concentrated along his right side, from hip to shoulder. The young Marine picked his way over the rock to a crumpled form obscured in the fog. It took Ridgeway a long moment to recognize the shape.
Monster lay face down on the stone island. Ridgeway sloshed to his side, concern pushing back the pain wrought by every step. He reached the flat stretch of rock just as Taz rolled Monster onto his back. The sergeant flopped over and Ridgeway's concern doubled.
A huge, charred dent had cratered the left side of Monster's breastplate, cracks radiating out from the center like an erratic spider web. He tried to count the number of scorched starbursts that pocked the carbonite plating but was forced to give up by the sheer volume of damage.
Ridgeway fumbled for the release mechanism that would open the armor shell. Absent from the TAC, Ridgeway was left with nothing but a physical inspection to determine the big man's injuries.
A grave-deep groan resonated from the prostrate form, broken into syllables but beyond comprehension. Ridgeway ignored the sound and his right glove settled against a set of contacts that ran along Monster's ribcage.
The sound repeated as a clubbing forearm slammed into Ridgeway's chest. He toppled back and plopped squarely on his butt. The sergeant rolled to his side and growled angrily as he pushed himself into a seated position, "I said, I'm all right!"
Even Taz took a full step back at the bear-like sound, but Ridgeway moved forward once more. The visible evidence impeached any statements Monster could make as to his condition. Before he could reach the battered figure, Monster's head snapped up, his hand raised once more though this time with a barring palm extended. With an agonized groan, he wobbled to his feet.
Stubborn sonofabitch, Ridgeway grumbled. The world might fall apart but it wouldn't see Monster ask for help along the way.
He keyed Monster's private channel, unsure if the sergeant's comm was working any more than his TAC Link. "Sometimes this superman shit gets a little old," Ridgeway muttered.
Before Monster could respond, the medic's voice cut across the open comm channel. "Major, we've got a problem."
Ridgeway turned toward Stitch, who hauled the fallen sniper onto the island that had by default become their logical LZ.
"What is it?"
Stitch reeled off the situation report, none of it good. "It's the Lieutenant sir. She's bad. Real bad. She took a ton of point-blank fire, punched one lung at least. Lots of internal bleeding, maybe some bile leakage. Between slugs and spalled carbonite she's got a shitload of frag floating inside her. I've gotta crack the suit to get a better handle on it but I can't risk the environmentals."
"Atmosphere?" Ridgeway asked as he helped set Darcy onto the island. Environment remained the first consideration in any off-world engagement. Deep underground, things only got worse; toxic gases could abound, while good stuff like oxygen could be in very short supply.
"Negative on that," Stitch muttered, his voice ragged, "air down here is better than it is topside, and that ain't right. I dunno, maybe they've got some kind of terraforming op running down here. Might mean a way out."
Ridgeway waved dismissively. "File it for follow-up. What's our immediate problem?"
"Hex decon."
Looking down at his own armor, Ridgeway recognized the unexpectedly enduring hazard in the Trojan Horse tactic. His mind scanned back across the operation.
The chemical plant, separate from the underground facility, had been identified as a weak spot in the Rimmer's security, likely because nobody in their right mind would ever choose to play near gallons of Hex. Seizing control of a poorly guarded factory on the edge of town had been an easy matter for the advance teams. With the factory secured, sealing the RAT squad inside a replacement Hex tank, was a simple matter of mechanics. Ridgeway had to give it to Grissom; who would look for intruders in a bottle of acid?
Therein lay the rub; the plan also called for the Marines to be on the surface by now, where a dropship rigged for decontamination would be waiting. Carbonite was impervious to hydrogen hexafluoride, but the people inside were not. Contact with even a lingering smear of the material could still prove catastrophic.
"We caught a break with the lake," Stitch noted as he jerked a thumb toward the expanse of luminous fog. "It's not water, but it's at least ph-neutral. If anything, it oughta dilute the corrosive."
Ridgeway pointed at the blackened pits in Darcy's armor. "What about those?"
"I think we're OK here," Stitch tapped Darcy's armor with a grey finger. "Given the amount of energy it takes to chew a hole in carbonite, any Hex around the impact area should have boiled off before the armor gave out. But it'll be a crapshoot to pop the whole suit without some kind of formal decon." The timber of his voice dropped an octave. "On the other hand, we're gonna have a dead Marine for sure if I don't pop it."
"And that ain't gonna happen." The voice on the ComLink was ragged but forceful.
Ridgeway turned to see Merlin slogging through the iridescent pool. The Marine hauled a rack of damaged cylinders and a tangle of braided steel hose. Fog swirled in his wake, clinging to the trailing strands of equipment.
Merlin wrestled with the snarl of loose lines. "Chem-rigs have suppression systems," the engineer explained wearily, "I figured a Hex-hauler to have a pretty good one." He held up the cylinders. "Two of the pressure tanks got scrapped, but one survived. Guess we caught a break."
With a heavy bang, Merlin set the mass of equipment on the rocks and began to untangle the silver-colored hoses, popping off the clamp-style brackets that had affixed the braided steel lines to the top of the truck. He paused once more, breathing heavily for a minute before he purged the lines and charged the power nozzle.
The decon rig had not been designed for manual use. Charged to several thousand psi, the high pressure jet would have broken the arm of anyone foolish enough to try. In powered armor, Merlin merely braced himself and threw the lever, directing the stream of white foam across Darcy's prone figure. He took care to focus on joints and seams where bits of the deadly fluid could lodge. He repeated the procedure on Stitch and Ridgeway before clanking off toward Taz and Monster.
Stitch had already turned back to Darcy, placing his grey armored palm into a recess along the sniper's ribs. Contacts met and a high-security code fired across the gap. With a burst of compressed gas, the entire torso of the suit gull-winged open and slid down along the sniper's sides, revealing the inert form of Lieutenant Darcy Lonigan.
Ridgeway peered over the medic's shoulder and grimaced. Darcy was beat all to hell. A dark, mottled bruise swept up her entire neck and jawline. Blood stained the left side of her olive drab T-shirt. Darcy's breathing was labored and the sniper's shallow breath fogged in the frigid air.
Scanning layers of injury, Stitch fired off a series of corrective measures. A wave of drugs pulsed into Darcy's bloodstream. Her heartbeat quickened, but barely.
Stitch gave Ridgeway a quick synopsis. "I can plug some of the leaks, but we're gonna need heat and shelter. She'll freeze if the suit stays open, but we don't have a lot of choice. If I'm gonna get some of this frag out, I'll need to peel the armor completely."
"In your dreamssss…" The voice was slurred and heavy, but the glint in her good eye was all Darcy.
Stitch let out an unexpected chuckle, muttering under his breath as he quickly resumed his ministrations. Ridgeway knelt at the sniper's side, his faceless helmet gazing down impassively.
"Gave us a bit of a scare there, Lieutenant."
"Yessir," she wheezed through bloodstained teeth, "...wasn't part of the plan. How's Monster?"
"Stubborn as shit."
Darcy snorted and closed her eyes, nodding slowly. "So what's new?" A long moment passed before she looked up once more, this time gazing directly at Ridgeway. "He saved my ass."
"Yeah, well, you can be his Morale Officer while he heals up."
Darcy coughed and speckles of bright blood stained on her lips. She flashed a wry smile in spite of the pain. "Aw shit Major, the guy saved my life and all, but that's askin' too much."
Behind his mask Ridgeway allowed himself a tired smile at her sarcastic wit, but the signs didn't look good. Darcy needed medical attention, and more than they could give her on a frozen island of rock. Ridgeway leaned down and spoke softly. "Rest up Marine, we're going to need to be mobile soon. You up for it?"
"Roger that," she replied, her tone suddenly stripped of humor. The eyes that gazed up were hard as sapphire glass.
Ridgeway nodded once, then stood, his armored fist thumping a gentle rap on the medic's shoulder as he turned away.
Taz and Merlin were on their feet, checking each other's gear. Monster knelt at the island's edge where he re-armed the Gatling.
As Ridgeway approached, he could fully appreciate the beating Monster had absorbed. Aside from the grapefruit-sized dent sprawled across his chest plate, a multitude of lesser dents and furrows criss-crossed the armor in a haphazard array.
The TAC package at the base of Monster's skull had been blown to bits. Ridgeway could only imagine the pounding the skull inside had taken.
Ridgeway stood at Monster's side while both men scanned the distance. "How we doing, Gunny?"
"Merlin, Taz and Stitch are operational," Monster replied mechanically, adding with a dry note, "you look like shit, but you're moving." Then his deep voice grew somber, "You already know about the Lieutenant."
The Major nodded in silent agreement. Ridgeway couldn't see the big man's eyes, but he knew they were full of concern. Although Darcy was quick to point out Monster's heroics, both men knew full well the role the sniper played in the entire team surviving Cathedral. Courage cut both ways.
"So what have we got?"
Monster paused a moment before answering, his head making a slow sweep of the dark horizon where lake light faded into blackness. When he spoke, his reply was insightful and succinct. "We've got some weird shit here, Major."
Of all the technical answers he might have gotten from a hundred other Sergeants, Monster to cut to the chase.
The big Gunny elaborated. "The good news is it looks like we're alone down here. No life signs, nothing hostile we can see. I'm getting some real hinky readings bearing two-six-niner relative, but whatever it is, it's beyond passive scanner range. We'll get a better look if we go active."
Monster's torso rocked back, his faceplate angling up as he continued, "My best guess is that's where we broke through." A dented gauntlet pointed straight up.
Ridgeway looked up at the cavern ceiling, zooming his view and boosting light amplification. His rangefinder told him that the ceiling towered some seventy meters overhead, a jagged carpet of dark stalactites. An even darker hole, some ten meters wide, gaped in the forest of hanging spikes.
Monster looked down and shrugged toward the glowing pool. "Without the lake, we'da been paste on the rocks. I'm not one to lo
ok a gift horse in the mouth, but that's weirdness number one: it damn sure ain't water. Too thick, too blue, and water doesn't glow in the dark. I've got Merlin running a check, but I'm laying heavy odds it's synthetic. If so, somebody had to put it here."
Ridgeway nodded, making a mental note. Another lower-priority item to be resolved later. "Go on."
"Weirdness number two, the atmosphere. Way too clean. Oxy-Nitro mix is solid, most of the right trace gases, it's damn near Earth-normal and that just doesn't happen, especially not underground. That suggests a terraformer down here."
Ridgeway's fingers drummed lightly against his thigh as he mulled the point for the second time. "Yeah, Stitch came to the same conclusion. But Intel said the reactor was at the deepest level."
Monster snorted abruptly. "Oh yeah, it'd be a real shocker if Intel missed something now wouldn't it?"
Ridgeway grunted, having a ground-pounder's typically low regard for intelligence officers. Safe in air-conditioned offices, analysts sipped coffee and peered through second-hand reports, often forwarding best-guess conclusions as gospel fact. The guys on the front line ate the mistakes.
Monster continued. "We took one hell of a drop. The Hex must have ate it's way into some kind of big crack, a natural shaft, something. Best estimate is that we pinballed through close to five hundred meters of rock before dumping out through the ceiling. Add another seventy of freefall, that puts us roughly twenty-five hundred meters below the surface."
The Gunnery Sergeant paused as if considering the weight of his own statement. Ridgeway mulled the conclusion carefully. Two and a half kilometers underground. Hell of a long way to dig.
Outwardly undaunted, Monster continued to present data in a steady stream. "It's way below freezing right here, about eight degrees Fahrenheit. We'd have to dig down to tap a lingering magma plane, and we sure as shit don't wanna get any deeper. That leads us to weirdness number three: You can't have fog without heat. If the cavern is stone-cold, what's heating up the lake?"
Dominant Species Page 7
