"It’s obviously picking up its pace," said Mac.
Emily nodded. Adam had given no indication that he had any idea how quickly the Locusts' harvesting of Earth's resources would take, but if the escalation in scale between two days ago and today was anything to go by, they were talking a matter of days.
Jesus, Emily thought, suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of anxiety and dread. If we fail to complete the mission...Emily pushed the negative thought from her mind. Failure, as they used to say, was not an option.
CHAPTER 15
Mac had brought along three large, high-powered portable halogen lamps and a portable propane generator that he had planned to use to illuminate the shaft. Except, now, as he and Emily stood on a hastily assembled wooden platform suspended between two stepladders, looking down into the shaft, it turned out they had not needed them. The twisting flow of energy that whirled and swirled within the shaft provided more than enough light to see all the way to the bottom of the pit, and into what looked like a larger, open area.
"That is a long way down," said Emily.
"I'd guess somewhere around sixty, maybe seventy meters," Mac estimated. "Not a problem." They climbed back down to the assembled teams. Mac and two of his crew set about fixing rappelling anchors to metal bolts they had already drilled into the side of the raised berm around the lip of the shaft; six anchors and bolts in total, at two-meter intervals. When it was done, the support team quickly threaded rappelling lines and carabiners to the anchors while the assault team readied their weapons, checked that the bags they carried their gear in were securely fastened to their backs, then climbed up onto the berm and positioned themselves near the edge.
On Mac's signal, one after another, the team leaders threw their coiled climbing ropes over the edge of the pit. The lines whirred through the air, uncoiling into the shaft.
Mac breathed in deeply, exhaled, and addressed his people. "Not to sound like a broken record, but remember we have very little idea what we're facing down there, so stay close and stay quiet. I'm going to remind you one last time; our primary mission objective is to get in and locate the energy reservoir for Emily. We do not engage unless I give the order, so keep your fingers off your triggers. If there are any Point Loma survivors, then we'll get them out, but the energy reservoir is our most important task. We want to avoid drawing any attention to our presence, so I'm going to repeat one final time, in case any of you haven't got it through your skulls yet; you engage only if I tell you to. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir," everyone replied almost in unison.
"Any questions?
"No, sir."
Mac smiled. "Okay, let's rock and roll." And with that, he stepped back into the waiting darkness.
•••
The walls of the shaft looked to be as smooth as porcelain. Emily momentarily stopped her descent, reached out tentatively and laid the flat of her hand against the surface; it was warm to the touch. In fact, the deeper into the shaft the assault team descended, the warmer the air became, to the point that she could feel small beads of sweat running down her forehead.
"All okay?" Mac asked. He had stopped a few meters below Emily.
"The rock's warm," Emily replied. "Shouldn't it be cold?"
Mac touched his own hand to the wall and after a second said, "You're right. Must be related to whatever the Locusts are cooking up down there."
To the left and right of Emily, the rest of the team continued toward the bottom of the pit. Above her, the opening looked small and distant. She could not help but compare herself to the time traveler in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine as he descended into the unknown depths of the Morlocks' tunnels in search of the captured Eloi.
Emily felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Mac across from her.
"You sure you're okay?" he asked.
She forced a smile to her lips, "Yup! Come on, race you to the bottom."
•••
Emily's feet finally touched the bottom of the shaft. The insides of her thighs were sore; even though she was wearing combat trousers, the rope had still managed to chafe. She resisted the urge to rub the sore spots, knowing that it would only make them itch more.
Mac unhooked her from the rope then spoke into his radio, "All clear down here. Next group, come on down." He turned to Emily. "You okay, love?"
Emily nodded and looked around. They were in a large semi-circular room with walls that curved away from where the shaft ended, about six meters above her head. The room was much wider than it had appeared from the top of the shaft. The temperature had risen to the equivalent of a summer day; a good eighty-plus degrees, Emily thought. Her clothing was starting to feel clammy from perspiration; the rest of the team's tunics also had spreading dark patches between their shoulder-blades. The four other men who had descended with Mac and Emily waited just a few meters away, kneeling with their weapons and flashlights pointing down a tunnel that ran perpendicular to the shaft they had just used to descend from the surface.
The team waited silently as the remaining twelve team members descended the ropes to join them. When everyone was safely down, Mac split them into two groups, ordered one to the left side of the tunnel, the second group to the right. They formed a line one-person deep, separated by gaps of two meters. Mac took point on the left, Petter the right. Emily took her place behind her husband. After a final check of their equipment, Mac signaled to Petter and the two lines of soldiers began to move out along the tunnel, the only sound the quiet scuff of their boots against the tunnel floor.
There was no need for the flashlights each of them carried, the twisting rope of energy flowing down the center of the tunnel gave off more than enough illumination for the humans to see for a fair distance ahead of them. The tunnel was huge, Emily noted, dropping away at a steady 10-degree incline in front of them. The bottom was flat and easy to walk on but on either side the walls curved upward for twenty meters above their heads. Just like the walls of the shaft, this tunnel's walls were smooth as glass, with not even the tiniest of flaws that Emily could see. The river of twisting, undulating strands of energy running down the tunnel's center was probably four meters in diameter, more than twice as tall as the tallest man or woman in the team. Filaments of glowing energy, ranging in size from tiny motes to the occasional strand that was longer than Emily's arm, drifted through the air alongside the main stream of energy, pulled down the tunnel as if by some unfelt draft. The filaments rotated, floating dreamily through the air, some merging with the main stream, the rest drifting ever onward like fireflies.
A couple hundred meters along, the channel diverged, forking into three separate tunnels. The energy stream took a new route along one of the new tunnels that curved to the left. Mac signaled for everyone to stop, and beckoned Petter over to where he and Emily stood. "What do you think?" Mac asked, looking at Emily. "Do we continue on down the same route or follow the energy?"
"It makes sense to me that the energy is flowing either to a storage area or, maybe, even to the Locusts themselves, which means we should follow it," said Emily.
Petter nodded. "Yes, that is logical, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that is where we will find any survivors. We could split into three teams, one for each tunnel."
Mac shook his head. "That would be a mistake, I think. Our handheld radios are limited and the repeaters are only going to add so much range. We should stick together."
"I agree," Emily said. "Our priority is to deliver the cube to the energy source, as Adam instructed. If we don't do that it's not going to matter whether we find any survivors because we'll all end up dead anyway once the Locusts strip the world clean."
Petter and Mac nodded grimly. "So, we're agreed then," Mac said, "we'll continue to follow the energy stream to its destination?"
"Yes," said Emily.
Petter didn't seem convinced of the decision but deferred to Mac. "You are in command," he said then walked back to his team.
The river of energy changed course, no
w following a smaller tunnel that took a gradual left turn off the main passageway. Mac set off down the new route without a word. Ten minutes of cautious walking later the tunnel made an abrupt 180-degree turn to the right. This section of the tunnel continued for another twenty minutes of walking until the group encountered a second bend that twisted the tunnel back 180-degrees in its original direction, all while dropping ever deeper into the planet's crust. Ahead of the group, a smaller tunnel intersected with the main one, branching off to the right. The energy stream continued to flow past the opening uninterrupted, so there was no need to change course.
Mac was less than a meter away from the intersection when something huge stepped out from the smaller tunnel into theirs.
To Emily, it resembled a giant stick insect. It had a thin body that was about three meters long, its skin color was close to purple with slightly raised bumps of darker purple scattered across its body like the camouflage of a cheetah. Its head, if you could call it a head because the only difference Emily could see from its rear end was that it had a cluster of what might be eyes extending in an arc like a crown across the top of its body. Six legs, two clusters of three on either side of its body, extended from its flanks, close to its rear, which caused the creature to walk with its front end raised well above the ground at a forty-five-degree angle. Two thin arms sprouted from its midsection, each ending in three delicate-looking articulated fingers.
Mac stopped abruptly, fumbling his rifle from his shoulder.
Emily gasped and reached for her pistol. Mac was so close to the alien, if he had wanted to he could have reached out and easily touched the thing. Which meant that when it attacked, as it surely would any second now, Emily reasoned, Mac would be the closest to it and the natural initial target.
Emily's body flooded with adrenalin as she braced for the cavalcade of gunfire she was sure was about to erupt around her. From the corner of her eye she saw Petter and the Jegertroppen directly behind him dropping to a knee as they brought their weapons to bear on the creature. Emily did the same, slowly dropping to one knee.
What Emily did not anticipate was for the creature to do nothing. Instead of attacking, it continued past Mac as though he did not exist, its attention focused squarely on the energy stream. Once it was close enough, a slit opened on the thing's head just below the arc of eyes. A proboscis, tube-like with equally spaced raised corrugated rings along its length extended from the opening and dipped into the glowing flow of energy.
It drank deeply. Emily could see the energy moving up the transparent straw-like proboscis.
Mac raised his right hand slowly into the air, his fist clenched to signal no one should move. If the stick creature showed any sign of aggression, he would unclench his fingers and all hell would be unleashed on it.
For its part, the stick creature appeared to be totally oblivious to the group of humans pressed against the wall of the tunnel, just meters away from it. For several minutes, it continued to drink in great gulps from the uninterrupted flow of energy roiling down the tunnel.
Emily saw beads of perspiration dripping down the side of Mac's face and across the nape of his neck. She could feel dampness on her own forehead but did not dare to wipe it away in case movement, any movement, might alert the creature to their presence.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the proboscis retracted back into the creature's body. Emily's muscles tightened as it stepped away from the stream of energy and turned in the team's direction, its iris-less eyes seemed to look directly at her...then it stepped forward and walked first past Mac, then Emily, close enough to her that one of its legs brushed against her right bicep. It continued past the line of soldiers cowering against the wall behind her, its legs making a click-clack-click sound as its feet tapped over the glass-like floor of the tunnel.
When the stick creature was safely out of range, Mac turned to face Emily, his eyes still following the creature as it continued, still apparently oblivious or blind to their presence, down the tunnel in the direction the team had come from. "Was that one of them?" Mac whispered, judging the creature was out of earshot. "A Locust?"
Emily thought for a second, her eyes moving across to Petter and his group who waited nervously, eyes as big as plates, their attention fixed entirely on Emily and Mac. "I don't know," she said, eventually. "Maybe. It just seemed so unaware. It doesn't make sense to me that that could be the mastermind behind everything that's happened to the planet, and yet not be able to sense us when we're so close to it. Right? I think it's more likely something the Locusts have made to assist them, like a helper, or a construct."
"A construct?" Mac's forehead creased as he processed what she had said. He stood up, slowly, and everyone else followed his lead. "Whatever it was, we have to assume it might be back or that there could be more of them. And next time we might not be so lucky. We need to put some distance between us and it as quickly as possible." He motioned over to Petter that they were continuing on their way.
Emily got to her feet, her calves tight from her time frozen in place, her mind still processing the implications of their latest close encounter of the what-the-fuck kind. If that creature really was a Locust, then their job had just become a lot easier, but she had learned long ago that rarely in this world was anything the way it appeared. Subject to change, she thought, This reality is always subject to change.
"Keep your heads on a swivel, people. Let's move out," said Mac, and the two lines of humans began to move again, deeper into the Locusts' lair.
•••
Mac raised an open hand—Stop!
On either side of the tunnel, both lines of the assault team immediately froze. Fifty meters ahead, the walls of the tunnel abruptly widened, expanding outward into what was clearly an entrance to a larger tunnel or room. From her position behind Mac, Emily was not able to see much of anything because the steady incline of the tunnel coupled with the glow of the energy stream obscured her direct line-of-sight into this new area.
The purple wisps of energy that had escaped the main stream, and, until now, floated freely through the air, became more agitated the closer they were to this new area. Each of the larger strings of purple light that had moved randomly through the air took on the same uniform trajectory and movement as their neighbor, as though they were being sucked into whatever lay ahead.
Emily edged closer to Mac. "What do you see?" she whispered.
"Nothing much from here, I'm going to have to get closer to get a better look."
"Let's go," Emily said, and before Mac could say anything to stop her, she stepped around him and began moving stealthily along the wall toward the end of the tunnel. Behind her, she heard Mac give a quiet sigh, and an order for everyone else to stay where they were.
"Hey, slow down," Mac hissed.
Emily turned and saw him right on her tail.
"We really need to have a discussion about this whole 'You won't even notice I'm here' thing," Mac said, as he stepped past Emily, then, in a low crouch moved slowly down the tunnel toward the opening, his automatic rifle raised and ready.
The energy stream began to narrow as it drew closer to the end of the tunnel, the streams of light within it twisting and turning at a much faster rate than Emily had become used to. The stream pulsed and shifted so rapidly now that Mac and Emily's shadows moved in jittery little circles around their bodies as they edged closer and closer to the end of the tunnel. It was actually a little nausea inducing, Emily thought, feeling her senses swim.
Mac started forward again, Emily an arm's length behind him. They both stopped short of where the tunnel widened into the new area. Mac crept closer until he could get a good look at whatever lay beyond.
"What do you see?" Emily whispered, but when Mac said nothing she shuffled forward and peered over his shoulder.
She gasped in amazement.
The tunnel opened into an almost perfectly spherical cavern that had been carved out of the rock. The floor was flat like that of t
he tunnel, but the walls of the cavern curved upward for at least fifty or maybe even sixty meters. To Emily it felt as though she had suddenly found herself transported inside a giant snow globe, but that was just about where the similarity stopped. Deep grooves, several centimeters wide formed concentric rings along the walls of the cavern. They spiraled upward around the cavern's circumference, all the way to its domed ceiling. The rings were spaced about a meter apart.
Starting roughly ten meters above the floor, large octagonal fissures pitted the walls. They were easily large enough for an adult man to stand upright in, Emily estimated. Each of the fissures was capped by a dome of translucent material that protruded outward like a blister on a piece of bubble wrap. Within each of the fissures Emily saw a darker shape, shadowy and indistinct, moving almost serenely, slowly rotating, suspended in a cloudy fluid that filled the fissure. There were thousands of fissures, Emily guessed, maybe even tens of thousands. It was impossible to accurately estimate just how many there were because the fissures became a blur in the ceiling's shadows the higher she strained to look.
But what had extracted the gasp of amazement from Emily's throat were the sixty or more constructs that moved between each of the fissures. They looked like exact clones of the construct the team had encountered in the tunnel half an hour earlier. The creatures busily moved from fissure to fissure, their proboscises pushing gently into the membranes covering each cleft in the cavern's wall. The constructs used the deep concentric slits running along the walls to secure themselves, adeptly maneuvering across the cavern's surface.
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 15
