by Tanya Huff
“It would if you were a Marine.”
“It would if I was a Marine? Seriously? That’s really not helpful. And technically, doesn’t Ressk owe me a life?”
“Shut up.”
The black slabs were giant symbols set into the red rock, large enough they could probably be seen from space. If the whole planet was a cemetery, then odds were high they were walking across the surface of a massive tombstone. The odds were high everyone on the team had figured that out, but as no one else mentioned it, neither did Torin.
About fifteen kilometers from the crash site, the low shadow became another red rock cliff.
Breathing heavily, cheeks flushed, Alamber sagged against the rock. “Look, all I’m saying is that with the slates off, you can’t tell how far we’ve come.”
“We were infantry,” Werst reminded him. “We humped over a shitload of terrain. Plateau’s flat, Gunny’s moving us at about six kilometers an hour, took us two and a half hours to get here. Fifteen klicks.”
“Do we go up, Gunny?” Binti asked.
Torin shook her head. “Look to the left, about three kilometers along the cliff face. What do you see?”
“Big pile of rubble. Section of the cliff probably collapsed.”
“Or someone dug into it.”
Someone had.
A small mechanical digger had been partially hidden behind the pile of rubble that reached nearly to the top of the cliff. On the other side of the digger was a door.
Craig folded his arms. “I can’t dux out what H’san were overcompensating for, but they’re the opposite of subtle.”
Binti moved up beside him. “It’s very shiny. You’d think it would have dulled down over the millennia.”
“Protective layer of dirt.”
“There’s that.”
The door stood four meters high, three meters across, the top arcing up another two meters. Constructed of a bronze-colored metal, it had been outlined in black stones inset into the red cliff. The metal might have actually been bronze, but as they planned to open it, not go through it, Torin didn’t care about its composition. A metal pallet, just large enough to hold the digger, rested on a packed dirt base to the left of the door. Connected by cables to a mechanical pulley system that hung out over the top of the cliff, the pallet held fourteen empty six-liter water containers. She ran her palm over the closest and frowned at the layer of grime.
“I wonder if it’s locked.”
“Don’t touch it,” Torin snapped, and Alamber froze, one hand reaching for the door. She swept her gaze around the ex-Marines. They shrugged out of their packs and moved toward the rubble.
“Alamber, Craig, wait here while we secure the shuttles.” Torin leaned her pack against Werst’s. “Stay up against the cliff and get out of sight if the door opens. We won’t be long.”
“And if they left a guard up there?” Craig asked, pushing Alamber’s hand down.
“We still won’t be long.”
“Good thing a hardware-to-hardware hack still works,” Ressk muttered as the telltales on the air lock turned orange and the outer door opened. “Don’t let it close again, Gunny. I’m not a hundred percent sure I can do that again.”
“Noted. You and Werst, secure Jamers’ ship. Mashona, you’re with me.” Dividing up along species lines was a poor use of resources, but ceilings in a Katrien ship were no more than a meter and a half high.
The Taykan shuttle was empty. Torin flipped the catches on the floor plate leading to the engine compartment as Binti examined the weapons locker in the stern bulkhead. “Nothing in here, Gunny. Space for eight KC-7s and a rack for a 9. They’ve got a heavy. We should get a heavy.”
“Someone in mind?”
“No, but I hate being outgunned. “So . . .” Her pause was weighted. “. . . our grave robbers are mercs. At least now you’ve got something to tell Justice.”
“Half of something,” Torin amended.
“Fair enough. Why hire mercs to go after the H’san weapons? There’s nothing down here for them to shoot.”
“Best guess, person who put the team together is military and they’re sticking with what they know.” Belly down on the floor, Torin reached in, slid her hand between two panels, and snapped out the SIE27.
“So they’re following a map?”
“Or they’re following a person holding a map or holding a list of clues or a historian’s best guess. Or they’re supporting rogue archaeologists. Doesn’t matter, we’re following them.” She wrapped the circuit in the protective sleeve Justice had them use for evidence and tucked it in her pocket. According to the specs Craig had taught her back when they were nothing more than recently coupled civilian salvage operators—whose ships were often cobbled together out of a variety of spare parts—Taykan ships didn’t carry a spare for the two-seven, and without it the engine wouldn’t fire.
“We didn’t hear any shots.”
“We didn’t have to fire any.”
“Remember what to pull?”
Alamber’s hair flew out and he snickered.
Torin raised a brow and Craig shrugged. “Takes so little to make him happy.”
“I wouldn’t say yours was little. Door opens in the center,” Alamber continued. “Hair’s breadth crack between them, and not my hair, a skinny Human hair. It opens out and there’s nothing to pull.”
“It’s a theme,” Ressk sighed, as Torin pinned the di’Taykan with an unimpressed glare.
“You tried the door.” Torin’s blood pounded in her ears, as half a dozen worst case scenarios clamored for her attention. “What if the door had been trapped?”
Alamber waved her off. “I’d have died a hero. Isn’t that a Marine thing?”
“Dead heroes are a Navy thing,” Werst growled. “Marines prefer live heroes; none of that single use shit.”
“We’re not Marines,” Craig told her quietly, jaw tight. “But we’re not entirely incompetent.”
“The grave robbers are mercs,” Torin told him. “Or with mercs.”
“The door’s still closed,” Craig pointed out.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself that after the last year neither Craig nor Alamber could be considered civilians, having acquired the same sorts of skill sets that had shifted the rest of them away from being Marines. Glancing over at the sun, she noted that it hung distinctly lower on the horizon. “Then let’s figure out how to get it open.”
“That was close,” Alamber said to no one in particular. “I hate it when sheshan and irsin argue.”
Torin ignored him. “Zero the door. Mashona, one to ninety. Werst, ninety to one eighty.”
“It’s a dead planet,” Binti pointed out as she moved into position. “What are we watching for, Gunny?”
“Zombie H’san?” Werst suggested.
“Don’t even joke.”
The door had been opened at least once from the outside. Therefore it could be opened from the outside.
“Hidden control panel?”
“Really fukking well hidden,” Ressk muttered, running his fingertips over one side of the surrounding black stone. “If I had a working scanner . . .”
“Why not wish for a key?” Alamber answered. “And I already searched there.”
“Using Krai senses?”
“Only if I ask first. How tall are the H’san?”
Torin lifted a hand. “About here.”
“And their reach?”
“That’s a little trickier.”
Fingers spread, Ressk froze in place. “This feels rough, but I don’t see anything.”
Hair spread, Alamber leaned over Ressk’s head and breathed against the stone, condensation rising in two shades. “There’s a pattern.”
“Black on black,” Ressk said. “Yeah. That’s brought up the definition. Do it again.”
&n
bsp; Another breath and Alamber stepped back and swept his gaze around the door, his eyes as dark as the stone. “The pattern’s everywhere.”
Torin did the same and saw nothing. “Do you . . . ?”
Craig shook his head. “Not a thing.”
“Face it, Boss, Human eyes are crap. It goes all the way around. Black on black. Very stylish. Not carved, raised . . . Relief. That’s what you call it in stone, right? Not actually . . .” He took another step back. Stepped in again. “It’s not a pattern, it’s lots of different symbols.”
“Written H’san?”
“Not like the samples Intell gave us, but why not? Things change. The relief’s too flush to throw a shadow, but that could be more because the light sucks balls. Big red balls.” Shifting his attention back to the first piece, he ran his fingers over the area Ressk had identified. “Even seeing it’s there, I can’t feel the edges.” He rubbed Ressk’s head and danced away from the answering swing. “Yay, teamwork.”
“Can either of you get a scent off the symbols so we can figure out which ones have been handled?”
Alamber shook his head, slid a hand beneath layers of fabric and began to scratch. “Normally, I’d be all about the handling, but honestly, Boss, I’m hot and sweaty and I can only smell myself right now.”
“And it wouldn’t hurt if you hiked your masker.” Craig shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“It’s as high as it’ll go. But I can take care of that for you.”
“Let’s concentrate on getting through the door, people.”
“I’ll try.” Ressk moved forward, nostril ridges flaring open. “Jamers has to be about my height so there’s no point in checking above my reach.”
“Maybe she stood on a box.” Alamber rose onto his toes, graceful in spite of heavy boots, and waved his hand above Ressk’s head. “Then took the box inside with her. Or rang the bell for entry and they sent someone up to open the door.”
“We’ll leave that as a last resort.”
“Why would a tomb have a bell?” Ressk asked absently as he tucked his face in close to the stone. First the left side, then the right. “Right here, there’s a concentration of Katrien.” His lip curled. “And not healthy Katrien either.”
“Jamers?”
“I’ve never met her, Gunny, how the hell would I know?” He stepped back, nostril ridges fluttering, and used a finger to delineate the edges of the scent. “Here to here to here. Roughly.”
“Mashona. Werst.”
They turned and took up positions covering the door. Torin ordered the others back behind the rubble and rested her palm against the stone. She wanted to say it felt greasy. She wasn’t positive it didn’t. Alamber could see it, Ressk could feel it, she could take the risk. “On three. Two. One.”
She felt the click as she pushed although, as far as she could tell, the stone under her hand didn’t move.
The door swung silently open, exposing a long dark corridor.
“It’s not just me right? That’s creepy.” Alamber peered over her shoulder, not quite touching but close enough she could feel the heat coming off his body, his pheromones making her skin feel too tight.
“It’s an empty hall and an automatic door,” Torin muttered, moving forward. “Now get clear and stay put.” The grave robbers had left evidence of at least one piece of heavy equipment in the lines of scoring that cut across the threshold. The distance apart looked familiar and Torin added anti-gravity sleds to the list of things shut down by H’san tech. They’d have had to flip out the metal wheels and wheels, especially with the weight they seemed to have loaded, meant they’d be moving significantly slower than with a working AGS. Slower was good.
She saw nothing she recognized as a trap, realized that meant SFA, and stepped inside.
Lights came on, an illuminated line of glass ovals set into the rock. Level with her shoulders, they shed the same thick, red light as the natural light outside on the plateau. This part of the necropolis had been built after the sun had gone red. After the H’san had fled their planet of origin. After they’d given up war.
Another step. The ceiling was high, the corridor both long—the walls met at the infinity point—and wide. A balcony had been cut into the left wall about ten meters up, running the full length of the corridor, the stone balustrades carved into . . . interesting shapes. The stone, all the stone, was a slick pink. A closer look showed flecks of both red and gray but that wasn’t enough to change her initial impression of climbing into the body of a living creature.
The air didn’t smell the way imagination suggested a catacomb should. But then, the dead here had been dust for millennia; the air smelled of history, not rot. Analysis on both cuff and slate remained down, so Torin breathed in and, in her entirely unscientific opinion, the air in her lungs felt the same as the air outside. Had the grave robbers cracked a seal, allowing the air outside in? Or had the H’san built a ventilation system into a catacomb they then buried?
As long as her team could breathe, Torin didn’t much care.
It felt five to ten degrees cooler than out on the plateau.
“Werst, on our six.” She’d seen too many bodies to believe the dead required reverence, but she kept her voice low. Respectful. Less likely to be overheard by lurking mercs even if the response of the lights suggested none lurked in the immediate area. “Everyone else, inside. Stay close. Be quiet.”
“Do we jam the doors open, Gunny?” Binti asked, matching Torin’s volume.
“No. Let’s not advertise our presence any more than we have to.” They had a fifty/fifty shot the doors would stay open until they were deliberately closed or they’d close automatically the moment no one stood in the way. “Alamber, look around in here for the symbol that opened things up. The mercs didn’t believe they were trapped, or they’d have tried to break free.”
“We’re calling them mercs now?” Craig asked, carrying her pack in.
“Evidence in the shuttle says armed ex-military. Mercs.”
He nodded at her KC.
She shrugged. “We’re the good guys.”
“The mercs are working with more information,” Alamber protested, peering up at the balcony, arms out from his sides so the cooler air could get in under his clothes.
“But our hearts are pure.” A hand on his shoulder, Torin tugged him around to face the door. “It won’t be up there; it’s a door control.”
“Yeah, but those freaky carved balustrades? They’re like the symbols around the door. Letters, or whole words maybe.”
“Still not going to be up there unless the last H’san out had a ladder.” She pointed. “Pretend the H’san occasionally default to logic and search around the door.”
It didn’t take him long to find it. Pink on pink this time, not black on black.
“Probably a di’Taykan flying that Taykan shuttle, then,” Craig said, squinting at the place Alamber insisted the symbol had been carved. “And the H’san either have good eyes or a sick sense of humor.”
“Whole planet of dead people.” Binti adjusted her grip on her weapon. “I vote sick sense of humor.”
Torin agreed. “Werst, inside.”
“We know the external control works, Gunny. Maybe, I should stay out here.”
“We’re not splitting up.” The thought of one of her people on the other side of those doors, sat like a rock in her stomach. She beckoned him forward. “Clear the doors, people, let’s see what happens.”
The doors closed as silently as they’d opened. Torin nodded at Alamber.
The doors opened.
Thirty seconds later, they closed again.
“You know,” Craig said thoughtfully, “I don’t really care about them not telling us where their home system was—is—but I’m a little pissed about them hiding a way to keep machinery working perfectly after being left on its own fo
r millennia.”
Torin frowned at the wall. “Mark the spot so if Alamber’s not with us, we can still get out.”
“Why wouldn’t I be with you?” Alamber demanded, hair expanding into a sudden, pale aurora around his head.
“Plenty of reasons,” Werst told him.
Ressk smacked his bonded’s shoulder and added, “Not all of them bad.”
“Some of them bad.”
“True.”
“Mark the spot,” Torin snapped.
The wall wouldn’t take a mark. They couldn’t chip it, carve it, or write on it.
Alamber’s hair smoothed out as he purred, “I guess you’ll have to take special care of me.”
“Not in a crypt,” Binti snorted.
“The dead don’t care.”
“You don’t know that,” Ressk said trying to scrape an arrow sign into the floor with the point of his knife. “Zombie voyeurs.”
“Stop saying zombie.” Torin frowned down the corridor, mostly to stop herself from smiling. Armed, taking a small team into enemy territory. Complete the mission. Bring her people out alive. This was the first time she’d felt settled in her skin since Colonel Hurrs had shown them a biscuit maker. “All right, they’ve moved on, but we’re looking at approximately four klicks of corridor straight out with no way of knowing how much farther it goes or if they took a sudden turn at any point on the way. They left no sign out here . . .” The sled had marked the threshold but not the floor. “So we check the crypts—out of sight, out of mind, and anything they left behind is information we don’t have.”
The crypts, evenly spaced along the right wall, had no doors. Internal lights came on in the first when Torin stepped over the threshold.
“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all,” Ressk muttered, heading for crypt two.
The first crypt was a large, square room with a black stone sarcophagus, about a meter and a half high, taking up most of the floor space. The empty meter of space all around left barely enough room for an adult H’san. Black-on-pink symbols covered all the walls but the one with the door.
“Oh, sure,” Craig muttered beside her. “These we can see.”
