by Mel Odom
Silently, Hawke cursed the Shadowman. They were at the site. They were going to get the trinket. He didn’t have to keep the pressure turned up like this.
“Looks like they’re preparing to drop deep sea fish into the ocean after you. They’ve got big cargo planes headed this way.”
“I can confirm that,” Dolphin said. “I just hacked into one of NeoNET’s auxiliary servers and found out Ayumi Sukenobu put in an order for four deep sea submersibles. I can only assume Aztechnology is doing the same.”
“Understood,” Flicker replied.
“I’ll be there for you, mija,” Joaquin told Flicker, “if I can do it without risking my boat.”
“I’m counting on it. Helldiver out.” The submersible shuddered as Flicker increased the acceleration of the screwdrive powering it through the ocean.
Hawke made himself breathe and tried not to grip the armrests so hard. Flicker would probably never let him hear the end of it if she returned the vessel with damaged seats.
Finding the opening to the underwater cave system was easy. The Scorpionfish hadn’t been able to locate it with all her drones and systems, and Flicker couldn’t with her drones, either.
Rachel, however, seemed to have a map in her head. She watched the video feed from Flicker’s deep sea drones and gave the rigger directions.
Within forty-one minutes of departing the Scorpionfish, they were following a channel that Rachel assured them led to the cavern. Hawke just hoped the air-filled cavern actually existed, and that they wouldn’t have to go in while wearing ADS. The Helldiver had atmospheric diving suits on hand if it came to that, but it would make the expedition much more difficult.
Three minutes after that, Dolphin let them know the first of NeoNET’s submersibles had plunged into the ocean overhead.
As Hawke climbed out of the Helldiver, which was tucked into a small underwater cove in the sunken city, he took a deep breath. His olfactory suite told him the oxygen content was three percent greater than the surface air, but it smelled metallic and salty.
“Air’s good,” Flicker called over the commlink. “Better than what we normally breathe.”
“I know,” Hawke replied.
“It’s because that air is thousands of years old,” Dolphin said.
She was tied in through a satellite relay Flicker had set up inside the Helldiver. As the sub had entered the sunken city, the rigger had laid a monofilament comm cable attached to a miniature unit floating on the ocean’s surface. Despite Flicker’s assurances to the contrary, Hawke worried that the sec teams from Aztechnology and NeoNET would track the device. But that hadn’t mattered because—thanks to the Shadowman—both corps already knew where the Helldiver had gone in, and didn’t need to search for the entrance.
He still couldn’t figure out why the man—or whatever he was—was running the operation so closely.
“I just wish I was there with you so I could see everything,” Dolphin said. “The video and cyber version of that place doesn’t do it justice. All I’m getting is sonar bounce-back from Flicker’s drones.”
“Trust me,” Hawke said as he looked around, “it feels a lot different when you remember you’ve got an ocean sitting on top of you. It loses some of the appeal.”
Thousands of years ago, Gharyn had apparently been a port city. Remnants of stone docks and pilings led out into the dark water, disappearing into the green-black depths. Stalactites hung from the ceiling and stalagmites pushed up from the ancient harbor like teeth in the mouth of some gargantuan beast that might close it at any moment.
Huge and deep, the cavern held at least a square kilometer of breathable space from what Flicker’s drones had mapped so far. They’d also found a passageway to the west, but Rachel had already informed them they’d be going that way.
“Look over here.” Rolla used a laser light to point at the bones of some monstrous creature lying on a section of the walkways that stretched between the docks and led deeper into the passage. “That wingspread had be fifty meters across.”
Dressed in a hardsuit and covered in gear like the rest of them, though she looked dwarfed by her load, Twitch stood beside the big troll. “If we have time later, mon, maybe we can grab some of those bones. I’ll bet a lot of collectors would pay plenty for them.”
“Focus,” Hawke said. “We get in, get the Dragonseed, and get out. That’s what we’re here to do.”
“Hey, I can dream.” Twitch grinned at him.
Hawke grinned back, thinking it was good at least one of them was confident about surviving the potential looming confrontation.
With Rachel at his side, he took the lead, following the walkways as he headed west. He cradled an AK-97 assault rifle in his arms, locked and loaded, safety off and smartlinked. All of them—except Twitch, who carried no rifle—were equipped with the same model so they could swap ammo easily. And because the 97 was so reliable.
Even under harsh conditions, Hawke reminded himself.
Flicker remained in the Helldiver so she could operate the horde of drones mapping the area and doing recon. She was also there to defend the vessel and make sure they maintained an exfil route.
If any of them survived to exfil, that is.
“How do you think this city got buried?” Rolla asked.
No one had an answer.
Hawke stopped at the top of a rise and looked back at the harbor area. He couldn’t see the Helldiver, which made him feel better. Flicker had the sub masked, hardened against electronic detection as well as she could. According to the rigger, their pursuers would have to be right on top of the submersible to find her.
“C’mon,” Rolla said, “you look around this place, you gotta be curious. I am. I mean, whoever built this city didn’t build it in a cave. All that rock overhead had to come from somewhere.”
Nighthorse directed her infrared beam at the ceiling. “Part of the strata above us is igneous, probably spewed out by a volcano, which might have destroyed the city and maybe the original coastline. Later, other debris—silt from the seabed, erosion from other landforms surrounding the city to the west—all filled in around the original damage. There are a lot of places underground that used to be on top of it. Seattle has the Underground. Same thing, only not as deep.”
Rolla grunted in acknowledgment. “When you’re down in the Underground, you don’t think about all that.”
“The next time Mount Rainier starts quivering and quaking, maybe you should think about it a little. Could be one day Seattle ends up on the bottom of the Pacific, too.”
“Maybe we could think happy thoughts for the time being,” Snakechaser suggested.
Hawke silently agreed. “We need to pick up the pace, people. We only had a forty-four minute head start on Aztechnology and NeoNET, and we’re twenty minutes into that. They’ll be here soon.”
Truthfully, though, he was less worried about what was coming behind them than what might lay ahead of them.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Past the harbor area, which had survived intact to a large degree, clear lanes ran in straight rows between fallen buildings. The sea had crept in here, and they waded through thigh-deep water that would have caused hypothermia if the hardsuits hadn’t come with built-in heating. As it was, compensating for the cold was going to drain the suits’ power faster than Hawke had planned.
Thousands of years ago, the narrow areas between the buildings had been wide thoroughfares. On the edges, above the waterline, Hawke spotted broad steps led into the crumbled ruins. Down the middle of the streets, broad-based columns stood under the cavern’s ceiling. Many lay crushed beneath the stalactites, but several remained, though a bit shorter now.
“Flicker,” Hawke called over the commlink.
“Yes?”
“Find anything yet?”
“If I did,” she responded tightly, “you’d be the first to know. I don’t like you walking into the unknown, and I sure don’t like you doing it with sec men dogging your every step.�
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“I know.” Hawke let out a breath and glanced at Rachel. “How close are we?”
“Close.” She shook her head. “I just can’t tell exact distances. I just know we’re headed in the right direction. The pull is stronger.”
Again Hawke cursed the Shadowman. If he was so powerful, why wasn’t he here now? He kept his anger to himself and kept moving, slowing a little because the water covered heaps of rubble and made footing uncertain.
A klick farther on, the cavern widened into a chamber almost as big as the sunken harbor. Shipwrecks mingled with the wreckage of large buildings that had probably once been some kind of public places.
The main structure still had three walls standing, but they were all broken, not running in straight lines. The building had been three stories or more tall, with huge, arched windows and walkways that would have allowed trucks to easily pass through. Ribbed metal arches spanned part of the space where the roof had been.
“Whoever these people were, they knew metallurgy,” Rachel said.
“So?” Hawke asked. Unimpressed by the architecture, he was more consumed with the fact that all but seven minutes of their head start was gone. He didn’t doubt that whichever corp sec group reached them first would make better time than they had.
“It must have been lost or forgotten. Everyone assumed metallurgy was learned during the Fifth World.” She looked around. “Some of these ships had to have gone down after the city sank.”
“Why?”
“They’re more modern. Old to us, but not as old as some of these other ships. Maybe people were searching for the city. Legends or myths must have existed about it for a while.”
“Let’s just hope none of them found what we’re looking for.”
Rachel shook her head. “They didn’t. It’s still here.”
“Hawke.” Flicker sounded tense.
Hawke figured he already knew what she was going to tell him. Standing on a small rise, he stared at the land bridge spanning a canyon at least a thousand meters deep, if his estimation of the fall time of the pebble he’d dropped over the edge was correct.
“Yeah.”
“NeoNET just arrived. They’re sending out drones now. I’m going to have to scramble my guys and try to keep them hidden. As they progress, I’m going to temporarily lose your six.”
“Understood. Just make sure they don’t find you.”
“Oh, that’s the first thing on my to-do list.”
Adjusting his backpack, Hawke studied the bridge. At least eighty meters long, the formation widened onto a ledge holding dozens of stone houses perched on a long hillside. All of the homes had fallen into a state of disrepair. Maybe they’d been destroyed by whatever fate had overtaken the city, but some of the damage had been done by houses higher up the hill tumbling down onto the others.
“Think it’ll hold?” Rolla asked.
“It has to.” Hawke started across. “NeoNET’s in the harbor. Going back isn’t an option.” His boots crunched on the broken rocks covering the stone span, and he kept expecting to feel it quiver as they passed.
“Here,” Rachel whispered as she stared up at the massive building that filled the latest chamber they’d found.
The structure resembled a ziggurat, ten stories tall, each one stacked on like cake layers, each one slightly smaller than the last, so that a wide rim was left on all sides. Looking at the design, Hawke thought the empty space on top of each story might have been for pedestrians. Smaller stone-walled areas suggested meeting places, maybe pergolas over common grounds, or garden areas.
The cavern roof was two hundred meters overhead, almost invisible in the darkness.
“You know what this is, don’t you?” Excitement rang in Rachel’s voice.
“The building holding the knickknack we’re looking for,” Rolla rumbled. “At least, it better be.”
Rachel ignored him. “It’s an arcology. People lived here separately from the rest of the sprawl. Maybe it was a racial divide, or maybe it had to do with religion or finances.”
“Or maybe it was just for people who thought they were better than other people,” Rolla said. “That’s the way the world still spins, you know. We didn’t invent that. Had to come from somewhere.”
Staying alert, Hawke strode toward the building. Piles of debris, fallen rock and sometimes fallen buildings lay in the open area before the massive structures. To the right, he spotted a trio of huge stones at least thirty meters tall that had been carved into the likenesses of skulls. He knew they were skulls from the familiar hollows for the eyes and the noses, as well as the curved fangs, but the dimensions were all wrong for anything human.
“Hawke,” Dolphin said.
“Yes?”
“I peeled back another layer of those files I got from Sukenobu. She’s been investigating the legend of an artifact that’s supposed to be magical in nature.”
“What Rachel found certainly fills that bill.”
“The artifact is also supposed to have some history of the dragons. How they work their magic and other things.”
As mysterious as the dragons continued to be, Hawke knew that would be valuable, maybe even priceless, to any corp. Even those headed up by dragons had members who wanted to better understand their CEOs.
Or possibly usurp them.
“Nothing else?”
“I think I’ve got everything Sukenobu has.”
“She doesn’t know much then.”
“She knows enough to have come this far. She was gambling on whether it would pay off. Guess where she got the intel on the artifacts.” Dolphin’s tone held bitter irony.
A sinking feeling big enough to drop a city twisted through Hawke’s gut. “KilmerTek?”
“The very same. All information roads lead to KilmerTek. Of course, they were cleverer this time, and used a lot of shell companies to disguise their machinations. Sukenobu didn’t figure that out, but I did because I’m getting a feel for the person who put this together. We’re dealing with one crafty slot, omae.”
The Shadowman. Hawke hadn’t thought he could hate the man more, but the feeling still had growth potential. “You still don’t know who he is?”
“No, but I haven’t given up.”
Hawke led the way into the building’s first floor. The structure was surprisingly sound overall, only tumbled down around the edges. As he walked, he stirred up small clouds of dust. Looking back, he saw their footprints in the fine gray powder. There was no way they could hide the signs of their passage in the time they had left.
He looked at Rachel. “Which way?”
“Up,” she said, raking her infrared beam along the stairs to the second floor.
Turning to Rolla, Hawke said, “Mine the room.”
The troll hesitated and scratched the back of his neck. “Aren’t you afraid that might bring the whole place down on us?”
“Flicker,” Hawke called. “How many sec men has NeoNET fielded?”
“I counted eighty-two. Aztechnology is here now, probably at the same troop strength. They’re busy destroying NeoNET’s subs. Listen.”
A steady chorus of gunfire and explosions came over the commlink.
“Both sides are backing off,” Flicker said when she came back online. “I think they realized if no one has a way back to the surface, no one wins. Lots of small unit action has spread thoughout the area, but both corps have now established beachheads. Everybody seems more or less happy with that. At least some of the numbers on both sides will be cut down. If you get lucky, NeoNET’s sec teams will turn back to save their evac vessels, or at least post a rearguard.”
“Sukenobu and whoever her counterpart is at Aztechnology want the Dragonseed too much not to pursue it.” Hawke looked back at Rolla. “Figure about two hundred to seven. Now, you wanna try to cut down the numbers coming for us, or you wanna let them come ahead?”
Rolla dropped his backpack and began rummaging around the explosives inside it. “They’re gonna try to blow
us up when they find us. If we’re in the building, they’ll blow that up too, and search the wreckage for what they came for.” He shrugged and held up a block of plastic explosive. “If they hesitate and try to do it the hard way, we might as well blow them up before they get to us. That’s why you had Flicker outfit some of her drones with explosives.”
Hawke smiled grimly. “I’ll leave you and Twitch to it. When you’re finished, catch up.” He turned and headed up the stairs.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
“Okay, NeoNET has stepped up their game,” Flicker said. “They’re on top of your twenty.”
A window opened in Hawke’s vision as he reached the eighth floor landing. The view came from a drone scanning from high ground as the corp sec force arrived. Clad in matte-black hardsuits, the sec teams looked like efficient, heavily-armed beetles moving through the ruined city.
Five hundred meters away, NeoNET scouts advanced through the passage Rachel had led Hawke and his group through. Showing professional chops, the scouts broke off from the main force and invaded the large cavern, taking up spotting and support positions to observe the building.
“They’re going to find us pretty quickly,” Paredes said. “They’ve got thermal imaging that will allow them to see through the structure, and they’ve got combat mages.”
Hawke turned to him. “How much can you sense about this place through the astral?”
Paredes shook his head as he looked around. “Surprisingly little. I can see the overall structure, but I can’t pass through it.”
“Neither can I,” Nighthorse confirmed. “Whoever built this place, they had magical blocks in place.”
“You could have mentioned this earlier,” Hawke said.
“If it had been a problem, I would have. As it was, you’ve been busy thinking about things from your perspective. You have Snakechaser, Paredes, and myself for this. We’ve got your back, omae.”
