by T Q Chant
*********
“This is definitely it.”
“Told you they came up from below, not through the roof.”
The six of them were crouched in a narrow chamber right in the bowels of the facility. It was a rough, half-finished space, almost as though the colonists had begun some sort of expansion but called it off after the colony went third gate and got its orbital jSpace comms system.
Something had obviously broken through into the aborted corridor; an inky darkness confronted Williams and the others as they peered into the narrow, jagged tunnel.
“It's gonna be tight.”
“Too tight for me,” Miller commented, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Dirchs. “Him as well.”
Williams looked critically at the pair of them. Even without their combat rigs, they were big men and the tunnel was low and narrow. She'd pretty much have to crouch to get through herself. Yvgena was stocky rather than big, and both Kora and Caha were wiry.
“Right, you two backstop. You know the drill – full defensive suite. You three are with me. Caha, I want you trailing a fibreop cable so we can keep contact. Backups out and watch your fucking fire – no desire to be killed by a ricochet.”
She collapsed her Engager's stock and telescoped the accelerator coil down, slinging the block of weapon onto her back before drawing and checking her pistol. The others were switching out for their backups, which in Yvgena's case meant drawing and racking an old-school sawn-off pump, without comment or complaint.
The tunnel was obviously more of a natural fissure that had been expanded, with chokepoints and switchbacks smoothed out with some sort of power tool. Williams took point, feeling her way along, all of her senses stretched to the limit. She was running her lolight systems to the max, set to active mode, and it cast everything into an eerie green glow of reflected IR radiation. Every so often, Kora pinged ahead with a mini ladar, mapping out their route and projecting it onto their visors.
It was claustrophobic, nerve-wracking – Williams didn't want to think of what would happen if they got attacked in these confines.
“Seems to open up ahead,” Kora murmured after a ladar ping.
“Alright, let's go dark – passives only,” she whispered back. No real need to keep their voices down over the squad channel, but something about the place seemed to demand that its silence go undisturbed.
“Smells like the fuckers,” Yvgena muttered.
Williams had to do the last stretch on her belly, worming her way through a particularly low, tight section. Despite herself she felt a spike of fire, sweat making her palms slick and adrenalin making her hands shake. With passive sensors only it was entirely dark, which only served to increase her fear until, after a few long seconds, she managed to roll clear and lay on her front on the opposite side of a narrow tunnel, fighting to bring her breathing under control.
There was a glimmer of light filtering through one end of the tunnel, just enough that the lolight could extrapolate the sullen underground world in a greyscale schematic on her visor. She came up on one knee, pistol up and sweeping from side-to-side to check that the targeting reticule was syncing properly.
The others arrived, Yvgena grunting and cursing under her breath as she wormed through last. Cahaya was busy setting up a comm relay at the end of the fibre optic cable he had laid through the tunnel. Williams reckoned Dirchs and Miller had probably already broken the cards out, secure behind a wall of anti-personnel mines. “Sitch 'em,” she told Cahaya. “Then we're pushing up towards the light.”
She felt a small glow of pride as the team formed up. Even Kora and Cahaya, both of them used to working at range, had stepped up without complaint. The four of them crouched in the dim tunnel, poised and lethal each in their own way. At Williams' murmured command they started up the tunnel.
“It's more of a corridor, really,” Cahaya murmured, almost as though he had read her mind. “It's been properly machined, or at least cut out by hand.”
“Sounds like we might have found their operation, then.” She compulsively checked the ammo feed on the sleek, silent pistol. “Watch your step.”
They edged their way up a short, shallow incline towards a low, arced opening that had been carved out of the living rock but otherwise left unlined. Williams held her hand up, then got down and bellied up to the lip.
"Yep, this is it," she told the others. She was staring out across a broad cavern, definitely natural – one of the biggest single underground spaces she'd seen since advanced survival training on Mars. Ladar ranging calculated it as eight square kilometres. The lolight systems struggled with the farthest reaches, but there was some light filtering down from fissures in the ceiling, some fifty metres overhead. That light was fading to grey as the day turned into the twilit night. As yet unidentified light sources speckled the further reaches of the surface. The ground was broken by rock spires, solid wall-like intrusions of a darker stone, and the inky black lines of chasms. Those had been bridged in some places, though, and the criss-crossing intrusions had been cut through.
“This is a lot more than I was expecting," Kora muttered. She and Cahaya, as usual, would be scrutinising the point's feed. "I'm seeing signs of habitation. No defensive structures or alarm systems."
“Not a lot of activity though," Cahaya added. "Abandoned, maybe?"
"Let's keep our guard up – those creatures must have come through here." Williams' scan of the area had highlighted a significant heat source on the far side of the cavern – hidden from view but discernible from the shimmering rise of hot air and waves of reflected thermal emissions. She highlighted it on the feed. "That looks like it might be a good place to start."
They moved off at her gesture, a fast pace down the exposed counterslope from the archway. Williams expected a hail of incoming every step of the way as they made the dash, but no ambush manifested as they made it to the cover of a solid wall of black stone, the first of the intrusions that ran like veins through the space. The rock towered over them, much taller than it had appeared from their vantage point above. Cahaya, without needing to be asked, pushed a fuzzy green map of the area to the others with a dotted red line proposing a route through the maze-like conditions. Williams checked it but saw no reason not to take the recommendation.
"Let's move out."
It was harder going than any of them had expected. The ground was broken, often to the point that they had to leap over narrow chasms, and the route was by no means direct, sometimes using throughways cut into the intrusions but other times forcing them to scramble over.
After about an hour they started to encounter the first signs of habitation, lean-tos and a scattering of discarded items. It was all covered with a layer of dust and sand, the area obviously abandoned some time ago.
"Looks like some sort of field camp," Cahaya reported, sweeping a scan of one of the larger enclosures. The intrusions had divided the cavern up into discrete open-topped chambers, the larger of which appeared to have become neighbourhoods.
"More like refugee camps," Williams replied. Her mind flashed back to the Razos emergency, back when she'd been a common boot; the waves of people fleeing the great sandstorms, squatting in desolate camps in the shelter of the West Wall until proper relief could arrive.
Cahaya was poking through the ancient remains of the mysterious lives that had once gone on here. He came up with the torn remnants of a dried food package, the writing on it still legible. "Definitely looks like an old form of Anglic, but I don't recognise the logo. NASA, anyone?"
"Did you sleep though history class? That's the old American space agency, back when the DisUS was still the US."
"This place gets weirder and weirder – this stuff must be a couple of centuries old. What the fuck is going on here?"
"Let's push up and find out."
It took them another hour of careful manoeuvring through cluttered caverns before they could get eyes on the heat source. Even though they were well into the short local night, t
hey could hear activity around it before they had reached a good vantage point – the sound of someone shouting instructions, the grind of something wheeled operating with poorly-oiled axles, and an occasional roaring burst of fire.
Williams and Kora crawled up a shallow intrusion, keeping low to the ground, while Cahaya and Yvgena backstopped them. Kora would do the detailed sweep while Williams assessed the general situation.
They were right at the edge of the cavern; to the right she could make out a lit passageway that seemed to have been mined out rather than being natural. It sloped upwards into obscurity. Directly ahead of them, built or rather dug into the rock-face, was a massive furnace, a pair of cylinders that glowed red hot in her enhanced view – definitely not good thermal insulation. A giant rat's nest of pipes and conduits wrapped the cylinders, some of which leaked steam, others black viscous oil. Two normal-sized figures were directing a pair of enormous creatures about their work – one had just finished dragging a cart filled with cloth-wrapped bundles up to sit beside a second cart. The two creatures were busy lifting the bundles out of the carts, waiting patiently while one of the supervisors keyed a hatch in the right-hand cylinder. Obviously oblivious to the fire that roared out suddenly, the shamblers dumped their loads in and went back to the carts, repeating the process.
+Might be another hybrid+ Cahaya subvoc'd over the squad channel, his message appearing in the corner of her vision in softly glowing green.
+Or an ET+ Kora suggested.
+They're actually still burning shit for power+ Williams pointed out. Smoke and steam hazed the air, making it hard to make out what the enormous creatures were doing despite her systems cleaning up the image.
+Surely they cannot be feeding it by hand+
+No. Think this is disposal of...something. Something organic+. Williams had a good idea of what that was, but wanted confirmation before she said anything more.
CHAPTER SEVEN – STOLEN TIME
“Rise, you dog, and serve!” The crack of a shock rod being used on a collapsed slave punctuated Okafor's command. It was coming towards the end of the day, and the slaves were all on the verge of collapse.
Sam realised, looking at her supposed betrothed, that she was angry. Fucking furious.
She knew there was a rule about not getting angry, and another one about it not being personal. These rules were older than the commandments that had been downloaded into her. They were rules to live by.
She didn't care about them. It all felt pretty personal, and she was pretty pissed off about it. About everything, about the whole damned situation. About having her head messed with. About the constant testing. If it wasn't so backward, she'd be pissed about having a husband picked out for her.
The latest test was the worst and felt more like punishment than her time spent labouring in the fields. It was the gaunt, accusing stares of the handful of remaining Unsaved as she supervised them that made it so gut-twistingly horrible. That, and the way she had to behave when supervising them.
“Come on, move it!” she rasped, gesturing with a goad as the emaciated slaves were herded from their pens in to the fields. It was pretty clear to her that they were not intended to do anything productive, that this was about punishment, about breaking them so that they would accept the Brightness. With Janssen gone, horribly murdered, the hope seemed to have gone out of them; without the strength of their leader they were not far from breaking.
And the way I'm having to behave isn't helping.
Cho wasn't her problem right now; she hadn’t seen the big woman for a while, nor Jonathan. She didn't know what to make of that, though it would be arrogant to assume she was their only priority. The two of them seemed to have a lot of sway in the community, which didn't seem to match up with their newcomer status.
Got more pressing concerns. She had Okafor, her so-called fiancé, to contend with. His placid dead gaze followed her everywhere, forcing her to demonstrate the same cold callousness as the other overseers.
“You were on our side,” one of the Unsaved hissed at her as he shuffled past. Sam desperately wanted to tell them that she still was, that she was looking for an out for all of them. Okafor was a shadow in the corner of her eye, though.
She knew she shouldn't take the risk, but she realised that they needed hope. Any hope. “Appearances can be deceptive, Lucien.”
She fought to keep her face completely neutral, didn't even offer a hint of a wink, while her heart rate spiked. Lucien's hostile expression didn't waver, but she thought she saw a flicker of understanding there; Lafarge had heard as well and gave her the tiniest nod of acknowledgement.
She strutted along the length of the line, playing the part but hoping she didn't get too into it. She had to apply the goad she'd been given, but tried to do it as little as possible, and made sure it made more noise than it inflicted pain. She could do this sort of thing with her eyes closed, taking on a character and playing it convincingly, but she didn't really understand why it came so easily to her. At least it gave her time to work out how the hell she was getting out of this place and taking these poor bastards with her.
And find out what's behind that damned door.
She already had an idea about that, and about the women the captive colonists said were missing. It was an idea she didn't want to pursue, didn't want to prove right. For one thing, it sounded like trying to find out had got her caught and sent back to this Bright Place at least once before.
Been caught a lot – not like you at all. That was bugging her. She guessed it had been her mentors before, whoever they were. She guessed their failure to keep her on the straight and narrow had led to them being punished, or at least being denied their reward of becoming a mother to angels.
Their faith must have been strong.
She was pretty sure Bethany wasn’t going to sell her out, although there was only so far she’d press that. She didn't know how to think about her, what, friend? Lover? Certainly not her mentor anymore.
She was an asset, certainly, and a threat if she went telling tales on any erratic behaviour. Making her an accomplice was the surest way of keeping her quiet.
Sam had to admit she was more than that, though.
Well, yeah, she's getting to be a good fuck as well. They'd managed a certain amount of bed-hopping in the weeks since Sam had first snuck into her room. The first time had been awkward if vaguely satisfying for her, but it seemed Bethany was a quick study. It was a risk, a huge one, but the fact that the hostel had private rooms gave them some freedom. Just as long as they kept quiet.
She had no way of knowing how close she’d got to her previous watchers, though, whether she’d tried to befriend them or fuck them. She reckoned she was on to a winner with Bethany, though, which removed one threat. She had to work out who amongst the remaining threats was the most dangerous.
“Only way is to watch the watchers,” she decided, lips twitching into a smile at the half-remembered wisdom. The nearest slaves flinched away from her as they caught the expression, obviously worried it presaged new cruelty. She forced herself into a neutral expression again, knowing that even a flash of humanity directed at these people could betray her.
Okafor and the other slavemasters didn’t seem to be paying much attention to their charges, or to her. They were all staring out across the fields, shielding their eyes against the daylight. The slaves had been moved up to one of the furthest reaches of the great, narrow cut in the planet that served as the city's arable land. Further to the north, it flared towards a more open mouth, the ground rising towards the jagged teeth of arid mountains that rose beyond, obviously too open for regular use by the standards of this paranoid society.
Turns out it does have a use. Squinting against the glare of the star, Sam could make out a brighter pinprick of flame that grew steadily larger, accompanied by a rising howl of noise. Plasma torch, controlled descent.
“Guess we're about to get visitors.”
**********
+Need to
get a proper look at this+ Williams decided, flicking her Mauser to full auto. It would take a lot to put the shambler down, she reckoned.
+Thought we were intel gathering?+
+We are. Sometimes that gets messy. Kora and Caha backstop. Yvgena, switch out for your Kalash and go silent. On my lead+
They went down the slope fast and quiet. Williams' skin prickled against the heat and her helmet's breath filters couldn't cope with the smell of overdone meat that billowed from the furnace door as one of the overseers opened it in preparation for another bundle.
Williams shot the other overseer just as he turned, eyes widening as he spotted the two sinister figures coming down on him. The burst pretty much took his head off, just the slight cough of the weapon firing, then a wet noise as the slivers of high-velocity teflak-coated ceramic darts turned it into chunks of meat and bone. She turned to track the first shambler as Yvgena took out the second overseer with a single round through the throat, blood splatter sizzling on the hot exterior of the furnace. The shambler in front of Williams just looked at her with a vague look of surprise; she didn't take any chances and blew the expression off its face. The second shambler, rather than attacking, surprised them with a low, keening moan as it hunched over the crumpled body of its overseer, pawing at her still leg. It looked up at them with strangely human, grief-filled eyes, then went back to its mourning.
Yvgena slipped past Williams and drove a diamond-bonded ceramic combat knife up into the creature's brain case, just to the left of its spine; the kill was fast and efficient. The low keening stopped but the shambler made no further noise as its heavy body collapsed forward.
“I said on my lead,” Williams snapped, lowering the Mauser. There was no heat in her voice though – they couldn't leave anyone living.
Yvgena just shrugged, an expressive full-body motion that reminded Williams that the other woman had been a VacTroop in the Marines before going into Intel. Hardsuit operations quickly trained you to make your gestures as obvious as possible.
