“Can you find me a landing area?”
“Probably. Resolution’s not that good. We might have to change our minds in a hurry.” His hand flicked across the touchscreen, and he added, “I can see several smaller valleys on the far side of the mountains. If we can glide down, we might be able to slip in without attracting too much notice. It’s night over there, so we kill our running lights, and…”
“And sensors will still pick us up,” Kruger warned.
“That whole side of the continent is a maze of mountains. Bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. They might know that we’ve landed, but we can make it damned difficult to work out where, and it isn’t as though we’re going to be on the surface for long.”
The engines roared louder, the wings burning red from the fury of atmospheric entry, and Carter replied, “Just find me a spot to put this baby down and give me a trajectory plot that minimizes the risk of detection. As long as I can fly around the peaks, I’ll manage. Readings, Kruger?”
“Twenty-five hundred miles per hour, fifty thousand feet, descending. Coastline is a hundred miles away; target site is three hundred. Recommend you keep us supersonic until we get closer, in case they have any perimeter defenses.”
“Did you see any signs of any?” Schmitt asked.
“Resolution’s not good enough to tell, and I don’t have time to inspect each one.” Kruger turned to the doctor, and added, “If I was running that base, I’d have placed half a dozen automatic launchers out in the middle of nowhere. We’ve got to assume they’re as smart as I am, or we’re dead.”
“You know what I love about you the most, Kruger?” Garcia asked. “Your modesty.”
“Modesty would be dishonesty, Lieutenant. Coastline ahead. Visual contact established.”
Carter peered into the distance, spotting the jagged coast, mountains reaching high into the sky. She tapped a control, bringing up a topographical view, the navigation computer plotting a path through the valleys and peaks, one that might get them to their target with minimal risk. They raced over the shore, over a crimson froth deposited on the lifeless soil by the purple tide, and she guided the ship into a long, winding valley, reaching hundreds of miles inland.
“Fifteen hundred miles per hour,” Kruger reported. “One thousand feet, descending. Three hundred miles from target. This valley will get us half-way there.”
Glancing to the right, Carter saw rocks tumbling down the slope, the force of Pandora’s passage disturbing the hillside for the first time in centuries. She gently eased down the throttle, slowing them down, ignoring the host of proximity alerts that flickered on and off as she struggled to guide her ship to its target. The enemy must have heard them by now, and she looked across at Garcia, who shook his head.
“No attempts at communication, nothing at all. If they think we’re on their side, they might be observing silent protocol. For all they know, we might have a Patrol cruiser on our tail.”
“You know better than that, and so do they,” Schmitt said, his face briefly bitter. “We’re on our own.”
“Turning coming up,” Kruger reported, and Carter scanned the dark horizon, firing a brief pulse with the thrusters to help her ship find its path, the computers completing the course change in plenty of time. She was attempting to thread a needle in the dark, the needle travelling at supersonic speed. Up ahead, the mountains rose, thirty thousand feet into the air, and she pulled up on the stick, gaining altitude as they raced above the rocks. One error of judgement, and they’d all be dead before they could even realize it. Which was at least some comfort. Nobody would ever know that she had failed.
“Coming up to the glide path,” Kruger said. “There’s a pass about ten miles away. We’re clear all the way on the far side, a clean run to our destination.”
“We’ve got a nice tailwind,” Garcia added. “Feeding atmospheric data to the computer.”
Pandora skimmed through the pass on its side, barely fifty meters above the surface, and Carter killed the engines as she levelled out, permitting her ship to find its own path to the target. They had enough speed to glide the rest of the way, despite the protestations of the conservative navigational systems, and silence reigned in the cockpit, only broken by the occasional terse report from the crew. Carter had to focus totally on her task, her hands not moving from the thruster controls, trying to keep the ship stable, on the glide path.
“Thirty miles, fifteen thousand feet, descending,” Kruger reported. “I’m getting some sensor probes, active beams, but I don’t know if we’ve been painted yet. They’re leaving an attack a little late, anyway.” Glancing to the side, he said, “Passive sensors have the base.”
“Try not to draw any attention,” Carter warned. The ship hit a gust of wind, tossed briefly to the right, spilling precious speed as she dragged it back on course. An amber light winked on, and her right hand reached down to the throttle, ready to engage the engines and kick them back into orbit if they ran into trouble. The altimeter dropped to four digits, still falling fast, every instinct calling on her to fire the engines, gain speed, attempt a normal landing.
With an effort, she resisted, focusing instead on the landing site. A jagged maze of canyons and craters, rough terrain that would be hard to traverse on foot, still less use for a safe descent. Kruger tapped a control, highlighting his chosen touchdown spot, and she nodded in approval as she looked at the site, a long, flat surface, more than a mile long, with the far end close enough to the base that they could walk the rest of the way.
Of course, so could the pirates.
“Five thousand feet,” Kruger said. “No sign of sensor probes now. We’re out of line of sight. No sign of missiles, aircraft, drones, anything. Nothing on the surface, either, close to our landing site. No heat contacts. No signs of life at all.” He grimaced, and said, “Too much life on the last world. Not enough on this one.”
“Aren’t you ever satisfied?” Garcia quipped.
“Pipe down,” Carter said, her hands tightly gripping the controls. “This is tough enough without a running commentary.” Her eyes darted from one monitor to another, watching as the ship slowly dived towards its goal, making minute adjustments to dodge past a tower of rock reaching into the sky, lining up for the landing. She reached for the landing gear, locking the skids into position this time, ready to deploy the breaking parachute at the final second. They had a mile to work with. Normally, she’d have wanted two.
The wind roared down the canyon. More speed, too much now, and she pulled the nose up to spill some of it, dangerously close to stalling. The computer was spitting gibberish, their landing profile alien to anything it usually attempted. It didn’t rate their chances of living through touchdown particularly highly. Carter looked down to see rocks on either side of their intended landing site, the path far narrower than she would have liked. It would have to do.
“Almost there,” she said, diving down the final slope. “Almost there.”
“Two hundred miles an hour,” Kruger reported. “One hundred feet. Descending.”
Carter gritted her teeth, finally daring to bring the ship down to the surface, the parachute triggering on landing. Pandora bumped up and down on the uneven ground, the forward thrusters firing to slow the ship, the drag of the parachute tugging them to the side. Almost before she realized it, the thruster blasts ceased, and the ship slowed to a stop, turning completely around prior to landing.
“Retracting parachute,” Garcia said. “All systems appear nominal.” Looking at Carter, he said, “That was a damn fine piece of flying, Vicky. Damn fine.”
“No sign that anyone is within firing range,” Kruger added. “My complements as well, Captain.”
Rising from her chair, Carter wiped her forehead, her hand coming back covered in sweat, and said, “All in a day’s work. I’ll be happy once we’ve managed to get back in the sky.”
“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with that,” Garcia said. “That was textbook.” Looking at the
viewscreen, he added, “Local dawn’s in about an hour. We ought to be thinking about moving out, while we still have the cover of darkness.”
“Agreed,” she said. “You, me and Kruger.”
“Wait a minute,” Kruger said, turning to her. “I don’t know where you got the idea that I’m some sort of commando, but you’ve got to be out of your mind.”
“Unfortunately, you proved that you are a damn good shot, and if we’re going to be poking around strange alien ruins, I’d like to know what might reach out and grab us.” She paused, then said, “We don’t know what the pirates are doing down here, and that lack of knowledge could easily end up killing us if we aren’t damned careful. At the very least, we’ve got to find out what they’re looking for, and you’re the only one qualified to tell us.”
“My mother always told me I should have become a lawyer. Nobody ever asks a lawyer to go on a covert operations raid.” Shaking his head, he said, “Fine, I’ll draw a weapon from the armory.”
“What about me?” Wu said, walking up to the bridge.
“You’re staying here.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Like hell I am. I’m the best shot you’ve got…”
“Which is precisely why you have to stay behind to guard the ship. And you can run a full systems check, and make sure we’re ready to take off at a moment’s notice.” Carter paused, then added, “You’re a qualified pilot, as well. If anything happens to me, you and Schmitt bug out back to Colchis and make the loudest noise you can about what is happening down here.”
“If anything happens to the three of you,” Wu replied, “We’re coming to get you. Either five of us make it off this rock or none of us do.”
“We can argue,” Garcia said, “or we can walk. I vote for the latter.”
“Agreed,” Carter replied. “We move out. Now.”
Chapter 22
“Come on,” Garcia said, setting a brisk pace as they scaled the side of the mountain. Behind him, Carter followed, Kruger panting in their wake, shaking his head as he dropped to the ground, reaching for his canteen.
“I need a minute,” the archaeologist warned. “I told you I wasn’t up to this.” Taking a deep drink, he said, “What the hell am I doing out here?”
“Holding us up,” Carter said, peering up at the top. “Only another thousand feet to go, and it’s downhill all the way to the camp.”
Shaking his head, Kruger replied, “You said that a thousand feet ago. We’ve been walking for three hours, and we’re still hours away. We’re not going to make it this way.” At Garcia’s expression, he added, “You think you’ve got problems now? Try later, when we’re having to get a couple of dozen prisoners, all in far worse physical condition than I am, over the mountain with people shooting at us the whole time.”
“I hate to admit it,” Garcia said, “but he might have a point.”
“That’s something we can work out later,” Carter pressed. “All we’ve got to work with are a few images taken from orbit. None of which give us the details we need to plan an attack. This is a reconnaissance. I don’t really expect us to complete the mission this morning.” She paused, then added, “Though it would be nice if we could.”
“Come on, Kruger,” Garcia said, moving back up the hill.
“I need another minute, damn it,” Kruger replied. “Damn it, what’s the hurry anyway? We couldn’t go down the slope in broad daylight anyway.”
Ignoring the tardy archaeologist, Carter pressed on up the slope, moving to the side to avoid a rockfall. As she took another step, she heard a loud crack beneath her, then felt herself falling, a hole opening up that she slid down, her arms fanning wide in a desperate bid to arrest her fall, to slow her pace sufficiently to survive the landing. After what seemed like hours but must have only been seconds, she stopped, coming to a halt at the bottom of a slope, rocky walls all around her.
“Vicky?” Garcia yelled. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” she replied, fumbling through her pockets for a flashlight. “I’m in a cave.”
“I’m coming down,” Kruger said. “Anchor this rope. I might have trouble getting back up without it.” He tossed the other end down, and said, “Shine that torch up. It’ll help if I can see what I’m doing.”
“You sure about this, Kruger?” Garcia asked.
“I’ve crawled through caves for most of my career. This is my specialty. Keep watch. Someone might have heard us, or noticed a blip on a seismic detector.”
As the archaeologist grunted and groaned his way down, Carter looked around, her eyes rapidly adapting to the gloom. The walls weren’t plain, as she first thought, but covered in scrawled text, ancient writing, pictograms that seemed similar to the ones she’d seen on the ancient artifacts in the jungle. As soon as Kruger joined her, she shone her torch on the nearest, and he nodded in recognition.
“We’re not the first ones down here. And I don’t know if you noticed, but that shaft was regular. Smooth. I think this was deliberately buried.” He smiled, and added, “I hate to think that we might have disturbed some strange alien beast, but after all these centuries, we’d only find a skeleton anyway.”
“What do you think this is?” Carter asked.
“Mine shaft, maybe. Or some sort of subsurface shelter. They used a lot of caves around here. Our best guess is that they were looking for some sort of rare element on the surface, though we’ve never been able to work out what it might have been. If we could, it’d give us a much better lead on some of their missing settlements.” Pulling out his own torch, he said, “Expansion era.”
“Can you read it?”
“An alien language that hasn’t been spoken for tens of thousands of years, intended for alien mouths?” He smiled, shook his head, and said, “We’ve never had any luck with decoding the text, and I doubt we ever will. We’ve got a little of their mathematical notation, and to give you an example of what we’re dealing with, they used base-13.”
“Crazy,” she replied.
“Coming down!” Garcia said, half-climbing, half-sliding down the slope. “I rigged the rope good and tight.” He pulled out his hand sensor, and said, “We should have thought of this before. Scans suggest that there are tunnels and chambers all through this mountain. If we want to catch them by surprise, this is the way to do it.”
Nodding, Kruger replied, “It ought to be less than a mile, going in a straight line. I like this plan a lot better than the last one.” Looking back up the shaft, he added, “And we know the pirates won’t be expecting it. Or they’d already have cleared this path.” Turning to Carter, he continued, “We don’t dare use the communicators, but we need to find some way to send a message back.”
“I already thought of that,” Garcia said. “I left a flag attached to the rope, with a message on the side. If the pirates come over the ridge, they’ll see it, but if they’ve gone that far, they’ll see Pandora anyway. As well as the hole. We really made a hell of a mess of the mountain.”
“I’ll take the lead,” Kruger said, sliding past Carter. “We move slowly, we move steadily.” He pulled a head-cam out of his pocket, clipping it into place, and said, “If I tell you to stop, we stop at once. We already know this mountain is a little less than stable, and I don’t want to be buried down here forever.”
“Have you ever done anything like this before?” Carter asked.
“Not a new cave. Only sites that had already been opened up.” He took a tentative step forward, reached down, and grabbed a handful of white pebbles. “Each of you take some. If we have to choose a path, we leave a marker so that we can find our way home again. Or to allow someone to follow us, if we end up needing to be rescued.”
Turning back to the tunnel, Kruger led the way, Carter and Garcia following, the walls getting narrower and narrower as they progressed. The strange pictographs were everywhere, curious faces peering down at them from the walls, some looking fresh enough to have been carved a few days before, others worn almost to inc
oherence. There was a meaning, a message, buried somewhere in the unintelligible text, and as she walked, Carter had the feeling that something was escaping her, that the meaning of the words was only just beyond her comprehension.
Garcia held up his hand scanner, adjusting the readings as they made their way deeper into the mountain, the tunnel twisting and turning around. The floor was smooth, only some crumpled debris on the surface, obviously levelled mechanically at some point in the distant past.
“Got a reading,” Garcia said. “There’s a cavern up ahead. Huge.”
“I see it,” Kruger replied. “Careful.”
The three of them walked forward, ducking under a low ceiling to emerge in a colossal cavern, strange crystals embedded in the walls, shining from their torchlight as they shone their beams around. Green, gold, emerald, ruby light shone down upon them, and a smile came to Carter’s lips as she looked around, basking in the beauty.
“I guess we know why they came down here,” she said.
“And we know why the pirates haven’t,” Kruger said, shining his torch at the floor. A huge crack split the cavern in two, more than twenty feet across, and nothing but inky blackness below. Kruger tossed a pebble into the hole, waiting futilely to hear it landing.
“Bottomless,” Garcia said.
“Effectively,” Kruger replied. “How wide?”
“I make it twenty-one feet.”
Kruger swung his rucksack from his shoulder, took it by a single strap, and hurled it across the chasm, nodding in satisfaction as it landed safely on the other side. He reached for a cable, handing it to Garcia, whose eyes widened as he took it in his hands.
“You think you can jump that?” he asked.
“I got through college with a partial athletic scholarship. I used to be pretty good, though I’ve let myself get rather out of condition.” Looking at the chasm, he added, “I could do twenty-five feet in my prime. We’re a little under Earth-gravity, which should help a bit. Just hold onto the cable. Brace yourself as best you can.”
Fortunes of War (Stellar Main Book 1) Page 16
