Part 19 (1/2)
Ridgeway grunted as he caught himself. Whatever lay ahead, Darcy didn't want to risk being observed. He eased back and, with a soft mental push, allowed the sniper's senses once more to become his own.
In the flicker of synapse, a set of graduated reticles bisected his view, testament that he once more gazed through the scope's powerful optics. That much he expected. What he saw through the scope left him stunned.
The chasm stretched down for several hundred meters, a jagged highway of sharp ridges set row upon row that gave the intervening s.p.a.ce the look of a demented trench warfare exercise. The tunnel snaked downward, leading to a warm orange glow that pulsed steadily from the far end.
Unbidden, the crosshairs tracked down to the end of the washboard pa.s.sage. At the base of the slope it dumped out into a cavern room of moderate size. The texture of the walls inside seemed odd and it took a long moment for Ridgeway to realize why.
The whole cave is lined with machinery. Equipment flowed up the walls and across the ceiling. Glittering streams, like fiery veins, appeared to flow among the cluttered patches of hardware. Wide channels of ember-red branched endlessly throughout the blackened hollow. For a moment Ridgeway was struck with the irrational thought that he was somehow inside a huge artificial heart.
”It's Escher drawn by Geiger.” Darcy offered with what seemed an uncertain balance of amus.e.m.e.nt and revulsion.
The ruddy glow cast the scene in an eerie, h.e.l.lish hue. But something about the pulsing light seemed familiar, although completely out of scale. Ridgeway s.h.i.+fted his focus from the target and scanned the data that ringed the scope's view. Visible light, barely twenty percent amped. The answer, Ridgeway realized, lay a little lower on the scale.
”Go thermal.”
The sniper responded immediately and pushed the scope to resolve waves in the ten micron range. The even-hued scene blossomed in artificial color as the imaging system displayed minute changes in the heat that radiated from every point within the scene.
It took Darcy only a moment to recognize the pattern. ”s.h.i.+t, the whole thing is one big IR array.”
”Yeah,” Ridgeway said quietly, following evidence to the inevitable conclusion. ”So whatever they are, amid all that hardware is flesh and blood as we know it.”
”Well, you are what you eat,” Darcy drawled quietly.
As revolting as the image was, Ridgeway had to concede the logic. He wondered if one species could a.s.similate the genetics of another. Maybe the Ascension's crew wasn't eaten so much as cannibalized for parts. He tried to picture the muscles entwined along steel bones. Had they been grafted on or grown in place?
”That could explain the silver in their blood,” Darcy muttered absently. ”Maybe they just chowed down on somebody who'd been on the table.” Her offhand comment lacked any real conviction.
Ridgeway groped for a reply as the crosshairs tracked to the brightest heat source in the cavern, a collection of equipment that glowed in the artificial tones of thermal imaging. Through digital sleight of hand, Darcy merged the visible and thermal channels, producing a layer of detail and surface texture.
Quick to offer her conclusions, Darcy pre-empted the prior line of conversation with a businesslike a.n.a.lysis. ”Roughly twelve meters high, heavy steel construction. Lot of moving parts, it's definitely serviceable. Looks like some of the old oil rigs we used to have back home.”
”Close.” Ridgeway replied softly. He'd seen units just like it on the frozen plains of McFarland's World. Unlike oil derricks that drew liquid from the planet's core, these sucked heat. ”Geothermal Rig. They're mining for heat.”
As he stared at the unwieldy machine, Ridgeway recalled Monster's first report. Maybe two klicks down to hit the magma plane. The hards.h.i.+p inherent in drilling through cold stone was staggering. He shook his head, that's one h.e.l.l of a mining op.
”Bet that took a while.” Darcy muttered, as if reading Ridgeway's mind.
A while indeed, Ridgeway a.s.sessed, noting with equal focus that the only visible dig went down instead of up. Disappointment welled, its growing weight tugging at his resolve. Dispair threatened to drown out any last shred of hope when he was struck by epiphany.
”They aren't locals.”
Darcy was caught by surprise. ”Come again?”
”These things, they can't be indigenous. They came here from somewhere else.” Excitement gathered in Ridgeway's voice.
In contrast, Darcy exhuded skepticism. ”How the h.e.l.l did you get that out of a drill rig?”
”Think about it. We have an experimental colony s.h.i.+p that blows a gasket. It vanished from point A and ended up here at point B.”
”I'm with you so far.”
Ridgeway continued. ”Up till now we figured the crew opened the door and got jumped by something native. But if these things had evolved down here, they'd be used to the cold. The fact they need heat, and that they had to go to such artificial lengths to get it, means they came from somewhere else.”
”Maybe they came in with the Ascension.” Darcy remained guarded.
”Huh,” Ridgeway chuffed. He hadn't considered that option and pondered it for a moment before his head shook abruptly, ”I don't see it. The Ascension blinks out of near-earth s.p.a.ce and skips straight here. Where did they pick up an alien life form?”
”s.h.i.+t, I don't know. That's a Merlin question.” Darcy exhaled sharply. ”OK, let's a.s.sume you're right and they're tourists like we are; what does that get us?”
”Well, I'm betting they didn't come through Cathedral like we did, so that suggests a second tunnel.” He paused, his brain clicking at high speed. ”Then there's the mining operation itself. They have a s.h.i.+tload of gear down there, maybe enough demo to blow the roof. Either way, my money says the way out begins here.”
Resignation gave way to determination and Ridgeway the commander resurfaced. ”Darcy, go visual, light amp thirty percent. Pull back to frame the whole scene.”
The image seamlessly slid back to provide a full view of the area below. Artificial rainbow tones gave way to the ember and black starkness of the cave. The callsign seemed obvious as Ridgeway added a new marker to the TAC. To the right of the s.h.i.+mmering waypoint, a single word glowed softly.
HIVE.
Ridgeway stared at the long downward ramp and plotted a course through a stealthy approach. Somewhere in the Hive was the key to going home. All they had to do was go in and find it.
In the distance, a dark shadow crawled across the orange hued ceiling. The crosshairs tracked up to the blob of darkness cast by an unseen creature that scuttled somewhere within the room like a giant roach.
The sniper's voice echoed softly in Ridgeway's ear. ”Welcome to Bug Central.”
CHAPTER 31.
Hie eyes closed, St.i.tch swallowed the wet lump that clogged the back of his throat. The wound in his thigh throbbed fitfully, showing disdain for the paltry dosage of painkiller. While the option to wrap himself in a soft blanket of drug-induced haze was seductive, St.i.tch could not afford the mind-numbing effects of morphinol. Given their current situation, that could easily become a permanent nap.
The medic tried to adjust himself in the chair, using his arms to lever his body upright. The s.h.i.+ft, though minor, was enough to trigger a fresh a.s.sault on his senses. Pain shot up from his leg and twisted his bowels into a knot.
”Sonofab.i.t.c.h!” The curse hissed between his teeth as the medic screwed his eyes against the pinwheels of light that sparkled on the edge of his vision. His fingers dug into the chair and he counted the seconds as the flare burned away.
”You all right?” Merlin's voice was soft on the ComLink, one of the few sensory inputs that came without an added degree of suffering.
St.i.tch unclurled just enough to force the reply. ”Peachy.”
Merlin's legs, the only part of the engineer that stuck out of the under-console cabinet, wriggled to the sound of clinking tools and the cyclic grind of a ratchet.
Leaning back, St.i.tch drew a measured breath, wary of a secondary tremor of pain. His attention flickered back to Merlin. ”So how's it going?”