Chapter 21 - Singing in the Void
They weren't exactly prisoners, but Ivy sure as the Everflowing didn't feel free.
The Scraegan takeover had been mercifully bloodless, and they hadn't even bothered disarming the human security force, though now with Scraegan warriors looming over every tent and gun emplacement she knew there wasn't a whole lot they would be able to do if their new hosts attacked.
She glanced back over her shoulder at the towering forms. The Alpha remained over on the Scraegan part of the plateau, along with several of the human expedition's senior technical staff. The painstaking process of outlining how they could work together to excavate the place was – thankfully – someone else's problem.
"How long you think we're gonna be stuck here?" Capicza muttered as they strapped into their harnesses.
"Long as it takes," she replied, thumping him gently on the shoulder with a clenched fist. "Don't worry, alright? Vannigan knows what he's doing. We'll be okay. We're all here to do a job – Scraegans too."
He nodded nervously. His fingers fumbled with the front fastening.
"Everflowing, let me do it," she laughed, reaching over and clipping the hooks into place. Giving them a quick tug to make sure they were secure, she placed a firm hand on the young man's shoulder. "You okay to do this?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm good," he blurted, glancing back over his shoulder. "Once we're, y'know, inside, I'll be okay. I just don't like being around them."
"Don't think there's a soul swimming who'd argue with that." Clapping him on the shoulder in what she hoped was a reassuring manner, Ivy turned to the attending technician, making a twirling motion to the sky with her index finger. "We're good to go."
A moment later she was gliding over the empty void of space again, Capicza close behind and millions of gallons of magma far below. The narrow crevice in the rock had been widened out into a larger passage, braced with temporary titanium scaffolds and rigged with work lighting. There were more than a dozen engineers in there now, hollowing out the overgrown tangles of rock, excavating as much of the mysterious structure as they could with hand cutters.
All around the human teams, the constant low rumble of Scraegan digging could be both heard and felt. She only caught glimpses of them as they worked, their massive bodies twisting and coiling like massive drills, their great clawed fists and feet ripping through loose rock like paper. Some of the bulkier Scraegans bore armour plates with what looked like specialised digging hooks – with curved barbs that ripped through the stone of Rychter's subterranean world.
Ivy had to admit, the big beasts worked efficiently. Their scanners showed an intricate web of tunnels already expanding around the structure, marking out its limits.
Her boots thumped against the solid stone of the tunnel mouth and with practised ease she swung herself inside, unclipping her harness in the same motion and stepping away from the edge to make space for Capicza. He landed a second later, mirroring her dismount.
Up ahead she could hear the snarl of cutting torches, muffled voices barking orders and the clatter of breaking stonework. Whatever else was going on across Rychter's surface, down here the Scraegans needed them. The brutes couldn't get their huge bulks into the actual structure of the place – they were simply too large. That all backed up the theory (a fairly self-evident one in Ivy's view) that no long lost Scraegan ancestor had built the place.
"You good?" she asked once Capicza completed his dismount.
"Yeah, let's go." He made a chopping motion down the tunnel. "Let's just get this over with."
Ivy grinned as they set off. "You don't like a little mystery?"
"Sometimes, but the River don't flow with this place. It creeps me out."
"Well the faster we do our work the faster we can go home."
"If we're allowed to leave this damned hole. What was Vannigan thinking, letting the Scraegans just... take everything over?"
She shot him a withering look. "What, you think we should have a shooting match with them? We'd be dead and buried by now."
"We could've left," Capicza muttered. "Could've left this place for them if they wanted it so badly."
"Over my dead body," she replied, ducking under a supporting strut as they approached the glare of cutters in the distance.
He didn't argue with that, lapsing into a sullen silence as they joined the rest of the dig teams who were busily carving a path into the void. So far they'd cleared several large open spaces, none of them containing anything except more large pillars and lines of power in the floor. She could hear the rumble of the Scraegans somewhere beyond the walls of stone, the work lights flickering and shaking every time one of their excavating packs trundled by.
She tried not to think about that, squaring her shoulders and following the path that curved back towards the cavern itself; towards the great spine of dark material she'd first discovered. Her feet moved gingerly along either side of one of the conduits – at least she assumed they were conduits – that shone in the floor.
Looking closer, she could see something physical flowing inside it, some kind of mercurial liquid that no-one had had the guts to try and extract yet. For all they know they might blow the place up, or bring the ceiling crashing down on their heads if they started hacking away at the internal mechanisms without knowing what they were breaking.
So instead, they followed the flow.
She found Captain Kenyatta and five members of the 15th Armourer's Platoon, some of the most skilled repairmen and women their unit could offer. They were expert welders and cutters, people doing precise work the closer they got to the heart of this place.
Ivy and Capicza had been extended an invitation to this elite little group. Along with them, Kelso Vannigan and a pair of Blackwater guards had also made the trip across the chasm, just in case. None of them really knew just what they might unearth down here – hell, less than a year ago an entirely new and lethal species had exploded into life beneath their feet.
She found herself glad of their presence. And of their guns.
"You both loaded up?" Kenyatta asked, swinging a torch back to illuminate them.
"Yes, ma'am," Ivy replied, shielding her eyes with one hand. "Assuming you don't blind us before we can get to work."
Kenyatta smirked, angling to torch off to one side. "The sensors show that we're getting close. We're reading thicker walls of this stuff-," she knocked a knuckle against the dark wall, "it looks like an actual internal room."
"We ever figure out how big this place actually is?" Capicza asked as he un-slung his heavy cutter.
"Scraegans have bracketed an area of around two hundred yards from north to south," Kelso replied, his eyes fixed to the data slate that Ivy was beginning to think was permanently attached to him. "And about a hundred deep. The full structure appears to be a rough sphere. We don't know how many individual levels it is made up of, but we seem to be in the centre – where the seismics read the pulses."
"Big bloody toss-ball," an older woman grunted as she slid her blast goggles down into place. "Well, what say we go knocking for a door, boss?"
Kenyatta nodded. "Alright, everybody pair off and take a section." She made a sweeping motion to her left and right along the ragged face of rock that still impeded their progress. "Twenty meter intervals. Move slow and careful, and see if you can find anything that we might call a door. Shanklin and Capicza, flank far left, Mosley and Losai, far right. Geislich, take Haan. Tanker, you're with me."
Capicza sighed and gave her helmet a gentle bump with one fist.
"Let's go," she said, propelling him off in the direction Kenyatta had indicated.
They set up at their allotted dig point, and Ivy kept her hand seismic close to the wall as Capicza levelled his cutter. He glanced at her and shoved his goggles down into place.
"You ready?"
Ivy pushed her goggles over her eyes and gave him a thumbs up. "Let's dig."
He thumbed the cutter's activation switch and a vibrant glare exploded in the dark. Even on a low power for precision work, the machines generated a lot of heat and light, and soon the floor around them was littered with broken rubble and half molten sheets of rock. Ivy moved with him as he sliced chunks out of the barrier, looking for any sign of an entry point.
After a while all they'd found was more dark walls, and eventually they swapped over.
And ten minutes later, as she finished scything through a particularly stubborn hunk of geology, Capicza grabbed her arm with an exclamation.
"Think I got something!"
She shook his hand off and powered down the cutter. "What, here?"
"Yeah, just beneath that next layer. Scanner's showing some kind of indent."
"An indent?"
"Yeah... you know? Like a hole – about a foot across."
"Okay." Ivy crunched a hydro cube and lifted her goggles long enough to wipe the sweat from her face. "Just point me at it."
Following Capicza's directions, she sliced several thin layers away in a square meter of wall space until they found the barrier beyond the rock. At first she didn't see anything different, but when the glare of the cutter cleared, she spotted it – a square-shaped panel set deeper into the rest of the wall.
And next to it was the unmistakable thin black line of a seam.
"Everflowing," Ivy gasped as they both peered in close. She reached out, and could just about fit a finger into the thin gap. "What do you think?"
"I think we'd better clear the rest of this away," he replied, looking up and around at the remaining rock. "You good?"
"Just stand back."
Dialling the cutting laser up to a quarter power, Ivy made light work of the rest of the barrier, swiping and slicing her way through – willing to bet she couldn't damage the strange black structure with and errant beam.
Soon they had cleared several square meters from top to bottom, and one they'd finished shovelling debris out of the way, they found themselves facing a large triangular shape, just visible in the gloom. Dark indents outlined the shape, with the vertical line Ivy had seen first bisecting the triangle from its high point, down to the floor.
The indent sat off to the right, with something that looked an awful lot like a crank handle built into it. Its grip was a weird shape, kinked in the centre to form almost a right angle, and with seven shallow grooves cut into its upper surface.
"Drown me," Capicza muttered, pulling his goggles up to get a better look. "Looks like you're a good luck charm, eh, Shanklin? You been saying some extra special prayers recently?"
"Captain!" Ivy called, giving him a nudge with one elbow to shut him up. "You wanted a door? I think we found one."
***
The handle turned.
She hadn't quite known what to expect, but once two of their fellow engineers had gotten a grip of the oddly shaped handle, there had been little resistance. It turned with a rasp, and a fresh conduit of blue light filled the outline of the triangle.
Then it opened.
The great slab parted with a heavy growl of what sounded like stone grinding against stone. A puff of sterile air burst forth from the aperture and Ivy wrinkled her nose, trying to figure out exactly what she was smelling. Some kind of metallic, chemical tang mixed with the must of uncounted years.
Glittering blue cut through the gloom within. She raised her torch and took a half step forward, but Kelso caught her gently by the arm.
"Better let us go first," he said quietly, before nodding to the two guards. Slipping the data slate into the straps across his back, Kelso tugged his bulky sidearm from its holster, levelled it, and then stepped over the threshold.
Ivy reluctantly moved aside as the guards followed, rifles swaying left and right, hunting for threats as they plunged into the gloomy half-light. She listened, hearing only their footsteps. Craning her neck for a better look, she could see their dark shapes moving and turning.
"Clear," Kelso called after a moment, and her heart rate slowed just a little bit. Exchanging a look with Capicza she shrugged.
"Into the unknown," she murmured, and led the engineers inside.
The shapes of Kelso and the guards fanned out ahead of her, and she could see large, concave curves of dark supports positioned at regular intervals. Her torch swept across a smooth floor, without even a trace of dust to suggest how old it might be.
Questions battered her mind as she stepped sideways towards the nearest glowing conduit. Just how long had this place been buried under the Scraegan labyrinth? Who came first? The Scraegans or whoever had built this thing? And just what was it?
The fact it still had power only made her more curious. Did that mean it was new? Or did it just have a massively extended power supply?
Ivy walked with careful steps, the blue glow beginning to swell as she moved deeper into the chamber, seeing several of the conduits converging in front of her. Behind, she could hear the footsteps of the others, their low murmurs of unease rippling through the cavernous space. Up close, the curving supports stretched twenty meters up until they met the gently bowing ceiling of the room.
Then she stepped out from between two pillars and saw it.
Ivy's eyes went wide and she turned off the torch, her hands falling limp by her sides as she stared. Directly in front of her was a circular platform carved into the floor, where dozens of conduits met like the spokes of a wheel. The lines of flowing liquid coiled through that central hub and spilled out away from her again, towards the true object of her amazement.
Spared from the encroach of Rychter's rock formations was a vast arc of machinery, tens of meters across, all built of the same dark substance that defied examination. It looked like some kind of control centre, but not one that suited a human anatomy. The consoles and controls were all embedded into the wall, with a thick band of something that looked like black glass cutting through the centre.
Footsteps coalesced around her. She was dimly aware of Kelso and Kenyatta, and of the gasps of surprise from the veteran engineers.
Keep it together, she told herself. Slowly, as though not to overload her brain, she let her eyes wander from left to right. What controls she could discern were all wrong to her eye – not the right size or shape for a human hand. She tried to cogitate the kind of limb that could wrap around the strange, multi-holed grips that mounted the long, spindly levers, but right now her brain wasn't quite there.
Finding this place was enough to process.
"Okay, everybody," Kenyatta said quietly, her voice little more than a low whisper, as though anything more than that might disturb the unseen denizens of this place. "Just keep your heads and remember your training."
"Who trained us for this?" one of the engineers muttered.
"Drown that chatter," the captain hissed. "All of you, keep her heads screwed in straight and do your jobs. Spread out, and keep your cameras rolling. But by the Watching Lords don't touch anything."
Ivy didn't need to be told twice. She walked forward, moving and turning as she gazed in wonderment, taking care not to step directly on the conduits. She doubted she could actually break anything that easily, but something about the place made her take that extra precaution. It was cold, alien, and exciting.
The Scraegans didn't concern her right now, not the war, not the burning suns of Rychter or the fear of the unknown. She walked up to the central panel, acutely aware of Kelso shadowing her steps. Capicza shuffled off to the left with considerably less enthusiasm.
What am I looking at?
She couldn't begin to make heads or tails of the bizarre bank of control mechanisms, all shaped with sharp angles and multiple grooves, positioned next to transparent nodes that might have been made from glass – displays of some kind maybe. The control consoles looked like they were built for something bigger than a human, but not so massive as the Scraegans. Still, she would have needed a good-sized box to stand on to use any of this stuff properly.
Ivy stepped sideways towards where a central conduit ran. It was a little thicker than the others and disappeared beneath a big tetrahedral console studded with display globes and large, weird-shaped control levers. In the middle of the tetrahedron was another crank handle.
"Don't do it," Kelso chuckled, moving up beside her and examining the console. "This looks important wouldn't you say?"
"Yes it does." Ivy shot him a playful glance. "Sure you don't want to spin this thing up?"
"Not till we know what it might do-,"
A clunk echoed through the room, a heavy, mechanical clunk that shattered the low, tense ebb of unease that had crept over the explorers. Ivy leapt back from the console and looked around, until she saw Capicza, standing in front of the black band of glassy material that bisected the control room, frozen in place, his eyes wide.
"Capicza?"
"I didn't touch anything!" he yelped, putting his hands up. "I swear."
A scraping sound filled room a second later, and Ivy watched in amazement as the dark glass – if that's what it was – retracted upward into some unseen alcove.
Before anyone could stop her, Ivy bounded forward and clambered up onto the nearest console to look out. A vast cavern of blackness opened out before her, lit up by a lattice of flowing blue, and right in the middle of it, stood the spire.
It was a thin blade of blackness illuminated by a single line of blue pulsing up and down its length. Her mouth dropped open and she whipped her portable seismic around to check the readings. Each pulse sent a tremor through the little machine. Looking up again, she tried to crane her neck to see the top, but the thing just vanished beyond her view into an impossibly tall shaft.
"By the Lords!" Kenyatta gasped. "What is this place?"
"Now we know why the power's still on."
"What's it doing?" one of the guards asked, her voice tight with unease.
"I think it's sending a signal." Ivy rocked her head back, following the tremor of light until it disappeared into the endless dark. "Everflowing bloody River, that thing probably goes all the way to the surface. It must be some kind of transmitter."
Capicza swallowed hard. "Transmitting what?"
"The bigger question," Kelso said grimly, "isn't what it's sending. It's who it's sending it to."
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