Polity Agent

Cormac glanced at him. ‘Not feeling so fatalistic now?’

Blegg started to say something, then decided against it. ‘We should be moving on,’ he finally replied.

Cormac was worming through another particularly cramped stretch when he heard the distant sound of the autogun firing. Checking, it surprised him to see how much time had passed, and realized Blegg’s estimate not to have been far off—it took their attackers ten hours and fifteen minutes to break through. Cormac’s estimate of their own progress had not been so good. Even the dracomen were growing weary, and the pools not yet in sight.

‘Thirty yards to go,’ came Arach’s call from ahead.

‘Move!’ Cormac bellowed. ‘We need to get through here fast!’

Here, as soon as the CTD blew, they would be fried—the heat and energy of its blast funnelled down to them through the fissure. They all began moving a lot faster and with less regard for minor injuries. Cormac listened to the whoosh and chatter of the gun — waiting for that moment when it ceased. Abruptly Scar and Blegg, just ahead of him, were rising up onto hands and knees and progressing faster. He heard a splash, and yet another splash. As he too rose up from his belly into a crouch, Scar passed the ring end of a line back to him. He attached it to his winder—too easy to get lost under water that might quickly turn murky. Through his gridlink he raised the helmet and closed the visor of his envirosuit, and followed the others down into water lanced through with their envirosuit light beams.

About them the pool lay deep and wide, but soon the two dracomen ahead led them into a narrow intestinal pipe corkscrewing through the rock. Twice they surfaced in travertine sumps, and on a third occasion a glare of light passing through the water ignited the sump with rainbow colours.

‘The autogun just ran out,’ one of the human Sparkind commented.

They waited, then suddenly the water itself surged upwards, forcing them towards the ceiling.

Now, thought Cormac, only Arach’s little present stands between them and us. He reckoned those Jain-constructed biomechs could move faster down here than he and his fellows, though they might have to burrow again if there had been intervening rock falls.

‘What explosives do we have remaining?’ he asked.

‘Grenades, eight planar mines and one more CTD,’ replied one of the Golem.

‘Let’s hope we won’t need the CTD,’ he said. ‘Position the mines where you deem appropriate—proximity detonation.’ He added unnecessarily, ‘Let’s keep moving,’ as the water level descended.

Within an hour they left the pipe and ascended a gently upward-sloping fissure. The temperature slowly began to rise, which indicated this cave system opened up somewhere to the surface. Then abruptly the upward slope ended against a wall of stone. Reaching this and directing his envirosuit light upwards, Cormac discerned another fissure climbing up into darkness.

‘How many mines left?’

‘Four.’

‘Okay, you Golem take the lead. Position two of the mines up in the fissure and when you reach a suitable point, run lines down.’

As the Golem headed rapidly up through the fissure Cormac turned to the others. ‘All of you, take a rest.’ He himself felt utterly drained, partly a result of the stimulants he had used while fighting through the jungle above. He did not want to use any more of them until it became absolutely necessary.

Lines snaked down to them twenty minutes later, just as a dull boom echoed through the cave system. The biomechanism must now have entered the underwater cave system. They hooked up their winders and ascended to where the Golem had secured themselves. The fissure here turned to follow an angle of thirty degrees from the horizontal still ascending.

With disheartening regularity over the next few hours the mines they had planted detonated behind them. Twice they needed to stop and take seismic readings to find some available course ahead. Once it became necessary to use one of their remaining mines, then some of the grenades, to blast a way through into another tunnel. While in there another dull boom resounded from behind. Checking some instrument one of the Golem told them, ‘That was the last mine we planted.’ Cormac felt he really did not need that—he could count. Then, manoeuvring through one sharply curving tunnel, he noticed a steady climb in temperature. Further along he found it necessary to close up his envirosuit. Next, reddish light began to impinge.

‘We have a problem,’ came a yell from up front.

Cormac quickly moved up past the others.

‘The seismic scanner missed this,’ explained one of the dracomen, almost guiltily.

The tunnel opened out onto a tilted slab that ran partly along one side of what appeared to be the empty chimney of a volcano. High above, the sky was visible like a bloodshot eye. Cormac moved to the rim of the slab and peered over.

Something down there?