behind. Luc’s hands tightened into fists by his sides, the frustration pooling inside him like a hot lava tide.
‘How many of our ‘skeets are primed with explosives?’ Marroqui asked his second-in-command, a pale-skinned woman with a scar on one side of her nose.
‘We’ve used up two, but we still have three left,’ the woman replied.
‘Fine. Once we’ve established line-of-sight with those missing ‘skeets, let’s send those three all the way down to the bottom and have them focus on taking out any automated defences or hunter-killers Antonov might have left waiting for us.’
Marroqui glanced back at Luc. ‘You’ll wait here, Mr Gabion. Someone has to monitor the uplink with the lander.’
‘Your mosquitoes can monitor things just fine without my help. I’m coming with you and your men.’
Marroqui regarded him with distaste. ‘You’re from Benares, right?’
Luc stared back at him. In that moment, he finally understood the reason for Marroqui’s unrelenting hostility. It had nothing to do with the rivalry between the Sandoz and SecInt; it was because he came from Benares.
‘I don’t know what they taught you in those combat temples they trained you in, Master Marroqui, but coming from Benares doesn’t make me a traitor.’
‘I never said—’
‘So you can either take me down there with you,’ Luc continued regardless, ‘or take the risk of having to explain to our superiors why you let Antonov escape a
A muscle in one of Marroqui’s cheeks twitched. For a moment Luc thought the Clan-leader might strike him, but instead the other man nodded curtly, his face impassive.
‘You follow
Luc nodded. ‘As crystal.’
‘Shit. We’ve lost another mosquito,’ said Marroqui’s second in command, waiting by the entrance. ‘No, hang on . . . that’s another three out of contact, all in just the last minute.’
‘What about the rest of the ‘skeets?’ asked Marroqui.
‘They all check out,’ she replied.
‘We’d better get moving,’ said Marroqui, abruptly businesslike. ‘Anything out of the ordinary’ – and with this, he glanced reflexively towards Luc – ‘report it
The entire complex turned out to still be pressurized. By the time they reached one of the shafts, mandalas and statues had given way to rough undecorated surfaces barely visible in the near-lightless gloom. Luc’s IR filters showed an open elevator platform dead ahead, ringed by a steel rail. According to the map, the shaft went straight down for almost a kilometre. A faint breeze drifted up from below.
‘How come these are working when the power’s out?’ he asked.
‘They run on localized emergency power supplies,’ said Marroqui. ‘They have to, or there’s no way out during a power failure. We shouldn’t have to worry about getting down or back up.’ He nodded to another woman, with chestnut skin, who had bent down on one knee to examine the interior of a control panel embedded into the wall close by the rail. ‘How’s it looking, Triskia?’
The woman made some final adjustment and snapped the panel shut before standing once more, her suit’s servos whining faintly. ‘It checks out, sir. No sabotage. We’re good to go.’
Luc tried not to think about the Stygian depths beneath them as he followed Marroqui and four others onto the elevator platform. Even so, his heart nearly skipped a beat when the platform began its descent with a sudden, jerking motion.
Halfway to the next level down, updates from the mosquitoes flowed in through Luc’s CogNet interface. His maps automatically reconfigured themselves according to their incoming data, displaying rooms and corridors that had clearly not been part of the original complex.
‘Any idea what Antonov might have been building down there?’ Marroqui asked, referring to the new layout.
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Luc replied.
‘Could be weapons caches,’ suggested the woman called Triskia. ‘Maybe he’s still planning on fighting his way past us.’
Marroqui shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He’d need bigger fabricants than the ones our mosquitoes have seen so far. If he’s still alive, he’s down to light weapons, nothing more.’
‘Two of the other teams just called in, sir,’ said one of Marroqui’s men. ‘They’ve reconnoitred at the reactor room, so they should be able to get the power going any—’
As if in answer, rows of lights stretching the length of the shaft blinked into sudden life. Luc squinted, bright phantoms chasing each other across the back of his eyelids. The next time he managed to open them properly, Marroqui and the rest were grinning and chuckling. As far as they were concerned, this was going to be a cakewalk.
The platform slowed, and Luc felt a tightening in his chest. He had the uncanny sense they had passed beyond
