just in case. I was a little worried having all our hackers with us but it wasn’t my problem any more.
‘Pack it in,’ Morag hissed at me.
I looked away from Pagan as we trundled into a huge vertical crack in the rock that disappeared into the darkness far higher than I could see, even when fully magnifying my vision. Deep below us I could make out the orange glow of lava. Even this far above it I could feel the heat. It was a welcome change from the normal damp chill of the caves.
‘I should have taken a really strong psychotropic,’ Mudge said, removing his sunglasses. We’d tried to explain the pointlessness of wearing sunglasses underground but he’d insisted it was a hangover tradition.
There were a lot of cave mouths, natural pathways in the rock, surrounding the enormous fissure. Some of the ledges were big enough to be small plateaux in their own right. On the opposite side of the fissure, waterfalls cascaded down to be turned to steam far below us. The ledge we were on and much of the surrounding area was covered in dark soil with large flat mushrooms growing out of it. The mushrooms gave off a faint ghostly bioluminescence. However, the most singular thing about the whole area was the beanstalk.
‘Fe fi fo fum,’ Mudge said, grinning as he popped something in his mouth. He’d spent the previous couple of minutes searching all his pouches, presumably for just the right drug for the occasion.
‘I smell the blood of an Englishman,’ Pagan finished and then for some reason glanced at me. Perhaps it was because I was staring at him.
It looked more organic and less like the solid liquid that made up Them but was unmistakably Themtech. Though it was only about the thickness of one of the skyscrapers that I’d seen in New York, its sheer scale reminded me of the Spokes. It ran as high as I could make out and down into the lava below. Smaller tendrils or roots branched from its entire length, burrowing deep into the rock or into tunnels.
‘What are those for?’ Cat asked.
‘At a guess, it’s harvesting resources it needs from the surrounding area, taking minerals, water from the ice for fuel, using the lava below to generate geothermal energy,’ Pagan said.
The Morlock was impassive but I couldn’t shake the feeling he hated this thing. It was like a giant parasitic maggot eating away at the guts of his planet.
‘It probably processes and gets rid of waste as well, but whatever it’s doing it looks like it’s collecting a hell of a lot of raw material and energy,’ Pagan continued.
‘That’s Nightside over there,’ Tailgunner said, nodding towards the opposite side of the fissure. He looked horrified.
‘You had no idea?’ I asked.
He just shook his head.
‘That would explain why it’s been expanding, growing,’ Morag said. Pagan nodded in agreement.
‘What’s been growing? What is this?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you know where we are?’ Pagan asked.
‘Pagan, I will throw you in the lava,’ I told him.
I received a warning look from Cat.
‘We’re deep under the Citadel, Jakob,’ Morag said.
‘Sweet. Let’s climb up the beanstalk and slay the wicked giant,’ Mudge said. I wasn’t sure he was joking.
Pagan was shaking his head. ‘It has to come through at least two miles of solid rock before it gets to this fissure.’
‘Can we sabotage it?’ I asked.
‘What with? A nuke?’ Cat asked.
‘I’d go for that,’ Mudge said.
‘Cat?’ I nodded at the Morlock. He was staring at her. He seemed angry. Cat was so surprised at the change in expression and the intensity of his look that she stepped back involuntarily.
‘Chill, dude. We’re not going to nuke your mushrooms,’ Mudge said. ‘Do they have any hallucinogenic properties?’
‘Why don’t you eat some?’ I suggested. ‘Can we use this at all?’
I noticed that Morag was smiling.
‘This is our out,’ she said.
21
The sonic decoy was subtle. A lot of noise may have got the guard fauna to investigate and also would have alerted Demiurge. We lay on the bottom of the icy underground river as dark shapes swam through the water above us, the reactive skin of the dive sheaths hopefully blending us into the stone. The dark shapes in the water were leopard seals fed on growth hormones, altered with neurosurgery to make them even more aggressive and fitted with cybernetic systems including an enlarged and power-assisted jaw. Most divers I knew hated diving anywhere near natural leopard seals, let alone these augmented versions. I wondered if Rolleston had got around to using Themtech on them. The idea of leopard seals with tentacles caused me to shiver.
I felt incredibly bulky with the smart-fabric dive sheath over my full combat gear. The sheath worked as one massive gill, pulling air in from the surrounding water, and was jacked into one of my plugs using technology originally developed for exo-armour. It also masked my heat and electromagnetic signatures. The seals would have had biological material from sharks implanted into them to help them pick up EM signatures.
I’d had rudimentary dive training in the Regiment, as had Rannu, Cat and Pagan, but we were using skillsofts and what little time we’d had in virtual sims. Merle was an accomplished diver. He’d been trained by the US Marines for their Force Recon outfit. We’d had a day to prepare for this, and that had included a run to get some specialist gear from one of Merle’s other Cemetery Wind caches.
The dark, fast-moving shapes swam over us and headed back towards the time-delayed sonar decoy. It would switch itself off before they got there so they wouldn’t actually find anything. If they located the decoy their handlers would know that something was wrong.
We gently pushed ourselves off the cold stone of the underground river floor and finned forward. Cave diving was one of the more dangerous types of diving and I could see why. Lots of tight spaces, particularly if you were as heavily encumbered as we were. The buoyancy controls on our sheaths were working hard to keep us neutrally buoyant. The hostile overhead environment meant that we had to be aware of snagging and couldn’t just surface if things went wrong.
The dangers aside, I liked it down here. Despite the fact that I was cold as the heat was bled off me in an effort to mask my signature. Despite the fact that I was drenched in sweat, there was something peaceful and tranquil about it. Seen underwater, the rock formations that we had become used to took on a whole new life, driving home how alien the environment was, but in a good way. Once again, everything we saw was in the green of lowlight vision. For a while I even forgot about the threat of the leopard seals. Fighting them would be a ball ache. We’d win, but discovery by the seals meant compromise, which meant scrubbing the mission.
Dinas Emrys, yesterday
The hologrammaitic rendering of the Citadel looked out of place among the rough, sparse, Dark Ages splendour of the great hall of Pagan’s sanctuary.
‘You’re going to have to trust me. I can hack it,’ Black Annis told us.
Mother, Tailgunner and Cat were looking sceptical. Mudge was looking bored. I couldn’t read Merle’s face and Rannu was always difficult to judge, but I think there was eagerness in his expression. Either he wanted a chance to prove himself again, which was fine, or he wanted revenge, which was less fine. I wanted revenge. I badly wanted to fuck Rolleston up and, if I got a chance, kill him.
‘Morag, if you could just tell us a little more about how you think you will do this,’ Pagan said.
‘Same principle as doing the data raid on Demiurge – I’ll stealth it. It’s Themtech, which means it has a mind
