“How big are those sewers?” Mooren asked.
“They’re storm drains, not sewers,” Knight replied. “This is almost a monsoon-esque area, isn’t it? They have a rainy season… Figure the storm drains are big enough for a truck?”
“Easily,” Killough said grimly. “What isn’t visible from the air and wasn’t on our list because Triple Q didn’t build it was the reservoir.”
“The reservoir?” Roslyn asked.
The MISS spy tapped a command and added a new orange oval shape under the park.
“Surface stormwater ponds are handy, but as Knight pointed out, this is a monsoon area,” he told them. “Rainy-season storms have rainfall measured in centimeters. Despite everything we do, water that washes down our streets isn’t safe to go into the ocean without treatment, and they can only treat it so fast.
“So, there are reservoirs positioned throughout the city. The newest of them is here, under the surface-water ponds. Designed to hold approximately twenty-five cubic kilometers of water, the excavation was done with off-angle drilling to keep the surface park untouched.”
“How easy would it be to fudge the numbers on how much fill you removed?” Roslyn asked quietly.
“Easy,” Killough replied. “Especially if you’re funneling the fill over to other major construction projects and not reporting it as disposed. Triple Q didn’t just help them hide materials incoming; it also helped them hide the fill coming out from the project.
“The company that did the work isn’t on our list,” he continued. “But they subcontracted it…and the company they subcontracted to was privately owned and appears to have only existed to do this one project.
“We don’t know who owned it. We don’t know where the equipment came from or where the equipment went, but they were drilling in the right place at the right time and installing a massive underground concrete structure.”
“And with access to that and Triple Q’s materials orders, they could have built a second structure alongside or under it,” Roslyn concluded. “I think you found them, Killough.”
“Your catch on the drainage network says they have at least some access from there, but that wouldn’t be reliable,” the agent said. “They couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t flood.”
He sighed.
“It gives them a lot of ways out. Too many for us to cut off.”
“But not too many for Song of the Huntress to watch from orbit,” Roslyn told him. “That means we can’t call in more Marines. If the shuttles and the rest of the Marines are needed for containment, it’s just us going in.”
She shook her head, looking at the orange highlights of the underground drainage system hiding their enemies.
“I’ll talk to Daalman and Dickens. We’ll make it work, try and pull out another squad, but we’ll have to do,” she said grimly. “Any idea where the best entrance to bring in exosuits is?”
“Here,” Killough replied, tapping the water treatment plant that had sent them all in the new direction. “It’s a secured, automated facility. A lot of material goes in, but there’s only people there when trucks go in and for weekly inspections.
“If they have control of the security, they can run any number of people in and out. The main access is concealed in the park, so no one will really question the numbers.”
Roslyn sighed.
“That’s right next to the damn school, Killough,” she said. “We’re going to have kids drawing exosuits for weeks—and that’s assuming everything goes smoothly.
“We can go in at night,” Mooren suggested.
“It’s noon, Sergeant,” Roslyn replied. “Every hour risks the lives of hundreds of people waiting for some kind of answer to the toxin these people built.
“No. I’ll make the call upstairs, and then you see if you can borrow something from the Guardia that will let us get to the door unnoticed. There is no time.
“We go in now.”
The shuttle barely had the space for Roslyn to find a private corner to establish a link with Huntress. A proper assault shuttle would have, but this was a light transport with token armament. Assault shuttles were designed to carry entire platoons of Marines, after all, not a single squad.
“Daalman,” the Mage-Captain responded when she finally connected with her superior. “What is going on, Chambers? That last stunt turned out to everyone’s benefit, but you’re starting to look a tad rogue here.”
“Sir, we are facing a serious threat,” Roslyn said quietly. “I believe that the toxin used to send several thousand of Nueva Portugal’s citizens into madness originates from the same location I was looking for under my orders from the Mountain.”
“I’d guessed,” Daalman told her. “Commander, we are well past the level where I am comfortable with one of my officers operating independently and under secret orders. I trust you and I have faith in the Mage-Queen, but this is too much.”
Roslyn paused for a moment, considering how to approach this. She had Daalman’s support so far, but she believed the Captain—and she needed Daalman’s full support going forward.
“Then you need to know,” she concluded quietly. “We’re pursuing a secret laboratory set up by rogue Mages from the Republic’s Project Prometheus. I now suspect they were working on alternative uses of the basic brain-interface technology used in the Promethean Interfaces.
“At the very least, we are looking at a high-level Mage-Surgeon and one of the RID’s handful of Mage operatives,” Roslyn continued. “We both know I’m operating under orders from the Mountain, sir. Neutralizing this lab and taking the Mages into custody is absolutely necessary—and doing so without it becoming public knowledge is critical to maintaining the fragile peace we have with the former Republic worlds.
“If it comes out that rogue Mages murdered thousands of people on a former Republic world, it’s not going to matter that those Mages worked for the Republic,” she said quietly. “It should…but it won’t.”
The channel was quiet.
“Well, I should know by now that you don’t pull punches,” Daalman finally said. “You’re talking multiple names from the Red List and an active Prometheus lab?”
“Yes, sir,” Roslyn confirmed. “We believe we have located the lab, but
