“Dead,” Leeson said, coming near and whistling in appreciation. “A full platoon, all dead. Those lights with snap-rifles didn’t stand a chance against these squids.”
“Good thing they won’t remember this death.”
“How’s that?”
I pointed a finger upward, toward the distant surface. “They were out of range of any storage unit when they died. Their tappers will have recorded some of the memories, but the worst of it should be safely forgotten.”
“Yeah… that’s probably a good thing for these kids.”
We gathered up spare energy cells and oxygen tanks after that. I didn’t like to admit it, but Barton’s misfortune might help the rest of the unit. Our supplies were getting iffy at this point.
After searching the rest of the plateau, we found that it continued downward on the far side. That single, relatively thin path between the rails led even deeper into the ocean.
Harris came near as I contemplated the path downward. He eyed me with a baleful expression.
“Sir? You aren’t thinking of going down farther, are you? Please tell me we’re turning back.”
“I don’t know, Harris. We haven’t found the bottom of this rabbit-hole yet. Graves wants answers.”
Harris threw his arms high and wide in a gesture of supplication. “Come on, McGill. We made contact with the enemy, and we lost damn-near half your unit. We can take these tapper recordings back to the surface and turn them in for revives. Not a single soldier here needs to be permed.”
I looked at him, and I knew he was right. We’d done about as much as we could do at this point. Pushing onward would be hazardous and maybe even stupid. Why get permed if you couldn’t even report back to your commander what the hell had happened down here?
Still, part of me wanted to go on. I wanted to walk down this path and kill every living squid on this planet. They were natural traitors, the lot of them. Every squid that had ever drawn a gill-full of dirty seawater deserved a good perming six days a week and twice on Sunday.
Heaving a sigh, I turned away. “You’re right, Harris. Get everyone on their feet. We’re going back up.”
He beamed at me. “Thank God! He’s seen the light, people! We’re going back up!”
A ragged cheer rose throughout the tired legionnaires. There’s something about marching through water, even thinner water than was natural, that just makes a man bone-tired. We were all pretty much beat, and now we had a long, long walk uphill to contend with.
But no one felt unhappy about it. Everyone wanted to get started, to get the hell off the bottom of this sea and back to sunlight, air and fresh winds. We’d been breathing our own stinks and squelching in sweaty boots for so many long hours now, it was going to feel like heaven just to open our helmets under that green sky.
We gathered up our stuff and began the retreat eagerly enough. A few troops had to be dragged or half-carried over the shoulders of two others, but no one was complaining. Everyone talked about hot meals and hot showers. The general mood of the unit had risen five points in five minutes.
All that good cheer ended, however, when a bloodcurdling scream rang out. We all stopped and sent beams of bright light stabbing into the deep watery darkness.
I spotted Kivi at the front of the line. She was pointing upward and screeching at something. She’d kept to the rear of the formation, being a bio and all, and no one had faulted her for that. But when we’d all turned around, she’d naturally been at the front of the column as we began the uphill climb.
At first I was confused, as were the rest of the troops. We looked her over, expecting to see some kind of ghastly injury. Then, once we realized she was okay, we looked around her feet for some horrible discovery. Had she found Barton’s head or something even worse? Something floating in the dirty water?
No. That wasn’t it, either. Kivi was pointing upward, at about a forty-five degree angle. Pointing at nothing.
“Look at it, you fools! Look!”
Gathering around and asking questions, we found she wasn’t in an answering mood. She struggled to move into our midst, to retreat behind the ranks of specialists and heavies.
“What’s gotten into you, girl?” Leeson asked. “I don’t see a damned thing.”
“Maybe she saw a whale or something,” Harris suggested. “She’s spooked herself.”
“It was no whale. It was a monster. Just keep looking—you’ll see it. The thing is lurking. It’s watching us right now.”
We stopped advancing and studied the rails. They were coming together again, forming the narrow path that led up to the surface.
It was about then that a number of troopers gasped. They’d seen movement. Impossible movement.
“I saw something,” Leeson said. “McGill? Centurion? Kivi is right. There is something out there. It’s hanging around above us—just a little to the right of the path. See it?”
More people turned on their suit lights, and we all peered into the dark water. The drifting bits of sand, fish-shit and dead plankton made it hard to see much, but I had to admit, there was a big, billowing something out there.
Kivi appeared at my side as I squinted upward into the dark sea. “You see it, McGill? There’s something so big out there, so impossibly huge, that it doesn’t look like an object at all.”
“Uh… you mean that shadow? It looks like… I don’t know. A hulking region of water that’s darker than the rest. That’s what you’re talking about?”
“Yes. It’s like a part of the ocean itself is gliding around apart from the rest.”
Natasha was skeptical. “We might just be seeing an underwater avalanche, or something.”
I nodded, but I wanted to be sure. “Unit, everyone turn on your
