“Oh, I’m waiting, sir. If you make it back up here alive, you’ll have the right to flex all you want to. I’ll even brag on your behalf.”
“That’s a kind offer, now piss-off.”
He backed away and the techs pulled open the doors. The sea was right there, lapping on the other side. I would have thought it was high tide, but I knew that we didn’t really experience tides anymore. All that kind of happy normal behavior was on the far side of the dome.
Striding with purpose, I walked into the water and kept going until it was over my head. Then, after swimming a few strokes, I was able to get to my feet again. That water did that weird pressure-shift thing, allowing me to move almost as I would normally. Since seawater between the rails was less dense, I wasn’t floating anymore.
About a thousand steps later, I couldn’t see the surface anymore. I couldn’t see much of anything other than the cold dark water all around me. It seemed like looking up was brighter than looking down—but that was about it.
Turning up my suit-lights to high, I kept walking. At a certain point, I thought I detected the dome. It was out there, a region of the sea that looked kind of… warped. It was like a sheet of clear glass in the water, hard to detect, but it was there.
Pausing, I played my lights up and down over the area. Here and there, I caught what looked like a glint from the walls.
“I’ve reached the dome,” I said into my intercom. A long monofilament wire ran from me all the way back up to the shoreline. “Do you read me?”
A stern female tech answered. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t want to. “We hear you, Centurion. Keep going. Report back if the barrier stops you from making further progress.”
I was still really needing to take a crap somewhere better than inside my suit, and my belly was starting to grumble something fierce, too.
For about half a minute, I considered walking into that wall. I didn’t know if it would kill me or save the star-falls—but either way, I didn’t want to go any deeper.
Two more steps. That was all I took, then I halted. With all the art of a mime working at a shopping mall, I reached out and began touching the water in front of me as if it was a solid surface—but there was nothing there.
“Damnation!” I exclaimed. “I found a tunnel right through the dome! Right here, the pathway cuts into the wall.”
“We’re not sensing an opening, McGill.”
“Well, I can’t help you there,” I said, poking my fingers into the region ahead of me. “I’m not a tech. I’m just a dumbass combat soldier. Do you want me to walk through it?”
“Are you sure you can proceed?”
“Absolutely,” I said with certainty.
“Standby. We’re doing a scan with the instruments you’re wearing.
I groaned aloud. “All right. I’ll just stand around here for a minute, so you can take all your measurements and whatnot.”
I heard the techs talking, and they seemed to be baffled. I couldn’t blame them for that, as this alien tech wasn’t like anything we knew about. I had to wonder if the water density changing system that had created the wall was the same technology that had put a hole in it right here.
I’d encountered this kind of thing before on other alien worlds. Nonhumans tended to be better than us at a given specialized technology. Humans were better generalists, but every civilization had their bright spots.
Back on Death World, for example, we’d met up with the finest in organic tech, courtesy of the Wur. Then there were the Dust Worlders who made great nanites—or the Edge World people known as Shadowlanders who had built the revival machines. In every case they’d developed advanced tech due to a specific need others didn’t share.
This case seemed no different. These kraken, or giant male squids, or whatever the xenos would call them in the end, needed to deal with deep water and high pressures. They’d mastered the technology, which no doubt allowed them to walk on the surface of their world or the bottom of their deep, deep sea.
After about four minutes I became bored, and I started to walk back up again. I really did need to go to the bathroom. The techs hadn’t approved of this move, but I’ve always been a man who preferred to ask for forgiveness, rather than permission.
It took them over thirty seconds to realize I was moving away from the site.
“McGill? Centurion? You haven’t been cleared to move from your position. Please return to your station. We’re not done scanning the vicinity yet.”
“What’s there to scan? I found the frigging hole in the dome, just like you wanted and that’s that.”
They complained, but I kept right on walking. Finally, someone said something that caught my attention. That was quite an achievement, because I’d already decided to ignore them.
“Centurion? There’s movement behind you.”
I paused mid-step, and I turned around. My rifle was slung, but I readied it smoothly even as I moved to face the other way.
But my action came too late. A pack of humanoids were right in my face. They’d come up from the depths, using the path I’d been on like a highway. The worst thing was I could see there were lots of them behind the first man. Hundreds of them, at least.
My gun began to chug out bolts. The first struck the leader’s foot, then leg, then belly as I brought my weapon into line. He exploded with a dark cloud of blood and gore. Overall, I’d have to say that I don’t prefer fighting in the
