our own ticket, and if the final stop did not turn out to be quite to our liking, we had no one to blame but ourselves.
Hunting Scalers-nonsense! The Systies were the only real objective. But we hadn’t found them, so we’d find the Scalers, and interrogate them.
“It looks scary, Thinker.” Priestess spoke on private to me. Priestess had walked into the face of death for us on Planet Hell. We all loved her, but nobody had yet touched her. I guess we didn’t want to spoil it. This way, she belonged to us all and us to her.
“That’s a ten,” I responded, pleased she had confided in me, and not somebody else. “I’d rather stay here.” She knew I did not like tunnels. The nasty, nasty, narrow tunnel made its way down to a very unpleasant-looking underwater stream.
It would be difficult. Difficult, but probably possible. Probably possible, a favorite phrase from Planet Hell, used as a prelude to many grim adventures. A wave of fear edged its way into my bloodstream as I watched the scan again on my faceplate. My legs turned to jelly.
“Tenners, let’s go.” Snow Leopard slipped into the hole, crawling in head first, followed by two Life Science techs.
We had been through a lot with Snow Leopard, and trusted his judgment. He was from Magna 4, a gigantic iceworld best described as a hostile environment. He resembled a white shadow, with blue-veined, almost translucent skin, pale pink eyes, and hair so blond it looked almost white. We knew we could trust him to do the sensible thing. He had changed since the early days in Providence. They did strange things to those that they made a One. Some members of the squad thought that he was no longer quite human, but we’d all follow him anywhere.
Into the dark, headfirst into that evil hole, squirming down at a steep angle. I was in the rear, following Priestess. Wet, muddy earth, all over my suit. The darksight on my faceplate adjusted gradually and soon everything appeared to be glowing a faint green. It was an incredibly tight fit, my comtop pressing against the tunnel ceiling. There was barely room to move my arms, barely room to breathe. I felt awkward with my weapon cradled in my arms and my equipment scraping the walls.
The dark closed in, and there was only me, crawling, and Priestess, ahead. I can do this forever, I thought. Just don’t stop; if I stop it will close in even more. My claustrophobia had amused my instructors in basic.
“Beta, Snow Leopard.” The voice crackled on the tacnet. “The probes we sent ahead have been hit, they are blind. Coolhand, Psycho, move in and let’s take that Scaler.”
I cut in, “What do you mean ‘hit’? Hit with what?”
“Don’t know.” Snow Leopard didn’t waste words on bad news.
A voice I didn’t recognize interrupted, “Keep it on v-min, guys.” Must be one of the techs getting anxious about his specimen.
I kept crawling.
Snow Leopard grunted over the comm and I heard a splash. “Damn it. All right, gang, I’m in the stream.” More splashing. “It’s a little slippery.”
I willed myself forward. Priestess’s boots were right in my face. The blood rushed to my head, my heartbeat pounded in my ears. The tunnel seemed to go on forever.
The boots disappeared and suddenly I was sliding and falling. An instant later, I landed in an icy black stream on top of an indignant Priestess. We scrambled apart and I followed her again, swimming like a snake in a sewer pipe.
“Hold it,” Snow Leopard was breathing hard. I stopped and waited. “All right, guys, it’s a little tight here. I just got through, but I had to take my helmet off. You can’t get a good grip…with your comtops on. When you get here, take your comtop off and keep your nose above the water. Push the comtop ahead of you, then pull yourself through with one arm.”
I heard a chorus of off-channel curses up ahead of me. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear either.
We moved on, water rushing past me. Suddenly the tunnel narrowed drastically. My comtop struck the limestone ceiling. Priestess’s boots thrashed in the water, glanced off my faceplate.
She cried out, gurgling, “No!” I grabbed her boots and tried to steady her.
“Priestess, are you all right? Answer!” I felt the beginning edges of panic. I triggered my flash. It lit up the water, and sent eerie liquid shadows flickering over the rocky ceiling.
“I can’t do it, Thinker!” She gasped, hyperventilating. “I can’t get through! I can’t move!!”
“Priestess, Thinker, Snow Leopard-you still with us?”
“Nothing to report,” I replied.
“Get out of there,” he ordered. “Now! We’ve all done it, even the techs. You have to take your comtops off, or you won’t have room to get a grip on the rocks and pull yourself through.”
“Priestess…” We were stopped and my claustrophobia closed in. “We’ve got to get out of here, Priestess! Have you taken off your comtop?”
“No.” She almost sobbed.
“Do it! Mouth against the ceiling! Then move out. I’ll be right behind you!” I knew if she didn’t move, we were probably both going to die. Miserably. I forced myself to unlink my comtop. Icy water poured in. I shook uncontrollably. Wrenching the comtop off, I slammed my face up to the bitter stone roof, sucking desperately for air. Only a few mils clearance, a few mils between life and death. I saw Priestess’s pale, frightened face, a fragile mushroom in a river of ink. She’d done it.
“Oh, my God.” A horrified whisper, barely audible. We both felt the cold wings of the angel of death.
Priestess kicked off into the dark, leaving me alone, numb with terror.
I took a deep breath and forced myself forward, the water swirling all around me, into the narrowest portion. Tons of rock above me, an immense presence, the tunnel almost full of icy water. Blind and deaf and shaking with fear, kissing that obscene stone, I heard the music of the stars. I felt the slimy walls. The earth held me in its teeth. My hands tore at the rocks, and now I edged forward, slowly. I forced my head between two great rocks, thrust the comtop ahead of me, and pulled myself through. I popped up into a wider portion, water streaming from my face. Air! An unfocused green glow. A limestone shaft, heading gently up.
“Thinker! Are you all right?” Priestess’s voice echoed down the shaft.
“I’m fine,” I gasped, stretched out on the rocks, exhausted. “Be right there!” Eagerly, with shaking fingers, I put my comtop back on.
We made our way out of the stream and eventually found ourselves walking upright but slightly stooped due to the low ceilings, deep within the cramped catacombs, the bowels, of the dead city. We fanned out through the corridors.
“Beta, Snow Leopard. Keep alert. Fire v-min at any movement.”
Ghostly stone doorways loomed all around us, leading to past worlds, deep inside the earth. Only the dead lived in the dark of this tomb.
Priestess and I moved in tandem. More chatter crackled on the net, the lifies moving into position, Coolhand and Psycho tracking the Scaler. My tacmod silently extended the tacmap. Doorways and corridors branched off everywhere. Priestess and I moved along a wall, scanning our surroundings carefully.
It was a silent, dead underground city, glowing a faint green through our faceplates. A phantom city carved from stone, empty doorways gaping blindly at us like the eye sockets of ancient skulls. The rot of history covered this world. We could sense it, we could see it all around us, crumbling under our boots, floating specks of the past, settling on our litesuits. The air carried the cold breath of the dead.
We turned a corner and sloshed through ankle-deep slimy water. I saw Snow Leopard up ahead, at the end of a long corridor.
He raised a hand and spoke quietly on all channels. “Hold fast!” We stood immobilized.
Priestess whispered to me on private. “Sorry about that mess back there, Thinker. I kind of panicked. I kind of thought…we were going to die.”
“Yeah. I noticed that, too.”
“Beta! On me! We’re going in.” Snow Leopard’s voice crackled in our ears. We moved up fast, crouching, our comtops scraping the rough ceiling.
A crumbling stone staircase led up to a blackened doorway. Another bleak dark corridor. The ceiling was a
