Predators lurked there. As I glided along the structures, looking for something that might be an entrance, I saw a flicker of movement. A brightly colored fish suddenly disappeared in an eyeblink-fast snap of jaws. Looking closer, I saw a long gray eel-like thing hovering by one of the girders, its head filled with glinting teeth and a pair of beady eyes. Stretched along the girder, it was almost invisible until it moved. I reached for the combat knife strapped to my thigh. Its presence gave me some comfort.
I spent some time examining the ancient structures. If there were any hatches or air locks in them, they had long since been cemented over by coral and barnacles and other sea life. It was bitterly ironic. The intelligent beings who had built this underwater complex had long since vanished, probably self-destructed in a genocidal war. Now their magnificent structures served as homes for fish and crustaceans and seaweed and the lowliest forms of life on the planet.
Then I saw something big prowling through the water. Something with arms and legs.
Like the snapping eel, I froze in place beside a crusted buttress, hanging in the water with my feet dangling, holding my breath. By being still I could be almost invisible. Or so I hoped.
Three of them. Three human shapes gliding through the water a few dozen meters away. Skorpis? It was difficult to judge distance and size underwater. Two of the shapes were considerably larger than the third. They seemed to be escorting it as the three of them swam along. They wore bubble helmets and had flippers attached to their feet. As they came nearer I saw that each of them was encased in a skintight suit that bristled with equipment. Yet I saw no weapons on them. I could not make out their faces, but they seemed big enough to be Skorpis warriors. At least the two of them did. The third? A child?
I scanned my memory for information about the Skorpis. Yes, they traveled as tribes. Their society was matrilineal, their leaders all females. Warriors could be male or female, both were of the same size, there was no sexual dimorphism among the Skorpis. That meant that the third one was either a child or a member of a different species.
I was running out of air. Soon I would have to get up to the surface and fill my lungs. But I dared not move while the Skorpis were so close. Fortunately their attention seemed to be focused on the sea bottom. All three of them were looking intently downward as they paddled by.
As soon as they had passed me-by no more than twenty meters-I began slowly rising toward the surface, keeping the heavy buttress between me and them.
Tangy salt air tasted better than wine to me, but I had no time to spare enjoying it. My mind was torn between my original objective of reaching the Skorpis base and a new curiosity about the trio nearby. Where were they going? What were they looking for?
I took a deep breath, then dived back underwater and decided to trail this trio, at least for a little while.
I glided along behind them, watching from a few dozen meters away as they probed deeper and deeper among the jutting underwater structures. They certainly seemed to be searching for something. They inspected the ends of each of the long, tubular structures, spending several minutes examining one before moving off to look at the next. I had to go up to the surface twice while they intently studied the maze of long cylindrical tubes and their supporting buttresses.
I began to realize that many of those tubes had been broken off, smashed at their ends. With all the sea life growing on the structures, that had not been evident at first. But now I could see that some tubes were far shorter than others, and their ends were ragged, as if they had exploded from within or been smashed from without.
At last the Skorpis trio, if that is what they were, swam out to the farthest tube. I dared not follow them all the way out there, for there was no cover to conceal me. The tube extended more than a hundred meters farther into the sea than any of the others. Perhaps it was the only tube to remain undamaged in whatever catastrophe overtook the others. In any event, I stayed close to the protective maze of girders and buttresses that supported the broken tubes.
The trio began to unlimber their equipment as hordes of curious fish swarmed around them, almost obscuring my view of them. In short order I saw the flash of a laser cutter and bubbles of heated water rising toward the gleaming surface above us. All the fish scattered away. The trio were engrossed enough in their work for me to rise to the surface several times for more air.
After a while the laser flashes stopped and I could hear through the water a cacophony of banging and the screeching of metal on metal. Then a long, tortured groaning sound, like a long-shut door being forced open on rusted hinges. The three of them disappeared from my view.
I waited long minutes. I went up to the surface for air. They were still gone when I came back down.
If that tube actually does connect with the ruins of the city, I thought, this could be a way for the Skorpis to infiltrate the city and wipe out what’s left of my troop. Is that what they’re up to?
I had to know.
I swam along the length of the tube to its end. None of the Skorpis were there, although much of their equipment floated in the water, tethered to the open end of the tube. They had opened it, I saw. They had pried open a small hatch and gone inside. I hung by one hand on the edge of that open hatch and debated my next move. It was dark inside the tube; I could not see much. The three of them might be waiting in there for me to walk into their trap, or they might be half a kilometer down the tube, searching its length to see if it brought them to the ruined city.
Remembering that the Skorpis saw in the dark much better than I could, I still squeezed carefully through that open hatch and inside the tube. I found myself in a water-filled chamber. The walls inside were smooth metal, untouched by the teeming sea life that had attached itself to the outside. I felt panic rising in me unbidden. It was one thing to be underwater in the open ocean. But in this confined chamber something like claustrophobia hit me. The only way out was through that narrow hatch and if it closed and trapped me in here-
My hands, blindly probing the ceiling of the chamber, found another hatch. I pushed against it and it swung upward. The gushing water drew me up through it into another chamber, this one lit a ghostly gray by luminescent walls. I kicked the hatch shut and the water drained out; I could hear the faint hum of pumps at work.
I stood on shaky legs and breathed again. The air was musty, damp, but breathable. Looking around this chamber, I saw still another hatch set into its curving wall. This was an air lock; it had been designed to let people go out into the ocean and come back inside again.
The Skorpis had done so and were somewhere up the tube now. Had they heard the pumps cycling? Did they know I was here? Were they waiting for me on the other side of that hatch?
I slid my laser pistol from its holster and leaned my free hand on the hatch. It swung open slowly. Whoever had designed this air lock had not been worried about enemies invading their city. The hatches opened at a touch.
I peered down the long, straight passageway formed of the tube’s interior. It was more brightly lit, its curving walls glowing with luminescence, three sets of wet footprints clearly visible on its metal flooring. I even saw their three sets of flippers, left on the floor a few meters up the passageway.
If they were waiting to ambush me I saw no sign of it. The passageway was perfectly smooth, there were no alcoves or bends for them to hide in. I could see for hundreds of meters along it, but then it rose at a slight angle and I could see no farther.
Should I follow them or wait for them to return? They were far enough up the passageway that they probably did not hear the pumps recycling, so they most likely did not know I was behind them. I could wait here, keeping the hatch slightly ajar. When they returned I could shoot all three of them before they had a chance to blink their eyes. They would be dead meat in this featureless passageway; no place for them to hide. They were not even carrying weapons, as far as I could tell.
But they might be scouting out a way for the Skorpis to infiltrate the ruins and surprise my troopers. Frede must have been right; they had put surveillance satellites into orbit and watched us trek to that ancient city. Like spiders watching a band of weary, lost flies. They sat in the center of their web and invited us to come in.
I heard their footsteps before I saw them. Echoing down the metallic passageway, the soft wet padding of their bare feet came to me. Then their voices, low and rumbling like distant thunder. I pulled the hatch almost completely shut, leaving just a slit open for me to peer through. And shoot through. There was not an atom of cover for them.
Checking my pistol to make certain it was set at its highest level and still fully charged, I waited grimly as they came closer to me and their deaths.
They were talking as they walked down the passageway. I found that I could understand their language, just as I had understood every language I had encountered on all of the missions the Golden One had heaped upon me. I could almost see his smirking expression of superiority, almost hear him telling me gloatingly that he had put the knowledge of the local languages into my brain the way one might insert a list of names and addresses into a computer.
“Another waste of time,” one of the Skorpis was grumbling.
The smaller one, in the middle, said in a lighter, softer tone, “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
The first one growled, “You may impress your fellow scientists with such talk, but all I see is a day spent searching for prey that doesn’t exist.”
“They exist,” said the smaller one. “We’re certain of that.”
The third one spoke up. “Once I was certain that I could fly with no aid except a certain magical beverage that I had been drinking.” His voice was heavy, sorrowful. “I was very certain. But I was wrong. Several broken bones showed how wrong I was.”
“The aliens are here,” said the one in the middle. Her voice sounded like a woman’s. A human woman’s.
“So you believe.”
“We have evidence of their presence,” she insisted.
“I am only a warrior, not a scientist. I believe what I can see, what I can touch or smell or hear or sink my teeth into. Your evidence”-he practically sneered the word-“is nothing but old myths and the tales of ancient ones.”
They were getting close enough for me to see that the smaller of them was a human. A woman. Humans working with the Skorpis? I had thought that the human race was locked in a war for survival against the Skorpis and their allies. How could humans be allied to our enemies?
“We have more evidence than the mythology,” the woman said. “And these underwater structures were built for a purpose.”
Neither Skorpis warrior answered her. Yet their silence was more eloquent than further arguing.
They were close enough for me to see clearly now. Unarmed. From the sound of their conversation, they knew nothing about my troopers in the ruins. They were looking for aliens, based on ancient myths.
If I gunned them down it would tell their leaders that enemies were near. When they failed to return to the Skorpis base, others would be sent to search for them. I could not hide their bodies. Sooner or later they would be found. The fact that they came out here unarmed told me that there were no predators in these waters that they feared. Their disappearance would immediately be suspect.
And, truth to tell, I found the prospect of shooting an unarmed human woman more than I wanted to deal with. Besides, I wanted to find out what she was doing with the Skorpis. There was much more going on here than the Golden One had told me.
Chapter 9
Softly I shut the hatch. Swiftly I opened the one in the floor and slipped into the water. Closing it behind me, I swam back out into the open sea and used my flight pack to drive myself quickly away from the end of the tube, back to the structures that could hide me.
If the trio suspected that someone else had been in the air lock, they gave no sign of it. They came out, with helmets and flippers back in place, gathered up their tools and swam back toward the Skorpis base. I waited awhile, then followed at a more leisurely pace, bobbing up to the surface every few minutes to gulp in air, rather like a dolphin.
There were underwater piers at the Skorpis base, too, but they were far smaller than the ancient ruins. Only two of them, and so new that hardly a barnacle had attached itself to them as yet.
I could see above me the shadow of a pier built over the water’s surface, extending out the same length as this underwater shaft. Cautiously I rose to the surface for a fresh swallow of air. So far so good. I was almost inside the Skorpis base. Almost. It surprised me that the Skorpis had not set out electronic security systems underwater to protect their base from any possible seaborne threat. And the trio I had seen in the water had been unarmed. It was as if they expected no enemy attack, almost as if this was not a military base at all.
And there was at least one human working with them.
The sun was sinking into the sea, throwing a reddish gold glow over the wave tops. I treaded water for a while, bobbing up and down as each fresh crest of the incoming tide surged past me. I was close enough to the enemy to hear them walking along the pier above my head, to hear their voices as they worked and talked and complained about their situation the way all soldiers do everywhere, in any era.
“Protecting a litter of humans,” one voice griped. “This isn’t the life of a warrior.”
“Maybe you’d rather have been with Second Battalion,” said its companion.
“At least they got to use their claws.”
“They’re all dead. Is that what you want to be?”
“We should’ve sent in both battalions.”
“No, we shouldn’t have sent in either one. We should’ve nuked those hairless apes in the first place, not wasted a whole battalion trying to capture their damnable transceiver.”
“Well, anyway, we’re stuck with guard duty.”
“Do you trust ’em?”
“Who?”
“The humans, who else? They say they’re scientists, but do you think we can trust them? Or are they really spies?”
“How the hell should I know? They all look alike to me. The gray furs make those decisions.”
“Like the decision to try to capture the enemy transceiver.”
“Yes. Just like that.”
There was more than one human in the Skorpis camp. And they were scientists, apparently. My head buzzed with the possibilities. Perhaps this was the way for me to penetrate farther into their camp.
I gave the matter a few moments’ thought. No sense waiting until dark. Boldness might work where stealth would be detected.
Hoping that all humans truly did look alike to these Skorpis warriors, I wormed my shoulders out of the flight-pack harness and fastened it to the underside of the pier. With some feelings of trepidation, I also unbuckled my gunbelt and left the laser pistol and knife there, as well. Then I reached up, grabbed the edge of the pier and hauled myself up out of the water.
“Who the hell…?” The two Skorpis on the pier were evidently sentries. They both had rifles, which they immediately unslung from their shoulders and pointed at me.