Gary Gibson - The Thousand Emperors

‘How come these are working when the power’s out?’ he asked.

‘They run on localized emergency power supplies,’ said Marroqui. ‘They have to, or there’s no way out during a power failure. We shouldn’t have to worry about getting down or back up.’ He nodded to another woman, with chestnut skin, who had bent down on one knee to examine the interior of a control panel embedded into the wall close by the rail. ‘How’s it looking, Triskia?’

The woman made some final adjustment and snapped the panel shut before standing once more, her suit’s servos whining faintly. ‘It checks out, sir. No sabotage. We’re good to go.’

Luc tried not to think about the Stygian depths beneath them as he followed Marroqui and four others onto the elevator platform. Even so, his heart nearly skipped a beat when the platform began its descent with a sudden, jerking motion.

Halfway to the next level down, updates from the mosquitoes flowed in through Luc’s CogNet interface. His maps automatically reconfigured themselves according to their incoming data, displaying rooms and corridors that had clearly not been part of the original complex.

‘Any idea what Antonov might have been building down there?’ Marroqui asked, referring to the new layout.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Luc replied.

‘Could be weapons caches,’ suggested the woman called Triskia. ‘Maybe he’s still planning on fighting his way past us.’

Marroqui shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He’d need bigger fabricants than the ones our mosquitoes have seen so far. If he’s still alive, he’s down to light weapons, nothing more.’

‘Two of the other teams just called in, sir,’ said one of Marroqui’s men. ‘They’ve reconnoitred at the reactor room, so they should be able to get the power going any—’

As if in answer, rows of lights stretching the length of the shaft blinked into sudden life. Luc squinted, bright phantoms chasing each other across the back of his eyelids. The next time he managed to open them properly, Marroqui and the rest were grinning and chuckling. As far as they were concerned, this was going to be a cakewalk.

The platform slowed, and Luc felt a tightening in his chest. He had the uncanny sense they had passed beyond some undefined point of no return. He glanced down through the metal grille beneath his feet, seeing twin rows of lights racing to meet each other in the shaft’s murky depths.

They disembarked into a corridor leading deep inside Aeschere’s bowels. Something whirred past Luc, and he jerked around in time to see a mosquito come to a nimble landing on the floor a metre or so from him.

As he watched, translucent plastic wings retracted into the machine’s carapace. It turned this way and that, its movements jerky and curiously comical.

‘It’s one of ours,’ he heard Triskia say. ‘Why’s it—?’

Triskia never got to finish her sentence. Luc watched with horrified anguish as she staggered, blood and bone misting the air as the back of her helmet exploded outwards.

Luc kicked out at the mosquito with one booted foot, sending it crashing into a wall. Marroqui screamed an order, and the air filled with noise and fury as his remaining men opened fire on the machine. By the time it was over, the mosquito lay still, its mirrored carapace blackened and ruined.

Marroqui knelt down beside the dead woman’s prone form, swearing under his breath. He passed a finger over her forehead and muttered something that sounded like a prayer. One of the Sandoz’s endless rituals, Luc guessed.

‘Shig,’ said Marroqui, looking back up at one of his men, ‘what the hell just happened? Was that one of our ‘skeets?’

‘It was,’ Shig replied, his face pale with shock. ‘I don’t understand why it . . .’

His voice trailed off.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Marroqui, standing back up and looking around. His previous swaggering bravado had all but deserted him now. ‘There’s no way Antonov could have compromised our comms encryption . . . is there?’

‘It might explain why you lost contact with some of your mosquitoes,’ said Luc, his voice cracking slightly.

Marroqui’s hands twitched spasmodically at his sides. ‘Impossible.’

Luc nodded down at Triskia’s still form. ‘Ask her if she agrees.’

‘Ramp up your personal countermeasures,’ said Marroqui, his voice edged with steel. ‘Fire on anything that comes within range.’

‘I think,’ said Luc, ‘this might be a good time to reconsider falling back. We can work out a new strategy—’

Marroqui turned to regard Luc, his nostrils flaring. ‘No, Mr Gabion. We’re Sandoz. Turning back at this point isn’t an option.’

‘Even if it means refusing my orders again?’

‘Even then,’ Marroqui muttered, hoisting his weapon and motioning to his Clan-members to move on.

Luc recalled what little he knew of the Sandoz credo, especially their refusal to surrender. It was going to be the death of them all.

Within the space of a few moments, the shadows and long, bleak reaches of the tunnels beneath Aeschere’s surface had become infinitely more menacing. They passed shadowed cells, the walls around them marked with ancient graffiti. Despite the occasional distant buzz of plastic wings, the mosquitoes kept their distance.

Communications with the rest of the Clan, scattered throughout the complex, became increasingly sporadic. At one point they all heard a momentary burst of static from their comms, interspersed with screaming and what sounded like heavy weapons fire. After that, silence.

Marroqui still refused to turn back. They moved rapidly, reaching the fusion plant just a few minutes later. Once there, Luc almost stumbled over the corpse of another of Marroqui’s men. The rest lay scattered around, their bodies and the walls surrounding them blackened from plasma fire.

‘I still can’t raise anyone else,’ said a man with freckled skin, looking pale and terrified. Alert symbols drifted on the periphery of Luc’s vision as he spoke.

‘Is there any way we can reboot communications?’ asked Marroqui. ‘Or maybe reroute them?’ His voice had become flat and emotionless, and Luc suspected this was the first time the Clan-leader had ever tasted defeat.

The other man laughed shrilly. ‘Sure – standard operative procedure in a scenario like this is to route all our comms through the mosquitoes, but I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘One of us could still head back up top,’ suggested one of the others. ‘That way we could try and contact the lander by line-of-sight and ask for help.’

Marroqui shook his head wearily. ‘It’s a good idea, except that you’d have to wait for nightfall, and that isn’t due for a few more hours.’ He glanced at Luc. ‘On the other hand, Mr Gabion, you really might be better off out of this. I could have one of my people escort you back up there and you can wait it out in that prayer room. I can’t make any guarantees it’s going to be any safer up there, but it might.’

Luc shook his head. ‘I have to be there when you find Antonov.’

The Clan-leader’s face reddened. ‘The situation’s changed, can’t you see that? We’re professionals, we know how to deal with this kind of situation. If you get killed down here, you’re dead forever.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Luc replied, holding the other man’s gaze until Marroqui finally looked away, shaking his head.

‘The control room for the entire complex is right below us on the next level down,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Before they dropped out of contact, the ‘skeets reported Antonov was using it as a command hub.’

‘If someone’s controlling our mosquitoes, that must mean there’s someone still alive down there,’ said another.