Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (15 page)

“Thank you, Padre,” Ia said.

“This isn’t any tech I’m familiar with,” Harper murmured, peering over their driver’s shoulder. He studied the controls, what few there were. “It doesn’t sound like thruster tech, and the base is way too thin to be hiding a hydrogenerator.”

“That’s because it’s not modern tech. It’s Atannan. It’s about, what, eleven thousand years old?” Ia asked Margaret.

The female looked over her shoulder at them, scooping back some of her air-tossed curls with one hand so she could speak
freely. “The repair archives for this model are stored in the sector that’s not quite twelve thousand years back, sir.”

“I’m surprised nobody’s noticed this place,” Helstead said. They were already descending into the darkened layers. Their pilot flicked on a set of lights which shone ahead, behind, and to either side, illuminating a portion of their descent. “The energy output alone for keeping the air fresh, the temperature comfortable, all the lighting fixtures involved…
somebody
should’ve noticed it before now.”

“They’re looking in the wrong frequencies. Most of the power used by the Vault is geothermally generated, with most of it used up before it reaches high enough to radiate to the surface. The mountains are also rather thick through here, which helps hide the few traces of heat waste that slip through,” Ia told her, as the sled shifted forward onto one of the levels. “It’s a variation of the Sterling engine, which bases its power on heat differentials—basically, the heat of the planet’s molten interior versus its icy-cold surface. The large pillars house most of the pipes for the fluid transference.”

Helstead shook her head. “I’ve counted dozens of those huge columns spaced out every so often, and those are just the ones I can see on our left, never mind our right. The sheer amount of electricity generated by that kind of engine is far too big to keep hidden—geothermal might blend in, but not the electrical fields involved,” her 3rd Platoon officer argued. “Earth is constantly being scanned for energy anomalies, in case someone figures out a way to slip an attack past our borders.
How
could they have missed it?”

“I told you, they can’t find it because it’s not electrically based,” Ia repeated. “The lighting, the heat pumps, the hovercraft, none of it radiates in the spectrums the modern era knows about. The power generated is converted into something the Immortal calls exo-EM, because it operates outside the electromagnetic spectrum—if you were capable of feeding on energy as well as food, you’d quickly develop the ability to differentiate between energy sources,” she pointed out, meeting Helstead’s skeptical look. “Just like you can tell by your sense of smell the difference between an apple and an onion, which are similar in texture…but if you block off your sense of smell, you cannot always tell simply by taste.”

“Not to mention, if you had a couple thousand years to muck
around with experiments, you’d probably figure out a thing or two to do with all that exo-EM energy, too,” Harper observed, joining the conversation.

“If you say so, sir,” Helstead muttered dubiously.

“We’re reaching the border of the Engineering Section, sir,” their stocky driver stated. “Do you know exactly which section and floor you need?”

“Ah…give me a moment…Floor 17, Section 4…and Floor 22, Section 361,” Ia recalled, glancing up at the dark ceiling overhead. The sled slowed in its race over the head-high stacks of stone tablets, turned, and darted off again.

“We’re not supposed to read anything in Engineering Sections 1–12, sir,” Margaret told Ia, her look and her tone both hesitant. “We’re only supposed to check the structural integrity of the sector, repaint the columns and ribs with fresh lettering where necessary, and twice a year, dust the stacks. We’re not allowed to remove the capstones to look at any of the tablets…and I’m not sure if you’re allowed to do so, either.”

“What she doesn’t know about won’t be a problem, now will it?” Ia replied. “I give you my word, all the tablets will remain exactly as they are, in the correct order, intact, and whole. I promise you we won’t do anything that will damage or disorder her records.”

The hoversled drifted to a stop near a thick column. Padre peered at them over his shoulder. “…This is the closest we can comfortably go, sir. The other side of that row is forbidden.”

“Your orders are to turn on the local light grid, stay here with the sled, and wait for us to come back,” Ia told him. “That way you don’t run into a conflict with your oaths of loyalty to Shey. Whatever happens down here will be on
my
head, should she ever find out. By staying here, and not trying to scan, follow, or spy on us, you will be able to plead ignorance of our actions, in the highly unlikely chance that she finds out about this trip.”

Climbing out of the sled, she beckoned for her second- and third-in-command to follow her. Margaret climbed out as well, moving smoothly ahead of them to reach a control panel lined with odd crystals. Grasping one of them, she pulled it down, slotting it between two others with a familiar
clunk
. Immediately, the trio started to glow. As did the crystalline globes
overhead, lighting up as if the shafts were nothing more than an odd-looking set of archaic circuit breakers.

As soon as the last of the strange lights finished igniting, it became apparent that Sections 1–12 did not start or end at a wall…because in every direction they could see, the stone tiles stacked beneath the hexagonal-vaulted ceilings looked almost exactly like every other stack they had passed. The only discernible difference was that the stones used for these tiles looked like they were granite instead of basalt.

“Shakk,”
Helstead muttered, eyes wide once more as she turned around, surveying every direction. “You weren’t kidding when you said this wouldn’t be easy…”

Harper stared, blinked, then chuckled. It was a wry sound, accompanied by a slow shake of his head. “Now I
know
you’re insane, Ia. Not just in this timeline, but in other ones, too. Not if you
volunteered
to catalog this place in an alternate life.”

“You’ll notice I’m not volunteering to do it in this one,” Ia retorted dryly. “Pick up the pace, meioas; we don’t have a lot of time down here.”

Adjusting the straps of her backpack, she set out at a brisk walk, wending her way through the head-high stacks of tiles. It took a couple minutes to get out of sight of the sled and its two occupants. Once she was sure they were out of sight, she flicked her hands at her companions, and picked up into a light-footed run, letting the tough but flexible soles of her pressure-suit boots absorb most of the sounds she made.

Helstead and Harper followed belatedly, doing their best to run silently in her wake. A solid minute of running proved all three of them had kept in shape, for not even Harper, the lightest-gravitied of the three heavyworlders, was breathing hard when Ia slid to a stop by one of the thicker columns. Or rather, by one of the balcony openings leading up and down.

“Light up your arm units, and link hands with me,” she ordered quietly, looking up. Helstead grasped her left hand and Harper her right. “Don’t worry; I won’t drop you.”

A nudge of her mind lifted all three of them up over the balcony, and up by several levels. Harper gasped, and Helstead giggled, squirming a little in Ia’s mental grip. It was the first blatant use of Ia’s telekinetic abilities since her brief demonstration in front of the various military psi branches of the Alliance’s Blockade efforts over three months ago.

This time, she wasn’t greatly weakened by an infection in her blood; this time, she had the stamina to counteract gravity for more than a few seconds. She was still weak, but she could do this. Whispering under her breath, Ia counted floors starting from the seventeenth. She reached
three, two, one
…and started counting alphabetically,
ay, bee, cee
, until she reached the highest floor,
eff
. It wouldn’t do to forget which floor they were supposed to be on when they returned, after all.

There was only one corridor off this hexagonal section, a single balcony instead of an open tangle of vaulted archways. Landing them next to a control grid, she released their hands and stiffened her muscles, trying to hide the way her limbs threatened to tremble. Weeks of rest in transit with gentle exercise had restored some of her energy reserves, her mental and physical strength, but levitating a few chairs and cups for a few seconds was not the same thing as floating three muscular heavyworlders a hundred meters upward.

She said nothing about her moment of exhaustion as Harper played his bracer-light over their surroundings; she was just grateful the strange crystalline structures distracted both him and Helstead. By the time he aimed his arm light her way, she had caught her breath again. Nodding at his unspoken question, she moved over to the nearest wall and grasped the large crystal shaft Harper’s beam of light had found. A soft
clunk
lit up the floor they were on when she pulled down on the lever, though unlike earlier, the other levels below this one remained dark.

Pulling a cloth from the side pocket on her backpack, Ia wiped down the shaft, then pressed her hand to the flat, translucent gold surface positioned next to it. Energy flowed into her, preconverted from geothermal energy to kinetic inergy by the strange technology maintaining this place. Refreshed, she pulled her hand away and scrubbed at the panel, removing the traces of her touch with quick strokes. Not that there was much chance of their being found, or their visit being uncovered, but she wanted to be thorough to set an example for her restless second officer.

Beckoning her companions to follow, Ia moved up the corridor at a pace somewhere between a lope and a run. Twenty meters down the hall, the passage cut into the mountain opened up into a largish chamber, one built with a high-vaulted dome.
At the center point was a largish, throne-like contraption. Surrounding it on all six sides were half a dozen odd, huge, crystal-muzzled guns, each one braced on a pedestal mount.

Ia stopped near the throne-thing and slung the backpack off her shoulders, lowering it to the polished stone floor. Channels had been cut into the floor and filled with the same sort of transparent crystals fitted into the gun-things; they looked vaguely like the crysium from her homeworld, but were almost colorless instead of pastel. The channels disappeared into the walls with no reason or explanation visible, though she knew from her postcognitive peeks what their function was.

“Ia? What is this place, exactly?” The question came from Meyun. His gaze flicked back and forth between the contraptions and Ia. “It’s nothing like the rest of what we’ve seen, unless you count the light fixtures. In fact, it looks like something a…a fantasy sculptor might make—is this more of that Atannan tech you were talking about?”

She crouched and opened up the backpack. “Yes, and no. You’re looking at the single most dangerous piece of experimental equipment ever created. If wielded incorrectly, it is capable of torturing any form of sentient life trapped within its grasp. Up to and including a Feyori.” Digging out a trio of oval hovercams, she clicked each one on, fished out their remotes, and sent them soaring up and around the room, scanning everything in their path. “In the wrong hands, it can
kill
a Feyori, physical or soap bubble. And in the right hands…it can turn a half-breed
into
a Feyori.”

“
Into
a Feyori?” he repeated, crouching at her side.

“Yes. I need you to re-create a handheld version of it, duplicate it five or ten times, depending on how strong you can make it, and shoot me with it. You have eight months to get it right, and you are
not
to tell anyone what you’re working on. Lie to your subordinates, lie to your superiors—though you can tell everyone you’re working on an experimental type of gun—and lie to everyone except me, of course, but figure it out and get it done.

“One more thing, Meyun.” She gave him a sober look. “Whatever you do, do
not
allow anyone to copy your notes; nor are you allowed to back it up to any shipboard workstation. Keep it entirely on nonsynchronized datapads so that you can destroy the information completely, pads and all, when you are
done.” Glancing to the right, she sighed. “…Delia, don’t touch that. You know better than to leave fingerprints up here.”

“Fingerprints, hell,” the shorter woman shot over her shoulder, though she did back up from one of the oversized ray-gun things. “We’ve already left plenty of DNA evidence in shed hair and skin cells. I don’t see what the big deal is at this point.”

“Hair and skin are evidence which
could
have wafted up from below…and most of which will be removed by at least three rounds of cleaning crews between now and the Immortal’s next scheduled visit to this exact place,” she argued back. “The Immortal would be upset to know we’d copied the information down below—and we will be copying some of it—but up here is another matter.

“If I hadn’t screwed up a few months back, we wouldn’t even have to be up here, but we are. And we’re here
only
to get enough visuals so that Meyun will have a better chance of figuring out the Immortal’s construction notes,” Ia told her. “That means
we
touch nothing beyond planting our p-suited feet on the floor, and that
I
alone touch anything else up here. Including the power switch for the lights. You can look, but you only touch the floor with your boots, Lieutenant Commander.”

Sighing, Helstead pulled a pair of her miniature stilettos from her hair and moved around the gun. She stared at its backside, then turned and looked into one of the large niches forming the sides of the space, twirling the long, thin, sheath-wrapped blades. “Joy. Yet
more
stacks of stone tablets. Who does this Immortal think she is anyway, Moses? Or maybe a burning bush? If I were to pick up one of these, would the first few words read ‘Thou Shalt Not’ something-or-other?”

Harper smothered a laugh. Unsuccessfully, since it escaped as a snort.

Ia smiled but shook her head. “I’m afraid we’re in the wrong section for anything even remotely like that. As soon as the hovercams have scanned everything, I’ll run all the tiles past their sensors. Telekinetically, since stray hairs and skin cells could be wafted up here on random currents over the decades, but fingerprints are proof positive of an actual visit to this part of the complex.”