Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)

Chapter 01 - Grave Diver

Year 248 P.L. Rychter Calendar
Coordinates: 52.3°S; 77.2°W
Site Designation: Scraegar Labyrinth, Incident Site, Codename: [REDACTED]

||

By the pissing Everflowing River, it was hot down here.

Ivy dragged a sleeve across her forehead and puffed and exhaled, taking a moment to catch her breath. Growing up beneath Rychter's two baking suns, she was no stranger to a bit of heat, but even for her this was pushing it. Letting herself dangle in the harness, she extracted a hydrocube from the front pocket of her engineering vest and popped it into her mouth, crunching down as she surveyed the cavern.

The place swarmed with engineers from her unit – the 15th E.C. Armourer's Platoon out of Brekka – some of them hunched over survey equipment, some working at prefabricated map displays, others tinkering with cutting lasers and checking cables, while dozens more dangled like spiders all around the immense void beneath the earth.

Ivy herself hung from one of the harnesses, currently carving rock samples out of the artificial cavern walls. Below her, a thick mesh of armour-netting had been placed. Far below that lay a bubbling lake of magma seeping from Rychter's deep core. It turned the whole place into a piss-damned furnace.

"Drown me," she muttered as she started winching herself back down to the main plateau with her latest load. Despite the heat, she had no choice but to wear the rugged engineering cadre overalls, complete with helmet and heavy padding for her knees and elbows. Safety first, as one of her colleagues had remarked bitterly.

"Comin' in a little hot there, boss," advised the engineer waiting at the edge for her.

Ivy frowned, slowing her descent until she swung into the arms of the young man who guided her booted feet onto the uneven rocks of the plateau. Huge metal support struts had been painstakingly driven into it to hold the war-shattered surface together. Barely six months ago this cavern had been a battleground that decided the fate of a world.

At least, that's what everyone thought back then.

"Thanks," she said once the engineer had untangled her, clapping him on the shoulder. She tugged the helmet gratefully off of her head, shaking loose her sweat-tangled locks of brown hair. Then she hitched her pack of samples up onto her shoulder and set off.

Ivy trudged into the stabilised plateau centre, where an array of pre-fab diagnostic stations had been set up to sift through the deluge of data coming in from the investigations. People flowed back and forth, voices jabbering, radio operators swearing as they tried to get their signals to navigate the labyrinth of crags above their heads.

Striding through the engineers, scientists and surveyors, were guards from Brekka's infamous combat support cadre – better known as the Blackwaters. They wore sheathes of unmarked grey armour and carried long rifles. One of them saw her approaching and peeled off of his patrol route, flashing a smile, a canteen of water hanging loose in his long fingers.

"Corporal Shanklin," he addressed her, tapping two fingers to his forehead in salute.

"Getting all formal on me, Specialist Vannigan?" she replied, smirking as she slid into her seat at one of the stations. She returned the salute, before swinging her sample pack up onto the table. "C'mon, Kelso. Lose the dam in your river, would you?"

"Some of us like a little formality," he chuckled. "But alright, Ivy. Quite a haul you've got there."

"Oh, you know me, hardest worker of the bunch." Ivy looked at him and cracked a wink.

She was thankful that the simmer of awkwardness – on account of the fact she was romantically entangled with Kelso's younger brother – had abated over the time they'd worked together in the dig site. Big brother Vannigan was a long-limbed, shaven headed young man who'd worked his way up through the combat support units until the Blackwaters snapped him up. He proved to have a sneakier mind than she would have guessed. It certainly didn't run in the family, for which she was thankful.