Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)

Chapter 16 - In the Empty Spaces

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

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The tunnel was a lot wider now.

Ivy raised her goggles for long enough to wipe away a film of sweat from her forehead, before sliding them back into place and letting the cutting torch burn again. More rock disintegrated, and even more of the tunnel revealed itself.

Capicza, Captain Kenyatta and two other engineers joined her in the new excavation site, plunging into the rock face to unearth even more of the obelisk. Several meters back from the surface of the cavern, they'd broken through onto a platform of the same dark material – not quite metal, but too smooth and gleaming to be pure stonework.

The long spine that formed part of the cavern wall still pulsed at regular two minute intervals, sending out those gentle, gentle tremors that made her increasingly uneasy. Ivy was finally forced to admit that not a single person in their group was ready for what they'd unearthed here.

More than that, it seemed like the Scraegans were just as shocked by the discovery. She remembered the faces of the Alpha and its cohorts as she and Kelso tried their best to explain what they'd found.

Thankfully, Scraegan eyes worked as well if not better than humans, and visual aids went a long way to speeding up conversations. According to Kelso some eggheads back at Brekka were trying to craft some kind of rudimentary sign language that might bridge the current language chasm, but that was a long way off. Right now, they had to make do with vids, a lot of ridiculous gestures and a handful of badly pronounced words and phrases that each side could attempt to speak.

When the message about what they'd found did get through, none of the Scraegans looked particularly happy about it. Although Ivy still found the great beasts very, very frightening in close quarters, part of her still longed to get a closer look at those machines, to crack open the mysterious fiery tech of their age-old foes and she just what made them tick.

Being an engineer wasn't something she could switch off.

"Ma'am?" Capicza piped up nervously, working with one of the heavy cutting torches a few meters to her left. "Think I've got something."

Ivy shut off her own torch and shoved her goggles up onto her forehead as she turned to look. Kenyatta squirmed between bodies in the narrow space to join the other engineer.

"Lay it on me, Private."

Capicza eased his slight body aside and pointed at a piece of the wall. It took Ivy's eyes a moment to adjust to what she was looking at, but when she realised what it was, a jolt of excitement shot through her. A thin sliver of blue-white light speared out of a tiny hole in the rock – light coming from something inside the cavern.

"Drown me," Kenyatta murmured. Ivy and the others shuffled over to join them, leaning in over the pinprick of light.

"Must be some kind of chamber on the other side," Capicza said. "We got a scanner?"

"Right here," Ivy said quietly, slinging her torch across her back and tugging one of the scanners from her tool belt. Thumbing its activation switch, she placed its flat back against the rock face.

The screen shimmered in the gloom of the tunnel for a few seconds. Then the display firmed up and Ivy exhaled as low, steadying breath, trying to make sense of the readings.

The machine showed the layer of rock in front of them, but beyond that, there was a strange mishmash of rocky clumps and the black void of nothingness that it couldn't classify. But as well as that, there was something else that made her heart beat faster.