Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)

Chapter 26 - Wink

Wonderment.

Fear.

Astonishment.

Suspicion.

Where to start? Ivy didn't know how she should feel as she walked along the smoothly machined valley floor towards the vastness of the transmissions spire. The thing soared upwards though the shaft out of sight, and she couldn't look at it for more than a few seconds at a time without feeling a surge of vertigo.

Seismic mapping confirmed that it did indeed run all the way up to the surface from the depths of the Scraegar Labyrinth. Given their current depth, that meant the thing was more than two kilometres tall. It was so thin it didn't look like it should stand up on its own.

There was something wrong about it that she couldn't put her finger on. Something that just defied human engineering principles.

She tried to focus on other details, examining the solid black surface beneath her feet as she walked, and trying to get her head around the kind of excavating gear you'd need to hollow out something like this. Rychter's human population had made a lot of strides in digging and blasting technology, given the conflict with the Scraegans, but even with the best equipment Ivy knew of it would have taken years to carve out a chamber like this.

Maybe the original builders had had that kind of time. They were still trying to figure out how to cut a sample of the material out without resorting to explosives that might destabilise the entire cavern, but right now that was someone else's problem.

"Everflowing," Capicza murmured, walking alongside her and trying unsuccessfully to sweep his torchlight over the exterior walls. The structure was so big that he couldn't look more than twenty feet up before the light paled into insignificance. "Who do you think put this here?"

"Drown me, how should I know?" She gave him a thump on the arm. "That's what we're doing down here. To get some answers."

At the head of the engineering team, along with Kelso and a pair of Blackwater specialists, she walked straight up to the entrance of the great tower. Up close the spine looked a lot less fragile, its structure easily fifty feet across and made of the same black material as everything else in this place.

At least on the outside.

A great door greeted them, a massive not-quite-circular thing. Maybe an octagon or a decagon, but it was difficult to tell because the dark material it was built of all seemed to blend together. It was big enough for a Scraegan to walk through upright with ease – certainly not built by anyone or anything as diminutive as a human being.

Ivy tried not to think about that.

On the far left of the massive structure, a circular recess pulsed with blue light, and she could see one of the strange control levers embedded there. Abruptly she changed course towards it, and came to a halt frowning, her torch aimed at the mechanism. She could grip it with both hands if she needed to – albeit a little awkwardly.

"Think that'll open this?" Kelso enquired, leaning in for a closer look.

"See anything else that looks like a door handle?" Ivy shot him a wry smile then nodded to Capicza. "Keep your light on this, will you?"

With his torch fully illuminating the recess, Ivy reached out and snaked her fingers through as many of the multi-holed grips as she could. Then she tugged, hard.

Nothing.

She tried again, and felt the lever edge just a little bit, but it felt like trying to lever a Hunter-Killer up into a loading bay. Letting out a snort of annoyance, she beckoned Kelso.