2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent) (71 page)

‘General Stevens?’ Sarah shot Riley a look.

‘The same,’ Petra replied.

‘We won’t run into him down here, will we?’

Petra laughed prettily. ‘Oh Riley, where did you find her? She’s a darling! Where are you from, Sarah? Your English sounds strange.’

Sarah clenched her jaw at the woman’s words, resisting the urge to slap her round the face. ‘England, you may have heard of it, that little place English comes from?’

‘She’s on my Deep Reach team,’ Riley told Petra, apparently oblivious to the belittling comment aimed Sarah’s way.

‘Oh, I see.’ Petra winked at her. ‘I thought you were one of Riley’s girls. He gives them all the tour, don’t you, Ri?’

Riley rolled his eyes and shook his head at Sarah, but Sarah wasn’t buying it. ‘And you were one of them, I suppose?’ Sarah asked Petra.

‘We dated for a while, didn’t we, Ri? Had some fun—’ Petra paused to usher them through a secure door after Riley unlocked it with his key card. ‘A lot of fun.’ She gave Sarah a sly nudge as she walked past.

Sarah made a face at Petra behind her back as she moved through.
What a cow
, she thought, praying the woman tripped over on her ludicrous high heels and broke something during the fall, preferably her neck. Sadly, however, the conditions weren’t sufficiently propitious to induce such a happening and Sarah was forced to endure the vision of Petra’s perfect hips swaying from side to side ahead of her along yet another corridor.

After a couple more minutes, her attention was diverted towards something far less galling as they emerged into a cavernous and brightly lit chamber. Square in design, the large expanse, a few hundred feet across, contained within it twenty-two large, round, modular buildings that took up half the available space. Immediately in front of these grey, circular structures and cutting off access to the left cluster of eleven, a similarly coloured walkway had been hoisted into a vertical position. No footbridge led to the other eleven vaults on the right, which were arranged in a similar crescent formation to those on the left, yet in a mirror image and separated from their brethren by an imposing wall; the only way to access them was via a tarmac service road that ran beneath Sarah’s elevated position.

Petra approached the bridge’s control console and inserted a card. A digital screen powered up, allowing her to enter various commands via a holographic image. The narrow bridge creaked and began lowering on cue. A minute later the walkway had spanned the gap to the Smithsonian’s vaults.

‘Have fun.’ Petra stood aside to allow Sarah through.

Riley thanked her and Petra held onto his arm as he passed. Looking at Sarah she gave him a lingering peck on the cheek. ‘You owe me, Ri, call me.’

Sarah stepped onto the bridge and stomped along the ramp, eager to get into the vaults and unconcerned whether Riley kept up. Reaching the end of the walkway, she descended a wide spiral staircase. At the bottom the entrances to the massive circular vaults stood arrayed in front her in a sweeping arc, their towering doors creating a formidable barrier to those seeking the secrets within. The wall, which Sarah had seen from her previous vantage point, carved its way through the centre of the chamber behind her, preventing access to the military’s vaults beyond.

Riley stopped next to her. ‘Which one do you want to see first?’

‘What do your
girls
normally choose?’

‘I wouldn’t take any notice of Petra, she has a tendency to stir things up.’

‘So, how many conquests
have
you brought here?’

‘I’d hardly call them conquests, but if you’re asking, the answer’s two, and that includes Petra. I actually got her the job here.’

‘Hence she owes you.’

He nodded. ‘I worked in this place for a while when I was in the army, ferrying things into the vaults down the service road. I never really got to see anything much, just things going in and out, covered up or in crates. But one time I was asked to help carry some boxes into one of the vaults and I was hooked. The mystery and magnificence of the artefacts I saw inside blew my mind. I wanted to know everything about them, where they came from, who made them and why. All those questions and more fuelled my desire to join the SED. I wanted to be the one to find those ancient relics, to unearth them, to be the first to glimpse their wondrous forms emerging from amongst the rock and soil. To hold them, touch their tactile surfaces and discover the civilisations that gave birth to them. The touch paper to my imagination had been lit and it was never going out.’

Sarah looked at Riley anew as he surveyed the vaults in front of them, his thirst for knowledge and the need to satiate the addictive thrill that only archaeological discovery could deliver a familiar tale of obsession; indeed, his words could have been her own. ‘I never knew you felt so strongly.’

Riley smiled at her. ‘Don’t bandy it about, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.’

‘You’re secret’s safe, Ace.’ She took a step forward. ‘So, what vault do you recommend first?’

‘Well, five of them contain items fresh from site. There won’t be much to see in those. The Boneyard,’ he pointed to the vault at the far end, ‘should be left till last, so we’ll start at six.’

Walking to the vault with a large white number six painted on its grey façade, Riley pulled out his multifunction card and swiped it across a pad attached on one side. He entered a code and in response a mechanism inside the door shifted, the clank of metal and the hiss of hydraulics resonating through the structure. The gap between the thick steel portal and its housing edged wider and wider. Instead of being greeted by a gaping opening, inside stood a concave, frosted glass panel surrounding a smaller, transparent door. Next to this smaller entry point various warning signs and instructions had been posted.

‘There’s a decontamination procedure before you get right inside,’ Riley told her, ‘you’ll need to close your eyes and hold your breath for ten seconds on entering.’ He bowed. ‘Ladies first.’

Sarah smirked and walked inside and onto a metal grid where an orange light blinked on. Closing her eyes she breathed in. A buzzer sounded and a blast of fine mist engulfed her, blowing out her hair and ruffling her clothes with its intensity. Almost as soon as it had begun, the process was completed, the buzzer sounding again prompting Sarah to open another door and pass into a low-lit interior. Ahead, a wide hallway stretched back into the vault with an even number of rooms on either side consisting of more frosted glass. Above her head, only darkness could be seen. Behind, Riley went through the same procedure before joining her.

‘We won’t be able to go into any of the rooms,’ he said, ‘they’re hermetically sealed, automatically regulated and require a full body suit and extra decontamination. Trust me, we don’t want to be getting into that rigmarole.’

She looked at him in concern. ‘You think someone might catch us in here?’

‘No, we should be fine at this time of night, but it’s best not to tempt fate. Besides, if we went into every room we’d be here for days.’

Moving past the air and gas-tight units, Sarah saw a flaw in his plan. ‘If we can’t go inside, how are we going to see anything?’

He stopped next to a room. ‘Aha,’ he said theatrically, ‘watch and be amazed.’

Next to the entrance and attached to the non-transparent pane sat a small control pad. He pressed a button and the frosted panel shifted, its opacity evaporating to leave behind crystal-clear glass in its place.

‘Impressive.’ Sarah gazed inside with interest, her eyes becoming transfixed with the object now on display. To protect any artefacts from being exposed to bright light the room was only dimly lit; however, the illumination was strong enough to expose the treasure within. On a table secured between two posts rested a single sword of dazzling beauty. The blade itself appeared to be an abstract weave of two separate blades, flowing into one halfway along its length. It glittered in the dark, an array of colours reflecting from its unblemished surface. The hilt and pommel, wrought of gold, melded into leaf-like structures that acted as a guard, their tendrils flowing up into the blade itself. The craftsmanship was sublime.

‘Oh wow,’ she said, savouring the sight, ‘how long would you say it is?’

‘Longer than I am tall, maybe eight feet?’

‘I wonder if they used it with one or two hands?’

‘Depends on the owner.’ He tapped at a computer screen built into the glass. ‘According to this, it’s seven hundred and fifty-five thousand years old, which puts it in the Permunioteric era. If I remember rightly the peoples of that age were averaging nine feet tall, so they could have been wielding this thing single-handed.’

She shook her head in wonder. ‘Nine feet, that’s crazy.’

He grinned. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ He pressed another button to make the sword disappear from view. ‘Come on.’ He headed off to the next room.

After seeing a variety of artefacts Riley surprised her again when he activated another system, sending the floor they walked on up to the next level in the vault. The lights above them powered up as the whole floor moved upwards, stopping at the next row of rooms.

‘How many floors are there?’ she asked.

‘Five per vault. A few of the military ones have ten, five in this chamber and another five below.’

‘I can never get used to this place,’ Sarah said, ‘the USSB, I mean. It’s like the surface, but with an extra dimension; there’s always something above or below you.’

He smiled. ‘It does take a little getting used to; still, you’ve got the rest of your life to adjust. Once a Sancturian, always a Sancturian, as they say.’

‘Right,’ she said, the reason for her being there reasserting itself in the forefront of her mind.

After visiting a few more vaults and being wowed many times over by their contents, Sarah decided to enquire about her pendant, initially in a roundabout manner.

‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘about the artefacts I had with me when I arrived at Sanctuary.’

Riley looked at her questioningly.

‘I don’t suppose you’d know where they’d be stored, do you? I’d really like to see them again.’ Mentally she cursed the obvious nature of her request while waiting apprehensively for a response.

‘Hmm, good question.’ He didn’t display any kind of emotion other than mild interest;
and why would he do otherwise
, she thought,
he has no idea what the pendant can do
. ‘I can check for you on the archive database, if you like?’ he added.

‘You can do that?’

‘Team leader privileges.’ He breathed on his closed hand and rubbed it against his chest in a show of self-praise.

‘Excellent,’ she said, watching as he accessed a computer in the vault they were currently touring.

He glanced at her. ‘Right, description of items please.’

‘The first one is a small pendant.’

‘Composition?’

‘Metal, with markings on. There are actually two of them, both pentagonal.’

‘Ah, like the symbol on your Deep Reach helmet.’

‘Yes,’ she said, impressed but also concerned he recalled her idiotic decision to put such a shape on her helmet in the first place.

More moments passed as the system searched for the set of parameters. ‘Hmm,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’

‘Good.’

‘Well, they’re on the system, along with the other objects confiscated from you. Parchments and a Mayan tablet, yes?’

She nodded. ‘And the bad news?’

‘They’re not in the museum, but in a vault.’

‘That’s great, we’re in the vaults,’ she said, trying to pretend she hadn’t planned for such a scenario.

‘It would be if they were in the Smithsonian’s vaults, but they’re not; they’re in the military vaults, number three to be precise.’

Sarah’s face dropped and with it her hopes of ever seeing the surface again. Part of her was happy, but another, a far greater part, was mortified.

‘Let’s take a look at the Boneyard,’ he said, unaware of the significance of the information he’d just divulged, ‘that’ll cheer you up.’

Sarah agreed half-heartedly and he led her out to the final vault, number eleven. Entering and undergoing the same decontamination procedure as before, Sarah found herself distracted.
No pendant
, she thought, barely noticing the strange pungent smell of the vault tugging at her senses.
Trish and Jason will be devastated when I tell them
.

By now Riley had switched off the frosted panel on the first room, which was larger than those in the other vaults.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

Sarah’s eyes focused and then widened at the sight that greeted her. As with every other room she’d already seen, the lighting had been set to a low level, casting deep shadows over the most magnificent mummy she’d ever seen. Dressed in a fantastically ornate gown of slate-like material, inlaid with a wealth of silver designs of a complex simplicity, the amazingly well-preserved remains of an Anakim man sat upon a chair, facing her.

Despite his undoubted age and the black desiccated skin pulled tight over solid flesh, his features were still well defined; eerily so, in fact. The strange features of his species, Homo gigantis as she knew it, were more than prevalent, announcing to any observer that what they looked upon was not human. Although, if the abnormal construct of the individual’s facial bones didn’t give away his ancient origins, his intimidating size had to have done. Even though he sat, Sarah found herself gazing up into his face, a face that lived countless lifetimes back in the depths of a distant past consumed by time.

‘So beautiful,’ she murmured.

‘Magnificent, isn’t he?’ Riley said reverently.

‘How old is he?’

‘He’s pretty young in the scale of things. Only two hundred and thirty thousand years. He’s been nicknamed the Ageless King.’

‘King?’

Riley pointed a finger. ‘Look at what he’s sitting on.’

Sarah’s eyes moved to the object beneath the mummified remains. She could only see the edges of dark cracked earth behind the decaying garments. ‘I can’t make it out.’