An Ancient Peace (25 page)

Keo shifted enough to fix Dion with a flat, unfriendly stare. “What the fuk does anomalous mean?”

His lip curled. “That basic education isn't a requirement for violence.”

“I could kill you with this rock.”

“And you've just made my point.”

She tossed the piece of broken stone into the air and caught it. “I could throw it with enough force it'd crush your skull. Throw it fast enough that you wouldn't have time to point at it.”

Dion snorted disdainfully.

Sujuno found herself actually considering it for a moment; then she sighed. “Sergeant.”

Toporov plucked the rock from Keo's hand.

“Once we've been paid for the weapons, you may kill each other with my blessing.” Suddenly realizing she'd twisted a handful of fabric so tightly her pants had begun to dig into the back of her leg, Sujuno forced her fingers open. “Until such time, play nice. And, no, we will not be taking the benches apart. Not until we've exhausted all other possibilities.”

“Like after we dismember the dead guys?”

“That would be one of the remaining possibilities, yes.”

“I feel I should mention that the plinths, which none of you can read, makes it clear, although not overtly, that the bodies are important to the H'san.”

“Cheese is important to the H'san,” Wenn pointed out to laughter.

“I repeat, none of you know . . .”

“And neither do you.” She was very close to ordering Toporov to give Keo back the rock, but it was less than two hours until lights out and they had no time for drama. “Everyone take fifteen, then we begin.”

Verr tapped a finger against her slate. “If the fukking scanners worked, we'd have been out of here yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, they don't.” Wenn flicked a finger against her forehead. “Got to use your big, sexy brain,
churick
.”

“Yeah, that'd be all adorable and shit if you didn't just call her delicious,” Nadayki muttered, leaning against Keo, fingers of one hand rubbing the contact point between her exoskeleton and her hip. “And if you didn't mean it literally.”

“Not that finding the other stuff was a breeze or anything, but it was hard mostly because of the area we had to search. We're all enclosed here; why would the H'san make finding this mark so difficult?” Keo smacked Nadayki's hand away and crossed her arms.

“Because they were seriously creepy. I mean, I'm not the only one who thinks this whole dead bodies on display thing is seriously creepy, am I?” Wenn reached up and tugged on the Mictok's lowest leg. It came off in his hand. He stared at it for a moment—they all stared at it for a moment—then his nostril ridges slammed shut, his lips pulled back off his teeth, he made a high-pitched noise, and threw it into the water.

“Well, Major, you were right about the water not staying pure,” Verr sighed. She smacked her bonded on the back of the head as she passed.

Sujuno caught up with her at the edge of the pool and they stood together, staring at the leg floating about a meter out.

“Should we grab it?” Verr wondered.

The three slender digits on the narrow end waved as the leg sank.

“Or not.”

Opening more light receptors in order to track the leg all the way to
the bottom, Sujuno frowned. “There's a pattern on the stone.” Dropping to one knee, she braced a hand and leaned out over the water, trying to ignore the way the light flickered as ripples from the impact returned from the other side of the pool. The stone on the bottom of the pool was darker than the stone that made up the rest of the cavern, but she could see lines that were darker still radiating out from the center. Or radiating
into
the center.

“I don't see anything,” Keo complained, behind her.

“Of course you don't.” Human eyes were useless. “We examine this before we start tearing things apart.” She ignored Keo's huff of disappointment.

Broadbent turned out to be the best swimmer. “Choice at school growing up was swimming or cross country,” he explained. “I hate running.”

“And that's why you went with boots on the ground,” Wenn mocked.

After a moment's consideration, Broadbent shrugged. “I never did much running in the Corps.” Stripped down, he ignored Keo's whoop at the purpling bite mark on his right shoulder, and paused at the edge of the water. “Uh, Major? We still drinking this?”

Keo snorted. “I'd rather lap up your manly musk than the essence of giant embalmed spider leg already dissolving in it.”

“You get promoted to major, Keo?” Toporov asked.

“No, Sarge.”

“Ignoring her personal preferences, Keo has a point.” Sujuno snapped her fingers to get Broadbent's attention and indicated the closest part of the pattern. “See that line? Follow it. Find out what's at the other end of it.”

“Yes, sir.” Broadbent waded in, clutching one of the extra lights. The Corps designed their gear to be Marine resistant; a little water would have no effect. Three steps in and the water lapped mid-thigh, the skin between his shoulder blades glistened with sweat.

Nadayki hummed thoughtfully. “I remember him being bigger.” When Broadbent made no protest, he sighed. “Still, it's probably cold in there. Who could leave a line like that dangling?” he asked when Verr snickered.

“Can you leave anything alone if it's dangling?”

“Why would I?”

“Quiet!” Sujuno felt her nails dig into her palms and ignored the pain. This was it. She knew it.

Three steps more and the water reached Broadbent's armpits. The ancient H'san had clearly angled the bottom steeply toward the center. One more step and he'd be swimming.

“Wait.” He froze at her command. “Can you feel the pattern?”

The water was clear enough and he was still close enough she could see his feet move. “Yes, sir.”

Her turn to wait. After a moment she growled, “And?”

“It's raised.” Balanced on his left leg, he bent his knee and stretched his right leg out in front of him. “I think it gets more raised farther in.”

“Are you saying,” Dion demanded, “that the pattern is dominant in the spatial relationship it maintains with the bottom of the bottom of the pool and that it grows more dominant the closer you move toward the center?”

Wenn's teeth snapped together. “Oh, come on, seriously? Major, let me . . .”

“No.” Dion either didn't know or didn't care about the threat inherent in the sound. She'd seen Krai teeth crush Human bone. “Not until we've been paid. Keep moving, Broadbent.”

He swam with short, awkward looking strokes, neither hands nor feet breaking the surface. When he reached the center, she heard him take a deep breath then he flipped forward and floated for a moment, facedown. Sujuno had to assume that, in spite of the depth, the water remained clear enough he could see the bottom. After longer than she was comfortable with, his legs dropped and his head came up. He spent a moment breathing, then said, “Lines come together around a squiggle, Major.”

Dion stepped closer to the edge. “I hesitate to ask, given your description, but does your squiggle happen to resemble the mark I've spent the last two days searching for?”

Broadbent bobbed up and down, the curves of his shoulders breaking the surface. He spat out a mouthful of water and stared at Dion for a long moment, his position inhibiting a physical response. “We've been searching for,” he said at last.

“Is the mark raised like the pattern you followed to the center of the pool?” Sujuno asked before Dion could spit out another string of stupid.

“Looks like, sir. Hard to tell how high from here, though.”

“At that depth, light's probably too diffused for shadows,” Vree murmured.

“Does it appear to be the mark we've been searching for?”

“Um . . .” He glanced down. “Yes, sir.”

“I expect, and this is an educated guess, that he needs to depress it.” Dion took another step, glanced down as water lapped against his boot, and stepped back again. “You need to depress it,” he repeated.

“Tell it it'll never amount to shit,” Wenn snickered.

“Tell it it's weak,” Keo laughed, flexing her exoskeleton.

“Tell it it's all alone,” Nadayki said, voice and hair flat. “It'll always be all alone.”

“The law is very clear; there is no line if the sole survivor is di'Taykan. We are sorry for your loss, Sujuno di'Kail, but there are many families who would be happy to have you join their name.”

“But when I am qui, the law will allow me to declare progenitor and restore the line.”

“The law will allow this, yes, but it is very expensive to register a new progenitor and you will not be qui for many years. The Taykan are not intended to remain alone as you will be until you change.”

“Major?”

Only Toporov noticed. He was better at his job than she'd given him credit for.

“The professor's right.” Her tone added how much she disliked admitting it. Vree laughed. Dion heard only the words and preened. “Broadbent, if you can reach the bottom, you should de . . . you should press the mark.” The mark they'd found after days of moving rock and dirt had also been raised stone, protruding out of the wall beside a metal door. Simple. Uncomplicated. Obvious. It had sunk into the wall when Dion had pushed against it and the door to the catacomb had opened. “If you can't reach bottom, come back and we'll find something light enough for you to swim with that'll extend your reach.”

Side by side along the curved edge of the pool, they all watched the light as Broadbent dove, pale flashes of arms and legs and torso following behind. His first dive took him nowhere near the bottom—refracted light had made the pool seem shallower than it apparently was. He surfaced, gulped in air, and dove again.

Closer.

When he surfaced the second time, he sucked in a desperate breath before his nose and mouth were entirely clear.

“Report,” she snapped when he finally stopped coughing.

“I can do it, sir.”

And then he did nothing at all but breathe for a ridiculously long time. She realized what he was doing just as she felt Toporov readying himself to bellow and said, “He's hyperventilating. Leave him be.”

The sergeant grunted agreement.

On his other side, Nadayki murmured, “I feel like I should say something about heavy breathing, but who the fuk cares.”

Broadbent dove again.

She felt the click through the soles of her boots.

“Was that . . .” Dion began and was drowned out by the crash of stone panels opening. By the roar of thousands of liters of water draining away. By ancient machinery pushing the nose of a small ship up through the absence of floor where the pool had been.

Her back slammed up against the Mictok's plinth and she realized they'd all stumbled back. They hadn't needed to, the floor had remained rock solid, but fight or flight had kicked in during the sound and fury and there'd been nothing to fight. Breathing heavily, she clenched her teeth and pushed herself up onto her feet to keep from reaching out and touching Nadayki. Pressure on new bruises provided potent distraction.

“Broadbent!” Toporov knelt at the curved line where the floor ended, leaning as far forward as the side of the ship allowed, peering down into the lower level. “Broadbent!”

“He's dead.”

“We don't know that, Major.”

“Look up, Sergeant. Two, two and half meters, forty degrees left of your zero.” The ship looked nothing like modern H'san ships, but
function put a certain form on anything intended for space that started at the bottom of a gravity well. The translucent smear she'd directed the sergeant's attention to was red and brown, topped with pinkish-gray froth. Water had feathered the lower edges, but impact had obviously occurred after most of it had drained away.

Toporov shook his head. “He could be injured.”

“Those are brains,” Keo said from behind her.

They'd all seen brains before. When she was a mere second lieutenant, Sujuno had found a bit of her captain's brains in a pocket of her combats while walking to the extraction point two days after her first battle had ended. Back at base, she'd thrown them in the incinerator and silently accepted the abuse the supply sergeant had thrown at her when she went in for a new set. By the time she got out, newly a major, she'd long since learned that a familiar set of combats, with dependable tech, meant more that random bits of brain.

Wen's arm rose, and a small stone rang against the side of the ship. “We should've tied a rope around him.”

“I'm telling you, you'd have still lost him. Given the mass of the water and the speed with which it drained, the force on his body would have been enough to have dragged anyone anchoring the end of the rope in after him. The only possible result would have been multiple brains smeared on a magnificent, ancient vessel.” As Wenn lifted his arm again, Dion put himself between the Krai and the ship. “Stop it!”

“It goes into space,” Wenn sneered. “I'm not going to dent it.”

“Do you have any comprehension of how priceless this vessel is?”

“I've got a pretty good comprehension of how stupid this whole thing is,” Nadayki called from the stairs. He sprawled gracefully four steps up, having removed himself as far from the edge of the pool as he could. Sujuno reluctantly admired his survival instincts. “Why the fuk would the H'san set up a kill switch? Go for a swim, press a symbol. Oh, look, it's a spaceship, and you're dead.”

Dion's lip curled. “Do not assume you understand how the ancient H'san thought.”

“I understand stupid.” He tapped his chest, his hair a lime-green aurora around his head. “Genius.” Arms wide, he indicated the whole cavern. “Stupid.”