Ridgeway grunted as he caught himself. Whatever lay ahead, Darcy didn't want to risk being observed. He eased back and, with a soft mental push, allowed the sniper's senses once more to become his own.

In the flicker of synapse, a set of graduated reticles bisected his view, testament that he once more gazed through the scope's powerful optics. That much he expected. What he saw through the scope left him stunned.

The chasm stretched down for several hundred meters, a jagged highway of sharp ridges set row upon row that gave the intervening s.p.a.ce the look of a demented trench warfare exercise. The tunnel snaked downward, leading to a warm orange glow that pulsed steadily from the far end.

Unbidden, the crosshairs tracked down to the end of the washboard pa.s.sage. At the base of the slope it dumped out into a cavern room of moderate size. The texture of the walls inside seemed odd and it took a long moment for Ridgeway to realize why.

The whole cave is lined with machinery. Equipment flowed up the walls and across the ceiling. Glittering streams, like fiery veins, appeared to flow among the cluttered patches of hardware. Wide channels of ember-red branched endlessly throughout the blackened hollow. For a moment Ridgeway was struck with the irrational thought that he was somehow inside a huge artificial heart.

"It's Escher drawn by Geiger." Darcy offered with what seemed an uncertain balance of amus.e.m.e.nt and revulsion.

The ruddy glow cast the scene in an eerie, h.e.l.lish hue. But something about the pulsing light seemed familiar, although completely out of scale. Ridgeway shifted his focus from the target and scanned the data that ringed the scope's view. Visible light, barely twenty percent amped. The answer, Ridgeway realized, lay a little lower on the scale.

"Go thermal."

The sniper responded immediately and pushed the scope to resolve waves in the ten micron range. The even-hued scene blossomed in artificial color as the imaging system displayed minute changes in the heat that radiated from every point within the scene.

It took Darcy only a moment to recognize the pattern. "s.h.i.t, the whole thing is one big IR array."

"Yeah," Ridgeway said quietly, following evidence to the inevitable conclusion. "So whatever they are, amid all that hardware is flesh and blood as we know it."

"Well, you are what you eat," Darcy drawled quietly.

As revolting as the image was, Ridgeway had to concede the logic. He wondered if one species could a.s.similate the genetics of another. Maybe the Ascension's crew wasn't eaten so much as cannibalized for parts. He tried to picture the muscles entwined along steel bones. Had they been grafted on or grown in place?

"That could explain the silver in their blood," Darcy muttered absently. "Maybe they just chowed down on somebody who'd been on the table." Her offhand comment lacked any real conviction.

Ridgeway groped for a reply as the crosshairs tracked to the brightest heat source in the cavern, a collection of equipment that glowed in the artificial tones of thermal imaging. Through digital sleight of hand, Darcy merged the visible and thermal channels, producing a layer of detail and surface texture.

Quick to offer her conclusions, Darcy pre-empted the prior line of conversation with a businesslike a.n.a.lysis. "Roughly twelve meters high, heavy steel construction. Lot of moving parts, it's definitely serviceable. Looks like some of the old oil rigs we used to have back home."

"Close." Ridgeway replied softly. He'd seen units just like it on the frozen plains of McFarland's World. Unlike oil derricks that drew liquid from the planet's core, these sucked heat. "Geothermal Rig. They're mining for heat."

As he stared at the unwieldy machine, Ridgeway recalled Monster's first report. Maybe two klicks down to hit the magma plane. The hardship inherent in drilling through cold stone was staggering. He shook his head, that's one h.e.l.l of a mining op.

"Bet that took a while." Darcy muttered, as if reading Ridgeway's mind.

A while indeed, Ridgeway a.s.sessed, noting with equal focus that the only visible dig went down instead of up. Disappointment welled, its growing weight tugging at his resolve. Dispair threatened to drown out any last shred of hope when he was struck by epiphany.

"They aren't locals."

Darcy was caught by surprise. "Come again?"

"These things, they can't be indigenous. They came here from somewhere else." Excitement gathered in Ridgeway's voice.

In contrast, Darcy exhuded skepticism. "How the h.e.l.l did you get that out of a drill rig?"

"Think about it. We have an experimental colony ship that blows a gasket. It vanished from point A and ended up here at point B."

"I'm with you so far."

Ridgeway continued. "Up till now we figured the crew opened the door and got jumped by something native. But if these things had evolved down here, they'd be used to the cold. The fact they need heat, and that they had to go to such artificial lengths to get it, means they came from somewhere else."

"Maybe they came in with the Ascension." Darcy remained guarded.

"Huh," Ridgeway chuffed. He hadn't considered that option and pondered it for a moment before his head shook abruptly, "I don't see it. The Ascension blinks out of near-earth s.p.a.ce and skips straight here. Where did they pick up an alien life form?"

"s.h.i.t, I don't know. That's a Merlin question." Darcy exhaled sharply. "OK, let's a.s.sume you're right and they're tourists like we are; what does that get us?"

"Well, I'm betting they didn't come through Cathedral like we did, so that suggests a second tunnel." He paused, his brain clicking at high speed. "Then there's the mining operation itself. They have a s.h.i.tload of gear down there, maybe enough demo to blow the roof. Either way, my money says the way out begins here."

Resignation gave way to determination and Ridgeway the commander resurfaced. "Darcy, go visual, light amp thirty percent. Pull back to frame the whole scene."

The image seamlessly slid back to provide a full view of the area below. Artificial rainbow tones gave way to the ember and black starkness of the cave. The callsign seemed obvious as Ridgeway added a new marker to the TAC. To the right of the shimmering waypoint, a single word glowed softly.

HIVE.

Ridgeway stared at the long downward ramp and plotted a course through a stealthy approach. Somewhere in the Hive was the key to going home. All they had to do was go in and find it.

In the distance, a dark shadow crawled across the orange hued ceiling. The crosshairs tracked up to the blob of darkness cast by an unseen creature that scuttled somewhere within the room like a giant roach.

The sniper's voice echoed softly in Ridgeway's ear. "Welcome to Bug Central."

CHAPTER 31.

Hie eyes closed, St.i.tch swallowed the wet lump that clogged the back of his throat. The wound in his thigh throbbed fitfully, showing disdain for the paltry dosage of painkiller. While the option to wrap himself in a soft blanket of drug-induced haze was seductive, St.i.tch could not afford the mind-numbing effects of morphinol. Given their current situation, that could easily become a permanent nap.

The medic tried to adjust himself in the chair, using his arms to lever his body upright. The shift, though minor, was enough to trigger a fresh a.s.sault on his senses. Pain shot up from his leg and twisted his bowels into a knot.

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h!" The curse hissed between his teeth as the medic screwed his eyes against the pinwheels of light that sparkled on the edge of his vision. His fingers dug into the chair and he counted the seconds as the flare burned away.

"You all right?" Merlin's voice was soft on the ComLink, one of the few sensory inputs that came without an added degree of suffering.

St.i.tch unclurled just enough to force the reply. "Peachy."

Merlin's legs, the only part of the engineer that stuck out of the under-console cabinet, wriggled to the sound of clinking tools and the cyclic grind of a ratchet.

Leaning back, St.i.tch drew a measured breath, wary of a secondary tremor of pain. His attention flickered back to Merlin. "So how's it going?"

"You mean compared to five minutes ago?"

The medic glanced at his chronograph and noted that in fact, six minutes had pa.s.sed, but he got the message. Merlin's efforts to get the surviving monitors back online were critical to perimeter surveillance. Constant disruptions added nothing to that progress, but minutes dragged out endlessly when measured as the gaps between gut-wrenching pain. St.i.tch was dying for a distraction.

The medic drummed his fingers on the chair and reminded himself that regardless of his shape, he was there to watch Merlin's back as much as the inverse. His hand closed tightly on the submachinegun, thankful for its rea.s.surance as he scanned the tiers overhead. Only curls of lingering smoke drifted among the balconies.

The sweep completed, St.i.tch accessed his own medical status and frowned for reasons that had nothing to do with pain. His report to Ridgeway had been abbreviated to say the least, in a civilian world a failure to disclose at this scale would const.i.tute malpractice.

So sue me, the medic groused inwardly, we've got bigger worries.

Unfortunately, the undisclosed aspects of his condition were rapidly becoming a real problem. The heavy pickaxe did not miss the femur as St.i.tch had inferred. The sharp metal tip carved an ugly furrow through the largest bone in his body. And while the femoral artery wasn't severed, enough collateral vessels were torn to present a serious threat of death by internal hemorrhage.

The armor squeezed his thigh in a python grip, the unrelenting pressure its own source of discomfort. Plasma packs served to replace some of the lost fluid but only a couple had escaped Jenner's scavenging. St.i.tch was engaged in a very short war of attrition.

"How long do you think it'll be before we hear from the rest of the team?" The words were past St.i.tch's lips before he could bite them off.

Something metallic dropped, clattered and rolled to a stop, the string of sharp sounds trailed by a weary sigh that echoed from within the cabinet. St.i.tch winced and turned his face from the verbal scathing that never materialized. The bangs and sc.r.a.pes from within the machine resumed amid an undercurrent of low mutters.

A long moment ticked by before fear of further nuisance drove St.i.tch from his chair in spite of the pain. He braced himself on the console and limped to the last standing bank of monitors. The array of screens stood black and dead. Switch boxes and amps littered the crannies between every dark rectangle.

St.i.tch studied the snarl and tried to divine some sense of order. A gut-cavity full of twisted intestines was easier to understand. His gaze fell on a boxy component made of grey metal, its corner-edges adorned with strips of yellow and black-striped tape. Among a smattering of inert lights, several b.u.t.tons ran across the face of the device.

St.i.tch extended a finger and aimlessly poked a b.u.t.ton, hardly surprised when nothing happened. He sighed, shifted his weight uneasily and punched a second b.u.t.ton to no effect. Piece of s.h.i.t, he muttered as he poked a third.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" Merlin's voice was edged with irritation. "I've got all of the camera feeds unhooked so don't f.u.c.k around with anything, all right?"

"s.h.i.t," St.i.tch huffed as his head rocked back. "How 'bout I just climb in one of these f.u.c.king freezers, would that make you happy?"

"Is that an option?"

"Oh screw you," St.i.tch snarled as his finger stabbed angrily at the last b.u.t.ton in line. The device hummed sharply and the rack of screens flared to life.

"Whoa!" St.i.tch s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back as though he had grabbed a viper. "Hey Merl..."

"That's it." Merlin's legs thrashed as he twisted free of his confinement. "Listen, if I can't get a live feed back online we can't see shi--"

The engineer froze as his facemask locked on the image that spanned the entire block of monitors. He rose slowly to his feet as St.i.tch limped back. The two stood side by side when St.i.tch pointed at the wall of monitors.

"Well if that isn't live, what the h.e.l.l is it?"

A dark figure stared from the screen, nearly lost in the shadows that surrounded him. He wore badly stained coveralls of an indeterminant color layered with patches of frayed fabric and worn duct tape.

Above the nametag, pieces of unkempt beard hung down across his chest, the tangle of grey cleaved by scars that crossed the figure's neck and jaw. His cheeks carried a deathly pallor, so free of pigment that St.i.tch could see the blue web of capillaries beneath the translucent tissue. Below his creased brow, splotches of blood mottled the sclera of one eye, streaking the jaundiced orb with red. The other eye was missing, St.i.tch noted, or simply lost in the deep shadow.

Before the figure, a small gla.s.s cylinder sat framed by two weathered hands. The left lacked a thumb while the right was over-sized and mis-shapen. The appendage seemed bound in a pebbled leather instead of skin.

The figure spoke, the voice thin and raspy. What might have been a human voice was boosted by something decidedly synthetic. "Shipwide systemic failures continue beyond our diminishing ability to repair. Progressive thermal shutdown has crippled the nanotech. Drive failure has finally become a foregone conclusion. Our supplies are exhausted, our food..."

The figure drifted into a lengthy silence as gnarled fingers nudged the gla.s.s cylinder. The vial held a dark, faintly emerald hue. Tiny lights blinked softly from one silver endcap.

"Abrupt cryonic failure grows epidemic and even the most--" he struggled for the word, "dramatic, extraction efforts have proven catastrophic. We are left with the unavoidable strategy of genetic consolidation." His lip curled back as he spoke the last two words with unmistakable distaste.

St.i.tch felt the ripple of gooseflesh across his arms before he consciously registered the motion along the figure's torso. Something slid beneath the ruined shirt, a serpentine ripple that oozed out of the camera's view.

"You see that?" Merlin's voice was hushed.

St.i.tch swallowed, his throat suddenly dry as he nodded slowly, unsure just what he had seen. A forboding chill coiled around his spine as he stared at the screen.

White digits burned at the bottom right corner, the columns incrementing sequentially from the right. 772:02:23:16:49:00. St.i.tch reached out and traced his finger along the line of numbers.

"Timecode," Merlin said. "tracks the runtime of the recording."

"Yeah, I know," St.i.tch replied, but something is screwed here." He tapped the screen, fingertip tracing the numbered pairs from right to left. "Seconds, minutes, hours--"

"Then days, months, and," Merlin stalled, motionless for a moment before his head tipped slightly to one side. "Three digits?" He muttered as he pointed to the leftmost group. "That oughtta be four digits, for the year."

St.i.tch turned slowly and asked "What if they didn't know the date?"

"I don't follow."

"Your rift," St.i.tch turned to Merlin. "Your hole-in-s.p.a.ce theory. You said that it could also be a hole in time right? Maybe forward, maybe backward?"

"Yeah..." Merlin drew out the single word as he turned back to the cl.u.s.ter of screens.

"So a hundred and sixty years ago a ship has a very bad accident, one that throws it to the far side of nowhere. What if you got bounced to someplace where you couldn't see the stars? Your ship is f.u.c.ked all to h.e.l.l, you don't know where you are, you don't even know when you are. What do you do?"

A long silence ticked by before Merlin answered. "Start over, count from day one."

St.i.tch nodded again, his eyes fixed on the digits 772.

Days, weeks, months... years.

CHAPTER 32.

Ridgeway watched silently as Taz oozed through the break in the rocks. Although the gap was narrow, the fact that both Ridgeway and Monster had made it through vouched for its navigability.

The forward edge of the Hive stood only a few meters away and the orange glow grew brighter with every step. Already the long midnight valley gave way to scattered puddles of shadow that grew like moss on the back of every red-hued rock. The Marines were forced to follow an increasingly serpentine path, leveraging the most from intermittent splashes of darkness.