"Aw crikey, sod the b.l.o.o.d.y fog already." The litany of muttered curses did nothing to ease the malignant tingle that slithered up his spine. His rifle swept the shadows ahead, tracking from one darkened recess to the next.

Glistening stalagmites rose from the fog in mute ranks, dark spires of obsidian flaked with iridescence. At the touch of his searchlight, the ebony columns flared with life. Waves of silver and copper spilled silently into the deep blues and greens of translucent stone. As the light swept past, the dazzling surface faded once more to black silhouette.

For the hundredth time in as many meters, Taz fought the pressing urge to fire up the chameleon. Polarized particles in the Carbonite skin could flex like microscopic lenses, channeling light rather than reflecting it. With sensors a.n.a.lyzing the colors that around him, the lenses produced a very effective camouflage.

Taz knew the effect was far from perfect. Moving rapidly, his armored form would appear blurred and indistinct. At a standstill, the electrochromatic skin could resolve its color-matching to near perfection. He wouldn't be invisible, but at least he'd be wrapped in the hues and textures of his surroundings. In a s.h.i.thole situation like this, any edge would be welcome.

Unfortunately the chameleon was a pig for power and juice was in short supply. So was just about everything else for that matter. The Marines were damaged, low on ammo and sloshing through a puddle of glow-juice; the situation was as close to a tactical nightmare as Taz could imagine.

Still, he reminded himself, the objective lay ahead. Swallowing his concerns, Taz did what Marines had done for centuries-- he advanced. The rest of the team would be some thirty meters behind his point position, fanned out in a half-circle formation. Their weapons were doubtlessly trained beyond him, poised to erect a wall of fire should their point man come under attack.

"Approaching Papa-Six." Taz spoke softly, referencing a large hole in the ship's hull, one of many breaches that pocked the dead vessel's exterior.

In terms of easy access, Papa-Six looked like the most promising option. Its upper crest visible above the fog, the hole extended down below the surface of the lake. The Marines were in no shape to try climbing up the outer hull.

Thermal imaging had revealed a definable current in the pool. The glowing fluid moved in a slow circuit, warm at the onset, gradually cooling as it made its way along the wide, shallow basin of cold stone. If they backtracked the flow upstream, by all logic it had to lead to a source of heat. That path led into the ship's belly through Papa-Six.

Hunkering down, Taz examined the jagged hole. He judged it to measure some twelve meters across. Less than a meter of the opening extended above the pool's surface. Time for a swim.

Taz checked his sensors. The temperature of the fluid had already climbed several degrees. Whatever was inside the ship had the ability to heat up a few thousand deciliters of liquid on a steady basis. That could only mean one thing.

Somebody left the b.l.o.o.d.y furnace running. A slim hope in a sea of desperation, Taz realized, but with the Lieutenant's condition on the downside of bad, it appeared to be their only hope.

Taz crouched low in the mouth of Papa-Six and allowed his armor to sweep the darkness ahead. Unblinking monitors sucked in heat and sound, radio waves and light, comparing data in ways that might disclose a hidden threat. The process took only seconds. Aside from the temperature variance in the pool, everything was cold and still.

Taz' fingers tightened on the rifle's as he whispered, "It's dead as a b.l.o.o.d.y tomb." He paused a moment before adding, "I'm going in."

As he moved into the hole, Taz looked up at the torn layers of metal. The observation was sobering. The ship's mangled skin was nearly half a meter thick. Extending an armored hand, Taz gripped a ragged flap of metal and leaned hard. It didn't budge.

"Hull's made of tough stuff," he reported mechanically. "Duraluminum maybe, or something like it. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, there must be a thousand acres of hull plate alone."

Taz inched along, moving downslope until he was eye-level with the liquid surface. The glare of his searchlight cut through the gap between pool and hull, the obstructions allowing only a flat, thin blade of light to slice through the darkness beyond. Broken spars and twisted bits of wire lined the inside of the gaping wound, glistening with scabs of ice. Icicles leered like row upon row of conical teeth. From his perspective, Papa-Six looked like a hungry mouth.

"Down the hatch," Taz whispered and slipped beneath the surface.

The Marine carefully picked his way through the irregular fissure, like a deep-sea diver of old exploring a sunken wreck. The fluid around him was hardly seawater. Between its viscosity and continual glow, the liquid cut his visibility to inches-- beyond that everything faded into a blurred luminescence.

Largely by feel, Taz weaved through kelp-fields of torn cables that swayed with unnatural slowness. With each step he was forced to reach out and sweep for unseen wires. The last thing he wanted was to get tangled in a submerged, low-visibility bottleneck. By comparison, the walk through the fog didn't seem quite so hazardous anymore.

Taz extended his right foot, feeling for the floor and finding none. The crumpled metal of the wound gave way to a smooth surface that sloped sharply down from the innermost edge of Papa-Six.

End of the tunnel.

"I'm in," Taz reported, noting that the sloped wall extended down farther than he could see. "It looks like this b.l.o.o.d.y hole punched into a multi-story compartment. I'm at least one floor above any sort of deck, maybe more. I'm heading up to see what's at the surface."

He turned to face the hull and groped for hand-holds that would allow him to scale the wall's inner surface. His armored gauntlet clamped down on a section of heavy I-beam that held when he applied his weight. Cautiously, Taz climbed.

Curved armored shoulders quietly rose through the surface, bracketing the dome of his helmet. Dripping with liquid light, Taz rose from the pool. As he cleared the liquid his powerful searchlights peeled back the deep shadows. The image was stunning.

He was in what he guessed to be an engineering bay, an immense room that would seem large even in a starcraft carrier. The bottom portion was flooded, the same lake-fluid stretched from wall to wall forming a radiant false floor. The room extended several hundred meters fore and aft.

Taz looked up and the twin white beams swept through a vertical arc. The ceiling loomed far above the pool's surface, an inverted maze of mechanical shapes dimly lit from below. By all appearance the design was unfettered by any concern of aesthetics. Industrial walls were encrusted with spaghetti-bowls of pipes and wires. Hazy grey ice glistened on every surface, shimmering under the searchlight's pa.s.sing touch.

A suspended metal walkway rose from the pool, sloping more than fifteen degrees off the horizontal. The ship listed badly to starboard, which accounted for the incline.

Directly overhead, a huge tracked crane hung motionless. Icicles spiked the length of dangling chains and hydraulic cables. Beneath a mammoth electric motor, Taz could make out the four-fingered jaws of a grappling claw, equally sheathed in frost. Each metal finger ran well over twelve feet in length.

Taz was struck with a twinge of bug-like insignificance as he made his way through a giant world. To make matters worse, the blue light shining up through the fog gave the frozen interior an eerie, alien appearance. With every ripple in the pool, shadow and light undulated silently along the walls. Taz spoke softly, his tone laced with an uneasy awe. "You getting this Majah?"

"Roger that" Ridgeway's voice replied softly.

Taz zoomed in on the nearby walkway. Certain that Ridgeway's ghost shared his point of view, Taz held a hand up to give the image a sense of scale.

"Walkway is about eight meters off, easy three meters wide but the siderail looks no more than waist high. At least something here looks b.l.o.o.d.y man-made."

Taz chewed on the unspoken inference. Thus far nothing about the ship screamed of a human origin. In two centuries of s.p.a.ce exploration, mankind had yet to discover anything more lively than a smear of colorful algae. But if men hadn't built this thing, who, or what, had?

"Leave it to me to b.l.o.o.d.y well stumble across the first sodding ET," Taz grumbled as he imagined some bug-eyed extraterrestrial popping out of the darkness. A first contact scenario would downgrade their situation from dire to outright FUBAR. Taz flexed his hand on the stock of the CAR. "If anyone appoints me Mister b.l.o.o.d.y Amba.s.sador, they better expect some sodding rough negotiations."

On the bright side, Taz reflected, the chance of finding anything alive on this rustbucket seemed remote. Judging from what he had seen already, the ship had been here for decades, maybe centuries. That concession alone however proved to be small comfort. Even if an alien crew was long-since dead, the task of figuring out a non-human technology would be a job for geeks, not a pack of beat-up Marines. It sure as h.e.l.l wasn't covered in any training manual he'd ever been issued.

Taz snorted. Just cracking a Rimmer encryption scheme could take the intel wizkids weeks, even months. The Marine's timetable was measured in hours. The familiar appearance of the walkway gave Taz a much-needed shot of hope. If the ship was built by people, it could be repaired by people.

Ridgeway's voice broke crisply across the ComLink. "Call sign for your location is the Lobby. Taz, make for the tower bearing zero-four-four, it looks to lead up to more catwalks above the pool surface. Take a support position and be ready to cover. We are inbound."

"Rojah that, heading for the tower." Taz eyed the grid-steel walkway where a hexagonal pattern of steel grate showed dark beneath the layer of ice. The frosty coat looked like it would shatter with a stamp of his boot, but he had no idea what effect that might have on the walkway itself. At this stage, Taz reasoned, it seemed best not to stomp about. He took a tentative step and his boot lurched on the gloss surface.

"Its awfully slick in here Majah. With this tub layin over like this, walking will be one long a.s.s-buster." Taz grimaced as he made the decision. "I'm going live with magnetics."

The coils in his boots would give Taz a gecko-like adhesion to the pitched metal floor, but as with everything else, the magnets chewed power. They also reduced speed. Still, Taz didn't need to complicate the hunt for power with a slapstick chain of pratfalls and slides.

Moving as quickly as he could on an ice-covered slope, Taz headed for the tower and a long climb into the darkness above.

CHAPTER 10.

Darcy struggled to focus on the riflescope. The feat of concentration required to push her view through the complex system of optics had long ago become effortless. Now waves of pain shuddered through her chest, repeatedly dragging her out of the scope. The sharp graduated crosshairs vanished as her vision disintegrated into a blurry static.

Sucking her breath through gritted teeth, Darcy lowered the rifle and glanced toward Papa-Six. Monster had already gone through and St.i.tch was poised just outside the hole, making a last check on the rubbery orange figure that floated on the surface of the lake. The buoyant survival suit had made easy work of transporting the Rimmer thus far, acting as a floating stretcher. But the path ahead led below the surface. Dragging a human balloon underwater would involve a fair bit of manhandling. In spite of her own pain, Darcy winced at the thought. Rough ride for someone with a stack of broken bones.

As if in affirmation, a low moan echoed through the cavern. The Rimmer was coming around. Darcy grimaced, and not from pain. Sound drew attention, and in the dead quiet, even a low groan would carry. Reflexively, her eyes swept the darkness as the sharp airy hiss of a drug infuser caused the moans to dwindle to a puppy-like whine.

"You sure about this?" Darcy poised the question without preamble, knowing that the secure channel would reach only one set of ears.

Ridgeway didn't turn to face her, but merely raised his right hand, index finger and thumb almost touching. "Just a little while Darce, at least until we figure out what he knows."

Before Darcy could reply, another wave of pain dug into her torso. She hunched forward, muscles spasmed against the growing agony. At the fringe of her vision she could see St.i.tch move into Papa-Six and slowly sink beneath the surface. Dragged by an irresistible weight, the inflated suit folded and disappeared. She didn't want to think about how many shattered bone-ends rasped against one another in the process.

A sudden uneasiness crawled up the sniper's spine, a hunter's intuition she had long ago grown to respect. The rifle stock rose stiffly to her shoulder as she crouched low in the fog, her back to Papa-Six. With a deep, measured breath Darcy focused her attention on the scope. In a flash of neural energy, her view zoomed outward in a world quartered by crosshairs.

The reticle crept silently across the ceiling, scanning an inverted landscape of stone. The powerful optics cycled through the visible, ultraviolet and infrared spectrums. In the dark, cold environment, anything alive would give off some type of signature.

The strain of shouldering the big rifle mounted quickly. While the armor supported the weapon's weight, Darcy's arms were still held high by the posture, exerting strain on her upper body. Battle-worn muscles began to twitch. A tremor of pain erupted from her damaged ribs as the crosshairs swept across a faint blob of thermal orange amid a forest of black spires.

Darcy reversed back to the point of contact. As she did, an explosion of pain tore through her side, blowing the image into a billion dazzling pixels of color.

"Oh s.h.i.t." The curse hissed through clenched teeth, elbows pulling together as her torso doubled forward. The taste of vomit bubbled up into her throat and she fought for air, finding little. The surface of the lake tilted up towards her before rocking back in a lazy, erratic wobble. She reached out with her right hand and clutched a piece of stone.

"Darcy!" From the tone she knew Ridgeway was coming even before she heard the slosh of his legs moving through dense liquid. With a snarl of her own, Darcy pulled herself upright, throwing the rifle forcefully to her shoulder.

"I'm on it." The statement carried more snap than she intended, but based on the sudden lapse of churning lake sounds, the point was clear. Darcy was already in the scope, rapidly trying to re-acquire the distant smear of infrared. She tracked mechanically, the scope peering deep into the icy darkness.

"What have you got?" Ridgeway's voice was calm to the verge of nonchalance. Darcy was confident that the Major was already ghosting her, trying to get a better sense of her condition than the vital signs on the TAC would convey. She'd do the same in his position.

"Just watching the back door." She was hesitant to declare a fleeting contact that was more than likely a pain-induced flare of color. Sweeping the roofline, she saw nothing but black.

Another tremor tugged at her guts. "Negative contacts," she muttered as she broke the mental link to her scope. Darcy spun the rifle and expertly snapped it apart at the breech, hoping that the dismissive gesture would cause Ridgeway to retreat to his own senses. She shoved the barrel and foregrip into its compartment, trying to conceal her pain in the practiced motion.

She couldn't tell if Ridgeway bought it or not. He faced her silently for a moment, then poked the first two fingers on his right hand towards Papa-Six.

Darcy nodded, sliding the receiver and stock into the backpack carrier. She eased away from the outcrop of rock, bending her knees to remain low in the lake. Ridgeway fell in alongside her as they reached the rim of the hole.

"Go ahead, I've got your back." Darcy uttered the words as firmly as she could, but Ridgeway pulled up short. "I'm serious," she added, "I've got it."

The carbonite dome that covered Ridgeway's skull remained frozen. The eyes behind that plate, Darcy knew, were a.s.sessing her, considering the likelihood that she could make good on the promise. "I've got it," she repeated, this time without the false bravado.

"Don't get lost." The senior Marine nodded once, then vanished into the hole.

Darcy breathed a sigh of relief and slumped against the hull, grateful for a moment without an audience. She sucked for air, her breath little more than a damp wheeze. Another round of wracking coughs renewed the salty taste of blood in her mouth. She stood unsteadily in the aftermath and allowed her head to clear while the armor made one last sensor pa.s.s.

Only frozen darkness surrounded them.

Still, Darcy thought, her eyes gazing upward once more, you can never be too cautious.

She reached down to a compartment on her left thigh and produced a slightly curved grey brick. Toggling the motion-sensor to standby mode, she pressed the mine against the ship's hull on the left side of Papa-Six, just above the surface of the lake.

"That should discourage drop-in visitors," Darcy muttered grimly as she watched the fog close over the mine. At the speed of thought, a coded pulse flickered from her armor to the packet of high explosive and densely packed tungsten flechettes. The now-active mine appeared on the TAC, its disarm and manual detonation codes available to each Marine. With the ability to distinguish friend from foe, the mine would provide any strangers with a very abrupt greeting.

Darcy gave a short grunt of satisfaction. Like most snipers, she had little concern of what lay ahead. The ones that crept up from behind were the ones that killed you. A claymore remained her favorite doorbell.

With a final glance into the cavern's depth, Darcy turned to Papa-Six. Like a reptile born to water, the sniper flowed into the jagged opening and slipped beneath the surface with barely a ripple.

CHAPTER 11.

Ridgeway had played in stadiums that were smaller than the ma.s.sive engineering bay. The room extended easily twenty stories above the lake; he had no idea how far below the surface. Countless balconies lined the walls, many edged with pneumatic clamps and loading arms. At some point, Ridgeway surmised, gravitic skids would have ferried equipment from one cliff-ledge dock to another in a beehive of activity.

Halfway up the wall a singular broad balcony circled the entire room. The cantilever shelf extended roughly fifty meters out from the plane of the wall. A handrail ran along the lip of the balcony, although from this distance the metal bars looked like fine thread stretched taut along an endless row of needles.

Higher yet, wide round ducts dotted the chamber ceiling. The distant air handlers were easily twenty meters in diameter. Pushing his visual magnification to its limit, Ridgeway made out the enormous fan blades, motionless in their dark shrouds. The rest of the ceiling was covered with a densely packed collection of pipes, components and grates. Looking up at the crowded surface from below, it looked to Ridgeway like a city hanging upside-down.

A dead city, he amended dourly, it's buildings covered in ice.

Shrugging off the uncharacteristically prosaic line of thought, Ridgeway shifted his attention across the flooded chamber to the tower rising through it's center. He made it to be a central transit column, most likely running from the submerged floor below to the ceiling far overhead. The irregular column served as a hub for dozens of walkways and drive-ramps that radiated out like spokes to the surrounding walls. Ridgeway mentally tagged the narrow skysc.r.a.per and the callsign TOWER materialized, adding to the slowly evolving map on the TAC.

The Tower offered the most obvious route to the heart of the ship. Inside, there would likely be banks of elevators, though just as certain to be inoperative. But where you found elevators you would find stairs, ladders, avenues to the floors above.

Sliding his gaze up the Tower, Ridgeway considered his options. The exterior of the column was a ma.s.s of alternating ledges and depressions. Given the angle of the ship, he wondered if it would be easier to climb on the upper surface of the leaning Tower than to navigate a canted stairwell. Taz was already moving up the outside of the spire, clambering from one ledge to the next.

Darcy coughed again, the sound filled with a growing wetness. Although she held fast to her ability to soldier on, the deterioration was obvious. Twice Ridgeway had seen the sniper wobble unsteadily before gathering herself.

Ridgeway keyed a private Link. "St.i.tch, how's Darcy holding up?"

"She's got blood pooling in her lungs, Major. Even with the neuros, we'll be lucky if she makes it six hours before she drops." The appraisal was delivered in a flat, matter-of-fact tone that sounded like equal parts resignation and fatigue.

Ridgeway had seen enough death and dying to know that there was no way to sugar-coat bad news. St.i.tch was well-aware of Darcy's toughness, if the medic gave her six hours, the average guy would likely drop from the same injuries in four.

Ridgeway groped for options. As a last resort they could pool the final reserves from every suit of armor and hit Darcy with a short run of infra-red, but that would be no more than a delaying tactic. The cell-regenerating properties of pulsed infrared were therapeutic, but not miraculous. Given her condition, it might be of no use at all. Internal hemorrhage was taking a brutal toll on the sniper and little short of a full surgical unit could blunt that a.s.sault.

The other side of the argument was just as pressing. Dumping the last of their power to Darcy would leave the Marines defenseless, and that was not an option. Ridgeway had to save as many members of his team as possible, even at the expense of the one.

The image of the silver-grey medal crept unbidden into his thoughts and Ridgeway shook it off. He refused to admit defeat, clinging doggedly to the belief that he could save them all. They needed a break, he thought with growing anxiety, and breaks didn't just happen. You made them.

So get to work, Ridgeway chided himself, shrugging off the mental lapse. Make it happen.

He looked at the Tower and flagged additional target points in a blur of mental activity. "Monster, Merlin, the thermal flow is warmer on the starboard side of the Lobby. Head up the Tower and take the first ramp to the right. There's some heavy cable strung along the underside of the walkway-- follow it. If you get even a hint of voltage, run it down. Merlin, I need your best magic and I need it yesterday."

"We're on it." Monster growled. The bulky armored figure spun on it's heels, one gauntlet slapping sharply against Merlin's shoulder. The two set off at as aggressive a pace as they could force, magnetic boots clamping harshly to the pitched metal walkway with each determined step.

Ridgeway was already focused on the remaining Marines. "Darcy, you take St.i.tch and the Rimmer straight up the Tower. If the guys who built this b.i.t.c.h think at all like us, there should be some kind of command deck near the top with an overlook of the whole section. Maybe we get lucky and find a sickbay or an aid station."

He paused to look at the battered figures standing around him. Darcy leaned heavily against the metal rail, her posture screaming of pain and exhaustion. Ridgeway hated to push her any harder, but there was no other choice. Salvation, if any existed in this frozen grave, lay somewhere above. His voice filled with determination, Ridgeway gave the word. "Let's do it."

The Marines launched themselves without question. The objectives, as well as the stakes, were apparent to all.