The moment the flank door was fully open, Gabriel guided the shuttle on a sharp diagonal towards the structure entrance. He’d been flying vessels like this for years, and it caused him no great difficulty to position the edge of the transport’s flank exit ramp onto the edge of the floor inside the opening.

  “There you go, Corporal – no gap at all,” said Gabriel.

  “Much obliged, Sergeant.”

  “Private Damico, set up your Karn-3 and cover the tunnel,” said Gabriel on the squad comms.

  “Yes, sir, I’m ready to rock and roll,” said Damico.

  Gabriel didn’t immediately give the order to deploy. For a moment, he watched the feed from the portside sensor array, which had a view along the tunnel Lieutenant Perry had described to him earlier. There was no movement.

  “Private Davison, Private Chan, exit the shuttle and move up to that open space ahead,” said Gabriel.

  Two shapes darted from the shuttle, apparently unencumbered by the GK-3 combat suits they were wearing. Davison and Chan advanced rapidly, sticking to the right-hand side of the passage.

  From the cockpit, Gabriel watched, his face set to hide his anxiety. When the two soldiers arrived at the end of the passage, they halted and checked into the space ahead.

  “Clear,” said Davison at last. “Well, kinda clear.”

  Gabriel paused in the middle of reaching for his gauss rifle. “What does kinda clear mean?”

  “There’s nothing here to shoot us, Sergeant, but I think you need to see this.”

  Having slung his rifle over his shoulder, Gabriel instructed his suit to interface with the shuttle. Once that was done, he set the autopilot so that it would hold the transport in its current position.

  “Time to move,” he said to Ziegler and Wolf.

  The two soldiers were already by the cockpit exit and Gabriel followed them down the narrow steps into the passenger bay. Pausing briefly, he looked towards the door leading to the cargo storage area. There was space in the back for plenty of Galos-sized objects, but if Captain Lanson was expecting the squad to haul out anything significantly larger, he would need to source a vessel with a greater capacity than this shuttle.

  The two doors to the shuttle’s undersized airlock were open and Gabriel could see into the tunnel. Stark, cold light from the star leaked through the gaps between the transport and the dome, and the air temperature was a cool minus thirty Celsius. A check of the reading from his helmet sensor reminded Gabriel that the atmosphere was thin and that he’d rapidly perish without the protection of his combat suit.

  “Let’s get after the others,” said Gabriel, hurrying towards the airlock.

  The exit ramp felt shaky beneath his feet as the shuttle’s autopilot made continuous tiny adjustments to keep the vessel in place. A wind blew through the gaps and it droned emptily along the tunnel. When he stepped off the ramp and onto solid ground, that same wind tugged at him without the strength to knock him off balance. Even so, it was an irritation, and Gabriel advanced rapidly deeper into the dome.

  The rest of the squad had already made it to the room ahead, and he could see several of them standing watchfully. Those soldiers kept looking towards Gabriel, and that made him think he wasn’t going to like what they’d discovered.

  A circular room lay at the end of the passage, with a diameter of about fifty metres and a high, domed ceiling. The walls were darker than the building’s exterior and similarly unadorned. A single narrow exit led from the south, and it sloped downwards. Corporal Hennessey and Private Davison were positioned on either side of the opening.

  Dozens of Sagh’eld corpses lay on the ground between the place where Gabriel had entered the room and the southern exit. The aliens were dressed in a mixture of the grey combat suits worn by their soldiers, and a different type of suit which looked to be made of a material more akin to cloth, and in a lighter shade of grey.

  Private Teague was crouched over one of the corpses a few metres away. Her med-box was on the floor, and she’d pushed a couple of the device’s needle probes through the fine links of a Sagh’eld trooper’s combat suit.

  “Take a look at this, sir,” said Teague, waving him over.

  Gabriel strode over, crouched next to the eight-feet corpse, and looked through its helmet visor.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  The living Sagh’eld were usually cadaverous, with stretched skin and sparse hair that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a human corpse. Only their piercingly green eyes spoke of life and intelligence.

  This Sagh’eld here on Scalos looked as if it had died a thousand years ago in the dry heat of a desert world, leaving it completely desiccated. In places, its skin had torn, revealing the yellow bones beneath, and its teeth, visible between drawn-back lips, had turned a sickly grey. Where its eyes had been, now only the empty sockets remained, like dark tunnels leading to the dead creature’s soul.

  “The corpse contains no detectable moisture, Sergeant,” said Teague. “Other than that, it’s just another dead alien.”

  “Any idea what caused this?” asked Gabriel.

  “The med-box is only partly familiar with Sagh’eld biology, Sergeant,” Teague warned. “But it’s capable of identifying many of their most common diseases and causes of death. Here—” She shrugged. “—it’s not giving a reading.”

  Without being sure why he needed to see more, Gabriel repositioned himself so that he could unfasten the alien’s suit helmet. With a twist, he pulled the helmet free, and the foul scent of decay reached his nostrils. For a moment, Gabriel watched. Then, before his eyes, the corpse began to crumble, turning rapidly into dust which the gleeful wind swept away.

  “The pressure in its spacesuit must have kept it from breaking apart until it was exposed to the air,” said Gabriel. He beckoned Private Wolf to join him. “Communicate this to the crew on the New Beginning,” he said. “And do the same with everything else we find.”

  “Yes, sir.” Wolf looked over her shoulder towards the exit. “I’ll have to start leaving comms relays behind, else we’ll lose the connection once we start down that next passage.”

  Gabriel nodded in acknowledgement and then turned so that he could once more survey what he and his soldiers had found. The Sagh’eld in this room had clearly been making for the exit, though the ways they’d fallen didn’t suggest they’d been in a hurry. Doubtless, the alien scumbags had anticipated the Tagha’an heavy emerging victorious from its engagement with the New Beginning, so maybe it had been business as usual down here.

  Another question jumped into Gabriel’s head. “Private Teague – this part of Scalos was caught in the fringes of the shuttle detonation – can we be sure it was the explosion which killed these Sagh’eld?”

  “That would be the logical explanation, Sergeant,” said Teague. “But I can’t promise it’s you the right explanation.”

  Another corpse lay at Gabriel’s feet and he gave it a nudge with the toe of his boot. The Sagh’eld’s arm felt light as a feather.

  “Their spacesuits didn’t give them any protection,” he said.

  “There’s plenty of stuff our own suits won’t block, Sergeant,” said Teague.

  “Don’t I know it,” said Gabriel.

  He strode across the room towards the single exit. A cluster of dead Sagh’eld lay at the top, and Corporal Hennessey was resting her foot on the chest of one. The passage was less than three metres wide and it curved down out of sight. Other Sagh’eld were visible, as dead as these ones in the entrance.

  Gabriel didn’t much like what he’d seen so far, but the mission had to proceed. On the plus side, nothing was shooting at him – yet – so maybe the shuttle detonation had completely wiped out the Sagh’eld presence.

  Without allowing his hopes to rise, Gabriel ordered his squad to gather in preparation for the coming descent.

  ELEVEN

  Gabriel took the lead, and the rest of the squad followed, keeping to the outer wall such that they could maximise their overlapping firing arcs. The downward slope was steeper than Gabriel had first thought, and he had to walk half sideways, half frontways, in order to maximise his grip on the alloy surface. In addition, the fallen Sagh’eld meant he had to keep a close eye on his footing, in case he tripped and ended up tumbling down the slope.

  Warily, Gabriel descended, and the passage spiralled onwards. The wind faded to nothing and was replaced by an oppressive near silence. Tapping the walls with his knuckles produced almost no sound, making him believe this part of the structure was solid. Every once in a while, Gabriel’s eyes went to the four-metre ceiling, and he felt the increasing mass pressing down upon him. As well as that, he felt the age of this place, like it had been abandoned a million years ago and lost for all that time, until the Sagh’eld had started plundering it for long-forgotten tech.

  “I wonder how far down this goes,” said Private Denny Galvan, who was second in line.

  Gabriel looked briefly over his shoulder at Galvan, who was carrying a pack of Sagh’eld explosives he’d located in one of the New Beginning’s two armouries. The soldier had lost his first pack of charges when the Gallivant was blown up on Cornerstone, and now he had some replacements. It was a reassurance to know that if the squad found their progress halted by a locked door, Galvan would be able to get them through.

  The journey continued and the positioning system in Gabriel’s suit estimated he was 250 metres below the entry point. That meant the squad would soon be underground, and into the parts of the surface facility which hadn’t been exposed by the detonation.

  “This feels more like a spaceship than a building,” said Private Stanton Castle.

  “I thought that too,” said Davison. “But why would anyone bury a spaceship underneath all this rock?”

  “There are lots of armoured facilities you’d want to install in the ground,” said Corporal Hennessey. “Missile launchers, comms hubs…”

  “Or just places that are real important,” said Gabriel. “Places you wouldn’t want to be destroyed by a single missile salvo.”

  Eight hundred metres from the entry point, the spiralling downward slope ended at a room. To Gabriel’s relief, the door was open. An access panel glowed dark green on the wall nearby and he stepped up to it. The tech wasn’t Sagh’eld in origin, though its operation looked familiar enough.

  Rather than taking the risk of operating the panel and having the door close permanently on him, Gabriel decided not to touch anything and instead entered the room.

  He found himself in a square space, thirty metres along each wall and with a ceiling that was just low enough to make him think he was going to strike the top of his head if he wasn’t careful.

  Orbs were embedded in the walls, floor and ceiling, and they emitted a wan blue light that made the place feel gloomy. Exits led from each of the other three walls, and all the doors were open. A couple of Sagh’eld were dead on the floor, and in the two opposite corners, Gabriel noticed the wreckage of what might have once been ceiling-mounted miniguns.

  He pointed them out to Corporal Hennessey. “Automatic defences?”

  “Yes, Sergeant, I reckon. The Sagh’eld probably took them out when they first discovered this place.”

  “However long ago that was,” said Gabriel. He turned to face the squad. “Listen up everyone – it looks as if this base was once protected by repeaters, and maybe by other stuff we don’t know about yet. If we’re lucky, the Sagh’eld will have saved us the hard work of having to knock out the turrets.”

  “If we find an operational gun, we’re heading the wrong way,” said Corporal Ziegler.

  “Or we’ve found a place the Sagh’eld didn’t get around to exploring yet,” said Gabriel. “But, yes, we’re going to focus our search on the places the enemy have been, rather than the places they have not - so hopefully we won’t have to deal with any of these ceiling guns.”

  “I’m only carrying twelve rockets, Sergeant,” said Castle. “I’d rather use them on living opponents than metal turrets.”

  Gabriel nodded his agreement. “We need to get our asses in gear. Check out those exits,” he said to the soldiers, indicating the ways to the south and west. “Private Chan, come with me – we’ll take a look at this north exit.”

  The floor was solid and Gabriel’s combat boots made almost no sound as he crossed the room. He halted to one side of the north passage entrance – which was less than three metres wide and possessed the same low ceiling as the room – and then glanced around the corner. The passage went on for some distance, with intersections along the way, and a single dead Sagh’eld lying conspicuously across the corridor.

  “Looks clear,” said Gabriel.

  “We should follow the breadcrumbs, Sergeant,” said Chan. “Wherever there’s a dead alien, we’ll know that’s the way to go.”

  “That was my plan,” said Gabriel. “Except there might be corpses along every passage – it could be we have a lot of exploring ahead of us.”

  “There’re a couple of Sagh’eld bodies to the south, Sergeant,” said Corporal Hennessey on the comms. “Aside from that, there’s just a bunch of corridors.”

  “It’s the same story to the east, sir,” said Corporal Ziegler. “There’s nothing to say if it’s a good way to go, or a bad way.”

  Gabriel cursed under his breath and hoped the structure didn’t extend forever beneath the planet’s surface. Even though Lieutenant Perry had reassured him that Sagh’eld reinforcements weren’t expected anytime soon, she’d also made it abundantly clear, without precisely spelling it out, that the soldiers were expected to complete the mission as quickly as possible.

  “We’re going north,” said Gabriel sourly. “Everyone, get your asses over here.”

  The soldiers hurried across the room, keeping their guards up. Despite the many dead Sagh’eld, proof was lacking that every one of the aliens had perished, and nobody wanted to be killed in an ambush.

  Once the squad was ready, Gabriel entered the passage north. The first intersection wasn’t far away, and he stopped at the corner to check east and west. No Sagh’eld corpses were in evidence, but a large, blank panel – about two metres by one – was fixed to the wall a short distance along the eastern passage.

  “What’s this?” muttered Gabriel.

  He had no fear of tech – except the warship-launched kind – and he approached the panel. Reaching out, he brushed his fingertips across its smooth surface. At once, the panel lit up, revealing itself to be a screen. Down the centre of this screen were numerous rows of alien symbols, which the language module in his suit duly translated.

  Gabriel raised a mental eyebrow. He’d learned from Captain Lanson that the Sagh’eld hardware on the warship could translate the script from this third, unknown, species of aliens. Evidently someone on the New Beginning had installed those language modules onto his suit computer and not told him about it. He wasn’t upset at the oversight.

  “What’re you looking for, Sergeant?” asked Corporal Hennessey, peering at the screen.

  “A map,” said Gabriel, prodding the top option on the list.

  Instantly, the alien script vanished and was replaced by a series of red-coloured lines which made no sense to Gabriel. Placing two fingers on the screen, he pinched in, and the lines zoomed outwards, revealing more detail. Another pinch in was enough to show this entire level of the base. Further investigation revealed - to Gabriel’s dismay - that there were eight levels in total, stacked one atop the other.

  Although the map lacked a scale marker, it did highlight Gabriel’s position and from it, he estimated that this level measured about five hundred metres from one end to the other. Some of the lower levels were more extensive.

  “Storage areas,” said Hennessey, pointing at two huge spaces to the east and west, accessed from levels three, five and eight.

  “And I wonder where these other passages go,” said Gabriel, indicating tunnels on levels two and six which led apparently nowhere.

  The map offered no clues and Gabriel pressed the exit option at the bottom of the screen, which brought him back to the menu.

  “Lower Monitoring,” he said, reading one of the other options. “Storage Five.”

  Gabriel’s eyes continued down the list. While the words themselves made sense, they were also maddeningly vague, as if the translation wasn’t quite perfect or, just as likely, the personnel who’d originally worked here knew exactly what these options related to.

  The very last entry on the list made Gabriel pause. He read the words twice in his head, and something about them made him shiver. “Infinity Lens.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Ziegler.

  “Damned if I know,” said Gabriel.

  He pressed the menu option for Lower Monitoring, but nothing happened. Moving his finger down, he tried to open the menu for Storage Five. Again, the screen didn’t respond.

  “Those options must be locked, Sergeant,” said Hennessey.

  “The map worked fine,” said Gabriel irritably.

  “But look here, sir,” said Hennessey, pointing at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen housing.

  Gabriel stepped closer, and he spotted what appeared to be an interface port, which was about half an inch square. The port had clearly been roughly handled and he could see gouges in the housing nearby, as if something had once been attached.

  “Either the creators of this facility didn’t take care of their shit, or—” said Hennessey.

  “Or the Sagh’eld plugged a security breaker into this port to unlock the menu options,” Gabriel finished.

  “But only the menu options they were interested in.”

  Gabriel pursed his lips. Corporal Hennessey had a knack of making connections where none apparently existed.