Subtle Weapon, page 2
part #2 of ShadowTech Series
Deva sighed. “Kaiahive. Has to be. Secret base or something.”
“You think they know who we are?” Keelin asked.
“Hey! My mask’s holding up!”
“Let’s assume this is a routine check,” Ryann said.
Brice snorted.
Piran stared at Ryann. “Routine? Seven armed Ions? And they didn’t ask us anything. You notice that? Didn’t ask what we’re doing out here.” He swallowed, needed a drink. “They’re taking us captive!”
“Thought you said your mask was good,” Keelin said.
“It is! Doesn’t mean they’ll leave us alone, though, does it? Probably…I don’t know, invading air space or something. You check on that, Keelin? Any fields we slipped through?”
Keelin did that growl again. “No certainty they’re Kaiahive.”
“Of course they’re the bloody company! Who else would they be? And they’ve easily got enough firepower to take us down. We make one mistake and they blow us out of the sky, drop us in the drink.”
Keelin twitched.
“Don’t bloody do anything! I don’t want to die!”
“Might shut you up,” Brice muttered. And when Piran spun round he wanted to punch that bloody smirk.
“Focus,” Ryann said. “Piran, concentrate on the data. Let Keelin pilot.”
Piran pulled at his collar, faced front, withdrew to his lenses.
The data wasn’t much comfort. The Ions were in position now—two to either side of their Proteus, two behind, and one in front. An escort, if he was being generous.
“Be at the island in a couple of minutes,” Keelin said. “Got visual.”
Piran pulled up the sensor. The volcano rose from the sea, tiny white-capped waves crashing at the base. The rock was dark, scarred, craggy. Ugly.
He checked the destination the Ion had sent, pulled up the local area scan. Frowned.
“Kee?”
“Keelin!”
“Keelin. You got a lock on that destination?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You make it for inside the volcano?”
“Haven’t looked into it too much. You got a point to this?”
“Why’re they taking us into a volcano? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Extinct,” Brice said.
“Yeah, but…doesn’t feel right.”
“None of this feels right,” Keelin said. “Going with your idea, Piran.”
He frowned. “What?”
“Might not have our true ident, but they’ll figure it out before too long.”
Piran’s face flushed both hot and cold. “So…so what the hell do we do?”
Her snout twitched. “Your idea.”
“What bloody idea?”
And now, as she turned to him, he realised that the twitching was a smile. And it scared the hell out of him.
“Drop us in the drink.”
Keelin
Keelin had only tried this move twice before, both on sims. The first time, she’d miscalculated, fireballed her craft, had her trainers chewing her out for weeks. The second time, she analysed, calculated, pulled it off. And had her trainers berate her for hours to find out how she’d rigged the system, how she’d fooled them.
They never admitted that she hadn’t cheated. They told her the move would never work outside the sim, even though they also swore that the sim was exactly like the real thing.
Keelin hoped it was as realistic as they claimed, or this was going to end very badly.
She cut power to the rear booster, re-routed excess into fore-topside. Data screamed an overload warning. The craft buckled, threatened to split.
She shoved the nose down, hard as she could. Heard Piran scream as the closest trailing Ion filled the sensors, felt heat from its body against her own. Proximity flared, would’ve stopped the move if she hadn’t already disengaged it.
The Ion missed them by a hair’s breadth.
The Proteus slammed nose-first into the water.
It wasn’t a graceful entrance. The force threw Keelin into her seat. The water pressed against the hull, against her flesh.
“What the hell was that?” Piran said, his voice shaking.
Keelin forced herself to breathe, knew the water covering her body was only an illusion. “Wasn’t about to let them take us.” She glanced around. “We all okay?” Because a good pilot always checked on their passengers.
Deva sat with eyes wide, pale fingers clasping the terminal in her lap. Ryann had her head back, swallowed, calmed herself. Brice looked bored. Piran trembled.
About what she would’ve expected.
“I take it the Ions can’t follow us,” Ryann said, only a hint of a wobble in her voice.
Keelin shook her head. “Only work in atmosphere.”
“But they’ll be monitoring the sea. They’ll be waiting for us to emerge.”
“Yep. So we stay down here for a while. Air tanks are full, so we’ve got hours.”
“You sure about that?”
She shot Piran a glance. “What?”
He shuffled in that seat, like he’d soiled himself. Better not have done, or he’d be cleaning the mess.
“Might want to check the data,” he said. “We’ve got a leak.”
He turned away, mouth twitching. Like he was afraid she’d hit him. Tempting, but not for this.
Keelin read the data. And cursed.
“The annoying git’s right. One tank ruptured, second’s got a dodgy seal. Running on emergency air.”
“Which means what?” Deva asked.
“Five bodies on board, probably half an hour. If we breathe slow. Got masks too, gives us each another fifteen.”
“So we need to surface in under an hour,” Ryann said. “Ions have a longer range than that, don’t they?”
“Fully powered, couple of hours plus.”
Piran muttered something Keelin didn’t catch—no, didn’t want to. His moaning wouldn’t help the situation.
She glanced over other readings, pulled up sensors in turn. Underwater, the Proteus was sluggish, but easy to control, and letting the craft drift beneath the surface didn’t take much. So she looked further.
“Close to the island. Rock ahead. Has to be the base of the volcano.”
Piran flapped his arms, didn’t do more than cause a draught. “Then turn around! Last thing we want is to wind up on that place!”
Keelin shook her head. She zoomed in the front sensor feed, marked it for Piran—and for the others. It would show up on Deva’s terminal too. “We’ve got a way out,” she said.
“What are we looking at?” Ryann asked.
“Cave.”
“So?” Piran’s forehead creased.
“It’s an opening.”
“Don’t see how that helps us.”
Keelin resisted the urge to slap him. “For someone so bright, you’re bloody stupid at times. Readings say the cave goes back a long way, far enough that the sensors can’t probe any further. Volcano’s riddled with tunnels. Have to come out somewhere.”
“And, what, you reckon you can get us through? What if it’s too tight?”
“Reverse.”
“What if you get us stuck?”
“You think I’m not going to be careful? You reckon I want to hurt my Proteus?”
“And what if we do get out? If Kaiahive has a base on the island, they’ll spot us, right? Probably got craft and people patrolling the whole place.”
“We don’t have an alternative,” Ryann said. “We can’t surface in the open, and we’ve got limited air. That cave is our only chance.”
Brice
Brice was torn. Piran had a point, but Ryann was right too.
And there was nothing he could do to change things. All he could do was sit back and trust Keelin.
She sat rigid, didn’t even look like she was breathing. Concentrating, then. That was good.
The Proteus shook. Brice ignored the terminal by his seat, didn’t want to see how close they were to the rock. Deva sat glued to her palmie, her mouth open in shock, her eyes wide.
That told him more than he wanted to know.
“We out of the water yet?” Piran asked.
<Let Keelin concentrate.> Ryann sussed, tight. Didn’t stop Brice catching it, though. Easier when she was so close, sat behind him.
<Just asking.>
The shaking and juddering of the Proteus rocked Brice’s seat, sent vibrations through his body. He reached out, tapped to wake his terminal, called up sensors.
Maybe seeing what was happening would settle his stomach.
He saw rock, far too close, covered in the green tinge of dark-sight. Wasn’t quite night vision, but close. Didn’t look real. And things weren’t helped by the blurring from the water.
Rock loomed closer. The craft jerked. Metal ground on the tunnel wall.
Keelin flinched. Would’ve felt that on her own skin. Must’ve hurt.
“Too close!” Piran said. “We’re not going to make it.”
Keelin’s arm tensed, where it lay on her chair’s arm-rest. And, once again, Ryann sussed to Piran.
<That’s not going to help. If you can’t say something encouraging, please don’t speak. Not until we’re out of this situation.>
<Not going to get out, are we?>
<Trust her, please. We’re out of the water now. The higher we rise, the closer we are to an exit.>
<Not there yet, though.>
The guy was an idiot! Was he trying to wind Ryann up or something?
Brice gave the back of his chair a kick. Piran spun, scowling.
“Let her concentrate,” Brice said.
<Bloody freak’s listening in.>
Brice kicked the back of the chair again, sneered at Piran. The coward tried to glare back, looked like a startled rodent or something, then swivelled round to face front.
Brice caught half-formed words, insults that rose in Piran’s mind. He breathed deep to calm himself.
Wasn’t like he wanted to catch the bloody fool’s thoughts, was it? No point filling his mind with that inane drivel.
The Proteus lurched to the left. Keelin tensed, rubbed her arm. Sweat ran down her face.
Brice glanced at his terminal, eyes drawn to the murky green image. It wasn’t as blurred now—Ryann had mentioned they were free of the water, hadn’t she?—but the rock was still too close.
Impressive, how Keelin navigated. Especially with proximity playing up. Brice didn’t understand the technicalities, but he knew that was something to do with collision avoidance, that its failure meant Keelin had to work from feel alone.
She lifted the craft’s nose, aiming for a crack in the ceiling. No, not a crack—a gash. A hole. The Proteus jerked. Keelin ducked, raised a hand to her head.
“We’re overheating!” Piran said. “Rear port booster. Can’t keep on like this. We need to turn back!”
“Can’t,” Keelin said—the first words she’d uttered since she’d taken them into the cave.
“What do you mean, you can’t? You said you could reverse.”
“Check for yourself.”
There was a moment of silence, until Piran broke it. “Fore-booster’s gone? How the hell did that happen? Wait—it was that crunch, back when we left the cave. Thought it was too loud for a scrape. And…and you carried on? Hell, Keelin! You’re going to get us all killed. Or you’ll get us trapped down here, and we’ll die of starvation or something.”
Keelin growled deep in her throat. Her arms tensed.
And Brice slammed his boot into the back of Piran’s chair. As Piran jerked forward, Brice reached out, spun the chair, grabbed Piran by his collar.
The stupid idiot’s breath was warm and stale. He shook. But there was anger in his eyes. Might’ve been hatred.
Brice brought his head forward, could feel the sweaty heat from Piran’s skin. “Let her do her job,” he said.
The Proteus shuddered and vibrated. Keelin winced and squeezed a hand over her midriff.
Piran’s mouth quivered, and Brice could tell he was about to say something stupid.
“Don’t care if you want to make it.” Brice glared at Piran. “But I do. Let her fly. Or I’ll make sure you can’t distract her.”
In that moment, Brice could easily have punched Piran in the face. Follow up with a fist in his guts, double him over, then punch down on the back of his neck. And if that caused permanent damage—well, the idiot only had himself to blame.
Piran swallowed, and a half-cough spluttered from his lips. He glanced over Brice’s shoulder, toward Ryann. Then he nodded.
Brice waited, only sat back once Piran faced front, once Keelin’s arms relaxed.
A hand rested on Brice’s shoulder. He turned. Ryann leaned forward.
She nodded, smiled.
Brice turned away, looked down at his terminal and watched the rock walls pass by. After a moment he heard Ryann ease back into her chair.
Deva
Deva stared at the terminal, tried to shut out the reality of the situation, shut out the anger between the boys.
The Proteus lifted.
Up was good. Down meant water. Up meant sky.
The craft scraped against rock. Keelin muttered, the words unintelligible. Piran whined. The Proteus twisted, and metal shrieked again.
And then Keelin exhaled.
The image on Deva’s terminal was still bathed in green, but a different hue now, not as artificial. Shapes shifted, and Deva pulled the terminal closer, squinted.
Were they leaves? Was she looking at trees?
The craft wasn’t moving. And Deva realised they’d landed. Keelin had got them through the tunnels.
“What is this place?” she asked as the sensor feed slowly cleared, showed her the small, tree-covered clearing the Proteus now rested in.
“If these readings are accurate,” Ryann said, and there was a vague haze over her eyes as she read data off her lenses, “I’d say we’ve come out in the crater.”
“Crater?” Piran frowned. “As in a volcano crater? Is that safe?”
Keelin growled, turned to Piran. He frowned, then nodded. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Extinct. So we’re safe. Right?”
“That’s always a relative term,” Ryann said, “but we’re reasonably safe for the moment. I’m not getting anything from the sensors.”
Deva swiped around the image on her terminal. The trees were dense, and there was no way to see clearly into the foliage around their trunks. She tapped for filters, but saw nothing.
Didn’t mean there wasn’t anything out there, though.
“If this place is abandoned,” she said, “where did those Ions come from?”
“Base on the flat part of the island?” Piran looked to Ryann.
“Not that I’m aware of,” she said, carefully. Her eyes glazed over as she checked her sources. “The most recent overheads of the whole place don’t show anything, and there’s no record of a base here.”
“Doesn’t mean a thing, though, does it? Kaiahive get everywhere.”
“There’s nothing to confirm those Ions were from the company.”
“And nothing to say they’re independents either.”
The corner of Ryann’s mouth twitched. “You’re correct. So we have to be careful. But we remain calm, and we take things steady. Keelin, what’s the Proteus look like?”
“Checking.”
Deva checked, too. She tapped and swiped through data, and winced. “Looks like structural damage only. Nothing pinging on alerts.”
“Turned them off,” Keelin said, in a monotone. “Knew we’d be too close most of the time, would’ve been sounding constantly. Didn’t need the distraction.”
Which was fair enough, except that a catastrophic failure would’ve hit with no warning. But she was the pilot. And she’d got them away from the Ions, hadn’t she?
Deva still wasn’t quite sure how she’d pulled that off. Ions were super-nimble, even more so than Nyxes. Didn’t have the range, or the storage space, but they should’ve reacted faster when Keelin…did whatever she did.
Unless she caught them by surprise. Always possible. Yeah, a bloody good pilot, Keelin. Didn’t have that superior flyer attitude, either. Grounded—which was a ridiculous word to use to describe a pilot, but it fitted.
The data on the terminal swarmed—Keelin, already organising repairs. She had two main groups, mech and tech, each one subdivided by severity.
There was a hell of a lot of work.
“Not going anywhere any time soon,” Keelin said. “Wouldn’t like to fly long-range the way we are.”
Ryann nodded, and clicked her tongue in irritation. “What kind of time-frame are we looking at?”
“Hard to say. Need more analysis.” She turned her head. “Piran? Any thoughts?”
“Thoughts?” He frowned.
“Repairs. Marked tech issues.” Keelin paused. “You’re in the system, right?”
His mouth twitched. “Yeah. I mean, just monitoring. Not doing anything dodgy.”
“Never said you were.”
“Right. The list. Repairs. Yeah, got it. Lots of flags. Looks like most of the issues are linked to mech or structure. Might not need tech fixes.”
Which was true enough. Even Deva could see that.
But she also understood why Keelin was diverting attention. The list was long. It was hard to believe this bird would ever reach the sky again.
“Are we looking at hours or days?” Ryann asked.
Keelin stiffened. “Days. Maybe weeks. Depends. Could be more underlying problems. Won’t know until we sift through the list.”
“But we’ll sort it,” Deva said. “Me and Kee. Reckon we’ll need to cannibalise internals for hull repairs. Won’t be a problem, will it, Keelin? Can make do without storage unit doors for a while, can’t we?”
“It’ll take a lot…”
“Lot of time, sure. But what else are we going to do? I can crack on with the hull, you deal with the system-related stuff. Work as a team, like usual.”
She watched Ryann, in her peripheral vision. The woman appeared serene, but her eyes were fixed on Keelin.
