Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)

Chapter 11 - Short Fuse

The guideline wobbled dangerously, almost yanking her off of her perch on the cavern wall, but she managed to keep her footing, jamming one heavy combat boot into a narrow crevice in the rock.

"C'mon! Everflowing, keep the damned line straight!" Ivy roared, craning her neck to glare at the unfortunate engineers at the plateau edge.

Shame-faced, they wrestled with the pulley system to bring the guideline taut once more, allowing her a stable anchor to fix herself to. Dozens of them lanced out from the ragged surface of the plateau, fired like harpoons to allow the swift transfer of people and equipment across the magma lit moat.

Swearing under her breath, Ivy turned back and levelled a heavy industrial cutter at the rock face.

Much more powerful than the handheld variant, it looked like a short rifle cradled in her hands, a clump of wires spooling from its rear that disappeared into the power pack slung across her back. Pulling her blast goggles down into the place, she set to work, joining several other engineers who were meticulously hacking away at the cavern walls.

Sun-bright light flared from the cutter's nozzle, slicing into the battered stone. She moved it in a gentle side to side motion, flensing away layers of rock until she could see the black metal of ... whatever it was underneath.

Above and below her, covering a large section of the wall, a whole squad of her fellow engineers spread out, anchored on fresh-cut ledges or dangling out of tight, armoured harnesses as they sliced away. More and more smears of black emerged, and with them came a gentle curve, apparently following the incline of the cavern wall upward.

Working along the left edge, Ivy kept cutting, removing more and more of the concealing rock, and what she found was that the bizarre obelisk stretched back into the rock face a lot further than they'd realised.

Despite hours of work, she didn't feel any closer to figuring out what it was. So far it was just a solid lump of something out of place, and the engineers worked painstakingly to avoid actually cutting into it with their tools. Riverlords-only-knew what might happen if they damaged it. For all she knew it might have been the only thing holding the whole drowned cavern together.

She kept going, cutting a narrow path that others could follow.

Several feet into the solid rock, she heard – and felt – a faint whump. She froze. For a moment she thought she'd imagined it.

"Capicza – excavation team," called the engineer working a dozen meters above her. "Anybody else feel that?"

So not a figment of her imagination.

"Shanklin here," Ivy replied quickly, edging away from the black metal. "I felt it too."

"Kenyatta – excavation team," the captain's voice cut across the comm. "What's going on?"

"Felt a vibration," Capicza answered. "Might have been a tremor."

"Came from the direction of this thing." She looked close, pushing up her goggles and narrowing her eyes. "You feel anything on your end, captain?"

"Negative. Plateau is stable – no seismic deviations."

She nodded; kept watching. It took nearly two minutes, before another faint pulse gently pushed at her feet, and this time she saw a tiny but definite throb of pale blue light beneath the surface. Her mouth opened in surprise.

"Another one," Capicza confirmed. "Shanklin?"

"Yep." Ivy nodded. "And it looks like this big lump isn't so inert after all."