"Oh no!” Angus said, looking away from the ship and past O'Doyle. “More silverbugs!"
O'Doyle turned to face the new threat, but nothing was there. He turned back, knife out in a flash, eyes wide with fury, but it was already too late.
Angus used the brief distraction to sprint for the river, tucking the map computer under his arm and pulling the floatation device's seal as he ran. O'Doyle started to limp after him, but Angus reached the bank in only a few seconds and launched himself into the roiling water. The current grabbed him and rocketed him downstream, into the deep shadows of the towering ship-cavern.
Chapter Forty-two
Where the fuck have you been!” O'Doyle said, veins popping out of his head, neck muscles thick with tension. “You were supposed to be here seven minutes ago!"
Connell felt the waves of anger pouring off O'Doyle like late-afternoon heat rising from the desert floor. The man's huge, tightly balled fists looked like medieval maces ready to crush a skull or two.
"We got tied up,” Connell said softly. “What's the matter?"
"Lybrand's hurt, and that motherfucker Angus took off!"
Veronica and Sanji glanced over at Lybrand, who lay passed out in the sand, a bloody mess covered in bandages. They immediately ran to her and started checking her wounds.
"He just left,” O'Doyle said through gritted teeth. “Down the river."
"Where's Randy?"
"Angus told me he's dead."
Connell's heart sank at the words. Another EarthCore member gone. “Did you see him?” Connell asked. “Where is his body?"
"It's in the ship somewhere. I haven't seen anything, and I don't really give a fuck. We need to worry about Lybrand."
Connell spoke slowly. “Veronica and Sanji will help her. We're getting out of here right now."
"Why weren't you back on time?” O'Doyle asked, sounding as if a sad little boy was using the voice of a huge man. “You could have stopped Angus. You could have made him help her."
"I know,” Connell said. “I swear to you — we're going to get her out of here."
Emotions swarmed over Connell. Murderous anger for Angus's chickenshit actions along with overwhelming guilt. Another of his people dead, one more lay dying. He couldn't go in the ship after Randy. Even if he wasn't dead, Connell couldn't leave the party, and they couldn't wait any longer.
"Connell,” Sanji said. “I think we have another problem."
Silverbugs skittered about like a swarm of platinum crabs. They seemed to come out of nowhere. Within seconds they'd formed lines so thick one could walk on them and never touch the ground. The lines ran at an angle away from the ship, stretching far off toward the cavern's side wall perhaps a quarter-mile away and then disappearing into a narrow fissure.
Trying to remain calm, Connell walked to Randy's discarded web belt and searched through the multitude of pockets. He pulled out a small pair of binoculars and through them looked out at the fissure.
Rocktopi thronged inside the narrow crack, a hyperkinetic blob of alien terror. They looked more agitated than ever, a bubbling mass of flashing colors and flinging tentacles, more like a wall of animated flesh rather than sentient beings. The silverbugs bounced madly, faster than he'd ever seen before, as if they were desperate for the rocktopi to break the religious taboo and pour into the cavern, destroying everything in their path.
"The silverbugs are trying to draw the rocktopi in here,” Connell said. He suddenly noticed the absence of the scrambler's scratchy static. He walked over to the packs, eyes hunting. “They look pretty pissed. Veronica, do you think they'll attack?"
"They're caught between religious tenets,” Veronica said. “They appear to be forbidden to enter this cavern, but following silverbug commands is ingrained in their culture. I think they're coming in, it's just a question of when."
Connell's heart leapt with hope as he finally set eyes on the scrambler amidst one of the pack's scattered contents. Angus must have set it down before his cowardly dash to the river. Connell picked it up and switched it on. He'd never thought static could sound so beautiful. The thick lines of silverbugs immediately broke down into a confused exodus, like cockroaches scrambling to escape a sudden light.
Sanji ran over to Connell and O'Doyle. “Lybrand is badly hurt,” he said. “We must get her out of here now. Her temperature is rising."
Connell's mind raced, stress filling him from head to toe. So many wounded, and they still had to hike around the ship just to get to the Linus Highway. Lybrand would never make the trip. They had to get her out and fast. Time was up in more ways than one. But how? How could they get out fast enough? Connell's eyes drifted toward the rocketing river.
There was really only one way.
Book Six: Exodus
Chapter Forty-three
Angus washed up on a sharp bend deep inside the ship, a wall made of finely fitted limestone blocks. The wall redirected the river back down the bend. Some of the blocks looked badly eroded, while others looked new, as if they were replaced when the water did too much damage. A light coating of platinum dust covered the blocks, sparkling lightly.
As he looked about, he wondered when the nightmare would end. Light from far above filtered past the edge of the thousand-foot-high cracked hull. River mist filled the air, freezing the light in a perpetual, wafting fog.
He didn't care about the platinum dust. All he cared about were the silverbugs.
Thousands of them.
Clinging to the walls and wriggling on the floor, like the inside of a beehive or an anthill. Angus noted with relief that these silverbugs were all a little scratched, a little beat-up, a little dingy. No new ones here.
He sat at the edge of a dome-shaped, cathedral-like structure complete with its own softly glowing light. Erosion had long ago collapsed the dome's outside edge, exposing the interior view to the river. That same erosion had probably forced the rocktopi — or more likely, the silverbugs — to build the breakwater. A level stone floor reached away from the wall and into the dome.
In the dome's center, fifty feet from the breakwater and dangling like a low-hanging chandelier, hung a large, polished orb, about ten feet in diameter and poised over a large hole. Angus remembered his map and the strange line that ran from the ship's center deep into the Earth, far deeper than his sensitive instruments could read. Puzzle pieces clicked in his brain, clicked home with force. The orb could only be one thing, really.
A nuke.
And it looked like a big one at that. A nuke, of course, was his best guess. The rocktopi technology could have anything hanging there, but logic dictated it to be a bomb of some sort. Another mile down and the temperature would exceed the boiling point — no life could exist there.
Movement on the orb caught his eye. A silverbug scurried across its curved reflective surface. The silverbug stopped and opened a panel, revealing a small chamber. Even from this distance, Angus could see the silverbug's “head” wasn't the familiar wedge-shape, but a trio of tiny cable-arms, waving like grass in the wind. It instantly reminded him of the three-fingered rocktopi tentacle tips. The cables dipped into the chamber, moved about, then pulled out as the silverbug shut the panel and crawled out of sight around the orb's far side.
"Maintenance,” Angus said in awe. “That's what these fucking things did originally — maintenance."
A small click-click of metal on stone interrupted his observations. He turned his head slowly to the right; a pair of silverbugs with wiggling tentacle heads sat less than ten feet away. They just perched there, observing, probably communicating with others. Angus sat stock-still, suddenly realizing that he'd left the jammer back on the beach, back by O'Doyle.