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They said nothing else, taking Vingo’s advice to heart as they continued their trek through the filth until eventually they reached a large circular blast door. Their lights reflected back off it, showing that it was made of a polished metal. An access panel about thirty-centimeters-square was on the wall beside the hatch. It had a series of holographic buttons hovering over its surface.

Below them, gathered into the corners of the sludge, were a dozen more of the toothed eels. They writhed together as snakes might.

“Breeding,” Vingo said as if already knowing Denver’s question. Vingo shot down at them twice, obliterating them with two blasts of his rifle.

“That was unnecessary,” Denver said. “They weren’t doing anything to you.”

Vingo huffed and turned his attention to the panel. “This is it,” he said. “Time to see if my contact was as treacherous as me.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie said. “I thought you knew your way into this place.”

“Me? No, I have no idea. All I know is that a rogue Amalgam agent supplied me with some codes. I don’t know if they work or not. They probably don’t, considering the reputation of this agent. You think I’m bad… this guy’s reputation is known across most of the tredeyan-ruled systems.”

“If it wasn’t clear by now,” Charlie growled. “I really hate you a great deal.”

“Of course you do; you’re human,” Vingo said. “Now, you three stand by the door and prepare to enter as I punch in the codes.”

“You want us to go first?” Denver said. “Like hell. You tell us the codes and you can go first seeing as you’re so desperate to join the Amalgam.”

“No, it doesn’t work like that. You have about one unit of air left. You won’t make it back out of the sewers. You’ll die in here, and when your suits degrade in the acidic sludge, you’ll become food. I can enter these vaults with or without you, it doesn’t matter to me now. “You helped me get here; that’s all I wanted.”

“What about the micro-gate?” Layla said.

“Oh, that’s still a real possibility, so if you want to get off this planet, I suggest you do as I say and go first when the vault door opens.”

“What kind of security does this place have?” Charlie asked.

Vingo shrugged. “No one knows. The Amalgam agent got the codes from a card game involving one of the capital’s matriarchs. That’s as close as anyone other than the governors have got. Even this sewer is usually protected, but given the war with the scion, I guess we got lucky.”

“Luck, huh?” Charlie said, stepping forward to the side of the hatch. “I’ve never felt less lucky in my life, and that’s saying something.”

“Let’s not waste any more time,” Denver said. “Vingo, enter the damned codes and let’s get this over with.”

Denver joined Layla and Charlie by the door. They stood to its sides, the sewer too narrow to let them stand completely free of the opening. While Denver and Layla stared ahead, Charlie focused his attention on Vingo while wearing his ‘murder face.’ Denver just hoped his dad could hold it together long enough for them to figure a way out of this mess. A dead Vingo would be no good if they needed something to trade or beat information from.

“Here we go,” Vingo said, stretching out his hand and tapping in a complicated-looking pattern of codes. Denver crouched when a high-pitched beep came from the control panel. The blue holographic display flashed red.

“Shit, that can’t be good,” Layla said.

“Wait,” Vingo ordered, entering yet more codes.

The red flashing turned to a dark purple color and a hiss of air came from around the large circular hatch in front of them. The thing started to turn ever so slowly; the sound of servos whirred inside. Denver quickly glanced over at Vingo, who had his rifle raised at the door.

“Quiet,” Vingo whispered.

The hatch stopped turning after it traveled a complete revolution. It then moved toward them before folding down like a ramp. Green light flooded from a tunnel before them as the door finished its movement.

“Well, look at that,” Vingo said. “The rogue was trustworthy after all. Perhaps that’s a lesson for us all, eh?” He looked at Charlie with an expressionless face before adding, “Go on, then; get inside. You don’t have the time to stand there breathing away your lives.”

Denver stepped forward and entered the tunnel first, eager to get this charade over with. If they were going to suffocate to death, he’d rather do it knowing exactly what Vingo was up to and what the hell was in this place.

The tunnel was wide enough for both Denver and Charlie to move forward. Layla brought up the rear with Vingo wedged between them. She shared a look with Denver that told him she would gun the alien down if he tried anything.

“So where are we heading?” Denver whispered over the comms, stepping as carefully as he could over the solid surface. It seemed to be a kind of smooth granite. His suit clanked with each step, making him wince with the echoes of their movement. It reminded him of a mausoleum he had once spent a night in. The rock seemed to have its own weird acoustics.

“This is one of the escape routes for the information arbiters.”

“Who are they when they’re at home?” Layla asked.

“This isn’t their home,” Vingo replied, not getting the turn of phrase, but continued, “They’re the ones who catalogue the sum of the tredeyan intelligence. It’s here, where our servers are, and our AIs that look for patterns in the data. It’s the arbiter’s job to interpret the findings as well as catalogue useful information. This vault goes back five hundred millennia.”

They reached the end of the corridor and turned ninety degrees to the left. Denver stopped and held up his hand, indicating for Layla and Vingo to halt. “Dad, you hear that?” he whispered.

“Sounds like… what the… is that?”

“Croatoan,” Denver said. “You know anything about this, Vingo?”

“No… approach with caution; we’re coming to one of the server analysis rooms. I can hear… there’s something else up ahead. We need to get to that room.”

“Fine,” Charlie said, inspecting his rifle. “Load up; shoot anything that moves in there. Follow my lead.”

Charlie stepped forward in a half-crouch. Denver stuck by his dad after glancing back to make sure Layla was okay. She looked as determined as his dad and filled Denver with pride. If they were going to assault a hyper-important vault on an alien planet during a war with super-advanced aliens, he wouldn’t want to do it without Layla and his dad by his side.

Before Denver brought his attention back to the white light at the end of the tunnel, he saw Layla mouth the words, ‘I love you.’ He responded in kind, flashing her a confident smile, and returned his focus to the room.

As they approached quietly, rifles at the ready, Denver started to feel something buzz around his mind. At first he thought it was static on his comms, but when he asked the others, none of them detected anything.

It was almost as if he could sense…

He didn’t get a chance to warn the others as a man-sized scion prism floated out of the white light and entered the tunnel. Another appeared behind them, making Vingo yell out with a kind of screeching panic.

The two prisms steadied themselves. Their cones raised half an inch to expose their glowing blue insides… their lasers. Denver closed his eyes, bracing himself for the impact, but instead he heard a voice say, “Put down your weapons, and enter the room. You might still live yet.”

“Did anyone else hear that?” Denver asked over the comms.

Vingo was gibbering something in his alien tongue and raised his rifle toward the prism in front. The scion machine snapped a thin, narrow beam of light between Denver’s and Charlie’s heads, striking Vingo in the chest.