“I’m grateful.”
“Tell us what you want us to do.”
“You can be of benefit to me in two ways,” Aumonier said.
“Your ships have a capacity exceeding anything in the Glitter Band, even the largest in-system liners. If you can start taking aboard evacuees, that will be incalculably helpful to us.”
“We will do what we can. How else may we help?”
“Doubtless you’ve witnessed our efforts to contain Aurora’s expansion by destroying those habitats contaminated by her war machines. Unfortunately, we’re running out of nuclear weapons. If there was any other way—”
“You wish us to intervene.”
“Yes.”
“In a military sense.”
“I don’t doubt that you have the means, Captain. At the risk of opening an old wound, we all saw what Captain Dravidian’s ship was capable of doing. And his vessel wasn’t even armed.”
“Tell us where and when,” Tengiz said.
“I’d dearly like to. Unfortunately—as you’re probably aware—I’m somewhat indisposed right now and need further surgery. I appreciate your insistence on speaking only to me, but it would simplify matters enormously if you would allow me to designate Prefect Clearmountain to speak for me.”
Tengiz looked at her with his blank telescopic eyes. She couldn’t read a single human emotion in the mongrel collision of machine and flesh that was his face.
“Do you have confidence in Clearmountain?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Absolute confidence. You have my word, Captain. Allow Clearmountain to speak for me.”
Tengiz paused, then nodded.
“So be it.”
“I’m going to sleep again now, if that’s all right with you. Good luck, Captain. To you and all the others.”
“We’ll do what we can. As for you…” Tengiz halted. For the first time she sensed indecision.
“We have long been aware of your predicament, Supreme Prefect Aumonier.”
“I never imagined I was of the slightest interest to Ultras.”
“You were wrong. We knew of you. We knew of you and… you’ve long had our respect. You would have made an excellent captain.”
Dreyfus and Sparver surmounted the last rise and found themselves looking out across a shallow depression in the terrain, like an old crater that had been gradually eroded and filled in by slow and mindless processes of weather and geochemistry. Yet there was something out of place at the base of the depression, even though Dreyfus nearly missed it on his first glancing survey. It was a ramp, sloping down into the ground, its walls and sides fashioned from some kind of fused construction material with the ebony lustre of burnt sugar. It had cracked and distorted in places, evidence of shifts in the underlying landscape, but it was still remarkably intact for something that had been out there for more than two hundred years. The ramp angled down into the ground and vanished into a flat-roofed tunnel, the lip of which had formed a portcullis of dagger-like ammonia-ice stalactites or icicles. Dreyfus pointed to the middle part of the opening, where a number of the spikes had been broken off at head height.
“Someone’s been here recently,” he said. But without knowing how long it had taken for the stalactites to form, he knew he could have been talking about a visitation that had happened days, years or even decades ago.
“Let’s take a look-see inside,” Sparver said.
“There’s nothing I like better than unwelcoming tunnels leading underground.”
If a surveillance system had detected their arrival, there was no sign of it. They crunched across the last few metres of surface ice until they were standing at the top of the ramp, and then began a cautious descent towards the portcullis. The ground was slippery under their feet. Dreyfus stooped to avoid dislodging any more stalactites; Sparver only needed to nod his head slightly. Beyond the opening, the ramp continued to slope down into unseen depths. The suit’s acoustic pick-up conveyed the sounds of trickling, dripping liquids to Dreyfus’ ears. As the gloom deepened, he angled his helmet lamp down, mindful of treacherous cracks in the flooring. He supposed that this must once have been an entry point for vehicles, though it was clear that nothing large had come down here in a long time.
After fifty or sixty metres, the ramp terminated in a black wall set with a single wide door. The door consisted of a set of hinged panels that would have rolled down from a mechanism in the ceiling. It had stopped half a metre short of the floor, above an airtight slot into which the lowest part of the door must have been intended to lock.
“Someone was careless,” Sparver said.
“Or in a hurry. You think we can squeeze under that?”
Sparver was already on his knees. He undid some of his equipment and weaponry and slid it through ahead of him. Then he lowered onto all fours and scraped through the gap.
“It’s clear,” he told Dreyfus, grunting as he stood up.
“Send me though what you can.”
Dreyfus unclipped the bulkier pieces of his kit and passed them to his deputy. Then he lowered himself to the cracked black floor and squeezed under the door, scraping his backpack in the process. Something jammed, and for a horrible instant he thought he was trapped, pinned in place with vicelike pressure. Then whatever it was worked loose and he was through, standing up next to Sparver. His suit reported no damage, but had the door been a couple more centimetres lower, he wouldn’t have been able to get through wearing it.
Dreyfus re-attached his equipment and hoped silently that he wouldn’t be sliding under any more doors. They had arrived in what was clearly a cargo airlock, designed to allow vehicles and heavy equipment to pass between Ops Nine and the outside world. A similar door to the one they’d just crawled under faced them on the opposite wall, but this one was sealed down tight.
“We can cut through,” Sparver said, tapping a glove against the torch on his belt.
“Or we can try opening it. Either way, if there’s a single soul alive in this place they’ll know about it. Your call, Boss.”
“See if you can get it to open. I’ll try to close the other one. I’d rather not flood the place with Yellowstone air if we can avoid it.”
“Because you’re feeling charitable towards Saavedra and her friends?” Sparver asked sceptically.
“They committed crimes against Panoply. I’d like them alive to answer for that.”
Dreyfus brushed icy yellow caulk off a raised panel next to the door they had just crawled under. The panel contained a simple arrangement of manual controls labelled with Amerikano script. He pushed the stud with a downward-pointing arrow and heard a laboured whine of buried machinery. The door began to inch its way towards the floor, spitting chunks of yellow ice out of its tracks as it descended.
“Looks like someone’s been paying their power bills,” Sparver said.
Dreyfus nodded. If he’d harboured lingering doubts that Ops Nine was truly where Firebrand had gone to ground, they had just been thoroughly dispelled. The facility was powered and functional, at least on a spartan basis. Amerikano technology was robust, but not robust enough to open doors after two hundred years.
Dreyfus flinched as slats rattled open in the walls without warning. Red lights stammered on behind ceiling grilles and he heard the roar of powerful fans. The environment sensor on his suit began to record the change of gas mixture and pressure as the air in the room was swapped for breathable atmosphere. The process took less than three minutes. The fans died down and the slats clattered shut again.
“I think I can open the door now,” Sparver said.
Nothing would be gained by waiting, Dreyfus knew.
“Do it,” he said, mentally preparing himself for whatever was on the other side. Sparver hit the control, then moved to stand next to Dreyfus, his Breitenbach rifle held doubled-handed. But as the door rose, it became clear that there was no one waiting for them on the other side. Dreyfus allowed the muzzle of his own weapon to dip slightly, but remained alert. The two prefects stepped over the threshold.