It was. The Muscle didn’t notice the corroded split in my ankle strap; and after a minute, he accepted that the sludge wasn’t going to turn homicidal. Delicate as a bird, he tiptoed through the pool and joined us staring into the passageway forward.
I could have kicked him that very second — broken his knee or swept his feet out from under him. But I couldn’t guarantee I’d take him straight out of the fight, and he had that jelly gun in his hand. Better to wait for a sure thing… especially if I could coordinate an attack with Festina.
Patience. Why do so many things demand goddamned patience?
"On we go," Muscle said. He waved the jelly gun to show who was boss, then led the way forward.
The corridor was only a dozen meters long. Then we came to the bottomless pit.
Oh, all right… it wasn’t honest-to-God bottomless. But it had to be at least ten stories deep, because torchlight didn’t reach the pit’s floor. Ten stories was still plenty enough that I didn’t want to take the dive; and diving was clearly what the Greenstriders had in mind when they built this place. A long stone bridge led forward across the pit, like a drawbridge across a moat. At the far side of the bridge sat another blank granite wall with another entry-code keypad.
Simple arrangement: to move forward you had to cross a narrow bridge over a fatal drop. In Greenstrider days I bet there were gun slits on the far side, ready to strafe unfriendlies if they tried to charge forward. Once you were on the bridge, you were bare-ass exposed… and the way across was only wide enough for attackers to dash up single file.
Cute little killing ground. If the defenders on the far side didn’t like you, either you got shot or you fell.
Or you turned back the instant you realized that going forward was utterly nuts.
"End of the line," I said, slipping back into the corridor. "If Maya’s holed up across the bridge, it’ll take an army to pry her out."
"Not so fast," Muscle told me. "First of all, we don’t know Maya’s here — she may be holed up in some other hiding place. Second, there’s not much chance the old Greenstrider defenses are still operational. Sure, this would have been a death trap three thousand years ago; but everything’s rusted, hasn’t it?"
"Not the prison that held Xe captive," Festina pointed out. "That was built by the Peacock, with self-repair mechanisms far beyond human capabilities. And this whole bunker belonged to the Peacock too. A lot of the equipment must have been standard Greenstrider stuff, but some had to be made by the Peacock himself. Those keypads, for example — not a speck of age on them. For all we know, the Peacock built automatic shrap-guns to cover this bridge; if we try to cross, we’ll be shredded."
"That’s a possibility," the Muscle admitted. "But I refuse to retreat without testing the theory." He gave Festina an ugly smile. "Tell me, Admiraclass="underline" what’s standard navy policy when you think something might be lethal but you can’t be sure?"
She stared back at him evenly. "Send in an Explorer."
The Muscle waved his gun toward the bridge. "You’re on."
I said, "Stop."
They both looked at me. "Are you volunteering to go instead?" Muscle asked.
"I’m serving as a member of the Vigil," I replied. "And our job is to prevent people from getting carried away with their own momentum." I turned to the Muscle. "What do you think you’ll accomplish, sending Festina across the bridge?"
"I’ll find out if any defense mechanisms are active."
"But why bother?" I asked. "Where’s the gain? Do you really think there’s anything down here that will help you?"
"You said there might be high-tech—"
I interrupted him. "I was leading you on, so you wouldn’t muck about with my brain. Buying time till you made a mistake."
"Still," he said, trying to look unflappable, "there might be useful things down here. You mentioned weapons—"
"Which are dick-useless, you know that. If you find a lethal weapon down here, or even plans for a lethal weapon, you can’t take it home to Admiralty headquarters. The League won’t let you carry killing devices across interstellar space. You knew that, but you ignored it, because you wanted to believe you could squeak out of the mess you were in. Grasping at straws, sacrificing your partner for some false hope…"
"I think," he said clamp-jawed, "you’re trying to make me angry. You want me to do something rash."
"You’ve already done something rash, you chump! The three times you came to kidnap me. Did it ever occur to you to work within the system? You could have flashed your credentials at our government, and said, Top admirals are interested in this case, we’d like to get in on it.’ Most politicians would be flattered. ‘Ooo, the Admiralty is interested in little old Demoth, let’s keep these guys in the loop.’ You would have been part of every investigation team; you’d get up-to-the-minute reports, invitations to planning sessions, tactical operations, the works. But no. You have some witless notion that acting like a lone wolf is more efficient or smart or sexy than playing with the team. What crap! What pathetic macho crap!" I took a deep breath. "Do you know the only high-tech artifact we’ve seen since we got here? A keypad that can last three thousand years. And you turned that to slag. Brilliant thinking, you mook."
He took an angry step toward me. I don’t know whether he intended to hit me, shoot me, or just scream in my face. It didn’t matter — he’d come into kicking range.
Festina snapped his knee, while I knocked the jelly gun out of his hand. After that, it was as easy as stamping grapes.
We freed our hands the same way we’d freed our feet: picked up the jelly gun, shot a blob against the wall, and warily dabbed our plastic wrist ties against the smallest drop of acid we could find. Both Festina and I managed the trick without burning ourselves — something of a miracle considering we were doing all this with hands behind our backs, and me half-shaky from pure relief.
As we stood around after, rubbing the pins-and-needles tingle out of our fingers, Festina said, "All right. We head back, smash the jamming machine, and call for help, right?"
"We may need to get closer to the surface," I told her. "My link-seed might not have enough radio power to transmit through all this rock."
"Closer to the surface is good." She scooped up the jelly gun and tucked it under her belt. "I’ll be delighted to put more distance between us and this death trap. If someone wants to know what’s on the other side of the bridge, maybe we can reprogram those androids from Lake Vascho. Let them lead the charge."
Festina bent to pick up the Muscle — he was unconscious with a broken jaw, but generally intact thanks to our ladylike restraint. I put my hand on her shoulder, and said, "This time let me carry the body."
"Oh sure, take my fun."
She unstrapped the torch-wand from Muscle’s arm and held it as I hefted the man up. Once more, I thanked Our Blessed Mother Mary for Demoth’s .78 gravity; the dipshit was heavy enough as it was. When I had him in a secure grip, I waddled with him down the corridor, Festina keeping pace beside me…
…till we reached a dead end. A blank wall of granite where there should have been a doorway to the next room.
"Oh shit," I whispered.
"Don’t say that!" Festina snapped.
"The nanite sludge… it flowed back into place."