A Quantum Mythology (45 page)

‘Have you got security feed from the habitat?’ Lodup asked.

‘Nothing,’ Deane said.

‘What do you think? The habitat’s a tin can.’

‘They said to go back,’ Deane replied, though the dive supervisor still hadn’t moved. ‘Siraja’s right, it’s heavily defended.’ The ‘immortal’ sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Lodup just pointed at the demonstration of fire and force happening in the streets of the sunken city.

‘Let’s head back,’ Deane said. Some of his authority appeared to be returning.

Or his obedience
, Lodup thought.

Lodup finned over to the
ADS
and grabbed one of the diver handholds on its armoured form. Deane expertly manoeuvred the impellers to send them floating over the seabed. He kept low, under the height of the buildings, skimming through the streets.

The light from the explosions and the strange beam weapons made a show of disconcerting, grotesque, flickering shadows. Lodup looked towards the fight, trying to catch glimpses of it between the buildings, along twisting streets, in the junctions and crossroads. He saw orcas swimming down low between the buildings, firing electromagnetically propelled harpoons and torpedoes of various sizes before seeking cover. The strange beam cut relentlessly through the buildings as if they didn’t exist. He watched as one of the heavily armed submersibles used by the security force was ruptured by several of the thinner beams. The superstructure buckled and the submersible was crushed as four hundred atmospheres of pressure did the rest.

Lodup caught a glimpse of the thing that was attacking them down an avenue lined with strange, petrified, tree-like growths as they moved parallel with it. It had a blocky body, not organic but not mechanical-looking either. He couldn’t make out much in the way of detail. Then it started to glow with an inner light and spiral patterns inscribed on its body lit up from within. Its head, which looked hollow, vomited the lava-like light. As it fired the beam, Lodup noticed that its legs tapered off into glowing rootlike structures which pierced the seabed.

Tethers attached smaller, floating constructs to the walking thing. They were broadly triangular in shape and reminded Lodup of flowers for some reason. They emitted the thinner beams of the lava-like force. Lodup guessed they were something like tethered ROVs. As he watched, another one grew from the walking thing’s body and propelled itself away through the water as far as the connecting tether would allow.

The walking thing fell into darkness as one of the Archies loomed over it, probably the last of the three giant creatures that remained, Lodup thought. An armoured tentacle wrapped around the construct. The roots on the thing’s legs flexed, grew and anchored it more deeply into the seabed as it started to glow from within. Then it was gone from sight, but he could still see the burning light stabbed up, again and again, cooking, cutting and blistering wherever the beam hit.

Over the infrasound link, Lodup was aware of Deane sending packets of information warning the base that they were incoming. As they got closer to the habitat, they could see batteries of torpedo launchers firing, while others regrew new payloads from the surrounding matter.

They surfaced into the bright light and semi-organised chaos of the moon pool.

The
ADS
dumped Lodup unceremoniously onto the pontoon jetty. Deane didn’t wait for one of the roof-mounted cranes to hoist the
ADS
out of the water. Instead, he grabbed the metal framework of the jetty, which buckled slightly as the
ADS
pulled itself awkwardly out of the water, its back already splitting open. As soon as it stopped moving, Deane’s hands appeared out of the dark, organic-looking matter that filled the
ADS
and he pulled himself from the exoskeleton.

‘C’mon!’ Despite his tall, wiry frame, Deane had no problems hoisting Lodup over his shoulder. The healing abilities of his augmented body could only do so much, and his foot was still just a stump.

Lodup tried calling Siraja to find out what was going on and request access to the external camera feeds, but the AI wasn’t answering. He assumed Siraja was securing the habitat’s electronic systems from intrusion, which probably necessitated cutting off all comms access.

Divers were surfacing constantly and clambering out of the moon pool alongside submersibles being hastily secured as their crews clambered out.
ADS
s were climbing or being lifted out of the water.

‘C’mon, move!
Now!
’ Yaroslav’s voice filled the moon pool chamber. He was changing the magazine in his weapon – a modified .45 calibre Vector sub-machine gun, standard issue for all members of the security teams. The guns were equipped with suppressors to deaden the noise from the weapons in a confined area, and Lodup noticed that most of the visible security personnel had removed the suppressors and were changing the magazines on their weapons. The majority of the SMGs had M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun Systems mounted on Picatinny rails under the barrels. They were also replacing the magazines on the shotguns. Yaroslav had an M320 40 millimetre grenade-launcher mounted beneath his
SM
G.

‘Each of you will empty the magazines from your primary and secondary weapons in an orderly and accurate manner, before falling back and switching to your sidearms!’ Yaroslav shouted, addressing his security personnel, who were staying out of the way as divers, submersible pilots and
ADS
jocks evacuated the moon pool chamber.

Yaroslav was changing the magazine on his sidearm, a .45 calibre Heckler & Koch
USP
, as Deane carried Lodup past him.

Above them, the multi-barrelled rotary weapons were moving back and forth under their inverted, tower-like ammunition drums.

They were among the last out of the moon pool chamber. Deane stood by the door, his earlier hesitation, his earlier fear forgotten as he made sure all his personnel were clear of the chamber.

The security detail formed up along the edge of the pool. They didn’t bother with cover. They knew there was no point. More security personnel lined the synthetic-grass-carpeted corridors beyond the moon pool chamber, leaving a narrow throughway should any retreating comrades need to pass.

‘Right, not much more we can do here – let’s go and hide,’ Deane suggested over the nearly constant thudding of repeated shock waves breaking against the diamondoid superstructure of the habitat.

‘C-and-C?’ Lodup said.

The habitat shifted slightly underneath them from a particularly heavy impact. Then everything went quiet.

‘I’ll drop you off and then you’re on your own,’ Deane told him.

Lodup had to hop into C&C. Deane left him propped up against the blast door, and he had to bang a few times before it finally opened just wide enough to admit him, then closed immediately behind him.

Inside the dimly lit control area there was little sign of panic or chaos, with the exception of the images playing across the wall. The staff remained lying on their couches, presumably linked into the habitat’s systems. A blast door now covered the window that normally looked out over the moon pool. Siraja was standing motionless in front of the blast shield. It was difficult to tell with his draconic features, but Lodup was pretty sure he was concentrating intently.

‘I indulge you because you actually have real meat between your ears,’ Siska told him as she reloaded her twin .45 calibre Sig Sauer P220 automatic pistols. She chambered rounds and re-holstered them at her hips, safeties off. ‘However, if you want to stay here, you need to keep out of the way and remain fucking silent.’

Lodup didn’t answer. He was looking at the feeds from various cameras being played across the wall: Yaroslav and the security detail in the pool below; the slow-motion rain of debris on the city; the wreckage and remains of the three Archies and the gutted corpses of several orcas; the damage done to the alien architecture; the destroyed submersibles, torpedo batteries and
AUV
s. Then finally he saw it, walking inexorably across the seabed, leaving a trail of silt in its wake. There was little left out there still attacking it.

Lodup got a clearer look at the thing this time as it strode past one of the cameras. It was about fifteen feet tall and looked like it was made of granite. A series of small torpedoes detonated around it, staggering and buffeting it, but the rootlike stone structures growing from its legs anchored it firmly to the seabed. As it glowed with internal light, Lodup saw in more detail the spiral and knotwork patterns inscribed on it. They reminded him of the tattoos on some of his former Navy shipmates. It vomited the lava-like light from its hollow head and one of the few remaining
AUV
s was destroyed.

It started walking up the ramp into the moon pool. On the local feed, Lodup watched the rotary weapons start firing hydrodynamic rounds into the water, the barrage audible even through the blast shield covering the window. The water frothed, but it continued walking up the ramp. There were so many impacts on the creature that Lodup couldn’t make out whether or not the weapons were doing any damage. Surely something in the centre of a firestorm that intense would be totally destroyed. He was appalled when the onslaught didn’t even slow the thing down. Then its head rose from the water.

The security detail started firing their Vector SMGs and M26 shotguns. Lodup knew that the nanite-tipped ordnance they were now loaded with would eat through or otherwise break down any matter they came into contact with. As they fired measured, accurate bursts with the SMGs, Lodup wondered how many of the bullets collided in mid-air because the fire was so heavily concentrated. They didn’t slow the thing down, either.

Lodup glanced over at Siska. She looked concerned, which worried him. In the three weeks he’d been working here, he’d never seen her look anything other than in complete control.

Some of the cameras whited out. Lodup felt heat rise from the floor as C&C lurched and glanced at the moon pool feed as it came back online. The thing’s hollow head was still glowing white and there was a massive rent in the wall of the chamber where its beam had cut straight through it. Parts of the diamondoid structure were burning in a way he knew they shouldn’t. Little more than a few smoking chunks of flesh remained of the security detail. The few who had been on the edge of the staggered line were still alive, but horribly burned and screaming.

Yaroslav was somehow still up, his left side and most of his back blackened and blistered with still-bubbling flesh. His face was a mask of agony as he tried to pull a member of the security detail back towards the moon pool’s exit, firing his Vector one-handed as he did so.

‘We have to do it now,’ Siraja said, an urgency in his voice that Lodup had never heard before.

The ROV analogues tethered to the creature, which Lodup had thought looked a little like flowers, rose from the water, their thinner beams reaching out to burn the air and turn the rotary weapons into slag.

‘Request permission,’ Siska said. Lodup had no idea who she was talking to. He suspected it was a sign of her nervousness that she had even spoken the words out loud. ‘No, sir, I cannot see another way. It’s either this or we lose the whole facility.’

The granite-skinned thing was stepping out of the water now. Small-arms fire sparked off its granite body from the corridor, which it ignored. It knelt down, its massive hands growing, mimicking the rootlike structure of its legs, and reached into the floor of the habitat.

Siraja opened his draconic maw to say something but it turned into an agonised electronic scream, then his image was burning, and then it was gone.

‘Sending the signal,’ Siska said, staring at the space where Siraja’s image had been.

Agony shot through Lodup. He cried out and then vomited blood as it squirted out of his nose and ran out of his ears and eyes. The world went away and there was only the white light of agony filling his vision. He wasn’t aware of collapsing. As the pain faded, he was nearly overwhelmed by a primal, instinctive fear. He knew something utterly inimical to his very existence was out there. Moving.

Through the blood in his eyes and the white-light pain, he was barely able to make out one of the feeds. It showed the black lake, the cold seep consisting of salty brine much thicker than the surrounding water, with its beach of mussels. Something was climbing out of the black lake. It looked like a living oil slick. It filled Lodup with terror that sprang from something hardwired and ancient within him, a racial memory.

He became aware of Siska nearby. She was crying tears of blood as more leaked from her ears and nose. She spat red on the carpet as she looked down at him.

The thing stretched from the black lake, moving across the seabed rapidly, forming pseudopods and tendrils of a black, viscous material that appeared plastic and liquid at the same time. Sluggish initially, its pace increased as it seeped through the streets of the sunken city towards the light, energy and life of the habitat. Whatever it was, it absorbed the glow of the city’s floodlights, only noticeable by its movement.

‘We’re sealing the moon pool. Anyone not through the blast door is dead,’ Siska said quietly, her voice amplified throughout the habitat.

Lodup glanced at the moon pool feed. There was nobody left alive there. The stone thing was still growing roots into the habitat’s superstructure.

‘What is it?’ Lodup managed, meaning the thing from the black lake.

‘Programmable biomass,’ Siska answered.

‘You didn’t make that thing.’

‘No, it’s much, much older than us.’

The lights went out in the moon pool. Lodup looked at one of the feeds and saw inky black tendrils and pseudopods wrap around the stone thing. The living-oil-slick-thing pulled part of its mass up and out of the water. The stone thing’s head turned a hundred and eighty degrees and started to glow. Where the oily pseudopods touched it, the granite-skinned creature started to dissolve. Lodup watched its roots withering. The stone thing was torn off the habitat and pulled into the water, engulfed by the black oil, which started to seep away from the habitat, but slowly, as if reluctantly.