Rusch, Kristine Kathryn - Diving Universe SS3 (6 page)

His voice had that odd tone again. She frowned, then tapped the screen. The notification had come back in her personal code: two cave divers nearby, willing to work for a lower price than she had expected, so long as their expenses and insurance costs got met.

“They're not bonded,” he said, “and they're not on any approved list of divers. But they're the closest.”

“Did you vet them?” she asked.

He nodded. He'd clearly been working in the old Command Center at the base of the mountain rather than with the communications equipment here. The equipment in the city itself wasn't that powerful, and wouldn't have allowed much more than a quick search of nearby archives.

“They seem clean enough. Their records go way back,” he said.

“But?”

“No real references,” he said.

She clutched the pad. The guards wouldn't like the lack of references. Or, more clearly, that Meklos Verr wouldn't like it.

But she wasn't working for him. He was working for her.

“I'm not sure it matters,” she said. “We need them to see how deep the water runs, if there are any artifacts in the caverns underwater, and where the water actually came from—if they can find that. What else?”

“Nothing,” Yusef said.

“They wouldn't even really know what they're seeing, right?” Her heart was pounding. She and Yusef had only had a handful of conversations like this one over the years. The conversations made her uncomfortable, but they'd been necessary.

“Not if we do it right, no, they wouldn't,” he said.

“And if they reported only to us...?”

“Then we should be all right,” he said.

She bit her lower lip. The second time that day. She was more nervous than she realized.

“And if we're not all right,” Yusef said, “then we ... I don't know...”

“It's a risk,” she said. “We're hiring them for risky work. Can we afford the insurance payout if it fails?”

He blanched. He always blanched when she asked questions like this.

“Only if it's a one-time payout,” he whispered.

No injuries, then. Nothing that would last or linger.

“Do they have families?” she asked.

“Not according to the records. But lots of people in odd jobs never record their families. They're usually running from their families.”

“Check on that,” she said. “Because if there are no families, then there's probably no one to even pay the insurance to if something goes wrong. If they have no obvious families, then I think we take the risk. Just you and I. You do know something about diving equipment, right?”

“Enough,” he said. His voice shook.

She stared at him. He stared back. Sixteen times they'd had this conversation. Sixteen. And out of those sixteen times, they'd only had to take the hard action four times.

No one else knew.

No one else could know.

“What about Meklos Verr?” she asked. “Will the security team get in the way?”

“Have you told them about the caves?” Yusef asked.

She shook her head.

“You have to,” he said.

“No, I don't,” she said. “I'm just going to tell them we've found water, and we need to make sure that it's not undermining the city.”

“The guy in charge seems smart. He'll know you're lying.”

“Only if you tell him,” she said. “No one else has been in the caves.”

Yusef sighed. “Then I guess we have to keep it that way, don't we?”

“At least for a while,” she said.

* * * *

10

They landed their air-to-ground deep exploration ship on the far side of Denon's Secret, far away from the sanctioned trails that wound their way up the mountainside. Even though the ship was in a forest of some kind, she still had the pilot camouflage the craft.

She didn't want anything to go wrong.

Because of that, she hadn't brought Zeigler, even though he had begged.

Shortly after the ship arrived, Navi ran the scanning equipment. If the Unified Governments of Amnthra had some kind of law against scanning from the ground near the Spires of Denon, she wanted to be the one who broke it. She could argue necessity and flash her credentials.

By the time the Unified Governments figured out that she was subject to the same rules as everyone else, she'd be long gone. But she hadn't gotten a notice about the scan, like she did when they tried to scan Denon's Secret from above. The scan worked. She found caves.

The images on her screen looked familiar—a tangle just like Zeigler predicted. She bet if she put a two-dimensional image of the Spires of Denon on top of the image before her, one part of it would match.

She didn't have time for that. She had to find exits from the City of Denon that didn't show up on any modern map. So far, it looked like this side of the mountain had about two dozen of them.

* * * *

11

It had taken Meklos two days to figure out the best way to deploy his team.

Fifteen wasn't enough. Fifteen wasn't close to enough. If he ran long shifts, he only had seven actual humans on the ground. He and Phineas had to monitor the robots and the various detectors. Since he and Phin were on opposite shifts, they wouldn't see each other except when they relieved each other.

He didn't like that set-up at all. Usually he and Phin coordinated and put an able but less important team member on the equipment.

He had already sent for reinforcements.

They wouldn't come for a week. He'd stressed the urgency, but he couldn't name the threat, so he knew he'd gone into the queue behind some less important but more easily definable jobs.

And now, Dr. Reese had thrown him another curve. She had hired two new experts to come into the city. She wouldn't define their area of expertise, nor would she let him vet them.

They're my responsibility, Meklos
, she'd said in that snotty tone of hers, and no matter how much he argued, he couldn't convince her otherwise. So he was going to meet them near the old Command Center at the base of the mountain.

Instead of pulling one of his seven-member team off recon, he woke Phin just before heading to the Command Center. He also took two members of Phin's team with him down the mountainside. They would set up as if they were guarding the Command Center.

When Meklos had asked to accompany Chavo to the newcomers’ ship, Dr. Reese had denied his request. 
I need to see exactly what they're flying and where it came from
, Meklos said. 
They're vetted,
 Dr. Reese said. 
And besides, you'll escort them into the city and out of the city. They won't be able to do anything.

Little did she know. He'd seen a single person disrupt one of the most orderly jobs he'd had. That person had destroyed everything in a short period of time. So he pulled rank on Dr. Reese again, and told her that he would inspect the newcomers’ equipment and supplies. What he didn't tell her was that he would take their names and any other identifying information and vet them himself.

Meklos had sent Valma Tanis to the old Command Center ahead of him. He and Declan Ceema, who had been with him almost since Meklos had begun security work, climbed down the mountainside together.

Going down was considerably harder than coming up. He hadn't quite realized how steep the grade was. Fortunately, his hands were free. He carried his usual weapons—a laser pistol (even though they were banned near the Spires), a knife, and a small explosive charge that he didn't dare use near the top of the mountain. All of those were hidden away on his person. Most people wouldn't be able to see the weapons at all, just his small comm unit, attached to his hip.

Declan had similar weapons, although not the explosive, since Meklos didn't want a member of his team forgetting where they were and accidentally causing damage to the Spires.

The old Command Center had been the original base for the first Scholars team to come to Denon's Secret. The team had arrived shortly after some members of a mountain climbing expedition realized that the Spires weren't some kind of natural phenomenon.

Initial Scholars teams were so well funded that they always built a command and control center. The center had sleeping quarters, a fully stocked kitchen, indoor plumbing, and a communications array that rivaled the ones on many ships.

The building itself was located below the lines that the Monuments Protection Arm had designated to protect the Spires. He suspected the line was designed to exclude the Command Center, since it predated not only the line, but the Monuments Protection Arm as well.

He appreciated the lack of designation—because it meant that he could use the communications equipment without worrying about damaging the Spires. He suspected he would have a lot of work to do here, even after he had vetted the newcomers.

His other team member waited outside the Command Center's main door. Valma Tanis was a tall woman. She wore shorts and a T-shirt that bared her muscular arms despite the sunburn threat. Long ago, she had led a military unit stationed on a planet hotter and brighter than this one; the implants she got as part of that service would allow her to stand in light two times brighter than this without any noticeable skin damage.

“Any sign of them?” Meklos asked.

The center itself stood in the exact middle of the path that Chavo and the two newcomers would take to come up the mountainside.

“Not yet,” Valma said. “I checked for ships. They have a single space cruiser parked in the designated zone. The ship is small and had to have come from a relatively short distance away.”

“How short?” Meklos asked.

“The nearest star base is about the extent of its range.”

He felt a surge of irritation. If Dr. Reese had told him more about these two, he wouldn't worry about such things as ships and ranges and travel times.

“Any identifying marks?” he asked.

“Just commercial ones. The ship was purchased from a regular dealer, without any government or business labels. It's not connected to the Scholars, and it's not part of any known business.”

Which could be good and bad. If they weren't affiliated, then they had no real contacts, and couldn't be expected to have any kind of back-up. Or the ship looked deliberately innocuous, to make anyone who wanted to check on it relax their guard.

“Ships in orbit?” he asked.

“More than I care to count,” she said. “This center doesn't have the equipment to surreptitiously scan them, but I did check with the Unified Governments, and they say nothing out of the ordinary is going on up there.”

Well, that was something, at least. He gazed down the trail. It was quite a hike from the designated parking area, and if the two newcomers didn't know how to pack, they'd be struggling by the time they got here.

Declan came around the building. He was short and squat, stronger than he looked and older as well. His fatigues were covered with the red dust from this lower section of the mountain.

“They're winding their way around the last part of the trail,” he said. “Chavo, a man, and a woman. They have professional level backpacks.”

“Any idea who they are?” Meklos asked.

“I can go inside, scan, and see if I get identifiers,” Declan said.

Meklos shook his head. He could see them now, both taller than the too-thin Chavo. “There isn't time.”

He turned to Valma. “Get them water,” he said.

She nodded and disappeared into the command center. He should have thought of that earlier. People were much more willing to subject themselves to search when they thought the people searching them were kind.

She came back out with three chilled bottles in her right hand just as Chavo and the other two arrived. Chavo saw Meklos and rolled his eyes. Meklos ignored him.

Meklos stepped forward and extended his hand. “Meklos Verr, head of security.”

The woman was the one who took his hand, which meant she was the one in charge.

“Navi Salvino,” she said, “and my partner, Roye Bruget.”

Meklos nodded at Valma. She handed out the water. Bruget put the bottle against his forehead and closed his eyes. Obviously the heat was getting to him already.

Salvino opened her bottle and took a dainty sip. She seemed fine, but Meklos didn't know if that was an act or not.

“I'm sorry,” he said as gently as he could. “I need you to state your purpose here so that I can check it against our logs.”

“We're the cave divers that Dr. Reese sent for,” Salvino said.

Salvino's words so shocked him that he nearly repeated what she'd said to make sure he'd heard it correctly. Cave divers? Dr. Reese had said nothing about caves. If caves honeycombed a mountain like Denon's Secret, then they were a security risk, and one he should have known about from the very beginning.

Meklos hoped his shock hadn't shown on his face. He glanced at Chavo, who shrugged. Apparently he hadn't known either.

Declan had moved slightly into a more defensive position. Valma watched warily from the side of the path.