Requiem (73 page)

Sear moved
towards the hole. He thrust his legs through up to his chest. He
reached and grabbed Seline's arm, yanking her with him. The last
thing she saw was Mercer's shield exploding in his hands and a bolt
of light tearing through his body.

They were
squeezing through the spaces between the pipes. Seline was sweating
profusely. She couldn't tell if she was crying, she was too busy
struggling and suffocating in the heat of what her fear convinced
her would be her coffin. Mercer's voice echoed inside her helmet.
She could feel the heat from the blast, burning her skin. Her eyes
searched frantically for something familiar. Pipes and tubes ran in
every direction. Her eyes were squinting, trying to keep out the
sweat. Sear's hand was wrapped around her wrist, dragging her
through the spaces between the pipes.

The vibration
and flashing of lights had stopped but the sense of danger stabbed
into her back like a knife.

They had passed
into the depths of the next layer. An ostensible boiler room,
cramped, industrial, and disorienting. They'd crawled into a large
cavity between the pipes. Therin and Carex were already waiting
each with a finger on the triggers of their rifles.

Sear appeared
in front of Seline. She was still catching her breath but it
remained just out of reach. Her back was against the wall of the
cavity. Her hands grabbed at her stomach unsure of what they were
supposed to be doing.

'Seline. It's
alright.'

She tried to
push him away but he placed his hands on her shoulders and held
them. She kept pushing him. He placed a hand on the side of her
helmet, held her head up and told her to look at him. She couldn't
see the colour of his eyes but could see the definition, the shape
of the iris. The sensation returned to her fingers. Her breathing
slowed but the confusion remained.

'It's alright,
Seline. They've stopped.'

She managed to
catch her breath. 'Why, why would they stop?'

Sear looked
around at the vents and tubes. 'Maybe they don't want to damage
whatever is in here.'

'I don't think
they could fit in here anyway,' said Therin.

'If they really
wanted to, they could,' said Carex.

Seline looked
around at the new surroundings, searching for any indication of
Mercer. Her lips were shaking, afraid of what might happen if she
said the words. Afraid they might commit something to reality. Sear
had moved away from her. She found herself looking at Therin who
was looking back at her only two metres away.

'Mercer?' she
said.

Therin's voice
was shaking from the coldness she was forcing into the words. 'He's
gone.'

Seline looked
at Carex. He pulled his eyes away, apparently examining some
superficial damage to his suit.

Seline looked
at Sear who had moved away to study the pipes. She watched him,
expecting him to turn to her and say something but he didn't. She
crawled over one of the ventilation pipes. She was about to place a
hand on his shoulder and yank him back from whatever horizon his
mind had drifted to.

'I know what
happened, Seline, reciting it to me will not help,' he said.

'But he's gone,
Sear.'

'And so is
everyone else if we don't keep moving.'

Carex lifted
his head up from his hands, 'Move where? We don't even know where
we are. We don't even know what the fuck's going on out there. For
all we know, Saranture is already lost.'

All eyes were
on Sear.

'Not even
Icarus is that fast,' he said. 'We still have time.'

'If this
mission was such a long shot with five of us then what is it now
with only four?' said Carex.

'And what will
it be with three if you decide to back out now? Our chances out
there are the same as in here. The odds are immeasurable. Accept
it. Accept it and fight anyway because you have nothing left to
lose.' Sear displayed the hologram of Icarus once again. The tiny
dot indicating their position blinked before the group. 'There's
still enough room to move in here. We have no choice but to
continue on. The centre of Icarus,' he looked up the others,
'that's where we're heading.'

The calmness in
his voice was cracking. Seline recognised the emotions. Fear.
Doubt. Loss.

'We can't
afford to waste time here,' said Sear. 'There may be more sentinels
on the way or worse.'

'We need a
break, Sear. We need to rest for a moment.'

'No. Stopping
now only makes moving forward that much harder.'

Sear found a
crawl space between the dense thicket of vents and pipes. 'This
looks like our best chance,' he said, and pulled himself into the
space.

Therin crawled
in behind Sear, using her thrusters to catch up.

Seline looked
at Carex. He was still breathing heavily. 'Are you alright?' she
asked.

'I was about to
ask you the same thing.'

'We can't stay
here,' she said.

'Yeah...' Carex
gestured to the crawlspace. 'After you.'

Every time part
of her touched the thrumming pipes Seline had to check for anything
that might suddenly materialise out of the darkness. A sentinel? A
repair drone? Mercer? Belameir? Mother? But there was only the
muted movements of Carex, shuffling in the space behind her.

Her mind kept
dragging her back to Mercer. To the final blast of light that he
tried to stand against. She thought she should say something. That
his death demanded more than what the group's silence could offer.
She found no words, only the gnawing feeling that something needed
to be said.

'I feel like I
should say something,' she said.

Everyone
continued shuffling forward in the gathering heat. Seline thought
no one had heard her until Therin finally spoke.

'Like
what?'

'… I don't
know, just something for Mercer.'

'If we stop for
him then we have to stop for everyone else,' said Sear. 'There will
be time to mourn when this is over.'

'It doesn't
need to be a sermon,' she said. 'I just can't help but feel like we
abandoned him.'

'We didn't
abandon him. He saved us so we could finish this. He knew what he
was doing. There was only one right choice to make and he made it.
There's nothing more to be said.'

Seline was
about to speak, to say that maybe he was right, when Sear spoke
again.

'What more do
you want from me, Seline? I can't afford to stop and reflect on
everything he meant to me – to us all. Not now. Not here. If we let
one memory in then the rest might come flooding right behind. He
meant a lot to me. More than could be put into words anyway.' He
paused and looked back over his shoulder, past Therin to Seline.
'You should know better than anyone that you don't need words to
express what someone means to you. For Mercer we'll let the silence
pay our respect. At least for now.'

Sweat was
running into her eyes. She was blinking to keep it out. 'You're
right,' she said. 'I was just… I dunno... let's keep moving.'

They'd reached
the end of the crawlspace and passed into a small opening. Seline
came behind Sear and Therin, ducking under a pipe and pushing off
another. She looked up, down, left and right. The labyrinth had
terminated. Her heart sank further down. She swallowed. The weight
ran down her throat, wrapping itself around her heart, anchoring
each movement to some colossal weight somewhere far below. She
stared blankly at the wall that blocked their path.

'Goddamn it,'
she heard Therin say. 'You've got to be kidding me.'

Seline
approached the wall first. She ran her hand over its featureless
surface. She looked down at the radar. The wall was thick, too
thick for the radar to give a reliable reading.

'How many
layers does this thing have?' said Carex.

Seline
sighed.

They looked
over the wall in silence. Seline turned back to the pipes. 'These
pipes must lead somewhere,' she finally said.

'Of course they
lead somewhere. The question is, is it where we want to go?' said
Therin.

'Well we need
to get past this wall somehow,' said Seline. 'We don't have the
plasma cutter and, according to the scanner, it's too thick for
brute force.'

'We're going to
have to follow the pipes and hope that, at some point, they pass
through this wall,' said Sear.

'And then
what?' said Carex. 'Bust in to one and follow it through? I know
these suits are heat resistant but the readings are saying some of
them are over one hundred degrees.'

'And some are
as low as eighty which our suits are capable of handling.'

'But for how
long? We don't know how thick this wall is. It could go for
kilometres,' said Carex.

'And it could
go for only twenty metres – just out of range of our scanners,'
said Therin.

'Look, either
way we're going to have to scout around this wall in order to find
a way through,' said Sear. 'We should keep an eye on the pipes to
see where they go as well as any other means of getting through the
wall. For all we know there might be a giant welcome mat rolled out
for us somewhere around here.'

'I'm reluctant
to suggest that we split up but it might be the best idea,' said
Therin.

'Two teams...
at least,' said Seline, desperately not wanting to be left
alone.

'Two teams,'
agreed Sear. 'One to follow the pipes north, the other to follow
them south.'

Seline sighed
quietly in relief. Therin and Carex assented. Before Sear could
assign teams, Therin tapped Carex's back and gestured for him to
follow her towards the southern hemisphere.

Sear hadn't
moved. He looked at Therin, she could sense the question he was
holding onto. 'Carex and I are together,' she said. 'You're under
enough pressure without having to worry about Seline.'

Sear looked
across to Seline. He could see her face clearly through the
greenwash of the night-vision. Sweat had escaped past the cotton
fibre band across her forehead and dribbled in thick, slow tracks
down the sides of her face. She said nothing. He didn't argue.

'Good luck,' he
said to Therin and Carex. 'Keep in contact and try keep the risks
to a minimum.'

They watched
Therin and Carex move away, following the wall. Sear turned and
headed in the opposite direction. Seline followed, lingering a
metre or so behind while her mind raced. She needed to stop. Just a
moment to recover. She thought about asking him but already knew
the answer.

'What's your
oxygen like?' Sear asked Seline.

Seline read the
gauge in her optics. '58 percent,' she said.

Still enough
oxygen to get back
, said the voice in her head.

They carefully
followed the face of the wall. Both holding their rifles up,
scanning the small spaces between the pipes and vents to their
left.

'Some of the
pipes are running through the wall,' said Seline, pointing ahead
with her rifle.

'These are too
small for even you to fit through, but there may be more.'

Oxygen at 52
percent

They continued
upward at a steady pace until Seline spotted another group of pipes
to the north-east. They were far off but looked like they were
feeding directly into the wall.

'Sear. Can you
see that?'

'I see it.
Let's get a closer look,' he said.

They both gave
a gentle kick of their thrusters and continued to scan the close by
vents and the horizons of the wall.

A thick pipe
stuck out from the surrounding vents and terminated flush with the
wall.

'This is what
we're looking for,' said Sear.

It still looked
a bit thin to Seline's eye. She ran her hand along one of the
joints, feeling for nothing in particular just wanting to feel like
she was doing something. She noticed Sear was doing the same thing
on the other side of the pipe.

He pulled his
hand away. 'I'll try Therin. Maybe she found something.' He spoke
into the comm. 'Therin, are you there?'

No reply.

'Therin? Come
in.'

'I'm here,' she
said, breathless.

'Any luck down
there?'

'Depends. If by
luck you mean hundred degree heat and superheated plates of steel
then yeah, I'm pretty damn lucky.'

'We're
somewhere near the northern point of the shell,' said Sear. 'We've
found a pipe that looks like it goes directly through the wall.
It's big enough to squeeze through, at least for Seline.'

A piercing
sensation ran down her spine like a cold, serrated blade.

'Good. There
aren't many pipes down here. We cleared most of them a while back.
From what I can tell, we're somewhere near the bottom of the shell.
This thing is massive. It must be some kind of heat sink. I have no
idea how big it is but it goes for as far as I can see. It might
even cover the entire bottom side of this thing.'

'Still no way
through?'

'No. No weak
spots that we've seen. No pipes or vents. Not a single welcome
mat.'

'Any trace of
sentinels?'

'Not yet, only
the maintenance drones so far. It's pretty cramped in here though.
Maybe Icarus didn't expect anyone to get this far in.'

'Might explain
the lack of defence systems. Still, keep your guard up.' Sear
looked up at the pipe. 'Seline is going through the pipe,' he said
to Therin.

Oxygen at 49
percent.

'Do you need
any help up there?'

'No. We can
manage. You may as well save your fuel. Find out what you can while
you're down there.'

'Acknowledged.
Keep us updated.'

'Will do.'

'Good
luck.'

The sound of
radio static was deafening. Seline scratched the non-existent itch
on her arm. She stared at the pipe.

'Alone?' she
asked without shifting her gaze.