The Darwin Elevator (61 page)

Faced with that black opening, tall as a two-story home, and no backup, Skyler finally stopped. He stood there, caught between the sane choice of returning to get help and the intoxicating urge to see what lay within.

A vision hit him. The colonists, huddled around the comm, a dozen people speaking at once and as many more coming through the speaker, as they debated the proper course of action to explore the crash site. If it even was a crash site. A slew of other theories were offered. Fair or not, the mental image resonated.

“Yeah,” Skyler said to himself, “enough of debate and consensus.”

He set to work on his gun again, taking care to keep noise to a minimum. The grenade launcher came off, the flashlight taking its place once again. Backpack re-slung over his shoulders, he took a few tentative steps into the darkness. He glanced back with each step, waiting until he could see little of the ground outside before turning on the flashlight. The last thing he needed right now was for fifty subhumans to spot him and come charging in.

Root systems from the trees above the tunnel dangled from the ceiling, charred and gnarled. The air had an overpowering smoke scent to it. Exposed rocks dotted the curved wall of the circular passage, some cleaved in half, signs of slag from the heat of whatever had forged this cavity. Water trailed down the center of the floor, eroding a jagged path into the darkness.

When the trickle of runoff began to widen into a pool, Skyler knew the back of the tunnel loomed. The diameter of the cavity began to shrink as well, and the heat became stifling. Without taking his eyes off the dark passage, he reached and unzipped his vest. Moisture and sweat trickled down his neck and sides.

Two steps later he caught the first hints of a shape in the gloom. The light from his weapon struggled to illuminate the form at first, as if it were somehow absorbing the beam. Each step brought more clarity, and Skyler was up to his knees in water when he finally had a clear view.

A shell ship, just as he thought. Perhaps ten meters long, miniature compared to those above Belém and Darwin. It rested on the bottom of the tunnel, a portion of it submerged in the pool of runoff. How the Builders’ vessel had forged this cave so much wider than its own girth, Skyler had no idea.

The tapered end wasn’t quite circular, he realized, but oval. The very tip of it folded inward on itself in a sharp beveled edge, not unlike the corners of the Aura towers. He stepped to one side, staying behind the hulking black form, to study the length of it. Much of the fuselage lay submerged in the rainwater, obscured by steam where the cold pool met balmy air.

His beam caught a gap in the center of the vessel, as if part of the shell had torn off. The gap spanned three meters left to right, and went clear over the top of the vessel.

Knee-high in cold water, Skyler froze up. He dared not draw a breath.

Something lurked within.