Necropolis 3 (11 page)

As he stepped back out into the break room, he realized the area rattled gently. For a moment, he was absolutely, completely perplexed; convinced he was having some kind of hallucination. The rumble grew stronger, knocking things off shelves, making a mess of the break room.

At first, he thought it might be some kind of earthquake, but began to seriously wonder if airless moons even had those. Then he heard an earth-shattering, marrow-freezing roar as the tremendous rumbling reached its apex.

Greg stood frozen, even after the tremors had completely disappeared. All he could think of was some kind of giant worm, a titanic monstrosity that had been infected by the Undead or co-opted by the Augmented. Suddenly, going on seemed a lot harder than it had been before. He stared down uncertainly at his bolt gun.

Finally, Greg took a deep breath and let it out in a long, slow sigh. He could do this. He
had
to do this. There was no telling what the hell was going on upstairs with Kyra, Campbell, and the others. Not to mention that the local star was on its way to going supernova. He roused himself and made for the far door.

After hesitating far too long, Greg finally released the lockdown he'd placed on the door and opened it. There was nothing waiting for him in the rocky tunnel beyond, the way he had yet to go, the way he prayed held his escape from this rock tomb. His mind wandered as he slipped out into the tunnel and progressed down it.

What could have
possibly
been large enough to produce such a sound and such a tremor in its passing? He couldn't think of anything, not even the beefed-up Berserker or the Augmented thing he'd fought in the garage. This thing, this mystery creature, seemed larger by several magnitudes than either of those things.

Greg came to a stop as he neared the end of the tunnel.

He looked down at his bolt gun once more, took another deep breath, held it, and then let it out in a long, slow sigh.

He could do this. He
had
to do this.

Greg pressed on into the unknown.

Chapter 10

–
The Deep
–

Keep moving.

It was a survival tactic that Greg had picked up somewhere in the rainy wastelands of Dis. It had stuck with him ever since. Already, he missed the primal comfort the break area offered. Like a little outpost of civilization, staked in the outer reaches of the explored regions beneath Onyx. The warmth, the light, the walls.

Greg made himself forget about the break area. He was forging ahead into new territory. Undead territory, by the smell of it. Only he hadn't come across
anything
. Besides the rumbling and the roaring, Greg hadn't encountered even a single corpse, walking or dead. No zombies, no Stalkers, no Rippers.

On the one hand, it filled him with relief. The bolt gun he held would do the job...probably, but even if it did, he had limited ammo and it wouldn't be as effective as even a pistol. He kept his ears sharp for undead groans, haunting moans, shuffling footsteps, scurrying, anything that might tip the hand of any nearby Undead.

There was nothing.

Nothing but...the smell. The reek of corrupted flesh seemed to permeate the air, like something that drifted just beneath the surface. It made him gag. Greg tried to focus on his surroundings. He'd made his way through a long, poorly-lit tunnel. There seemed to be a work-light only every ten or fifteen meters. Among those, some of them flickered weakly, others were completely dead.

The tunnel was on a slope. He headed back up, which was good. He needed to get the hell out of this nightmare. Before long, he noticed the light up ahead was better. Not by much, but enough to stir his hopes. He finally crested the top of the tunnel and stopped the passageway opened up into a truly massive cavern.

At least, he
assumed
it was. The light was still quite poor. He could just barely make out the far wall, but couldn't tell how high the ceiling was. Every little sound he made echoed away from him into the abyssal darkness.

Greg sighed heavily. He scanned the area for any immediate threat. Nothing shifted in the shadows, he heard no movement. From what little he could see, it was obvious that this was some kind of central mining chamber. The dead hulks of earth-movers and drillers occupied the ground level.

There was a hint of catwalks and ladders built along the walls, but what little he could see was in poor repair. Something caught his attention, something flaring dimly in the thin light. He made his way towards it, weaving his way through the heaps of metal that had been forged into vehicle shapes.

As Greg came around the equipment, he saw what was producing the light: a terminal. It warmed his heart. He quickly crossed the distance between them and fired the thing up, bringing it out of sleep mode. Immediately he could tell that it was running off reserve power. Most of its functions weren't available.

He spent several frustrated minutes attempting to figure out what he could access, and then navigated that. Loading each new page seemed to take forever. Finally, he came to a map of the area and frowned at what he saw.

This was the lowest level of the mines, which explained why everything was so under-developed and empty. The only way up appeared to be the area he was in. However, he decided, he wasn't going
anywhere
until he got some fucking light going. It might help him directly, it might not, but it was just too creepy down here.

There wasn't much to the area he was in. It was mostly just tunnels and caverns with a few remote outposts, similar to the one he'd found a ways back. There was, however, a generator room nearby.

Greg wasn't a technician, but he'd picked up a handful of useful tips from Powell and the other techs he'd hung around over the past few weeks. If it wasn't totally gone, he might be able to reactivate the generator they'd installed down here and bring the lights back online. Another thing he'd discovered was that some of the more basic systems, like a generator or a terminal network node or a power junction, weren't
too
complex.

Greg stared at the map for a few more seconds. The route there was easy. He just had to go left, follow another tunnel for a dozen meters, and there was the generator room.

The bolt gun firmly in his sweaty grip, Greg turned and set off towards the far tunnel. Drying off and changing uniforms had done a lot to help him warm up, but Greg noted how downright cold it was down in the mines. He shivered as he came to the mouth of the new tunnel. It was considerably smaller than the ones he'd been traversing so far. As Greg made his way slowly towards the generator, he pondered over the fact that he had somehow, in all his time spent down here, not been able to secure a flashlight.

Or a radio for that matter.

He supposed he should be thankful for the bolt gun, the food, the change of clothes, and the medical kit. It actually was a lot, when he thought about it. Maybe there was something to that saying about counting your blessings.

The tunnel came to an end. There was no door, just an opening with a great deal of thick, black industrial-strength cables coming out of it. Greg poked his head cautiously in and looked around. The light, though thin and gray, was just good enough to show him exactly what he didn't want to see. A handful of blackened, giant spiders occupied the generator room. Some of them clung to the ceiling and walls.

Greg hesitated, his grasp clenched around the bolt gun. He raised it, sighted the spider hanging on the ceiling overhead and hesitated as his finger tightened on the trigger. What if it wasn't powerful enough?

Oh well.

He squeezed the trigger.

There was a sharp
hiss
and suddenly the spider no longer stuck to the ceiling. It smashed to the floor in a tangle of dark, thrashing limbs. A high-pitched shriek filled the air as it attempted to right itself. The others came to life. Greg aimed at the next one, which came down from the wall, and fired twice.

There was a dark spray of gore and the creature thrashed violently. Greg realized he had pinned it to the wall. He aimed and fired again, this time destroying the alien face of one that had made it to the ground and
was coming for him. He counted three more still moving and able-bodied. They were coming for him.

He backed up, taking aim and firing as they advanced on him, their movement frantic and jittery. Two of them went down, or at least stopped advancing on him. The third leaped through the air, legs splayed open. Terror seized Greg as the dark, titanic spider filled his vision and he froze.

At the last second, he snapped the bolt gun up and fired off the rest of the magazine. The force of the bolts sent the spider flying back the way it had come in a visceral spray of gore. Greg let out a breath he hadn't even realized he held and slowly lowered the gun. His hands trembled from a cocktail of terror and adrenaline.

He ejected the empty magazine and fed a fresh one in. Peering cautiously into the generator room, he saw that some of the spiders were still alive. He moved in and, as quickly and carefully as he could manage, finished each of them off with a bolt to the face.

With the spiders dealt with, Greg stared around the room. It wasn't very large, or well-designed. There was just a large piece of machinery at the back of the room and some shelving units, crates, and foldout tables scattered around.

A screen centered on the front face of the generator flared red, blinking slowly on and off in the dim light. Greg crossed the room and stood before it.

Power: Critical Low

Relief swept through Greg. The model was similar to the one they'd found in the abandoned repair station on Dis, near the end of their stay there. Powell had shown him the simple procedure of replacing power cells.

Turning and sweeping his gaze once more across the area, he stared at a single power cell resting on one of the foldout tables. There was a pair of crates next to it, one of them open. He crossed to them and stared down. Each crate held a pair of cells. Four was more than enough to work with.

He spent a few seconds trying to decide what to do with the bolt gun. He had no holster, no sling, nothing to put it on his person. Frowning, he finally set it down on the table and picked up one of the heavy cells. He carried it across the room and set it down on the ground next to the generator.

After a few moments of hunting, he finally located a panel on the front of the device and opened it up. Two power cells rested inside. A small screen on the front of each showed a blinking, red and nearly empty bar.

Greg grabbed one and slipped it out. Instantly, all the power remaining in the area died. Everything shut down and he froze as he was plunged into an absolute and perfect silence and darkness. Greg swallowed, tried to tell himself to not be afraid of the dark. Only it wasn't the dark that terrified him, but rather the things that may lurk in the dark, things that didn't need light to see by to find him.

Moving carefully, wishing vainly for a flashlight, he felt his way along the generator until he returned to the spot where he'd set down the new cell. His heart thudded violently now and he seriously began to worry about having a heart attack. He tried to calm himself as he knelt and hauled the cell up, but dark thoughts wouldn't leave him be.

What if there was something else out there?

What if the power cell was dead?

What if he fried himself trying to do this?

What if-

He slipped the power cell into the slot and instantly the emergency power came back on. Greg spun, expecting to see something had slipped into the room with him, some dark shape looming in the doorway or perhaps
right behind him
.

There was nothing. He was still alone in the room. Greg laughed nervously, an anticlimax, he supposed it would be call
ed, if this were a novel or a movie. He frowned as he realized only emergency power was on. He studied the new power cell. Yep, it was new alright. The power bar was green, full, and steady.

Finally, he decided that you had to have
both
cells replaced before full power would come back. He supposed it made sense. Greg took the second nearly-dead cell out, expecting to be plunged into darkness once more, but this time the single cell provided enough power to keep emergency lights going.

He crossed the room, hauled a second cell out of the crate and slipped it into its waiting, metal nest. As he did, there was a happy beeping sound and suddenly the lights all around him flared to full life. Greg let out a long sigh of relief, grabbed the panel and fitted it back into place. He walked back over to his bolt gun, and instead of picking it up and leaving the room, opted to take a break for a minute.

He hopped up on the table and sat down, relishing how good it felt to just sit there. He was tired. Already, his brief reprieve from the world in the lonely break room seemed like a million years ago. He was hungry, thirsty, and his whole body felt like it had been hit by a jump ship, then a bunch of jerks had beaten him while he lay there, unconscious.

Everything felt bruised, sore, and miserable.

He'd like to think that he hadn't complained that much, ever since waking up Dis in that ruined ship. How long ago had that been? Greg sat and thought for a long moment. At least three weeks...was it? That didn't seem right. In some ways, his days at the abandoned outposts in the wastelands of Dis seemed merely a handful of days ago, less than a week. In others, it seemed that those memories belonged to another person in another life.

The perception of the passage of time, he realized abruptly, was absolutely insane. How could something seem both yesterday and last century?

He shook his head and, after a long moment, stood up. Popping his neck, back, and shoulders, Greg grabbed the bolt gun and left the corpse-strewn generator room behind. He began to genuinely wonder how far he could push himself, how long he could keep going without a real break. Then he remembered the local star and picked up the pace.

As he approached the central mining chamber again, that same rumbling from before abruptly started. Greg froze and instinctively moved to the nearest wall. He crouched there, gun out, eyes hunting fervently along the only two entrances in the tunnel, one behind him, one ahead of him. He searched for something,
anything
that might give him a hint as to what the hell was making all the noise.

The tremors kept going for half a minute, sending dust and small rocks to the ground from overhead, and Greg worried about a cave in. He prepared himself to run at a second's notice, but the tremors subsided and he was still alive. Too much, Greg decided. There was just too much going on right now.

His frayed nerves were already bad enough as it was. He felt burned out and exhausted, too tired to deal with this shit, which only worsened as he came back into the main room, and for the first time, got a truly good look at the chamber above him. The walls were ringed with ladders and catwalks and there was even an elevator shaft lashed to the rock wall. To Greg's great dismay, they were, all of them, ruined.

It was as though something had come through, something huge, and gone to town on the place, destroying absolutely everything that might provide a way up. The most obvious and direct route out, the elevator, had been crushed in several places. The top had broken away and now the whole thing leaned precariously back out into the cavern, threatening to give way to gravity and tumble earthwards at any second.