The Thousand Emperors Read Free Page B

supplies,’ said Marroqui. ‘They have to, or there’s no way out during a power failure. We shouldn’t have to worry about
getting down or back up.’ He nodded to another woman, with chestnut skin, who had bent down on one knee to examine the interior of a control panel embedded into the wall close by the rail.
‘How’s it looking, Triskia?’
    The woman made some final adjustment and snapped the panel shut before standing once more, her suit’s servos whining faintly. ‘It checks out, sir. No sabotage. We’re good to
go.’
    Luc tried not to think about the Stygian depths beneath them as he followed Marroqui and four others onto the elevator platform. Even so, his heart nearly skipped a beat when the platform began
its descent with a sudden, jerking motion.
    Halfway to the next level down, updates from the mosquitoes flowed in through Luc’s CogNet interface. His maps automatically reconfigured themselves according to their incoming data,
displaying rooms and corridors that had clearly not been part of the original complex.
    ‘Any idea what Antonov might have been building down there?’ Marroqui asked, referring to the new layout.
    ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Luc replied.
    ‘Could be weapons caches,’ suggested the woman called Triskia. ‘Maybe he’s still planning on fighting his way past us.’
    Marroqui shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He’d need bigger fabricants than the ones our mosquitoes have seen so far. If he’s still alive, he’s down to light
weapons, nothing more.’
    ‘Two of the other teams just called in, sir,’ said one of Marroqui’s men. ‘They’ve reconnoitred at the reactor room, so they should be able to get the power going
any—’
    As if in answer, rows of lights stretching the length of the shaft blinked into sudden life. Luc squinted, bright phantoms chasing each other across the back of his eyelids. The next time he
managed to open them properly, Marroqui and the rest were grinning and chuckling. As far as they were concerned, this was going to be a cakewalk.
    The platform slowed, and Luc felt a tightening in his chest. He had the uncanny sense they had passed beyond some undefined point of no return. He glanced down through the metal grille beneath
his feet, seeing twin rows of lights racing to meet each other in the shaft’s murky depths.
    They disembarked into a corridor leading deep inside Aeschere’s bowels. Something whirred past Luc, and he jerked around in time to see a mosquito come to a nimble landing on the floor a
metre or so from him.
    As he watched, translucent plastic wings retracted into the machine’s carapace. It turned this way and that, its movements jerky and curiously comical.
    ‘It’s one of ours,’ he heard Triskia say. ‘Why’s it—?’
    Triskia never got to finish her sentence. Luc watched with horrified anguish as she staggered, blood and bone misting the air as the back of her helmet exploded outwards.
    Luc kicked out at the mosquito with one booted foot, sending it crashing into a wall. Marroqui screamed an order, and the air filled with noise and fury as his remaining men opened fire on the
machine. By the time it was over, the mosquito lay still, its mirrored carapace blackened and ruined.
    Marroqui knelt down beside the dead woman’s prone form, swearing under his breath. He passed a finger over her forehead and muttered something that sounded like a prayer. One of the
Sandoz’s endless rituals, Luc guessed.
    ‘Shig,’ said Marroqui, looking back up at one of his men, ‘what the hell just happened? Was that one of our ‘skeets?’
    ‘It was,’ Shig replied, his face pale with shock. ‘I don’t understand why it . . .’
    His voice trailed off.
    ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Marroqui, standing back up and looking around. His previous swaggering bravado had all but deserted him now. ‘There’s no way Antonov
could have compromised our comms encryption . . . is there?’
    ‘It might