Cradle of the Deep (Ex Situ Book 2) by Deirdre Gould

Author:Deirdre Gould [Gould, Deirdre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-04T06:00:00+00:00

17

“Can’t believe you talked me into this,” grumbled Chao as he wriggled through the maintenance tube ahead of her.

“Wasn’t me,” said Indra, yanking the clattering sack of metal tools as she crawled. “It’s the Keseburg. Wasn’t really a choice. You heard Nat, if we don’t do this, we’re dead.”

“You really think Issk’ath’s just going to let us do this?”

“You told me the robot was huge. We can barely fit through here,” she grunted, shoving aside a bundle of cords with her elbow. “It’s not going to be able to reach us or the wiring.”

They reached the intersection with Maintenance. “It could still do things. Cut off oxygen to the deck. Turn off the heat. Kill the plants in Agri.”

“How many weeks has it been Chao, since you went into hiding?”

“I’ve lost track,” he turned down a side tunnel. “I think about eight now,” he called over his shoulder.

“It knew our language within moments. It didn’t take that thing eight weeks to figure out the environmental controls. If it wanted to kill us, it would have done it by now. You told me that it wants us alive. That’s our bargaining chip.”

“Some bargaining chip,” he muttered, holding aside a heavy cable for her to slide through.

“Have you got a better idea?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I do, but nobody wants to listen to it.”

“Well? Spit it out.” She turned to hold up the cable for him, too, and he wriggled past her.

“We take the Dolan or any other of the fleet that’s working, and we go down to the planet.”

Indra snorted a laugh.

“Knew you wouldn’t even think about it.” The junction box for the engines glowed a faint green ahead. They slithered toward it, Chao wiping his face with a dusty hand. The electric heat of a thousand wires around them was stifling and Indra’s skin itched with trickling sweat.

“Ok, let’s think about it,” she grunted, pulling the bag of tools up beside them. Chao sat hunched over, unburying the electric leads from the large box. “First thing is that we don’t know if it’s a toxic wasteland there.”

“We do. I had access to the Wolfinger logs for a little while, remember? They were breathing without helmets down there. A water source was a short walk from the landing zone. There were plants and animals. I’m sure there are dangers, but even Earth had dangers. And we’re going to run out of material for fuel up here eventually. Thirty-one people and some half-broken cloning tanks aren’t going to create enough to keep even the basics up forever.” He shut his eyes and sighed as the air cycler kicked on above their heads and a wisp of a cool breeze flickered over them.

“Okay,” she said, unscrewing the chip panel from the front of the box. “Let’s agree that there’s at least a chance of survival down there. I agree, it’s better than waiting to die up here when our air or heat run out. But that robot came from down there, too. For all we know, there’s an entire army of those things down there.

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