EarthCore by Scott Sigler

Author:Scott Sigler [Sigler, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-07-09T02:00:54+00:00

All told, they had seven weapons: three H&K rifles, two Beretta pistols and two K-Bar knives. The pistols and knives belonged to O'Doyle and Lybrand, so they kept them—they each carried an H&K as well. The number of weapons was the good news, but the amount of ammo was the bad. They had six H&K magazines total, two for each rifle. O'Doyle set all their weapons to single-shot, as automatic would use up their precious ammo supply too quickly. The brief weapons training for Connell, Sanji, Veronica and Mack didn't involve actual firing—O'Doyle refused to waste a single round.

O'Doyle carried Mack's cavern map and took point. Connell walked about twenty paces behind him. Another twenty paces back Mack stayed with Veronica and Sanji, and twenty paces behind them Lybrand brought up the rear. They all had their headlamps on, which announced their presence to anyone further down the tunnel, but there was really no choice—they would either be an easy target or stumble blindly through the dark and dangerous caves.

A little more than six hours after the elevator plummeted to the shaft floor, the party set out down the tunnels. They knew roughly where they were headed, but nothing about what they'd find along the way. Chapter Twenty-three

10:32 a.m.

14,100 feet below the surface

They moved steadily downward through switchbacks and crisscrossing tunnels, sometimes crawling hundreds of feet down ancient rock slides, using the massive boulders like misshapen ladders. Twice they had to break out their two sets of climbing gear to get past particularly dangerous declines. When the tunnels were wide open and the footing sure on some ancient streambed, it felt like they moved quickly; but they wanted to move downward, not horizontally.

The massive expanse of unforgiving stone tunnels and brownish tan caverns soaring high overhead seemed to humble everyone, even Connell. In the midst of such grandeur, speech seemed somehow childish and ineffective. In three and a half hours, they'd moved more than three thousand vertical feet below the Picture Cavern.

O'Doyle halted the party and stopped to examine a puzzling feature on the ground. He called back to Connell, who came forward and stared at what looked like tiny indentations in the powdery cave silt. "What is that, tracks of some kind?" O'Doyle nodded. “I saw some a ways back, but I didn't much worry about it. That was stupid of me. I didn't think of Mack's little silver critters until I saw this set. Now that I look around, these tracks are everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Look at any patch of dirt you see in here and you'll see these little two-prong indents."

O'Doyle pointed to one of the marks. Connell's headlamp lit it up like a spotlight illuminating a pitch-black stage. The marks looked like someone had pressed a two-prong fork into the dirt. The “prongs” were less than a quarter-inch apart. Like eyes focusing in on ants after seeing the anthill from high above, hundreds of marks suddenly clicked sharply into view. They were everywhere. Thousands of them in just the small area surrounding him and O'Doyle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.