He was back to being his usual focused self today, but there were dark shadows under his eyes. I don’t think he slept much last night. He’s asleep two pods away from me right now, and I hope he has a better night.
The training session was winding down when I started hearing the Ddura. It says something for my chances of hiding my feelings for Ruuel that he always seems to know when I’m debating telling him something. He said, "Hold," to the squads, then looked at me. "The Ddura?"
I nodded. "Sounds anxious."
"Hunting?"
"No. The confused noise." I transmitted what I was hearing into the squad channel, and watched his eyes narrow.
He added Tsur Selkie to the channel, then said: "Either a reaction to the machine itself, or to a threat to the site’s integrity."
"Continue the relay, Devlin," was all Selkie said to us, but he obviously said a whole lot on other channels since there was a sudden exodus of people out of the central circle toward the edge of the lake.
The tone of the Ddura’s call changed almost immediately. "Now partly question noise, but mainly unhappy noise," I said helpfully over the interface, then asked Shaf aloud: "Kolar has dogs, right?"
He wasn’t surprised by my hearing the Ddura, so I guessed he’d gotten through my briefing material, and just nodded in answer to my question.
"Ddura acts like very big dog." I looked back at Ruuel. "This sounds like one not know Muinans back. Ddura at Pandora stopped making this cry."
"Security identification has been reapplied," Tsur Selkie said. "Stand by."
The Ddura paused mid-moan, making the confused sound again, then the question noise. But then it switched back to being mournful.
"Security identification had been placed on the power unit," Selkie said, sounding satisfied. "Evidently that isn’t sufficient to cover a machine using that power unit. The device looks as if it will be successful, however."
He left the channel, and Ruuel said: "Keep lunch brief. If the site is opened, both squads will go in as point team."
I’m guessing he had a private channel open to Shaf, since they walked off together. I dropped out of mission channel as well, and glanced at two squads of Setari who were going to go on being super-correct at each other, but at least didn’t seem to be openly hostile. I’ve no doubt Fourth Squad knew that Katzyen had started out spoiling for a fight, but they would follow Ruuel’s lead. Ruuel’s lead wasn’t exactly chatty, though, and everyone was silent as we started walking back to the mess tent.
"Are Kolaren squads numbered as well?" I asked Taranza, who looked to be around my age rather than the couple of years older the other Kolarens seemed to be. She had short, streaky blonde hair and less of a tan than the others, and a way of looking around with wide-eyed appreciation which I liked. "Like this is Fourth Squad, and the other squad here is Ninth Squad?"
"We’re First Squad," Taranza said, with a faintly apologetic glance at the Taren Setari. "That is going to cause some confusion."
Both squads ended up talking that over during lunch, even Sonn making one or two suggestions. The Ninth Squad captain, whose watch was about to start and who was eating breakfast when we reached the mess tent, ended up deciding that we could use a variation which was the equivalent of Squad One and it would still mean the same thing and the Kolarens seemed okay with that, though I expect they’ll keeping calling themselves First Squad in their own dialect.
Islen Tezart explained that the machine his team had been building created a counter field of aether to hold the site’s own aether field back from the doorway around South Mountain. Then they used the same sort of nanotech which they create their buildings with to eat the seal – and only the seal – away. The counter field machine formed an ugly frame about the opening, but it was done.
Going in as point team was delayed by what was on the far side of the seal. Ruuel’s initial reaction had prepared me a little and I’d expected there would be the skeletons of the people who’d been trapped inside, but no-one had guessed at the sheer number. Dozens, maybe hundreds, packed into a short entry corridor and hexagonal room beyond. How many were crushed by the panicked press trying to escape? The seal had preserved them well, too: leathery skin stretched over grey bone, cloth still whole, although so fragile a touch would probably destroy it. They were almost all lying facing outward, withered hands stretched forward or covering their heads. I guess it was the Ddura which they were running from. Something which caught and killed them all together.
Imaging from scans had already shown us the general outline of the underground rooms: five ring-like levels, each smaller than the previous one until finally there was what seemed to be a single room, sitting at the centre point between the three mountains. Once I’d seen how huge the place was I wasn’t surprised the Tarens had thrown a big portion of their resources at this place. The site commander wanted the Setari to sweep the rooms of this part of this level for anything which sparked their Combat Sight – monsters, traps, invisible lurking death – and if possible locate the communication platform and maybe whatever was generating the aether field. Islen Duffen wasn’t very pleased with the Setari going in first, even though they were under orders to levitate as much as possible to avoid disturbing anything. But since the massive battle she seems more inclined to listen to what the Setari have to say, at least where safety is concerned. She wants me to tell her more about Earth history when she has time, but since we found this site she’s worked non-stop and looks ready to drop, so I don’t know when that will happen.
The walls inside the site glowed: the same sort of glow made in Pandora during moonfall, but with no free-flowing aether. It meant we didn’t have to worry about lights, at least. Fourth and Squad One split into their respective teams, and worked their way along a main central passage, moving apart to follow side-corridors and enter rooms, and then joining up again. One thing they found out almost immediately was that the ramps down were sealed like the entrances, and when we met a longer connecting passageway on this level, it was also sealed. So we’ve only gained access to one third of the top level.
It was a town, not a tomb. I’ve no idea why any of the old Muinans would want to live underground – the issue of ventilation alone would be enough to make it less than ideal – but every room we looked in seemed to be living quarters, except for occasional ones which were water sources or gathering areas. Nothing leapt out at us and there were no traps. The communication platform was in the room at the end of the long spoke passage and after a tedious amount of back and forth discussion they had Sonn try to use the platform to deactivate the seals. Didn’t work, did produce an ecstatic Ddura, but fortunately going back outside was next on our schedule.
The technology group spent the afternoon constructing another machine around the entrance to North Mountain, while the archaeologists broke into two teams: one painstakingly untangling the human wreckage just within the entrance, and the other working on the nearest of the rooms. The archaeologists are so tremendously excited. It’s not that everything was perfectly preserved or anything, but there had been very few places at Pandora and Nurioth which hadn’t been exposed to wind and rain and been pulled about by animals. And, of course, it’s working old Lantaren technology. I don’t know if this is the big break we need to fix the spaces, but it’s the first major find since Tare gained security clearance.