this stark dungeon.
Every shrub was a hiding place. Every doorway down the long hall was a potential sniper’s nest.
“What the hell is this place?” Wilton asked.
Nobody else spoke.
The alarm siren echoed off the long walls, bouncing back to them in a solid wall of sound.
“Where are all the Pukes?” Price asked.
“Wilton, Monster.” Chisnall nodded at the first door.
Price pressed Brogan against a wall, her gun at the back of her neck.
“If I even think you’re going to call out, I’ll make sure you can’t. Permanently,” Price said.
Chisnall crouched down, weapons aimed forward down the long hall. Wilton and Monster took the doorway assault-style. They flattened themselves against each side of the door before smashing it open with a boot heel and diving inside—one left, one right, one high, one low—guns ready.
“Clear,” Wilton said, and Monster echoed the word. The room was empty.
They disappeared inside for a moment, then reappeared.
“It’s a dorm,” Wilton said. “Bzadian style. Eight sleeping tablets. Empty.”
“Lived in?” Chisnall asked.
Wilton nodded. “Clothes, personal effects. Lights are on but nobody’s home.”
The next doorway was the same, and the next. Wherever the inhabitants of this place were, it was not in their living quarters.
Halfway along the hall, light from a side passage fell in a pool on the floor. After a quick sweep of the remaining dormitories, they made their way back to the lighted passage.
As they neared it, the red flash and strident siren stopped abruptly.
“It was giving me a headache,” Fleming’s voice said on the comm.
“Good effort,” Chisnall said.
The passage was ten meters long with a door at the end. Closed, but there was no lock.
Chisnall pulled down on the handle as quietly as he could and used the snout of his sidearm to push the door open.
Silence. No shots. No shouting.
He eased it open a fraction more, then looked back at his team. “Okay. Who wants to be a hero?” he asked.
Nobody answered.
“It’s you,” Chisnall said, looking at Wilton.
Wilton grinned and took a step backward. The others cleared a path. He broke into a run, and just as he reached the door, Chisnall flicked it open. Wilton rolled through the doorway in a crouch—the smallest possible target. He scanned the room while the others leaned out from the doorway to offer fire support.
Two large machines took most of the space. From one came the sound of rushing water and from the other the sound of flowing air. This would be the plant room that kept air and water circulating throughout the underground installation.
Still no contact with the enemy.
Chisnall examined his rough map of the underground complex. “Let’s start again from the beginning,” he said.
They returned to the passageway and walked through the accommodation block back to the entrance.
“Anything on the monitors?” Chisnall asked.
“All clear,” Fleming said.
Chisnall checked his map, marking in the doors and passageways that led out from the atrium.
First door on the left, the security office.
First door on the right, the storeroom.
First passageway on the right led to the generator room where they had hidden the warhead.
The middle door was the passage to the dormitories.
That left the second passage on the left.
“On me,” he said, and led the way into it. Price came last, pushing Brogan along in front of her.
It opened into an office area. A circular room. The desks were workstations, four chairs at each, with a low partition allowing the users some privacy while they worked. Admin staff, Chisnall guessed. The desks were made of a light, aluminum-like metal that the Bzadians used extensively.
The computers and filing cabinets might yield interesting data, he thought, but there was little time to stop and investigate. Several of the desks were covered with pieces of paper. Tables of numbers and charts.
“Still warm,” Price said. Chisnall looked over to see her pressing the back of her hand to a drinking tube on one of the desks.
The aliens had cleared out in a hurry.
“We’ll come back here after the preliminary recon,” he said. “See what we can get out of those computers.”
So far they had found little of interest. Yet the aliens had gone to a lot of trouble to hide this place away from satellite eyes, deep inside Uluru. They had done that for a reason.
They passed through the administration offices, weapons ready. The Pukes had to be somewhere. But where?
They took the passageway directly in front of them, emerging into a mess hall. Some of the tables still had food and drinking tubes on them. A music keyboard was near one wall, a Bzadian-style electronic