Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (18 page)

The
Odyssey
was resting in fifty feet of water, the keel section rising out of the depths at a thirty-degree angle and overhanging the sound at its apex. The remaining habitat cylinder was against the city coastline about a mile and a half south, resting amid the shattered wreckage of what appeared to be a few multimillion-dollar yachts.

He wasn’t concerned with the habitat cylinder, however. The materials that he, and the city, would need were in the keel of the ship. He just hoped that the majority of it was intact.

“Wait here,” he told Lyssa as he maneuvered the boat alongside the wrecked keel of the
Odyssey
. “She’ll have taken on water, and you don’t have a suit.”

“Will any of it be any good after that crash?” she asked, not for the first time.

“I lived. The hardware I’m going after is a lot sturdier than I am,” he replied. “If CM was up on impact, the gear should be intact.”

He reached out and grabbed a protruding piece of steel, peeled from the hull by either an internal explosion or perhaps something blowing through from the other side, and
pulled himself up. Jumping would have been easier, but it would have destabilized the boat, and he didn’t see the need to dunk his companion.

Eric crawled into the ship through the hole, hopping down into what was once a storeroom. He looked around, noting the scattered food packets, and knew he was a fair distance from the ordnance supply and the Museum. Unfortunately, both were well below the waterline.

Well, nothing to be done about it. Let’s get to work
.

Somewhere above him Eric heard a scraping sound, the grinding of metal on stone and the hammering blows of heavy feet on his decks.

Shit. Must have picked up some hitchhikers on the way down . . . or since she came to a rest
. He shifted his grip on the Priminae GWIZ and made his way across the slanted deck of the storeroom to the interior corridor.

The corridor led down into a darkness so pitch-black that he had to use his suit’s active night vision mode. There just wasn’t enough light to amplify with the passives. So Eric walked down into a green-bathed hall, warily clearing each room and branch corridor he passed. But he had checked three rooms before he thought to turn the dial down on the GWIZ, and Eric thanked whatever gods looked out for fools and Marines that he hadn’t fired a shot off in close quarters at the previous setting.

He made his way further down, well below where he was sure the waterline was. So far he was still dry footed, but that could change the second he opened any of the dogged hatches he had to pass through. First, though, he needed to get to the cargo elevators because they were located right next to the main auxiliary maintenance shafts, and those would let him get down to the flight deck and munitions stores below.

If he were really lucky, he might just get there and back off the ship before the unwelcome guests on his onetime home and command found him.

Yeah. That’ll be the day
.

Eric was sure that Mr. Murphy was just waiting for the right time to make his appearance. Things had already gone far better than he’d expected, and that just asked for some sort of critical problem to crop up.

Oh well, nothing to be done about it. Onward and . . . well, downward in this case
.

Gaia walked behind Weston as he descended into the depths of what had once been a proud ship, his ship. She felt his sorrow, his pride, his regrets as though they were her own. She had walked with humans many times in the past, reveling in their triumphs and consoling them in their defeats, but this time there was an urgency that she had never felt before
.

The difference was between watching and being a part of something, because now was the first time in her memory that she herself had come under threat
.

She found herself both thrilled at the sensation . . . and terrified by it
.

“Turn left, Eric,” she whispered. “The next corridor is flooded.”

Eric turned left.

He couldn’t say why, actually, just a chill down his spine and the urge to take a longer route had come upon him as he laid eyes on the tightly dogged hatch ahead of him. It
wouldn’t add that much to his distance anyway. He’d learned a long time ago that when you had a feeling, barring the availability of contradicting evidence, you should follow where it led.

Another heavy scratching sound, several decks away, sent shivers down his spine. The view of the corridors through his night vision systems wasn’t exactly relaxing, any more than the tight, abandoned corridors themselves were. Getting caught in an enclosed area by monsters like the Drasin was about the worst nightmare he could imagine. Eric was the sort of man who preferred the open sky to fight his battles.

Too bad we don’t always get what we want
.

He reached the maintenance hatch, just up angle from the powerless elevators. Like everything else on the
Odyssey,
the hatch was built solid, with double-dogged latches and multiple breaks to prevent decompression in the depths of space. For a man in enhancing armor, however, they were pretty easy doors to manipulate.

He got the first one open and crawled into the smaller space, turning back to dog the hatch out of habit before he stopped himself and left it open.

May need to get out of there in a hurry. Let’s leave a back door, just in case
.

There was a ladder heading down, only now it headed off at an angle. Eric used it to control his slide as he dropped down to the lower level of the
Odyssey
’s keel. Three hatches later he let himself out, planting one foot on the wall and one on the floor as he looked around the immense space of the hangar deck he’d emerged on.

Most of the
Odyssey
had been evacuated before she, and he, went down in the fight, but not all of it. There was a twisted wreck of a machine that he recognized as an Archangel that
had had its wings well and truly clipped. The once-sleek fighter would not fly again in this life.

Eric pushed it aside, moving up now in a crawl as he made his way up the awkward incline of the deck, heading for munitions, weapons, and the Museum. The magnetic boots built into his armor helped, thankfully, keeping him from sliding down into the darkness as he climbed. The enhanced senses of his armor kept updating him of the increased noises from above him, letting Eric know that the clock was ticking on his little mission.

Lyssa bobbed along with the powerboat, idly floating about fifty feet off the port side of the
Odyssey
’s keel. She’d moved far enough away not to be driven into the metal reef by waves or wind while she waited.

It was the barest hint of motion that caught her eye, and Lyssa half turned toward it before her mind caught up with her and she recognized what exactly she was looking at.

It was crawling out over the metal beam of the
Odyssey
’s keel, tearing a piece of the metal apart like it was pulling a fluff of cotton candy from the rest of the ball. She watched as the creature hunched over the prize for a moment, then seemed to gobble it down in a series of motions that reminded her of a mix between a spider and a snake feeding.

Lyssa slowly dropped down behind the controls of the powerboat, eyes not leaving the horror for an instant. She couldn’t bring herself to look away as warring impulses tore at her. Part of her wanted to turn, to run, to hide in the dark if she could. The thing she was looking at triggered every primal
urge to terror she had. Every core facet of her mind and body was screaming at her to get the hell away.