Doctor Who_ Hope - Mark Clapham [67]
The image stayed steady, albeit remaining a bit fuzzy. Miraso slapped her fist into a palm and hissed yes, clearly pleased with the result.
Citizens of Hope, people of Endpoint, said Silver, his booming voice unobstructed by his mask. I have exciting and disturbing news for you all. I have discovered evidence of an unknown force living beneath the sea, within the territory of Endpoint. We believe that this force may be connected to a series of violent incursions into Hope in recent months. This cannot be allowed to continue, and as the waters here are too hazardous, too poisonous, for any normal person to survive, I have decided that I, Silver, will have to perform this operation myself. I intend to find this threat to our lives, and if necessary destroy it. This is, I believe, the least I can do.
Silver nodded to the camera, then turned and leapt over the barricade. Whoever was holding the camera ran to point it over the edge, only to get fogobscured glimpses of ripples on the waters surface.
Miraso stood up, waving for the screen to be turned off.
Hes on his way, she said.
Silvers descent beneath the sea was not so much a swim as a careful process of controlled sinking. The Doctors location was far beneath the waves, but on the horizontal plane only a short distance from Hope. As he sank, Silver flapped his feet gently, moving slightly forward as he descended. He had lost visibility as soon as he was a few feet beneath the surface, and had switched to sonar, with an overlay of the global positioning data from SatNet. The Doctors last known position, or at least the last known position of the tracker Silver had placed in his bloodstream, flared below Silver in the distance, down on the sea bed.
For a long time he sank, not encountering anything. The protective clothing was resisting the corroding effects of the sea, although sensors indicated gradual tarnishing of his faceplate. For anyone else, floating through impenetrable darkness would have induced an aching feeling of loneliness. But for Silver, in so many ways unique, it was not an unusual sensation. His computerenhanced brain had time to process a billion thoughts during this sensory deprivation, but none of them disturbed him enough to interrupt the steady movement of his swimming.
As he approached the sea bed, Silver noted an increased pressure around him, threatening to crush his chest. Fortunately his chest plate was built to withstand much greater pressures, and an increase in power flow compensated for any drag caused by the pressure. The sonar with which he viewed this sea bed world was far too sensitive, fragments of swirling matter and sand blocking his view. Something large loomed ahead, somewhere near the Doctors location. Silver activated the jets on his heels, moving smoothly towards his target. The shape ahead solidified into some kind of structure, a vast bunker built into a rock slope, jutting out like a tooth, solidly rooted in the rock.
Silver raised his human hand to his mask, his arm difficult to manoeuvre under all the layers of protective material. His finger pressed a rubber bump on the side of his diving mask, a covered switch which allowed him to cycle through possible wavelengths. Standard visual and infrared were worse than useless. Eventually his headsup display was ablaze as he cycled to a view of power sources in the immediate vicinity. Silvers enhanced mind overlaid what he was seeing with other information, and interpreted the row of cigarshaped structures floating next to the bunker as submarines of some kind, their power sources glowing warmly.
Silver swam towards them. Some form of undersea structure, a series of submarines. Where the two joined there would be airlocks and boarding tubes, an ideal area to break in. As he swam Silver began to check the functions on his robotic fist. This would require some of the more robust weaponry...