Page 3 of The Captain's Bounty
“No, you’re not,” Dex said tersely from above. “Don’t move. We’re looking for the sling-foot. We’re getting you out of there.”
Well, if she had to wait around for a rope anyway, not moving seemed like a waste of time better spent exploring.
“Never mind that,” she called. “Reinforce the point of entry and get down here.”
“Why? What do you see?”
Six different doorways, all bricked in with stone and covered in glowing blue alien writing.
“Just get down here,” she repeated, turning in a slow circle. Four pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, with what looked like a square-cut pool in the center, giving her the impression of a temple. The tile inlay was an oceanic mosaic that showed dark orbs stored under water. She’d have loved to crawl down into the ‘pool’ with a light for a closer look, but there was so much to look at already and when her feet at last moved her, it was toward the glowing blue writing of the nearest door that she gravitated.
“Tell me there’s treasure,” someone else called down. Probably Boaz, Dex’s second-in-command, a man she’d never really liked, but that was all right. It was rare to spend this much time on a dig and still get along with everyone by the end. People and personality traits didn’t quite work that way. And although Boaz had a way of looking at her that she could practically feel crawling around under her clothes, he’d never said or done anything out of line. She just didn’t like him as much as she did Dex.
And Dex worked for Corporate, which cared less about knowledge than it did about money, so she wasn’t all that fond of him either.
“This whole place is a treasure,” she replied instead, reaching up to trace a glowing word. The instant she did, the glowing became lights and they went wild, flashing under her fingertips until she snatched her hand back again.
“Uh,” Boaz said. “What was that?”
“You saw that?” she asked, surprised.
“Those flashes of light? Uh, yeah… we did.”
“Please stop touching things,” Dex wryly added. “At least until we get down there.”
Really? Like this was her first dig and little ol’ her just couldn’t manage without the help of some big strong men? Rolling her eyes, she glared up at the hole in the ceiling and their moving shadows working directly above it.
The end of a rope dropped through the opening in the ceiling, the looped end plopping directly into the conical pile of sand deposited on the temple floor.
“Well, that wasn’t as far as you made it sound with all that screaming,” Boaz remarked.
“I’m coming down,” Dex called.
Lissa backed from the wall, the strange words of which were once more only mildly glowing. Slowly, to avoid touching the lettering, she dragged her fingers through god only knew how many layers of dust while Dex’s soft grunts of exertion accompanied his descent to join her.
The walls weren’t obsidian, as it first appeared, but black and gray tile every bit as dark as a cave. Dragging her finger through it revealed the faint cracks that ran vertically and horizontally, separating the letters until they no longer looked like glowing words, but rather like buttons.
Like a keyboard. Or a control panel, she thought, backing away again. If this was a temple, it was like nothing she’d ever seen.
“Shore up those walls,” Dex called back up the ladder once he reached the bottom. “Lissa, we’re leaving. Get over here.”
Lissa gave him a withering stare over her shoulder. “You haven’t been entirely useless on this excavation, Mr. Morgan,but you have an annoying tendency to forget which of us is in charge.”
Dex’s heavy brow furrowed slightly, betraying an actual human emotion before he smoothed it away into his usual bland Corporate face. “And for all your experience, Ms. Blackwood, you have a tendency to forget archeological discovery protocol. Rule One: In the event that an unidentified site of possible significance is unearthed, all work shall cease at that site and for fifty meters around that site. Rule Two: The foreman—that’s me—shall shut down all machinery and secure the site. Rule Three: The site manager—that’s you—shall confirm that the site is secured and notify GIASS to request further assessment by a guild member. The hell are you thinking?” he demanded with a hint of exasperation. “I thought you were trying to get back into their good graces. Isn’t what you’re doing guaranteed to piss ‘em off more?”
Yes and yes, but… that door… those lights…
Her fingers itched as her eyes traced every faintly glowing line of every alien character.
“That’s what I thought. Now, come.”
Lissa did not ‘come.’ She went where her feet led her, past the pool to the nearest sealed door. Sliding her finger through the dust there revealed nothing but what her eyes had already told her. It had its own controlling keys beside a door that had been bricked in long, long ago. Hastily, by the looks of it.
“Why would they do that?” Dex wondered, as if reading her mind. She turned to find him almost directly behind her, his gray eyes narrowed as he made his own assessment of the sealed doorway.
“I don’t know.” She went to the wall, skimming the glowing lights with her fingers again. “But watch this.”
The lights surged in every button she touched, flickering wildly. Having seen it once already, this time her eyes were ready and she picked out the pattern.
