Dominion by Scott McElhaney Page A

given no information about this lady,” the guard said.
    “I’m not leaving her behind,” Hawke insisted as an unveiled warning.
    “She’s with us, son.  Clearly Sky Listener forgot to mention her, ” Night Rain said, “Don’t worry.”
    The man didn’t appear satisfied with the governor’s answer, but he was given no choice.  Without hesitation, the three of them began their descent.  The floor of the ice tunnel was covered in long rubber mats that looked to have been tossed to the ground hurriedly.  Some were angled, some overlapped others, and some left dangerous gaps of sheer ice between them.  It was clearly evident that the mats were required for safety as well as for traction. 
    They stepped aside and permitted the cart loaded with chiseled ice to pass them.  It was only after the men were behind them that they could see how deep the tunnel truly was. 
    Hawke did the math and realized that if the tunnel continued downward at a 30 o angle the whole way, they would have to traverse about two miles just to make it to a ship that was located about a mile beneath the ice.  He wondered if the air would be sufficient just before he noticed a wide flexible tube that descended along the tunnel wall. 
    Lights were hung from the ceiling nearly every twenty yards, offering minimal lighting, but plenty to guide their passage.  After several minutes of descent, they passed three men who were ascending toward the surface with some large metal tools.
    “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to sit in a cart and let it roll all the way down?” Kashuba asked, breaking the silence.
    Hawke laughed, “Could you imagine how fast you’d be going by the time you reached the ship?”
    “That would be great!” she replied with a laugh, “As long as you had brakes.  Otherwise, I think it would be quite a painful end to a fun ride.”
    “We will certainly need to find a better method to access the ship if it’s discovered that regular visits are required of us,” Night Rain stated.
    “Maybe an elevator would work best,” Hawke said, “Now that’s a technology I could help with.”
    They continued on for what felt like another half hour before they located four men standing near a black wall of metal.  There was a rectangular hole cut into the wall from which they could hear voices echoing.  One of the men turned to them and immediately shook Hawke’s hand.
    “Welcome, friend,” he said, “This is the greatest day of all of our lives .  Well, probably not the greatest day of yours .  Ships like this are obviously no big deal to you, but to us, they were impossible before this morning.”
    “Actually, I’ve never seen a ship this size except in movies,” Hawke replied.
    “Movies?” he asked.
    “Never mind,” he said, ducking his head to peer into the dark doorway, “That’s a lot of space between the two hulls.”
    Night Rain joined him, looking into the abyss between the outer wall and rectangular hole on the inner wall.
    “Where’s Sky Listener and his people?” Night Rain asked, shocked to see the door already cut open.
    “We’re in here!” a voice echoed in the distance.
    A face appeared near the bottom of the other doorway like a severed head lying on the floor.  It was Sky Listener holding one of the bane lights to his face.
    “We had cut our way into a gymnasium, it appears,” he said, “The floor to this room is about four feet beneath the doorway we created.”
    “How’d you get across?” Hawke asked, frightened at the thought of tumbling into the giant abyss between the two hulls.
    There was no walkway or anything for that matter in the ten to twelve feet that separated the two metal hulls.  If one tumbled, there was no telling how far they would fall.  Hawke held more firmly to the thick jagged edge of the doorway. 
    “We had two boards we were using as a walkway between the two hulls, but one of them fell,” Sky Listener stated, “Needless to say, that scared all the