by B. V. Larson
What saved us in the end was our armor, and our force-blades. Barton’s light troops had been down here in sheer suits. It must have looked like kids in pajamas fighting adults. Caught up-close and personal, they’d been torn apart. Just getting a rifle in line with a squid who was right there in your face, throwing his coiled tentacles around you, was damned near impossible.
“Use your force blades! Trim those tentacles and turn them into stumps!”
The water was soon black with ink and blood. There was no way to tell what was ours or theirs, it was all mixing together in a ghastly cloud.
The squid I was wrestling with was soon short three of his eight tentacles. Changing tactics, he gripped me suddenly in a bear-hug and his big thick beak came at me. That was a freaky thing. I could see it, spread wide and as big as a football cut in half. The nasty thing clacked against my faceplate.
Fortunately, my helmet held, but my air hoses weren’t so lucky. One was snipped, and bubbles poured out. My suit compensated by shutting off the flow. Still, it was only a matter of time before I suffocated.
Roaring with effort, my ears rang with my guttural vocalizations. Howling inside a helmet will give you a headache right-quick. Just ask anyone who’s done it.
I managed to get a force blade to twitch upward, slicing into the central meat of the alien that gripped me. He shuddered and gave one last convulsive squeeze before he reluctantly relaxed in death.
Cursing, I peeled away history’s biggest calamari appetizer ever. After thirty seconds or so, I was free and standing on the seabed again. My breath came in ragged panting, and already my air felt a little thin. I’d have to repair my suit soon, but the battle was still raging around me.
“Harris? Sitrep!”
“Centurion? Are you still alive? Wow, I thought you were squid-meat.”
“Sitrep, Harris.”
“We’ve got six dead, two seriously hurt. The squids are mostly dead now, however. We gave them a good old-fashioned Varus schooling, sir.”
“Good job. Finish them all off.”
“Uh… no prisoners, sir?”
“You heard me. These are renegade squids. They’ve already broken their oath to Earth. I’m not going to start coddling them now.”
Harris relayed the order, and the team mopped up the last of the enemy. The squids had had the element of surprise, but they hadn’t been able to take down a platoon of heavy soldiers with specialist back-up.
When we’d recovered as best we could, including a patch-job on my ailing suit, we proceeded with caution. We soon found the discarded remains of Barton and her light troopers.
“Dead,” Leeson said, coming near and whistling in appreciation. “A full platoon, all dead. Those lights with snap-rifles didn’t stand a chance against these squids.”
“Good thing they won’t remember this death.”
“How’s that?”
I pointed a finger upward, toward the distant surface. “They were out of range of any storage unit when they died. Their tappers will have recorded some of the memories, but the worst of it should be safely forgotten.”
“Yeah… that’s probably a good thing for these kids.”
We gathered up spare energy cells and oxygen tanks after that. I didn’t like to admit it, but Barton’s misfortune might help the rest of the unit. Our supplies were getting iffy at this point.
After searching the rest of the plateau, we found that it continued downward on the far side. That single, relatively thin path between the rails led even deeper into the ocean.
Harris came near as I contemplated the path downward. He eyed me with a baleful expression.
“Sir? You aren’t thinking of going down farther, are you? Please tell me we’re turning back.”
“I don’t know, Harris. We haven’t found the bottom of this rabbit-hole yet. Graves wants answers.”
Harris threw his arms high and wide in a gesture of supplication. “Come on, McGill. We made contact with the enemy, and we lost damn-near half your unit. We can take these tapper recordings back to the surface and turn them in for revives. Not a single soldier here needs to be permed.”
I looked at him, and I knew he was right. We’d done about as much as we could do at this point. Pushing onward would be hazardous and maybe even stupid. Why get permed if you couldn’t even report back to your commander what the hell had happened down here?
Still, part of me wanted to go on. I wanted to walk down this path and kill every living squid on this planet. They were natural traitors, the lot of them. Every squid that had ever drawn a gill-full of dirty seawater deserved a good perming six days a week and twice on Sunday.
Heaving a sigh, I turned away. “You’re right, Harris. Get everyone on their feet. We’re going back up.”
He beamed at me. “Thank God! He’s seen the light, people! We’re going back up!”
A ragged cheer rose throughout the tired legionnaires. There’s something about marching through water, even thinner water than was natural, that just makes a man bone-tired. We were all pretty much beat, and now we had a long, long walk uphill to contend with.
But no one felt unhappy about it. Everyone wanted to get started, to get the hell off the bottom of this sea and back to sunlight, air and fresh winds. We’d been breathing our own stinks and squelching in sweaty boots for so many long hours now, it was going to feel like heaven just to open our helmets under that green sky.
We gathered up our stuff and began the retreat eagerly enough. A few troops had to be dragged or half-carried over the shoulders of two others, but no one was complaining. Everyone talked about hot meals and hot showers. The general mood of the unit had risen five points in five minutes.
All that good cheer ended, however, when a bloodcurdling scream rang out. We all stopped and sent beams of bright light stabbing into the deep watery darkness.
I spotted Kivi at the front of the line. She was pointing upward and screeching at something. She’d kept to the rear of the formation, being a bio and all, and no one had faulted her for that. But when we’d all turned around, she’d naturally been at the front of the column as we began the uphill climb.
At first I was confused, as were the rest of the troops. We looked her over, expecting to see some kind of ghastly injury. Then, once we realized she was okay, we looked around her feet for some horrible discovery. Had she found Barton’s head or something even worse? Something floating in the dirty water?
No. That wasn’t it, either. Kivi was pointing upward, at about a forty-five degree angle. Pointing at nothing.
“Look at it, you fools! Look!”
Gathering around and asking questions, we found she wasn’t in an answering mood. She struggled to move into our midst, to retreat behind the ranks of specialists and heavies.
“What’s gotten into you, girl?” Leeson asked. “I don’t see a damned thing.”
“Maybe she saw a whale or something,” Harris suggested. “She’s spooked herself.”
“It was no whale. It was a monster. Just keep looking—you’ll see it. The thing is lurking. It’s watching us right now.”
We stopped advancing and studied the rails. They were coming together again, forming the narrow path that led up to the surface.
It was about then that a number of troopers gasped. They’d seen movement. Impossible movement.
“I saw something,” Leeson said. “McGill? Centurion? Kivi is right. There is something out there. It’s hanging around above us—just a little to the right of the path. See it?”
More people turned on their suit lights, and we all peered into the dark water. The drifting bits of sand, fish-shit and dead plankton made it hard to see much, but I had to admit, there was a big, billowing something out there.
Kivi appeared at my side as I squinted upward into the dark sea. “You see it, McGill? There’s something so big out there, so impossibly huge, that it doesn’t look like an object at all.”
“Uh… you mean that shadow? It looks like… I don’t kn
ow. A hulking region of water that’s darker than the rest. That’s what you’re talking about?”
“Yes. It’s like a part of the ocean itself is gliding around apart from the rest.”
Natasha was skeptical. “We might just be seeing an underwater avalanche, or something.”
I nodded, but I wanted to be sure. “Unit, everyone turn on your lights at once. Focus right up there—over the path we came down on.”
They did as I ordered, and soon the region in question was a tiny bit brighter. The dark object that hung there, the moving shadow in the water, it seemed even blacker now. You could see it only due to the fact it was darker than the water that surrounded it.
“McGill,” Harris said, standing at my right elbow. “Whatever it is, that thing means to block our path back up to the surface.”
“Yup. That’s what I think, too.”
-44-
We were all out of light troopers, so I tried to figure out who among my surviving men was the most useless.
It definitely wasn’t one of the heavies, or my two officers, or my noncom veterans or weaponeers. I needed all my best fighters, in case things went badly.
I still had one ghost, Della... I also had a few bio people and techs. That was it. So, it had to be between Della and the bio guys. Della had a stealth suit, although that wasn’t much good under water. You could kind of see her outline due to the displacement of water. You could see her absence, so to speak, because the light-bending tech wasn’t really invented to handle a liquid medium.
“Della! You’re up!”
She ghosted up to me, just like she was supposed to. “I’m really going to have to go up that hill alone? Really?”
“That’s right. The thing probably won’t even see you.”
“James, you know undersea creatures use many senses besides vision. Especially if they lurk at the bottom of oceans where there’s no light at all.”
“Yeah well… good luck, girl.”
She hesitated. “This isn’t because I didn’t come to Thanksgiving last year, is it? I told you I was busy.”
“Nah. Come on, Della. Don’t pull that. If you’re going to work in a legion with a family member, you have to forget all that stuff when shit becomes real.”
“Yes, yes, I know. I’m sorry. I’m a little… concerned.”
I wished her well, and she moved away and up the slope. Harris came to stand beside me.
“You pissed at her, or something?”
“No, man. What’s wrong with everyone today? She’s a scout, and there’s definitely some scouting to be done here.”
“More like some fishing with your ex-girlfriend as bait.”
I glared at him. “You want to replace her? Just say the word.”
He shut up and vanished quicker than a ghost. Meanwhile, Della made steady progress. She wasn’t moving fast, or slow, she kept up a steady pace. I had to hand it to her. The fact that she was more or less visually invisible wasn’t the end of her skills. She’d come from Dust World, and she’d been ranked as a scout by her people. That essentially made her a commando, a native of her planet who was known for getting around in a stealthy manner.
No plumes of dust came up from the seabed where she walked. Nothing seemed disturbed at all. I wasn’t sure how she was doing it. She could have been swimming, but I doubted it. The thin water didn’t support a person who paddled at it. We’d all tried that at one point or another on this long journey into darkness.
No, she must be stepping in heavily tread spots, cleverly using the footprints of others, who’d come down the other way and kicked up any debris that was there for the kicking.
Everyone held their breath, watching as she moved upslope. A dozen meters, then two dozen.
“She’s going to make it,” Leeson said in admiration. “I’m pinging her exact location, and she’s got to be right under the crotch of whatever that thing is hovering over the ocean floor.”
I turned toward him. “You’re pinging her? With your officer’s display?”
Every officer in Varus was issued some special equipment. One item was a tricked out helmet. We could do a lot of things with it, such as marking targets and locating missing soldiers.
“Uh…” he said.
That’s when I put a big, gloved hand on him. “Turn that damned thing off, Leeson. That’s an order!”
“Okay, okay!”
He twiddled some controls, and we both turned to stare out into the dark again. For a goodly ten seconds, nothing happened. We both sighed in relief, and I almost unhanded him—almost.
But then, something shifted. Something big above the pathway kind of—rippled. Out of this ripple fell a glittering loop.
“Oh, gee-zus,” Leeson said. “I’m sorry man. I’m so sorry.”
I opened my mouth in confusion. I didn’t know what the hell he was sorry about, exactly. But then, I caught on.
“That’s the monofilament,” I said. “That thing out there—it ripped it up off the ocean floor hours ago. Now, it’s trying to fish for Della with it.”
“Maybe she’ll get away, McGill. She’s a slippery one.”
I watched, and I thought he might be right. The monofilament, a glittering wire that reflected our shining lights, dragged over the seabed, kicking up muck. All Della had to do was step over it at the right moment—like a kid skipping over a jump-rope.
“Della,” I said on a direct transmission. She was still in range for that. “Just dodge the line when it comes. Don’t even answer me. Just hop over it.”
“She’ll do it,” Leeson said. “Let’s just watch and see how it goes.”
I shook him. His helmet flopped back and forth like a ragdoll’s head in the hands of an abused child. “Get up there! Take your weaponeers. Lance that thing in the belly while it’s distracted.”
“Sir? Are you serious? That thing is huge.”
“It’s not going to get any smaller, Leeson. Attack while the enemy is distracted. That’s tactics 101.”
He didn’t argue any further. Instead, he called up his groaning weaponeers, eight of them in all. They unlimbered their belchers, tightened down the beams to their narrowest setting, and marched up the hill toward the strange monster.
“That’s a great idea,” Harris told me eagerly. He’d reappeared from somewhere. “Leeson and his muscle heads will flush this thing out, or nobody can.”
“Harris, you’re up next. If the weaponeers fail, you’re going to do the job.”
“With what?”
“Force-blades, if you have to. Get going!”
“Shit…” Harris called up his platoon, and they marched upward resolutely.
I followed with the ragtag specialists and injured troops who weren’t much good for fighting monsters. This was it, we were going to do or die right here.
Some might have thought I was mad to march right into the jaws of a half-seen leviathan, but the way I figured it, we didn’t have much choice. Whatever this thing was, it was native to this environment. It could outmaneuver us and take it’s time. If we waited until it seemed to go away, it would just come back later, dogging us when we were all strung out on the pathway and virtually helpless.
Worse, we couldn’t afford to screw around. We were slowly running out of power, air—everything. A waiting game could only benefit the monster.
No, the time to move was right now. We knew where it was, and we were going to gut it if possible. Maybe we’d all die right here. I knew that was a distinct possibility, but I couldn’t see how we could hope to get a better shot at it later on.
It was now or never.
We advanced a dozen shuffling steps. Then two dozen more.
That’s about as far as we made it upslope before the creature—if it truly was a creature—took notice.
It stopped dipping and dragging its silvery loop of wire. Instead, it snatched the line up and away.
“It’s gone!”
“It’s running!”
My troops gawked overhead
like dummies. They stopped walking and turned in circles, trying to see it again.
“Keep moving, dammit!” Harris shouted. “March men, march!”
He’d beaten me to it this time. The troops obeyed, moving uphill at an increased pace. The floating dust from the seabed rose up in a hazy brownish-gray cloud.
“Weaponeers,” I called out. “Stand your ground until ten troops pass, then start moving uphill again one at a time. I want you placed evenly throughout the column. I have a feeling your belchers are our best defense. Kivi, you and Natasha start rigging up some explosives in our wake. Nothing too smart, no mobile crawlers. Just proximity mines on a timer.”
“But sir,” Natasha complained. “An explosion might rupture this field we’re in. If it collapses, we’ll collapse. The water could come in and crush us.”
“How sure are you that this will happen?”
“I’m not at all sure, Centurion. I’m giving you a possible scenario.”
“Kivi? What do you think?”
“Uh… I don’t know. It could happen. But unless we actually blow up one of these rails, I doubt it will.”
I thought that over. “The order stands,” I said. “We’re in a bad way down here, and we’ve got to take some risks. Deploy the mines at the rear of the column.”
They did as I ordered, and the rest of them moved upslope in a scrambling trot.
Suddenly, a part of the ocean water rippled right in front of me. I almost jumped out of my skin. Then Della appeared.
“McGill? This thing is hunting us.”
“No shit. Did you see any details? You were up close and personal with it.”
“Not really, but it knew I was there. It kept dipping that loop into the field, dragging it over the seabed, trying to snare me.” She gave a little shudder. “Now I know what it’s like to be a crab under a rock with a predator lurking nearby.”
“Yeah… that’s what it is, isn’t it? A predator. That could be a good thing. If it’s a natural creature that just happens to live down here, it won’t be too determined. It might flee if we give it a hotfoot. Also, it’s not likely to be working as part of a team.”
“All true James, but … it’s intelligent. It was using an improvised tool. It’s been stalking us for many hours now. Don’t underestimate it.”