The android approached, the only member of the platoon not wearing an exoframe suit, not even battle fatigues. She still wore her blue service uniform, and not one of her synthetic platinum hairs was out of place. She placed a hand on the quivering white alien and tilted her head.
"DNA analysis confirms: It is a member of the Klurian species of the Alpha Pavonis system. The scum destroyed them over two hundred years ago, ma'am. This individual is even older."
Marco felt sick. At his side, a soldier lifted his visor and vomited.
"Fuck," Addy said. "The scum have been collecting creatures from planets they destroyed and keeping them here. Some kind of weird trophies."
"And weird hosts for their parasites," Marco said.
Lailani nodded. "They're harvesting the DNA of these aliens," she said. "I can hear what they're thinking. Even the little maggots are in the hive. They're learning. They're trying to understand the aliens they encounter. They want to take their traits, to think like them, to grow stronger. To absorb the galaxy, to take a part of every conquered species into their own DNA. The way some species collect technology or resources from worlds they conquer, the scum collect DNA."
"Well, they messed with the wrong species this time," Addy said. "Because the only DNA they'll get from humans is Devastating Nuclear Ass-Kicking."
"That would be DNAK," Marco said.
"Ass-kicking is one word!" Addy insisted.
"And we're not even using nuclear weapons," Marco said.
"Poet, shut up!"
They freed the bloated alien, and medics carried the poor creature back to the surface. The platoon kept delving deeper into the hive.
Through their communicators, they heard updates from other platoons. They too were finding aliens imprisoned here, dozens of species once thought extinct. Marco found some small aliens, no larger than butterflies, trapped in translucent boxes of skin-like material. There was one massive alien the size of an elephant, bound to the floor, bellowing in misery. The animal wept in joy as the soldiers freed it, leashed it, and squeezed it through the tunnels toward the surface. One alien looked almost human, a beautiful woman with glimmering indigo skin, golden eyes, and fairy wings. Another alien was a mere blob of slime with eyes and a mouth; they carried it out in a bucket. Chamber by chamber, they freed these poor souls. And chamber by chamber, they encountered the scum—and they killed them.
And as they traveled deeper, more scum emerged.
From one tunnel raced giant centipedes woven of fire, crackling and spurting out flame, and the plasma could not hurt them. The platoon had to fight with grenades, with blades, with metal fists. The flames washed over them, and one soldier screamed and fell, his armor melting.
In another chamber, the scum took on strange human forms, the centipedes' tails split into clawed legs, and they stretched out spiky arms. Marco fired his gun again and again, burning the creatures. Several of them swarmed over a soldier by his side, ripping off the woman's helmet and spitting acid into her face, melting the flesh down to the skull.
Tunnel by tunnel, hall by hall, the horror grew. The scum were experimenting here, evolving, engineering. In a grand hall flew giant insects with wings, and the platoon filled the place with plasma. Still the blazing insects swooped at them, clawing. Stingers thrust out from their abdomens like the stingers of bees. The creatures managed to stab one soldier, tearing through her armor. Inside her exoframe, the soldier swelled up until she burst, coating the inside of her visor with blood and brains. Two more soldiers died, infected with venom, their flesh leaking from their suits, before the platoon managed to slay these monstrous hornets.
Chamber by chamber, more creatures slain.
More soldiers dead.
They had begun the invasion with fifty soldiers in their platoon. In the tunnels, they lost life after life, dwindling to thirty, to twenty, finally to only ten soldiers. They fought on. More soldiers joined them. Platoons shattered and reformed. Across the hive, thousands died.
Thousands of scum emerged from the depths, bugs of every kind. They tossed grenades. They fired plasma. Soldiers kept racing from behind, delivering more ammo, and they fought onward. The corpses of centipedes coated the tunnels. The hives shook madly as tunnels collapsed, burying entire companies. Marco had to dig himself out from under boulders, to carve a path through, to find another chamber, to pull his friends in. Those with exoframes survived; those without perished under the stones. The Spearhead Platoon moved on, guns firing, deeper, always deeper.
Here was an entire civilization underground. In vast halls the size of starships, eggs lay in piles, maggots writhing within. The soldiers burned them. In other halls, captives—some alien, some even human—hung from the ceilings, their abdomens engorged to obscene size, filled with nutrients the scum were sucking on. There were halls full of rancid meat, halls of dripping honey, halls where scum mated in the dirt, halls where their dead rotted. There were scum nurses, scum builders, scum slaves and masters. The soldiers burned them all.
Ben-Ari and Marco led the way. Addy and Lailani followed. Gunnery Sergeant Jones. Osiris the android. Several others, sergeants in black. They were all that remained of Spearhead, but still they fought, cutting down the enemy, plunging deeper and deeper, kilometer after kilometer, moving underground through the hive.
"There are too many!" Addy shouted, retreating from a tunnel. "Fuck, there are a million down there." She lobbed a grenade.
"Go this way!" Lailani shouted, pointing down another tunnel. "There aren't as many down there. I can feel it."
They raced down the other tunnel, a tighter squeeze, so low they had to run hunched over. The rattle of scum rose from ahead.
"Incoming!" Addy shouted, firing her gun.
Marco stared ahead and gritted his teeth. A chill flooded him even in the heat. It sounded like thousands of scum were racing up from below.
Lailani closed her eyes and stood still. Marco could see her eyeballs moving under her lids, and her lips moved silently. Suddenly the scum in the tunnel ahead turned and took another path. Lailani opened her eyes and breathed out in relief.
"I did it," she whispered. "I sent them a signal through the network. I sent them another way." She cringed. "Toward another platoon."
Screams and gunfire rose from the other tunnel.
"Come on," Marco said. "Lailani, you keep using your brain to send those scum away. The other platoons will deal with them. Our job is to find the emperor."
They fought onward. They fought for hours, for a day, for a night. They were ten, then twenty, then thirty kilometers underground. From all across the mines, the reports came in of soldiers slaying the scum, dying in the hives. Thousands were dying. Entire brigades, famous brigades who had fought in many battles, who had become legends—they perished in the hive. Two more of the Spearheads died, consumed by larvae the size of horses. Other soldiers replaced them. The survivors fought on.
Every hour, Lailani grew weaker. It was not just the physical exertion. She spent almost all her time now with her eyes closed, living inside the scum network, choosing paths, sending commands. Sometimes Marco saw a hundred scum racing toward them, and he would begin to fire, only for Lailani to send the bugs a message through their invisible network. Every time, the scum would take another path. More than any grenade or gun, it was Lailani who was their greatest weapon. Lailani, genetically engineered by the scum, placed into the womb of a homeless woman, grown to become an agent of the enemy. Lailani, only ninety-nine percent human. Lailani, that one percent inside her, that little bit of scolopendra titania DNA, letting her control the creatures, understand the creatures. Today she led humanity.
And finally, after thirty hours of battle here underground—thirty hours with no sleep or rest—Lailani stopped walking and nodded. She pointed down a shaft. And she said, "He's there. The emperor. We found him."
CHAPTER TWENTY
The shaft plunged down, and through the cracks in his exoframe, Marco felt cold wind and smelled rot. He stood on the ri
m, staring down below. Lailani's words echoed.
He's there. We found him.
Marco stared down the dark shaft. His flashlight showed nothing but shadows. Did he truly lurk down there? The scum emperor? The creature they had to kill to destroy the hive, to topple this cruel empire?
Marco tried to peer through the shadows, seeing nothing, but he heard a low rumbling, barely audible, almost like breathing. It was the voice he would hear lying on his bunk at night, a murmur, muffled, only his imagination giving shape to words.
Marco . . . Marco . . . They're waiting for you, Marco. Come join them . . .
Marco inhaled deeply. "I'll lead the way." He placed one foot over the chasm.
"Let me," Ben-Ari said, holding his shoulder.
Marco shook his head. "You've led us through many battles, ma'am. You've placed yourself in the path of danger too many times. Let me take the lead this time."
"Wait," Addy said. "Fire in the hole!"
She tossed a grenade down the shaft. They waited for the dust to settle, and Marco climbed into the shaft. He dug his gauntlets and steel-tipped toes into the walls, descending slowly, peering down into the depths. His flashlight illuminated nothing but shadows, but he could still hear it. That breathing. That muffled grumble of a voice, perhaps no more than creaking stones and wind in the tunnels.
Marco . . . Come to me . . . I see you, Marco . . .
He climbed down faster, jaw clenched.
Enough, he thought. Enough! Enough of this shit. He inhaled sharply, and his rage surprised him, flowing over his fear. I've suffered these scum for too long. It's time to end this.
He reached the bottom of the shaft, walked down a tunnel, and entered a vast hall.
It was a chamber the size of a cathedral, and lamps of skin and flesh shone on the craggy walls. Skulls covered the floor, thousands of them, each from a different race, a lurid collection of conquests. Marco couldn't even see the human skull here, if there was one. He saw skulls the size of marbles, skulls the size of cars, skulls with horns, round skulls, elongated skulls, black skulls, red skulls, anguished, furious skulls, some staring with two eye sockets, some with a hundred. Here were the trophies of a galaxy, rising knee-deep, a sea of bones. In the center of the hall, many skulls had been stacked and fused together with sticky membranes, forming a tower, and upon the tower rose a throne of bones, but the seat was empty.
The warriors entered the hall. Lieutenant Ben-Ari. Marco. Addy. Lailani. Sergeant Jones. A handful of others. They were all that remained of their platoon. Marco kept waiting for more soldiers to emerge, warriors from other units, but none came. He heard battle above—screaming, screeching, gunfire, flesh ripping.
Lailani inhaled sharply. "Thousands more scum are leaving their burrows above," she whispered. "Hundreds of thousands. They're coming in from other hives, from hives all over the planet—coming here." She glanced up the shaft they had just descended. "They'll be here soon. We must hurry."
The chamber began to shake. Dust rained from the ceiling. The sea of bones rattled.
"It's a trap!" Addy said.
"Calm down, admiral," Marco said to her. He took a deep breath and turned to Lailani. "Do you sense anything here? Do—"
Lailani was staring at the pillar of bones. "There," she whispered. "There!"
Marco stared back at the tower woven of skulls and bones, at the throne at its top. The throne was large enough for a giant, but he saw no occupant. Marco squinted, trying to look closer. Wait! There. Something moved in the shadows on that throne. Something small, pale gray, peering with black eyes.
The bones rattled louder across the floor. The walls shook. A voice rose from the tower.
"Marco . . ." A dry cackle sounded. "Einav . . . Lailani . . . Addy . . ."
The voice rose louder, louder, calling out their names. It rose to a shriek, to a demonic laughter. It was too loud. Too loud! Marco couldn't stand it. He placed his hands on his ears, realizing he still wore a helmet, and it was too loud! He screamed. At his side, Addy ripped off her helmet and covered her ears. Lailani fell to her knees. The chamber shook.
"Kill it—it's on the tower!" Marco shouted. He aimed his plasma gun and fired a bolt. More bolts flew from his fellow soldiers' guns.
The creature on the throne scurried away, maybe just a shadow. It couldn't have been larger than a baby. The plasma hit the throne, melting the bones. The cackling echoed through the chamber.
"I knew you would come." The voice seemed to come from all directions at once. "I lured you here. I've been calling you all your lives."
"Kill it!" Ben-Ari shouted. "There!"
She pointed. They saw a creature on the wall, clinging, glistening white like a wet, naked cat, scurrying away in an instant. Their plasma hit the wall, melting stone.
"Einav Ben-Ari . . ." said the voice, but it was like a hundred voices speaking at once, some high-pitched and demonic, some impossibly deep. "The girl with no home. The girl who was born on a military base. The girl who ran away, who fucked men twice her age, who drank, who hated herself. The girl with no nation, the girl who will never be as admired as her father, her grandfather, the heroines before her. The girl with a barren womb, who can grow only monsters inside her. The last, shriveling leaf of a dying tree."
Ben-Ari had tears in her eyes. "Kill it!" she was screaming, firing her gun everywhere, but the creature leaped from place to place, appearing, vanishing, a ghost. Marco couldn't catch more than a glimpse of it, couldn't see what it was.
"It's the emperor!" Lailani said. "He's there! He's the whole room! Kill him!"
"Lailani Marita de la Rosa," said the creature, this emperor of arthropods. "The girl born to a child-whore. The girl born infected with our sweet blood. The girl who ate from landfills, who danced for men for a handful of pesos, who cut her wrists, again and again, pleading to die. The girl who murdered her friends to prove her loyalty to me. The girl who came back to her master. Who will be mine again."
"I will never be yours again!" Lailani screamed, weeping. "Never! I will never kill anyone for you again!" Her tears flowed. "I never killed Elvis—you did! You did! I cut myself only to get rid of you, and now I'm going to finally cut you out!"
She grabbed a grenade and hurled it across the room. A shadow fled, and the grenade burst, showering the chamber with shrapnel. Hot pieces dug into Marco's armor. His ears rang. Skulls shattered across the floor. Dust rained from a crack in the ceiling.
"And you . . . Marco," said the shadow. "The boy whose mother my warriors consumed. Oh, I tasted her flesh too, Marco. I was there. I was in my soldiers' minds as they feasted. And I was in your mind. When you were a child, afraid of me lurking under your bed. When you were alone. All those years, when you were alone, hurting, grieving, when the clouds were so dark, the pain so great, I was there with you. When you read those dirty magazines as a boy, so ashamed. When you betrayed Kemi, the woman you loved. When you betrayed Lailani, taking Addy into your bed. When you realized that you were a traitor. When you watched your friends die while you lived on, too cowardly to fight with them. But there is no guilt here. There is no treachery in the dark. Soon you too will be one of the hive. Soon you will savor the tastes of countless flesh, of endless conquest."
"We'll never join you!" Marco shouted. "Mock us all you like. You are the coward now! You are the one hiding! You think yourself brave and powerful, oh mighty emperor? Then show yourself! Face us."
The creature laughed. Marco glimpsed the white thing above, fired his gun, but it vanished again.
"Tell me, Marco," the emperor said in a thousand voices, some mocking, others twisted beyond understanding. "Do you miss your friends? The friends that you killed? I tasted them too. I savored the sweet flavors of them. I took them into my hive. I remade them for you, Marco. Your new friends." The emperor laughed. "Rise! Rise, my children! Let Marco see what he will become!"
And from the sea of skulls across the chamber, figures rose.
Marco and his fellow soldiers r
aised their guns.
"God," Addy whispered. "Oh God."
Nausea rose in Marco's throat. At his side, Ben-Ari was clutching her Star of David pendant and praying. Lailani gasped and crossed herself, tears on her cheeks.
"Stop this!" Marco shouted at the emperor. "Stop this mockery!"
But only cruel laughter filled the chamber, and the figures stepped closer.
They were somewhat human, maybe mostly human, but centipede too. They rose twice Marco's height, created from many human torsos stitched together, forming bizarre centipedes. From each torso emerged two human arms, the hands tipped with claws. Not scum. Not human. And yet Marco recognized their faces.
They were the faces of his friends.
There was Beast, his head bald, his eyes white, slithering forward like a cobra prepared to strike, most of his body still under the skulls. Beside him advanced Corporal Diaz, Marco's old squad commander—or at least a creature with Diaz's face. Sergeant Singh was here too, still bearded. Marco spun around, panting, head spinning, unable to believe this. It had to be an illusion. Had to! Yet they were all here, all those the scum had slain, had eaten. There was Corporal Webb, the commander from Fort Djemila with no legs. There was Caveman who had died on the tarmac. And there—there in the distance, staring with blank eyes—there was Elvis, there was his dear friend Elvis, and he scuttled forward on many legs, and his mouth opened with a hiss. The faces of his friends. The bodies of deformed centipedes formed from human parts.
"Hello, Marco," Beast said.
"Hello, friend," said Elvis.
"It's nice here," said Diaz.
"Join us," said Singh.
"Join us!" they all chanted.
Marco wanted to fire his gun, to kill the creatures. But he couldn't. He couldn't do it. The other soldiers stood by him, their own guns raised, their faces twisted in disgust. They too couldn't fire.
"It's . . . it's really them," Lailani said. "I can feel it. It's them. Their DNA. The scum took their DNA when killing them."
"Fuck!" Addy said. "Oh God, what do we do?"
Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3) Page 20