by B. V. Larson
They were confused for a moment, but they moved to comply. Varus people had faced any number of nasty enemies on countless worlds. Even the freshest recruits quickly hustled to follow my command.
“Where’s Toro?” Kivi demanded. “I can’t get a signal from her. There’s some kind of interference—that tunnel is shielded.”
There was no more time for thought or talk. The drones began to boil up out of the duct and into the open field.
My troops didn’t need any encouragement. Their weapons blazed. Only a few of the drones were able to reach our line. We wiped most of them out.
They were fast, just like Graves had said. Shaped like roly-poly bugs nearly a meter long, with churning tracks underneath, they were armored with segmented plates on top. It took a lot of firepower to stop them.
When we had a chance to examine them, we saw exactly how they were dangerous. They didn’t blow us up, or bite anyone. Instead, they had what looked like stingers.
“That nail-like thing came right out of the shell,” Carlos said to me, panting and staring at the smoking mess of parts at his feet.
Sure enough, I saw other drones repeating the trick. They ran in close, opened a segment of curved metal like a tank opening a slot in its armor, then out lunged an arm with a nail at the end.
But these weren’t just nails. They were dribbling venom—or acid. Something that bubbled and flowed like thick glue, or fresh snot. Whatever it was, people who got stabbed by these nails crumpled to the ground in agony.
They writhed, screamed and died.
-28-
Our formation saved us. We were back far enough to destroy most of the nasty metal bugs before they could reach our lines. But by the end, we’d lost three more people.
“Harris, how many went in with Toro?” I asked when it was over.
“At least five,” Harris said, “plus the three light troopers I sent in. They suckered us.”
“Look at them!” Carlos called out, pointing toward the dome.
We craned our necks. The rogue scientists stared back through the blue glass.
“We can reach them if we rush through right now,” Carlos suggested.
“No, that’s what they want,” I said. “They’re baiting us. They’ve been doing that all along. Tricky bastards. Somebody loan me a belcher—mine burned out when we took down the turret.”
A weaponeer approached and handed his over to me. I’d been a weaponeer back in the day, and the weight of the weapon felt right at home in my hands.
“McGill…?” Leeson cautioned. “Graves said we weren’t supposed to damage the dome.”
“Stop worrying so much,” I said, cranking open the aperture on the belcher to its broadest setting. “Stand clear!”
Troopers scrambled out of the way. Perhaps sensing their danger, the on-looking dome-dwellers began moving back toward their vehicle.
I didn’t give them any more time. I fired a blast—a widely dispersed flash of energy.
Beaming through the blue dome like a lens, it wasn’t enough to damage the glass. But it did light one guy’s hair on fire and set another one’s clothes to smoking. They reached up and clawed at their eyes.
“You nailed the bastards!” Carlos whooped. “Now can we go into that death-tunnel?”
“I’d make you go first, but I need you,” I told him. “Harris, take a team of lights down there and try not to lose them all.”
“Damn you, sir!” he said. “I was just about to volunteer, but you beat me to it!”
We watched as they hustled into the hole. The recruits looked sick. There were only a few left alive. Most were back on the ship above, getting puked out of a revival machine.
Shortly after Harris’ lights reached the entrance and began poking their way into it, I noticed something funny.
As I kept an eye on things, at first I didn’t see anything but rocks and blue glass—but then, I spotted it. A puff of dust and dark smoke coming up out of the ground. I contacted Graves.
“Primus, something is happening” I said. “There’s a disturbance in the area—a gas release I think, about four hundred meters west.”
“Roger, McGill—keep an eye on that. We’ve got similar reports elsewhere. Report back any developments.”
Frowning, I looked back at the men entering the service duct. All the light troops were in there by now, and Harris was ducking inside. He caught me watching, and he flipped me a quiet bird. I smiled at that.
By chance, I turned to look at the three lab-monkeys I’d injured earlier. They hadn’t run off into the interior the way I’d thought they might. Instead, they were hunkered around some kind of equipment on the ground.
On a hunch, I walked closer to them and peered inside. The glass was more than thick—it had to be a meter of transparent material. That’s probably why it looked colored, as anything transparent anything takes on a hue if you stack up enough of it.
The dome was so thick I couldn’t really see their features, just their shapes, but they were definitely up to something.
“Harris,” I called out, “what’s going on down there?”
There was no answer, so I yelled for Kivi.
“Run a line down there. I want contact with that team, I don’t care if you have to set up two cups and a string!”
She got to work on it, and it wasn’t long before I could talk to Harris, shielding or no.
“We’re in some kind of duct full of wires and pipe, sir,” he said. “These power cables are as thick as fire hoses. You want us to cut one?”
“Nah, we already knocked out the turret they were powering. Keep advancing.”
“Right,” he said in disappointment.
I knew he wanted any excuse in the world to halt and screw around with something technical. The man who advanced slowest lived longest, that was his motto—unless he got pissed off. After that, he fought like a demon.
“Centurion?” Carlos said. “Uh… what’s that?”
Following his pointing arm, I squinted at the region I had warned Graves about. The smoke was billowing out now, but it wasn’t rising. It was flowing all over the place, getting closer.
“We’ll soon be enveloped in that shit,” Leeson said. He came to stand next to us. “There’s another outlet over there.”
Looking north, I saw what he meant. Another spot was gushing out dark vapors.
“This can’t be good,” I said. “Harris, in case we all have to come down into that pipe with you, tell me what you’ve found.”
“Found Toro. She’s been shredded. Looks like the same drones that attacked us.”
“Roger that. Push in until you find the way out.”
“That might not be a good idea, Centurion,” he said. “I’m seeing a grate ahead, thick bars, no way through.”
“Blow it up, cut it away, do your job!”
He grumbled, but he pushed further. I got his helmet feed now, as Kivi’s set-up was finally working right. I could see what he saw.
The situation was grim. There weren’t just a few finger-thick bars of steel in the way. The grate in question was more like a perimeter fence on a fire-base. Each bar was as thick as a sapling and as black as cast iron.
He shoved aside panicky recruits, attached a charge to the central bar, and ordered his people to retreat.
That’s when they got him. Those drone-bugs slithered right under the bars in large numbers through the gaps. The bars were spaced perfectly for those critters to slide through while a man couldn’t get more than arm deep.
The light troopers blazed away with their snap-rifles, but that just set up a deadly splattering pattern of ricochets in the pipe. Harris, in the meantime, was pinned by two drones that clamped on his boots, and six more that crawled over his armor, chewing up hoses and fabric wherever they found it.
He roared and cursed the whole time, and I didn’t blame him.
“Centurion, I need help!” he called out.
“Harris,” I said, “I can see the charge is set. Blow
those bars!”
“I can’t get out of range, sir!”
“I know that, dammit. You recruits, get out of there. Run for your lives!”
Harris’ gloves were coming apart now. They were woven mesh, but these drones had teeth like buzz saws. They got through his left gauntlet, spraying blood all over the place.
“You’re dead anyway, Harris,” I said. “I order you to blow that grate.”
“I hate you, McGill,” he said in a labored voice.
Then, the signal cut out. A blast of soot and dust shot out of the service duct at our end.
Harris was on a one-way trip back up to the transport.
The last of the surviving light troopers came rushing back out of the duct a minute later. They were injured and desperate. Sarah was among them.
Seeing her crawl over alien rocks made me feel sorry for her. The faceplate on her helmet was cracked, and she was choking on the toxic atmosphere that was getting in.
Walking up to the last of them, I nodded. “You did well,” I said.
“We didn’t do shit,” Sarah coughed. “Our weapons were useless, and most of us died like rats in a trap.”
“That’s right,” I told her, “but you followed orders. That’s appreciated. You saved the lives of others who are advancing after you, too. You are a crucial part of this battle.”
She said something, but it was drowned out by a desperate coughing fit.
Deciding that now was as good a time as any, I executed her and her companions. They all had ruptured suits. It was only a matter of time before they died, and we didn’t have time to do any babysitting.
Standing up again, I ordered my troops to gather around.
“Attach lines,” I said. “That vapor will be here shortly.”
“What if it’s acidic?” Carlos asked. “What if it eats our suits?”
“Then we’re screwed,” I told him.
It took a few minutes for everyone to hook up. Our suits were equipped with filament lines with clips at the end. They could be used to attach troops to one another. Usually, we used them on worlds that had no light or any kind of dense atmosphere. They allowed us to communicate and find one another without vision or other sensory input.
Before we’d even managed to hook everyone up, the black cloud of dense smoke roiled over us. It looked like the kind of thing an oil-fire would emit. It absolutely erased our vision.
“Natasha?” I called out. “Analysis on this smoke—what have you got?”
“It’s not breathable…” she called back.
“No shit?”
“It’s not corrosive, but it is adhesive… I think it’s meant to coat us with a dense film.”
Already, I could see what she was talking about. I took a step, and I almost fell.
“It’s some kind of slippery substance!”
“A fine aerogel. Clingy, slippery, sensory clogging.”
I tried to wipe it away, but it was pointless. “All right people,” I said, “we’re going into that damned pipe. I’ll lead the way.”
Having started off near the entrance, I felt around until I found it. Others crowded behind me, complaining and bumping into one another. A few of them became disoriented and weren’t able to get attached to anyone else.
“This stuff is preventing my sensors from operating,” Kivi complained. “Not even sonar penetrates it.”
“That’s why we’ve snapped lines on. Let’s go inside.”
I tried to contact Graves, but the radio was out.
Crawling into the service duct, I felt a profound sense of claustrophobia. It’s one thing to crawl into a sewer pipe, but it’s quite another to do so when you can’t see a damned thing.
Once I was in a ways, it widened out and I was able to almost stand. Behind me, my troops were tugging on the line as they fumbled their way in my direction.
“Come on, come on,” I called out to them. “Quit playing with yourselves and get in here.”
“How’s it look down there, sir?” Carlos asked.
“It’s great. Like a picnic on a sunny beach.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I wiped an area on my faceplate repeatedly until I was able to see through the gunk. It was like having dirty oil smeared over your windshield, but with my suit lights on and wiped in a similar fashion, it was better than nothing.
The crawlspace was littered with dead troopers and fried drones. Apparently the drones curled back up into balls when they died. I kicked them out of the way.
The number of troops I’d lost down here—it was a crying shame. I told myself that if I ever commanded a legion, I’d flatten any dome full of rebels I met up with, and damn the casualties.
Behind me, the crawlspace began to fill up. About ten of us got inside before something else went terribly wrong.
Near the end of the chain was Carlos. He’d managed to crawl inside, and he’d just begun to wipe his faceplate clear.
“You’re right sir,” he told me. “This is like Heaven in here!”
He grinned, but then his line went taut behind him. It jumped, and so did he, jerking backward a foot or so.
He threw out his arms to catch hold of anything he could.
“Shit-damn! Something is yanking on my six!”
“Leeson!” I shouted. “What’s going on out there?”
“I don’t know, Centurion, but something just drew hard on our line. Maybe a vehicle hit our last man—there’s been no gunfire, but I’m showing yellow circles on my HUD.”
I activated the full unit locator, and the inside of my helmet filled with graphic data. I didn’t always use the system as it was distracting in combat. But when you couldn’t see anyway, it was more useful.
I saw right off that several of our people were dead outside, or I could hope they were out of contact and just reading dead on my HUD.
“Has the line been cut?” I demanded. “Sound off, who have we got out there who can tell me—”
That’s about as far as I got before the filament connecting all of us jumped again. This time, Carlos was sucked right out of the service duct along with the next two guys in the sequence.
Everyone looked shocked, and we heard horrible noises being broadcast by the troopers outside. Screams, gurgles, and puffing, desperate breaths.
I’m not much good at complicated plans, but I do take action when it’s appropriate. I rammed my way past several troops, banging them down on their backsides and into the walls of the pipe. I reached the man I was looking for. He clung desperately with a failing two-handed grip to an uneven spot on the tunnel wall. The tether behind him was as tight as a piano wire. I had my combat knife in my hand.
He looked up at me in shock, sure I was about to kill him. I grabbed for the slack line between us and held it up. I bid the man a solemn nod and shrugged as I cut the filament through—the ends slithering out of my hand. The poor bastard looked back and forth at the two pieces falling and then snapped away—vanishing with tremendous speed into the utter blackness behind him.
-29-
“What the hell was that?” Kivi demanded.
She was clinging onto me. That wasn’t like Kivi. We’d faced death together any number of times, and she could be as tough as nails. She didn’t like dying, don’t get me wrong, but she’d never seemed so afraid of it before.
She just kept staring into the black, roiling smoke outside. It wasn’t coming into the crawlspace with us, possibly there was an air-pressure difference that was pushing it back.
“Specialist,” I told her sternly, “you’re a tech. Reestablish communication with the rest of my unit.”
“Right… Okay…” she said, letting go of my arm and working on her tapper.
Techs had tools the rest of us didn’t have. They carried a rucksack full of devices and a better computer than any tapper.
“Uh…” she said as I gathered up the last handful of troops I had with me and headed toward the bars where Harris had last reported in. “McGill?
I can’t raise anyone. Either that smoke is interfering with our communications, or—or they’re all dead.”
“Vital signs?” I demanded. “Anything?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Not even dead-red location markers. We’re cut off from fleet, and the unit.”
“Should we go back outside and look for them?” asked one of the heavies.
“Nah,” I said. “If they’re alive, they’ll make it in here. If not—well, we have to press on—we can’t afford to lose this precious ground. Our mission is to penetrate the dome and knock out any power source we can locate.”
The whole team went quiet. They looked at me like I was insane. That was nothing new for me, mind you, but it annoyed me just the same.
“Come on now,” I said, “this is Legion Varus. We’re not some hog outfit. Sure, we’re probably going to die, but I’m not going to hunker down in here and wait for it.”
No one said a thing. Their bravado was spent. I understood. Historically, there were very few outfits that didn’t break and run long before they reached a fifty percent loss rate. You couldn’t help it. Even if you wanted to be brave, the back of your mind kept doing the math and declaring you a loser.
“Let’s get this over with,” I told them, taking point. “At least we might get a chance to roast one of those skinny friggers.”
Harris’ body was strewn over the deck, partially draped over the jagged bars he’d blown apart in his last, suicidal act. The drones that had been chewing on him lay scattered all around the place.
“Pick up some extra charging pods,” I told them. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get a chance to shoot something.”
We made quick time after the broken grate and shortly came upon a round, blue disc of light. Before advancing further, I made another fruitless attempt to contact Primus Graves. I wiped my view clear one more time and advanced.
Coming out of the pipe and into the dome proper, I looked around. My rifle was up to my faceplate. Vac helmets always made it harder to handle a rifle, but we were trained for it.