by B. V. Larson
“Into those caves, sir?” I asked suddenly, excitedly.
“Exactly.”
I slammed my gauntlets together, making a resounding bang in his face. “Hot damn! The troops said we’d never pull this duty, but you proved them wrong. Thank you sir! Thank you.”
Winslade looked confused and a little put out. Graves knew me better. He was shaking his head again.
“Well,” Winslade said, “if you’re so eager to go, you’ll be even happier to learn that I’ve stepped up the reproduction of your unit. I’ve got every revival unit on the lifters churning out your troops first. You’ll move out in two hours’ time.”
This last announcement took me by surprise. We’d barely eaten and hadn’t slept since we landed. My face faltered.
“Is there a problem, Centurion?” Winslade demanded with a glint in his eye.
“No sir, not really, but my boys are getting bored. I guess we’ll just have to wait around for the bio people to get their jobs done.”
Winslade nodded then left. Neither he nor I were satisfied with the encounter, and we both probably hated one another more than ever.
Harris showed up shortly after the brass had left. He looked like a man who’d been drinking all night and was only just getting to the hangover.
“Total bullshit,” he said. “Complete, total bullshit. They can’t send us into any frigging caves! How do we get down there in the first place?”
“I’ve figured out a way,” Natasha said.
Harris and I turned to face her. Harris shook his head and exhaled loudly in defeat.
“Little miss prissy-pants. Of course you did. Let’s hear it. Tell this old soldier how he’s going to die on another fool mission for McGill.”
I wanted to tell him to shut up, but I didn’t quite have the heart. He had good reasons to bitch and gripe. We were all being screwed, and candying that up wasn’t going to solve anything.
“How do we do it, Specialist?” I prompted.
“We’ve found the gas-release nozzles,” she said. “They’re very carefully hidden, but by reviewing the vids from Nostrum as the gas formed, it’s obvious. About every hundred meters, a source has been pinpointed. It stands to reason that the exits from the caves must be nearby.”
“It stands to reason?” Harris demanded. “That’s it? You’re sending us down there into Hell itself on a hunch, aren’t you? Just admit it, girl!”
Natasha licked her lips, I could tell she was slightly nervous. “The rock density at those points is clearly lighter. The tunnels must be there—but they’re hidden from us somehow.”
Harris walked away, grumbling and kicking at alien fragments. The men had already stripped our dead and hauled them into the lifter for “recycling” but the enemy corpses had provided plenty of blasted scraps of meat for Harris to abuse.
Natasha and I gazed down into what could only be described as a valley of death. The black vapors had largely dispersed now, and the winds were blowing again. In the center of the scene, as the sun set, was the dome itself. Lights came on inside, and we saw movement within.
“They’re as bold as brass in that blue-glass bottle,” I said. “By now, they must have figured out that we’re not going to blow up their dome. So, they’re ignoring us.”
“We’re in a full blown siege,” she said. “I wonder how long it will last.”
“What if they fire X-ray missiles at us out here?” I asked.
“They really can’t. The beams can be directed, but we’re too close now for that kind of attack. They’d risk burning themselves as well as us.”
I nodded. “If they don’t have revival machines, they know we’d be called the winners in that scenario. We’d come back and they wouldn’t.”
“Precisely.”
After a moment’s quiet between us, I asked her the next thing that was on my mind. “Natasha, if I lead my unit down there, are you gonna find those cave entrances?”
“If those entrances are there, I’ll find them,” she said firmly.
Figuring that was the best I was going to get, I let it go at that.
With a couple of hours to rest, I checked on the battle lines and took a break in the lifter. I ate a cold meal with a single, sour bottle of synth-beer.
Della joined me. She’d died in the battle and come back in a daze.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve died,” she said. “I forgot what it felt like.”
“Hey,” I told her, “on the bright side, you’re sporting a younger version of your body. Those creases I saw beginning to form in your face the other day—they’re gone. It’s a miracle!”
She glanced at me sidelong. “Is that detail important to Earth women?”
“Usually,” I admitted.
Della was different. Being from Dust World, she wasn’t always in tune with human norms. She was like Etta that way. Neither one of them cared much what other people thought of them, or their appearance. Dust Worlders just weren’t wired that way.
“It’s nice of you to say, anyway,” she said.
Experimentally, I slipped my hand out and touched hers. She gave me a tiny shake of the head, and I retreated. It just wasn’t to be.
I understood. Her recent death had left her thoughtful and apprehensive about the future. That happened to the toughest of us.
Dying and coming back from the grave a few hours later—it just wasn’t natural, after all.
-36-
The hours flew by. Night fell, and the sky turned just as black as the ground. Gathering my glum troops, I marched them outside.
There was no moon swinging around this rock of a planet, and not much in the way of standing liquids like oceans. The sky itself should have been full of icy stars, but they were hidden behind cloud cover. In short, it was as dark as a coal-pit out there.
The only vision we had was artificial in nature. We were running purely on night gear, which let us see something, at least. The landscape blazed green when seen through our scopes. The oily rocks glimmered, reflecting a wet, poisonous sheen.
“Formation as follows,” I ordered, “light troopers up front with Harris. Leeson will take the center, Toro the rear. Lights, move ahead about a hundred meters and fan out.”
“You heard the man!” Harris boomed. “Spread out! No sense in letting some demon eat our sorry asses all at once!”
Ahead of us, I could see the light troopers forming a double-line and moving downslope. When they were a hundred meters away, Leeson and I advanced after them.
Leeson’s weaponeers looked sad. They didn’t want to abandon the relative safety of their 88s to climb down into the dangerous valley. I couldn’t blame them for that. They carried nothing but belchers and some smart-missiles on their shoulders.
Toro’s heavies followed us down at the rear. They moved warily, slowly. I had to keep contacting her to speed up and close the gap between us, which she never did do to my satisfaction.
Picking my way down various trails on spiked boots, I had Natasha on my right, and Leeson on my left.
Adjunct Leeson was a bitter man on the best of days, but today he was downright irritable. He’d died in the last battle, and I think he was still annoyed about that.
“This thing between you and Winslade,” he told me on private chat, “that shit has to stop, McGill.”
“Maybe you should inform the primus of your deepest feelings about it,” I suggested. “Maybe if he knew how hurt you are when we pull an assignment like this, he’d be sweet on us forever.”
Leeson chuckled and grumbled a little more, but then he finally shut the hell up.
“I’m getting a reading, Centurion,” Natasha said when we reached flat ground and began to climb over giant, crab-like corpses.
“Give it to me,” I said.
I displayed the datastream I was getting from her on my faceplate. It was distracting, and possibly deadly in combat, but I was used to it. Since we were doing nothing other than walking, I figured it was safe enough.
&nb
sp; I noticed an indicator on my HUD—about a hundred meters south, a portion of the ground was lit by a smoky golden circle. The golden circle wasn’t really there, of course, but it was superimposed on my faceplate by my tapper. It was a way of letting me know where something interesting was located.
“Might as well investigate,” I said, and I relayed the stream to all my adjuncts.
They stopped advancing and threw up a hand to signal their troops to halt as well.
“The Light platoon would like the honor of investigating this find, sir!” Harris called out.
I grinned. He knew he was going to have to go first. I gave him the order and he sent three of his luckiest people to the spot.
I expected black gas to come pumping out at their approach. I seriously did. But nothing happened.
“Maybe they’re all out of smoke,” Harris said as if he’d read my mind.
A few more recruits dared to gather around the spot, useless snap-rifles in their tight grips. The searched the rocks carefully.
Natasha raced up with her equipment when the all-clear was sounded. She began setting it up, and she quickly got a confirmation.
“The caves are definitely under us,” she said. “There must be an entrance. It has to be close.”
Like a pack of fools, we began looking around. We were all daring to feel hopeful already, I could tell. After all, nothing had attacked us yet. Maybe we’d find a way to sneak into these caves. Maybe, those tall skinny bastards in the dome were all out of monsters and traps.
The human spirit is damned near unstoppable in its own way, and rare is the man who truly believes he’s about to die—even when it’s frigging obvious.
Natasha’s machine let out an audible hum. It had found something—some kind of gap in the ground, perhaps.
That’s when it happened. The rocky valley floor simply opened up and swallowed us down.
Not just Harris and his light troopers went in, mind you, but me and Leeson’s people too. The only ones who were outside the deadly radius were Toro and her overly cautious pack of heavies.
I hated them as I fell. I hated Toro herself most of all. Somehow, when a man is dying, he oftentimes hates those who were lucky enough or smart enough to avoid the same awful fate.
The fall itself didn’t kill me—although it should have, by all rights. There were bones grinding in my chest and both my legs had snapped.
How far down was I? There was no time to check. Fifty meters, maybe. My suit had caught some of it, and it hadn’t been a straight plunge. As a bonus, I’d bounced around against some rocks on the way down. Only my armor, which was like a shell on a beetle, had kept me alive and gasping for breath, if only temporarily.
Some around me groaned, and I knew they were still alive, but only a few of them stirred.
I forced myself up into a sitting position. I was proud of that. My rifle came around, but it was dead. Something had killed it in the fall—maybe I’d landed my fat metal-covered ass on it.
My pistol still glowed green, however, and it was easier to operate anyway.
There was something in the dark with me. I could sense it. My night vision was out, so I kicked on my suit-lights.
Now, that’s against the rules when everyone else is running their night gear, but I was beyond caring about that at the moment.
Harris saw me then. He had his helmet off. He was coughing and sitting up like me. One of his eyes was crushed shut, or maybe torn out. It was hard to tell.
“Put that damned light out!” he yelled at me.
“I can’t see without it.”
“They’ll find us if you don’t turn it out!”
“Have you seen them?”
“No… but I heard something.”
“Harris,” I said, getting to my knees. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but I found I could crawl. “Harris, we’re dead anyway. Let these crabby, spider-monsters come.”
“Toro is up there. She can lower ropes. She can get us out.”
“Nah,” I said. “We’re all broken up. Even if they did get us out, they’d just recycle us anyway.”
He stared at me, knowing the truth of it, and went into another coughing spell. His suit was still pouring oxygen up into his face, but without the faceplate and a good seal, he wouldn’t last an hour.
“Okay,” he said, accepting reality. “Back to back, like the old days.”
I crawled over to him, put my back against his, and we waited for the monsters to come. When they finally did, there was a moment of terror in my heart, I don’t mind telling you. The Devil himself never looked scarier than these crab-things did in that black, dusty pit.
We fired our weapons. We knew it wouldn’t do much, but we were going to go out fighting. A few other troops stung them too, from here and there around us. Maybe my own troops were smarter than I was—seeing as they’d kept quiet and played dead until the crabs found us.
When one of them loomed near, I saw the underside of its shell. That’s where the mouth was. A six-pointed star, with six squirming teeth, or spines, that served as little hands to shove the food into that lowering orifice.
That’s when Harris showed his true genius. He had a plasma grenade in his hand, and he held it straight up in his armored fist, which rammed home into the lowering maw.
Apparently, these things fed by kind of squatting on top of their prey.
Harris had great timing—either that, or my tapper didn’t update fast enough. I had no memory after that. Either his grenade went off and killed us both, or we were chewed up and swallowed.
Whichever was the case, I have to say it wasn’t my favorite death. Not by a long shot.
-37-
I soon experienced one of my more unpleasant reawakenings.
“Get him out of there!” a rough voice ordered. “Right now!”
“But he’s not fully formed yet,” a female voice said. I figured she had to be a bio. “We should just abort.”
“Forget it. He can fight. I don’t care if he’s deaf, dumb and retarded—he can fight.”
I recognized that voice now. It was an old acquaintance of mine—Claver. I couldn’t fathom why he was giving anyone orders. He was supposed to be in prison.
Knowing who was talking didn’t help me much. I felt wrong inside. Kind of sick, like my guts were twisted up in cramps. A revival usually left me bleary-eyed and confused—but this was worse than normal.
“Is he a bad grow?” Claver demanded. “He’s tucked up in a ball, shivering. That’s not the McGill I know.”
“He’s trying to pull it together—I told you it was too early. He’s not fully-formed yet.”
Those words alarmed me. If they were birthing me early, there had to be a reason. I attempted speech, but it came out as a croaking sound.
“He’s a dummy,” Claver declared. “He’s normally as shit-off stupid as a tomcat anyway, but this is even worse.”
“You want me to recycle him and try again?” asked the bio.
“No, there’s no time. Try to quicken another seed from his combat team. You’ll probably never get finished—but try it anyway.”
The bio went to work, and I heard the goopy sounds of thick chugging liquids as the machine was refilled with supplies for a new job.
Something told me I should keep my eyes shut, but I tried to open them anyway.
Pain! Blinding white light—then a vague shape loomed over me. I could feel his heat and smell his breath.
“Get off me, Claver,” I managed say in a raspy voice.
“There! See that? He’s awake! The bastard was just playing possum on us, that’s all.”
He laughed harshly then, but he seemed relieved.
I tried to think, but it was harder to do than usual. Why was Claver in the Arcturus system? Why was anyone listening to him? Something had to be wrong. These thoughts danced in my mind, but speaking them aloud was too much effort right now.
Groaning and straightening out my body, I coughed and puked up some gunk. That wa
s worse than usual, too. Fresh lungs always started off with a coating inside that evaporated over time—and it was just as irritating as it sounded.
“That’s it,” Claver said, “get up, boy. We need you!”
My spine straightened slowly, popping every single vertebrae into place as it did so with an audible click. It was weird and tad disconcerting. I didn’t think I’d ever been brought out this early before. I hoped all my parts were there.
Hands caught under my armpits and helped me sit up. A warm spray of water gushed over me, washing some of the gunk out of my face.
“Hey, you have to do that outside,” the bio said irritably. “I’m charging the machine, here. Extra water can mess up the next grow.”
Claver chuckled at her. “Yeah… good luck with that, little lady. Come on, McGill. Spit, shit, and git off the table. I need you, boy. All of Earth does.”
“Why?” I managed to say.
“We’ll talk about that. Real soon. I promise—nurse, I need you to clear me for a quick exit. I’ll take care of James here, personally.”
The bio came near. “I’m not a nurse, sir.”
“I’m sorry your majesty—can you check him out, please?”
I felt her hands running over me to perform her final inspection. “Apgar scores are surprisingly good. Cognitive functions are slow, but acceptable.”
“That’s par for the course on this model,” Claver said.
“Physically… his breathing is labored, but I don’t see any reason not to—whoops!”
My eyes opened a notch wider. Hearing your midwife say “oops” was never good when you were freshly reborn.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Look at that—that’s a new one,” she said. “His toes aren’t fully formed. I told you we shouldn’t pull him out early. We’re lucky he has hair and ears at all. Those get printed last by these units.”
Alarmed, I lifted a foot to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, my toes were tiny pink bulbs—way too small. They looked like a child’s toes. There were no nails, no hair growing out of the top—nothing. I wasn’t even sure they had bones inside.