by Isaac Hooke
“Not a chance,” the Chief told me.
So my initial assessment was correct. The ramifications of it all were only just hitting me.
“Aliens fighting aliens,” Snakeoil said, giving voice to the thoughts still forming in my head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
I watched the horde continue to retreat before the onslaught. It looked to be a complete route. “What happens when they turn on us?”
“About that,” Snakeoil said. “You might want to join Skullcracker.” He gestured to his right, pointing across the rooftop.
I turned. From this angle, I saw something poking from beyond the rim of a collapsed superstructure. It looked suspiciously like the golden head of one of those alien mechs.
I remembered the blue dot I’d seen beside Skullcracker on the HUD. I glanced at the overhead map again: the head matched the dot’s position.
I edged forward, past the superstructure, and the object was slowly revealed.
It was indeed an alien mech, looming there in all its golden majesty on the eastern perimeter of the rooftop. Its back was toward me as it stared into the streets below.
Skullcracker surveyed the battle space beside the mech. Even in his jumpsuit he was dwarfed by it, coming in at about one-sixth its size.
As if sensing my gaze, the shiny mech turned toward me. The only feature on its face was a single, glowing red bar across the forehead, probably some sort of visual sensor; otherwise I stared at a smooth, expressionless oblong of gold steel.
The alien mech remained motionless for several moments, as if unsure what to make of me, this battered and bruised human soldier who had come to call upon it.
And then the cockpit irised open.
Shaw stepped out.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tahoe
My hyperventilating increased, despite my shallower lung capacity.
“Help!” I managed to shout. I felt sick. “Help!”
I was inextricably lodged in a tight crawlspace beneath a billion tonnes of rock. There was no sign of the rest of the squad. I wore only my boots and cooling undergarment. My head was turned sideways so that the rock floor and ceiling pressed the cartilage of my ears painfully into my skull. My arms were extended in front of me. The rest of my body was squeezed so tightly by the rock that breathing was difficult.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, that terrible superlative was reserved for the alien insects crawling inside the tunnel an unknown distance behind me at that very moment. I could hear the rustle of their tiny mandibles whenever I held my frantic breath. They sounded eager. Hungry.
I scrambled blindly for my rifle. The barrel faced forward, the wrong direction to shoot at the insects. There was no way I could possibly turn the weapon around in this confined space, but foolishly I tried anyway.
The rifle jarred against the rock and I heard the tinkle of breaking glass. The dark stone before my face became pitch black.
And I thought I’d been in hell before.
Damn you, spirits.
I’d just destroyed the lamp tied to my rifle. The helmet casings for the units were industrial grade, but when removed from that protective shell the lamp was no stronger than an ordinary LED.
I should have been more careful. But I was simply too frantic.
I held my breath. With the light gone, the rustling of the insects had grown louder, more fervent.
Abruptly it changed in timbre.
I felt the pressure of insectile limbs along the outside of my boots.
They had reached me.
The insects were probing, investigating this new and interesting obstacle that had appeared in their paths. Probably trying to decide if my boots were a tasty morsel or something inedible that needed to be ripped away first, like the wrapper of a candy bar.
That’s right, I was one big chocolate bar to those things.
In the darkness, all of my senses were focused on touch and sound, so I readily felt when those probing limbs moved upward along either side of my boots. In moments some of the alien insects would skitter onto the more vulnerable sections of my legs, which were protected only by my cooling undergarment.
In a panic I slid my legs to the left and right, attempting to shake off the insects.
That caused a reaction. They began to hiss slightly, and in my mind I imagined agitated cobras.
I felt a sharp pain in my right toe. One of them had bitten straight through the boot. Opening up the candy wrapper.
I kicked my boot against the rock and heard a satisfying crunch above the hissing.
“Help!” I still felt nauseous, but strangely I wasn’t hyperventilating as much. You’d think I’d be panicking even more, that I’d be overcome with the helplessness of the situation.
Not so.
The insects provided a focal point for my hopelessness. Gave me something I could actually fight.
The hypoxic stars of hyperventilation began to fade from my vision.
“Come on, you mothers,” I wheezed. “Let’s see what you’ve got!”
I scissored my legs back and forth, trying to grind them. I thought I felt the weight of squished insect bodies hanging from my boots, but that may have been wishful thinking.
“Come on, bitches, I can do this all day!”
And indeed I could. I had performed similar exercises in PT every morning for the past two years.
“That all you got?”
I actually laughed in malicious glee. A short, breathless laugh.
But then I felt another prick. And another. Both just above the rim of my boots, and extremely painful. I gritted my teeth as the mandibles tore past my cooling undergarment and into the flesh below.
The pain brought me clarity and I realized swishing my legs back and forth like that was pointless. It would buy me time, sure, but I wasn’t going to win that way, not in the long run.
I had to focus on moving forward.
The other members of my squad had gotten through.
I could do it, too.
I had to.
I flinched as more mandibles cut into my flesh above the boots, and I quickly scissored my legs, trying to mash them.
I felt a wetness beneath me, slowly flowing toward my chest. It had to be insect blood, probably mixed with some of my own. The fact that it trickled toward my upper body meant I was on a slight downward incline.
Another terrible bite came, this time above my right knee. One of the insects was advancing toward my crotch . . .
I moved my legs back and forth in the tight confines and knocked the latest round of them away, bathing the tunnel in more of their fluids. My entire underside felt wet now.
Wait a second.
Those fluids might act as a lubricant.
It was getting harder to move my feet as more of the insects crowded my lower extremities, but with some effort I forced the tips of my boots into the rock walls on either side. I had trouble obtaining a foothold because those walls seemed slippery, but I kept trying and finally found purchase.
Then I jammed my fingertips into the tiny crevices in the rock ahead of me and exhaled all the air in my lungs. When I was done exhaling, I exhaled some more.
I sucked in my stomach as far as it would go. I squeezed my shoulder blades together.
Ignoring the fresh bites the insects inflicted along my legs, I pushed with my feet and pulled with my fingers, giving it everything I had. I exerted myself so fully that my entire body shook from the effort, and the strain caused me to exhale yet another small gasp of air.
I slid forward a centimeter through the lubricated rock. The cartilage of my ears, already bent, was pinched further. However I hardly noticed the pain, not with all the other sensations I was experiencing right then.
Without taking a breath, without changing the muscles of my torso one bi
t, I found purchase once more with my boots and fingertips, and pushed and pulled again.
I advanced another centimeter.
Again.
Another centimeter.
The rock seemed to loosen slightly around me.
I finally inhaled. I still couldn’t expand my lungs completely, but I’d made progress.
Those insects were having a field day with my legs, biting through the cooling undergarment like piranhas. I scissored my thighs twice, killing as many of them as I could, then I exhaled everything and shoved forward again.
I advanced another centimeter.
I repeated the process, and in moments I’d moved forward an entire pace.
Incredible.
I was actually doing this.
The way was opening up around me—the enclosing walls definitely felt looser, and I could almost inhale to my normal lung capacity.
I advanced another pace.
A third.
I slid my rifle and EM emitter forward in the darkness, and scissored my feet, grinding up the newest batch of insects.
The ceiling no longer pressed so rigidly into my head, and my ears weren’t deformed as much, nor was my breathing so frantic, so when Mauler’s voice came I actually heard it.
“Cyclone, you all right?” he said. From the muffled quality of his voice, I guessed he was about eight meters ahead of me.
I hadn’t been abandoned after all.
“Yup,” I said, flush with relief.
“I heard you calling, why didn’t you answer me?”
“Didn’t hear,” I said. “My ears were mashed to shit against the rock. All I heard was my own panicked breathing and the blood gushing past my ear canal. Not to mention the damn insects.”
“Insects?”
“Yeah. They’re here. Don’t slow down, bro. Don’t you dare.”
I continued crawling forward in the dark. It wasn’t pitch black anymore—my eyes had adjusted, and some ambient light from Mauler’s lamp reached me. Even so, I didn’t need it, because I still couldn’t turn my head. I proceeded forward by touch alone.
The alien insects kept harassing me, and I paused every so often to grind up the current lot before continuing.
The cave opened up bit by bit, at least horizontally, so that soon I was able to bend my arms and better use them to aid my motion. I still couldn’t actually look forward, but I felt certain I’d be able to soon. Because of the extra room, the insects were reaching farther along on my body, and I had to involve my hips whenever I stopped to grind them. Luckily none of them had touched my crotch area yet, but it was only a matter of time. Already my buttocks throbbed where chunks of flesh had been ripped free.
The rifle and EM emitter were abruptly yanked from my grasp.
What the . . .
Hands clasped my own and dragged me forward.
My head was free.
Then my torso.
And finally the rest of my body.
Mauler hauled me upright.
I stood, or rather, crouched, in a chest-high chamber. The rest of the squad was here, hunched two abreast.
“The insects,” I said, glancing down.
Mauler followed my gaze.
I stomped my feet, shaking several of the vaguely locust-like insects from my body. I brought my hands down, swiping and patting them from the front and back of my legs, wincing as their mandibles tore my flesh in the process. The insects landed with a gentle rattle on the floor and Mauler promptly ground them up beneath his boots.
More of them began flowing from the crevice behind me.
Mauler returned my rifle and EM emitter.
“Get back!” he said, forcing me away from the crevice with one arm.
I moved aside. Mauler ripped a grenade from where he had secured it to his rifle. Staying hunched, he cooked it for a few seconds and then lobbed it into the cleft of rock I’d just emerged from. “Frag out!”
Insects continued to spill from the hole so that for a moment I thought the grenade would be regurgitated, too. I was about to dive away when it detonated.
A plume of black dust and insects spewed from the crevice. I heard a rumbling a few seconds after the explosion, and when it ceased I realized the crawlspace had collapsed.
A few more insects emerged after the detonation, joining those already blasted into the chamber, and the squad swiftly stomped them to death.
“Well that was one of the shittiest low-crawls I’ve ever done,” Fret said. Like everyone else, his cool vents were covered in scrapes and nicks and chewed up entirely in places. The exposed flesh of his face and hands didn’t fare much better; pieces of his beard were torn away, and bloody gashes crisscrossed his fingers.
“I’ve had worse,” Trace sniffed from where he crouched beside him.
“Don’t think Cyclone has.” TJ grimaced at me. “You get the worst low-crawl of the year award, dude. Looks like you dragged your feet through a blender.”
“Not so far from the truth.” I glanced down. Those insects had done quite the number on me. Above my boots, the leg areas of my undergarment were steeped in blood, with chunks of flesh protruding in several spots.
The sight made me feel faint and I promptly sat down on the uncomfortable rock.
My brothers crouched there above me, seeming suddenly reluctant. About what?
Then I realized it: They wanted to treat my wounds, but from the looks on their faces they were convinced I was infected with some alien virus. You know, the gene-altering, shapeshifting kind that would turn me and anyone who touched me into a monster, just like in the science fiction novels. The Brass would definitely ensure I went through more than a few hours of decontamination if I ever returned to the ship.
Ghost, always the brave one, came forward. The albino seemed like some white-haired imp without his jumpsuit. He untaped a suit-rep kit from his rifle.
Facehopper joined him.
“I got this, boss,” Ghost told him.
Facehopper glanced at him uncertainly. “You sure?”
“Positive.”
Facehopper seemed relieved.
“Here, just give me the kit,” I told Ghost. “I’ll do it myself.”
“No way,” Ghost said. “I got this.”
I stared into his eerily red eyes. “I don’t want you to get infected with anything.” I snatched at his suit-rep kit.
Ghost knocked my hand aside. “You’re my brother. And if you’re infected, I want what you’ve got. Why should you get to have all the fun, flirting with the nurses in detox while the rest of us are stuck in training?”
Ah Ghost. More of a brother than any by blood.
“Too bad the only nurses in detox are robots,” I told him.
“All the more reason to flirt with them. They can’t give lip.” He opened up the kit and judiciously applied field bandages to my bloody legs. There weren’t enough, so he concentrated on the major wounds.
“Do you want me to give you something for the pain?” Ghost asked midway.
I shook my head, breathing hard from the agony. “Need to be alert.”
When he was done I sat back, wincing. This was going to be a long day.
By then the rest of the squad had removed the spare ammunition rounds taped to their rifles and attached them to their torsos instead. I did the same, not wanting to leave my weapon unbalanced.
“Let’s go,” Facehopper said.
I followed the squad down the tunnel at a crouch, the way lit by the ambient light of my brothers. I walked with a pronounced limp, of course, my legs throbbing the whole time.
There is no pain, I told myself. Pain is an illusion of the mind. A fallacy.
It was true. Pain was indeed an illusion. The only reason living things had pain receptors was because of the self-preservation mechanism: Any actions
that inflicted pain were to be avoided, as pain meant tissue damage. Agitating a wound increased pain because said agitation might worsen the wound. Too bad the primitive mechanism couldn’t be shut off, because in this case avoiding pain meant staying here and dying beneath a billion tonnes of rock.
Yes, pain was indeed a fallacy.
At least it lets me know I’m alive.
I glanced back one last time at the collapsed cleft. I was just glad to be out of there. Because like Fret had said, that was one of the worst experiences of my life.
“You think the collapse will diminish the nuke’s blast radius?” Mauler said, noticing my gaze.
I shook my head. “We’re still within the vaporization radius. When you have a weapon capable of matching the heat from a star’s thermonuclear core, nothing can stand in its way. And I mean nothing: All the rock you see here will be vaporized and melted within the first few milliseconds after detonation, forming a ‘melt cavity.’ The ensuing steam and radiation will blast upward through the shafts and passageways, seeking the path of least resistance to the surface.”
“Know-it-all,” Mauler muttered.
“We’re bringing nuclear steam heating to the warrens of Shangde City,” Bomb said. “Gonna dine on cooked crab tonight, baby!”
“It’s going to be messy,” I said, unable to share Bomb’s cheer. I just hoped we were able to find shelter before the steam and radiation obliterated our squad, too.
I kept the rifle close to my chest as I advanced. It was designed to be used while wearing the bulky gloves of a jumpsuit, and the grip on the stock felt a bit wide without them. The tip of my index finger barely reached the trigger. I could still fire it though, and that was the important part.
The ceiling slowly gave way until eventually we were able to stand to our full heights; however the width still limited us to two abreast.
The pain in my legs didn’t abate. Ghost’s bandages had started to feel uncomfortably tight and the whole region pulsed in time to my heartbeat.
Mauler kept glancing over his shoulder beside me, and I’d often follow his gaze; the lamp on his weapon revealed only the empty, dark murk behind us.
“Worried that the insects are tunneling their way through?” I asked him.