by Allen Ivers
Until finally sight deafened the senses, as a muted orange glow came from around the bend. They had only gone down, and still one thumper left to place. In the heart of a mountain, what could possibly be putting out visible light?
Aaron lowered his monocular, going so far as to pocket it. That small hesitant glow gave off enough to his starved eyes to light the entire passage. The team inched forward, wary but excited, with Holmst throttling the advance to avoid a misstep. Perhaps it was a trap, but what need would the Drones have for traps this far into their turf? They could simply overwhelm.
Eden was the only one who didn’t rush onward, her head hung low, chin to chest. She was staring at the ground -- the smooth, packed stone. The air pockets in the walls and ceiling had been pressed into an almost polished marble. When she finally noticed her solitude, she looked up to Aaron, swallowing her fear to follow.
She and Aaron stepped into the light, seeing their colleagues huddling at a breach in the wall. It was barely more than a splinter, split in the stone like rotting wood peeling back. The russet light positively streamed from that gap, and they all yearned for its secret.
Curiosity and that damn cat.
Even from his distant point, Aaron could make out something moving. He wished he hadn’t looked.
Inside the dormant magma chamber of a long-dead volcano, they found the nest. It looked more like a city.
The golden light beamed up to them from enormous patches of moss, rows upon rows -- some kind of bioluminescent process between rock and plant that made the most welcoming of lights, like a soft lamp in a library. There were whole fields of it stretching far down the length of the cavern. The stuff looked thicker than grass, hefty and peaty, like a sponge or baked bread.
A scant few Drones could be made out meandering through the paddies, probing the crop and harvesting up particularly lush bundles with their bladed arms.
They would then ferry their loads throughout the cavern, before returning to further tend the crop. One beast could be seen hoisting a patch to its demonic maw, where the levers of its split jaw gingerly picked the moss from its clumsy claws before passing it to the chomping teeth behind.
Beyond the farmlands, three artificial stalagmites rose from the floor, reaching their asymmetric spires toward the cavernous ceiling thousands of feet up. Aaron might’ve assumed them to be natural formations from the passing of an epoch of natural events.
Rather, a team of Drones pulled stone blocks from some unseen quarry to reinforce their newest project, and spit some mucus or resin that seemed to fuse the stone chunks into one cohesive piece. Simplistic pick points had been carved in the sides like a rudimentary ladder, allowing for the Drones to wedge their claws in for leverage and lift themselves up to the many small awnings and overhangs that dotted the vertical surface.
As one Drone clambered up with a patch of Moss, it passed a pair in their tiny hovel. They exchanged hisses before the climber had to recoil and climb on upward.
Aaron lifted his monocular, daring to zoom in on the towers. The moss gave off so much light that it nearly blinded him, beaming a clean white circle onto his face, but he could just barely make out the outlines of eggs amongst the dotted homes in the towers. They were cushioned with the moss, like a baby bird.
Perhaps it served as both protection and immediate food for the fresh infant? Dozens of Jergad ferried material up to the various aeries, the entire clan tending to everyone else.
This was no outpost; this was their home.
“Jesus Holy Christ,” Jensen murmured. He may as well have yelled, but no one reacted to it.
Aaron lowered his glass and craned his neck back, hoping to see far above where the towers might end.
High above toward the very top, suspended bridges connected the three towers to a massive platform at the center. It looked like a ball caught in a spider’s web, an anvil suspended by mere threads. For all its weight, Aaron thought it surely must collapse. Any moment now he would hear the rocks creaking under that impossible load.
These industrious beasts seemed to defy conventional physics. What had once been an enormous magma chamber had seen the touch of construction and architecture, agriculture, even social castes.
This was no hive mind of giant brutal monsters; this was tribal, genuine evidence of real civilization.
“Back the way we came. Now. Double-time.”
No one wanted to dispute Holmst’s order. They had stuck their heads far deeper in the lion’s mouth than they ever intended to. The longer the stayed, the more they tempted fate.
Jensen and Keira dropped their remaining thumpers, more abandoning them than anything else. Ounces made pounds; pounds made pain; pain made delays.
Now was no time for delays.
Aaron helped Jensen shed his gear, pulling the straps loose as fast as his hands could work.
And that’s when Aaron heard the spoon of a grenade spring free with a metallic happy ring, happy to announce its release to the entire cavern.
Aaron looked back to see Holmst dawdling at the window, cupping the smooth steel incendiary tin in his left hand -- and staring at the moss farm below. Holmst considered the grenade for a moment, as if debating one final time, before turning his eyes to the window.
He was going to burn it. And every ear between him and the surface had heard that pin come loose. The noise of city life in that cavern came to a crashing silence, that ring still working its way down the cavern.
The thin red line had already been crossed.
“Run!” Aaron bellowed.
As if to countermand that order, Holmst hucked the grenade toward the moss paddies. The aluminum casing skipped off the stones with a hollow melancholy tune.
Fast, too fast, Holmst was right next to him – a blur of motion in between the melodic falls of the grenade. That look in his eye, regret and… shame?
Something hit him. Holmst? Why?
Aaron fell to the ground. His ribs screamed.
That is, until the flashfire caught and spat a dragon’s breath through the stone window. Flames licked the air around him, and just as soon extinguished by the exhale of wind that felt like someone had compressed a storm gale into the room with him. Stone cracked and fell all, a bedding of shards.
Aaron shivered, shaking the chunks off of him and pressing himself up off the floor, his bad leg moaning as if it could remember the punishment from last time.
The once calm lantern light of the moss was now a flickering beam of orange. Had he been down longer than he thought? Even with the just the dim firelight glinting off the stone, he could tell he was now alone.
And what was worse, the stone chips at his feet were starting to skitter along the floor, as if trying to crawl out of the way of the approaching horde. Their chittering screeches seemed to echo from inside his own head, as the shadows danced across walls around him.
They were coming.
Aaron fumbled with his rig, scrambling for his monocular. He had to find the flares, find his way back out of the tunnel. He ripped the eyepiece from his pocket, bracing it up to his eye.
Drone, front and center, framed in the window and searching the debris. It spotted his movement, and reared back, talons high.
Aaron snapped his rifle up, barely taking time to sight down on his target. The gunshot itself nearly threw Aaron back to the ground, with a piercing whine driving itself into his ears. The thirty-caliber weapon was a loud crack outside; inside the mountain, he might as well have shot himself for all the pain he caused.
He had no idea if the drone went down. He collapsed, trying to push his sanity back inside his head. The rifle was going to do him no good down here, and he may very well have summoned whatever remained of the sleeping horde.
Don’t think. Run.
Aaron sprung to his feet, running toward what he hoped was an open passage. Up to safety or down into the belly -- he wanted to be anywhere but here.
Sure enough, the silhouetted Drone stood up in his way -- at least
as best as it was able: his shot had severed its leg at the knee. Propping itself up on the stump, it took a wide swipe at him. The blade hooked his rig, slamming him to an abrupt halt.
He could feel the bone spear pressed against his spine.
It dragged him backwards, carving a trough through the stone scraps. He was dead without that night vision optic, but it was currently tied to a thing about to kill him.
Choices.
He clicked the straps off and slid out of the webbing just as the Drone’s second claw came down, cracking the stone under it like a steel pick. For all of the Jergad’s strength and tenacity, the smaller Aaron was a great deal more slippery.
He ran, boots pounding the ground, swinging his arms as though he might drag his body forward with each motion. He did not dare look back. The hellish sounds that issued forth from behind him didn’t need a linguistics expert to translate. If they were violent and cruel on the plains, what would they do to him down in this spider hole?
His ankles creaked and shins burned, lifting the heavy load of his ratty boots with each step forward. That implied he was going uphill at least. That was positive news.
A Drone came into view, seeming to step out of the very wall. Its jaw swung open and hissed, drooling its thick mucus onto the floor. No time. Don’t slow down. Aaron ran right at it.
The Drone waited for him, arms open to greet him in for the deadliest embrace. Perhaps it would cleave him down the middle, slicing his skull in two to minimize his ability to feel pain? Or it would take him at the midsection, to better guarantee a kill? What if it missed and took him at a shoulder, holding him just long enough for the brethren to arrive and feast?
What is it not expecting from prey?
Aaron charged the Drone, a creature three times his size forged from a child’s nightmare. It lowered its head, displaying the wide skull crest like a leathery pauldron to shield its body.
Right. That.
Only one way to go now. Aaron jumped.
The Drone had filled the entire hallway; that is, until it had stooped. The space between the large beast and the roof was a mere three feet.
Aaron squeaked between monster and stone like a pub dart. The creature reacted but too late, slamming its head crest into the roof, sealing the opening and also wedging itself.
Aaron thanked the countless nights on the obstacle course before tucking his head to his chest and running. His chest ached from the lack of oxygen, his vision dimming, the cold mountain air piercing him to the bone. Each laborious breath felt like swallowing whole ice cubes.
But he couldn’t stop. Do not stop. Sergeant Bray’s voice barked some epithet in his ear.
Aaron wiped at the side of his face and up his jaw, smearing the sweat with a warm liquid that could only be his blood. The gunshot must’ve ruptured something. Or maybe when he hit his head?
Light. Sunlight.
Aaron shot out of the cave like he was rocket powered. He wished he’d died in the blast.
The Howler lifted away, the last of its cables pulling into the belly. Despite being a mere twenty meters up, the ghostly machine hovered in absolute silence.
He could make out a single voice screaming: Jensen, frantic and raspy, "I see him! He's right there! AARON!"
And just like that, he was silenced by the closing hatch and the aircraft’s curious engineering, before it peeled away into the sky, like it had never been there at all.
That silence ripped out his guts.
They left without him. The mountain winds cried out in a louder voice than those engines did. The gnashing horror behind him was louder, bellowing up from the belly of the mountain like out of a trumpet announcing the approach of the executioner.
Aaron fell to his knees, his exhausted legs unable to hold him a moment longer. What would be the use of standing, anyway? The load would be relieved in short order.
They emerged all around him, from behind boulders and over cliff edges, slithering towards him with unexpected fluidity, like they might be wary of some trick. Or maybe they were just playing with their food.
Aaron glanced back at the tunnel, toward the fires they had lit far below and out of sight. Behind that curtain of impossibly black shadow he had trespassed through, a dozen shapes roiled and twisted, as though the darkness itself hungered for sacrifice.
He closed his eyes, listening to the approaching drums of a thousand heavy feet. Maybe it would be over before he opened them.
13
Riley
“You left him!” The voice cried out, “You crazy son of a bitch, you left him!”
Riley had been at the Wall’s Northern Hangar Bay by pure chance, performing a surprise inspection with a few officers. The recon team had not been expected back for another few hours.
Based on the growing crowd and the epithets issued from around the returned Howler’s dusty frame, something had gone sideways.
Riley strode on over to the theatrics, as much curious about the outburst as he was annoyed. The crowd parted for him, allowing him to take his box seat for the unfolding drama.
A large Capital -- memory said Jensen Davila -- had been tackled to the ground, an Oskie dropping a knee onto his throat. Lieutenant Holmst eyed him with a kind of humor. But the shade over his eyes betrayed a rising remorse, that the thrashing fish on the deck was throwing barbs that struck true.
Riley couldn’t hold back his smile. Clearly, the mission had been an unqualified success.
Jensen spat his words, trying to force his head up from the deck, “He was alive and you left him!”
“I stay ten seconds more, and we might all be dead with him,” Holmst stated, with the boilerplate assurances of someone convincing himself first and foremost.
Jensen grunted some epithet past the knee on his throat. The big man had enough meat on him he could probably heave the Oskie off him, upgrades and all. He was choosing not to, or perhaps hadn’t the presence of mind to try it.
It was the Capitals who straightened up first, a filthy-haired short woman spying Riley’s gossiping smirk. The silence rippled across the assembly until all eyes were on him.
Riley studied the prostrate man, the grief that wracked him. Even with a boot on his throat, he was still twisting and pushing. He had to be losing consciousness soon, the blood flow cut off to his head.
And the soldier sitting on him wasn’t doing much better. A long and arduous op, and now this — the young man was actually steaming. His cybernetics were overloaded.
Riley stepped into the circle, pushing the crowd back with his stare. “Corporal, what’s your heat sig?” He barked.
The man swallowed hard, as he consulted the heads up display flashing across his left eye for a quarter of a second, “Hundred eight point four.”
“Keep at it and your implants will cook you in your skin,” Riley scolded him, “Lieutenant, have your men stand down for ice showers and refractory. Be in the ready room for debrief in five.”
“Yes sir,” Holmst nodded to the Oskie controlling Jensen’s air flow. Without any further instruction, the Oskie released Jensen -- and struck him aside the head with a rifle stock.
The Capitals jumped in surprise -- some to defend their comrade, others to his aid. But all of them froze in place, stopping themselves from committing an even more egregious error. Every airman, every soldier, every technician in the building had their hands on their weapons.
He owned their fates, every step of the way.
Holmst and his team retreated through the crowd but Holmst's eyes still lingered on the situation he had created, unable to unhook himself.
Riley hovered, something magnetic in this moment keeping him from receding back into his scheduled events. Perhaps it was their eyes, the way the Capitals hung heads and furrowed brows betrayed their frustrations, their resentment -- their anger.
“I have been... understanding of your situation,” Riley lectured the Capitals. “I would even go so far as to say I have been compassionate. You are a volunteer
force. This was a volunteer mission, and a dangerous one. Casualties are not always avoidable. It’s not anybody’s fault. Huah?”
Movement.
Carmona took two disciplined steps forward, falling into parade rest. He had carefully positioned himself in front of his vulnerable compatriot, possessive, defensive.
How very noble.
He had a very winsome look, shaved head and rigid bone structure -- like a recruitment poster came to life. “Sir, permission to speak freely?”
Look at him. He thinks he’s a real boy.
“Permission denied. Fall in, Capital.”
“It’s just that, the Lieutenant--”
Riley drew his sidearm. The only warning Carmona had was the dull whine of the capacitor charging before a concentrated beam reduced two-thirds of his head to a pile of ash, leaving his neck a carbon stump.
A Capital cried out in surprise before clamping her own hands across her mouth. There -- now they were beginning to understand their place.
Riley holstered his weapon before his body had crumpled to the ground. He cocked his head at the Capitals that remained, curious if anyone else had brought something for show & tell.
Some dared not move a muscle, while others couldn’t stop themselves from shaking, holding back tears. This shouldn’t shock them; death should be the blanket upon which they make their beds. They should be ready to face its embrace the way they would a lover, surrender themselves to its whimsical delights. Instead, they somehow had believed their futures bright.
Bray had been too soft on them.
“Report for R&R, and eyes up for future assignments, Capitals. Dismissed.”
He would have to amend their training regimen, introduce some drills to increase their comfort with their mortality. Perhaps some good old fashioned capital punishment might better acclimate the crowd.
The Deck Crews saw to the body’s disposal. The Capitals would be escorted by armed guards to their barracks for the promised rack time. But then, some new edicts would have to be issued.
Riley tucked his hands in his pockets as he marched up the corridor toward the Ready Room. He stared at the beams overhead as he passed through each hatch, the metronomic pattern soothing his nerves and buffing that metallic edge off of his breathing.