by B. V. Larson
There it was again, I thought to myself as I climbed the hulking roots after the rest. Disrespect. That’s what it was. Ever since I’d come back from a long absence without any clear explanation, my troops—especially my closest officers—were giving me a daily ration of shit.
It wasn’t anything overt, in most cases. It was quiet-like, stealthy, or maybe even subconscious. But I’d gotten the message, loud and clear.
And I didn’t like it.
-31-
When we were all huddled up on top of the black roots, perched like rows of starlings on a wire, we gazed back down at the mud and ferns.
It was getting dark by now. The daily rotation period on Storm World was about half as long as it was back home on Earth. Days took just under thirteen hours to make a full turn, six and a half hours of light, followed by an equal period of moonlit night.
As it was hard to perform a serious mission in only six hours, command had seen fit, in their infinite wisdom, to have us serve out a full day and night as a single shift.
Using night-vision, however, the forest floor lit up as bright as day.
Scanning along with a dozen others, I saw nothing unusual. The forest was quiet. The ferns ruffled, but only with the breezes. For Storm World, it was a rare and beautiful night.
About then, I thought about Cooper again. I’d neglected to check in with him at the top of the hour, and he hadn’t made his report, either. The disappearances and dramatic new orders from Graves had driven all thoughts of my scout out of my mind for a while.
“Cooper?” I called, using a direct channel helmet-to-helmet.
There was nothing but silence in return.
“Cooper?” I repeated. “Come back, this is Centurion McGill.”
Three more long seconds of quiet followed, and I ran a diagnostic. The connection was solid. My helmet was linked to his—but he was too far off to get a body-reading. He didn’t show up as a casualty—he didn’t show up at all on my regional scanners.
I made my way down the slippery root in the dark to Natasha. She was near the forest floor, poking around and taking measurements.
“Hey girl,” I said, and she squeaked.
Nearly losing her balance, I caught her arm and steadied her.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. I’m a little spooked.”
“Why?”
“This forest… there’s something wrong out here. I’ve gone back over the unit logs. These people who vanished, they were all on their own at the moment of disappearance. About ten meters or more from any other member of the outfit.”
“Okay…” I said. “So they were out of sight. Out of mind. Taking a piss, or something.”
“Right. And according to the logs from the network sensors I’ve been paging through, they vanish very quickly. It’s almost as if something reaches up out of the ground and snatches them away. They’re there one moment and gone the next.”
“Super. Let’s move higher up on the roots.”
“James…” she said as we made our way up to what we assumed was relative safety. “What if something is grabbing people?”
“Like what? The boogeyman?”
I laughed, and she laughed weakly in response. But we both knew we were on an unknown planet with all sorts of possible predators we hadn’t identified yet.
“Look, James,” she said. “This is a big deal. I can’t call these disappearances in as deaths. We’ve got no bodies—we’ve got nothing.”
That sobered me up. I hadn’t thought about that angle before.
“You’re saying that if we don’t find them—or at least find their bodies—they’re permed?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
I stewed, thinking that over for a while. Then I stood up.
“We can’t sit on this tree forever,” I said. “Graves won’t stand for it. Besides, a new storm might blow in at any time.”
“It will be dawn in a few hours.”
“Not good enough,” I told her. “We’re going on patrol again. Anyone who doesn’t like it can grow a set of gender-appropriate gonads to deal with it.”
“That’s what I figured you’d say—but I’m still scared.” She examined the ground around us.
Then I showed her the Cooper situation, and that didn’t make her any happier.
“That’s four gone now,” she said, eyeing the data.
“We don’t know that. He might be dead in a normal fashion, or there might be some other explanation.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I surely do!”
Natasha rolled her eyes at me. That was the trouble with knowing a woman for decades. You just couldn’t fool her any more after she caught onto your tricks.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Something’s up. But like you said, we can’t sit on this tree any longer. We’ve got to finish the patrol whether we’re losing troops or not.”
She licked her lips. “Who are you going to put on point?”
I looked around at the prospects. They were sitting like monkeys in a big tree, many crouching. Most held their weapons nervously, scanning the open ground below.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll lead by example. They can’t all piss themselves at once if they see their commander is fearless.”
“But you’ll be risking yourself.”
“That’s the whole point!”
With that, I stood up and addressed the full unit on tactical chat.
“All right people, listen up. We’re moving out. We can get to the point where Cooper found evidence of a tree-slashing war party in half an hour if we move fast.”
I paused for dramatic effect, scanning faces. People winced and shrank. A few were surprisingly hard to see, as they were crouching behind big leaves and fern fronds.
“Follow me,” I said at last.
Turning around, I marched down the root and onto open ground as if I hadn’t a care in the world.
Startled, my troops got up slowly and walked in my wake. They’d been certain I was scanning for a volunteer. The relief of tension had them smiling and shaking their heads as they marched behind me.
That’s what I’d wanted. Not a single man of them complained about walking into danger, not even Carlos. That was because I was leading the way in person. How could they whine if I wasn’t even forcing anyone to play the part of the sacrificial lamb?
After about a hundred meters, I began to whistle. Now, anyone will tell you that I’m not the best at whistling, although I’m better at it than I am at singing.
Fortunately, I didn’t care how many ears were offended today. I felt good, and my people were even starting to smile and talk again. They’d been pretty glum while they’d been perched on those giant roots, waiting to vanish into limbo.
My mood and the general upbeat surge among my soldiers all changed, however, when I took a final step.
I was, if I had to be precise, about two hundred meters from the big tree where we’d taken refuge. Since I was whistling and walking fast, I’d gotten ahead of the column. At least fifty paces ahead.
That might have been a mistake. Like the others who’d vanished, I was isolated from the pack.
I took a final confident step, and it seemed as if I’d walked off a cliff. I pitched forward, and the forest vanished. Falling, tumbling as a man might when he’s stepped into a pit he had no idea was there.
Automatically, my hands reached out and I flailed, trying to grab for roots, leaves—anything at all.
But there was nothing there. Nothing but darkness. If I’d stepped into a hole, it seemed to be the biggest damned hole this side of the Grand Canyon.
Tumbling, falling, I finally understood what had happened to all my missing troops.
-32-
I didn’t go down screaming—not exactly. It was more of a series of thrashing roars and grunts.
Needless to say, I was surprised and seriously freaked out as I fell down into nothingness. The worst part was how deep this ho
le was—if it was a hole. The fall wasn’t just a few meters, it went on and on. It felt like being in space, falling in orbit.
Absolute blackness swallowed me for several seconds. These moments were among the longest of my considerable lifespan. It felt like I was falling into Hell itself.
But there was no fiery pit below. I couldn’t see anything. One moment, I’d been walking in the forest. The next moment I was falling. That’s all I knew.
My sleeves ruffled with a fast, continuous passage of air. After a time, I realized it had to be a trick of some kind. Some kind of interdimensional hanky-panky was at work.
I happen to be something of an expert on getting lost in time and space. I’ve fallen between cracks in our trusted physical laws many times. Some aliens had a way of producing better tech than we did back home on Earth—mostly because they had a hundred thousand years or so of a head-start.
This felt like one of those times. It reminded me of the first time I teleported in a teleport suit, or when I’d stepped through gateway posts heading to Dark World, but ended in some kind of queued-up purgatory of non-existence.
After the first five or so seconds of skidding in what felt like a perfectly lightless, void of a universe, I began to get seriously worried.
What if there wasn’t an end to this fall? What if I was trapped, bound to fall forever until I was a desiccated corpse—or worse, a mad-thing that was unable to die?
That was right about when I hit the bottom. In some ways, it was a relief to strike something solid. After all, I’d fallen a long ways, and it did bring an end to my previous questioning. Even if I died down here, that would be better than an eternal fall.
Standing up and brushing myself off, I noticed a number of things. First off, I hadn’t died on impact—I hadn’t even broken my legs.
Storm World had a lower gravitational pull than Earth did, but falling was falling. I should have built up enough inertia to be seriously hurt—but I wasn’t.
“Hello?” I called out, peering around in bewilderment.
Wherever I was, it was small, cramped and pitch-black. I felt the walls, and found myself enclosed in a horizontal tube of sorts, about two meters in diameter. I was almost able to stand upright—almost.
Turning on my suit lights, I saw I was indeed in a chute of sorts. The ceiling opened up and had another pipe just like the one I was in, but it fed this one from above at a slant.
“Looks like a sewer…” I grumbled.
“Smells like one, too,” said a familiar voice. “Or maybe that’s the mud on your suit...?”
“Cooper?” I demanded turning around and looking for him.
Of course, I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t there—he’d kept his stealth gear active, even though it hadn’t done him much good so far.
“Show yourself,” I demanded.
“Feeling paranoid, McGill?” he laughed. Then he quickly changed his tune as I got out my pistol and aimed it where his gut had to be. “Whoa! Lower that gun, sir. I’m pulling this thing off!”
He appeared then, in chunks coming out of the air in a manner that was strange to watch. It seemed, for just a second, like I could see through his guts when he was partly visible and partly covered. Did the Vulbite stealth gear just bend light, or did it do more than that?
As neither of us was a tech, I figured we weren’t going to get any of those answers today, so I dropped such thoughts from my mind.
“Come on,” I said, heading off down the tunnel.
“Why do you think that’s the right way?” he demanded.
I glanced back at him, over my shoulder. “You got something to say, ghost? Where does this one go?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t done much exploring yet…”
“Bullshit,” I said, laughing and splashing away—there was a little water in the pipes, but it was less than ankle deep. “You got scared and shivered down here, playing rabbit. Come on.”
Cooper grumbled, but he followed me gamely enough. In a way, I couldn’t blame him for squatting down here where he’d landed. There was no guarantee we’d find a way out by heading off at random, and his strategy of sitting around had gained him an officer for company.
We walked about a hundred paces, and the floor disappeared. I might have walked right out into space and fallen, but the sound of the rushing water gave it away.
“A pit,” I said. “Another one.”
“You’re like a lucky rabbit’s foot, sir. Just like Carlos said.”
I gave him an annoyed glance. “Scout—start scouting.”
“Shit.”
He crept past me, let his stealth suit drop over him, and moved off around the rim of the big open space. There was a lip of sorts, a thin ring that spiraled along the wall. I could see where he was due to the water he was displacing with his boots.
Grunting and hissing, he slid around in the dark. In order to help him, I turned my suit’s full spot- lights on and aimed them downward. His feet made tiny splashes as he edged around the pipe, following the ledge.
“I’ve found something,” Cooper said. “There’s a door on the far side—or something like that.”
“Well, open it.”
He grunted and strained. “It won’t budge,” he said at last.
Sighing unhappily, I began edging my way around the big circular pit to his side.
“There isn’t much room over here on this side, McGill,” Cooper whispered.
Just then, a creak sounded. The door he’d found opened outward.
Unfortunately, Cooper wasn’t in a good position. He was directly in front of the door, trying to turn the wheel that sealed it. When the door suddenly opened—well, he was knocked off that thin ledge and went tumbling farther down into darkness.
I could hear him howling and carrying on for several seconds. It must have been a long way down to the bottom of that next run.
The door that had opened, knocking Cooper into oblivion, opened farther. I drew my pistol again and leveled it, waiting.
Another familiar face peered out of the circular doorway, making me blink in surprise.
It was Kivi.
-33-
“What the hell are you doing down here, Specialist?” I demanded.
Kivi looked startled. “It’s good to see you too, sir. I thought I heard voices out here, on the other side of this door, so I opened it.”
I stared down into the darkness. There was no sign or sound of Cooper. I shrugged and began scooting along the walls to Kivi’s side. I slipped inside the doorway and took a look around.
“Hmm…” I said. “I was kind of hoping for something better.”
She watched me closely. “This is all there is: tunnels, pipes, it’s like a subway system, I think.”
I turned and stared at her. “How do you figure?”
“Well, someone uses the system for transportation. I doubt it’s the Wur. I think it’s the other guys—the local inhabitants of this miserable planet. The Scuppers.”
“Not much of a subway,” I said. “All you do is fall into a flat region, and then you have to walk.”
She shrugged. “By the way, who were you talking to back there in the tubes? Before I opened the door?”
I eyed her for a second. She looked honestly curious. That meant she had no idea she’d knocked Cooper off into another freefall.
“Uh…” I said. “I guess I talk to myself now and then.”
“I’ve never heard you do that.”
“Maybe I’m getting old.”
She snorted at that. Our bodies hadn’t aged five years since we’d joined up decades ago. But she stopped arguing.
I’d skipped on the truth for purely selfish reasons. You see, Kivi and I had had an on-and-off thing going for many years—since I’d first joined Legion Varus, actually.
I wasn’t a man who understood women well, or who even dared to make that claim—but I was good at making a connection when I felt like it. One thing you never did with a girl was tell her she was a f
ool who’d screwed up and killed someone by accident. Not if you wanted to get lucky later on, that was. A thing like that—she’d inevitably associate the horror she felt with you, the man who’d been dumb enough to tell her.
Instant buzz-kill.
So, I kept the details to myself. Who knew? We were trapped down here alone, and we might just get bored eventually…
The room we were in was about the same general size and dimensions as the last one I’d just stepped out of, but it had a floor. That was pretty cool. We walked around, finding several doors like the one Kivi had popped open and nailed Cooper with.
Experimentally, I opened each one. Tubes led off into the darkness in every direction.
Sighing, I sat down on the curved floor and tried to figure out what to do.
“We’re cut off from every form of communication,” she told me. “I had a few buzzers, but when I sent them off they zipped away and lost the signal. They never came back.”
Kivi looked at me, and I saw a hint of fear in her face.
“Could this be some kind of storm drain system?” she asked. “If it is, water could come through at any time and sweep us away. We’ll be permed.”
It was a distinct possibility. We were cut off, disconnected from the grid. If we died down here now, Varus might never find us. We couldn’t be revived without a documented death, so… game over.
“Nah,” I said dismissively. “We’re not going to get permed, girl. Don’t even worry about that. What I’m wondering is who made this? And why?”
“It has to be the Scuppers,” she said. “The Wur wouldn’t do this. They deal in organic tech. It’s not Galactic, either, so it has to be the native people.”
“Hmm…” I said. “I thought they were fish-people or something.”
“They’re amphibious, yes,” she said. “All that was in the briefing. You saw the pictures and read the reports, right?”
“Yep.”
She frowned at me. “No you didn’t.”
“Well… I’ve been kind of busy since I got revived, you know. I had a unit to command, a patrol to set up…”