by Ivan Cat
"Must be the warheads," said Skutch.
"Now we find them," Karr sighed to no one in the dark as the comset voices talked on.
"Please don't say that they are farther down," Jenette said.
"I don't think so," said Liberty. "The scanner freaks out stronger when I aim it upward."
"Fine," said Jenette. "That's as good a start as any. We'll backtrack, following the scanner signal. Eventually these passages must link back together."
"What about me?" asked Mok. "I can't move. You can't leave me down here."
"Nobody's leaving anyone," Jenette reassured. "Which of you Guards has rank after Corporal Toliver?"
Liberty's reluctant voice responded. "Guess that would be me. Does that mean I have to smarten up and act like a big girl?"
"That would be helpful," Jenette said. "Okay, this is the plan. Mok, you keep talking—off circuit. If we hear a voice around us, we'll follow it. If we haven't found you by the time we regroup, we'll come back down together and do a systematic search. Liberty, any objections or suggestions?"
"No ma'am. Sounds like a good course of action."
Mok didn't like it and kept moaning to that effect.
As the others started to move, Karr began to creep back up in his own pitch-black tube, his right hand holding the Gattler and his left outstretched to the wall. The going was tough, the passage still slick from the recent torrent of embalming fluid. Karr didn't know what his boots would land on from one step to the next and he fell into cold ooze several times before getting the hang of walking in the slippery stuff.
"Warmer, warmer," Liberty's radio voice huffed in regard to the scanner. "Every light is blinking. They've got to be around here ... I'm turning a corner... Sure is hot in here... I see a light ahead, red, throbbing like a beating heart." Brief silence as the Guard closed on the unknown phenomena. "This is weird," Liberty hissed. "I see a body. Dr. Bigelow? Bronte?" Slow footsteps sounded in Karr's earpiece as Liberty called out. "Please be alive. Please move ... oh ... oh ... fuckshitpiss." Karr's comset squawked with rapid, heavy breathing and running, fleeing footfalls. "Shit-shit-shit-shit!"
Sounds of a struggle ensued. A rising shriek. The transmission cut out.
"Liberty!" Jenette called. "Respond!"
"The buzzers got her," Mok moaned when Liberty did not answer back.
"The little things that bit off your finger?" Skutch's voice scoffed. "Liberty'd eat those alive."
"Guess so," Mok admitted nervously. "But what else could it be?"
"Possibly something bigger," said Jenette. "Possibly much bigger, like Arrou said, creeping around down here in the dark, where we can't see it, just waiting for fools like us to—"
Mok's voice raised half an octave. "Okay, okay, Consul! Please, no more descriptions. I get the idea!"
Skutch's voice broke in at that point.
"Hey, Marsh," he asked quietly, "would you say that's a 'throbbing red heartbeat' up there?"
Dr. Marsh gulped, a gravelly sound. "Yes, I think I would."
Karr strained to see any sign of a red glow in the dark ahead of him, but saw nothing.
"What do you say we turn around?" Skutch suggested in a hushed voice.
"Works for me."
"Consul, we're going to retreat and try another way up."
"Do it," buzzed Jenette.
Karr heard boots splashing in a hollow tube.
"What's that?" asked Marsh's voice. "You hear that, Skutchie, that tapping...?"
Kekitekitek.
"I hear it, but I don't want to hear it."
"It's getting louder."
"Look, over there! What's down there?"
"Bad smell," came Crash's alien voice from the background. "Bad, bad smell."
Jenette's voice overrode the circuit. "Maybe you guys should go a different way."
"Copy that, Consul," Skutch agreed. "We're scramming. Down that way, you two. On the double." More sounds of boots splashing, then, "Dr. Marsh, get down!"
Again, chaos broke out on the open channel. Male, female, and alien screams overlapped, cut short by the dead click, click of microphones overloading and cutting out. Karr felt pulse-rifle shock-waves in delayed synchrony with the clicks; the encounter was not far away. Karr jogged forward, careening through the pitch dark, eerily giddy from the swaying in his inner ear. He slipped and fell, scrambling back up on all fours and spitting chemical syrup as the disembodied combat rattled in his broken comset. There was a loud—BWAMPH!—much louder than the pulse-rifle concussions and then the sounds of combat ended, as Liberty's encounter had, leaving only a faint skittering sound before the transmission stopped altogether.
"Liberty? Skutchie?" Jenette called in the dead airspace. "Crash? Crash, pick up a comset if you can hear this...."
Karr stumbled onward and upward. A patch of dark gray appeared and expanded in the blackness ahead. Before he knew it, the tunnel suddenly ended. Karr fell a few feet in the dark. When he scrambled to his knees, he found he was in a transparent pod too small to stand up in.
And he was underwater.
The tunnels he had been running through were not tunnels at all, but tubes in the ocean under Coffin Island. Contrary to its skeletal surface, and what Jenette had told Karr of its biology, the ring-island's underside was alive. A long, thick root protruded down from the island—sort of a natural keel or sea anchor, Karr guessed—and from that keel root hung a forest of interlocking tubes. The effect was similar to that of tendrils hanging under a jellyfish, each swaying sickeningly in the ocean currents. Karr was shocked at the sheer mass of the living structure; it must have comprised a large proportion of Coffin Island's total weight, for the keelroot and tendrils loomed all around his tiny blister and disappeared into the icy depths of Dead Zone ocean far below.
Each individual tendril ended in a bulbous bladder, like the one Karr was in. On the other side of its waxy walls, schools of hideous, luminescent marine vertebrates darted around in the tangle, feeding on each other and basking in an evil, red glow.
Vermilion illumination shone down from above Karr, where a cancerous knot bulged in Coffin Island's keelroot. The bulge glowed, a baneful underwater sun. Many of the interlocking tendrils anchored to that point, like twisting leprous feelers. The light pulsed, first racing, then lagging, like a faltering heartbeat, and as it did so, the ugly water creatures reacted, swimming frenziedly or laying deathly still. What could cause the underside of a dead island to grow in such a strange manner, Karr had no idea, but just from their limited description, Karr concluded the glowing, cancerous knot had to be the "throbbing red light" that Liberty, Marsh, and Skutch had commented on.
Grim transmissions continued in Karr's ears.
"Come on guys," Jenette's voice buzzed. "Give me a sign. Grunt if you can't speak."
"I'm still here," said Mok.
"And me," Karr said to himself.
Karr scanned the swaying tubes for sign of Khafra lights or searchbeams. None were visible, but there was no question in his mind that the others had met with trouble near the writhing red bulge. He, and perhaps the unlucky Mok, must have been washed the farthest down in the flood.
Karr doubled back, once more in the dark, listening and feeling for any indication as to how he had gotten lost. The first clue was the clatter his boots made on the down-sloping floor; the torrent of cadavers had not passed this way. The second clue was when his footfalls began to splat and squish in body parts once more. Karr backtracked to the division between the wet and the dry and felt for openings. At first his fingertips only met with firm tube wall, but then he reached upward. Ceiling, ceiling, nothing. Standing on tiptoes, Karr felt a slime-ringed hole where the torrent had poured down. He tried to grab the edge and climb up, but it was too slick. His feet got no purchase on the rounded walls, either.
Kekitekitek, Karr heard in his earpieces, and then Jenette's whispers, "Oh, hell."
"It's the buzzers!" Mok panicked. "Don't let them get you, Consul! Run!"
Now K
arr heard Jenette's rapid breathing and footfalls in the comset.
Karr tossed the Gattler up, then stepped aside as it fell in the dark, tossed it up, stepped aside as it fell. Then it didn't fall. The tool lay across the opening overhead. Karr jumped, grabbing the metal barrels, and chinned himself up. Chunks of unseen matter dislodged and splattered his cheeks, but he was able to hook a leg over the lip and rolled onto the steep upper surface. Without pausing to humor his protesting muscles, Karr began to ascend, jabbing the Gattler barrels down hard into the slope for extra grip. Karr's heart pounded against his ribs as Jenette's breath sawed in his ears.
"Arrou, where are you?" came a whisper that sounded like a lost little girl.
Karr reached the top of the incline and felt two tubes splitting off. The slick trail wormed left, but warm air flowed out of the opening to the right—warm air that might be coming from the glowing bulge. Karr jogged right. The tunnel wound back and forth, like a snake tied in knots. Other passages opened under his fingertips, but Karr kept to the ones exuding warm air.
Kekekitek—kekekitek, the evil noise rattled in his headset.
"Run! Run!" Mok's voice encouraged. "Don't let them get you!"
"Quit making so much noise!" Jenette panted.
Kekitekitekitek.
In the heat of the moment, Karr could not discern if the tapping was on the comset or right beside him. He whipped the headset down onto his neck.
Kekitekitekitek.
It was close. Scraping and splashing echoed from ahead in the smothering dark. "Jenette," Karr hissed. "Jenette?"
Mok's voice rang staticky around Karr's neck. "I hear them! Oh man, they're coming this way!"
"Mok, please," Jenette buzzed. "I can't hear myself think!"
It was hard for Karr to tell if the thrumming sound was coming from ahead or behind. Deciding it was probably coming from ahead, he fell to one knee and switched the Gattler from cutting beam to adhesive froth; a cutting beam might slice the tube walls open and let in the sea. His forefinger fidgeted on the trigger as the cacophony drew closer. Friend of foe? Friend or foe? Adrenaline accelerated Karr's thoughts: he must not shoot without knowing if it was Jenette. A wild spray of surgical adhesive could easily suffocate her.
"I don't deserve to go like this!" Mok wailed. "I'm a lazy coward, but I don't deserve to go like this!"
Scraping and splashing echoed from ahead of Karr in the smothering dark. Running human footsteps? In desperation Karr yelled, "Consul! If it's you call out—or I'll shoot!"
"Don't shoot!" yelled a female voice very close by.
Karr's finger froze on the Gattler's trigger. A split second later, the footfalls pounded across his path from right to left. And then the thrumming, drumming noise went past like a mag-lev freight train. KEKITEKITEKITEK. Karr fired. The Gattler chugged against his shoulder. A boiling-shellfish screeching filled the tube as the adhesive hit unseen creatures. Seconds dragged by. The tube reverberated with chattering legs and shrieking mouthparts. Gradually, the noisy torrent diminished. Karr imagined layers of blind crawling things building up, wave after wave becoming trapped in the adhesive froth until the horde could not move over the carapaces of suffocating hive mates.
Beep, warned the Gattler. The ammunition load was half empty.
Karr let loose the trigger and held his breath, expecting a wave of creatures to swamp over him. In his imagination he already felt the crawling of bug-like feet, paralyzing venom running in his veins, and mandibles snipping him apart.
"Fuck-shit-they-got-me!" Mok's screams blared from Karr's headset. Karr pulled it back over his ears as the Guard, confused, relieved and angry all at the same time, spoke again. "Oh crap! Don't ever sneak up on me like that! Give me some light, dumb-shit."
"Dumbshit," a strange voice echoed over the channel.
"Don't give me any fucking lip. I'm not in the mood."
Karr's own paranoid vision of death had not come true. The skittering near him had diminished. And he hoped that he had helped lessen the number of creatures pursuing Jenette. Mok, however, was not so lucky. A terror play sounded over the comset.
"Fucking lip, fucking lip."
"This isn't funny, jerkwad. I gave you an order." A pregnant pause. "What the hell is wrong with you? Uagghh! What's wrong with your skin?"
"Good skin. Jerkwad."
Tinny screams rang in Karr's headset. "Oh shit! Shit! Aaaaaaarrrrrgh—"
Static.
XXXII
They shall the Body Pure value above all others,
Those who love Loyalty and Truth before all else.
—from the speeches of Olin Tesla
The quarters of Colonel Taureg Halifax glowed like the heart of a yellow-white star. Every available area of ceiling, walls, and floor was plastered in adhesive glowstrips. Wearing black-green blast goggles, Halifax withdrew another strip from a case stashed in a corner. He affixed the strip to a clear spot by the room's only door, and turned the narrow band on. Sweat poured over skin-weld sutures that held Halifax's gashed forehead shut. It was very hot in the room. Alone, the glowstrips produced very little heat, but in such concentration they raised the ambient temperature far in excess of human comfort levels.
Halifax reached into the case for another strip.
"Damn."
The case was empty, as were the others Halifax rapidly dug through.
Patton lay on Halifax's military style cot, which had been moved into the center of the square room. A transparent ceramite sheet substituted for a mattress; glowstrips attached to the floor shone up through the plastiwire mesh on the bottom of the cot. Pat-ton was a dark silhouette, getting darker by the minute. The domestic's coat of somber blue glowbuds was winking out one by one. Only a few spots atop his head still showed color.
And hour, maybe two, and there would be none glowing at all.
Halifax sought out every drawer, compartment, and crevice in the room looking for more glowstrips.
Patton shifted on the cot, groaning faintly. "Not stay, not stay."
Halifax continued to search.
"Reserves," Patton mumbled louder. "Halifax not stay. Call Reserves."
"Reserves units are deploying for duty as we speak," Halifax said, keeping his voice even despite the fact that all the stash spaces in which he normally stockpiled glowstrips were empty. "Here I am required; here I stay."
Patton grew agitated in his fever, "Defend Enclave. Ferals attack. Patton knows. Ferals will attack."
Halifax hurried back to the cot, picked up an already activated glowstrip and held it in front of himself so that his body did not cast any shadow onto Patton. Normally, Khafra reacted to bright light by brightening their own glowbuds in return. Many times before, Halifax had played on this instinctual behavior to trick Patton into glowing brighter and stronger. This time the trick wasn't working. Patton's glowbuds continued to wink out.
Halifax cursed. He needed a new plan. "Listen up, soldier. It's time for a report." Patton made no response. "Are you listening?" Halifax demanded.
"Listening," Patton mumbled.
"That's better. This is your briefing. Recon patrols have detected a large force of Ferals approaching our zone of control. At 0700 I placed all Enclave forces on alert. Defenses are being manned. The situation is urgent, but stable."
Patton groaned, his muzzle twisting, mirroring his inner conflict. The alien buried his already closed eyes under a forearm. "Halifax must not worry about Patton. Halifax must defend Enclave."
A couple more glowbuds winked out.
Halifax pulled Patton's light-blocking forelimb off of his eyes—no mean feat, since even a weakened Khafra was far stronger than a human. "It wasn't your fault! You didn't kill that Feral. We humans killed it, with pulse-rifles!"
"Cheating words!" The alien's forepaws pantomimed abortive jabs in the air. "Patton pushed."
The alien convulsed under Halifax.
It all stemmed from the conflict at FI-538. Pact shall not kill Pact. Halifax was not aware of
the details of that instinctive injunction, but he was all too familiar with the consequence of breaking it: a slow, suicidal winking out of glowbuds. In the past Halifax had always been able to bring Patton back from the brink of his alien mortality. But then in the past Patton had not taken action that caused the demise of another Khafra; Patton had caused plenty of wounds, but never a fatality. It didn't matter that Patton's action had saved Halifax's life, nor that Patton's actions had only indirectly lead to the death of the Feral. The Feral had flared its death glow and gone dark; a Radiant life had been taken. To Patton's Khafra instincts, a Radiant life must be paid in return.
Halifax did his best to subdue his thrashing domestic. "Easy, easy! No more cheating words! I promise. Just open your eyes! That's a direct order! Open your eyes!"
Patton attempted to comply. His eyes squinted open, briefly.
For that instant one or two glowbuds on his head flickered brighter.
Halifax thought fast. "Right. Okay. Time for a verbal exercise, a test to make sure you remember your training. Are you ready?"
Patton rumbled weakly. Halifax proceeded.
"Question one: when were the most mechanized fighting vehicles ever used in combat?"
At first Patton only grumbled, but then his teeth clattered and one eye opened slightly and scanned numerous maps and military diagrams plastered on the walls under the many glowstrips. The alien's gaze fixed on a Terran map of Eurasia with a red line running down from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea.
"Battle of Kursk. 1943?"
"Correct. Bonus question: why did the assaulting forces fail?"
"Spies. Defenders expected attack."
"Good. Another one," Halifax continued. "On what planet did the forces of Kut Al Imra fall after one hundred years of Bloodstone Wars?"
Patton struggled and peeked at the wall maps again. Normally Halifax would have been against such cheating, but at that moment the old soldier couldn't have been happier. Patton was forced to look a long time before he found the right map; Halifax had specifically chosen a diagram mostly obscured by glowstrips to base the question on.