Reforged (Bolt Eaters Trilogy Book 2)

by Isaac Hooke

  Behind him, in his rear-view video feed, he watched as the living wall passed by. That area of the cave was dark, considering that most of their headlamps were pointing forward, but LIDAR allowed him to see. Several hundred Snaggles overflowed into the southern branch as the wall went past, and joined the entities already here; attacking the Bolt Eaters and the alien tanks they dragged.

  “Damn things look just as disorganized as the first time, to me!” Brontosaurus said.

  “Probably a good thing,” Frogger said.

  The wall of creatures vanished from view, heading back to the end of the cave; as usual, the floor where they had passed was covered with extra bodies. It was probably a good thing the Bolt Eaters were on the retreat from that passageway.

  And then a strange, white cloud appeared on his LIDAR. It swept into the southern branch, moving rapidly.

  “The hell is that?” Slate said.

  Eric turned his torso around so that his headlamps illuminated the incoming mass. It was a deep black in color, and the cloud devoured any Snaggles it swept over; the creatures dropped from the air and landed in screaming, bloody pulps. Those pulps were quickly reduced to bone, which collapsed under the pressure of the cloud.

  “Looks like the Banthar decided not to let us go after all,” Eagleeye said. “Got termites, incoming!”

  11

  “We can’t let them close!” Eric said. As he’d told Marlborough earlier, while the EM countermeasures would protect them from the termites, at least for a while, they’d be blind the whole time, essentially sitting ducks while the main Banthar forces closed in. Plus, the tanks they were using for spare parts would be completely unprotected.

  Also, there was the possibility the Banthar had found a workaround.

  “South, all speed!” Marlborough said.

  Eric grabbed onto Slate’s alien tank and helped him haul it away from the termites at a sprint. The other Bolt Eaters likewise hauled their own wrecked vehicles south through the caves.

  Eric kept his headlamps active, as did the remainder of the team so that cones of light lit the passageway ahead, augmenting the LIDAR wireframes.

  In his rear view video feed, the black cloud consumed everything behind him—the LIDAR was unable to penetrate.

  He glanced at his power cell. His battery was decreasing at a rapid rate, thanks to the fast run.

  “Geez, I haven’t fired a single weapon since entering the caves, and I’m already down to thirty five percent,” Hicks said.

  “We all are,” Frogger said.

  “Thirty percent here,” Brontosaurus said.

  “That’s cuz you’re fat,” Slate said.

  “Mechs can’t be fat,” Brontosaurus said.

  “Yeah, you’re fat, baby,” Slate said. “Wear it with pride.”

  As the team moved through the winding passageway, the termite outliers began to close with the units. None of them touched Eric and the other mechs, of course, but they did begin to land on the tanks.

  “Some of them have reached the wreckages,” Dunnigan said. “Should we abandon them?”

  “I say no,” Dickson said. “As far as I can tell, the termites haven’t actually begun burrowing into any of the units. It’s almost like the micro machines recognize the tanks as friendly units, thanks to the alien nature of the material.”

  “All right,” Marlborough said. “Hang on to them, then, for now. But as soon as signs of infestation are detected, we’ll have no choice but to abandon them.”

  Marlborough was right about that, because at that point the wreckages would be useless to the team—once an infestation started, it would only take a short while before the tanks were converted entirely into micro machines.

  More Snaggles appeared from ahead. They leaped down from the ceiling, where they had apparently been suckling the rock.

  Eric sliced through them with his alien blades, thankful that at least an entire wall of the creatures wasn’t coming at him. Still, it was a distraction he could have done without.

  One of the creatures landed squarely on his face, and he had to rip it off, and he trampled it as he continued running.

  “Damn it, these things really like anything with metal in it,” Mickey said.

  “Not too different from the micro machines themselves, huh?” Bambi said.

  They reached a crossroads, but the team kept running straight, as per Marlborough’s previous standing order.

  “If this ends in an impassible wall, we’re screwed,” Traps commented.

  The Snaggle attacks let up, and the surrounding walls began to tighten, so that soon the mechs could only run two abreast.

  “Uh, this isn’t good,” Hicks said. “We should turn back.”

  “Too late now!” Eric said, glancing at the cloud in his rear view feed.

  It wasn’t long before the team was running in single file. Eric had to release the tank, so that Slate could drag it alone behind him. The outliers swarmed thickly around the team members. They didn’t touch the individual mechs, thanks to the countermeasures, but hundreds had landed on the different tanks. So far, the micro machines just rested there, as if basking on rocks in the sun as insects liked to do. Eric suspected it wouldn’t be long until the Banthar gave the order for the micro machines to begin digesting those tanks.

  “There’s some sort of underground river, running along the side of the tunnel,” Crusher said.

  Eric glanced at the floor, but didn’t see anything; a moment later his feet began to splash in yellow liquid. He was sprinting along the shore of what indeed seemed a river—it traveled just underneath the cave wall to his right. He moved slightly to the left, closer to the wall so that his advance wouldn’t be slowed.

  “A river of piss,” Slate said.

  “More like a molecular composite,” Eagleeye said. “A lot of hexane, some heptane, and a bunch of other goodies.”

  “Nice,” Slate said. “Anyone want to sniff some alkanes?”

  “You know, it might be deep enough to fit our mechs,” Bambi said.

  “You’re the biggest among us,” Marlborough said. “Test it!”

  She was near the front of the single-file group, and she promptly crawled into the water while the rest of the Bolt Eaters continued running forward. If she couldn’t fit, worst case, she’d have to resume the run on drag.

  The water only seemed to reach up to the middle of her legs, but when she reached the very edge of the wall, she sunk up to her carapace. Then she ducked, vanishing into the liquid.

  “It’s a fit,” Bambi transmitted. “I’m being swept downriver. It’s a really strong current.”

  “It would have to be, given the weight of your mech,” Crusher said.

  Eric glanced at his overhead map, and saw that Bambi’s indicator was fast moving southward, away from the party. It followed the line of the cave wall, at first, but then pulled away rapidly to the east.

  “It could lead to nowhere,” Traps said. “We could find ourselves trapped in an underground basin.”

  “Better than trapped here, surrounded by termites, with our power cells slowly running out!” Marlborough said. “Into the river!”

  The cave was slightly wider here, allowing Eric to help Slate drag the tank into the water: he hauled it toward the edge of the cave, where the water reached to his metal hips. He could feel the current pulling at his ankles—it was definitely strong, and the eddies caused small whirlpools to form in front of him.

  The micro machines began to swarm even more densely around him, so he bent his knees toward his chest and allowed the current to carry him under the cave wall, and he was swept downriver. He kept one hand on the tank. The light from his headlamp didn’t penetrate very far, but on his LIDAR, he saw that the micro machines were releasing the tank en masse, and being carried away, otherwise motionless, by the river.

  “Looks like these termites don’t like liquid alkanes very much,” Slate said.

  “Lucky for us,” Eric said.

  The current wr
enched him sideways suddenly, until he was traveling east, completely surrounded by rock. The tunnel here was jagged, unlike the cylindrical smoothness of the previous passageway—obviously it had been eroded naturally, by the passage of the liquid. There was just enough clearance to fit the mechs and the tanks they brought with them. He released the tank to float ahead of Slate.

  The current shoved him against the surrounding rocks constantly, causing dents and scrapes in his armor. It was like being inside some sort of high pressure hose with sharp rocks lining the inside.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me if we emerged beyond the mountains, into the hands of a waiting Banthar ambush party,” Mickey said.

  “I doubt the aliens have mapped out all the underground rivers across this planet,” Hicks said. “Be positive, for once.”

  “It’s hard to be positive when everything’s been going wrong,” Mickey said. “Ever since we woke up to Manticore’s attack on our apartment building that morning, everything’s been going downhill. There’s probably some underwater creature in here, waiting to attack us.”

  “Damn it!” Slate said. “Don’t jinx us, bitch!”

  “Right now, the biggest worry we have is getting stuck,” Dickson said.

  “It gets pretty tight ahead,” Bambi transmitted from her position in the lead. Her signal strength was weak, but enough to get most of her voice data through without too much jitter. “I already got stuck a few times. You might want to reduce your mech profiles as much as you can.”

  “What about the tanks?” Mickey said. “We can’t reduce the profiles of those.”

  “Hope they don’t get lodged,” Bambi transmitted.

  Eric held his arms in the direction of the current in front of him, assuming a “Superman” pose. He could see one of the alien wreckages carried along just in front of him, and past it, Brontosaurus.

  All of a sudden the tank froze in place, and Eric slammed into it. Slate smashed into him from behind, along with the tank behind him. A pile up of epic proportions ensued, as the rest of the Bolt Eaters and the tanks they dragged smashed into him. Eric felt each thud transmitted though his armor.

  “Gah!” Slate said. “Fuuuuuck!”

  “Armor rear integrity down to sixty percent,” Dee announced.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Eric said. He was pinned against the tank in front of him, and couldn’t move. “Hey Brontosaurus, your tank has stopped up the rest of us.”

  “I see it,” Brontosaurus said. His indicator had frozen on the overhead map. No, not frozen: it was slowly moving back toward the blockage. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  It took about five minutes for Brontosaurus to return to the blockage. By then, Eric had managed to maneuver his arm past the outer edge of the tank, and he was hitting the rock there, doing his best to clear it away. He wasn’t making very good progress.

  Brontosaurus began doing the same thing on the other side of the tank—trimming the rocks that held it in place with his fists. It took about twenty minutes, but finally he managed to dislodge the craft, and the team was moving again.

  They experienced three more stoppages like that, and once again it took a mech in the lead to return and break them free before the Bolt Eaters could continue moving again.

  Finally, the current swept them underneath the lip of the mountain, and they were drawn out into the open in a secluded valley. They were in a section of rapids and cataracts, but the water wasn’t very deep, and they were able to make their way to the shoreline.

  “Woo!” Slate said, pulling his tank onto the shoreline. “Now that’s what I call a raging river.”

  “Imagine doing what we just did in human bodies?” Traps said. “We would have been ripped apart by the current a long time ago. Or brained against the rocks lining the tunnel.”

  “Dude,” Slate said. “If we had human bodies on this mission, we would have been dead long ago.”

  “Inspect the tanks, make sure no termites are still attached!” Marlborough ordered.

  Eric helped the others inspect the alien tanks they’d hauled ashore, but there were no sign of any termites on any of them.

  “Man, it’s good to be back in the sunlight,” Brontosaurus said.

  “Recharge time, baby,” Slate agreed.

  “As usual, the Bolt Eaters defy the odds once again to escape their overpowered foes!” Tread said.

  “We got damn lucky,” Dickson said. “And don’t you forget it. If that river hadn’t been there, the termites would have trapped us. Banthar troops would have arrived shortly after and recaptured us. We won’t always be lucky like this. In fact, several times in the past, we weren’t. So count your blessings. Seriously. Don’t try to attribute it to any sort of evasion skill on our part. Because there was no skill involved in what saved us back there.”

  The team was quiet for a moment, sufficiently chastened. They had almost been captured, and killed. And only luck had saved them. Dickson was completely right.

  “All right, enough moping,” Marlborough said. “Deploy the repair drones. Let’s get those emitters 3D-printed. If it wasn’t obvious before, it should be now: we need those disguises. In the meantime, I want to continue east, through this valley. We stay close to the river, in case termites decided to show up again. I’ve noted their aversion to the liquid.”

  Eric glanced at the overhead map. According to the accelerometers, the team had passed underneath the southern range, and appeared here, in this valley nestled between another range to the north. East would take them away from where the Banthar had last sighted them.

  He deployed his repair swarm and instructed some of the machines to work on the damage he’d obtained in the last fight, while the remainder were to continue work on the masking emitter. He used Slate’s alien tank for materials.

  Eric grabbed onto that tank and helped Slate haul it, figuring that since he was leeching materials from it, the least he could do was share the burden of its transport.

  The river raged beside them, switching between rapids and small waterfalls. The shore was covered in that familiar wiry undergrowth, and the team cleared it with their footfalls as they walked. He kept his eyes on the mountains on either side. Trees like those of the forest carpeted the gentler slopes, providing many spots for an ambush.

  Dickson was right.

  Eric wasn’t sure how much longer their luck would hold out.

  12

  Eric and the others marched in silence; well, as much silence as their big mech bodies could allow, anyway, and the buzzing of the repair drones. The river forked several times, wending deeper into different valleys through the ranges, and Marlborough always chose a direction that would keep them inside the mountains.

  The platoon often scanned the sky for signs of airships, and they spotted a group of three such vessels on one occasion; the Bolt Eaters took cover behind a copse of trees, and the patrol passed without spotting them. At least, Eric hoped the airships hadn’t noticed the group, as the vessels hadn’t raised any sort of alarm.

  “How much longer until the emitters are ready?” Marlborough asked Frogger while the team remained in cover.

  “Should be only half an hour,” Frogger said.

  “We might as well stay here then,” Marlborough said. “We’re far enough away from where the underground river emerges that I feel safe enough to authorize a half hour break.”

  “VR time!” Slate said. His avatar was the epitome of excitement. When he realized his expression was being broadcast for everyone to see, Slate quickly assumed a poker mask, and added: “Assuming the Sarge approves…”

  “We have sunlight again,” Marlborough said. “So VR is A-okay. I’m even authorizing a time boost, if you want to stay longer.”

  “Thanks, Sarge,” Mickey said.

  “I’ll keep watch,” Marlborough said. “But as usual leave your Accomps online in the real world to act as secondary sentries.”

  Without further ado, Eric set up Dee to watch the external environment, and then he logged ou
t of this existence. It was a relief to escape from that bleak reality, where it seemed the entire planet was against them, to this one, a refuge from the world. He accelerated his time sense, wanting that half hour to last at least half a day.

  His virtual apartment loft materialized around him. He stood next to the window, overlooking the city below.

  Bambi and Crusher appeared. They were dressed modestly in long sleeved shirts and pants, obviously in no mood for sex. Like himself.

  “What should we do?” Bambi said, coming up beside him.

  “I was thinking of a hammock,” Eric said. “On an isolated white sand beach somewhere. Just us three, the sand, and the ocean. Plus several glasses of beer.”

  “Make it wine, and I’m in,” Bambi said.

  “Beer and wine, then,” Eric said. He pulled up his HUD interface and switched environments.

  In a few moments he was standing on a white beach beneath an umbrella overlooking an azure sea, and a sky completely free of clouds. Behind him, a hammock was tied between two palm trees. It was big enough to fit himself and the two girls.

  He sat in the hammock, with the girls, and slid his arms over their shoulders. He quickly adjusted the hammock’s physics so it would hold all three of them without toppling.

  He materialized a small stand in front of him, with a tray on top containing beer cans and wine bottles. He cracked open one of the cans and poured himself a foamy cup. Crusher took one for herself as well, while Bambi poured a glass of red wine.

  They sat there, drinking in the shade, staring out at the sea.

  “I hope we get home,” Bambi said.

  “We will,” Eric said.

  Crusher leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s what I love about you, you’re a wellspring of optimism.”

  “And here I thought all you loved was what he has in his pants,” Bambi said.

  “That’s a big plus, too, of course,” Crusher said. “But everyone can have that in here. You, if you wanted.”

  “Ha,” Bambi said. “I don’t think so. I’m quite happy with my female parts, thank you.”