“I’m starting to like Ewing’s wild-goose chase more and more. Hey Captain, can we just stay out here? You know, until they call us back to the ship? Skip that whole tunnel thing?”
“Watch your sectors.” Tin warned. “Captain, you getting any readings yet?”
“No. It’s still going through its setup.”
Ayliss returned to the footage of the Spartacans in the crater. The dark bottom was rough with fingers and fissures, and the lead scouts were taking their time getting across it. The view shifted to just inside the first tunnel entrance, where the broken rocks from the demolition littered the ground. Unlike the crater’s bottom, the rock inside the passage was flat and level. The flying ’bots focused on those surfaces, showing thousands of circular rub marks. Remembering the giant caterpillar, Ayliss tried to think of what kind of appendage it or its cousins might have used to perform that work.
The feed took her back to the scouts, who were edging closer to the tunnel mouth. One was nestled against a short rock spire that stood up like a cracked tooth, peering inside, while the others likewise hid themselves. The reconnaissance robots were gliding down the horizontal passage, where the walls had taken on a fuzzy, almost stucco-like texture. The imagery shifted closer to this anomaly, switching from night vision to infrared.
“What is that?” Dell asked quietly.
“Readout says it’s alive. Kind of like a moss.”
“Moss? In this atmosphere?”
“A kind of moss that could grow in this atmosphere. Look at it all. It’s everywhere.”
“Could be a food source, ma’am.” General Merkit relayed the opinion of analysts located elsewhere on the ship. “The robots are detecting a difference in age and thickness in large, geometrically similar patches. As if strips had been harvested and replaced.”
“I suppose they have to eat something.”
“Ma’am?” one of the technicians called, punching the keyboard to his front. “Important feed from Crater Forty-Seven coming in. There was a camouflage net inside the hole, and the ’bots have flown in underneath it. On display.”
The largest screen switched from the inside of the moss tunnel to a disorienting tableau shot from above on a completely different crater. The center of the circular image looked like an open food can crawling with maggots, while multicolored, ribbed tubing ran inward from the wall at three points. Reena rose and stood next to Merkit, puzzled.
“This is an overhead view, ma’am.” The technician explained as the description came through his headset. “They believe the center is a spacecraft under construction, and that the supports between it and the crater wall are more of the caterpillar creatures.”
The picture fell into logical place, and Reena gasped in recognition. The food can was actually the truncated hull of the ship still being assembled, and the maggots were smaller versions of the caterpillar. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, ranging in size from gigantic to mere slivers, working in concert. The supports were just that, the larger caterpillars extending from the walls of the crater to the fuselage of the vessel. In the gaps running down the chimney, gangs of the creatures could be seen inching pieces of machinery up the walls. Looking more closely, Reena marveled to see the myriad appendages performing complex tasks as they emerged from the tube-like bodies or disappeared inside them. Claws fastened down on bolts and screws, while others wielded welding devices and red-hot electrical irons.
“Look at that.” Merkit pointed. “Their bodies adjust to the task. Do you think they’ve been mutated by the aliens, the same way as the Sims?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Reena turned to the technician. “Are we recording all of this? Every bit, with complete redundancy?”
“As ordered, ma’am.”
“General, contact the command element and tell them to have those Spartacans get moving. We need footage of actual Sims being created, or stored in vats, or however these things are doing it.”
“With everything we’ve seen and recorded so far, you’re not going to have any difficulty convincing the rest of the alliance that we found the origin of the Sims, ma’am.”
“I’ve never been worried about convincing them of anything.” Reena’s eye never left the screen, where the creatures kept on with their labors despite the intrusion of the recon ’bots. “Before we blow this place to bits, I’m going to need absolute proof that these things were making the Sims. After we’ve destroyed this place, we still have to make the Sims understand that the game is over.”
“Looks like somebody guessed right,” Varick commented as the footage of the partially assembled ship came into their helmets. “That caterpillar was one of their workers.”
“Look at how many of them there are,” Tin observed. “All different sizes, too.”
“Could be billions of them, maybe trillions under there.” Zuteck spoke. “Heck, under here, for all we know.”
“I have a question.” Bullhead interrupted. “The demolitions blew down the obstacles in the launch crater, and made a lot of noise doing it. The recon ’bots are deep inside those tunnels now, with the Spartacans behind them. Why haven’t the aliens sent a few big caterpillars to block the robots and crush the scouts?”
“Maybe the same reason the workers on that ship haven’t reacted to the robots filming them. Think they might be blind? Deaf? Both?”
“Discipline.” Tin replied. “The aliens turned that first caterpillar around when it was running away from them. Its only escape was to kill itself. I bet the aliens have some kind of mind control over these things. What do you think, Captain? I mean, you met one of them.”
“You may be onto something. The shapeshifter I met spoke inside my head without opening its mouth. And when we jettisoned the thing, it laughed the whole way down.”
“Did you feel like it was able to make you do things?”
“No. It knew we were going to kill it, so if it could have stopped us, it would have. Maybe they can control the caterpillars that way, though.”
“Uh-oh,” Dellmore interrupted. “Showtime.”
The footage from the flying ’bots in the Spartacan tunnel showed layers of moss covering the walls, but the dark expanse to their front now started to shimmer. The heat signatures of thousands of floating, bobbing points filled the void like a storm of fireflies, and then they filled the view. The cameras on the miniature reconnaissance craft blurred as the moths covered them, and then the image shifted. Farther back down the tunnel, obviously a composite of the feed from ’bots that hadn’t been surrounded yet. Up the passage, the swirling dots of light seemed to coalesce in the air in tiny bundles, like floating rolls of dough congealing into balls, and then a large spark erupted from inside each mass.
“Did you see that?” Lightfoot asked. “They merged together and crushed the robots!”
More sparks followed, while the oncoming torrent seethed toward the next cameras. The process repeated itself, a blizzard of dots blotting out the view until the image shifted, then tiny eruptions and more moths. The tunnel was filling with them, and now the Banshees could see the lead scout. Flat on the stone floor, up against the wall, motionless.
The storm rolled down the passage toward him, but then the boiling lights swirled in a tight circle that generated a long, thin tendril. More robots were coming up, sharpening the picture, showing what appeared to be a whip-like cord reaching out from the cloud toward the supine body. Other cords appeared, wrapping around the first one as the horde of moths billowed closer.
“Muscle.” Ayliss whispered. “Doesn’t that look like a muscle fiber?”
The elongating bundle of twitching cords fused together, and then dived with alarming speed. Snake-like, it coiled around the Spartacan from head to toe. Now the width of a man’s thigh, it detached from the cloud while the Spartacan’s one free arm punched at it with no effect. The hideous picture of the constricting sinews and the struggling man ended a moment later, when the coil gave off a muffled boom and a spasm of light exploded from insi
de it.
“They crushed him!” Legacy stammered. “They formed a big tube of muscle, and they crushed him.”
Explosions burst inside the oncoming moths, grenades thrown by the other Spartacans, and then the view showed the scouts rushing back down the tunnel.
“No effect. The grenades didn’t hurt them at all.”
“Get outta there, guys. Get outta there!”
The flickering storm lashed out, boiling down the passage while more tendrils started to form. A lone scout detached from the wall just in front of them, running into the cloud, cords whipping and grabbing him, but not before he detonated an incendiary bomb of some kind. The outline of the tunnel appeared as a stark circle, its center consumed by light and fire, the camera view retreating. The tendrils were gone, and the air showed numerous flaming bits that darted about before dropping to the floor, but then the mass returned. It rolled forward as a roiling fog, catching and destroying the recon ’bots still in the passage.
The view shifted to the crater, an overhead shot as five remaining Spartacans rushed over the broken rocks in full flight. The tunnel entrance pulsated with the approaching doom, and a shuttle dropped almost to the floor with its rear ramp down. The dark figures fled in terror, clawing, tripping, legs pumping, then the first one was aboard and the next one and then the swarm surged right into the back of the shuttle.
Tree-sized vines materialized out of the cloud, man-sized branches that speared the sides of the shuttle while the clutching cords wrapped around the fuselage. Mercifully, someone in orbit cut the feed before it exploded.
“My God.” Reena stared at the screen even as the crater’s bottom started to fill with the moths. The flying robots ascended ahead of them, showing that the cloud was growing exponentially. “General Merkit, initiate the emergency evacuation protocol.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Merkit bent over one of the technicians, speaking quietly.
On the screen, a salvo of rockets slammed straight down into the crater. The view switched to higher-altitude reconnaissance, showing the massive aperture as an innocuous hole just before it belched light and flame and then smoke. A second salvo struck home, blowing the smoke out into a wispy fog that hugged the ground. Holding her breath, Reena strained to see through the obstruction.
Undiminished, the cloud of moths spewed forth from the opening and spread out like ants surging from their ruined home to do battle.
“Ma’am?” Merkit was next to her. “General Immersely.”
The Banshee commander’s face appeared on the screens. Seated in the center of a tactical operations center on a different warship, she was an immobile form surrounded by troops speaking urgently into headsets and typing rapidly on control panels.
“Madame Chairwoman, I’m going to need authorization to employ every weapon available.” Immersely spoke slowly, in a voice of steely calm.
“You already have that authorization, General.” Merkit answered.
“Not all of them. I’m going to need the therm-bombs to get my people out.”
“Those were designed for the tunnels.” Merkit shook his head. “No one’s going to be able to emplace them now.”
“I’m aware of that. I’m planning to use them as air bursts.”
“They were designed for confined spaces. You use them in the air, the effect’s going to be considerably diminished.”
“I certainly hope so.” Immersely’s facial prosthetic twitched. “I’m going to be detonating these things right over my people.”
The first shuttle flight to be brought down by the moths sent down a distress call heard all over the surface.
“Hey, is anybody else getting readings near me? Eye in the sky, you seeing this?” The pilot’s broadcast quivered with near-panic.
“Mark your location.” a robotic voice answered.
In helmets all across the plain, aerial imagery widened until the blinking cursor appeared. It was a flight of three shuttles, heading for one of the pickup zones to begin the evacuation.
“What are you seeing?” the pilot shouted. “I had no readings at all, and suddenly the alarms are all going off!”
Increasing the resolution showed nothing at first. Then flashing red dots appeared on the screen all around the shuttles, the alarm cursors quickly forming a wide cloud of heat signatures that enveloped the three craft.
“Engine failure! Engine failure!”
“Something’s blocking my intakes!”
“They’re moths! There’s a million of ’em!”
All communications from the shuttles ceased. The Banshees watching on the ground knew the link hadn’t been severed by Command, because they got to watch the three stricken craft fall all the way down.
“Multiple swarms rising from craters. They’re disappearing from the scopes—looks like they’re scattering.” The technician in front of Reena chanted the latest reports. “Another shuttle flight just went down. There were no warnings until they were on them.”
“They know how our systems work, and they’ve figured out how to get past them.” Merkit kept his voice low, as if trying to figure out a puzzle. “Look at the screen. They’re intercepting the evacuation flights.”
All across the target area, Banshee units were moving toward the pickup points. Bright flashes kept exploding inside the craters, missiles impacting steadily. Smoke drifted from most of the holes in elongated clouds. Drone gunships had dropped low enough to be seen from the ground, covering the troops as they moved.
“Madame Chairwoman, I think they’re trying to trap our troops on the surface.”
“What would that accomplish?” Reena asked, forcing herself to stay seated and to focus her thoughts. “They know more than our systems—they know how ruthless we can be. They know we’ll blow this whole planet to bits, with our people still down there, if we have to.”
“Everything we’ve seen says they were relying on not being found. For whatever reason, they’re tied to this place. And now that we’re here, perhaps they’re going to take as many of us with them as possible.”
“Ma’am?” General Immersely appeared on the screen. “The ground element is being cut off. Request permission to join them.”
“Denied. You’d never get down there anyway. They’re picking off the shuttles . . .” Reena’s word trailed off.
“I have an answer for that. I’m going to bring the ground element together, and then burn the surface and the air with the therm-bombs. Their suits should protect them. After that, I’m going to drop missiles all around them except for two shuttle lanes, one in and one out. You have to let me go down there.”
“Give me a moment, General.” Reena broke the connection and looked at Merkit. “They do know us, right? Jan and Varick said the thing reached into their minds.”
Merkit frowned, until comprehension reached him. “That’s how they’re intercepting the flights. They knew the whole plan as soon as we put people on the ground.”
“General, this is Chairwoman Mortas.” Reena reopened the connection. “I’m going to need you to trust me.”
“Stay here? Why?” Tin answered Captain Breverton’s call.
“The company’s been ordered to break up into squads and head out on different headings. Somehow the aliens figured out where our pickup points are, and you saw what happened to the shuttles. They haven’t been going after individual craft that are flying random patterns, so Command figures the aliens won’t gather for a single bird.
“Each squad is going to be picked up at an unspecified time and place, because we don’t know how the aliens identified the pickup points. You weren’t supposed to be where you are, so you’ll be fine.”
“When can we expect our ride?”
“I just told you—no one knows the timing. Don’t do anything to attract attention, and be ready to move.”
“Understood.” Tin switched to the squad’s internal communications. “But I sure don’t like it.”
“Hey, we’re the only ones who don’t have to hump o
ut into the wasteland.” Dellmore tried to sound optimistic.
“Right.” Lightfoot chimed in. “We’re already there.”
The others all laughed, and even though their suits were soundproofed Ayliss couldn’t help noticing that the merriment was a low whisper.
“Captain Varick?” Zuteck called.
“Go ahead.”
“You are officially a jinx.”
“Thanks. And here I thought I was just rusty.”
“Hey,” Cusabrina hissed. “We might not have to wait long. Look what’s coming.”
Ayliss widened the view in her helmet, observing the numerous short, dotted lines of Banshee suits spreading out across the flat. Gunships ran routes over all of them, and target markers dotted the imagery for missile strikes, but the first shuttles appeared to be coming in. Three ships came flying along alone, each from a different direction, clearly on intercept with three of the widely scattered squads.
“You’d think they’d throw in a little diversion, wouldn’t you?” Legacy asked. “Maybe a little zigzag?”
“That’s messed up.” Varick agreed. “All that effort to fool the moths, and now they’re coming straight in.”
“Fuck!” Dellmore shouted. “Look what’s popping up.”
The dreaded convergence of the aliens started all over again, like a recurring nightmare. Red dots flashed ahead of the lone craft, their number increasing by the second until they formed a crimson cloud.
“Why aren’t they diverting?” Ayliss asked, dumfounded. “They’re going right into it.”
The answer came in the form of a loud mechanical voice that overrode all other communications.
“All units! All units! Take cover! Take cover! Take cover!”
The Banshees flung themselves down, hugging the dirt, and Ayliss looked up at the last moment in the direction of the nearest shuttle. Miles away, an eye-burning dot of white light burst into life and then blossomed into an orange line in the bright sky. A boom like the birth of the universe followed, and the damping mechanisms in her suit did their best to keep it from rendering her deaf.
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