Side by side we climbed the loose, mounded dirt that surrounded the entrance and peered down the hole.
“Contact, Captain,” Sendrei warned.
The tactical HUD showed the Stryker vehicle had closed to four hundred meters, just beyond visual range due to heavy overgrowth. Two red dots were moving away from the vehicle at five meters per second and heading directly at us. A red outline tracked the two through the brush as they approached, even though I still couldn’t see them.
“Take incoming, Cap, and try to keep it quiet. Deploying kiss-and-tell,” Marny said.
It was SOP during excursions into enemy territory for our squad to drop small pucks that reported any movement in the area. Marny wasn’t about to let Kroerak sneak up on us. Without watching, I knew she tossed one of the pucks as far down the hole as she could get it.
I grabbed the multipurpose tool from my calf and flicked it open to a full meter in length. Made from nano-crystalized steel, the tool was good for prying, stabbing, slicing and pounding, depending on which end you held and how far it was extended. I preferred holding the hammer end in my hand with the semi-sharp flattened end extended to a point. In this configuration, the tool resembled a sword. A real sword, however, was much too delicate for someone in a mech-suit to wield — even honed nano-steel would shatter on the first powerful blow. This blade was thick and semi-sharp; it wouldn’t cut someone even if they ran an ungloved hand along the edge. It was designed to withstand whatever pain the mechanized infantry might be required to give out.
With heart pounding in my chest, I rushed forward to meet the still obscured, advancing foe. I’d timed it so that both would break from cover just as I closed to within ten meters.
“I got ‘em,” I said as the two adolescents oriented on me. The young Kroerak were nearly two meters tall, still shy by half a meter of fully grown. Unlike warriors, their carapace segments had yet to fuse together. The two jostled for position as they rushed forward, a behavior I’d only seen occasionally in warriors.
“Thanks, boys.” I used both hands to control the blade. Planting my right foot, I used a short down-stroke, swinging through the first bug until the pommel of the weapon came close to my bent left knee. A move I’d worked on with Marny, it allowed me to deflect an opponent’s energy to my left side. The impact was devastating to the bug, as the blade traveled cleanly through to its midsection. I allowed the impact to turn my body, raising my left knee as I extracted the sword.
The second Kroerak had been knocked aside when I’d struck its brother. It had dropped down to all fours, its foreclaws digging into the soil, an action I’d never seen — even from a warrior. It was an effective — if suicidal — way of arresting momentum. The idea that it was severely outclassed in this battle clearly hadn’t entered this bug’s brain. With my left hand, I batted the first bug from my sword. I wouldn’t have time for a satisfying, full swing, but I was in go-mode and would take whatever opportunity was provided. I shifted my shoulders hard as I stepped into the bug’s low charge and bashed my gloved fist into its head. It clawed at my suit trying to pull me into a deadly embrace, until a satisfying crunch told me I’d hit pay dirt. I flicked the bug off and drove my sword into its back for good measure.
I’d often wondered how people got to the point where hatred of individuals became hatred of an entire group. I’d reached this point with Kroerak. I could honestly say I hated the species for what they’d done to humanity. I’d seen, up close and personal, how the Kroerak mutilated and killed people, treating them just as we treated non-intelligent species — as food sources. My enmity went further than that, though. I’d also seen how Kroerak took sick pleasure in their domination. Still, I took no joy in the kill beyond the visceral feeling that accompanies besting an opponent in mortal combat.
As a kid, I’d read a book about a bug species much like the Kroerak that had been entirely wiped out by the child hero. The hero in the story had been tricked into his actions by his elders and suffered emotionally for his part in the genocide of the species. I can honestly say, at this moment, if I’d had a button that would wipe every Kroerak from the universe, I’d have been happy to push it.
“Cap? You with me?” Marny asked, jogging to where I’d planted my sword into the fallen Kroerak’s husk.
“Yeah, let’s go.” I extracted the sword and flicked it clean.
The slope of the hive entrance was steeper than I liked, but the suit’s gyros and arc-jets kept us upright as we quickly covered the twenty meters. We jumped in, landing in the center of a long tunnel.
“Left or right?” Marny asked.
Both directions had seen considerable traffic and the ground was hard-packed. The left branch angled upward slightly, which I liked the idea of.
“I have point.” I shortened my multi-purpose tool and flipped it so I had the hammer end available. With a nod from Marny, I started to the left.
She tossed a kiss-and-tell down the right branch, then followed behind me. My AI immediately mapped what it could scan ahead in the dark. The passage was clear for ten more meters, at which point, a branch went off to the left. Together we stalked ahead, as quietly as the suits would allow. When we were two meters from the turn, I tossed a puck across the intersection, imbedding it into the dirt wall ahead. The pucks didn’t have video, but their movement sensors included enough data that our AIs could extrapolate the type of enemy, group size, distance, direction and time to intercept — that sort of thing. None of the pucks had yet activated, so we continued.
Our goal was to stay quiet if possible. I didn’t expect the calm to last, but there was nothing wrong with surprise, as long as we didn’t lock ourselves in too deep. I entered the opening to the left, holding my hammer, ready to strike. My AI registered an oval-shaped room, ten meters long, seven meters wide and four meters high at the largest dimensions. It appeared the room had been dug out, which made me wonder where the material had been taken. The tailings at the entrance weren’t enough to account for this room’s volume, much less the extensive tunnels we expected were down here.
The room was littered with broken, rigid casings the length and diameter of my forearm, but otherwise empty. I knelt and picked up one of the hollow casings. Something had torn through one side and when I applied pressure, it crumbled in my hand. I stood and dug into the floor with the toe of my armored boot. Instead of exposing clay soil, I shuddered as I pulled up more of the broken case material.
“Creepy, Cap,” Marny said. “Has to be eggs.”
“Lot of frakking eggs,” I agreed.
We exited the room, turning back to the left and continuing down the main passage. Five meters further down, my AI highlighted a section on the wall to my right. I would have missed it, but the AI was nearly perfect at identification.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Cap,” Marny said as I inspected the recently hidden opening. The material on the wall was a mixture of broken egg cases and clay. It had been packed and smoothed until the opening was indistinguishable from the rest of the passageway.
I backhanded the hammer into the center of the opening. “I just don’t think this is going to get better.” The wall crumbled under the impact of the hammer’s head and debris cascaded into the hidden chamber. I continued with the hammer, widening the opening sufficiently to allow entry. The entire operation took only a few minutes.
“It’s quiet,” Marny said, after throwing a puck through the hole.
Stepping in, my sensors read the room. It was a slightly different shape than the first, but roughly the same volume. In this room, there were five, three-meter-high piles of the same cases. In the center sat a two-meter diameter dirt mound.
“Cover me,” I growled as I leapt forward and buried my hammer into the mound. As expected, my hammer contacted the harder-than-steel carapace of a warrior. My blind strike hadn’t been perfect and the mound exploded with a groggy, albeit really pissed warrior. It quickly turned to orient on me. I flipped my hammer end for end and jammed the h
andle between the hardened plates that separated its head from its thorax. The warrior crumpled.
“There have to be four-hundred eggs in here,” Marny said.
“What’s that?” I asked. Along one of the walls, was a pile of rotting native Zuri animals.
“Food sources,” Marny said. “My guess is the eggs hatch, they eat through that meat and eventually break out of the egg chamber.”
“Frak.” My eye landed on a human arm, outlined by my AI. Glad for my suit’s internal air system, I rushed over and pushed the disgusting pile back. The arm belonged to a recently killed Pogona male.
“That’s a gunshot, Cap,” Marny said. A burn on the side of the Pogona’s head outlined a familiar-looking hole caused by a blaster pistol.
“No way,” I said, not willing to believe any species capable of holding a blaster pistol would supply Kroerak with food.
“We have substantial movement on the surface,” Sendrei’s voice cut in on the tactical channel, startling me. “Something knows you’re down there.”
“Copy, Sendrei,” Marny replied. “Cap, wrap this up. We might have company soon.”
I turned from the rotting pile and dialed a five-minute incendiary grenade into my suit’s ordnance manufactory. I jammed two grenades into the center of each egg mound, unwilling to leave behind what my AI counted as four hundred eggs.
“What’s the call, Cap?”
“This isn’t what we came for,” I said. “We keep going.”
“Copy.”
We continued down the passage to a three-way intersection. Marny kept setting out pucks, but none of them activated. I’d been watching the Stryker team’s progress. A veritable horde of hatchlings had erupted from a previously hidden surface opening half a click from where we’d entered. So far, it looked like between Tuuq and the Stryker, they were handling it.
I followed the intersection to the left, where my AI highlighted yet another closed chamber. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but non-existent resistance wasn’t it. I was starting to question my assessment about the size of the force we’d run into the night before.
On my first strike into the egg chamber, dirt exploded outward. A full-sized Kroerak warrior had been waiting and tackled me to the ground. For a moment, we wrestled, its sharp claws scraping against my suit’s armor, searching for a weakness I knew it would have a hard time finding.
The bug went limp and I rolled out from beneath it, jumping back to my feet. Marny retracted her own multipurpose tool and tossed a puck into the egg chamber. Wordlessly, we stepped inside, finding the same scene as before.
“Frak,” Marny said, just as three of our kiss-and-tells simultaneously woke up.
“Let’s do this. Fire in the hole,” I said, launching the same incendiary grenades at the piles, only this time, with no countdown.
Back in the passageway, our shadows danced on the opposite wall as the room was engulfed in fire.
Marny took point and moved back along the path we’d come. “We need an exit plan.”
“Back the way we came?” I asked, not loving the idea.
With movement behind us, as well as near where we’d entered the tunnels, we were in danger of being surrounded. It was a devil of a choice. Attacking the horde coming from behind would require us to further commit to unexplored tunnels. At least heading this way, we knew what to expect and where our exit was. Marny made it through the intersection and into the main tunnel.
“Sendrei, what’s your sit-rep?” Marny asked.
“Trouble,” he replied. “Something stirred a nest. You have a score of warriors incoming. We’ve engaged, but we’re not stopping them. There are too many and the Stryker’s guns are taking too long.”
“Contact,” I said, spinning around and taking a knee. My rear view had caught a line of warriors streaming toward us. “Blowing the ceiling.” It was important to share tactical decisions so Marny could react. Ordinarily, I’d let her make the call, but in close-quarters combat, timing was critical.
“Copy,” Marny replied as I fired explosive rounds into the ceiling, just past the entrance to the last egg chamber. “Contact right and left.” She had returned to the intersection and had my six.
Two warriors caught in the blast rocketed toward me. If I’d been standing, they’d have knocked me over. We were well past silent mode so I opened up on them, firing the armor-piercing rounds every suit manufactured since the Kroerak war carried. I didn’t bother to stand, but unloaded automatic fire into the attacking warriors without hesitation.
In my peripheral vision, the tactical target count grew as Marny’s sensors recorded bugs in the unexplored section and main tunnel.
The ground shook as great mounds of earth collapsed into the tunnel, burying warriors and cutting us off from the others. For a moment, I was concerned that I might have caused a larger explosion, as the ground continued to shake.
“We gotta move,” Marny said.
“Which way?” I asked, joining her at the junction to the main hallway. The obvious choice soon presented itself. By my AI’s count, at least three dozen of the skittering horde were closing on our position from the tunnel entrance. In the other direction, there were only a handful of adolescents and hatchlings.
“On my six,” she ordered.
The ground continued to shake beneath our feet. Something big was happening and I hoped I hadn’t set off a chain reaction by dropping the ceiling. Together, we pushed deeper into the cavern, choosing to engage the smaller bugs first. The basic plan was to gain a defendable position and then take out the encroaching force. At least, that’s what I thought the plan was. The hatchlings didn’t put up much resistance as we overran them and continued down the long curving passageway.
“Cavern up here,” Marny announced.
The tremors in the ground gained strength as we continued forward. Just as we entered the room, she turned and tackled me, throwing me back into the tunnel. While still in mid-flight, she was ripped off me and thrown against the passageway’s wall by a three-meter-long Kroerak ship lance.
“Frak!” I yelled, rolling up onto one knee.
The warriors that had been pursuing us from the main tunnel were within five meters. Marny’s bios reported that she’d been knocked unconscious and her suit was in the process of applying a stimulant. There were other problems, but she was, at least, alive.
I fired into the crowd and worked to focus on individual bugs. The Popeyes were effective against Kroerak, but one-on-thirty were bad odds. My main weapon would lose effectiveness once the bugs got into hand-to-hand combat range. While I could solo a warrior with just my multi-purpose tool, I couldn’t expect to win against more than a few.
I gave ground, firing on full auto as I backed to Marny. One. Two. Three, four, five, six. I was knocking them down in a hurry but for each one I killed, two more jumped over and pushed forward. My only advantage seemed to be the width of the hallway, which allowed only a few abreast. I was thankful for the Kroerak temperament as the warriors slowed, pushing and fighting with each other to get to me.
I reached across my body with my left hand and extracted the multipurpose tool from its position on my leg, not wanting to lose even a second of fire as they pressed in on me.
Finally, they were on me and the fight took on a new dimension. I punched, kicked, and did everything I could to keep them off Marny and from killing me. My suit was taking damage and I wasn’t more than halfway through the group, or so my AI said. Personally, I couldn’t see much beyond the next punch as I was simply living in the moment.
“We’re coming, Liam.” Tabby’s voice filtered through the sounds of battle.
“Get back in the Stryker,” I ordered. I couldn’t fathom what would inspire her to exit the armored vehicle. “There are warriors everywhere.”
Bright lights illuminated the ceiling of the cavern behind the bugs and the sound of a turret firing filled my ears.
Tabby laughed. “Don’t be an idiot.”
The three bugs pressing me were unaware of the change in the tempo of the battle, but suddenly I knew there was a glimmer of hope. I buried my hammer into the neck of the closest bug and pulled it across my front. My goal wasn’t to kill as much as it was to block the other two who were pressing.
“Cap?” Marny asked, weakly.
“Stay down, Marny. Stryker’s in the hallway behind the bugs,” I said.
“Cruiser,” she corrected.
“No, just the infantry fighting vehicle,” I said. She’d evidently taken a pretty good hit to the head.
I felt a clunk on my shoulder as her suit arm came around me. She fired into the bugs at point-blank range, something I hadn’t been able to manage. The bug I held on my hammer dropped and I released the hammer with it, swinging my gun arm up and firing into the space Marny had gained. Between the two of us, we pushed the bugs back and I got my first view of the Stryker sitting at an angle in the hallway, firing into the kill box we’d created between us.
“Tabbs, how the frak did you get down here?” I asked, once the bugs had dropped. “That entrance is too steep for a vehicle.”
“Cap, we have bigger problems,” Marny said as the ground beneath us shook again and great clods of dirt fell from the ceiling.
“What?”
“Take cover.” Marny pushed me against the Stryker just as the ceiling fell in on us and everything got very quiet.
“That’s messed up,” I said after we’d sat for thirty seconds in complete darkness. “Everyone up?”
“Liam, do you see Jonathan and Sendrei?” Tabby asked.
“See them? I don’t see anything. I’m surrounded by dirt. They’re in the Stryker with you,” I said. “We’re twenty meters under. I’m not sure we’ll be able to dig out.” My suit strained as I pushed against the dirt trying to make room.
The ground continued to shake, even more violently than before.
“There was a doorway that opened in the passage filled with lights and technology,” Tabby said. “Jonathan saw it and jumped out of the Stryker. Sendrei followed.”
Corsair Menace (Privateer Tales Book 12) Page 12