by JE Gurley
The deeper they drove into the tunnels, the more his scalp itched. The uneven walls and tumbled-down buildings played havoc with his sense of order, setting him on edge. He eyed each shadow with suspicion and peered around every bend of the tunnel ready to spin the ATV and run for it if necessary. If not for his promise to Cici to reach Level 3, he would have turned around and left. He did not renege on promises. They were like oral contracts, the lifeblood of a merchant.
“A dig site tent is just around the next bend,” Cici informed him. “It’s the last place they were working when Myles and I left for the remote station. Director Rathiri had not yet decided on establishing a new dig on the lowest level, Level 5. That must be where they found the xenomorphs.”
Cici spoke as if she expected to find her friends waiting at the dig site. Dax knew better. So did she, when the lights of the ATVs fell upon the destroyed remains of the tent and smashed equipment. Ivers called a halt. They saw no bodies, but they did see blood, lots of blood, leaving a disgusting stench in the air. Dark splotches of dried blood stained the dirty-white material of the tent. Congealed blood lay in puddles in the packed earth. Bloody marks in the sand indicated where the creatures had dragged away bodies.
Cici gasped and looked away. Anger burned in her brown eyes. “Oh my God.”
“It was a slaughter,” Myles said, his words almost a hiss.
Ivers stared at the destruction as if remembering the carnage on his ship; then, gunned the engine of the sledge and moved on, glancing neither left or right as he passed the site. Dax followed him.
The tunnel turned and twisted up and down. Twice, they passed concrete walls constructed across the tunnel, both smashed into rubble. The buildings looked as if blown apart from the inside.
Ivers pulled up beside him. “When I came down here with the cargo transfer team, I saw this and wondered why no one had suggested the Huresh were hiding from an enemy rather than fleeing a natural catastrophe. Surely, history is filled with enough fallen civilizations to suggest most end from outside forces. This has all the earmarks of a battlefield.”
Dax agreed. “A civilization doomed by natural catastrophe but fighting until the end sounds more romantic than another conquered people. No one wants to believe there really are monsters out there, civilized or of the bestial variety. I sure as hell didn’t.”
Half a kilometer farther along the tunnel, a dark metal door inset into a wall of hard rock stood out amid the decaying stone buildings. Although plain and unadorned, a prodigious amount of effort had gone into its construction. Three meters high by two meters in width, the door rested in an equally solid metal frame with fingers of metal inset into the surrounding rock to bolster it further. The door to the sanctuary was ominously ajar.
“The signal came from right around here,” Romeo said. He looked up and pointed to a dark, rectangular cavity in the tunnel’s ceiling. “That must be the ventilator shaft that allowed the signal to get through.”
“Everyone stay together,” Dax advised, as he stopped the ATV and got out.
He and Ivers entered the room first, their weapons aimed into the room. The ATV’s headlights revealed a four-hundred-square-meter room with walls of the same dark gray metal as the door. It had no other doors or windows. The room was empty.
“Damn it!” Dax yelled. “Whoever was here is gone.” He thought of the elevator in the Atrium. Whoever had contacted them had grown tired of waiting. “We came for nothing.”
Ivers pointed to a message scratched into the metal wall with a steel trenching tool. “Trapped here for over fifty-two hours,” he read. “No food or water. I haven’t heard the Ravers in hours. I must try for the surface to warn the Abraxas. If anyone manages to reach this room, stay here. I’ll get help. If I don’t return, it won’t matter anyway. Gregor.”
“Gregor Pavlovich,” Cici explained. She stood in the open doorway staring at the message. Her face revealed her disappointment in finding the room empty. She knew the chances of finding anyone alive were now dismal. “He is, was, our chemist. He must have tried to use the elevator. Poor Greg, if only he had waited a few more hours.”
“Ravers,” Dax repeated. “The name fit the creatures well.” He glanced at Ivers, whose face remained unreadable. “Time to leave.”
Cici was aghast at his suggestion. “We can’t leave. We have to go deeper. Someone might still be alive.”
“They’re dead,” Dax growled at her. “Everyone is dead. No one reached the surface alive.” He turned to Ivers. “You’re a fool if you go down there. If the Ravers don’t kill you, you’ll probably bring the roof down on your head with the missiles. Hey! That’s not a bad idea. Why don’t we seal the cavern, trap those things in here?”
“One, we don’t know they’re still in here. Two, they can dig their way out with those tremendous claws. I can’t leave until I know they’re dead.”
“Well, we’re pulling out. This is no longer a rescue mission, and with no bodies, we’re not a burial detail. If you’re smart, you’ll come with us.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I still have a job to do.”
“Ivers, you’re a stubborn bastard. What are you trying to prove?”
Ivers clasped the ion disruptor to his chest. “Prove? I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to do what the Corp trained me to do – nothing more, nothing less.”
Ivers’ obstinacy irritated Dax. He was stubborn, but Ivers was intractable, a pig-headed Marine. “Oh, come off it! You’re suffering from survivor’s guilt. Everyone died on the Abraxas except you. If you want to join them, just place the barrel of that disruptor to your temple and pull the trigger. It’ll be a whole lot quicker and less messy than one of those creatures ripping you apart, and it will serve the same purpose.”
Ivers sighed. “Take your people and go. Leave this to me.”
“I intend to.” Dax returned to the ATV and cranked it. “You’re a fool, Ivers. Everybody, let’s go,” he called out to the others, most of whom stood around in confusion. He looked at Tish. She refused to meet his gaze. He didn’t care what they thought of him. He had done all he had promised. As far as he was concerned, it was over. “I’m not kidding. I’m leaving.”
She lifted her head and nodded. “I know you’re not. I’ll come with you, but I think it stinks.”
As she slunk toward the ATV, Myles spoke up. “We can’t leave. We have to help the sergeant. We must go to the lower levels and check for survivors. There’s another sanctuary room on Level 4.” His eyes pleaded with Dax, but Dax ignored him. “They’re my friends!” he shouted.
Plia was already in her ATV revving the motor. Romeo had not left the vehicle. He sat in the rear seat with his rifle over his knees ready to return to the ship. Tish climbed in beside Dax but did not look at him. She leaned against the door, as if placing as much distance as possible between them. He didn’t care. She would come around to his side eventually. Her instinct was to nurture and to comfort. His was survival.
Cici stood beside Myles. Her rigid posture declared her defiance. The line had been drawn, sides taken. He sighed at their foolishness. It would have been better if there were mangled bodies lying around for them to see. That might have brought home the harsh reality of the situation. She had not seen the video from the Abraxas.
“We’ll leave the other vehicle for you in case you change your mind,” he said.
Andy climbed out of his ATV and sat down beside Plia.
Cici glared at Dax. “I won’t run away without knowing whether my friends are dead or alive.”
Dax didn’t know whether to admire her courage or curse her for her stupidity. “They’re dead. When you see this creature, you’ll wish you had run away, like me, but it will be too late by then. You’ll die too.”
“Don’t you even care?” she shot at him.
“I care about my crew. I intend to keep them alive. This isn’t our fight.”
“Then go!” she shouted at him. “And damn you!”
Dax ch
ose not to respond. Nothing he could say would change her opinion of him, and he had long ago given up caring what people thought about him. He cranked the ATV, but the loud roar he heard was not the motor revving. It was one of the creatures roaring from back toward the entrance to the lava tube complex. He quickly killed the motor and motioned for the others to do the same, but he knew it was too late. The creatures had surely heard them. A series of barking chirps preceded another roar, followed by more answering chirps from farther away. The creatures were calling to one another. The Ravers were in no hurry. The creatures knew where they were. Foolishly, they had allowed the Ravers to trap them in the lava tubes. I allowed them to trap us, he thought, correcting himself. I was a fool for coming down here.
“You won’t have to hunt them after all,” he told Ivers. “They’re hunting us.”
“Am I crazy,” Andy asked, “or were they talking to each other?”
“Just announcing their positions like a pack of wolves,” Ivers said.
Dax wasn’t as certain that’s all it was. “I think there was a lot more information in those chirps than ‘Here I am’.”
“You think they’re intelligent?” Ivers asked.
“God, let’s hope not,” Cici said.
“We can hide in the sanctuary,” Tish suggested.
“They’ll just wait us out and starve us. Damn!” he yelled, hammering the steering wheel with his fist. “I was stupid to come down here. Now, we’ll have to fight them, both of them, or all of them if there are more than two.”
“They can come at us from two directions here,” Ivers pointed out. “We need to find a spot more advantageous to us where we can concentrate our field of fire.”
“There’s a short cul-de-sac we opened up not far from here,” Cici said. “The entrance is barely three meters wide.”
Ivers nodded. “It will have to do. Lead the way.”
They loaded into the ATVs with Myles driving the third one, and rode deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels, not the direction Dax had intended, but it now seemed their only choice for survival. He knew the deeper they traveled into the tunnels, the farther they would have to fight their way back to the surface, but they weren’t fighting yet. They were running. He didn’t see the Ravers in the thick darkness beyond the lights, but he knew they were nearby, watching. He could feel them, like a change in the air before a bad storm. His scalp itched so badly his head ached.
Just as Cici had described it, the entrance to the cul-de-sac was barely wide enough to admit two vehicles abreast. It was not a natural lava tube, but rather an adit carved from the native rock by the Lokians. As soon as they were inside, Ivers turned the tracked vehicle with the missile pod around and pointed it at the entrance. Then he killed the headlights.
“Turn off all the headlights. Point the floods at the walls. We don’t want too many shadows to throw off our aim. I suggest everyone take cover in the buildings on either side,” he said. “We’ll set up a crossfire.”
Dax noted the buildings were little more than piles of collapsed stone, rusted steel, and crumbled concrete. They would offer little protection against the Ravers. He directed them to follow Ivers’ suggestions about the lights, though to him the indirect lighting of the cul-de-sac made it eerie. He split the group into teams, pairing good shots with those less experienced. “Tish, you come with me. Plia, take Andy with you. Romeo, you pair up with Cici and Myles and watch Ivers’ back.”
True to his nickname, the Luck’s chef walked over to Dax and said quietly so that only Dax heard him, “I’d rather watch Cici’s back.” His face bore a wolfish grin.
“She’s a bit old for you, Romeo,” Dax replied, “but you have good taste.”
Romeo inserted himself between Cici and Myles, giving her the once over while she wasn’t looking. Dax admired Romeo’s tenacity. He played the hound dog even when faced with man-eating monsters.
Ivers chose his own position on top of a narrow ledge thirty meters from the entrance. This provided an unobstructed view of the entrance and part of the lava tube beyond. He sat with the ion disrupter beside him and the remote control for the missile pod in his hand. He reminded Dax of a big game hunter waiting for his quarry. They all waited. After half an hour, Dax began to think the creature had forgotten about them.
“What do you think?” he asked Tish.
“About what?”
“That chirping and roaring – are they talking?”
“I don’t know. They’re communicating certainly. I don’t know if it’s anything more than that.” She looked at Dax. “They can’t be intelligent, can they? I mean, they’re animals.”
The idea clearly frightened her. It scared him too. Giant hungry monsters were bad enough. Smart monsters were a bit over the top. “Maybe I’m just thinking too hard. You know it hurts my brain.” He grinned at her. She smiled back, but it faded quickly.
He saw Ivers tense. “Get ready,” he said.
The Raver shot through the entrance in a blur of motion, silently, brushing the side of the wall, and sending rocks scattering ahead of it. Tish’s sharply indrawn breath betrayed her fright. He squeezed her hand to reassure her. Ivers was ready for it. The missile pod moved slightly. The Raver turned toward it and snarled. Ivers fired. The missile shot straight at the creature’s head. Its reflexes were too quick. Using its powerful rear legs, it leaped to one side, crashing into and through the side of a building. The missile shot past it and exploded outside in the tunnel.
Ivers had anticipated the creature’s reaction. He had seen how quickly it could move on the Abraxas. The missile pod tracked the creature’s movements. A second missile, fired milliseconds later, caught the creature midstride. It exploded just behind the Raver’s enormous head. The black armor absorbed most of the explosion, but pieces of shrapnel peppered the unprotected portion of its left forelimb. It roared in pain and fell onto its side, as the injured limb gave way beneath its weight. It rolled across the ground, smashing walls and bringing down buildings in a cloud of dust.
“Now!” Ivers shouted.
Dax fired his laser. Everyone else followed suit with whatever weapon they had. The whine of bullets and the buzz of laser fire filled the cul-de-sac. None of the fire did any serious damage, but it kept the creature swatting at bullets until Ivers could line it up in the sights of the disrupter. The high-energy beam sliced into its neck, sending a shower of blood over the ground. Even injured, it did not give up on the hunt. It dug its claws into the dirt and pushed with its rear legs, while simultaneously dragging its body forward with its one good forelimb. With a determination bred into its body by its creators, it crawled across the ground toward them.
As it clambered over a low wall, it reared its head, revealing a black scale below its jaw broken off by the explosion. Dax took a deep breath, aimed, and fired three quick shots into the exposed flesh. The laser passed through its tough, fibrous hide, continued through the mouth and tongue, and into the brain. It screamed once and fell dead. To make certain it was truly dead, Ivers continued to bathe its body with the disruptor until its flesh ignited, filling the tunnel with the sickening stench of seared flesh.
Dax’s legs turned to rubber. He leaned back against a wall with his laser held down by his side, the barrel dragging in the dirt. His breath came in rapid gulps. He had held his breath since firing at the monster. His hands hook so badly, the laser rattled. He thought he had been frightened before, but watching the creature clambering over the wall toward him topped all previous episodes.
“Yes!” Andy yelled, pumping his fist in the air.
Dax felt a moment of shame at his fear compared to Andy’s exultation, but the young co-pilot had not been aboard the Abraxas. He had not seen firsthand of what the creature was capable.
“Don’t celebrate too quickly,” Ivers warned. “Its brother is out there somewhere. It will be a little more leery now and not so easy to kill.”
“Maybe we can escape now,” Tish said.
She sounded so hop
eful Dax hated to burst her balloon. “At thirty kilometers per hour, we could never outrun it. We’re safer here.”
“How much safer?” she asked. She glanced at the dead Raver.
Dax followed her gaze. Somehow, it looked even more frightening dead. The reflected lighting accentuated its worst features – the long, black teeth and the sharp claws. He couldn’t argue her point. Even dying, the creature had crawled to less than ten meters from them – too close for comfort. They had expended half their ammunition, nearly depleted the power packs of the lasers, and had only three Wasp Sting missiles remaining, but the creature was dead. One down and how many to go?
“I suggest everyone make his or herself comfortable,” Ivers said. “I don’t think the last Raver will be in any hurry.”
No, it knows we’re not going anywhere. He noticed Ivers said ‘last Raver’ as if he didn’t believe it. Neither did Dax. Four of the creatures couldn’t destroy an entire civilization. This was his worst-case scenario, trapped in the underground labyrinth with an unknown number of Ravers. No, in a worst case, we would already be corpses. It was the reason he had refused to enter the labyrinth of tunnels. He wished he had stuck to his guns.
Dax chose a spot facing the entrance, sat down, and leaned his back against a wall to wait. When I screw up, I don’t do it by half measures.
8
Dax’s stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten in hours. He had expected to be long gone before now. Make a quick search for survivors, and then back into space – quick, easy, and relatively safe. Instead, they sat around in an ancient rubble pile of concrete, stones, and rusted steel that had once been a city but was now grave markers for a vanished race. The chances of their joining the late Lokians, the Huresh, were good. No one had said the latter aloud, but it was what everyone was thinking.