Resistance (Relic Wars Book 1)

by Max Carver

  “Everyone back to your vehicles,” Hagen said.

  Then the ground shook, and this time it wasn't a tremor or a rumble indicating distant blasting or cave-ins. It was like an earthquake.

  The wall erupted inside in the rainbow-ringed tunnel, chunks of decorated rock flying everywhere, with a deafening roar of rapidly compressed air.

  Something surged out of the wall, an immense shape inside the newly created dust cloud. It seemed to grow and grow, a dark shadow, its features unclear.

  Then it rushed forward, and they all saw it.

  The creature was the size of a great whale back on Gideon, the largest beast on a planet full of giant beasts. The front end of it was nothing but a huge round mouth, its breath like a hot wind over a field of flyblown carrion, filling the tunnel with the reek of decay.

  Within the huge mouth lay a throat the color of raw meat, ringed with teeth the size of a shark's. Ring after ring lined the cavernous throat, as far back as Eric could see.

  Prentice had been standing at the mouth of the tunnel, closest to the place where the monstrous beast had broken through the wall. He'd been knocked to the ground by the initial quake. Now the bejeweled lawyer scrambled on hands and knees, screaming to escape the impossibly huge mouth as it loomed closer and closer to him.

  Eric felt frozen in place, filled with shock and awe at the enormous creature, which seemed to be nothing but mouth, throat, and teeth, as big as a dinosaur.

  It snapped up Prentice in an instant, its huge mouth easily closing around the chubby lawyer in one bite. The beast shook from side to side as it chewed and swallowed him down, rock dust spilling from its skin.

  Malvolio raced up on his unicycle, raising the nozzle of a canister of bug spray.

  The enormous wormlike beast bashed the android against the wall, smothering Malvolio with its immense size and weight, though it was hard to say whether the move was intentional or just a lucky accident on the giant monster's part. Eric doubted whether a full canister of bug poison would even make this creature sneeze. Assuming it had a nose somewhere.

  The creature's mouth opened again, and Eric glimpsed Prentice a couple of meters inside. The lawyer was already half-chewed, broken and bloody like he'd been through a blender and a rock tumbler on the way back through the circular rows of shark-like teeth.

  In fact, Prentice looked just like Reamer had looked, during that brief moment when Eric had managed to drag him back out of the wall.

  “Everybody take cover!” Hagen shouted. “Then open fire!”

  Eric looked around, dazed. Hagen and Alanna ducked behind the dump truck that had led the procession. Naomi dropped behind her scouting vehicle, and Iris joined her.

  Bartley, on the other hand, rolled toward the giant monster, eyes wide, mouth foaming as he screamed. He pointed his exoskeleton's industrial hammer directly at the beast. Bartley seemed incredibly brave to Eric—then again, it was also Bartley's nature to respond to new situations with his fists.

  Bartley threw a punch with his exoskeleton arm. The heavy cylinder of the industrial hammer surged forward and bashed into the immense creature's head. A sound like a meat mallet smacking into a side of beef echoed through the room.

  The huge head slammed against the wall, and Eric glimpsed more of the giant creature's side. It did look like a titanic, dust-coated worm, no discernible eyes, the only features a few dozen scattered, wriggling tentacles that seemed disproportionately thin and short, almost like hairs on the surface of the worm's skin. Maybe they helped it crawl around underground.

  Eric shook himself out of his stupor enough to grab his orange shocker and unleash it full blast at the immense creature. He emptied the full battery in a single bolt; anything less seemed pointless for an animal so big. He couldn't even see the back end of it. Much of the worm, maybe most of it, was still somewhere beyond the shattered wall.

  The others were already doing the same; Hagen and Alanna fired their shockers from behind the dump truck, while the loader bot still sat at the front, boxy metal head slowly swiveling, big round camera-ball eyes taking in the scene as if unsure what to do. Its last direct order had been simply to park at the fork.

  Iris and Naomi discharged their shockers, too, then dropped to the ground behind the scouter.

  The immense alien worm lay against the wall, not moving. The last dribbles of electricity crackled over its thick, dusty hide, touching the limp noodles of its small tentacles, then faded. A dark spot was spreading on its side where Bartley had hammered it.

  Green foam drooled from the worm's open mouth.

  “Anybody want to tell me what the hell that is?” Bartley asked.

  “Is it dead?” Naomi half-stood behind the scouter. “Tell me it's dead.”

  The worm shifted, just a little, and everyone took a step back.

  “Mmmf,” a voice said, muffled by the thick creature. Malvolio's hand rose from behind the worm's thick head, waving a red silk scarf that had been worn almost to shreds by time. “I daresay I surrender.”

  “It's just the android,” Iris said, rising up. She took a hesitant step toward the unmoving worm, then another.

  “Careful there,” Hagen said. “Could be a trick.”

  “That doesn't look to me like the kind of animal that's capable of tricks.” Alanna approached the giant worm, looked it over, then kicked it with her boot. “You killed Prentice, you slimy bastard!” She kicked it again, then again.

  “I'm sorry for your loss,” Iris said, her voice barely a whisper.

  “Yeah,” Alanna said, and finally stopped kicking. “He was my favorite lawyer.” Then she walked away and climbed into the dump truck cab. “Somebody clear out that roadkill so the rest of us can get going before something even worse happens—”

  The whale-sized worm rose from the ground with a roar that shook the tunnel and brought dust spilling down on everyone.

  It rolled its circular lip outward, so that the first ring of shark-like teeth now radiated like spikes around its mouth.

  The creature seemed to zero right in on Bartley, who'd dealt it such a bruising blow. Bartley put his exoskeleton into reverse, rolling backwards on his treads while he retracted the long steel cylinder of the hammer for another strike.

  The worm reached him long before he had any chance to hit it again. The shielding at the front of Bartley's exoskeleton kept him protected from the teeth, but the creature slammed into Bartley like a freight train. Bartley yelled as his exoskeleton toppled onto its back with a crash.

  Those who hadn't already depleted their shockers did so now, hitting it with a couple of weak crackles.

  The worm's advance had exposed its flank to Eric. He saw his opening and took it, slamming his heavy clamp hand into the worm's side, hoping to break a few bones, or whatever it had under that dirty, mottled skin with the ugly rat-tail tentacles.

  The clamp hit with a meaty thump, but the worm's hide was tougher than he'd expected. Recoil vibrations from the impact shuddered through his exoskeleton and shook his body, making his teeth click together.

  The worm turned to face him, if face was the right word for a giant eyeless maw. The mouth opened wide, revealing again the shark-tooth-lined cavern of its throat. It let out another pain-inducing roar, its breath reeking of dead things.

  When the huge mouth charged him, Eric managed to catch it in his clamp. He closed down tight, squeezing the worm's lip, and it let out another roar as he pinned it in place. He had a moment to peer into its depths, to notice Prentice's torn, gold-trimmed white loafer stuck between two of the big teeth like a stray bit of gristle.

  The worm's breath was as hot as a blast of desert air, blowing Eric's hair back from his face, the rotten-meat stench forcing its way into Eric's nose and throat, making him gag.

  The worm shook its head from side to side, like a dog with a dead squirrel in its mouth, and Eric was slammed around inside his exoskeleton.

  Eric looked at his other arm, still tipped with the roadheader attachment, the d
rum covered in dozens of diamond-tipped steel cutting teeth, capable of carving through solid rock. With a thought, he activated the tool and set the drum turning at high speed.

  The beast bashed him repeatedly against the wall, as though trying to peel Eric out of his exoskeletal shell before eating him, like Eric was a meaty creek crawdad from back home. Eric reached the spinning roadheader drum inside the huge worm's open mouth, toward the rings of shark-like teeth and the red flesh of its gums and throat, but he couldn't quite reach any of them yet. For a surreal moment he felt like an evil dentist with some demonic dragon for a patient. The roadheader rumbled, ready to chew and destroy, the steel cutting teeth flowing in a never-ending spiral.

  The worm's massive head slung to one side, preparing to bash Eric against the wall yet again, and Eric saw his chance.

  He pressed the roadheader against the worm's inner cheek, plowing a trench into gummy red flesh. The tool chawed across a band of the big teeth, and they flew out like bloody ivory shrapnel, trailing dark red roots. One crashed into the face mesh of the cage surrounding Eric's head; without the mesh, it would have speared him in the eye.

  The worm's outer hide was tough, but the inner tissues were softer. The roadheader shredded colossal muscles. Gouts of blood flew in every direction, drenching Eric and washing over every part of his exoskeleton. The red blood was steaming hot, shockingly human in its color and texture—and taste, Eric unfortunately learned, as a lot of the bloody spray hit his nose and mouth. He closed his lips against it, but worm blood seeped in anyway, salty and full of iron.

  The worm let out a screeching kind of roar and reared back like an angry cobra, slamming Eric’s exoskeleton against the cave ceiling.

  The exoskeleton's nervous system, as Eric thought of it—silicon processors, copper wires, gold connectors—did not feel true pain the way a living body did. Still, when he was jacked in, any damage or disturbances to the exoskeleton rig jarred him pretty badly.

  He felt alerts firing off from everywhere within the suit, panic seeming to ripple from one industrial arm to the other.

  Then the exoskeleton's systems went offline, shutting down in quick succession. The rig was designed for rough and heavy labor, from underground terrestrial mines to cutting into asteroids, but it wasn't armor-plated, wasn't a combat rig. While it normally empowered him, extending his reach and amplifying his strength, without power it was just a cage. Right now, it was also a cage clamped to the lip of a huge alien worm.

  Eric struggled to open the clamp arm, or at least reactivate the roadheader, but nothing was responding.

  Below him, tires squealed, rubber burning against stone.

  He looked down to see the compact dump truck charging across the room at high speed. Hagen was visible through the windshield. It looked like he'd been gunning the engine, building up speed, in a move known to every teenage boy with access to a motorized vehicle.

  The loader bot crouched at its usual spot on the dump truck's front platform, squatting like a giant boxy hood ornament. Its excavator-bucket hands were open and tilted so that the rows of yellow teeth along the edge—normally used for scraping up broken rock from the ground—pointed straight ahead, ready to dig into the worm's side.

  “Loading!” the robot shouted, just before colliding hands-first with the giant worm.

  The impact of the dump truck drove a segment of the worm sideways, pinning it against one wall, shattering stone willow trees and wetland-creature statues. The truck accelerated, inching forward, tires smoking against the blue quartz floor. Hagen was applying the truck's full power, trying to crush the worm's body against the wall.

  Its head slammed down to the ground, making the entire tunnel shudder. Eric's exoskeleton crashed to the floor along with it, battering Eric around inside. He'd be covered in fresh bruises, if he lived through this.

  While the truck pressed against its side, the worm reshaped its body, flattening against the wall for a moment. It created enough space that it could slip free of the dump truck and slither backwards, retracting into the shattered wall from which it had emerged.

  The worm's lip stretched as it dragged Eric's exoskeleton along, right into the path of the dump truck.

  The dump truck slammed into Eric's rig, denting it and rattling him hard before Hagen managed to slam the brakes.

  The worm wasn't content to leave Eric there. It kept dragging Eric's exoskeleton along, across the blood-smeared floor, and up the slope into the rainbow tunnel to the place where the worm had bashed its way in. The worm was planning to take Eric with him.

  Eric willed his clamp arm to open, to release the worm's lip before the beast dragged him away through the wall, into whatever hell lay on the other side. But the clamp was still as dead as the rest of his rig.

  He reached back for the cable that connected him to the exoskeleton to disconnect it. If he could get his legs working, he might have a chance to escape his rig, though he would hate to lose it.

  “Loader!” Naomi shouted. She was squatting behind her scouter, opening the combination-lock backpack where she kept her plastic explosives and detonators. “Loader, grab Eric's rig!”

  “Loading!” The boxy yellow bot tilted forward at a steep, seemingly impossible angle over the front edge of the dump truck. The bulky machine didn't seem capable of balancing itself like a prima ballerina, but it did. It seized Eric's exoskeleton with one big bucket hand.

  Eric jolted to a stop, anchored by the loader bot's grip. The worm's lip tore, flesh splitting open and blood raining onto the floor.

  The worm gave another big shake of its head, as though it meant to slam Eric around again, but this time Eric stayed put, held in place by the loader's strong arm. A long strip of muscle and skin peeled loose from the worm, remaining in Eric's clamp as the creature ripped away from him.

  Roaring louder than ever, the worm accelerated its retreat, backing up into the shattered wall of the rainbow tunnel. It moved quickly, pushing itself backwards with its dozens of short, ugly, tentacles. It roared again as its mangled, ruptured face backed out of sight through the big hole in the wall, leaving a creek of bright red blood in its wake.

  It gave a final roar from the darkness beyond. Then the mine fell silent.

  Chapter Eleven

  As it became apparent that the wounded monster was not immediately returning, everyone started moving and talking all at once.

  “Is it gone?” Naomi held up a marshmallow-sized lump of plastic explosive with a pin-sized detonator stuck in it. “I've got a snack ready if it comes back.”

  “Okay, I'm up!” Bartley announced. After some difficulty, he'd managed to push his exoskeleton upright with its industrial arms. The task would have been easier with a claw or excavator attachment. Unfortunately for Bartley, he'd had the hammer on one arm and the big chisel on the other. “Let me at him! Come back and face me, you giant toothy rectum!” Barley rolled toward the gaping hole in the wall, raising his industrial arms, ready to fight.

  “Hopefully, it's gone to crawl off and die somewhere.” Iris stepped forward, tentatively, from behind the cement truck. “Is everyone okay? Eric? Everyone?”

  “I'm great,” Eric said, still lying on the ground, trapped in his dead exoskeleton, soaked in worm blood. “Loader, could you set me upright?”

  “Loading.” The robot lifted Eric's rig up onto its treads.

  Eric unhooked his cable from the machine. He did his best to clear the worm blood off the gold electrical contact, then plugged it back into the port for his leg braces. Then he stepped out of his rig.

  Iris approached, reaching out as if to touch him, then drawing back as if noticing he was coated in blood and gore. “Is...any of that blood yours?”

  “I think it's all worm sauce,” Eric said.

  “Thing had a nasty bite, didn't it?” Hagen asked, dropping out of the dump truck cab. “Anybody need medical right now?”

  “My underwear needs medical,” Bartley said, and Eric watched a moment of disgust ripple o
ver Iris's face. Bartley didn't notice, because he was pointing his high beams through the hole in the wall and looking into the space beyond.

  “I think the giant worm killed Reamer, too,” Eric said, feeling shaken to his core. He was pretty sure there was a nice layer of shock in there somewhere, insulating him a bit from the horrors he'd seen today. He had the rest of his life to be haunted by them, after all. “Prentice and Reamer had all the same injuries. The inside of the worm is just teeth and muscle. It slices you and crushes you. Then it swallows you. It must have a huge stomach back inside there somewhere—”

  Alanna gasped, and Eric turned toward her, half-expecting to see yet another nasty alien creature arriving.

  Though Alanna had initially seemed a little cold and indifferent to the death of her lawyer, now she was wiping her eyes, leaning against the cement truck's hood as though she couldn't fully support herself.

  “He shouldn't have died like that,” Alanna said. “Either of them. Why are we even down here? What is this place?” She gestured around at the shattered statues of trees and animals. “Really! What the hell is all this? Why is any of this here? And why did we have to get trapped inside it? I was supposed to leave Caldera this weekend! I was going sky-skiing on Aquaria. And then shopping for a new snorkeling suit. Instead, we're all getting...getting hunted by...does anyone have any idea what that was? You, scientist!” She pointed at Iris. “Speak!”

  “Hey, guys?” Bartley said from the huge, crumbling hole in the wall.

  “It's clearly a dangerous carnivore,” Iris told Alanna. “Perhaps...some kind of local species?”

  “A local species of giant man-eating worms that nobody's noticed until today?” Hagen asked. “With everybody digging underground all up and down the canyon? And what about the first wave of miners, the ones who built Money City before the war? They never noticed?”

  “Maybe the worm's from another region of this planet,” Iris said. “It could have been displaced by volcanic activity. Or maybe human activity has only just now infringed on its habitat. We can only speculate. What I can tell you is this...” Iris lifted the sheet of bloody worm flesh that hung on Eric's clamp. A short tentacle the size of a rat's tail wiggled on one side. On the flip side were a couple of shark-sized teeth.