by Max Carver
Naomi, Eric, and Iris emerged from below the spider statue into a scene of chaos. A cloud of dust and shattered rock poured out along with them as the underground room collapsed behind them.
Ahead, the gigantic worm had found them, emerging from the same archway their group had, as though it had simply followed them at a distance and waited for a moment to strike.
Bartley was already in close battle with the titanic creature, rolling forward and back, boxing it with his huge hammer and chisel, alternating between left and right.
“That's right!” Bartley shouted, his voice amplified as if he meant to harm the worm with sound, too. “Turn! Turn, you mouthy bastard!”
The worm roared in response, weaving in its attempts to dodge Bartley's big tools. Its lip had turned outward so the shark-like teeth radiated around it.
At the same time, the loader bot stood just beyond Bartley, pushing against the worm's body. It looked like Bartley and the loader had been tasked with trying to turn the worm toward Hagen, who stood by the cement mixer, hose ready.
“It looks...healed?” Eric pointed to the large gap he'd ripped in the worm's mouth earlier. A cross-hatch of leathery material had appeared there, holding the damaged flesh together.
“No,” Naomi said. “Those are stitches.”
Eric wanted to ask who might have done that, but this wasn't the time to pause and reflect.
Nearby, Malvolio stood ahead of Alanna, holding his arms up as though to shield her in case the giant worm strayed too close. Hagen had probably told him to keep the boss safe, to whatever extent the drama-bot could.
“Go join them.” Eric extended the ancient insect helm toward Iris and pointed over to Malvolio. “I have to go help.”
“I can't touch that right now.” Iris held up both her hands, like a vampire who'd just been presented with a cross or a slice of garlic pizza. “Maybe later.”
Eric was annoyed but didn't have time to argue. He tried to hand the helmet off to Naomi instead, but she'd already run over to join Malvolio and Alanna.
Sighing, he wasted precious seconds stiff-legging it over there and depositing the helmet on the ground by Alanna, since nobody seemed to want to hold it. Detour complete, he turned and hobbled toward his exoskeleton as fast as he could.
He climbed into the driver seat, unplugged his leg braces, and plugged into the exoskeleton. He instantly felt the rush of being big and strong again. His arms were finally online, as they should have been with all the time he'd left them alone to restart.
Eric charged toward the worm and stood beside the loader bot, who was trying to shovel the worm sideways. The boxy yellow robot was bent low, excavator-bucket hands extended, trying to get under the worm. Eric pushed with his claw, adding his rig's strength to the effort.
Then he activated the roadheader on his other arm, spinning its spirals of rock-cutting teeth at high speed. He disconnected the tank of river water used to cool and wash the cutting area; he didn't need it to cut through worm flesh, and he needed to conserve what he had left in case there were more tunnels to open ahead.
Besides, the roadheader was already dripping with the alien worm's blood, and it was about to get soaked in it again.
Eric drove the tool into the worm's side. It wasn't nearly as effective as it had been on the soft innards. The outer hide had a tough, pebbly texture that resisted the tool; only small leathery flakes flew off as he tried to dig inside. The worm's rat-tail-sized tentacles flailed at the roadheader, too stumpy to even reach it.
Eric, Bartley, and the loader managed to move the worm until its head was pointed toward Hagen and the cement mixer.
The roadheader broke through the crust of the worm's hide, red blood sprayed Eric like paint, and the worm bellowed.
Hagen raised the hose and unleashed the shotcrete full blast. He filled the roaring maw with the quick-drying stuff, coating the ring of sharp teeth around it.
Wet cement gurgled deep in the worm's throat. It moved its giant head aside to turn away from the stream of shotcrete, but the damage had been done. The worm choked loudly on the cement. Its body shifted from side to side, jerking and convulsing, sending everyone running back and away from it.
Everyone except Hagen. The man stood his ground, graying hair plastered to his head by sweat, the dark bags under his eyes permanent.
Hagen raised the hose, spraying higher so the shotcrete would arc down on top of the worm's head.
Eric remembered the time, not long after he'd arrived on Caldera, when Hagen had taken him out for a beer and a mixed-meat sandwich from the deep fryer at The Tipping Point. The tables at the bar were dirty, but not nearly as dirty as the plates and glassware.
It was after Eric's formal job interview, over in Reamer's office. Reamer had been doubtful about hiring Eric, but something about Eric seemed to impress Hagen; maybe the years Eric had spent driving and wrangling the enormous devilhorn beasts on the ranch, or maybe how Eric could backjack into the mining exoskeletons and instantly use them like he'd had years of practice. Or maybe they were just desperate for workers, which was why even menial jobs on Caldera paid triple what they did on Gideon.
Hagen questioned Eric about his background, school, family, hopes, and dreams in a way that sounded casual on the surface but had probably been systematic, the retired battle-hardened platoon sergeant sounding out his new man. Eric tried to ask about Hagen's time in the war, but Hagen was tight-lipped about that.
“I had a wife,” Hagen had told him, after several glasses of strong whiskey. “Years ago, back on Phoenix. The colony was pretty new, still loyal to Earth, and we didn't see any reason not to stick with the Alliance. Sure, maybe the issue got murky as the war went on...” Hagen shook his head. “We were supposed to deploy to Malb, a rebel stronghold, a rocky hellhole planet. Not as bad as Caldera, if it was peaceful, but the war was hot there. Nobody was looking forward to it.
“We were all lined up, rifles in hands and packs on backs, just waiting to board the shuttle. Then word came down that the deployment had been delayed forty-eight hours because of repairs to the carrier that was supposed to transport us.
“So we cheered, of course—we had a free weekend ahead, and what's better than that when you're twenty-two? I went back to our apartment in family housing, you know, picked some flowers on the way, thinking I'd surprise my wife—you know where this is going, I can see it.” Hagen had drained the rest of his glass. “A good friend of mine, a mechanic, had just been transferred out of our unit six weeks earlier, so he wasn't part of the deployment. The moment he thought I was off-world, he transferred his own unit into my wife's rear—which was now the enemy rear, I realized as I stood in that doorway.
“Later on, I thought of all kinds of clever, sharp insults I could've thrown at them. A thousand different things I coulda shoulda said, while I stood in that doorway looking at them. But at that moment, nothing. I just remembered how she'd cried the night before about my deployment, about how much she worried, and I'd held her and told it would be all right. And all that was just a performance on her part. She couldn't wait for me to go so she could get a piece of Rod. That was his name, Rod Youngston. Bastard.”
“I'm sorry,” Eric had said, uselessly.
“So about this girl of yours back home...Stevie...”
“Suzette.”
“Yeah. What you want to find is a woman who's only got one face. Not two, not three. Not...eleven. Find a woman who tells the truth. And if you find one like that, give me her number.” Hagen had let out a drunken laugh and almost fallen from his stool.
Then Hagen had paid his tab and left, never mentioning anything personal about himself to Eric again.
Now Eric watched Frank Hagen, toughened by a brutal war and a brutal woman. The older man couldn't help grinning like a sugared-up kid as he buried the front few meters of the giant worm in a heap of cement.
“I think that's got him,” Hagen said, lowering the hose. It looked like he'd used up most of the cement.
The worm rose up, somehow managing to lift its head despite the mountain of quick-drying cement atop it. Globs of half-dried cement flew everywhere. Some of it splattered Eric through his exoskeleton's protective head cage. He hurried to wipe off the droplets before they became a permanent feature of his face.
The giant worm plowed through the spot where Hagen had been standing and onward, colliding with the cement truck, flattening the cab and crushing it against the nearest wall.
Then the worm fell still, the concrete finally good and hard around its head. Clouds of dust rose from where it had slammed onto the floor, weighed down by a ton or two of concrete.
“Frank!” Eric shouted, rolling toward the dead worm and the destroyed truck, but it was clear there was no way that Frank Hagen, or any other human being, could have been alive under that mass of concrete and twisted metal.
Chapter Fifteen
Eric and Bartley rolled closer to the massive dead worm, which now looked a bit like a train that had jumped its tracks and slammed into a concrete building. Their lights cut paths of visibility through the dust cloud.
“Hagen?” Bartley shouted. “You dead or what? I was going to kill you myself, you dirty Earther. I'm going to be pissed if some worm beat me to it.”
“You'll have your chance.” Hagen's voice made them jump, not least because it came from an improbable place, somewhere far behind them, nowhere close to the wreckage.
“It's a ghost! Kill it!” Bartley swiveled toward the voice and raised his hammer and chisel. Eric rotated for a look, too.
Malvolio unicycled around from behind the big bug altar at the center of the room, his ratty yellow coat tails fluttering. The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air.
The android carried a very stunned-looking Hagen in his arms, as though the two of them had just gotten hitched and Malvolio was about to toss Hagen onto the honeymoon bed.
“Whoa, good job, drama-bot. How'd you move so fast?” Naomi asked.
“One of my previous owners found my musical and dramatic performances...not exactly to his taste. He amused himself by increasing my speed far beyond factory recommendations, and then having me race other, similarly boosted machines. Once he had me race the outdoor custodial bot, whose main purpose was the collection of canine offal from the lawn.”
“You...never mentioned how fast you were.” Hagen looked pale and seemed to be catching his breath. His thinning hair stuck up all over. “How fast were you going?”
“It varied at the vector changes, of course, but an average of three hundred fifty kilometers per hour. I am capable of higher speed, but I thought it might be uncomfortable for an unshielded human.”
“Yeah. You can put me down now.”
Malvolio gently set Hagen on his feet.
“Why did you never mention it?” Hagen asked.
“I was ashamed to have been altered in such a fashion. I am a performing artist with a repertoire of song, dance, and theater spanning thousands of years. I am not a go-kart.”
“Looks like you got a better deal than you knew on this unit,” Alanna said.
“You need first aid?” Naomi asked Hagen, but he shook his head.
“What I need is fresh air and sunlight,” he said. “But you can't find those on this planet, so I'll settle for getting the hell up to the surface. I believe if we head that way—” He pointed toward one of the four big archways. “—that'll take us close to where Caffey Industries is working. They've got a bigger operation, probably more security. At this point, we just need to get around other people, no matter who they are.”
“We're going to beg Caffey Industries for help?” Alanna asked, with a sour look on her face. “My father will not like that.”
“They don't have to help us, we just have to leave through their exit,” Hagen said.
“I'm sure Bowler Caffey Junior will find a way to make it difficult for us. But that's my problem. I agree we should head for light and civilization, to the extent it exists on this planet. Was this worth it?” Alanna toed the elaborate metal helm with her boot. “Iris? Is it everything you dreamed?”
“Yes,” Iris said, but she spoke quietly now, her hand fidgeting at her side, as if unsure of herself. “It will take an expert from the Society—a xenoarchaeologist or even a true gatekeeper—to confirm it, but I think we really have something here.”
Alanna leaned down, reaching toward the masked helm.
“Don't!” Iris moved to block her. “Eric, can you grab the relic again?”
“Why are you so scared to touch it?” Naomi asked Iris, joining the others who stood over the relic.
“It might have a...this is difficult to explain...an unpredictable reaction to certain treatments I had, when I was still considered a potential gatekeeper.” A flicker of pain crossed her face, but she swallowed it back quickly. “There are trace amounts of exotic metals in my body, in my nervous system, in particular—”
“Nobody ever injected me with any weird metal.” Naomi squatted down to pick up the helm herself.
“Don't—” Iris began, but it was too late, and probably useless on top of that, since Naomi clearly wasn't interested in taking orders from Iris.
Naomi touched the mask with both hands. Her fingers traced the tightly woven threads of metal along the elongated mandible area, and the round eyeholes, following the anatomy of a mantid's head.
“It's no big deal—” Naomi began, and then every muscle in her body seized up as if she'd been electrified.
Naomi's scream echoed off the high walls and the vaulted starry-night ceiling.
Then she snarled like an animal.
Then she changed.
Her jaw dropped, opening impossibly wide, like a snake preparing to feed. Her teeth sharpened, lengthened, and twisted into odd, angular shapes—some hooked, some long and curved like an animal's horn, some flat and sharp like swords. None looked like any tooth Eric had ever seen, and he'd grown up among farm animals and wild beasts.
Naomi's skin shifted from a deep brown hue to a bizarre mottled purple, a color drawn from the world of nightmares. Her flesh became scaly. Her ears grew leathery and fan-shaped, like a bat's; her eyes burned bright red as though filled with magma.
Her boots seemed to vanish as her feet grew longer and wider, tipped with claws. All her clothing was gone, replaced by the scaly midnight-purple skin.
Naomi's hips, stomach, and breasts swelled, approaching the proportions of a prehistoric Venus statue. Her nipples became clusters of hooks, barbs, and blades that would have ripped the face off any baby who tried to nurse on her.
Black bat wings sprouted from her shoulder blades and grew incredibly tall, their tips reaching up to the vaulted ceiling, spreading to blot out the crystal stars above like thunderheads engulfing the night sky.
She let out an ear-splitting screech that didn't sound human at all, more like some kind of predatory bird.
“Separate her!” Iris screamed. “Get her away from the relic!”
Eric and Bartley approached, but they hesitated to grab her with their exoskeleton arms; she might have looked fearsome at the moment, but they didn't want to hurt the real Naomi, wherever she was in there.
Naomi's new monstrous visage turned to face them as they approached, red eyes glowing like pools of lava, her braids twitching and snapping around her face like a crown of vipers. Her black wings kept growing larger and larger, as though she meant to enclose and smother them all.
“What the hell is happening?” Alanna screamed, and her question seemed apt—at the moment, Naomi looked like a towering pregnant demon risen from hell, her jaws ready to devour them all.
Eric and Bartley's slow advance happened to keep her distracted long enough for Hagen to sneak up behind her. He lay a concrete-crusted glove over her still-swelling belly, where the scaly surface rippled and puckered as tho
ugh a dozen little demon babies were trying to kick their way out.
The Naomi-demon let out another horrible shriek as Hagen pulled her away from the ancient relic.
Naomi shrunk as they toppled to the floor together. By the time they landed in the dust and shattered concrete, she looked normal.
At least, her body and clothing looked normal. Her face looked frozen in shock, eyes unfocused.
Everyone moved closer to her, except Iris, who went for a closer look at the relic instead.
“Naomi?” Bartley asked. “Are you back? How many hot dogs am I holding up?”
His voice seemed to startle her into movement. Naomi sat up, shivering as she looked around at them. Her hair and coveralls were damp with sweat.
“Are you okay?” Hagen asked. “Can you say your name?”
Naomi started again, looked at Hagen kneeling beside her, then scrambled back and away from him, crab-fashion on her hands and feet. She trembled as she stood.
“Naomi.” Eric rolled toward her.
“No.” She held out a hand for him to stop. “Not right now.”
Then she walked behind the dump truck, out of everyone's sight.
“Is she going to be okay?” Alanna asked. “Because we really need to get moving. Somebody toss her in the truck if necessary.” Alanna turned to Iris, who still knelt quietly by the relic, examining it but not touching it.
The relic had changed shape, morphing into the shape of Naomi's fanged monster face, purple and scaly. The long spikes that had protected the mantid's antennae had migrated to the sides of the helmet, turning into rows of short-stubby spikes positioned to protect the fan-shaped, bat-like ears Naomi had briefly sported.
“What just happened?” Alanna asked.
“I don't know.” Iris looked up from the relic to meet her gaze.
“What is this thing? What is it supposed to do?”
“I don't have those answers, either.”
“You brought us down here searching for it,” Alanna said. “You had a secret assignment down here, is that it? You're a spy for the Antikytheran Society?”