by Max Carver
The teeth weren't even the worst of it. This was the roadheader worm, the one that had created the big tunnel through which they'd entered. Its enormous body was covered in scores of rotating drums, each one with a spiral of spikes spinning at high speed.
The giant roadheader worm extended out of the floor, its maw heading directly toward Eric and Iris.
“Eric Rowan,” Iris said. Her eyes still glowed white. Her voice was commanding, full of iron authority, not at all like her usual soft, quiet tone. “You must not allow the beasts below to take the relic. Darkness will fall across the galaxy.”
“Okey-dokey,” Eric said, which sounded a little inadequate for responding to her strange, solemn god-voice. Fortunately, he didn't have to dwell on it long, because the exoskeleton was finally ready to move again. The energy surge from the mask had only stunned the Dragonfly rig's electrical systems, not fried them forever.
He swung around, moving monkey-style, grabbing onto overhead bolt heads and support trusses as he returned toward the platform.
Then he saw another problem. The platform had drawn close to the shaft that would take it out of the underground room and toward the surface...but now it had stopped moving completely. Red lights blinked all over. The complete stoppage of the platform was a perfectly logical automated safety response to all the damage the elevator had suffered, in any normal situation where huge, murderous aliens weren't swarming below it.
Eric saw Hagen was down, too. A worm's metal-spear projectile had gored the middle-aged man's thigh. Bartley was jumping toward where Hagen lay, bringing the first-aid box from the crushed truck cab.
Hagen grabbed Bartley's arm and pointed toward Naomi, saying something Eric couldn't hear. Bartley nodded and ran toward Naomi and Malvolio. Hagen, gritting his teeth in pain, began digging through the first-aid box.
Eric swung down from the rocky roof and landed as gently as he could on the precariously sloped platform. Iris's eyes had closed, and she'd fallen limp, unconscious.
He set her down by the first-aid box. With one of his robotic arms, he grabbed the glowing white mask from her fingers.
Instantly, she reverted to her usual self, dressed in dirty coveralls, her head resting on Eric's crumpled jacket like a pillow, her hands no longer the color of bloodstains. Her hair was still all burned away, and there were still circular metal implants all over her skull.
“She's a gatekeeper?” Hagen asked, his voice an angry grunt.
“Maybe,” Eric said. “I don't know. I have to go get the platform moving again.”
“Listen,” Hagen said, his teeth still gritted in pain. “We're dropping the dump truck on that extra-large worm. Need you to lower the front safety railing.”
“I'm on it. Watch over her.” Eric gestured at Iris as he started toward the control console.
“I will if I don't black out,” Hagen grunted.
Alanna and Bowler Junior still huddled near the console. Eric ignored them as he unhooked from the exoskeleton while remaining inside it. He plugged the gold connector of his backjack into the console's dataport.
He quickly overrode the safety systems and got the platform moving again.
Then he watched the plan unfold: Naomi and Bartley smeared a thick layer of plastic explosive across the back of the truck—most of what she had in her backpack, by the look of it. The loader bot raised an arm, remotely controlling the dump truck. The truck began to accelerate in reverse while keeping the brake on, so the tires spun backwards in place, building up a head of steam. The engine revved again and again.
Naomi and Bartley dashed away from the truck. At Naomi's signal, Eric dropped the front safety railing.
The dump truck hurtled backward and off the platform. Its back end smashed into the enormous jaws of the roadheader worm. The spinning spiked drums all over the colossal worm began tearing the truck into shreds, spraying ribbons of metal and showers of sparks.
But the impact also struck the huge worm like a Whack-A-Mole mallet, driving the beast back down into the tunnel it had just carved up through the floor.
“Nailed him!” Bartley shouted, and high-fived Naomi. “That'll show those squirmy little bastards.”
“Thank God,” Hagen mumbled, popping pain pills.
A chorus of angry roars thundered from the worms below, followed by a fresh barrage of metal spears and white-hot plasma balls.
Eric made the platform accelerate well past its top permitted speed. Alarm bells clanged and red lights flashed all over the elevator as the broken, sagging platform rocketed up the wall.
The platform climbed away into a relatively narrow shaft, up and out of sight of the worms below.
Eric was barely able to slow it back down before it reached the top and slammed to a halt with a violent jerk that sent them all sprawling.
“Keep moving!” Naomi said. “The timer's ticking!” She'd set a timer because there was a chance that a remote-control signal wouldn't reach the detonator, once they were on the surface and out of the mine.
While Malvolio picked up Hagen to carry him, Eric lifted Iris, still unconscious, as well as the first aid box. He shoved the relic—now a small white-metal mask, no helmet—into a small storage compartment in his exoskeleton and locked it tight.
“You must not allow the beasts below to take the relic,” she had said. “Darkness will fall across the galaxy.”
Eric moved her close to him, holding her with his smaller, lower robotic arms.
Everyone hurried up the wide tunnel of the Caffey mine. The main lights were out, but long red emergency strips lit the way.
Finally, they reached the outdoors. Only a few stars were visible through the planet's volcanic smog, but Eric had never been so happy to see the night sky.
As they made their way toward the road, two more armored worms burst out from the ground nearby, a pair of sentries that had been hiding just under the dirt. Bartley turned the plasma rifle on them; he'd taken the weapon from Hagen.
Naomi glanced at her pocket screen. “Save your ammo, Bartley. Three...two...”
The world around them shuddered and shook. The explosion echoed up and down the canyon. Eric imagined the roadheader worm blasting apart, its spiky drums whirling out from it as deadly shrapnel, hopefully cutting up some of the other worms. Regardless, the huge amount of explosive should have turned the entire Caffey mine into a lake of fire; Eric hoped that wiped out all of them.
Jets of flame roasted the two sentries as the heat traveled up through their tunnels from the mine below. Their burnt bodies toppled to the ground before they could attack.
“Hey, good call,” Bartley said, nodding at Naomi.
Then they moved down the road as fast as they could, hellish red light glowing from the open mine entrance behind them.
Chapter Twenty
“This thing is going to kill me,” Hagen said, his voice slurred by the quick-acting painkillers. He sat in Malvolio's arms, looking at the long steel spear in his thigh.
“Should I try to pull it out?” Eric raised one of his mechanical arms.
“You a goddamned doctor, kid?” Hagen asked. “Because if you rip my femoral artery, I'm dead. I don't want any of you touching this unless you've been to medical school.”
“I have,” a voice said.
Everyone turned to look at Bowler Caffey Junior.
“You're a doctor? Why you running a mine way the hell out here?” Hagen asked.
“I didn't pass all the exams,” Bowler said. “It was the chemistry that got me. And the math. I was good at surgery, though. I operated on a cat, and a monkey—”
“Forget this. Malvolio, unicycle faster,” Hagen said, elbowing the robot that he was currently using as a wheelchair.
“And a homeless guy!” Bowler Junior whined, picking up the pace to jog alongside them. “I put a stent in his heart.”
“You performed heart surgery on a man and he lived?” Hagen asked.
“Totally.” Bowler Junior slowed his pace a little and lo
oked away.
“For how long?” Hagen furrowed his brow.
“Almost....twenty-three hours. But it wasn't my fault! He also had advanced cirrhosis—”
“I think I'll hold out for Angel Moroni Hospital. Where all the doctors and nurses are fully licensed.” That was the only major hospital in Canyon City, which made it the only one on the entire planet.
“Fine! Be that way!” Bowler Junior pouted and kicked a pebble on the ground, like he'd been denied a new toy.
“We need to get Iris to the hospital, too,” Eric said. She was still unconscious in his robotic arms, the skin of her scalp an angry red where her hair had burned off to reveal the round metal implants.
“I'm trying to reach my pilot.” Alanna waved her screen toward the sky. “Not really getting a signal, though.”
“Maybe the eruptions are strong tonight,” Naomi said. “That can make satellite communication patchy. The air does seem even more foul than usual. Malvolio, you should zip on ahead and get Hagen to the hospital.”
“Take Iris first,” Hagen said.
“Don't be ridiculous, Frank, you could bleed to death,” Naomi said. “Hagen goes first, then Malvolio comes back for Iris. Right, Miss Li-Whitward?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Alanna replied absently, not looking up from her screen.
“Wait—” Hagen began, but Malvolio whooshed away like someone had just fired the starting gun of a race, completely ignoring Hagen's protests. He was soon gone out of sight along the twisting canyon road.
“You did that on purpose.” Eric grinned at Naomi. “Malvolio knows the organization chart; he knows Alanna's orders override any of Hagen's. And Alanna was barely even paying attention when she gave the override.”
“I wasn't paying attention to what?” Alanna looked up. “Where did Hagen and the drama-bot go?”
“Off to the hospital,” Naomi said. “Any luck with the pilot?”
“Not yet. The screen will keep trying for me. Let's keep moving.”
The group began to walk, but the loader bot hung back, gazing at the fire-red glow from the mine entrance.
“Everything okay, buddy?” Bartley asked the big machine.
It gestured toward the fire with one hand. “Loader.” Then it gestured toward its own boxy yellow chest area. “Loader.” Its voice was quieter and more subdued than usual.
“Aw, poor guy,” Naomi said. “The dump truck was a part of you, wasn't it?”
“Unloaded.” The robot's massive arms seemed to sag.
“Sorry to hear it, bro.” Bartley patted the robot's arm. “But, hey. We'll find you another dump truck somehow. I promise.”
“Load.” The robot straightened up and began to walk, though still a bit slower than usual.
Eric looked at Iris in his arms. “Should I jump ahead into town?” he asked aloud, hoping for good advice. “I could get her to the hospital faster that way, but I don't want to bang her around.”
“Let me see her.” Bowler Junior, failed medical student, stepped forward to examine Iris. Eric tensed up, but saw no reason to stop him—beggars couldn't be choosers. So Eric just swung the first-aid box in closer, where Bowler could reach it.
“I can't even contact a limousine service!” Alanna snapped, looking at her screen. “Not even a terrestrial limo service. Are all the satellites out or what? Major eruptions tonight?”
“The ground was shaking a lot,” Naomi said. “Hard to tell the major blasting from the natural tectonics.”
“Looks like third-degree burns to me,” Bowler said, inspecting Iris's scalp.
“I'd better get her to the hospital!” Eric said.
“Huh? No. Wait. Maybe it's first-degree burns. I always get those backwards. Told you, math is not my strong point. Anyway, she just needs some burn gel if you want to help her out. I'd probably give her fluids if I had some.” Then Bowler smirked, looking over the small, limp girl like a dirty thought had crossed his mind. “Well, I do have some fluids—”
“I'll take care of her,” Eric said quickly, moving back and away from Bowler, getting Iris out of his reach.
“I bet you will.” Bowler winked. “As soon as the two of you are out of sight somewhere, right?”
“Can we go back to that moment when we were all ready to kill this guy?” Bartley pointed at Bowler Junior.
“I never left that moment,” Naomi said.
Eric opened the first-aid box and gently applied the blue cooling gel to the angry red skin of Iris's scalp, what skin there was between all her circular gatekeeper implants. He wondered if she really was a gatekeeper, and had been hiding it, or if she'd really failed the training as she'd claimed.
He shuddered when a long strip of her scalp came away in his fingers. Then he saw it wasn't flesh at all, but a stretchy material—the inner ring of a wig. It hadn't been her real hair that had burned away; she didn't have any.
Then he resumed adding the gel with his fingertips. Counting his human arms, he now had six arms. Like a mantid. He also had the relic, so apparently he could rule over a whole kingdom of bugs if he wanted. The thought didn't exactly appeal.
As his fingers traced the edges of Iris's face, her eyes fluttered open, large and black, looking into his. A sleepy smile arose on her lips.
“Eric,” she whispered. “Did we...?” Then she seemed to snap fully awake, looking around frantically and squirming in his robotic arms. “The worms! Where are they?”
“Naomi toasted most of them,” Eric told her.
“It was really a team effort,” Bartley said. “Mostly me, Naomi, and Loader here, who made a big sacrifice to save us.” He patted the robot's arm.
“Unloaded,” Loader said.
“Damn right,” Bartley replied.
“Uh...okay.” Iris looked back at Eric. “The relic!”
“Got it,” Eric said.
“What? We're still lugging that thing around?” Bartley asked. “Ditch that wormbait! You saw how they went all goofy and culty about it.”
“Yeah, we need to toss it,” Naomi said. “If those worms come back, we're all dead. We can't survive another attack. I'm about to fall down just from exhaustion.”
“But the worms are dead,” Alanna said.
“We don't know whether they're all dead,” Bartley said. “They keep coming back bigger, heavier, and with more firepower. I'm getting a little sick of that trend, honestly.”
“We shouldn't cast aside something so valuable,” Alanna said. “Not after all we've been through.”
“We can't allow those aliens to have this relic,” Iris said. She stepped away from Bartley's exoskeleton, toward Alanna. “The power is too immense. And these aliens are pure monsters. Worse, they're intelligent monsters. They have advanced tools and weapons. They have space travel. If they've come here in search of the relic...well, we've seen how they treat humans. Do you really want to amplify their power with a relic of the ancients? Of the civilization that built the wormholes? Who here wishes for that?”
“Not me,” Eric said.
“Who says they have space travel?” Alanna narrowed her eyes at Iris as though studying her. “We've seen no worm spaceships. They could be native to this planet.”
“But the Money City settlers never saw them,” Iris said. “And those settlers were here for years before the war.”
“The Money City settlers were Big Timers,” Alanna said. “Pre-war, like you said. They built citadels and skyscrapers. Not grubby inhabited landfills like Canyon City. The worms had reason to fear that generation. But not ours.”
“You did sound pretty certain they had space travel,” Naomi said to Iris.
“Okay.” Iris took a breath, as if buying time. “I've...heard of them before.”
This brought an eruption of questions and shouting from everyone. The group was still walking, except for Naomi, who puttered along on the scouter, their last working vehicle.
“Okay, okay, let me explain,” Iris said. “A reclamation crew collecting salvage after a batt
le encountered alien lifeforms like this. Similar size and shape, similar tech. There was also a relic of the ancients on that planet. They killed most of the crew.”
“And...why has no one but you ever heard of this?” Alanna asked.
“One survivor was a gatekeeper, a member of the Antikytheran Society. That's how I know. This information is classified, deeply classified. As in, I could be severely punished for telling you any of it. Anyway, the worms were observed to have a spacecraft of their own. Follow-up investigations revealed nothing. The worms had vanished completely; they didn't live there, they'd just been visiting. And now here they are again, hundreds of light-years from that other system. So that's why I know they have interstellar travel. Maybe they know how to use the wormholes, like we do.”
“Are you telling me these things are all over the galaxy?” Alanna looked ill.
“It's possible,” Iris said. “This second sighting indicates they might have a huge presence out there. Humans have really only explored a very thin slice of the Orion arm around us. The farther we reach out, the wider we explore and settle, the more likely we are to encounter something...other. Something in a position to compete with us on an interstellar scale.” Iris took a deep breath. “All of the gatekeepers' worst fears are coming true. We have to get this information to them. And this relic.”
“So...are you a gatekeeper?” Eric asked.
She looked him in the eye. “Yes.”
Everyone fell silent at that. Actual gatekeepers were rare, occupying a powerful position on starships and the critical space stations near the wormhole gates. In the popular imagination, they were like holy people who kept themselves hidden, shrouded in mystery.
“She was supposed to be a geologist,” Alanna mumbled.
“I do have degrees in geology and metallurgy,” Iris said. “The Society was not shortchanging you by sending me.”
“You were obviously working as a spy for them, with your own little mission,” Alanna said. “You knew about these giant alien monsters and you didn't mention it to anybody here?”