Dark World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 9), page 29
“Holy shit, sir,” Cooper’s voice came over tactical chat. “They almost got me.”
“See?” I said. “This really is your lucky day, Cooper.”
He just blinked at me.
“Platoon! Advance!” I roared these words, and I rushed for the top.
Startled, my troops followed me, including the Blood Worlders.
It was time to get serious.
-41-
When I assaulted the summit of the nest, Leeson, Harris and hundreds of other officers were working their way up the hill behind me. We had thousands of troops on the march, but I didn’t figure the Vulbites were going to wait around politely for us to gather our full strength.
“Light troops, belly down on the ridge! Heavy troopers, advance into the cone itself!”
They followed orders at a jog. It was hard to get up and over as the earth was loose and sandy. The rim of the cone crumbled under our boots—it was kind of like charging over a sand dune.
But we did it. Advancing with their odd, croaking cries, the Blood Worlders thundered down into the sandy depths. They kicked up a dust cloud that would have choked us if we hadn’t been wearing respiratory gear.
In response to our move, other platoons that had crested the rim of the cone did the same, advancing into the center.
Suddenly, the center erupted with a massive gush of pink-gray objects. For a second, I thought maybe the mound was a volcano after all, and it had just gone off.
But no, it was a vast flock of flappers. Thousands upon thousands of them, rushing up like disturbed bats. They massed up in a screeching, fluttering cloud and quickly descended upon the troops.
The light troopers I’d left all along the rim did gruesome work then. They fired into that mass with abandon.
We couldn’t get them all. There were just too many. But we did tear them up something awful. Our bursts of fire could hardly miss the flapping masses, and each round tore through not one, but often a dozen of the leathery bundles of flesh.
It practically rained dying flappers on the heavy troopers, who advanced undaunted into the dark. They were drenched in blood, which turned into black grime when it mixed with the dust that coated us all.
“Gunners, advance!” I roared when the mess cleared out. “Don’t let the Blood Worlders get too far ahead.”
We rushed down after our slower, heavier brothers. Together, we forced our way into the clinging darkness of the central mouth.
The open cone of the anthill structure was maybe two hundred meters across, but the hole in the center of it was only perhaps a tenth of that. Still, it was big enough to swallow a lot of troopers quickly.
Once inside, it felt like the dim sun had vanished, and we’d been caught in a winding, sloping cavern that must go all the way down to Hell itself.
The sound quality changed from the normal tones of the open world to the deadening sound of being surrounded for miles by shaped earth.
We jogged deeper still down curling tunnels. Soon, all natural light cut out. The Vulbites didn’t seem to use artificial light in their tunnels. Perhaps they guided themselves by scent when below ground.
Blindly jogging forward, we met enemy resistance, but it wasn’t strong. Now and then, one came rushing at us out of a side tunnel, but we shot those down immediately.
I began to take heart. Could it be that once you were inside the anthill, their major defenses had been bypassed? Was this more like a civilian hive, rather than an armed camp? Perhaps we’d reached the soft underbelly of the enemy and would soon locate their queen.
My flights of fancy were soon corrected by harsh new realities. The floor gave way on a long ramp, and ahead of us, a dozen or so surviving heavy troops, led by Silt himself, vanished into the darkness.
I pulled up short on the last ledge. Behind me, a score of light troopers piled up.
“I don’t see them down there, sir!” Cooper said.
“Kivi! Give me a depth reading!”
She scooted past the rest and came up to perch on the edge with Cooper and me. She used sensors and sent down crawling buzzers.
Kivi shook her head. “It’s deep. Fifty meters, maybe more. They’re moving around down there, but—”
“Silt!” I called out. “Sub-Veteran Silt! Are you alive? Report!”
A crackling voice came back on my headset. “We’re here. Two casualties so far. We’re circling up, back-to-back, but I fear the worst. The Vulbites have separated us from your weaklings, and they obviously intend to finish us off in this dark pit.”
“That’s one rude squid,” Cooper chuckled, listening in. “I say we leave his ass down there to take as many with him as he can.”
This pissed me off. I’d given Cooper all kinds of rope, hoping to upgrade his nature—but this was a step too far for me.
I grabbed him by the scruff and pitched him into the darkness ahead. He rolled, squawking and flopping. That made me feel a twinge, but only for a moment.
“Cooper has bravely advanced to help our Blood World brothers. Who’s with me to rescue them all?”
A very lame cheer went up from my light troopers. Taking this as a clear mandate, I ordered them to advance and went with them.
The path was steep. We skidded down and down, churning up the dirt into a choking cloud. We would have suffocated if we hadn’t been wearing suits. Those troopers who had opened their faceplates in panic, in fact, were gagging and hacking their lungs out.
“Button up!” I ordered. “I know fighting in a suit sucks, but it’s better than choking.”
The chamber at the bottom of Hell itself was maybe two dozen meters wide. It was unevenly shaped, every dimension being curved and organic rather than squared-off. The floor had the undulating shape of a pool bottom, and the roof scraped our heads in spots while in others it was unreachable.
“All right, guns out. Stop moving around, let the dust settle.”
We froze, waiting, sweating and staring in every direction. There was no way we’d managed to surprise the enemy, except possibly by advancing deep so quickly.
That made me think—stopping here was a mistake. All we were doing was allowing the Vulbites to encircle us. Maybe they were undermining us right now or gathering their combat units together in strength to crush us.
“Light troopers,” I said. “I want you to take each of these side tunnels. I’m sending one pair into each one. If you encounter resistance, don’t engage, just run back and report. If you make it a hundred meters in or find some kind of obstacle, turn around and report.”
Walking along, I slapped pairs of helmets and pointed toward side tunnels, of which there were nine. Soon, they were humping off into the dark again.
Cooper gave me a sour look when I slapped his head and Sarah’s beside him.
“Go on!” I shouted, giving him a shove.
He ran forward, doubled over at the waist so he could fit into the tunnel, and disappeared. Sarah followed him, looking scared.
I knew what was on their minds. If they vanished in one of these missions, and the rest of us got out, they might be permed. Revivals could only be authorized if we had confirmed kills. Otherwise, there might be two versions of any given soldier running around on the planet. That would be illegal, unethical, and very confusing to everyone. When it had happened in the past, one of the troopers—usually the erroneous copy—had to be terminated.
For that reason, legionnaires feared environments like this more than they did the open battlefield. If you were knocked flat and turned into a bloody smear under an officer’s boots, there was no doubt about your status, and the revival usually came soon after.
We waited, and slowly, the scouts began trickling back. I got reports from every direction, along with mapping news from a dozen of Kivi’s crawling buzzers. Putting this all together, Kivi’s computer built me a three-D map.
“All right,” Kivi said, setting up a small battle projector. It looked like a portable camp stove, but it projected a hologram that glowed with a blue-green radiance. “See this? This is where we are inside the nest.”
She showed me a large angled view. We were about two thirds of the way down to the base of the hill—in the very middle of it.
“Damn…” I said. “How deep is this damned thing? I thought we should be hitting the queen by now.”
She released a bitter laugh. “No, no, no. You don’t know anything about ants, do you? The hill part is just the tip of the iceberg. It extends far below ground, in an ancient colony. On Earth, a colony of large ants will dig three meters down, sometimes.”
I computed that in my head, and I didn’t like the answer at all.
“We’re not even down to the surface level yet,” I complained. “You mean this thing could go on under the earth for kilometers?”
“Yes, and I suspect it does.”
A circle of eyes watched me. No one was happy. No one cracked a joke, not even Carlos. They all knew I had the power to order them deeper—and they didn’t want to go.
“What about the other human units?” I asked. “Any radio contact? Any sign others have been this way?”
“None,” Kivi said. “We’re either ahead of them, or we’ve been cut off from them somehow.”
I eyed Kivi. “You went down here before, with Graves and the rest. Is this how it went?”
“No, sir. We didn’t make it this far. We were trapped and buried soon after penetrating the nest. I have only fuzzy memories and no idea how it ended, as our tappers couldn’t update our engrams.”
I nodded. Once you got outside the grid, your memories couldn’t be recorded easily. If we all died right here, right now, it was unlikely that we’d remember any of this—assuming we were revived and not permed, that is.
Gunfire broke out then, before I could make a rational decision. Not all the light troopers had returned yet, and some of them had made contact.
The Vulbites had ambushed my scouts. We moved to help, but it was too late. Only six of my lights came back. Cooper and Sarah were unaccounted for.
“Dammit…” I said to myself. “Veteran Moller?”
“Sir!”
“You’re in charge if I don’t get back. I’m going after Cooper and Sarah.”
“Um…” she said, looking around in alarm.
I knew it was stupid. Most of the rest of them did, too.
“Do you really have to do this, James?” Carlos asked me. “Um… Adjunct?”
I glanced at him. “Yeah… I sent them down there. If we don’t have bodies, alive or dead, they’re permed. I’m going. I’ll only go a short distance. If I don’t come back—”
“Adjunct McGill,” Silt said, speaking up for the first time. “May I lodge an objection?”
“No,” I told him, and he clammed up.
Silt looked like one unhappy squid. His eyes were rolling around in groups, checking all of us, counting heads, probably. I’m sure he knew the score. If he died down here in this deathtrap he was unlikely to catch a revive at all.
I crept into the dark tunnel—the one I’d sent Cooper into—and left my platoon behind.
-42-
Going after Sarah and Cooper was a stupid thing to do. I knew that. Graves would have marked them down as permed and not even bothered to shrug his shoulders.
But I wasn’t like that. I hated leaving troops behind. Sure, I’d shoot them myself if they deserved it—but this was different.
We were talking perma-death. The bugaboo of all legionnaires. The thing we all feared the most. Any legionnaire preferred a clean death to being captured, lost, or simply left behind on a hostile planet.
Creeping forward, the silence of the place got on my nerves. The sounds I could hear seemed amplified as I strained to listen. The respirator hissed and sighed. My suit scratched and thumped over the earth.
Soon, as I advanced, I was forced to bend over then crawl as the ceiling lowered. Still, I saw no sign of them.
Fifty meters in I paused, knowing I should turn back. Vulbites might ambush what was left of my command, and I should be there with them.
Taking off my helmet, I listened for a few seconds in the dark. Figuring to hell with it, I cupped my hands around my mouth.
“Cooper! Sarah!” I shouted. “Are you out there? We’re giving up on you and moving out!”
There was no response.
“All right,” I said. “You’re both as good as permed. Luck.”
After a few more seconds, I clamped my helmet back on and turned around.
There, to my shock, was Cooper. He had crept up behind me in the tunnel.
He had a strange look on his face.
My eyes narrowed. “Were you about to frag your commanding officer, Cooper?”
“No sir,” he said, sighing. “I was about to go AWOL—but you convinced me to come back.”
I squinted at him. “Where’s Sarah?”
“Over here,” he said. “That’s why I came back—for her.”
I followed him and saw a crawlspace I’d missed on the way. Sarah was in there, with a dead Vulbite.
“It rushed us out of this bolt-hole. I killed it, but not before it nailed Sarah.”
Recording the death, I touched my tapper to hers. That way, her latest memories would be stored.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” I said while I looked over the scene. “You were so spooked down here that you lost your damn mind?”
“Sorry, sir. Being in this bug nest must have gotten to me. I had fantasies of finding my way out alone.”
Thoughtfully, I turned to face Cooper dead in the eye. “Let’s head back—you first.”
He moved down the narrow tunnel, as limber as a gibbon. I followed as quickly as I could. Officers have heavier kits, with breastplates and more gear. Deep in these tunnels, it slowed us down more than anything else.
“You thought you could find your way back out? To the top?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said over his shoulder. “I figured my odds were better than following you five more kilometers down.”
There was a certain logic to it. If he went up instead of down, he might find another unit. He could hook up with them, or at least be recorded as a death if they found his body.
“So you were trying to avoid being permed, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a violation, Cooper.”
“I know sir. You can bust me down to recruit in the morning.”
I snorted. Cooper was already a recruit—which was as low as you could go in a legion.
“Why’d you change your mind?”
“Sarah,” he said. “It’s one thing to perm myself—but I didn’t want to take chances with her. Now that you’ve recorded her death, I figured the odds someone from this cursed unit will carry that fact out of here were better than my odds alone.”
It didn’t totally make sense, but then again it did. I suspected it wasn’t a calculation of odds that had turned Cooper around. It was the guilt. He’d been risking his own skin—but it was different to risk Sarah’s.
I decided not to press him further or to punish him. Life was shitty enough for a recruit in Legion Varus without people giving you an extra ration.
About when I was having this thought, I heard ripping fire up ahead and a commotion.
We rushed forward without speaking further, and we flipped off our suit lights.
When we got back to the main chamber, I could see things had not gone smoothly in my brief absence.
Veteran Moller was on the ground, face down in the dirt. A rash of red splotches decorated the back of her suit.
Sub-Veteran Silt stood tall. A squid normally was four times the bulk of a man, and Silt was no slouch. His powerful limbs twitched and squirmed like snakes.
“I have taken necessary action,” he said. “Veteran Moller is not an officer. I will lead you out of this trap to the sunlight again.”
Carlos, Kivi and the handful of light recruits who’d survived had squared off with Silt, who stood with the larger group of hulking Blood Worlders.
Instantly, the problems with fighting in integrated units loomed in my mind. Discipline might break under the best of circumstances, but when you stirred in various planetary cultures and alien mindsets—well, it was a powder keg.
Cephalopods simply didn’t think like humans did. They were almost as different from us as the Vulbites were. They only understood master-slave relationships, for one thing. If a squid got the upper hand on another squid—or anyone else—it was written in his DNA that he should try to overthrow the leader.
Silt had been stressed by this long plunge into darkness. He knew he wasn’t immortal like we were, and he couldn’t take it. A being that knows he’ll be given a revive if things go wrong is much more likely to follow you to death’s door than one who isn’t so certain of his future.
“Silt!” I roared. “Drop that weapon and surrender yourself! That’s an order!”
Silt flinched, and his eye-groups peered at me in surprise.
“You are no longer in command here, McGill. You abandoned us. No officer could be so callous and self-serving!”
It did occur to me then that Blood Worlders were accustomed to being watched at all times. When I’d fought with them before on Dust World, Earth, and Blood World, they’d always floundered when there was a lack of leadership.
Whereas a typical human might be relieved to have his CO take the day off, men like these heavy troopers, who were now shuffling around in confusion, were stressed and uncertain when faced with freedom.
“It is you who are out of line, squid!” I roared at him. “Surrender that weapon!”
Cooper was at my side, crouching and aiming. Most of the rest of the humans had their weapons in tight hands, but they weren’t aiming at Silt.
This was clearly because the biggest threat was the Blood Worlders. They weren’t sure what to do. They were standing with Silt, who had been their direct commander for most of their time in the legion. Still, they knew a power struggle was going on, and they didn’t know what they should do about it.
