24


Communications with the Jellybird were sporadic at best. X-37 updated me when he could.
“That is affirmative. Jelly has confirmed at least one of the Union spec ops carriers has arrived in the system,” X-37 finished.
Elise and Locke waited, listening to me and casting furtive glances my way as they pointed their weapons down each section of the hallway. We’d been hearing scratching through the walls and the occasional groan of metal as though something was about to break through. The first five times it had been alarming. Now it was just pissing us off.
“If you’re done communicating with your neural-comp, we should continue. Unless there’s something you need to tell us,” Locke said.
“Our pursuers have found the system,” I said. “There were three carrier ships—not large, but dangerous. One of them is in the system. We can hope that the others went to other slip tunnels in search of us and won’t arrive here anytime soon.”
“I still find it hard to believe how cavalier your attitude is about the slip tunnels,” Locke said. “Everyone on Wallach has been raised to fear them.”
“There are pros and cons,” I said, moving toward his position so I could take the lead in the direction we were planning to head. “Right now, they mostly feel like cons. I like the slip tunnels better when we’re able to escape to them and stay alive.”
“Perhaps you can show my people how to do this if we are forced to flee Wallach,” Locke said.
I moved forward, scanning the area and wondering if the smoke was a product of recent damage to the equipment or a cloud of neurotoxins that would kill us before he realized what was happening. It smelled like smoke and burnt wiring, but that wasn’t necessarily a great thing either.
“I hear something,” I said. “X, are you picking it up?”
“I believe it has to be one of the engineers,” X-37 said. “He has repeated several technical instructions for somebody to use to shut down the power to this area, which I believe means he is an engineer rather than a soldier or support worker.”
“Good to know,” I said as I moved forward, weapon just low enough that I could see over it but high enough I could utilize the sights in a microsecond. It was a search-carry that I had learned long before I joined dark ops. Elise and Locke used a similar method of keeping their weapons ready but not getting too tired during the long mission. The weapon never felt heavy at first, but that changed quickly. Especially when there was lots of adrenaline dump from our previous encounter.
I moved into the control room and searched it quickly. Elise and Locke came in right behind me and checked their areas, then stood guard. None of us spoke.
I pointed to the downed engineer. “Locke, talk to him. My translation software is getting better by the minute and I think Elise is right, our languages aren’t that much different, but now isn’t the time to guess.”
Locke knelt over the man and checked his wounds. He looked up, his eyes telling me what I needed to know. The engineer had suffered at least one mortal injury.
“Tell us what happened,” Locke said as compassionately as the situation allowed.
“It came after us, so much bigger than the others,” the engineer wheezed, clearly in pain. Parts of his body looked paralyzed and I realized that he was missing several fingers.
“Others?” Locke asked. “We’ve only been able to detect one through seismic graphic data.”
“There are swarms of the smaller ones, maybe its offspring or its worker drones,” the engineer said. “There’s no time for that. Let me tell you something. It dragged me to its lair and the little ones chewed off my fingers and dug out my eye.”
Elise and I both looked when he said that, catching a view of him right as he turned his face. The right side of his head was mangled, most of the flesh chewed off and the eye definitely gone.
Locke didn’t flinch and neither did I. As for Elise, I wasn’t sure because I quickly returned my attention to my security zone.
“Hand me a tablet and I will show you where the lair is on the map,” the engineer said. “Tell my family I love them and that I died honorably for the president and the people.”
“I will make sure it is known and you and your family are honored,” Locke said. He studied the schematics and asked the engineer several questions in a low, compassionate voice. When he stood up, it didn’t seem like he had good news.
“Spill it, Locke. What’s our situation?” I asked.
“We’ll need to cut a tunnel to reach the lair. He came another way that has collapsed, according to his notes. I know how to operate the machinery needed and Engineer McRyanous says it is functional and fully charged,” Locke explained.
* * *
I looked back frequently and saw that Elise mostly walked backward to cover what was behind us. Ahead of me, Locke pushed the tunnel-cutter as hard as he could. It was loud and slow and threw lots of dust into the very small tunnel we were creating. I didn’t want to be caught by the creature or its minions in such a confined space.
“There’s nothing to be done for it,” X-37 said. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t believe the large creature can reach you this deep into this very small passage. It could, however, disgorge its neurotoxins into the passage to flush you out or kill you.”
“What is your neural-comp telling you?” Locke shouted over his shoulder as he took a very brief rest.
“He says to go faster or we’re going to die,” I said.
Locke went back to work. The tunnel cutter broke apart rock and made sounds that didn’t give me confidence that it could continue to work for much longer. But I wasn’t a miner, so what did I know.
Locke shouted something I couldn’t make out, then he pushed the machine into a much larger tunnel. Rocks spilled away from us. I stepped past Locke, and swept my HDK around the new passage, relying on my enhanced optics to see anything that was about to murder us and eat our faces.
“Oh shit!” Elise and Locke shouted at the same time.
Red and black centipedes, for lack of a better term, swarmed past my feet after my companions. Several of them also climbed my legs. On instinct, without thinking for a second, I snapped out my Reaper blade and sliced them apart as I move deeper into the opening. There was no going back.
Elise fired her pistol twice, then drew her sword and began slashing the small things apart. By small, I meant somewhere between five and fifteen kilos in weight. They chattered and stabbed with stingers that were situated near their heads but also on their tails, which thrashed energetically to find a target.
I stopped, slashed, and fired my HDK one-handed. I kicked one so hard that it flew into the ceiling and broke in half.
It wasn’t long before we found a rhythm and began to slaughter the small creatures in earnest. I felt several pricks to my skin and hoped they weren’t poisoning me.
“Talk to me, X,” I ordered. There wasn’t time to be incapacitated by these things, and I didn’t want to lose my other eye.
“The creatures are in fact poisoning you, which I find intriguing. Most younglings of this type would have far more concentrated venom to make up for their small size. Be thankful none of these have released anything that will kill you immediately.”
“Great,” I said. “Elise, try not to get bitten! They’re poisonous but only if they get you a lot of times.”
“Thanks. For. That!” Elise responded, punctuating each word with a stomp on one of the smaller things.
An anguished cry cut through the rock tunnel, which now that I thought about it, could only have been made by the larger creature we had failed to kill during our first encounter. The walls vibrated from the force of it.
“This thing has to be enormous,” I commented as I tried to recall images from what I had seen earlier.
“I was unable to take a precise measurement while you were shooting at it and Locke was throwing grenades,” X-37 said. “I can, however, measure this tunnel, which should be an indicator of its full size. The ceiling is nearly four meters high. This means...”
I pushed past Elise and Locke as a swarm of the larger worker drones emerged from a hole in the ceiling I hadn’t realized was there. Firing on full auto, I reloaded three times before they stopped coming at us.
“We’re not going to have bullets left when we finally find their mother,” Locke complained.
I looked them over. “Do you have anything better for melee combat than that knife?”
“No.” His response was succinct and ominous.
“If you would let me finish,” X-37 interrupted. “The partial view of the creature from your first encounter was likely skewed. Your perspective was off. I estimate that when this thing stands on its more humanoid front legs, it will be nearly as high as the ceiling. My analysis of wear patterns on the rock and what we saw briefly suggest that it belly crawls much of the time but will expand itself to do battle with a determined foe.”
Elise winced, because this had been on our shared communications link. I was glad her earbud was still in place after all of the chaos.
“Care to fill me in?” Locke asked.
“My limited artificial intelligence isn’t full of good news right now. A quick translation—we’re gonna die,” I said.