23

Locke offered to bring more men, but I told him no. Without knowing how they worked or their command structure, it seemed like it would be an unnecessary encumbrance. The three of us could move fast, strike hard, and take out this monster quickly.

I hoped. Because that was what I needed to happen. Neither the people on the Bold Freedom nor the citizens of Wallach could afford for us to fail.

The lift plummeted downward.

“How far below the surface is the heatsink transfer area?” I asked, thinking of the diagram we had studied before beginning the mission.

“Five hundred meters,” Locke said. “The place goes down another thousand meters, and several levels. Not all of them are accessible to people. Bots have to do a lot of the work down that deep. And we don’t know what’s been ruined, so even if we could crawl into some of the levels, it would be dangerous.”

“So, there’s lots of little hidey-holes this monster could crawl into?” Elise asked.

“There’s a maze of ventilation, conduit pipes, and other places a small creature could go, but this thing is huge and deadly,” Locke said.

“But there are hundreds of small crawlspaces?” she prompted.

“I don’t know why you’re pressing this issue, young lady, but you are correct. There are lots of places too small for the monster or for humans to travel,” Locke said.

“I was just thinking that where there’s a big monster, there’s probably some little ones bouncing about,” Elise said.

“Let’s hope not,” Locke said.

When the door to the lift opened, there was no one to greet us. Locke looked surprised and concerned.

“I assume that isn’t a good sign,” I said. “X, get to work.”

My limited AI quickly tapped into their computer network, scanning monitors of hallways and rooms.

“What just happened?” Locke said with some alarm.

“My limited artificial intelligence hacked into the surveillance network down here,” I explained.

He stared at me, his professional demeanor threatening to abandon him for the first time. “Only the highest-ranking leaders have anything like that among our people. It’s a mark of honor in very high station.”

“Yeah? I can live with that,” I said.

“It makes me uncomfortable that you do not appreciate your own status,” Locke said.

“Well, when we’re done with this, we can throw back a couple of beers or something and you can explain it to me,” I said. Without waiting for him to respond, I moved into a hallway and cleared it with my weapon ready.

“Why would you throw bears?” he mumbled before shaking his head like it didn’t matter.

There wasn’t any sign of work crews, guards, or the creature.

“Something has taken out a lot of the lights,” Elise observed, a pistol held in two hands as she helped me clear some of the technical rooms that served the lift and maintenance areas.

“At the end of this hallway is a room where I had anticipated checking the camera feeds,” Locke said. “Unless you just want your neural-comp to do that for you.”

“Let’s have a look at those monitors,” I said. “But let’s keep our heads on swivels.”

Locke gave me a strange look, clearly trying to figure out what I meant.

“Really?” Elise said. “You always tell me to use precise language during a mission.”

“Whatever,” I said to Elise. “I just mean let’s keep our eyes open and not let anything sneak up on us,” I explained to Locke.

“Of course,” he said, moving to clear a zone that I couldn’t see when we entered the viewing room. “My translation gave me something very strange, which doesn’t help when I’m starting to pick up your language of my own. I may have to just turn it off.” He tapped the side of his helmet, where there was some sort of earpiece that helped him communicate with us.

“How did you become the chief squad leader for General Karn?” I asked once we had secured the room.

He typed on the controls to the viewscreen and pulled up images of several key points of the structure on this level. “There were...trials.”

“What kind of trials?” I asked, turning on another computer monitor and attempting to hack into it without X-37’s assistance just to see if I could do it.

“I was dumped on an island with nothing but a survival knife and a swimsuit. They came back to pick me up after a month and I was still alive, so that was good. Same thing in an arctic environment—except I had insulated coveralls instead of swimwear. Jungles, deserts, subterranean mazes. Once I’d proved my worth at keeping myself alive, there were death matches with bots and more schooling. When all that was done, I interviewed for the position and did well,” he said.

I laughed. “Nice. Sounds like you are pretty motivated.”

“It is a great honor to be the chief squad leader for a general. I only have three peers, one of those being the chief squad leader for the president,” Locke said.

“A squad leader controls eight to twelve soldiers where I’m from,” I said.

“It is much the same here; however, as the chief squad leader, I can demand the support of all squads if I believe there is a threat to my boss or if I feel my boss is derelict of duty and needs to be deposed,” Locke said.

“Damn,” I muttered. “I’m pretty sure the Union would never go for something like that.”

“It’s an ancient tradition,” Locke said, shifting his attention back to the view screen. “I’ve pulled up what I can, but a lot of the hallways are dark and many of the video feeds are damaged.”

* * *

We found bodies long before we found the creature. Downed maintenance workers lay in the hallway, faces contorted, bodies frozen in a painful death. Both were men and they had numerous circles of blood where they had been stung by something.

“Did they get shot in the back?” Elise asked, crouching to examine the fallen forms. Her complexion was pale, and I thought she might be sick, but she didn’t back away or avoid looking at the corpses.

“Looks like they were stung by something,” I said, sweeping my eyes into the shadows to search for the creature or more victims.

“The creature is extremely poisonous. Its venom paralyzes victims and seems to kill them with the sheer pain it induces,” Locke said. He moved to the end of the hallway and took a guard position.

That allowed me to take a closer look at the downed maintenance workers without compromising our security. I was already getting used to the man’s professionalism.

“What you think, X?” I asked.

“Your initial assessment is correct,” X-37 said. “I’m measuring the diameter and apparent depth of the wound. The latter will be hard to determine without an autopsy. We can conclude from the posture of the man that he was in considerable pain when he expired.”

“So you’re saying that Locke knows what he’s talking about,” I said, then moved to the next body. Both men still had sidearms, which was interesting for maintenance workers but also told me whoever killed them, or whatever killed them, wasn’t interested in their guns.

“Cain,” Locke said. The hard urgency in his voice told me everything I needed to know.

I was running to his position before he spoke again.

“It’s coming,” he said, taking a shooting stance and raising his rifle to his shoulder. He aimed down the sights like a professional and controlled his breathing like an expert marksman.

“Elise, get online,” I said. “There’s no place for anything fancy in this hallway.”

Seconds later, she was standing on my left with her pistol in both hands. “Just so we’re on the same page, I assume we’re shooting first and asking questions whenever.”

“Your apprentice has a keen understanding of the situation,” Locke said, his gruff voice low but strong.

I saw the creature first, of course. It appeared at the end of the long hallway from a corner or an intersection, it was hard to tell exactly. The lights were out and where they did still function, they flickered between us and the monster. My optics gave me a better rendering of the fast moving—and alarmingly large—thing.

It was like nature couldn’t decide whether or not it was a centipede or humanoid. I knew it had a long tail, or perhaps that was part of its body, and I knew it had arms in something that was probably a head or face. I wasn’t sure about some other things in the two seconds I had to observe it before Elise and Locke saw it.

“Are those wings?” I asked.

“I do not believe so,” X-37 said, but without the normal clarification he offered when there was time to do so.

“Open fire!” I aimed carefully and fired one well-placed shot after another toward the accelerating beast. When it was closer, I’d switched to full auto and was ready to clip the HDK Dominator to my gear so I could deploy my arm blade.

Which would be like attacking an armored car with melee weapons.

Elise emptied her pistol and shouted at me as she reloaded. “That thing is huge! Why didn’t you warn us!”

It came roiling down the hallway, the body more tailed and humanoid now. It had dozens or perhaps hundreds of arms and legs that gave it its speed.

“It is unlikely that your warning would have made much of a difference,” X-37 provided needlessly.

I switched magazines and took a step forward, not enough to get shot in the back by my friends, but enough to be the first victim of this hellish creature.

“I’m throwing a grenade! Don’t move any closer or the overpressure will damage you,” Locke shouted, then hurled a device ahead of us that promptly exploded.

It was less than twenty meters from us now, but the floor disappeared, and it tumbled downward. Without hesitation, Locke sprinted to the edge of the new crevasse and fired everything he had into the hole.

I joined him, and a second later, Elise was there doing her part with her pistols—aiming and firing with bloodthirsty determination. She sidestepped after every two or three shots, never staying in one place for too long—just like I’d trained her.

There was smoke and debris in the air as well as the smoldering after-effects of the explosion confounding my Reaper optics. Its heat signature was confused as it twisted and roiled in some sort of complicated pattern, forming a kind of monster. The creature hissed and screamed as it struggled to get back to its hundreds of clawed feet. At least, I thought they were feet. I couldn’t be entirely certain.

Locke dropped another grenade and stepped back. I pulled Elise back and turned away, sheltering her with my body. There wasn’t much danger of shrapnel where we were, but overpressure moved around corners and could do a lot of damage to eardrums, eyes, and even lungs.

I hope that Locke knew what he was doing and didn’t throw something too big. The first charge had blown a massive hole in the floor.

We heard the creature scurrying away and shrieking something that almost sounded like words.

We were all panting, leaning on our knees and breathing hard after the short encounter. Elise started laughing nervously, which I expected. She always was one to laugh in the face of danger—not because she wasn’t afraid, but because that was how she dealt with so much adrenaline.

“Good choice with the grenades,” I said.

Locke responded with a nod, still catching his breath despite his superb physical conditioning. “It would’ve done more damage if I could have put more incendiaries and shrapnel in it, but I didn’t want to blow us up too.”

“I hope there’s only one of those things,” I said.

Locke laughed grimly. “Don’t jinx us. That’s the best sighting we’ve had of the thing. Normally, the attacks are so sudden and violent that cameras barely get anything useful, and we haven’t had any surviving victims.”

“Lucky us,” I said.

“That thing was horrible,” Elise said. “How can we kill something like that?”

It was Locke who answered, confirming we were on the same page and that I could trust the man’s tactical judgment. “We just have to export enough violence to put it down without taking more damage than we can withstand.”

“And how are we going to do that?” I asked.

“I was hoping the grenades would do the trick. We need to get to a position where it can’t maul us and where we can sustain gunfire until we’re out of ammunition or it dies,” Locke said.

It took several moments for each of us to process what had just happened. Without further discussion, I dropped down into the hole and looked at the debris caused by the grenade and the thrashing of the creature. The hallway went into directions with a four-way intersection at each end that I could see. The lighting was even worse down here and there was a haze in the air that concerned me.

“X, can you tell me what that is?”

“I advise leaving this area immediately or donning a self-contained breathing apparatus,” X-37 said. “I don’t believe the current levels are dangerous, but it seems that this thing puts out a mist of neurotoxins when wounded badly enough.”

“Great. Why can’t anything be easy?” I asked, looking for a way to climb back up to Elise and Locke.

“Do you actually wish for me to answer that question?” X-37 inquired.

“That depends on how good your answer is,” I grumbled as I stepped on a broken section of wall and worked my way up to the hole Locke had created with his first grenade.

“I’m glad you didn’t want us to come down there with you,” Elise said. “Not that I’m scared.”

“Of course not,” I said, dusting myself off and checking my weapons. “None of us are scared. We just saw the most vicious killing machine ever created by nature, shot the hell out of it, and didn’t kill it. What’s there to be scared about?”

“It took out dozens of security guards and work crews in the short time it took for us to realize there was a problem. After that, we sent soldiers to hunt it,” Locke said. “But we haven’t been able to understand why there is so much vandalism to the equipment. That is what is endangering the reactor. Most of the complex is self-regulating, but if it starts to overheat or loses integrity, this planet will be uninhabitable in a matter of days. The area around the plant complex will be gone in hours.”

“Do you think it’s intentionally damaging your equipment or just smashing into it by accident because of its size?” I asked, knowing that X-37 was still gathering data for his own conclusion. The better questions I asked, the better my limited artificial intelligence could do his job.

“It’s probably both, but some of the damage is in very small areas, places we normally send bots in to conduct repairs. I don’t see how this monster, especially after having seen it so close, could reach into the more delicate sections of our infrastructure,” Locke said.

“Let’s move out,” I said, selecting a direction that should parallel the creature’s movements but from a level above it—assuming it didn’t climb up and slaughter us in retaliation for our effort to fill it with bullets.

“I need more information,” X-37 said. “President Coronas’s LAI, who calls itself Buttons after her favorite pet from childhood, shared a good deal of information, but I would like to hear what CSL Locke has to say.”

“Buttons?” I asked. There was no way I had heard that correctly.

“Excuse me?” Locke asked as Elise also looked at me strangely.

“That’s what her limited AI told me; however, the president addresses her as Computer Ninety-nine, or just Comp Ninety-nine,” X-37 explained.

“Maybe we’ll get into that later,” I said, “or maybe not.” I addressed Locke. “My limited artificial intelligence wants your assessment of this creature so we can make a plan that has a chance of working.”

“Understood,” he said, then paused as he swung around the corner and cleared it to the left as I cleared it to the right. Elise kept her attention focused down the hall of this four-way intersection. So far, none of us saw any evidence of the creature retaking its place on this level.

“Our information is limited, and I almost believed that it was intentionally damaging our sensors to keep us in the dark. Have a look at the mindless rage of the beast. I think that has to be coincidental. Something like that with a true intellect or capacity for deception would be too horrible to face,” Locke said. “We know the creature is extremely poisonous and paralyzes its victims. It takes some of them to its lair.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask how you know that,” I commented.

“We found two abandoned lairs during some of our initial searching,” Locke said. “There were a lot of bones—human, animal, and something else that had to be sloughed off exoskeleton or something similar.”

“Why did you stop searching for it?” Elise asked.

“We had to start preparing for another mission,” Locke admitted.

“The evacuation,” I said.

He nodded. “If we fail today, that will be our only chance. But not a chance for everyone. People with critical skills and strong genetics will take priority over the rest. Everyone else will be left to deal with the nuclear fallout and this creature if it survives the power plant complex going down.”

“I can’t even describe how bad that sucks,” Elise said. “That shouldn’t even be an option. You should be putting all of your resources into stopping this creature.”

Locke looked at her as we took a short rest before the next intersection. “There are people who argue as you do.”

“Like you?” she asked.

“You are amazingly direct for a young woman,” he said. “Are all teenagers from the Union like you?”

“Gods, I hope not,” I said before I considered my words.

Fortunately, Elise laughed at my reaction. “He’s probably right. This galaxy doesn’t have room for too many people like me.”

Locke didn’t join in on our humorous assessment. He considered each of us, then checked his weapons. “Perhaps. But if there are more people like the two of you, this would be a much larger search party.”

“I thought you could command the obedience of all the squad leaders in General Karn’s army,” I said.

“I must also balance my assessment of the situation with the will and intent of my superior,” Locke said. “I was not able to offer proof that more soldiers searching the lower areas would be more successful. At the peak of our operation, I had dozens of squads with the best gear looking for this thing. Many of them are dead. None of them were successful.”

“What makes you think we’re going to do better?” Elise asked.

“That’s the exact question I would like to have answered,” X-37 said to me privately.

“It was a last shot in the dark. Karn had very strong words with me for volunteering for a final suicide mission in hopes of saving our people,” Locke said.

I patted him on the shoulder. “Fortunately, we’re experts at suicide-not-suicide missions.”

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