Uncommon Loyalty

by Toby Neighbors

  “Use your laser gun and weld it down,” Ty said. “Not just at one point, but several.”

  “You think that will hold?” Kal asked.

  “I hope so,” Gunny Tveit said. “I’ll be testing it.”

  The work went smoothly, but not before more of the aliens were spotted. The creatures were appearing near the base of the spires around the mining complex.

  “They should have built a wall around this place,” Jules said to Ember.

  “What good would that do?” Ember asked. “Some of them fly.”

  “It would make me feel better,” Jules said.

  Gunny Tveit was on the roof with Ty Lonzo. They could see the insectile creatures, and both were wondering what they waited for.

  “Man, this is a real disaster,” Donny Calloway grumbled. “The Proxy better get their asses down here quick.”

  “No need to state the obvious,” Ariel Summers said. “We all know what happens if the Proxy don’t send help soon.”

  Kal signaled that he was done welding down the cable.

  “I’m all through,” he said. “It’s ready to go on my end.”

  Ty pulled the cable as tightly as he could, putting all his weight into the effort. It only took Gunny Tveit a few seconds to make the first weld. By the time she finished the second, Ty was no longer needed to pull it taut. She made a dozen more spot welds, then cut the cable and started the process to run the zip line over to the barracks.

  “Time to give this a shot,” Gunny Tveit said.

  “Good luck,” Ty said. “If it works for you, I’ll give it a go.”

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, removing her ammo belt and flinging it over the line.

  “Tallyho,” Ty said.

  Gunny lifted her legs and began sliding down the cable. Kal was waiting at the other end, and while the line bowed slightly under her weight as she slid past the center of it, there was no fault in the zip line. She put her feet down on the garage rooftop to slow her descent, and Kal caught her to arrest her motion completely.

  “It works,” Kal said.

  “I never doubted it for a second,” Gunny Tveit said.

  “You know,” Jules piped in via the helmet com-link, “if you activated your wingsuit you could probably get airborne halfway down.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Ember said. “If the wind was right, you could simply fly around to escape the locals.”

  “Too bad the infantry grunts can’t do it,” Ty said.

  “Or the hostages,” Gunny Tveit said. “Let’s get that other line secured.”

  By the time both lines were set up and tested, the dump trucks were parked in position by each of the two buildings. They were fully charged, and Staff Sergeant Locke had been smart enough to put additional batteries in the cab of each vehicle.

  “We’re rigging slings for the wounded,” Master Sergeant Spielman said when Gunny Tveit came back to the roof of the admin building. “It looks like your plan is actionable.”

  “Unless something goes wrong,” Blevins said. “Murphy’s Law and all that.”

  “How much food are your people carrying?” Ty thought to ask Master Sergeant Spielman.

  “Each marine has a week’s rations in their kit,” the master sergeant said.

  “Better make sure they keep their kit with them at all times,” Gunny Tveit said. “Once things go south, there won’t be much time to pick up supplies along the way.”

  “We better load some extra rations into the trucks,” Staff Sergeant Locke said. “I’ll see to it.”

  “Better hurry,” Blevins said. “The natives are getting restless.”

  Gunny Tveit looked out over the wide expanse that bordered the mining facility on one side. The transport was no longer visible. The Isopterans had tunneled under it until the entire ship dropped down below ground level. In the distance, Gunny Tveit could see hundreds of the six-legged creatures moving slowly across the prairie toward the mining complex. The aliens surrounding the nearby spires were moving constantly, some circling and others climbing up and down the craggy monoliths.

  “I guess that means we can’t go looking for Nick,” Kal said.

  “If we do, we’ll never make it back,” Gunny Tveit said.

  “That’s not true,” Ember said. “We have wings, remember? We could stay above the fray and get back to the rooftop if the building was surrounded.”

  “Summers couldn’t,” Gunny Tveit said. “And none of us are trained in landing without chutes.”

  “But it’s possible,” Ember said.

  Gunny turned to the young woman. “Yes, it’s possible. “But we can’t abandon the people here, Ember. You get that, right? We can’t leave the infantry platoon and the wounded Proxy to go searching for Nick. He might not even be alive.”

  “He is,” she said. “I know it.”

  “And I hope you’re right,” Gunny Tveit said. “Look, team, we’ve got responsibilities here. There’s a fight coming, and we need to throw in with the good guys. But once the evacuation is started, we can try Jules’s theory. If we get airborne, we’ll go find Nick. I promise.”

  “How is it possible that with all the resources of the Proxy, it’s come to this?” Kal said.

  “Yeah, I feel ya, bro,” Ty said. “We can fly through space, but we can’t get off this rock when we need to.”

  “We’ll make it,” Gunny Tveit said. “I’ve seen worse situations.”

  “Good news!” Master Sergeant Spielman announced. “I just heard from the Proxy, and there are two more ships inbound. They should be in orbit within twenty-four hours.”

  “Twenty-four hours?” Blevins groused. “We’ll all be dead long before that.”

  “Not if we stick to the plan,” Gunny Tveit said. “We’ve got a lot of firepower in this building.”

  “And they’ve got unlimited drones just waiting to march in here and rip our limbs off,” the dour staff sergeant declared.

  “Blevins, if you don’t shut your trap, I’ll shut it for you,” Staff Sergeant Locke threatened.

  “Let’s not turn on each other,” Master Sergeant Spielman said. “We make our final preparations, and when the creatures come for us, we show them just how bad an idea that really is.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” Ty said. “We can make that. No problem.”

  “And then what?” Ember said. “We just leave Nick here to die?”

  The group fell silent for a moment, then Gunny Tveit said what they were already thinking. “We may not have a choice.”

  Chapter 37

  The chattering reached Nick again. It wasn’t as loud or as thick as before, like it was coming from a smaller group. That was the good news. The bad news was that the sound was coming from in front of him. Nick was poised at the junction between two tunnels. The one he had been on continued climbing upward, the other ran level but then angled down in both directions. He sat wondering if he could risk going back down at that point. For all he knew, the tunnels rose back up, but he couldn’t be sure. Nothing in the grim darkness of the Isopteran hive was certain, and his fears were beginning to make him second-guess everything. Maybe the tunnels didn’t lead out of the hive at all. Maybe he was trapped there, forever.

  Finally, he decided that he couldn’t stand going down. He would rather die fighting the creatures than go back down into the depths of the unground dwelling. And more than that, he wouldn’t last much longer in the darkness. He felt his mind slipping, like shoes that had worn smooth on the bottom. All it would take was a little push and his mind would go spinning off into madness.

  He decided that what he needed was light. The murky green night vision was starting to blend together. He felt like he was going blind. So, with a sense of resolute determination, he switched on his helmet’s LEDs and let his eyes adjust to the light before pushing on. The tapping and chattering grew louder. Nick checked his pistol again. He had a full clip, forty rounds of soft slugs, plus three more magazines in his ammo belt. He drew his karambit with h
is left hand and scurried on up the tunnel.

  It wasn’t long before the enemy appeared. It was a group of the Isopterans. Not the bigger architects, but the smaller drones. They were crowded in thick together in the tunnel. Nick’s hand shook as he raised his pistol. The chattering of the creatures grew louder and faster. He could feel their intensity as he pulled the trigger.

  Each bullet tore through the aliens, who were crawling toward Nick head first, with no cover to hide behind. The bodies dropped as black blood and gore began to seep down the slope toward Nick. He emptied the entire forty rounds in his magazine, popped it out, and rammed a fresh one home. The dead aliens were piled up in the tunnel. Nick was forced to climb up to them and start slinging their bodies past him. Some tumbled down the tunnel, others landed with a sickening crunch and didn’t move. Nick’s hands and armor were covered with the slick black blood and tiny bits of the alien carapaces. He retched several times but fortunately had nothing in his stomach to vomit out.

  Soon, more chattering was heard behind him. Nick decided it would be better just to push his way through and began crawling over the last several bodies of the dead Isopterans. Tears stung his eyes, and a shame the likes of which he had never experienced or even dreamed existed clung to him like the blood and detritus of the slain aliens. He was the intruder on their world. How could he rationalize slaughtering so many and treating their dead with such indifference? It made him feel small, and greedy. Why was his life worth so much more than theirs? On the other hand, why had they attacked him? He meant them no harm. Perhaps the mining of the planet was harmful to the Isopterans or their ecosystem, Nick couldn’t say. Perhaps the Proxy deserved the rancor of the Isopterans, but not Nick and not his friends. They were simply doing a job. They had come to rescue the people taken captive by the aliens, and it all seemed like a big misunderstanding.

  The chattering grew louder and more intense behind Nick. He set another grenade and kept moving. He hadn’t gone far when the tunnel went from an upslope to a gently arching downslope. Nick felt despair setting in, until he noticed something ahead. It was something in the tunnel, along the floor, something shiny. He moved toward it and saw that it was water. Rain must have fallen and filled the section of the tunnel with water. Nick splashed forward, exhilarated by the prospect that he was in rainwater. If it really was rain, then it seemed reasonable to think that he was near the surface. The rain had fallen into the tunnel and flowed down to the arched section. He reached the middle of the arch and rejoiced as it angled back up.

  “I’m getting out,” he told himself. “The exit can’t be far. I’m going to make it.”

  He crawled out of the standing liquid and up to a new section of the tunnel that sloped upward so sharply it was almost vertical. The tunnel rose up for what looked like a long way, well beyond the reach of his LEDs, but somewhere ahead there was light, and Nick felt a spasm of relief race through him. He had almost made it. Just a little farther and he would be in the sunlight again. The very thought of it made him giddy with excitement. He wanted to run, but he quickly discovered that the only way up the tunnel was to lever himself, using his legs to press his back against the wall of the tunnel. He could move up a few centimeters at a time. The chattering was getting louder, and Nick felt a sense of frustration. Why hadn’t his grenade stopped the horde chasing him? The tunnel below him was too dark to see. His helmet lights only cast dark shadows, and he couldn’t release his grip on the tunnel walls to crane his head around and look below. Then he heard something that chilled his blood. It was splashing. The unmistakable sound of something moving through the water. They had gone around his grenade. Perhaps they had learned from the last explosive that to touch the weapon was death. How they could communicate such information, Nick had no idea. All he knew for certain was that he couldn’t die this close to his objective. He couldn’t let them catch him this close to the exit.

  After levering himself a few more times, he was forced to shut off his lights and look down with his night vision. There were two aliens below him. They were slinking toward him, like big cats moving in for the kill. He pointed his gun past his leg and fired four shouts. The aliens chattered, spasmed, and dropped down the tunnel. Nick kept moving in a hurried rush, anxious to reach the end. When he saw the ledge, his heart felt as though it would burst. He reached up with a shaking hand and took hold of the edge. His head peeked above the edge, and he was blinded by actual sunlight.

  After a moment, his eyes adjusted, and he stared through another angled passageway to an opening. Beyond the opening was clear blue sky. Nick started to push himself up, when suddenly the entire tunnel shuttered. The grenade had gone off and the shock wave rushed up the tunnel. He tried to brace himself but it was useless. The entire tunnel shook with such force that Nick was thrown back. Smoke and dust surrounded him, and as the light of day blotted out, Nick fell.

  Chapter 38

  “Here they come,” Donny Calloway’s grim voice announced on the com-link.

  “Staff Sergeant Locke,” Spielman ordered. “What’s the status on the supplies?”

  Kal leaned toward the window, looking down at the ground. Over his shoulder, Ember could see a group of infantry marines carrying emergency rations to the huge earthmovers parked between the barracks building and the maintenance garage.

  “Finishing up now, Master Sergeant,” Locke said.

  “Good. Divide your squad and send half onto the building rooftops. If we have to retreat, I want someone down there to help the wounded off the zip lines.”

  “Roger that,” Locke said.

  “Remember, platoon. We don’t fire until we have to,” Master Sergeant Spielman said. “If they want the first floor, we give it to them. Don’t fire until they break through the stairwells.”

  “You think they can get through the stairs?” Jules asked.

  “We piled a lot of stuff in there,” Ty said, referring to the broken furniture and debris that was piled into the first-floor landing to block the aliens from advancing to the second floor and beyond.

  “But they broke through the barriers before,” Kal grumbled. “Not to mention they can probably climb the side of the building.”

  “I’d feel better if we were on the rooftop already,” Ember said. “It feels claustrophobic in here.”

  “The fleet is on its way,” Gunny Tveit said. “Our job is to keep the rescued captives alive until then.”

  “I know it’s the best strategy,” Jules said. “If the crawlers see a lot of people with guns looking down from the roof, it might cause them to send their flyers in earlier than they might otherwise, but I’m with Ember. It feels like we’re in a cage.”

  “Battles are always tough to wait on,” Gunny Tveit said. “Hours, sometimes days, of agonizing boredom punctuated by brief intervals of terror.”

  “You make it sound like a holiday,” Kal teased.

  “Give me a straight-up fight any day,” Ty said.

  “This is the life of the infantry,” Gunny Tveit said. “And they don’t have a fifth of the training we have. Count your lucky stars you’re in Recon.”

  “Roger that,” Jules said.

  “What happens if the crawlers go after the vehicles?” Kal said. “Or spread to the other buildings?”

  “I don’t think that will happen,” Gunny Tveit said. “They’ve shown their tendency to fixate on one target until it is overrun and consumed before moving to the next.”

  “Like the transport ship?” Ember offered.

  “Exactly. They didn’t follow us back here until they had the troop transport completely underground.”

  “You think they’ll do that to this building too?” Ty asked.

  “If they mess with the foundation, it could ruin the zip lines,” Kal said.

  “A structure this size will have extensive footings. It may even be built on bedrock,” Gunny Tveit said. “I don’t think they’ll try to take it down like the transport, and if they do, we should get some advance notice. At least
enough to move to the other buildings.”

  “It would take them too long to start tearing down this building,” Jules said. “Our backup will be here before they can do that.”

  “Sun’s going down,” Nick said. “Any chance they’ll go home and get some rest for the night?”

  “No,” Gunny Tveit said. “I don’t think they will.”

  “Can they see at night?” Ty asked.

  “They burrow underground,” Ember said. “I doubt the dark affects them at all.”

  “I haven’t seen eyes on them,” Gunny Tveit said. “They probably use their antennae to see with on some spectrum of light or sound that we can’t fathom.”

  “Can I just say, I hate them?” Ember said. “I wish I could kill every single one of them.”

  “Yeah, I second that,” Kal said. “I hope they attack. I’m ready for some payback.”

  Ember slumped against the wall and sat down. She felt herself being pulled to exhaustion. And not just because they had been on the alien world fighting for their lives all day but also because her grief over having lost Nick was consuming her. She felt guilty. He had all but declared his love to her after she’d been wounded on Issip Minor. But she didn’t want his pity. Nor did she want him to compromise his principles because he was afraid of losing her. Most of all, she didn’t want him to love her because he felt he had to.

  All of those reasons seemed so practical at the time, but she saw the foolishness of waiting. She had believed that nothing bad would ever happen to them, and she had been wrong. Completely, utterly wrong. Nick was gone. Her hope that they might find and rescue him had been the tiniest of sparks to begin with, and as the aliens swarmed below, she knew there was no chance of finding Nick. They would hold off the aliens until help came, and then they would be whisked away to safety. If Nick had miraculously survived being pulled down by the nasty creatures, he would be left to die on the brutal world. And the worst part was that he would never know how much she loved him.

  They had known each other for years, and of course, there had been interest from other boys. But deep inside, she knew she loved Nick. There had always been a spark between them, a tenderness she valued and cherished but never talked about. Not even to Jules. She kept that part of her heart private, believing one day she would have the opportunity to share it with Nick. She couldn’t stop the tears from falling as she realized she would never get that chance again.