“I think you’re about to have all your questions answered, Colonel,” Rai said. “We can both see for ourselves.”
* * *
At first it was like the precursor to an earthquake. The ground trembled slightly. Strange birds took to the air, knowing that danger was approaching. The savage hordes surged, thundering forward to announce the arrival of something much greater.
With the tree cover, it was impossible to get a complete view of the monster. Yet, you didn’t need to see all of it to know it was horrible, destructive, and completely unafraid of anything man or machine could throw at it.
It lurched along the ground, pulling itself forward with a series of barbed tentacles that grasped at trees, rock outcroppings, and anything else that would give it a hold with which to propel itself forward. Sometimes, in its haste to find something to latch onto, it would grab one of the savages that was unlucky enough to be in its path and toss it aside as if it were just another uprooted tree that had gotten in its way. It was an undulating mass of arms that destroyed whatever it could while remaining just below the earth’s surface, dragging itself forward.
The forest buckled beneath the earth-dwelling horror. The sound of trees snapping in half was like cannon fire. The ground opened beneath the savages, swallowing up hundreds at a time in the path of the behemoth. In its wake, it left a huge furrow in the earth, like a nasty gash made by a crashing ship.
“This may be it for us,” Colonel Robert said calmly as the he watched the creeping horror pull itself forward, destroying everything in its path, including the devils they had been fighting. Yet, he was unwilling to give voice to his fear. The pale expression on his face, however, told the tale when words would not. No doubt he, like everyone else, had never seen anything like this in his life.
Drake’s smile fell. The cocky expression he’d worn only minutes before was replaced by a look of abject horror. “It’s coming right at us.”
“It appears so,” Colonel Robert said. “Prepare everything we’ve got. There’s no time to run. It’ll be on us in less than a minute.”
“Yes, sir,” Drake said.
“Rai, how are your CASPers?” Robert asked.
“Getting geared up, thanks to your people, but none of them are a hundred percent,” she said.
“We aren’t faring much better,” Robert admitted. “But we will fire every last bullet, detonate every last explosive, and inflict as much torment on this bad science experiment as we can.”
“Maybe I should try to learn something from the chief,” Rai said. “If there’s any intel he can provide, we probably need it right about now.”
“See what you can do,” Robert said. “But make it quick.”
Rai nodded, focused firmly on a memory of Hendershot, and let her anger build as she approached the leader of the savages.
The chief was still chained to the tree and grinning maniacally like an asylum inmate. Rai approached him carefully. She hadn’t been this close to one of the savages without them attacking. She noted the comm unit strapped to his neck that was serving as a translator.
Rai unsheathed the knife that was strapped to her thigh and pricked the tip of her thumb with it to test its sharpness. A droplet of blood welled up immediately. The chief grinned at the sight of the knife, fully aware of what was coming.
“The one we serve rises,” the chief said. “He has heard our cries and is sympathetic to us.”
“Tell me about him,” Rai said, stepping close enough to press the blade against the taut flesh of the chief’s bare abdomen.
“He is the eater of souls and the devourer of light,” the savage said, realizing that this wasn’t the kind of information Rai was looking for.
“Not helpful,” Rai said. “Try again.”
“He is legion, yet he is one,” the chief replied.
“Again, not what I’m looking for,” Rai said as she buried the blade into the chief’s shoulder. The savage howled in pain and thrashed about. While most of him moved within the confines of the chains, his shoulder did not. Rai had driven her knife blade all the way through, pinning him to the tree like a bug in an insect collection.
“Help us stop it,” Rai said. “Or I will shoot you.”
“Stop it?” the chief laughed as his shoulder bled copiously. “Why would I do that? Like every other god, this one requires sacrifice. We have offered up you and your group as ours. Our god merely comes to collect…and to be honored by our gift.”
“You’re chained up and not in any position to make an offering,” Rai pointed out, grabbing the handle of the blade and leaning into a little, sending fresh bolts of excruciating pain through the chief’s arm, neck, and upper body.
“I feel a faint tickle,” the savage said. “Perhaps a butterfly has landed on my shoulder.”
Rai fired a round from her sidearm into the air then touched the hot tip of the gun to the creature’s wound. The roar it let out was like a pack of lions being set on fire.
“Surely, you know I could escape from these bonds if I chose to,” the creature said, its voice still filtering through the comm unit with an electronic timbre. “Have you not seen what we are capable of?”
“You’ll die too, you know?” Rai asked.
“Cronus will honor me with rebirth,” the chief said. “I have nothing to fear.”
“Cronus?” Rai asked.
“Behold,” the chief said, training his eyes on something in the forest. “Cronus. The destroyer of entire worlds. The destroyer of you.”
The ancient god erupted from beneath the soil, showing its true complete form. Trees that were centuries old were lifted from the earth as Cronus pushed his way out of the trench it had dug in the ground. The monstrosity used its tentacles to push itself up to its full height, rising more than a hundred feet in the air.
Its gray flesh was like that of something dead that had been rotting in the sun for far too long, all putrescent and bloated. It roared with a mouth full of concentric rings of barbed teeth, and surveyed the nature of the threat against it, using hundreds of red eyes that hadn’t seen the light of day in quite some time.
“What is that thing?” Rai asked the chief, horrified.
The chief’s eyes were rolled back in his head, revealing the whites. He was muttering and chanting what might have been some sort of prayer, completely oblivious to Rai and her question. Knowing that there was no time to waste, Rai leveled her sidearm and shot the chief in the kneecap. Immediately, his eyes went wide with pain as he snapped out of the trance he was in. He snarled at Rai.
“Cronus will devour you,” the savage growled. “His appetite is eternal.”
“Tell me how to kill him or I’ll put a bullet in the other leg.”
“Do what you like,” the chief said. “I have nothing more to tell you. You have done your worst, and I haven’t told you what you wanted to know. I have a knife in my shoulder, a burn on the wound, a bullet in my knee, and yet I remain silent. Shoot me again if it pleases you. I shall delight in watching Cronus eat you.”
Rai did as she’d promised, and disintegrated the savage’s other knee. He howled and grimaced and cursed. “Last chance,” she said, looking over her shoulder and realizing that Cronus was almost upon them.
“May you rot in the bowels of our master,” the savage said through gritted teeth.
Rai raised her sidearm again and then stopped as an idea occurred to her. She left the chief and headed back to Robert, who was poised to launch possibly the last attack of his career.
“That thing can devour us whole,” Rai said quickly. “Maybe we should let it.”
Robert froze and turned to look at her. “The CASPers,” he said, suddenly understanding what she had in mind.
“The suits will protect us,” Rai said. “If we’re going to end up inside that thing one way or another, maybe we should just make things easier for Cronus and jumpjet our way into its mouth. Most of our suits have one or two good jumps left.”
Cronus had paused
, ravenous from the effort it had taken to drag itself from its home in the bowels of the earth to the surface. It plucked savages from the ground, tossing them into its terrible mouth for the sustenance they provided. Like a hydra with no heads, its barbed tentacles flailed and grasped for anything within reach, scooping up entire armloads of the creatures who served it and tossing them into a mouth that was as cavernous as a mine shaft and filled with rows upon rows of teeth that impaled some and ripped apart others.
“Think you can survive those teeth?” Robert asked. “The jumps will have to be coordinated just right to avoid them.”
“We’re pilots, sir. That’s what we do,” Rai said. “Besides, if I have to be impaled on one of those teeth I would much rather do it while trying to stay alive than to just simply give up and allow myself to be eaten.”
“It’s all we’ve got at this point,” Robert conceded. “You’re in charge of the CASPers. Drake and I will try to buy you enough time and distract this thing long enough for you to reach its mouth.”
“Feel free to feed Drake to that thing if it’ll buy us a minute or two,” Rai said, not bothering to hide her disdain for the man. “Even an extra thirty seconds is reason enough to toss him in.”
“Get moving, Lieutenant.” Robert smiled dryly. “No time for grudges.”
The horror beneath the earth continued to drag itself toward the firing line. Drake rushed back to take command of his men. Colonel Robert held back with the tech that was still desperately attempting to get a signal through to the ships in orbit.
“Hold your fire until it gets closer,” Drake ordered his men. All the surviving CASPers of Robert’s Guard had joined his infantry on the firing line. Rai and her CASPers were off preparing for the surprise that she and Colonel Robert had cooked up for the approaching monster. Drake knew the amount of firepower Rai and the five CASPers left from the Hellhounds had wouldn’t make a difference anyway…or at least not from the infantry line. For all their sakes, he hoped her plan worked. He watched the tentacled horror pulling itself along. The creature was truly a living nightmare. Drake could understand why the native savages worshipped it as a god. From their point of view, the thing was truly unstoppable. He hoped they’d prove them wrong.
“Prepare to fire on my mark,” Drake shouted over his comm to the gathered troops and CASPers on the firing line. He allowed the horrific god of the savages to draw a little closer and then screamed, “Fire at will!”
The CASPers struck first. Missiles streaked from their shoulder launchers, blazing through the growing darkness of the twilight toward the savages’ god. They sunk into the gelatinous mass and exploded there. Chunks of the diseased flesh spun away from its body to splatter the trees in a Rorschach collage. The wounds the explosions inflicted upon the thing healed almost instantly, closing nearly as quickly as they were made. Whatever substance composed its body was impervious to bullets, and simply bled back into place, leaving it just as it had been before the missiles hit.
Mortars pounded the god and the ground around it. They hammered the thing relentlessly, their blasts tearing at its oozing form. The god’s tentacles slashed furiously about in the air, striking and detonating many of the shells before they made contact with the central mass of its body. Between the mortar fire and the continued missile barrage from the CASPers and troops armed with RGPs, it was like watching a deranged fireworks display.
Drake had seldom felt fear in his life. Usually, he was the cause of the fear others felt. That was not the case now. For the first time in a long time, Drake found himself afraid and hated himself for it. The fear drove him, filling his very soul with rage and helpless anger.
Despite the staggering amount of firepower his men were pouring into the approaching god, it continued to pull itself ever closer to the firing line. The infantry troops and CASPers without mortars or missiles joined in the battle to stop it. Tracer rounds flashed orange and blue through the darkness, now that night had fallen over the woods. Heavy CASPer machine guns and their tripod mounted infantry counterparts chattered, hosing the entity. Bullets shredded the front of the god’s form, severing numerous tentacles as the thing raged in fury at Drake’s attempt to stop it. Still, it came onward.
“Die already, you bastard,” Drake muttered, watching the monstrous entity with hatred burning inside him.
The god was nearly on top of them, and Drake ordered the CASPers equipped with firegel to open up on it. Geysers of flame burst outward from the firing line, licking at the god. At last the thing showed it felt pain. Its massive mouth emitted a high-pitched shriek that sent many of the men to their knees, dropping their weapons and covering their ears. Drake ignored the pain in his eardrums, gritting his teeth against it, and turned to a trooper holding an RPG near him.
“Give me your weapon!” Drake growled. The man looked at him, wide-eyed and terrified.
“Now,” Drake ordered again, snatching the RPG from the man’s hands. Drake ran to the center of the firing line. He glanced around at the troopers who were clutching their ears and unable to cope with the high-pitched screech the god was using like some kind of sonic weapon. Drake felt contempt and disgust at the sight of them.
“On your feet!” Drake yelled at them, screaming over the horrific noise coming from the savages’ god.
The CASPers equipped with firegel kept up their attack on the god. Large areas of its body were burning, completely ablaze where the gel clung, intermingled with the gelatinous ooze that made up the creature’s central mass. The ooze crackled and popped like smoldering fat in a frying pan. Patches of it would erupt to splash over the troopers and CASPers closest to it. Men screamed as the burning ooze and firegel splattered onto them, cooking away their flesh to the bone. The CASPers hit by the splattering ooze continued to hold their ground. Eventually such intense fire would damage even a CASPer, frying its systems or worse, but for the moment they were still functional and desperate to stop the savages’ god.
The god had pulled and crawled within reach of the firing line. Its tentacles shot out into the ranks of the infantry and CASPers. It lifted one CASPer from the ground, crushing the armored suit and its pilot within its grasp. Another tentacle swept through a group of infantrymen, knocking them about as if they were nothing more than toys.
Drake avoided a tentacle that claimed the lives of three infantrymen near his position and lunged forward, charging at the god. When he was within a few yards of its main body, he jerked the launcher he carried to his shoulder, aimed at the creature’s mouth, and fired the RPG. The rocket-propelled grenade flew into the god’s mouth and exploded, shattering teeth and sending fragments spinning away from the monster’s open maw. The god’s screeching cry fell silent as its mouth clamped shut. Drake allowed himself a wicked grin as he flung the spent launcher aside and drew his matching pistols.
* * *
Rai and the others were suited up and ready to go. Their CASPers weren’t at full capacity, fully armed, or even fully functional in at least one case. But this was what they had to work with, and it would have to do. It was like walking into a gunfight with a gun that fired but was missing its sights and had a cracked stock. It could still kill, just not as efficiently. That description summed up what remained of the shattered Hellhounds, and even Robert’s Guard.
They had been through a lot, and they knew the worst was coming. It hadn’t even begun yet. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Taking this job had been a mistake. They hadn’t had near enough intel on what they were walking into, and hundreds of lives had been lost as a result. There was no changing that now. All they could do was salvage what was left of this mission and try to walk away with their lives.
She saw what Drake’s RPG had done—disintegrating much of the creature’s open mouth and forcing it to clamp its jaws shut in a painful reaction. That was the exact opposite of what they needed; the plan relied on having its mouth open. It also relied on fire, since they had seen what flames were capable of doing to it.
She turne
d to the other CASPers. “We have to shift gears,” she explained. “This mission just became more than landing inside the mouth of this thing. We have to force it to open its mouth again and then land perfectly.”
“Just another day at the office, Lieutenant,” a pilot named Blake replied. “This is what we were born for.”
“Agreed,” Rai said, “so here’s the plan. Blake, you and Clyde are going to hit that thing in the mouth with everything you’ve got. You’ve heard the saying ‘tear it a new one’, and never have I meant it more than right now. Its mouth is a tangled, jagged mess of broken teeth we can’t possibly get through. It’s the monster equivalent of a barbed-wire fence, and we have our good friend Drake to thank for it. Once the two of you hit it in the mouth with everything you’ve got, it’ll open up in pain, or rage, or both, and it will clear the way for me, Carter, and Wolfie to perform the space opera version of Jonah and the Whale. Everybody good?”
The men replied with united iron fists held high in the air.
“Then let’s do this,” Rai said.
The CASPers’ jumpjets weren’t fully charged, which meant they couldn’t jump as high or for as long. But they were mobile enough to allow them to hurdle the savages who still circled the creature, and the spears they hurled in defense. Despite the burns it had suffered and the disintegrated mouth it now sported, Cronus, as the chief had named it, showed no signs of slowing, and it still had a ravaging mass of tentacles that whipped through the air in a mad frenzy, knocking men and savages alike to and fro. It was like a skyscraper-sized nest of snakes writhing in a chaotic rhythm, lashing out at anyone or anything that got too close.
“Hey Drake,” Rai said over the comm unit as Blake and Clyde jumped in controlled arcs toward Cronus. “Since you were so kind as to shut the mouth we needed to jump into, could you lay down some cover fire and thin the herd a little? Or if you don’t want to do that, feel free to jump into its mouth yourself and clean up the mess you made.”
CASPer Alamo Page 20
