by Sara King
“Stay where you are right now. I’m gonna go check out the situation in the deep den first.”
It took Joe almost two hours to get down to the Baga without alerting the Takki. His stomach did a flip when he saw the tiny opening the Baga had found. Water trickled in a warm, brackish rivulet along the floor. Joe could imagine his body plugging the hole like a stopper in a vial, and his subsequent drowning as the water piled up around him, with nowhere to go.
Ghosts of the Mothers, he wants me to crawl in there?
“Well?” Flea demanded. “Can you do it or not, counter?”
“I can fit,” Joe said, more strongly than he felt.
“So who you want to go first?”
“You,” Joe said. “I might block the tunnel for you.”
“You might block it behind me, too, counter. Then we’d both be stuck down there.”
“Just get your ass in the tunnel.”
Flea made a disgusted noise and obeyed. For his part, Joe stared at tiny tunnel entrance until he could feel the heat that had nothing to do with temperature slickening his neck and palms. God hates a coward, he thought, with more determination than he felt.
Reluctantly, Joe got on his knees and pushed his gun into the darkened entrance. The tunnel sloped up, not down. As such, it was not going to afford Joe the advantage of being out of reach in the high ground when the shit hit the fan. What was worse, if he didn’t move fast enough when the Dhasha started attacking, it would pluck him out of his hole as easily as a robin pulling out a worm.
Taking a deep breath, Joe got onto his stomach and eased his head and shoulders into the tunnel. Immediately, the brackish stink of water assaulted his senses. The walls of the tunnel almost touched his back, and his arms had only ninths on either side. Joe tried not to think of the stream running around his waist and legs as he pushed himself deeper into the tunnel.
The further he went, the greater the sensation that he was trapped. If I have to back out, I won’t make it. I’ll wedge myself in and the water will build up and I’ll have nowhere to go…
Finally, Joe had to close his eyes and concentrate to calm his breathing.
“A little claustrophobic, Commander?” Flea asked.
Joe cried out and tried to stand, only succeeding in straining his body against the ceiling of the tunnel. “You son of a bitch!” Joe snapped through his headcom, barely able to avoid shouting out loud. He located the Baga hidden in a crevice in the rock ceiling ahead. Only the faceted burgundy eyes were visible in the shadows, watching him.
“What happened?” Daviin asked quickly.
Joe closed his eyes and tried to slow his heartbeat. “Nothing. Stay where you are. I’m almost to the den.”
“Sorry,” the Baga said out loud, sounding hesitant. “I was just teasing—I didn’t realize…”
“Just shut up and go,” Joe said.
The Baga scuttled out of the shadows and disappeared in the tunnel ahead with a speed to envy.
“I’m waiting for you at the exit,” Flea announced within a tic.
Joe gritted his teeth and tried to move faster. His left hand was clenched around his rifle, but he could feel his fingers shaking regardless. He squeezed them down and kept moving, trying to do anything but think about the walls of rock surrounding him, the trickle of water being diverted over his body.
Joe smelled the puddle before he saw it. The tunnel began to stink of stagnant water and at first Joe thought he had finally reached the deep den. Then he crawled over a ridge and faced two ninths of air above eight ninths of water. It looked like it stretched several digs, though further on, the stone ceiling dipped down and touched the water, blocking the rest of the tunnel from sight.
Joe stared at it, sucking in panicked lungfuls of stale, brackish air. He had the choice of continuing and risking drowning if the ceiling didn’t rise again, or trying to back out. He did not want to back out.
“Flea, how’d you get past this water?”
“I swam.”
“How long ‘til I’ll reach air?”
“I don’t know. A few digs. I don’t need to worry about air.”
“Goddamn it. You don’t breathe? Didn’t you think about that when you said I could make it through here?”
“I said you could fit. And you did. Everything else is up to you.”
If Joe had had the opportunity, he gladly would have crushed the Baga all over again. “All right, furg, if I die, this is on your head.”
“It’s on your own head. You’re the one who wouldn’t let me stick the prince by myself.”
Joe ground his jaw until it hurt. God hates a coward, he mentally chanted. It had been one of his father’s favorite sayings, something he’d always said right before he was about to do something he knew was furgish. Yet Joe, like many Jreet, had taken it closer to heart than that, and had used it to keep himself sane on Eeloir. To his surprise, Bagkhal had picked up the saying from him and had used it ever since. One of the many ways his old Overseer had surprised him.
God hates a coward. God hates a coward…
Then, taking a deep breath, he pushed himself into the puddle. He had to fight down his nerves as water rose all around him and he had to crane his neck up to the ceiling to breathe. Then, praying the Baga wasn’t playing a sick joke, he sucked in as much air as he could and ducked his head under the stone outcropping. He pushed himself forward, feeling the ceiling with one hand and keeping his rifle ahead of him with the other.
Panic clawed at his lungs when he realized the tunnel was dropping, sloping down instead of up. He sped up, trying desperately to stay calm. The tunnel had just started to slope back toward the surface, relief overriding every other part of his brain, when the Baga said, “Commander, you might want to surface slowly. We’re in the Dhasha’s watering hole.”
Joe checked his upward climb with a spasm of panic. His lungs clawing for air, he backed down to the bottom and thought, “Why didn’t you say something sooner, you little sootwad?!”
“It didn’t occur to me you’d try to surface like a bumbling Takki clown.”
If Joe could have seen the Baga through the thick, brackish water, he would have swam the little insect down and strangled him. Instead, he backed up until he could feel the rock wall beside him and slowly allowed his head to surface, ready to suck in a lungful of air and duck back into the tunnel if necessary.
The room was filled with Dhasha. Packed. The ceiling was low, adding to the place’s hot, stifling feel. Joe took several deep breaths, doing it as slowly as he could to avoid catching attention from the enemy.
“They’re in a meeting,” Joe said. “Sounds like the prince is pissed.”
“About what?” Jer’ait asked.
“They can’t find us,” Joe said. He frowned, listening.
“…was correct. The third groundteam contains both a Jreet and a Huouyt. I was told the Huouyt shouldn’t be a problem at these temperatures, but no one moves from this room until we have visual confirmation on the Jreet.”
“Bones,” Joe muttered.
“What, Human?” Daviin demanded.
“This prince is smart. He’s got all the Dhasha walled up in the deep den.”
“Waiting for us to come to them?”
“He’s waiting for one of the Takki to spot you,” Joe said.
“Any of us or just me?” Daviin demanded.
“Just you. Somebody told them there’s a Jreet on our team. They know about Jer’ait, too.”
“So the Vahlin has predicted two of our attacks now,” Jer’ait said. “Accurately, and ahead of time.”
“Looks like,” Joe said grimly. “Okay, Daviin, time for you to show your stuff. Flea and I aren’t gonna be able to kill the prince with all his young surrounding him.”
“You want me to come help you fight them?”
“No. I want you to create a diversion.”
Absolute silence followed his statement. Then, “A…diversion?” Like Joe had asked him to knit teddy bears.
>
“We need to clear them out of the den. That means they need to think they know where you are.”
“Which they will.”
“Not if you are smart about it.”
It took a painfully long time for the Jreet to say, “How?”
“Go down to the first connection and kill anything you find down there. Galek, follow him. As soon as he’s got it cleared, drag the bodies out of view and take a position guarding the crossroads. Daviin, take whichever tunnel looks like it’s heading to the surface and silence whatever you see along the way. As soon as you hit a main shaft, let one of the Takki escape. Then get the hell out of there. Take the main shaft as far as you can towards the surface and hide out.”
“That’s suicide,” the Grekkon interrupted. “You forget, Human, I cannot dig him out.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Joe said. “He’s gonna have to find his own way out.”
The headcom descended into silence as his groundmates digested this. Finally, Daviin said, “I can get into the deep den. I might be able to kill the prince.”
“Flea’s right. There’s no way you’re getting through the waste tunnel, and there’s an even fatter chance you’d make it through the slave tunnel without the prince knowing you’re coming. Besides, this prince isn’t ashing around. He’d send his young ones after you and you’d have nowhere to go. They’d flood that whole tunnel and we’d all be screwed. We need to draw them up a main shaft, away from us.”
“Very well,” Daviin said. “Galek, come with me.”
Joe waited as they cleared a path and took their positions. In the meantime, he watched as Flea made his painfully slow climb out of the water ditch and onto the ceiling. Time seemed to creep past with every cautious movement of the Baga’s black claws. A Dhasha came to the ditch and Joe pressed himself to the wall, rigidly still as the oblivious Dhasha drank its fill not a rod away. As the Dhasha lifted its head and allowed the stray water to dribble from between its razor black teeth, Daviin said, “If they weren’t so irrational, these tunnels would remind me of home.”
“Did you find a main passage yet?” Joe asked, trying not to move. Before him, the Dhasha turned back to the room and rejoined the group.
“No. All slave tunnels so far. Killed a lot of Takki, though.”
“Takki don’t count unless we kill them all. Then we can go home and let the Space Corps bury this place.”
“Don’t they have a Takki plague they used in the last war?” Flea asked from his position on the ceiling. “Why not just spread that stuff out here?”
“It was eighty thousand turns ago,” Joe said. “And it almost wiped out the Takki and the Dhasha in one go.”
“Then why are we wasting our time down here?”
“Because they barely contained it last time. The Dhasha went nuts. Forced Congress to ban it or declare outright war. Congress gave in and the Dhasha made all the surviving Takki take gene-enhancers. They’re immune now.”
“So they should make another one,” Flea muttered.
“Even if Mekkval would allow it—which he wouldn’t—they’d have to come up with something nobody’s ever seen before. Ever since they almost lost their Takki, Dhasha have been enhancing their genetics. They literally can’t get sick.”
“Found a main shaft.”
“Vanish and kill something,” Joe said. “Then move down the tunnel and keep killing, maybe two or three more. Then let something see you. Then backtrack and get out of there as fast as you can.”
“They’ll see the pattern of bodies and think I’m continuing toward the deep den.”
“We can hope.”
“Interesting. You know, technically, that verges on dishonorable.”
Joe knew he was treading dangerous ground at that moment. If he said the wrong thing, then Daviin might allow his scruples to overcome his good sense and continue toward the deep den anyway.
The Baga saved him. “Tricking Takki is as easy as taking money from Jreet. You can’t always hold their hands, as much as you feel sorry for them.”
Daviin chuckled over the mind-band. “How much did you lose already, Baga? I forget.”
“That’s nothing new,” the Baga retorted. “Wait ‘till we play cards, Jreet. There isn’t a better card player on this planet. I’ll earn those credits back and more”
“So you say.” The headcom went silent before the Jreet said, “It is done. I’m backtracking. Should I return to the slave tunnel I came from?”
“No,” Joe said, knowing as he said so he was risking Daviin’s life. “We can’t take the chance they’ll follow you back to the rest of us.”
Instead of arguing, Daviin said, “Understood.”
From the ceiling, Flea suddenly cried, “It’s working! Daviin, they’re coming after you!”
“All of them?” Joe asked. He couldn’t see through the wall of Dhasha bodies, but he felt a stirring in the air.
“They’re fighting to be the first in the tunnel.”
“Is the prince staying?” Daviin asked.
“Yeah. He went to the back and laid down. He’s got a couple of little ones and his females with him.”
“Wait for them to clear before we do anything,” Joe said at the excitement in the Baga’s voice. “It’s the small ones we’re worried about. They can follow us back into the tunnels.”
“You actually think they’d get their scales wet?”
“No, but I’m not taking any chances.”
The last of the Dhasha cleared out, leaving Joe an unobstructed view of the niche containing the prince, three females, and two hatchlings barely reaching Joe’s thigh.
“This is going to be difficult,” Joe said. “We need to make a plan—”
“You get the females,” the Baga said. Then he began spitting.
Silently cursing the Baga, Joe lifted his rifle and started firing.
The prince got up under Flea’s assault and found itself stuck to its hatchlings. It roared and, in a screaming, flailing shower of scales, began attacking the two smaller Dhasha. One of the females got sucked into the mess, and in less than a tic, all that was left of her was three separate ribbons of meat. The two younger males—having the indestructible rainbow outer layer of scales—were faring better, but were still succumbing to their father’s rage. One was secured firmly by his back to the prince’s left leg, and the other’s face was fused to the prince’s side.
Though Joe hit the prince by accident as he shot the three females, the plasma bounced harmlessly off its scales, lodging in the stone wall behind and melting it into bluish-brown sludge. Without the protective outer scales of the males, however, the females could not withstand the plasma. They died quickly, their fat stomachs roiling with baby Dhasha who, even without being born, had been infected with their father’s blood-lust. Joe could hear them tearing each other apart in the womb.
On the ceiling above, the Baga calmly spat blob after blob of mucousy gray material into strategic places in the fray. Once the young and females were dead, he went on to bind the male’s front paws to the rock floor, then followed with his hind paws. Joe jumped out of the water ditch and rushed forward, readying his hatchet. He only had moments to hack a hole in the prince’s chest deep enough for a plasma round to take hold and be lethal enough to kill.
Before Joe could reach the Dhasha, the Baga dropped from the ceiling and hovered above the prince’s head. He spat a wad into the Dhasha’s face, dousing the flaring air-hole beside an egglike emerald eye in gray slime, plugging it.
The prince went stiff, then roared as Flea spat another glob, covering his other nostril. Watching it, Joe almost felt a pang of pity. Even if he weren’t pinned to the ground, the prince would never be able to breathe again. The Dhasha struggled, slowly suffocating. As Joe watched, his body went limp and he slid to the ground, still propped up by the way his stubby legs were fused to the floor.
Joe stared. He had been ready for a fight, ready to hack open a hole in the monster’s chest so he could bl
ast it with plasma. He’d never imagined a creature as tiny as the Baga could kill a beast like the Dhasha. It defied imagination.
“You kick ass, Flea,” Joe said.
“I know,” Flea said, calmly dropping to the floor near one of the Dhasha’s front feet.
“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” Joe said. He got nervous watching his groundmate scuttle closer to the Dhasha’s scythelike talons.
“Give me a sec.” Picking a black claw that hadn’t been doused in glue, Flea snipped it off at the finger joint with his beak. Then he held the rainbow digit and its evil, gleaming ebony talon up for Joe’s perusal. “My first prince.”
“Great,” Joe said, “Now get your ass back in the tunnel.”
Flea, however, took to the air and glanced at the prince’s niche. “I hear all princes hoard treasure. Think this is where he buried his wealth?” He swung over the squirming stomach of one of the females and let out an excited cry. “It is! The fight kicked up a statue and a necklace. They look like they might be ruvmestin!”
Joe glanced at the nest, which was littered with writhing bodies of dead females. He’d heard tales of Dhasha caches from other PlanOps veterans. Until now, he’d never had the opportunity to check for himself.
“Doesn’t matter,” Joe said. “Don’t have the time. We’ve gotta get out of here. Daviin’s alone up there.”
Flea dropped down between the golden bodies of the Dhasha females. “It is ruvmestin! The miga’s so heavy I can’t carry it!”
“Ghosts,” Joe muttered. A single bead of ruvmestin would buy his entire groundteam a drink every night for twenty turns.
At that moment, Galek shouted, “A horde of Takki just crawled out of the tunnel. Couldn’t take them all. They disarmed me, but they can’t get through my biosuit. They’re dragging me into the tunnel Daviin took, toward the surface.”
“Burn!” Joe ran toward the ditch. “Flea, let’s go!”
“Come grab this necklace!” Flea cried.
“No, goddamn it! Get your ass over here!”
“It’s ruvmestin and Space Corps is gonna bury it!” Flea shrieked. “All you have to do is grab it!”
“Now, Flea!”
Flea rose from the nest with his wings working hard to keep him afloat. In his upper arms, he carried a small white statue the size of a nuajan stick and in his lower arms he grasped the truncated prince’s claw. The Baga gave Joe a nasty look as it sped across the room and followed him to the trench.
