"We're right with you, de la Rosa," rose Ben-Ari's voice, coming from another armored vehicle. "Lead the way."
Down below, Addy was at the driver's seat, and the sand tiger began to crawl forth. At their sides, hundreds of other sand tigers were emerging from shuttlecrafts and rolling across the desert. Exoframes were heavy and strong; sand tigers were heavier and stronger. The caterpillar tracks crushed the bugs under sixty tons of metal.
The remains of the Human Defense Force rolled forth. Hundreds of sand tigers. Then thousands. Scum cracked beneath them. Their machine guns fired, sending chunks of scum exoskeleton flying. More shuttles kept flying down through the gauntlet, some of them crashing, others landing to deliver troops and vehicles. Soon a battalion of Behemoth Mark IV tanks joined the fray, metal beasts twice the size of the sand tigers. Their cannons fired, tearing into swarms of scum. Clouds of dust and sand rose everywhere. Firebird jets roared overhead, firing their own machine guns, tearing into the myriads of scum that were still emerging from cracks and swarming toward the army.
Marco wasn't sure how many soldiers were making it down onto the planet, but one thing he knew: for every human warrior, there were thousands of scum on this world, too many for even their artillery, air force, and armor to defeat.
We need to kill the emperor beyond those mountains, he thought. It's the only way to finally defeat the scum.
"We're getting closer," Lailani said, her voice carrying through their communication system to the rest of the platoon—and, Marco assumed, to Admiral Bryan who flew above in the Terra. "He's getting louder. He's calling to me. He—" She gripped the sides of her helmet. "I can't stand it. I can't. I can hear him. I can see what he's showing me. What he will do to us. How he will deform us."
"Hang in there, de la Rosa." Ben-Ari's voice emerged from the speakers now. "You're doing great. I'm proud of you. Keep leading us there. He won't hurt you with us here."
Lailani pointed. "That way. Addy, turn left just a bit. Between those two peaks. Do you see them?"
"I see them," Addy said, driving the vehicle.
"Past those peaks, there's a hive," said Lailani. "It runs deep. Much deeper than Corpus. His evil is rising from there, everywhere, seeping through the air. So much buzzing! All of them. Millions of them screaming inside my skull." Tears filled her eyes. "They're all chattering together. They're so evil."
Marco kept firing the machine gun, killing the scum on the desert ahead. "We're going to silence them, Lailani. All of them. Just hang in there. You're doing great."
The thousands of tanks and sand tigers charged forth, raising storms of dust, plowing through the enemy. They broke through one kilometer, then another. Vehicles fell every few meters. Cracks opened in the surface, and tanks tumbled into pits of scum. Some of the more brazen centipedes leaped onto sand tigers, slew the gunners, and slithered into the vehicles to consume the soldiers within. The husks of vehicles remained behind in the desert. But the others charged onward, firing their guns, cutting through, claiming another kilometer. Hundreds, soon thousands of Firebirds flew above, adding their firepower to the convoy.
All were following Marco's sand tiger. All were following Lailani.
You joined the army to die a heroine, Marco thought. But you're going to live, Lailani. You're going to live as a heroine.
"Hanging in there?" he said.
Lailani looked ashen, but she nodded. "I think so. The chip is blocking most of it. We—" She screamed and clutched her helmet. "Marco!"
"Lailani, wh—"
The desert cracked open ahead.
A creature burst out, large as a whale.
"Fuck!" Addy screamed below.
For an instant, Marco could only stare, heart still, breath gone.
It was an insect—an insect to dwarf their armored vehicle. It looked like something halfway between crab and beetle, all body armor and claws and antennae. It must have stood a hundred feet tall. Several more cracks opened in the desert, and more of the gargantuan creatures emerged, bellowing in rage, insects the size of warships.
"Kill them!" Addy screamed.
"No shit, Addy!" Marco said. "I thought we'd ride them!"
He fired his machine gun.
Bullets slammed into a rearing insect, doing it no harm. Across the desert, the other vehicles were firing their own machine guns, but even the massive .50 cal bullets—large enough to rip human bodies apart—ricocheted off the giant insects' exoskeletons.
A tank fired its cannon. A shell flew and slammed into one of the insects, denting its armor. Enraged, the creature grabbed the tank with claws like tree roots, lifted it overhead, and hurled it across the desert. The tank—all one hundred tons of it—slammed into a sand tiger, crushing the armored vehicle. More tanks were firing. The insects grabbed more vehicles, lifted them, and tossed them back onto the convoy.
"We need grenades!" Marco shouted down into his sand tiger.
Sergeant Bellet hopped up into the gun turret with him and Lailani. It was just large enough for the three of them.
"Here!" She handed him one grenade, another to Lailani. "Use these. I—Fuck! Linden, steer!"
One of the giant insects came swooping toward them, bellowing. Addy pulled the steering wheel hard to the right, and the sand tiger stormed forward, swaying in the sand. Exoframes came with folding grenade launchers on their shoulders. Marco activated his, and the gun unfurled with a series of clicks. He loaded a grenade. He aimed. He fired.
The grenade flew and slammed into the massive insect. Lailani and Bellet's grenades followed a second later.
Three explosions rocked the enormous beetle. Its armor cracked open, exposing its innards. Marco grabbed the machine gun and fired, hitting that opening. The bullets pierced the soft flesh, and the insect screamed and fell, narrowly missing them. The desert shook.
"Addy, left!" Marco shouted. Another one of the beetles was leaping toward them. He fired another grenade, hit it, and followed the blast with bullets. Addy steered out of the way.
"I can't see a damn thing!" she shouted. "Too much dust!"
More of the creatures kept emerging from the sand, attacking the convoy. Firebirds streamed overhead, firing missiles into the insects. One of the beetles spat a glob of saliva skyward, hitting a jet. The Firebird crashed down into a tank. Both vehicles burned.
"Almost there!" Lailani said, pointing. "It's getting stronger. Almost there! Just past those ridges!"
The sand tiger charged, raising clouds of dust, as behind it stormed the thousands of other vehicles. Their guns cut their path through the enemies. They reached a rocky passageway between the two peaks, and the vehicles raced up the slope, and—
From the mountainsides, creatures leaped down.
They were huge scorpions the color of the stone, each the size of a battleship.
One scorpion tail slammed into a tank, shattering it, punching through the metal. A Firebird swooped, and a scorpion leaped and grabbed the jet in its jaws. Addy kept driving, and Marco fired another grenade, and a scorpion raced toward them.
"Addy!" Marco shouted, firing his machine gun, and Lailani and Bellet hurled grenades, and—
The claws grabbed them.
The giant scorpion lifted their sand tiger into the air, then hurled it across the desert.
The massive vehicle, all sixty tons of it, tumbled through the sky like a toy. Lailani fell out of the gun turret. Clinging on with one hand, Marco grabbed her. They flipped through the air, and the soldiers inside shouted, and they came flying down toward the desert floor. The sand tiger was above Marco. The desert below.
He cringed and shoved off the sand tiger, pulling Lailani with him.
They slammed into the desert, the metal of their exoframes denting and sparking against stone. The sand tiger slammed down at their side, missing them by inches, and crushed Sergeant Bellet in the gun turret. Blood leaked.
Marco rose, his metal suit creaking. Half the plates were dented, the rest hanging loose, and a crack halved h
is helmet. He helped Lailani rise. Their sand tiger lay upside down beside them, soldiers struggling to emerge from within. A scum scuttled toward them, and Marco fired a plasma blast, killing the creature. In the distance, tanks and jets were still battling the giant scorpions.
"You all right?" he said to Lailani.
She fired at another scum and shivered. "It's here. We're above him." Her voice was a strained whisper. "The emperor is right beneath us."
They were past the two mountain peaks, Marco saw. They stood in a crater the size of a soccer field. In its center rose what looked like a giant anthill the size of a palace.
"The entrance to a hive," he said.
"His hive," Lailani said, clutching her gun. "And he knows we're here."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They gathered in the crater, thousands of soldiers. Hundreds of tanks surrounded the crater in a wall of metal, and hundreds of Firebirds flew overhead. In the center of the crater rose the entrance to the hive, a hill of dirt and stone. When Marco looked up and hit the zoom function on his visor, he could just make out a distant shard of light orbiting the planet: the HDFS Terra, the flagship of the invasion where Admiral Bryan was overseeing the battle.
"Are you sure, Corporal de la Rosa?" Lieutenant Ben-Ari was standing before Lailani, along with several intelligence officers.
Lailani nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I'm still connected to the scum hive. They keep trying to contact me, to hack into me, to control me. Always they're screaming in my head, but they can't break through, not with the blocker in my skull." She touched the back of her head where the surgeons had implanted the chip. "The signal is strongest here by far. The hive of the scum emperor is right beneath us."
After two devastating days of battle, the Human Defense Force and its allies had claimed this crater and the mountains around it. They had dropped explosives into every crack and hole, aside from the one here in the crater, and sealed them with reinforced concrete. Firebirds had carpet bombed the canyons and hills again and again, flattening the land, destroying any hiding place for the scum.
But Marco knew that most of the creatures still lived, still lurked underground. Still waited for them.
An intelligence officer punched controls on his wrist, and a hologram appeared before them. "Our sonar detectors have revealed a part of the hives. Not an accurate map, and not all the way down, but here are the tunnels we know about." The hologram spun, revealing hundreds of forking paths. "It's a fucking big hive. If you ask me, we should just fill the whole damn thing with napalm."
"No." Ben-Ari shook her head. "Admiral's orders. The scum emperor would just burrow deeper. Napalm won't work. Nor would chemical or biological weapons. The scum can breathe anything we toss their way. Only one thing to do. We crawl deep. We find the emperor. We shoot him at point-blank range."
"All right!" rumbled Gunnery Sergeant Jones. "Time to go burrowing." The beefy NCO hefted his Fyre rifle. "You kids ready?"
"No," said Marco. "But we'll go anyway."
"Atta boy."
"So how do we do this?" Addy said, pulling up her visor to spit into the sand. Blood dripped from a cut on her forehead, and she wiped it clean before slamming her visor shut. "Same as on Corpus?"
"Corpus," said Ben-Ari, "was easy."
Her exoframe clanking, the lieutenant began to climb the hive. The rest of the platoon followed. A hole gaped open atop the hill like a volcano's mouth. Scum claw marks marred its rim.
"Corporal Linden?" Ben-Ari said. "Some fury?"
"Fire in the hole!" Addy shouted and lobbed a grenade down into the hive. An explosion sounded deep within, and the hive shook. Smoke blasted out. Once the dust settled, Marco, Addy, and a handful of others arranged themselves around the hole and blasted down plasma from their guns. The inferno filled the hive. A few scum tried to flee from within, only to burn in the flames, shrivel up, and fall back in.
"Cease fire!" Sergeant Jones said, and they all stood for long moments, waiting for the dust to settle. They peered down inside. The tunnel delved into the shadows.
"I'll lead the way," Ben-Ari said. "Follow close behind. Keep your rifles on semi, and fire only bolts, not streams. Friendly fire can kill us down here as easily as the scum."
The lieutenant leaped down into the hive, vanishing into the shadows.
Standing on the rim, Marco glanced at his friends.
"Let's get this over with," Marco said. "We can do this. We can—"
"No time for speeches," Addy said and shoved him.
"Damn it, Addy!" he shouted as he tumbled into the hive.
He fell for several meters, finally thumping down onto a tunnel's floor and sliding. He grabbed the walls for support, digging his gauntlets into the stone to slow his slide. Finally he was able to climb down, gripping the walls, and found Ben-Ari standing in a cavern the size of a living room. The other soldiers joined them. Several wounded scum twitched on the floor, filled with shrapnel and burnt with plasma.
"We go deeper," Ben-Ari said. "De la Rosa, you hanging in there? You feel it?"
Lailani was shivering. Inside her helmet, her face was pale, and she was biting her lip so hard it bled. But she nodded. "I can feel him. He wants us to come to him. He's right below us."
"How many enemies are down there?" Ben-Ari said.
"They're everywhere," Lailani said. "Millions of them filling this planet. This whole world is full of them like maggots in an old block of cheese."
"Marco, don't eat the planet," Addy said. "You know cheese disagrees with you."
"Addy, why don't you take off your boots and gas the scum to death?" Marco said.
They walked through the hive, plunging deeper. The tunnels were just large enough to let them walk upright. Scum were longer and heavier than humans, but as crawlers, they needed only thin tunnels, no larger than pipes. Yet these tunnels were larger. They must have been carved for bigger bugs. Marco shuddered to think what new breed of creatures would need tunnels the size of human corridors. His suit included an air filtration system, but with his visor cracked, he could smell the place. It stank like a burrow of worms.
Soon their gauges reported that they were a kilometer underground. Behind the Spearhead Platoon, other platoons were following, and thousands of soldiers filled the mines. The tunnels forked every hundred meters. Whenever they reached a fork, Lailani stood with eyes closed like a dowser, listening to invisible voices, finally pointing and choosing a path. Their flashlights, built into their helmets, were their only source of light.
As they walked deeper, Marco frowned. He thought he heard a voice ahead. At first he thought it only like the voices he had been hearing at night, a mere illusion brought on by stress. But as he stepped closer, he realized it was real, coming from farther down the tunnels. He climbed down a shaft, emerging into a horizontal tunnel, and approached the voice. It was louder now, speaking in a foreign language.
Marco's exoframe came with an automatic translator. The translation was projected across his visor in glowing letters.
"Help . . . me. Help . . . me."
He glanced at Ben-Ari. The lieutenant walked at his side, dust and blood coating her exoframe. Both soldiers raised their weapons and advanced together, the others walking behind.
They entered a round chamber. Several fleshy bulbs clung to the ceiling, glowing like strange lampshades made of skin. Their light illuminated an alien that hung on a wall, its limbs bound with sticky membranes. The creature was about twice the height of a man, cadaverous, and green, and eight eyes blinked on its bulbous head.
Ben-Ari gasped. "It's an Altairian. The scum destroyed their homeworld a century ago. I thought all the Altairians were extinct."
Marco approached the green alien. "We can help you. We—" He winced and fought down nausea. The alien's belly had been slashed open, and tiny centipedes, perhaps some race of miniature scum, were breeding within the host. "He's wounded!" Marco said over his shoulder. "We need a medic!"
He and Ben-Ari drew their knives and wo
rked for long moments, cutting the membranes that held the alien to the wall.
"Scum coming!" Addy shouted and fired a blast of plasma.
A centipede squealed and died. More scum came scurrying up from a tunnel. Addy and the others fired their guns while Marco and Ben-Ari lowered the wounded alien from the wall. Medics rushed forth with a stretcher, then had to add a second stretcher to fit the large alien. As the soldiers slew the centipedes, the medics carried the alien back to safety.
"His planet was destroyed a century ago," Marco said. "Has this creature been hanging here for that long?" He shuddered, then fired a plasma bolt, killing a last scum that scuttled toward him.
"Let's keep going," Ben-Ari said. "De la Rosa, show us the way."
But Lailani was standing still, her armor clanking as she shook. Her eyes were sunken, her face ashen, and her hair clung to her forehead with sweat.
"Lailani!" Marco approached her and held her hands. "You all right?"
She nodded. "Almost. It'll be over soon." Tears flowed down her cheeks. "I could hear the green alien inside me. He was screaming into the hive for so long. His misery fed the scum. How they savored his pain!" She took a shaky breath. "Let's keep going. This way. We have to kill the emperor. We have to kill him now."
They kept descending. Lailani led the Spearhead Platoon, but many other platoons were taking other paths, filling the hive. Gunfire sounded from across the tunnels. As the Spearhead walked, they sprayed plasma, killing the scum who approached. They had descended another kilometer when Marco heard another voice—weak, pained, begging.
They stepped into another chamber. A stone table stood here, and an alien lay on it, strapped down with fleshy sheets. It was a bloated white creature, all rolls of fat and tufts of hair. Perhaps once it had been graceful, but tubes now thrust into its veins, pumping yellow liquid into its corpulent form. Maggots lived inside it, breeding. Marco had to struggle not to throw up.
"Osiris," Ben-Ari said, "do you recognize this species?"
Earth Rising (Earthrise Book 3) Page 19
