by B. V. Larson
“I thought their graveyard was outside,” I said.
“I bet they worship their gods here.”
“Could be,” I said.
“Maybe this explains why the Macros had us come here,” said Kwon. “Maybe this is some kind of holy place for them.”
Or maybe the Macros had no idea what’s down here, I thought. Maybe the machines just wanted us to drive our way to the center of this hellish mound, because it was big and in their way. I kept these thoughts to myself, however. It wouldn’t do my men any good to hear them. Troops needed a specific goal to keep them going.
We pressed the Worm defenders back, meeting only skirmishers. But we could tell they were building up for something big, gathering their strength. I came to appreciate that most of the Worms that had once lived in this vast place had to be dead. We’d seen millions of bodies buried outside, but only met thousands in the heart of the place. I wondered how many Worms could live in a place like this, a vast nest, if it were fully populated.
We reached a slope that went upward, and when we topped the rise, we met a surprise. It wasn’t the surprise I’d been expecting—namely about fifty thousand pissed Worms. Instead, it was a depression of sorts, a bowl formed in the middle of the mountain. We were very close to the spot my maps told me the Macros wanted us to reach. Looking down the slope into the center of that dish of earth, the answer was very plain.
A ring sat there. A ring that was smaller, much smaller, than the ones I’d seen before. It was probably only two hundred yards wide. Half of it was sunk down into the earth. Looking at it, I suspected it had been buried, or had been constructed bit by bit from the bottom up.
There were Worms crawling over the ring and around it. The device was clearly made of the same sort of material the others I’d seen were made of. I hoped I would have time to study it, the information could be invaluable to our own nerds back home.
“Flip on every suit recorder we have,” I ordered. “Roku, order your tanks to scan that thing continuously, and store the feed. I want every brainbox we have to bring home a record of it.”
Seeing us, Worms began humping, crawling from all sides of the ring. They dropped the last dozen feet to the floor of the place and squirmed away. My men fired down on them, burning them as they ran. I ordered them to stop, as the enemy was unarmed.
“Where the hell are the Worm troops?” asked Kwon at my side.
“More importantly,” I said, “how did the Worms get a ring down here?”
“Maybe they found it, and built this mound over it. Maybe it is their god.”
I huffed. “I think the Macros fear this ring. The Worms have a plan, and the Macros sent us down here to stop them. Maybe this thing will transport a Worm army to the Macro homeworld. Maybe it will let them push their nuclear mines through to blast the Macros.”
“Let’s take it and find out,” Kwon suggested.
I nodded. “Company Alpha swing left, Echo right. I want one tank leading each group. The rest advance toward the artifact. Fire only if fired upon. If they are surrendering and in retreat, maybe we can finish this without further bloodshed.”
I figured I was dreaming when I described this final step as a cakewalk. But the Worms still managed to surprise me.
-55-
The Worm troops were hiding, of course. Not out around us in the forest of fan-like growths. They were right there, all along the rim of the bowl that surrounded their ring. They had dug in and laid waiting under our feet. By the time I’d advanced my forces to the ring and we were completely in the bowl, they exploded out of the ground and charged us, raging, from every direction at once.
I really wished, at that moment, that Chen or Jensen or at least one of their sensor arrays had survived the trip, but they had all been lost or destroyed along the way. We couldn’t see what they had in store for us, and thus were taken by surprise.
Thousands of them. They came on, guns chugging out steady streams of popping balls. We burned them, and they blasted us. The bowl wasn’t very large, and they were in close in less than a minute. The drill-tanks rotated their big weapons, spraying blinding heat into the advancing enemy like flamethrowers. Ranks of Worms turned into twisting, smoking bodies. Often, their magazines of explosive pellets were ignited, and the resulting explosion flattened everyone nearby.
We were killing them ten to one, but they still had the weight of numbers. Once in close, when it was down to knife-work, the Worm troops had the advantage. They were six times the weight of a man, stronger, and their jaws were deadly.
Kwon and I took up a stance in the center. The bowl-shape of the terrain helped us then. We had a free field of fire. Since the enemy were higher up than my marines, we could fire over our men and hit the Worm troops that were still pouring out of the holes around the rim.
“Mark your target!” roared Kwon. “Don’t burn one of my men in the back or I’ll burn a hole in yours!”
I sent the center tanks to the front—which was everywhere. “Pull back Bravo and Delta,” I shouted into my com-link. “I want a central reserve in case they break through our line completely. We’ll give fire support from the base of the ring itself.”
“Sir!” shouted Kwon, standing back-to-back with me. We both fired intermittently, steadily, out into the massed enemy ranks.
“What?”
“Sir, we have to get out of here.”
“We’re holding them.”
“But we don’t know what this thing is going to do,” Kwon pointed out.
I glanced over my shoulder and looked up at the big ring that loomed overhead. It was mottled and craggy. It seemed weathered and ancient, rather than freshly built. But who knew with the Worms? Nothing they made had straight lines and smooth surfaces.
“You think they wanted us to hug this thing?” I asked.
“They gave us one surprise,” said Kwon reasonably. “Why not two?”
“Yeah, why not?” I agreed.
Bravo and Delta companies had gathered in the center with surprising speed. No one wanted to be on the front lines, holding back the mass of charging Worms. There semed to be no end to them. The bodies were stacking up into steaming heaps. Some of the enemy troops were scrabbling over the bodies of their comrades or burrowing under to get to us.
“We’re going to break out! Everyone push back the same way we came in. We know the way out if we head in that direction.”
The men needed little encouragement. We marched southward, and the enemy lines folded away from us, falling back from our concentrated fire.
When I reached the rim of the bowl, I looked back and realized I couldn’t withdraw entirely. We’d made it to our destination. We had to tell the Macros about it. I got out the special unit, the one that was tied to the glittering trail of nanites that wound back all the way to the outside world. I wondered how many times the wire had been broken. I’d seen it snap just from a marine carelessly treading on it. The wire had naturally repaired itself, being made up of billions of nanites. Miles of nanites, spun along a hair-thin path to the world of sun and wind. Just thinking about it made me homesick for an open vista. I’d even welcome the red, fluttering glare of Helios right then.
I pressed the button I’d never pressed until then. The one that opened up a channel to the Macro command.
“Identify,” came the response, quickly and coolly.
I relaxed a little. I hadn’t known if the thing would really work until then. “This is Colonel Kyle Riggs. I’ve reached the goal point. The mission is complete.”
“The mission is incomplete.”
I stared down at the pitched battle around the ring. In two spots, our lines had fallen back. They had not yet buckled, but I could do the math. With each wave of Worms that poured out of the holes, we lost a number of men. At some point, we would lose too many and the enemy would break us. We’d dissolve into pockets of struggling, encircled, desperate survivors. If they had enough troops and enough time, we would be slaughtered. There would be no
surrender. No retreat. Maybe this is what the enemy had planned all along. Maybe Kwon was right, and they did worship here at this ancient altar. That made us a dramatic blood-sacrifice.
“What do I have to do to complete the mission?” I shouted.
“The nanite wire must touch the transport ring.”
I stared at the shimmering strand of liquid silver that ran to my otherwise disconnected com-link. My eyes went back toward the ring which stood downslope.
“Standby. We’ll do that now.”
I grabbed Warrant Officer Sloan by the shoulder. He’d kept with me since the initial battle in the cavern. As he’d lost his tank, he’d joined my unit by default. I lifted a loop of the nanite strand and gave it to him.
“You want to end this whole nightmare, Sloan?”
“Damn straight, sir!”
“Here, run this down to the ring. Make sure it has a strong contact.”
He nodded, grabbed it and ran. Like kite-string, it ran out behind him. Shimmering and whipping, it reformed itself as he went, trying to keep its structure even as it was stretched further.
The Worms showed no sign of easing up. Kwon and I used the time to fire in support of the men who were now beaten back toward the base of the ring itself. I watched my men stiffen their resistance there. Having a structure at your back—any structure, and troops on your flanks helped keep spirits up. But still, we were retreating. Men left behind among the Worms thrashed and were torn apart.
“I don’t think they like us messing with their gods, sir,” said Kwon. “The Worms are pushing hard now.”
“I think they know what we’re doing,” I told him. “We only have to hold them for another minute or two. I want to see us make an orderly withdrawal toward the ring. Relay that to Roku.”
Kwon bent forward over his com-link, giving my instructions to the tank commander. I noticed the signal light was blinking on my hotline com-device. I picked it up.
“Riggs here,” I said.
“One minute has passed. The mission is incomplete.”
“Yes, one more minute,” I told them, setting down the handset again. Literal-minded bastards.
I watched as Warrant Officer Sloan reached the base of the ring. He took the wire and wrapped it around a jutting spur of the odd material. I thought to myself that if I had the time, I would go down there and investigate the structure carefully.
The signal light was blinking again. I picked it up.
“Connection detected.”
“Yes, it’s ready,” I said. “You can come through now.”
“Sequence engaged. Portal opening imminent. Withdrawal recommended.”
“Yeah, we’re pulling back to the ring now. We’ll meet your big boys as they come through.”
“Portal opening imminent. Withdrawal recommended.”
“Okay, I—” I stopped. My mouth hung open in my suit. I watched the battle for a frozen second. Six Worms reached a drill-tank. They bit the metal hull and fired streams of bursting rounds into it. The metal of the tank withered, but the head-like turret continued to swivel, burning them.
Thoughts burst in my mind like enemy explosive pellets. Macros always repeated themselves when a miscommunication had occurred, I realized. They had told me to withdraw. When I said I was pulling back to the ring, they told me to withdraw again. I wasn’t getting it. The only answer was they didn’t mean I was to retreat to the ring, they were telling me to retreat away from the ring.
What was I not understanding? Possibilities presented themselves inside my fertile mind. None of them were good. What if they weren’t sending troops, but instead a bomb of some kind? A wave of sickness rolled over me.
“Everyone get away from the ring!” I shouted, keying the command override. Every headset rang with my words. I took a step forward, then two more. I screamed into the microphone, causing my voice to distort and break into a scream. “I repeat, move all units away from the ring! Head south, to me! Priority one! NOW! Go, go, go!”
The ring began to… thrum. It was gentle at first, but grew into an undeniable force, a sound that could not be ignored. Every skull felt it, whether they had ears or not. It was a deep, forceful, brain-shaking vibration.
I saw perhaps half my tanks shudder, halt, and reverse direction. Hundreds of marines looked around, confused. Their unit commanders reinforced my orders. I could hear them, yelling at the troops and waving for them to pull back. As the ring was at their back, they had no choice. They rose up and charged the advancing Worm line. The enemy met them eagerly, but recoiled in shock as beams, knives and howling marines ran upslope into their ranks.
I experienced a moment of hope. I felt maybe they would escape whatever was coming, but my elation was a very brief affair.
A strong breeze came up next. I took another five steps downslope, toward the ring, toward my struggling troops. Kwon laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“We gotta go, sir,” he said. His words were gentler than his grip.
Maybe he knew what was going to happen. Maybe he’d witnessed the wrath of an alien god before. The breeze grew into a wind, then to a howling gale. My suit ruffled around me. I felt it move and shift.
“What are they sending through?” I asked.
“Nothing, sir,” said Kwon.
I looked at him suddenly. I twisted back to look. I saw the first man lose his footing. It was Warrant Officer Sloan. He’d been standing at the base of the ring, closer than anyone. He lifted up, pin-wheeling his arms for balance. He lost it and landed on his face. His body, dragged by an unseen force, began to thump and roll toward the ring. He flipped over and over, tossed about like a leaf as the force of moving air grew ever stronger and then—then he was gone. He slipped into the span of emptiness that was the gap in the arch of the ring and vanished. There was a spot of color on my vision, where it had happened. I’d never seen something go through the ring like that—not this close. It was like an… an event. A sparkling change to reality.
I knew, in my heart, that Warrant Officer Sloan was somewhere else now. Most likely, he floated in space. Perhaps he orbited a world no human had ever laid eyes upon until this moment. Or perhaps he was on the surface of a neutron star. He might have been instantly burnt to a vapor, or crushed to the size of a flat coin by unimaginable gravity. Or he might be simply floating somewhere, calling mayday to no one in a heartless void without even starlight to accompany his ending.
I grabbed up the com-device that connected me to the Macros. I could see by the glowing green LED the channel was still open. I almost broke the device in my fury and desperation.
“Turn it off!” I shouted.
“Mission accomplished. Return to base for pickup.”
“You are killing my men! Turn it off now!”
“Mission accomplished. Return to base for pickup.”
“Fucking machines!”
“Mission accomplished. Return to base for pickup.”
I destroyed the com-device. I smashed it through with my fist, and I enjoyed the sensation immensely, despite my agony of spirit. Kwon pulled me away, and I let him drag me toward the rim. We stumbled along until we caught a passing tank. Several of the drill-tanks had escaped. They were heavier than my troops, and denser. They were able to resist the hurricane force of suction that now drew everything up into a swirling tornado in the area around the ring. Worms twisted in those winds, hundreds of them. My troops drifted between the Worms. They still fired off and on, burning Worms who came too close with pencil-thin beams of brilliant light.
Kwon dragged my fingers to a handhold on the hovertank. There were plenty of handholds around the base of every tank for soldiers to hang onto. Kwon crushed my fingers around one of these loops of metal. I would have shouted in pain, but I didn’t care about pain just then. Kwon then used one of his ham-like fists to grip another handhold himself and placed his second hand on the back of my neck. I kept hold of the grip he made for me, but he still held me by the scruff of the neck, as if he didn’t tru
st me and I thought I might let go.
There were marines around me, inside and outside of the tank, but not many of them. I craned my neck back to watch as we raced away, half-dragging marines and smashing down coral-like growths.
I looked back and watched hundreds of marines and Worms, swept high up in a maelstrom. Many of them embraced. Knives and beamers flashed, maws snapped. By ones and twos and clusters of up to a dozen struggling forms, they were all sucked together into nothingness.
I wondered if, when they reached the far side, they continued fighting to the bitter end. I suspected—knowing both my men and the Worms—that they did.
-56-
When we reached our base of bricks, the Macro ship had already landed. Ice crystals, formed no doubt in this strange planet’s upper atmosphere, crackled and fell away in blue-white sheets. I assumed they were formed from water vapor, but I couldn’t really be sure and didn’t care to ask.
The base itself was a mess. They’d suffered a Worm counterattack—possibly one motivated by revenge. I leapt off the tank I’d been riding upon, one that was positively roomy now that we’d lost three quarters of our troops. I sprinted into the bricks, leaping atop the first one I saw. The command brick, which had been situated upon a stack of others in the central compound, had been knocked over. It lay on its side, canted downward so one end was thrust into the ground. The airlock was up high, stuck up into the air. Bodies were everywhere. Most of them were Worms, but one in ten was a marine.
I ran up over a steaming pile of corpses and leapt to the top of one brick, then another. I went to the command brick airlock, and ripped at it.
A hand fell on my shoulder. I whirled. It was Major Robinson. I could tell from the look of him that he’d finally gotten his chance to prove himself in combat. He had a fixt-sized hole in his side that was black and oozing.
“She’s not in there, sir. We evacuated the command post when the Worms flipped it.”
