Steel World

by Larson, B. V.

  “Hold on! Friendly!” shouted a female voice. We drifted down and the owner of the voice peeked out at us.

  “Hi, Inga!” Carlos said.

  I didn’t recognize the girl, but she waved at us as we drifted down.

  “Don’t go down too far,” she said. “I hear its bad down there.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Carlos said unhappily.

  We kept dropping. Once, we heard the chatter of snap-rifle fire in the distance. Twice, I could have sworn someone screamed or at least shouted in pain.

  There wasn’t much we could do. We had our orders. Eventually, we crunched down onto a surface of rough grit. It wasn’t quite sand; it was more like a mixture of ground-up granite and metal shavings.

  I struggled and ended up sitting on my ass while I tried to pry the dish off my foot. Carlos came over and flipped a tiny sliding switch on the rim of the hubcap. Instantly, it sprang off my foot.

  “Magnets, I guess,” he said.

  I nodded and climbed to my feet. He waited for me and let me exit the shaft first.

  It was dark down here. Up on higher levels there had always been light. Now there was nothing but a dim bluish glow. The light seemed to come from strips on the roof of the tunnels. I supposed it was some lizard’s idea of emergency lighting.

  “Let’s turn off our suit lights and go with night vision,” I suggested.

  “Let’s sit in this shaft until the rest of the team gets down here,” Carlos said, voicing a reasonable counter proposal.

  I shook my head. “Orders were to secure the LZ.”

  “Yeah, right, but they aren’t going to know what we did or didn’t do.”

  I frowned at him. Carlos was never going to be Legion Varus’ poster-boy.

  “Fine, I’ll take a look around by myself.”

  I nosed out of the shaft and aimed my rifle in a slow sweep, while looking through the scope. I didn’t see any movement, but I did see a lot of gravel and half-clogged tunnels.

  “It looks like they’ve had some cave-ins or something.”

  “Naturally,” Carlos said. He was right behind me aiming his weapon the other way down the shaft.

  I glanced at him. I’d noticed that he never wanted to do anything adventurous, but if I did it first, he couldn’t hang back. He had to come and look at whatever I was up to. I smiled to myself. Carlos hated to think he was being left out of anything. I guess there were worse traits in a soldier.

  The shaft opened into a tunnel that led to the right and left. We checked out the immediate vicinity, going no more than twenty paces in either direction.

  Carlos flipped on a penlight and splashed it on the walls. After a few seconds, he knelt and fished something out of the rubble. It was a fist-sized lump of reddish, translucent material. It looked like melted glass.

  “You know what this is?” he asked me in a whisper.

  “Junk?”

  “No. My HUD computer says it’s pure ruby. About a thousand carats worth. Would be even better if it was a red diamond. Those are the rarest kind, you know. A raw diamond this size is worth millions.”

  I aimed my snap-rifle in his direction. I indicated he should toss the jewel down with the barrel of my weapon.

  “What’s your problem?” he asked me.

  “I don’t have a problem. You’re the one looking at perma-death for violating Galactic export laws.”

  He made a face and tossed the jewel aside.

  “You’re no fun,” he said.

  We found nothing else of interest so we flipped off our lights again and returned to the shaft.

  When we got there, we heard the rest of the team landing. The second we came around the corner, a half-dozen rifles aimed into our faces. They had their lights on, and we didn’t. They’d been making more noise than we were, and we’d come out of the dark quietly.

  “Report, recruits!” Harris demanded, lowering his weapon.

  “Nothing much. The tunnel runs at least a hundred meters in both directions. It appears to be damaged or unfinished. No contacts, nothing.”

  “All right,” said the Centurion. “We’ll move out—to the north. According to the map, that area is smaller. If we can clear it in an hour, we’ll mark it safe and go south.”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Carlos asked. “What exactly are we looking for? Besides lizards, I mean.”

  “You’re looking for signs of a break-in. The miners reported seeing intruders in the middle levels of the mine. I personally find it unlikely they’d come in this far down, but we just don’t know.

  “A break-in, sir?”

  “As in a tunnel that has been recently dug to merge with these.”

  “One last thing, sir,” Carlos said. “Have any of the other teams met up with the enemy yet?”

  “Negative. There have been some reports of sightings, but they haven’t panned out. People are shooting at phantoms up there.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him. Communications were far from perfect down here. Maybe some other group had run into something and been wiped out. But I decided not to argue about that. Instead, I lifted a hand.

  The Centurion nodded to me.

  “Are we going to divide up in to two-man teams, sir?” I asked, bringing up his initial plan.

  The Centurion directed his light out into the dark, forbidding tunnels. He shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. We’ll stay tight. It will take longer, but since the enemy hasn’t been found yet, and we’re the last ones to get started—we’re going to keep all our firepower together. Now team, if you do see a definite enemy down here, you have my leave to fire. We’re going in hot. There is no legit reason why an innocent lizard would be down here at this point.”

  I was relieved to hear this. I checked my magazine, made sure there were no jams, and flipped off the safety.

  Without asking, Carlos and I headed into the tunnel and swung left. We both knew we were going to be on point until Harris had his share of our blood on his hands. There was no sense in pretending otherwise.

  As we moved forward, I couldn’t help but notice Harris had taken up his position at the rear of the team. I shook my head. I guess he figured that the dinos would have to eat all of us first to get to him.

  We left the group behind again, and I realized Carlos and I weren’t talking anymore. This place was creepy, and we both felt a bad vibe about it. I think it was the quiet. Our boots were the loudest thing down here. We crunched on grit and heard water dripping somewhere. Everything echoed.

  We reached an area that was crisscrossed with tunnels that ran with wet, dripping walls. We began moving from intersection to intersection, staying in cover as much as possible. Carlos and I were leapfrogging from one corner to the next, walking with knees bent on high alert. Puddles of water sent up wisps of steam when our boots splashed into them.

  Carlos signaled me, and I rushed forward across an open side tunnel. As I passed by, I took a glance down that dank, rubble-filled tunnel.

  There was something there, something inhuman. It was crouched over a lump on the ground, and appeared to be digging at it.

  I made it to the far side and threw my back against the tunnel wall. I signaled Carlos, indicating enemy contact.

  He followed our orders, withdrawing to the rest of the team who were about thirty meters behind us. That left me alone with an alien rooting around in the tunnel next to me.

  Quiet fell after Carlos was gone. It was too quiet, I decided. The enemy should have been making some noise doing whatever it had been doing.

  I nosed around the corner to have another look.

  To my surprised, the alien was right there. It must have heard me as well, and had been stalking forward to investigate.

  I could see it clearly now, and knew it was a saurian regular. They looked a lot like the juggers, but smaller, sleeker and faster.

  What happened next surprised me: the saurian lifted a round object. It had to be a weapon. Most of the enemies I’d dealt with on this campaign
had relied on their teeth. A few had possessed advanced weapons, but most hadn’t.

  I fired at him and missed. He’d ducked behind a spur of glittering rock. A flash of blue-white energy lit up the tunnel then. I saw the source clearly: he had a plasma grenade in his claws.

  All this happened in about half a second. I didn’t bother to shoot at him again because there wasn’t time. The grenade was already flying in my direction. I threw myself backward instead, and around the corner from him. I landed on my back, rolled over onto my front, then began crawling away. Blue light built up behind me in a silent flare of energy. I kept crawling. Water splashed up and I could feel the heat of it through my gloves. I reached up and ripped away my night vision goggles.

  Then the grenade went off.

  Light filled the chamber. It was a quiet explosion, like a flashbulb as bright as a blue star rising behind me. The glare of it seemed to burn right through the back of my skull.

  I was lifted up and tossed forward. I felt as if a giant had kicked me right in the ass. A thousand slivers shot into my skin through the smart cloth suit, stinging and making me hiss in pain. I knew what that was, I’d learned about it in training. Plasma grenades were weird. Instead of being an explosive wrapped in metal which turned into fragmentation, they picked up whatever was around them and shot it out in every direction.

  In this case, I was feeling bits of grit and probably even slivers of water from the puddles I’d been scrambling through. They’d been turned into tiny weapons, some of which had punctured my thin suit.

  Half-blinded and in agony, I rolled back over and tried to get to my feet. I knew that the saurian would be backing up its grenade-toss by rushing in close.

  I made it up into a sitting position before the thing was on me. Its claws scrabbled as it eagerly charged and rounded the corner to face me. It scrambled close, making a grunting sound. Behind it, my team had their lights on. They were coming, but not fast enough.

  I knew I was going to die again. I can’t explain how horrible that feeling is. It was worse this time than it had been the last. The first time you face death, you can deny it. You can pretend it really isn’t happening.

  But not the second time around. I knew all too well what being savaged by a half-mad saurian felt like. Their teeth were curved and sharp and numbered in the hundreds.

  I managed to get off a burst of slivers, but that was only enough to get the rifle slammed out of my hands. The thing’s muzzle was lunging forward, dipping down. The jaws opened.

  A rattling cascade of fire came to my ears. I saw the saurian shiver and lurch to one side. It fell heavily and struggled to get up. But before it could, the rest of my team closed in, pumping rounds into it. The tunnels rang with the snap and whistle of our rifles as we shot it again and again.

  I slumped down on my back in pain. Carlos’ face loomed over me.

  “You’re alive?” he asked as if surprised.

  “You’re ugly,” I said.

  They laughed and hauled me up. I found I couldn’t stand. Sitting down was a problem, too.

  Centurion Graves came to me and squatted nearby. He coldly assessed my status. “Can you walk?”

  “Maybe in a minute, sir.”

  “Why are you lying on your side like that?”

  “Because my butt is full of needles, sir.”

  That brought a chuckle from some of the others.

  “Right, plasma grenade. I bet it picked up this grit. Perfect terrain for that kind of weapon. You’re a lucky man, McGill.”

  “People keep telling me that, sir.”

  I didn’t add that I didn’t feel lucky right now. It was probably obvious anyway.

  “All right, McGill will have to be hauled back to the surface. He’s no good to us down here. Veteran Harris? Go back up the shaft and alert the rest of the unit. Tell them we’ve had a confirmed contact, and we have an injured man. I want three more full squads down here in ten minutes. Pull them from the upper levels.”

  “Right, sir,” Harris said. Without missing a beat, he turned to Carlos. “You heard the centurion. Get up that shaft—”

  “Negative, Veteran!” barked Graves.

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me. You, personally, are going to sound the alarm. I doubt these recruits even know how to operate the disks well enough to travel up the shafts again. Get moving.”

  I thought I heard Harris mutter something unpleasant, but I could have been mistaken. He turned and ran double-time for the shafts.

  Carlos tried to help me up, and Graves grabbed my other arm and hauled with him. I was placed on my feet, where I swayed slightly. I could stand, but walking wasn’t in the cards, not yet. Just standing was painful.

  Then the chattering of gunfire came from down the tunnel. We all turned and lifted our rifles.

  It was Harris. He was running back toward us, howling. Behind him thundered a jugger. The thing was racing down the tunnels after him, slapping its fat tail against the walls. Chunks of grit and shale showered the floor with every sweeping step it took.

  -13-

  Harris was aiming his gun behind him and firing blindly as he ran. Orange sparks splattered the walls. I saw that most of his rounds were missing, but a few caused red spots to sprout up on the charging jugger’s chest. Rather than stopping the monster, these injuries only served to piss it off. It ran faster, gaining on Harris.

  “Ready your weapons, but hold your fire,” Centurion Graves ordered calmly.

  We spread out and leveled our rifles. Harris was in the way, or we would have fired. I thought about doing it anyway, but Centurion Graves had given the order to hold, so I held.

  It was a close thing, but Harris didn’t make it. The jugger caught up with him and snatched off his right arm, the one with the rifle in it. Along with the weapon, he lost most of his shoulder and the side of his face.

  It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. One minute, Harris was running for all he was worth, and the next a big portion of his upper body was—just gone. The jugger paused in its charge to toss back the morsel and gulp it down.

  What remained of Harris took one more weird half-step then flopped down into the blood-soaked grit.

  I fired. All of us did. We didn’t wait for Graves to give the order. He was firing too, so I was sure he didn’t mind.

  We tore the monster apart. It took about ten seconds to bring it down. After about ten more seconds of thrashing, it finally lay still.

  Graves walked forward and picked up Harris’ weapon. “Grab his ammo. Split the load. He’ll need it when he’s back in action.”

  So calm, so nonchalant! How many deaths had this man witnessed firsthand? I couldn’t even guess. He’d sounded more concerned about my injuries than he did Harris’ death.

  “I made a mistake,” he said. “I didn’t realize we were being stalked. Recruit, check out that lump in the tunnel down there.”

  He pointed, and I realized he was pointing at Natasha, not me. That made sense, as I was injured.

  It took Natasha by surprise. She was standing next to me, and she looked shocked. I don’t think she’d ever been sent out to scout alone before.

  “What lump, sir?” she asked.

  Graves gestured impatiently. “Whatever McGill saw the saurian messing with. It’s down that tunnel. Recon and report.”

  Natasha was breathing hard. She had a wild look in her eye. She stared at Harris’ mangled body. I could tell she didn’t want to go down any of these tunnels for any reason.

  Graves understood the situation instantly. He walked up to Natasha and smoothly placed his rifle under the woman’s chin.

  I had to admit, upon seeing that, I was unnerved. I instinctively took a firmer grip on my weapon. I felt a protective surge.

  “The penalty for directly disobeying orders is perma-death,” Graves told her. “But I’m a lenient man. If you like, I’ll put you out right here, right now. You can revive later and apologize.”

  “That won’t be necess
ary, Centurion!” Natasha said. She turned and trotted down the tunnel into the dark. I watched her go, not knowing what to think.

  I eyed Graves sidelong. The look on his face reminded me of the first time I’d met him aboard the transport that carried me up to Corvus. He’d been in the emergency compartment dispassionately watching us all suffocate. That same steely-eyed gaze was on his face now. He really didn’t care if Natasha lived or died.

  As if he was aware of my scrutiny, Graves turned to look at me.

  “You don’t approve, Recruit?”

  “I didn’t say anything, sir.”

  “No, you didn’t. Keep it that way. You’re here to learn, and you’ve already learned a lot. Never forget what the tribune told you, McGill: Legion Varus is playing for keeps on this planet. If you don’t like it, you can get out in five more years.”

  Natasha reached the lump in the tunnel and examined it for about three seconds with her suit light. Then she raced back toward us as if her butt was on fire. I didn’t blame her. Every shadow looked dangerous to us now.

  “It’s another saurian, sir,” she reported. “It appears to be a miner, and it looks as if it’s half-eaten.”

  Graves nodded. “Dinos aren’t averse to cannibalism,” he said, as if he was describing some kind of strength. “There does appear to be a rebellion among the miners here, but it’s much bigger than a few unpaid juggers. The enemy includes both large and small lizards, and one example of something else, if McGill is to be believed. Puzzling.”

  He gave me a cold glance. I got the feeling he didn’t entirely believe my account of the alien I’d met in the forest.

  I shrugged. I didn’t care what he believed, because I’d seen it with my own eyes. Hell, I’d shot it to death.

  Graves turned and signaled two fresh recruits to take point. I was relieved. Natasha came to my side and helped me walk.

  We proceeded as a tight group back up the tunnel.

  There were no more mishaps until we reached the shafts themselves. I stared in disbelief when we got there. The shafts were full of rubble.