by Pen
Rachel was still staring at the giant machine, which was making a low whine, like gears that were stuck and couldn’t move. “Let’s get on with this and then get the hell out of here,” she said warily.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Ward said. He reached back down and felt the door for a seam. Pain pulsed off his trembling shoulders, but he did his best to ignore it.
The door was perfectly smooth steel. It probably opened remotely. Finally, he found the main seam down the middle, but there was no room for him to insert his fingers. He wondered if the new super-charged servos in his armor could do the trick of pulling the large door open, but if he couldn’t get his fingers inside the seam he’d never be able to find out.
“Maybe I should just pound it?” he said, peering up at Rachel, who was now studying her RDSD.
“Dunno. I’m trying to find the code they use to trigger it.”
“Yeah, I figure it opens on its own, right?” Ward said.
Rachel grimaced at him. “Not with two-hundred pounds of doofus standing on it, it doesn’t. Maybe you should—” Rachel’s words fell off as she raised her head. Her eyes flew open. She was looking past Ward, above him. Her feet started scrambling backward. Her whole body read: panic!
Ward turned to look behind him just as she screamed.
The giant worm had detached the segment that the disablers had hit. The worthless section lay discarded where it had crashed. Where was the rest of it? A shadow covered his face, and he peered up just in time to see the great machine plunging from the sky, seconds away from swallowing him up.
A new, smaller set of spinning blades whirled around the new “mouth” at the front of the end segment. Did every section have its own set of blades? And would he have to disable each individual segment to stop the damn thing?
He would have no time to answer those questions.
The worm smashed down on top of him, and they disappeared as the door Ward was standing on gave way, blasted open from the impact.
The two of them fell through open space.
The last thing Ward heard was Rachel screaming his name.
* * *
Rachel Dodge dashed for the opening.
The dirt-covered steel door had been ripped off its hinges and thrown into the dimly lit cavern that Rachel was now staring down into. It was a long drop to the bottom. No sign of Ward or the worm, only the now clean, silver remnants of the steel door reflecting up at her from the cavern floor below. There was a dim light source down there. She could hear crashes and booms emanating from deep inside, but due to the darkness down there and the bright sun up top, she couldn’t see the source. Was that Ward fighting the worm, or was it something else? Was Ward even still alive after taking that hit from the worm? Rachel shivered.
Shaking off an image of Ward crushed beneath the metal mouth of the machine, she unhooked the small intelli-hook gun she had attached to her utility belt. She always traveled lightly. A small i-hook gun, a supply of lock putty, her trusty RDSD, and a few MagCharges were her staple tools of the trade.
She aimed the gun at the opening and fired the i-hook. It latched onto the mouth of the opening, and she lowered herself over the precipice as if she were rappelling down a cliff face.
It was an easy climb down. The opening was filled with dirt on all sides, essentially a vertical tunnel that led to the cavern. She wondered how the burrowing worm hadn’t caved in the cavern roof. When she got to the bottom, which formed the ceiling of the large underground space, she saw the answer: a titanium roof covered the cavern. There were clear signs of wear and tear and worm-shaped indentations from the other side that indicated the machine had slithered across the titanium with regularity.
The whole cavern was dimly lit by fist-sized lamps embedded into stone walls.
As she slipped into the dim light, the booming sound got louder.
As her eyes adjusted she saw, one hundred feet ahead of her, Paul Ward in the fight of his life against the giant worm.
Ward had already disabled two more sections of the worm, and as she looked on, he fired another dart straight into the mouth of the worm as it charged him head on.
The space he was in was just the cave version of the field above them. Nothing but dirt. Stone walls. Nothing down here, Rachel noted. Nothing but Paul and this fucking robot.
The worm shook like a dog shaking off water, and the dead segment flung away, crashing into the cave’s stone wall and sending up blue sparks.
And it charged Ward again. This time it reached him. Ward could do little more than grab the edges of the worm’s mouth and hold on. The worm slammed him back-first into the stone wall. Rachel hoped his wings would still work after that.
Hoped his spine would too.
That was answered as Ward kicked the worm away from him. The new bug suit made him strong. And now with just two segments left, the worm was not the overwhelming beast it had been before. It was slower but still powerful.
Why wasn’t he flying above the thing? Maybe the wings were already toast.
Ward ignited the wings, and Rachel’s fears were confirmed. They sputtered and coughed, just enough to help Ward leap over another surge from the Worm. But they certainly weren’t going to fly him anywhere. The machine rammed into the wall below him a millisecond later.
Then, Rachel heard herself scream his name again as part of the stone facing of the wall crumbled and gave way from this final assault by the machine. The rock avalanched down onto Ward, knocking him out of the air before he’d even had a chance to land, and buried him in a pile of boulders and rock.
The worm burst free from under the rubble and turned to find the source of Rachel’s voice.
She blinked invisible.
The worm scooted over to the center of the cavern, searching. Rachel just hung there, not moving a muscle, barely breathing. She could feel her arms starting to shake when the machine finally lost interest and returned back to the rock pile.
Carefully and quietly as she could, Rachel lowered herself to the ground. Less than a foot of cable remained in the i-hook when her feet touched down. That was a relief. Not only did she not want to have to fall to the ground, because—ouch! She was also sure the worm would hear or feel her vibrations if she did.
With her eyes now adjusted to the lack of light, she noticed a small tunnel-like opening on the far wall opposite from where Ward was buried. It gave her an idea.
Rachel watched as the worm returned its focus to the rock pile. The spinning blades from its mouth began cutting through the boulders, evidently searching for the fallen Ward.
She needed to hurry. Rachel tiptoed her way to the back of the worm as carefully as she could. Standing right between the final two sections of the worm as it dug, she pulled out two MagCharges and tossed them as quickly as she could at both segments—they clanged on to the steel shell and stuck. She bolted away from the worm, moving faster than she ever had before.
And froze.
The worm turned. Obviously, its sensors had picked up on the placement of the charges, not to mention her sprinting footfalls. It spun its body to and fro, searching—but it saw nothing.
Soon it was back to digging for Ward, so Rachel headed for the other end of the room and the small tunnel she had spied, stepping as carefully and lightly as she could. As she did so, she used the RDSD to set the MagCharges to explode in one minute. She got to the tunnel just as she heard the sound of the digging change. She peered back and saw Ward’s boot sticking out of the rubble. The worm had found him.
Shit!
Climbing up in the tunnel she made a decision. She turned visible again and leaped back down onto the cavern floor with a loud—thud. The worm instantly sensed the vibration.
It turned.
“C’mon, you bastard! Come get me!” she yelled. She could see that the worm had unearthed both of Ward’s legs—which looked to still be attached. And then she saw one of those legs move. He was still alive!
The machine charged after her.
>
The worm was moving incredibly fast. There were still thirty seconds left on the RDSD’s counter. The damn thing would be on top of her by then. She reached down and remotely triggered the charges just as the worm reached the center of the cavern.
It exploded in a shower of metal and sparks.
The worm was dead. There were no segments left.
Rachel sprinted over to Ward, dodging burning worm debris on the way. He was trying to push the rocks off of him, and she helped as best she could. When she was finally able to see his face, blood was oozing out from under the mask, but he smiled.
“I think I’ve got worms,” he gasped.
Rachel retrieved her i-hook from the opening and helped Ward detach his wings from the bug suit. It took him only about fifteen minutes to fix them. The impact with the stone wall had caused part of the compression unit to jam, he told her. No big deal. And he then proceeded to tell her every small detail.
She didn’t understand a fucking word, but what she did know was that their ride home was back in business.
And with that settled, she went back to searching for the power source they’d come to sabotage. The RDSD pointed them toward the big stone wall.
The one with the tunnel built into it.
* * *
The tunnel was small and, like the large cavern they were standing in, dimly lit by fist-sized lamps embedded into the stone. Ward peeked down the passageway and spied a hard bend back to the left about fifty feet in.
Rachel tapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve got this one, sexy. Why don’t you take a load off.”
“I just did,” he quipped, glancing back at the rock pile.
She grimaced, pulled out her RDSD, and disappeared. Ward could hear her shimmy up into the mouth of the tunnel. Her footsteps faded into the passageway.
“What do you think?” Ward asked into the shadows.
“Looks like the energy source is on the other side of this wall, and I don’t see another way in but this.”
A loud rumble rose up behind them.
“Fuck me, not again!” Rachel breathed, and reappeared in the tunnel.
The earth exploded behind them, and a new worm came whipping out of the ground, maw open, drills extended and spinning toward them.
“Hold on!” Ward shouted as he ignited his wings, keeping them folded tight against his back so they would fit. He launched forward through the mouth of the passage, tackling Rachel into his arms and zooming deeper into the dimly lit tunnel.
When Ward realized what part of her upper torso his hands had grabbed he felt his cheeks flush hot, and he moved them down. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“Just go!” Rachel shouted.
A mechanical roar bellowed behind them.
They snapped their heads back to see the worm—close, too close—bounding up the tunnel at incredible, frenetic speed. Gaining on them. The tunnel hadn’t been built for a human. It was just big enough to fit one of the worms.
Ward goosed the engines, and they shot ahead. Turning his head back forward in the same moment, he saw the tunnel take another hard curve to the left. It was too late to adjust their flight path. His right shoulder smashed into the rock wall of the passage, absorbing the blow, keeping Rachel out of harm’s way. Her suit was not armor. A blow like that could snap her collarbone.
The passageway twisted hard back to the right. Followed immediately by a second twist to the right.
Ward could feel the machine gaining on them. “Shit! I can’t increase our speed with all these twists and turns!”
Above the quiet engine of his wings he could hear the worm’s awful roar and the sound of rocks cracking behind them as it used the tunnel walls to speed itself toward them. The buzzing of the razor-sharp drills rose louder.
This worm was clearly an expert at using the tunnel.
“I’m gonna try the darts! Hold on!” Ward shouted to her. With his right arm still planted firmly around her, he dropped his left behind him, loaded the disabling darts, and took quick glances back.
The worm was two feet from them now.
“Wait!” Rachel shouted. “Look!”
A ghostly blue glow began to stain the stone wall in front of them, growing brighter.
He rounded the final bend in the stone, and they blasted out into a large opening.
Ward had only enough time to notice that they had entered into another enormous cavern before a colossal, crackling blue energy field was upon them.
Right in front of them.
“Don’t hit that thing!” Rachel shouted, and Ward pulled them up as hard as he could, arcing upward toward the stone roof of the cavern.
The sound, light, and power of the blue energy was nearly overwhelming. It crackled before them in a grid-like pattern.
The worm could make no such move. It flew out of the hole and slammed into the energy at top speed.
And exploded.
Segment after segment of the worm’s mechanical body plowed into it like freight train cars slamming into a wall, bursting apart in bright-blue sparks of energy. Metal shrapnel zoomed up at them.
A worm popping in a giant bug zapper, Ward thought. He tried his best to dodge the careening shrapnel. He kicked at it. Punched at it. Anything to keep it from flaying Rachel alive.
With so much attention paid to the shredding worm, he lost track of where he was going.
“A little close to the girls, don’t you think?” Rachel shouted to him. Uncharacteristic panic laced her usual snarkiness.
Ward glanced down and saw that the shrapnel had stopped spewing up at them. There was nothing left of the worm.
But then he saw what had Rachel panicked.
Her torso was only inches from the energy field, not to mention his own hands. He’d let them fly far too close to the grid. Any closer and they would both lose some appendages. He grunted, giving it everything he had, his spine bending further than he would have said was possible. His head pounded from the strain. He saw stars. Rachel screamed too as he squeezed her tighter than he should have—the servos in his armor triggering.
But it was working. They arced backwards away from danger.
Peering above him, he saw he had a new problem. The cavern roof was quickly approaching.
“Shit!” he yelled. There was no way he could stop them in time. He applied the brakes, but the stone facing raced toward them. He tried to turn his body, take the bulk of the impact.
Just then his eyes scanned over a dark shape to his left. He snapped his head in that direction, and at the last possible moment, saw what it was.
Open space above the energy field.
Ward gave it everything he had, screaming at the top of his lungs, and swerved them to the left. His right arm slammed into the roof of the cavern. But he made the turn, and even as his arm screamed in agony, he’d managed to hold on to Rachel.
He slowed their speed as they soared over the top of the blue energy grid.
“You okay?” he asked her.
Rachel grimaced and rubbed her ribs. “Didn’t know you liked the rough stuff.”
Ward smiled. She was okay. “Sorry.”
The energy grid was connected to a series of seven black girders that together formed a cage-like structure over the crackling blue substance. Below the grid and the black beams was what looked like a giant pool of more blue energy. It was beautiful and at the same time seemed incredibly deadly.
Ward set them down on one of the black steel girders. There wasn’t much room. Each beam was no more than about three feet across. Tight, considering a misstep meant falling into certain death. And Rachel couldn’t fly.
“What the hell do you think this is?” Ward said, peering around at the strange structure.
“I have no idea,” Rachel said, wide-eyed. “The AI controller’s got to be here somewhere, though. This is definitely the location, but all this energy is jamming up my signals. I can’t pinpoint it.” She pulled out her RDSD and scanned the area one more time. “That’s weird,�
�� she said, pointing at the stone cavern. “Those walls are porous.”
Ward shrugged. “More passageways?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s solid stone, but it’s built kind of like a sponge.”
“This whole damn place is weird.” Ward surveyed the structure. He couldn’t see any way a human could easily service this thing. The whole structure looked like a death trap. “Gotta be for a drone, right? Not built for a human. You figure the worms are some kind of cargo system?”
“Yeah, as well as a defensive measure. But this wall wasn’t built for those worm things, either.”
Ward thought about that, then snapped his eyes back toward the darkness of the stone walls surrounding them. “Does that mean there’s some other kind of monster waiting for us in the dark?”
Just then his eyes caught a glimmer along the stone facing of the cavern. Something shiny and reflective in the ghostly blue glow. He snapped back to find it. “What the hell?”
“What?” Rachel asked.
“What is that?” Ward was pointing to the far cavern wall straight out in front of them, ten feet above.
As they stared at it, a shape emerged from the shadows. A shiny sphere. Something on the sphere was moving. Smaller spheres, maybe? Then the entire object moved to its left just slightly—a jerky, awkward movement.
That’s when they both saw them. Their words caught in their throats. Attached to the sphere were eight mechanical legs. The small spheres on the body were eyes.
Another glimmer caught Rachel’s eye to her left. She spun to see it.
Her jaw dropped.
The whole wall was glimmering in front of them. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “I think I know what cargo the worm carried down here.” The entire wall was teeming with giant, gleaming metal spiders. Crawling slowly out of the porous holes she had noticed earlier.
“First worms, now spiders. Someone’s got a sick sense of humor!” Ward said.
“I bet they built this place,” Rachel said.
Ward grunted. “Fascinating theory. Got any on what we do now?”
