by John Ringo
“Get the left,” Powell shouted as a wall of fire came by Champion’s suit.
Champion bit down on his trigger, sending a stream of .50 caliber rounds down the corridor, but he could not track in on the charging demon…
“Chither!” he shouted as the demon latched onto the leg of his suit and flipped him onto his face. Their contact may have had no inertia to it, but the low-slung, powerful alien was more than capable of lifting a Wyvern suit off its feet.
“Got it,” Kaijahano said, firing a single cannon round into the dog-demon’s exposed back.
“We got company,” First Sergeant Powell said, dropping to a knee and firing down the corridor. “Sir, the entry is blocked. Too many to bull through.”
“Platoon,” Berg said calmly, “take positions and open fire.”
“How many of these things are there?” Ducksworth asked rhetorically. The corridor was getting piled up with bodies of Dreen, mostly dog-demons.
“A lot,” Champion replied. With his mangled suit-leg, he could only fire from the prone but it didn’t really matter. His team was belly down, side by side with him, while Bravo took a knee and Alpha was standing. The wall of fire had the Dreen stopped in the corridor and there were no more forks, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a way around. If there were enough of them, and under an intelligent controller, they could use the corridors to bypass the blocking position and hit them in the rear.
Of course, then they’d run into Third Platoon, who were patiently waiting for an opportunity to get it stuck in.
“Or not,” Champion said as the wave receded. “Sir, we’re out of targets.”
“Either they’re out of bodies or the controller has taken a different choice,” Berg said. “Hold your position…”
“…stopped,” Berg said over the command freq.
“We still need to get into that room,” Weaver replied.
“How’s your ammo level?” Lieutenant Ross asked.
“Nominal,” Berg replied. “We’re still all in the green. One suit mobility damaged.”
“Third will remain in support,” Lieutenant Ross said. “Second platoon will assault forward into the room. Move it out, Two-Gun.”
“Chither,” Berg said, sliding to the floor of the immense cavern, then popping back up to look around. He couldn’t exactly stop for sight-seeing but it looked much like the other crystal caves, just immensely larger and with much larger crystals.
The crystals were the problem, as it was apparent the remaining Dreen were using them for cover. He could see a mass of fungus towards the rear of the compartment but between the Marines and the fungus a horde of Dreen thorn-throwers darted in and out from the pillars, laying down a wall off fire.
The only cover was the one difference between this compartment and the others, besides the size, a low wall that had an opening by the corridor but stretched in a semicircle around the compartment, truncating by both side walls. However, there was a fifty-meter open area between the wall and the crystals the Dreen were using for cover.
“I’m hit!” Shingleton screamed. “Grapp, I’m hit!”
“Stay frosty, Kelly,” Sergeant Bae said. “How bad is it… ?”
“We need to clear those pillars,” Lieutenant Bergstresser said. “Somebody needs to flank them!”
“Then you do it, sir!” Champion snarled. The sergeant had crawled forward on his belly and barely made it to cover behind the wall. But he was up and firing over it. Just as the last words left his mouth, though, he let out an “unk” and fell back, blood pouring out of his suit.
Berg was sorely tempted to do just that, but he also knew it wasn’t his job.
Bae was down a man. With Champs gone that left…
“Staff Sergeant Carr,” Berg said. “You will move your team to the right, using the wall for cover. When you reach the end of the wall, report in. We will provide cover fire for your movement to the pillars. Take the Dreen force in the flank and drive them out.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the staff sergeant replied. “Dupe, Rucker, on me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“We lost Sergeant Champion and Lance Corporal Rucker, KIA,” Eric reported tonelessly. “Corporal Shingleton was injured by a thorn and we’ve been unable to stop the bleeding. He needs to be evacuated to the base. There appears to be a final defensive point beyond the fungus. When Staff Sergeant Carr’s team attempted to approach from beyond the last crystal pillar, they took plasma fire. He stated that it was white in color, not green.”
“Nitch,” First Sergeant Powell said. “Maybe Mreee. Both of them use blasters and the plasma is white.”
“That was where we lost Rucker,” Carr said. “It tracked in on him. Right around the cover of the crystals.”
“Yeah, that’s one of those Mreee/Nitch blasters,” Powell said. “They’ll do that.”
“We couldn’t even get a good look at who was firing,” Carr said. “There’s a bunch of spread-fungus down there, too. I’d rather not get into that if we can avoid it.”
“We need to clear this compartment, Staff Sergeant,” Bill said. “But I’ll admit we need something to clear the fungus so we can.” He thought about that for a second and then snapped his fingers, the claws of his suit trying to follow suit. “Miriam.”
“Miriam can clear the compartment?” Lieutenant Ross said, surprised. “How, sir?”
“Let’s get your wounded and KIA back to the camp, Lieutenant,” Bill said. “I need to talk to Miss Moon.”
“Well, of course, I brought some with me,” Miriam said. “I’m not done studying them. I’ll admit, this isn’t the best environment…”
The camp had been moved to one of the larger crystal caves and even the conversation of the camp tended to trigger the crystals. The whole area was lit by effulgent light from the glittering pillars.
“Well, here’s an experiment for you,” Bill said. “We can’t clear that forward compartment until we get rid of the fungus in the way; that stuff will infest a Wyvern suit like nobody’s business. Can your spiders clear it?”
“I’ve only got the two,” Miriam said. “But they’re parthenogenic. I don’t actually know what their rate of reproduction would be in an optimal environment…”
“Would an optimal environment be a pile of dead Dreen?” Bill asked. “We’ve got that.”
“I’m not sure,” Miriam said. “I’ve never been able to experiment with Class Four biologies. The best I can suggest is we can try.”
“It looks dead,” Eric said, examining the space spider through the glass of the box.
“I evacuated the air,” Miriam said. “They go into hibernation in vacuum.”
She twisted the valve on the inlet, letting air into the box, and the spider immediately began to move.
“Okay,” she said, opening it up and dropping the spider onto one of the dead dog-demons. “Here goes nothing.”
The arachnoid appeared to be surprised to be awake, spinning in place in confusion, then began wandering across the dead Dreen, its antenna waving. When it found the exit wound from the .50 caliber that had killed the Dreen it paused for a moment then dove into the hole.
“I wonder what it’s — ” Eric started to say, then there were crunching sounds from inside the Dreen. “Yuck.”
“Interesting,” Miriam said. “No reaction to the increased oxygen that I can determine.” She sat down with her back to the bulkhead and pulled out a lab book. “Time is… fourteen twenty-three. Now to see what happens…”
“That didn’t take long,” Eric said, trying not to retch as small arachnoids streamed out of the collapsing carcass of the Dreen. It had been less than two hours and starting with one of the space spiders the dog-demon was now almost totally consumed.
“Their rate of propagation in the presence of food resources from a Class Four biology is amazing,” Miriam said. “Can you grab a couple of them so I can observe rate of growth? I’d love to get a count on them but I think that’s going to be hard. Two thousan
d, you think?”
“I cannot listen to that anymore!” Sergeant Bae screamed, his Wyvern’s claws up against his sensor pod. “Okay, external audio is off!”
“That shouldn’t happen to… a Dreen,” Eakins said, turning his sensors away from the pile of Dreen bodies.
When the wave of arachnoids from the first dead dog-demon hit the pile of Dreen by the entrance, they exploded, reproducing in enormous numbers. It had taken two hours to reduce the first Dreen to bones. It took about the same to do it to a hundred.
“They’re moving,” Staff Sergeant Carr said.
The, by then, hundreds of thousands of spiders had moved into the compartment, spreading out in a quest for more sustenance. They found it first in the scattered bodies of thorn-throwers, but that satiated them for barely five minutes. Then they hit the fungus.
“Now that’s…”
“…A hell of a thing,” Berg said. He had used the cover of the pillars to move forward where he could observe the effect of the spiders on the Dreen fungus. Miriam had wanted to do it, but he’d forced her to wait in the corridor and monitor his video.
The spiders weren’t having it all their own way. He saw dozens, hundreds, of them being captured by pseudopods thrown out by the fungus. The same thing had happened to humans during the Dreen war and even after. It had especially happened to the armies and mujahideen militias in the Middle East who had thrown themselves into the Dreen “crusaders” much as the arachnoids were doing.
But this was a small patch of fungus and a lot of spiders. While one might get captured by the fungus, a dozen other of the creatures swarmed over the pseudopod, eating it as fast as it could digest its captured prey. Sometimes captured spiders even survived, breaking out to attack the fungus in their own turn. Some were partially absorbed, leaving shredded corpses behind. Perhaps the fungus gained some sustenance from them, but it was being eaten too fast to do anything with it.
As Eric watched, one of the most dreaded things in the galaxy shriveled and fell to the cute little spiders, who munched their way across, unheeding of losses, chewing it up, reproducing even as they moved, leaving little spiders behind which caught at the shreds, moved onward…
“Thirty-two minutes to ingest one hundred and sixty-four square meters of spread-fungus,” Miriam said. “Not bad. Full time to clear the compartment, from one spider, was approximately four hours forty-nine minutes. Lieutenant Bergstresser, your compartment is now clear of fungus as far as I can see.”
“Right,” Berg said. “Gunny Juda, move teams forward by fire and maneuver to clear the compartment of remaining threats…”
“Sir, this is Bae! You need to see this, sir!”
“This” was a Nitch, a much larger arachnoid than the ones that had cleared the compartment, standing nearly eight feet at the shoulders. The Nitch were one of two Dreen slave races the humans had encountered in the Dreen War, the other being the felinoid Mreee. While the Mreee were a relatively recent addition to the Dreen empire, having been conquered within the lifetime of one of the survivors of the war, the Nitch had been slaves since time immemorial.
The spiderlike Nitch had silvery bodies that reflected oddly in any sort of complex background and actually acted as natural camouflage. But this one was easy enough to see, rolled onto its back, its blaster lying more then ten feet away as if tossed and its legs pulled up in contortions. It was also, quite clearly, dead.
“What’s this?” Bae asked, squatting down next to the giant spider. “It’s leaking fluid from holes on its sides.”
“It was the sentient controller,” Berg said, staying well back. He did not particularly like spiders and Nitch gave him the willies. The space spiders were just different enough from true spider forms he found them okay, but Nitch… “They’re generally hooked into the fungus through tubes that feed them and I guess that they use to control the rest of the Dreen. If there was Dreen stuff in them…”
A juvenile space spider fell out through one of the holes, walked a few feet and then stopped, its legs pulling in and its carapace wrapping around it in hibernation mode.
This end of the compartment was littered with the hibernating space spiders, so many that it was impossible not to step on them. With the food supply exhausted, they’d apparently shut down in hopes that something would turn up. Space spiders appeared to be nothing if not patient.
“Well, let’s get him back to base,” Eric said, turning to leave and treading on another of the spider bodies. “And we’ll need to get the compartment swept up. I figure Captain Weaver will be up here with his guitar in about…”
“We got a way to get these things cleaned up, Lieutenant?” Weaver asked, walking up, guitar in hand. “I’m afraid the crunching will interfere with the acoustics…”
“We must watch the Tree closely for any change,” Colonel Che-chee said over the comm. Nine of the dragonflies were parked outside the field of the Tree, hiding in its shade, while the tenth was waiting by the space dock. “In the event we observe any change, Cha-shah will immediately enter the space dock and report. My chronometer says that Captain Weaver will be starting at any time. Observe closely, males! Any change in the light patterns, even the slightest! Any change in the particle emiss… Oh My GOD!”
“CAPTAIN WEAVER!” the communicator screamed. “Colonel Che-chee requests that you cease playing immediately!”
“Why?” Weaver bellowed. “Anna Gadda Da Vida… !”
“Sir… sir…” the communications tech stuttered. “JUST STOP!”
“That’s a hell of a thing,” Weaver said, watching the video from Colonel Che-chee’s helmet camera.
On the dot of the time-stamp of his starting to play, the entire Tree jumped about five times in luminosity. But that wasn’t the really strange part. It began collapsing upwards, the base expanding in size at the same time, the higher points sliding in line with lower and stretching out. He’d stopped before the full transformation could take effect.
“And there was no apparent effect from inside?” Bill asked. “I was up front, so the change never got to me.”
“Not that anyone could tell, sir,” Captain Zanella said. “Until we got the transmission from Colonel Che-chee, we had no idea there had been a change.”
“That’s not all, sir,” Figueredo said. The astronomy tech had been sent along to assist in investigations. While the exploration of the interior of the Tree had been uninteresting, the readings that he got from the Cheerick suits… “Admittedly, they were shielded by the Tree. But there was a sharp change in stellar emissions. They actually dropped.”
“Run that one by me again,” Bill said. “Define.”
“Local heat output dropped by ten percent,” the astronomy tech replied. “Solar wind dropped by thirty percent. Cosmic ray scatter dropped by nine. Those are near orders, sir, but probably close to accurate. Whatever this thing was doing, it was affecting the star, sir.”
“Okay,” Bill said, looking at the Cheerick. “Colonel, I want you to refuel your dragonflies then move out to at least two AU and observe the effects. But not all of them. Send two males.”
“You think there may be hazard?” the colonel asked.
“I have no grapping clue, Colonel,” Bill admitted. “But I’d rather not lose the flight commander.”
“Freebird?” Weaver muttered to himself. “Too slow. “Smoke on the Water?” Too bass. “Jungle Love?” Too campy… Ah!”
He hummed to himself for a moment, then started slamming the guitar strings, his eyes closed and grooving to the music. When he finished the intro, he just had to open his mouth. The hell with these crystals and not liking his singing…
“When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town,” he screamed over the guitar, “Down around San Antone, And the folks are risin’ for another day… round about their homes…”
“Sir!” Eric shouted. “Sir! Open your eyes!”
Weaver looked up and the guitar twanged a loud, flat C chord as it slid to a stop. Because he could see
what he was doing.
He couldn’t see what was happening to the Tree, but he could see the effects. The walls of the room had become transparent and all four of the Jovians were in view. Something was causing the massive planets to fluoresce in different colors. The only thing that would do that, Weaver knew, was massive energy input. Offhand, the amount of joules just wouldn’t register. Actually, for a moment they did, then his brain locked up trying to count the zeros. Pretty close to the total output of Earth’s sun was the best he could figure. For each Jovian. The energetic gas was flashing in all the colors of the rainbow and as the Jovians moved it streamed out behind.
“Don’t stop!” Eric shouted again. “It’s just started!”
Weaver caught up the melody again, grooving on the music and playing for all he was worth. But this time he kept his eyes open. This show was just too good to miss.
“Well, the secret of the Tum-Tum Tree is finally explained,” Captain Zanella said, shaking his head.
“It’s a concert venue,” Weaver finished, grinning. “It’s a grapping interstellar concert venue.”
While Weaver was playing in the control compartment, the wall of the compartment the camp had been moved to became transparent as well. As the Tree spun on its axis, the Jovians could be seen fluorescing while the music was transmitted to the entire crew. After a few minutes of playing, the “beams” that the Tree was shooting out began collecting the gases, drawing them towards the Tree and fluorescing them along their entire length. The whole solar system was lit up with cascading waves of lambent color, reds, blues, greens, purples, every color of the rainbow as the gases reacted to the massive power of the Tum-Tum Tree and formed a huge spiral of shining, rippling light.
