by B. V. Larson
I had respect for Graves. I had respect for Harris, too, even if he did piss me off at moments like this. Both of us sucked in a breath and took a step back from one another. I realized I’d been visualizing Harris’ next death at my own hands. That sort of thing wasn’t good for morale.
Graves looked from me to Harris and back again.
“You know,” he said. “You two have always been annoying to every officer I put in charge of you. Did you know that? They complain every time. Now I can see what they mean.”
Harris seemed surprised. “Just doing my job, Centurion.”
“Yeah, I know,” Grave said.
“Sir, can we just investigate the tunnels?” I asked. “We’re in a relatively safe position here. The boulders are stopping the enemy’s heavy gun. We have a little time.”
“But that can’t last,” Leeson said suddenly. I think he was worried that Graves might listen to me. “We’d just be giving them more time to set up their defenses.”
Graves was busy with his tapper while we argued for a minute or so. When he finally looked up, his face was unreadable.
“I just texted McGill’s idea to the Primus,” he said. “She told me I have half an hour to try it out. After that, the general attack begins.”
Leeson and Harris were stunned. I tried to look cool, but inside I felt triumphant—that was until I heard the rest of what Graves had to say.
“McGill, you’re going in. I can’t afford an officer, or too many troops for that matter. But I need someone senior to vouch for what you find. Harris will handle that. He’s in command. Take three regulars who can walk and head into the tunnels. Remember, you have thirty minutes—or at least you did three minutes ago. Hustle up, people!”
I think Harris was in shock. His mouth hung open. He wanted to argue, but he’d just received a direct order, and he was too much of a soldier for that.
Graves had a hint of a smile on his face. “A little time together in a hole might do you two some good,” he said. “You might bond or something.”
Or something. I was still thinking of murder—and I knew Harris was doing the same.
When Graves moved off to organize his remaining forces, Harris snarled at me and slammed his shoulder into mine as he passed by. Walking along the huddled lines, he tapped three regulars announcing they’d just volunteered. The last “volunteer” he selected was Kivi.
This pissed me off. I figured he’d tapped her just to irritate me. He had to know Kivi and I had an informal thing going on—everybody did. He figured that if he had to go underground with me, he would damn well bring along my girlfriend, too. Probably if Natasha and Carlos were here, they’d have been picked next.
We gathered up our kits and made our way uphill into the highest boulders up near the cliffs. I was in the lead, as I’d seen the colonists vanish into these rocks with my own eyes.
“It was up here when I first saw them do it,” I said, crouching and scanning the rocks.
Harris nosed up next to me. “Isn’t this where that hot little number shot you in the face?” he asked, as if eager to hear the story again.
I looked at him, and he grinned at me.
“It was a knife, but yeah, that’s about right. They came up out of slits in the rocks right along here. See those shadows under the boulders? They aren’t just shadows. They’re narrow tunnel entrances.”
Harris scoffed, eyeing them. “How the hell is a fully-kitted heavy trooper supposed to get into that weasel-hole?”
“Like this, vet,” I said, sliding toward it feet-first.
I almost got stuck, but I made it through. I had to shed my power-pack and drag it along with my weapon behind me, but I made it inside.
“Don’t go running off to make out with some tunnel-slut, you hear?” Harris shouted loudly.
Kivi was right there at his side, not looking at either of us.
Grumbling to myself, I flipped on my lights and had a look around. The tunnel was tight, and it rambled off in several directions. I investigated while the others came down after me one at a time.
My algorithm for searching the tunnel complex was simple enough. I took whatever route seemed to be going downhill, explored until I met a dead-end, then turned around and searched the next branch. When we spotted smaller side-passages, we sent in one of the others to scout.
In the first ten minutes, we had only one bad moment. A fresh-faced legionnaire named Perez found a booby-trap.
I’d been of the opinion that the traps were only in the rocks above, set to catch invaders before they entered the tunnel network—but I’d thought wrong. Perez was jabbed right in the butt with a black-tipped stick. The nano-metal was black and shaped like an arrow or maybe a small spear.
Heavy troopers have armor over their butts just like the rest of our bodies, but the same weakness existed there that existed at our shoulder joints. The tip penetrated the polymer joints at the hips and sank in just enough to graze her skin inside.
Hungry nanites flooded her bloodstream. Our suits have good medical systems and can even perform life-saving operations, such as amputations, if necessary, but Perez was struck too close to her vital organs. The nanites quickly coursed through her blood to her heart and consumed her.
Perez shivered and gagged. She said it was like having ants inside her guts—huge metal ones.
Harris did the honors, frowning. He put his sidearm up to the woman’s chin. Perez nodded. We couldn’t do anything else other than leave her. We didn’t have time to wait around until she hemorrhaged and died.
“I’ll see you next time, girl,” Harris said, almost gently. This kind of surprised me, as I’d generally thought of him as a heartless prick.
His beam glowed, and Perez relaxed, eyes glazing. The nanites were still busy in there, hollowing her out, but at least she didn’t have to feel it.
“Nasty people, these colonists of yours, McGill,” Harris growled at me.
“They aren’t mine, Vet,” I said. “And remember, they laid these traps for littermates and slavers. Not for us. We’re new in town.”
Harris waved for me to get moving. I went back to exploring the tunnels.
About seven minutes later, I was ready to give up. With less than ten minutes left, we had lost a good fighter, and we still hadn’t found anything.
Then I saw something new. Something I hadn’t expected, but I knew the second I saw it that I should have expected it.
I saw a pair of eyes down one long, dark tunnel. They stared back at me from the darkness.
“Vet, hold up,” I called over my shoulder.
“What have you got, McGill? Is a snake eating you for dinner now?”
“Just hold your position, please.”
Harris and the others grumbled, but they stopped moving and stared after me.
I waved at the eyes in the darkness. They blinked, but didn’t move. Taking a chance, I scooted closer—but not too fast.
The eyes vanished, retreated. I spotted them again a little farther away. I chewed my cheeks for a second, considering.
“Hey,” I said in a loud whisper. “I know you. Talk to me.”
The eyes appeared again. They were narrow and suspicious. “Why are you here?” demanded the owner.
“You’re Stott, aren’t you?” I asked.
“You don’t belong here. I should kill you—again.”
Hmm. My hand slipped to my sidearm. I knew we had a truce going with these people, but here was that same weaselly little bastard who had shot me in the back, bringing on the first death I’d experienced on Dust World. The temptation to return the favor was strong.
“We’re allies,” he said suddenly, as if following my train of thought. Maybe a lot of people dreamt of killing Stott. If they did, I couldn’t blame them for it.
“Stott,” I said. “Show me the way out. Show me a path close to the ship, and we’ll leave. We only want to get closer to the ship so we can attack them.”
“That’s a bad idea,” he said.
<
br /> “Do you have a better one?”
“Yes,” said Stott earnestly. “Give them people. Give them a few hundred of your best wives and children. Once their hold is full, they will fly. They won’t come back for a long time.”
I frowned at him. “Yeah, that’s great for you, but what about our people? The ones we send off into slavery?”
Stott sidled a little closer, but he was still far out of reach. I sensed that he could dart away any moment if he wanted to.
“That’s the center of my plan,” he said. “You don’t care about your people. You can just make more. When the littermates and their masters leave, bring the lost ones back to life.”
I had to admit, it would probably work. Stott made me feel a mixture of disgust and pity. Submission, hiding—these were the keys to survival among a beaten people.
I shook my head. “We can’t do that,” I said. “We can’t make a copy of a person unless we know they’re dead.”
“Ah, that’s too bad…but wait! Just tell them to kill themselves. Nothing could be easier aboard the great ship. All you have to do is disobey enough times and they will end you. Staying alive is much harder than dying.”
“Yeah? What do you know about it?”
He sidled closer. I could almost grab him—almost.
“I’ve been aboard,” he said in a whisper. There was a slightly mad gleam in his eyes. “The last time the great ship came. I was found unsuitable and dumped from the ship after failing their tests of the flesh.”
Tests of the flesh? Did they check genetics, and reject the losers? I guess it made sense. How else could they have bred such specialized versions of humanity?
“What’s it like on the ship?” I asked.
“It’s madness. It’s like the worst of dreams where you can’t awaken.”
I nodded. “Well, Stott, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we’re Earthmen. We fight, we don’t surrender. If someone tries to capture us, it is the same as trying to kill us. Either way, we fight to the death. Just tell me how to get close to them, and we’ll leave you alone.”
Stott looked thoughtful. “You experienced Della, didn’t you?” he asked me.
“Uh…”
“She told me you did. She said I would never be considered again and to stop asking.”
“Yeah…well…Look, are you going to help or not?”
A strange light came into his face. “I think I will,” he said. “I came here to kill you, you know. But that was before I knew what you wanted in my world. Now that I understand, I have a better fate for you than the screaming death.”
“That’s great. Listen, I have to—”
“Don’t go that way!” Stott whispered, as I turned to continue my exploration.
“Why not?”
“That way lays the next trap. I set many of them. You’ll never get out of here without my help.”
I stared at him. “You set traps? Inside your own tunnels?”
He nodded slowly.
I pulled out my gun. I should have shot this bastard the second I’d seen him. He’d managed to kill me once and now Perez. He didn’t deserve to live.
“I see you understand,” Stott said. “But you don’t fully understand. I don’t want you to find my traps now. I want you to find the ship. I want you to go inside. I want you to be tested and taken from this world and never brought back to life.”’
Stott was right. I did finally understand him. He wanted me to find the way to the alien ship. He wanted me to do it, so I could be tormented and abused the way he had been at some point.
I pointed my gun at him and gestured with it meaningfully. “Lead the way. Show me how to get to the ship.”
“I will find the closest exit. I know them all. Better than most.”
“Stott,” I said as I followed him and called for Harris and the others to follow me, “if you screw me, I want you to know, I’m going burn you down before you can get away.”
Stott laughed. It was a weird, haunted sound. “Don’t worry! I don’t have to harm you. To kill a fool, all one has to do is lead him to a cliff. You’re a special fool, since you demand to be guided there.”
I followed him through dark tunnels for several minutes. As I went, I dropped beepers: small devices that marked the path for the rest of the troops I hoped would follow soon.
Stott occasionally giggled, and he crept along on all fours as often as not. As I followed him deeper, going downhill toward the giant ship, I had to wonder which of us was the crazy one.
I didn’t trust our guide. How could I? The man had shot me in the back only a few days ago. I’d caught him planting booby-traps that had already killed one of my comrades. What’s more, he knew about Della and me. Our little get-together in the hot springs had become front-page news. That alone might be enough for him to try his luck at killing me again. Who knew? Maybe it would stick this time around.
But I didn’t have much choice in the matter. We had to find a way out of these tunnels that reached closer to the ship—either that or my commanders were going to send us on an insane charge right at that shield. We’d squeeze through the dome of force, dying as we went, and probably finish up on the ramp in a heap of fried meat.
I knew Stott might be leading us to our deaths, but I felt like I had to take the chance. Hell, we were all about to die anyway. At least this way, I figured there was hope.
So, I led the way. I didn’t tell Harris about Stott—who he was, and what kind of a sneaky little psychotic bastard he really was. I figured they might turn around if I did, and I wouldn’t have blamed them for it.
We pressed ahead into the darkness. Every time dirt sifted down from the crumbling roof of the tunnels, dribbling onto my helmet or armored back, I figured that was it. The cave-in was finally letting go, and I’d screwed up royally.
But instead, the tunnels just went on and on. When I was just about to give up, and Harris was reminding me we only had a few minutes left, Stott stopped. He felt around in the dark. I cranked up the beams on my helmet lights and tried to peer past him, but I couldn’t. The tunnel had ended.
“What’s this crap?” I demanded.
We were down on our hands and knees now because the ceiling was low. I scrambled up to Stott and grabbed him around the throat with steel gauntlets. He began keening, sounding like a rabbit in a snare.
“Hey, hey,” Harris said, coming up behind me and giving me a shove. “What the hell is wrong with you now, McGill?”
“He led us into a dead end. There’s nothing here.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“He hates me. I—”
Kivi came up to us then and kicked me. “You screwed his girlfriend, didn’t you?” she demanded. “That’s why he’s here. That’s why he came looking for you in your crazy love tunnels. This is all bullshit, Harris. We’ve got to get back to the surface and rejoin our unit. The attack will come soon, and we’ll be stuck down here.”
I pushed Kivi off me. “It’s not that way at all,” I said. “But I do think he’s screwed us over.”
“This is just like when you came down here to find your new girlfriend,” Kivi went on. “Why die in battle if you can have a little fun in the dark instead? I thought you were moving kind of fast—I bet you were trying to lose the rest of us in this maze. Admit it!”
Kivi wasn’t always a reasonable person. When she got jealous, every butt in sight got a dose of her foot.
Harris pushed the two of us apart.
“Shut up!” he roared. “Look up, you fools!”
We did and gaped at what we saw. There was a crack, not much more than a slit, in the limestone ceiling. Stott had jammed himself into it and was squeezing upward as we watched.
“He’s getting away,” Kivi said.
Harris bashed her one on the helmet. “Who cares? That’s got to be the way out. Kivi, you’re the smallest. Get up there after him. Scout and report. You’ve got one minute. McGill, unlimber that cannon of yours. We can’t get ou
t through this exit if it’s so small. I’ll report in. If Graves approves, we’ll melt the walls back a little and make more room.”
“You really think he’s found it, Vet?” I asked, incredulous.
He gave me a quizzical frown. “Was Kivi right, boy? Were you really down here looking for booty the whole time? Of course he’s found it. What the hell else are we doing down here?”
“Right,” I said, pawing at my kit. I had to clear off the dust, connect the cables and test-fire the unit. I checked the power-levels…they looked good.
In the meantime, Harris used a guide-wire we’d left in our wake to talk to Graves. Radio didn’t seem to want to penetrate these stone walls.
Kivi crept up the hole after Stott, cursing and squirming.
“I’m stuck,” she said, sending down a cascade of dust into our faces. “Oh, shit, I’m stuck!”
“Calm down,” Harris said. “What do you see up there?”
“Uh…not much. There’s light ahead. Must be daylight. That colonist weasel is gone.”
“Follow him.”
“I won’t be able to get back!”
“That’s an order!”
More squirming, churning and dust: I could tell she’d turned on her exoskeleton and goosed the power. Her limbs churned with strength she couldn’t have mustered otherwise.
“I hate you, McGill!” she called down.
“Join the club, girl,” Harris answered. “Any progress?”
“Yeah. I’m up at the top. I’m under some kind of big rock. We can’t charge out of here. We won’t be able to move fast enough. They’d nail each of us as we came out once they figure out where the exit is.”
“What about our guide?” I called.
“He’s—ah, hold on, I see him. They’ve got him! I think he tried to run, and two skinnies ran him down. Permission to fire, Vet?”
“Denied,” Harris said firmly. “We can’t give away our position. We aren’t ready.”
I shook my head. Despite my dislike of Stott, I felt a little sorry for him. His worst fears had been realized. He’d been caught and dragged into that ship of nightmares again. Whatever he’d done in the past, I knew he had only one life to give. He’d played us fairly.
“Vet, we’ve got to go after him,” I said.
