The monster runs wild. I can feel it rebuilding my muscles and bones. The heat is incredible, but I still won’t show up compared to the flames in the tunnel. My heart is racing, and the world seems to slow down as my brain and reflexes blaze with speed.
The one with the flame thrower turns from side to side, looking for me. I wait until he’s turned away and then strike.
The hardened fibers shatter everywhere as I pull away from the wall. I see a world of smoke and flames burning along the walls of the tunnel, making the thick smoke glow red and orange. The smoke burns as I inhale, then fibers in my nose and throat filter it all out, leaving clean air. Pain is a distant warning as my feet walk on hot rock and burning fuel. I rush the man-shaped shadow in the smoke.
I wrap my arm around his neck and drive the diamond blade up, under his helmet, into his skull. He shudders for a moment, all of his wired systems trying to figure out what to do when his brain checks out. Then he goes limp and falls.
I step back just in time. His partner’s power blade screams past where I was an instant ago. We both drop into a fighting crouch and circle. His boots crunch on the hot rocks, and my feet blister as we circle. His power blade will go through just about anything and is a real fighting blade, not just a tool. The hard plates on his armor will deflect my blade; I’ll have to strike between the plates. I’ll have to finish this quick; the others are on the way.
I feint and then strike. This guy is boosted and catches my thrust on his power blade. Our blades cross for a moment, and my blade screams, cracks, then shatters under the vibrations of the power blade. I have to pull back and protect my eyes from flying diamond shards that cut me. His helmet protects him, and he lunges in for the kill.
I rotate away from the blade and catch his arm. The force of the attack slams me against the burning wall, searing my back.
We struggle. He tries to force the power blade into my chest, and I try to hold it back while my back sizzles and smells like a barbeque. His reinforced skeleton, boosted musculature, and wired reflexes against me and the monster.
The monster wins. I grow new muscle and nerve groups, and my elbow and shoulder rotate in whole new ways. I reverse the blade and drive it at his chest. It screams and sparks off the breastplate, leaving a deep gouge as I force it upward to his neck. All resistance goes away when I jam it home under his chin. I hold it there for a moment as he convulses.
He goes slack and falls off the blade, which also goes quiet as it does not recognize me. I step away from the wall, and part of my burned skin peels off. I don’t feel it; even now, new skin is growing.
I need to go; the others will be coming. Instead, I stand and stare. I just killed two men. Blood on my hands. Again. It was supposed to be different this time. Now, I’m a killer. Again. I didn’t want it to be this way.
I hear the rest of the team bounding down the tunnels. Time to go.
I glide down the tunnel, going way too slow in the low gravity. I need to get to a bend up ahead.
A railgun thunders, and part of the wall explodes ahead of me. Smoke and dust fill the air, and rock chips glow like coals from the impact heat. Thank God, it wasn’t an explosive shell. He only missed because of the fire and smoke, the next one will be dead on.
I make it around the bend before the hail of gunfire. The tunnels echo with thunder. The air fills with fragments and dust. They must be firing blind. There is no let up, and they blaze away with suppression fire as they close.
I look down the tunnel. The echoes from the gunshots give me an image of the hall down the way. There is no hope there. It’s a straight path for over a hundred meters. I’ll be an easy target. I will have to try to take them at this corner.
A self-propelled-grenade flies around the corner and then does a sharp turn straight at me. My instincts make me dive to the ground, but I fall too slowly in the gravity.
The SPG soars overhead and then goes off in a blinding flash. There is no pain as blackness returns, and I can feel the monster awaken fully. It’s free.
* * * * *
Chapter 23
The lights from one of the ruined suits lying on the floor illuminate the gore-painted walls. I’m covered in blood, none of it mine. I have no injuries at all anymore. Bits of the men and pieces of their equipment are scattered everywhere. Added up, the spare parts look like they once belonged to four men. An arm here, a leg there. Over there, half a man managed to crawl a short distance away.
I tell myself I didn’t do it. I tell myself the monster did it. None of that matters. I didn’t stop it. I would have done it, too.
I get vague memories from the monster. Images of horror, carnage, and massacre. I feel the terrible burning purpose behind it all. I piece the impressions together to figure out what happened.
The SPG had done a lot of damage. The monster remembers the terrible burns, my shattered skeleton and ruptured organs, and the frangible needles that filled me with shrapnel. It was enough damage to shut me down, to kill me. The monster had taken over, kept me alive, and began rebuilding me. It adapted, changing me, making sure I could survive this kind of thing.
The team then came upon my body. They must have assumed I was dead. The one torn into little pieces must have been the one who tried to pick up my body and take me back. When he was torn apart, the others must have frozen for a half instant. That gave the monster all the time it needed to tear into them. I have vague impressions of claws and blood. It was too close and too crowded to shoot safely, but I took a hit anyway. A shot that should kill anyone only slowed the monster down. The last one used the time to get away, and only half of him escaped. Then, I woke up and forced the monster down. I forced myself back to being human again, somehow.
This cannot ever happen again. Ever. I have to control it. If it gets loose when I take too much damage, then I need to see that that never happens. Ever again.
I can hear them coming. There are about a dozen men with a lot of heavy gear. All of this would have been recorded on the small cameras the remotes dropped earlier and on suit cams. They aren’t going to mess around this time. They’ll use heavy weapons if they have them. I need a way to stop them.
A piece of rock falls on me from above. The railgun fire and the grenade did a lot of damage to the unfinished tunnel. Holes and cracks are everywhere. I tap on the rock and listen, getting an image of the structure of the Lunar rock. The railgun projectiles punched deep into the rock, expanding into fragments at the end, creating large voids filled with rubble. The grenade blast further weakened the structure. On Earth, this would have all collapsed, but it’s still holding up in the weak Lunar gravity. For now, anyway.
I pull away loose rock, and find the largest crack stretching across the roof. I wedge my fingers in and commit myself. I pull with everything I’ve got, straining to pull apart the weakened rock. Nothing. I can see their lights approaching. Straining, I can feel the monster pitch in, strengthening my torn muscles and my skeleton. Dust and rocks begin to fall as the rock begins to move. I can hear shouts down the tunnel; they are getting ready to fire. I give one last pull, tearing a boulder out of the ceiling.
I fall to the ground as rocks slowly fall around me. The cave rumbles. I push off the walls, going around the corner before the hail of fire that thunders into the corner. Behind me, the cave explodes with fire. Railguns hammer into the weakened walls, and the whole thing starts coming down.
I leap, pushing off the floor and walls to get away. An SPG flies into the turn and explodes in the falling rocks. My sight vanishes in a flash of light, and my hearing goes away in the roar. The concussion sends me flying down the tunnel and then the tunnel behind me collapses in slow motion around the smoke and flames of the blast.
* * * * *
Part Four: The Deep
Chapter 24
I get up and keep going, blind and deaf. I can feel the vibrations in the rock, telling me about the tunnels ahead and behind. That cave-in behind me will need real mining equipment to clear; they are
n’t coming that way. Ahead, the tunnels go on, branching and branching again, going ever lower.
There must be something up ahead. Abandoned tunnels eventually fill with toxic gases, and the air pressure drops until they are close to vacuum. The air has to be coming from somewhere. Odds are, this connects to a smuggler’s tunnel. Somewhere, there is food, water, and some way out of here.
My body heals, wounds sealing up, while grenade fragments and rail-darts slide out. All of this costs me; the monster is hungry. I don’t know what it does, or how it does it, but I’ve leashed the thing and forced it to repair my body. It’s used up my body’s reserves, and whatever it uses to keep going. It’s got limits too. Now, starving, the monster demands to be fed, or it’ll devour me alive from the inside.
It’s made my senses razor sharp, like a hunting predator. I can see the tunnels in a faint, hazy, shifting glow from the spare photons, each one a brief flash. Sound from the echoes of small creatures and my footsteps gives me a picture of what is ahead. But it’s my sense of smell that has grown the most. I can scent the trails of the small, scurrying creatures of the caverns. All of the air is foul, but it is slightly better in that direction. There is a slight current of air flowing out through the micro-fissures in the rock. Most of all, though, I can scent food and water in the distance.
My stomach growls, and the monster makes its hunger known.
I make my way through the old tunnels. A map builds in my head at each turn or grade; I’ve always had a good spatial sense, and these enhanced senses make it easier. At least I won’t get lost; anyone else could wander forever in this lightless maze. That’s good, because the teams following will have to check it all. It will take days, Terran days, maybe even Lunar days. All of that assumes they think I’m alive after all of that.
Judging from the cut patterns on the walls, these are old mining tunnels, the kind they sunk way back in the years before there was good shielding. They used to cut these tunnels, getting metals, water, and oxygen-bearing minerals. Then they pressurized them and made them into habitats. That means there are bound to be old habitats left by the first settlers here.
I’ll want to be careful, though. Smugglers use these tunnels a lot, and they will want to eliminate any witnesses. Squatters won’t be too happy to see an intruder, either, and out here, away from the law, there is only one way to settle affairs of ownership. The biggest danger will be with dangerous fugitives who have nothing to lose—people like me.
Good thing I can scent other people a long way off. I make my way into the deeper, older tunnels, far away from any current habitats.
Time passes, but I have no idea how much. Time and other markings of existence all seem to float away. All that is left is the hunger and thirst in the cold and dark.
Eventually, I come to it—food and water and, possibly, shelter.
An old digging machine slumps, in ruins, by the side of the tunnel. I can smell fresh air up ahead. There is a rich scent of processed food that never smelled as delicious as now, and the water smells better than a warm summer rain.
I can also hear the sounds of swarms of small crawling creatures, and their rich, noxious stench. I’m more worried about the sounds of larger creatures moving about stealthily and their thick, wild scent. On Luna, some of the vermin have grown to huge sizes in these wild reaches. The rats are known as “lunar wolves” for a reason.
I can feel the writing chiseled into the wall. “Jefferson Junction.” My blood runs cold. Jefferson Junction was one of the early deep towns, and a prosperous one. Until they accidentally released radioisotopes from some of the early fission power systems. They flooded the tunnels, and the whole settlement had to be abandoned. I could already have breathed them in or picked them up on my skin. I’d never notice the radiation slowly killing me.
A high-pitched shriek echoes up the tunnel from behind me. It’s answered by a chorus of shrieking howls from further ahead.
The lunar wolves have my scent.
* * * * *
Chapter 25
The screeching howls get closer and grow in number. The whole pack is joining the hunt; scores of them from the sound of it. Now, I can also hear the distant scrabble of claws on rock.
I can’t see them yet, but I know what they look like. Warped rats the size of large dogs, with a tough, hairless hide, razor-sharp incisors and claws, huge, black, staring mad eyes, and bat-like ears. A lot can change in a few centuries.
I think of running only for an instant. It would be suicide. They are faster and know these tunnels intimately. Once their territory is invaded, they will fight until the intruders are dead or they have all been driven out. No matter how far I go, they will follow. Their senses are as keen as they come; there is no way for me to hide.
If I cannot run, and I cannot hide, then I have to fight.
Rat packs will use hit and run attacks to wear down a target, and either cause their target to panic and run or get goaded into rushing into a trap. Then, when their target is vulnerable, the whole swarm descends to attack.
So, I need to pick my battlefield. Going back is a bad idea, the tunnels are wide open, and I’ll be getting hit from the walls and ceiling as well as the floor. There is also the problem of how long I can hold out; I could be looking at hit-and-run attacks for days or weeks.
That leaves going in deeper. There will be rooms and doors in the old habitat; ways I can guard my back, or buy time. There will also be things I can use as weapons inside. This is their nest, so I can expect the whole swarm to fight me for possession of it. Good. One way or another, it will be over soon.
I glide ahead. The entrance to the habitat is a looming rectangle of deeper darkness. Just inside are the lunar wolves. They show up as vague shapes, but I can hear where they are, feel the air of their passage, and locate them by the faint vibrations through the rock. Three of the huge rats leap forward with a shrieking challenge. It’s meant to stop me or drive me off, to force me into another place to be killed. I charge.
The first one gives a shriek of surprise when I smash its snout as it leaps at me. While it’s still in mid-air, I wrap an arm around its thin neck and wrench its scarred head aside with my other arm. Crunch, snap.
The other two pause, stunned. I’m not acting the way I’m supposed to. A quick side kick smashes the vulnerable snout of a rat, then I follow through with a tearing throat strike, covering my claws in its hot, foul blood.
As I rotate to the third, it’s already fleeing, scampering up the tunnel. It’ll be back, with friends.
No time to waste, I glide inside the habitat.
This room is a large, vaulted chamber that was probably some kind of meeting chamber or community room. Now, it’s a disgusting nest. The reek hits my nose like a stiff jab; it’s a combo of the caked waste of generations of rats and insects and the remains of dead creatures. The floor crunches as I walk on it, and crawling vermin, remains of the rats’ prey, and something disgusting cracks and breaks open with wet sounds underfoot, making my footing unsteady and messing with my ability to sense vibrations in the floor. A dozen lunar wolves shriek at me and slowly advance.
I turn toward one of the tunnels farther in, and one rushes my back. A sweeping kick knocks it down, and a palm strike to the snout stuns it.
Before I can finish it off, two attack from my flanks. A spin kick for one, and an elbow strike for the one now behind me. They back off; the first two have pulled back and are ready to attack again.
Four come now. Screeching and snapping, they strike and fade and swap places with a fresh opponent. I strike back, rupturing an eye here, crushing a snout there, sending one flying with a kick. They get in hits too. Soon, small scratches and bites filled with septic saliva cover my arms and legs. My skin is tough, but their incisors can easily grind through Lunar rock.
They pull back, and I catch my breath. This has gone on too long, and now I’m cut off in the open. The air is filled with a thrumming, mad chorus of shrieks. The entire swarm is here.
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* * * * *
Chapter 26
The shrieks of the swarm rebound off the ceiling and walls, disorienting me, ruining my sense of hearing and direction. I crouch low to keep my balance on the slick floor; I need to keep from getting bowled over.
Now that they’ve whipped themselves into a frenzy, the whole swarm attacks with fury. I hold nothing back.
A set of jaws close on my arm, and I crush the skull. Hot, reeking breath from slavering jaws seeking my throat. I grab the slick hide, twist, and use the dying creature as a crude club. Claws and teeth tear at my back and legs; only the thick, new hide of the monster saves me.
I keep turning and striking. Kick, elbow smash, claw, open hand thrust, turn. How many am I killing? I don’t know. Just one more, then the next one, and one more until they break, maybe, then one more. The pain of the cuts and tears on my skin fades to a distant, warm feeling, and I only feel the slickness of blood, mine and theirs. Exhaustion goes away, and there is only the fight, the darkness, and the enemy. I strike out with a series of blows, ignoring the sharp tearing wounds on my arms and hands. Just a few more. I don’t have to kill them all, just one more than they can take. I pick up a huge rat, break its neck and use it as a bludgeon to clear out some space. Just a little longer…
Several slam into me from behind, knocking me over. Jaws seek my neck. I roll and lash out, tearing flesh with my claws and pummeling others away. A sweep kick knocks several down, and gives me time to get to my knees. I take out several in front of me and fight my way up to my feet, while two snarling rats gnaw at my back and neck. I grab those, crush their necks, and throw them back into the swarm.
They pause, gathering their courage and numbers. I lash out, holding nothing back. I send several flying, crush a skull with a kick, break a neck, and tear my claws through their large, mad eyes. Soon, they gather up and surge at me once more.
Warrior- Integration Page 6
