Extinction

-47-

There was more room down here than I’d expected. The Worms had been busy. They’d carved out a horizontal space in each direction—or maybe the region was a natural gap, a cave in the layers of rock and earth. I couldn’t tell which right now, and I didn’t much care.

I moved toward a wall. There was less confusion there, and the odds of being hit by my own men firing down from above was less.

“Form up against this rock wall, men!” I shouted.

A few of them heard me and put their butts against the wall. Occasionally, a Worm rushed us and we burned it down.

“Don’t trust your footing,” I shouted. “There may be more traps—more layers below us. Turn your beams into the larger area of the cavern and fire at anything that squirms.”

I took my own advice, peering through the dust, confusion and darkness. Columns of earth stood everywhere, blocking a clear line of fire, but I managed to squeeze off a shot every so often. The men around me did the same. Collectively, we stemmed the tide of Worms that rushed forward to kill the men who still struggled in knots in the pit. Twisted limbs, corpses and dirt choked the collapsed area.

It didn’t take long for the Worms to notice their new, organized attackers on their flank. They formed up a unit of their own and pressed forward, about twenty of them. They reared up and let their chattering guns stream fire into my group. We had no cover, and I directed my men to advance and hug columns in groups of three.

Both sides were exchanging fire at close range now, about a dozen yards apart. On each side, troops momentarily revealed themselves, fired and ducked back. Sometimes, the incoming fire from the other side overwhelmed one of my men. Two went down in less than a minute, then a third slumped, his head missing.

I activated my com-link. “Forget about radio silence. Everyone down here knows the score, this is a pitched battle. If you are up top, I’m talking to you now. I want the last Sergeant in line to stay up there with three fireteams. Keep sniping down into that hole and keep them off our wounded. The rest of you, come down. We’ll provide covering fire. Move north into the columns and hug the walls.”

I signaled my remaining men. There were less than a dozen who could fight. “When they start sliding down, we all cover them with everything we’ve got. No grenades, though. I don’t want this ceiling collapsing on us.”

It wasn’t long before more boots came sliding down with men behind them. My men roared around us and we all came out of cover at once, firing at the Worms.

The enemy recoiled, then returned fire. I was hit with a half-dozen exploding balls, and my left side was numb afterward. I drew my hand beamer and burned Wormflesh wherever it showed itself.

The men sliding down came in ever growing numbers. They picked themselves up, advanced and soon we had two fronts for the Worm ambushers. After another minute or two of fighting, the last of them died or retreated down black holes in the floor.

They’d killed half my men, and we’d never seen a sign of the bomb they supposedly carried. Maybe the whole thing had been a feint. At the moment, I found it hard to think. I panted and tried to push ribs back into my skin by kneading them through my suit.

“Sir, we’ve lost contact with the forward fireteam and Robinson’s Company Three,” said Kwon, hulking over me. “I think the Worms were waiting for us, sir.”

“No shit,” I said.

“Why didn’t we see them? With our scanners I mean, sir?”

I paused for a second, wishing I could scratch my face. It itched with sweat and droplets ran down from my buzzcut into my eyes to sting them. “I think we were only detecting the metal in their machines—their drilling sleds. I guess when their infantry digs, we can’t see them. Either that, or these tunnels were all here already, and they just slithered underneath us and dug until the soil was weak enough that it collapsed.”

“So, they could ambush us again? Anywhere?”

“Yeah. Pretty much,” I said. I crouched down on my heels. The idea of sliding down deeper into the depths of Helios didn’t fill me with confidence. It made me want to walk in a crouch and feel every step of the way.

“Orders, sir?” Kwon asked.

I tried to think for a second. “Send one scout down each of these tunnels. They are only to go about a hundred yards out, then come back and tell us what they find. If they make contact with the enemy, they are to retreat immediately.”

Kwon stared at me. “Should we maybe try to use ropes to get back up to the main tunnel, sir?”

“No. The Worms and their bomb are below us, not above us. We’re going to take them out.”

Kwon straightened and shouted for volunteers. He slapped the nearest four men who didn’t stumble away fast enough. These volunteers separated and headed for the darkest, narrowest Worm-tunnels we’d seen yet.

Two of the volunteers never came back. One did with a Worm on his tail. We hammered the monster down with a dozen shafts of hot energy. The last man crawled back a full six minutes after we’d sent him down.

“There’s a bigger tunnel down there, sir,” he told me.

“Did you see any Worms?”

“No, but they are around. I could hear them. It sounded like they were driving a tractor or something.”

Kwon and I eyed one another. “Show us the way,” I told the scout. We followed him back down a narrow shaft into utter darkness.

The shaft ended as a hole in the roof of a much larger Worm tunnel. This one was horizontal and the ribs of earth on the floor and walls were thicker, as if a giant Worm had made it. Perhaps it had.

We gathered in the tunnel and counted noses. I had about sixty effectives left. I got out a computer and did some triangulating. According to my best calculations, this tunnel led from our base directly under the Worm mountain. I turned and headed in the direction of our base.

“What if the Worms are in the other direction, sir?” asked Kwon.

“I hope they are behind us. I hope they light off their nuke now, this far from our base. Then they won’t kill everyone—just us,” I said.

“Very reassuring, sir.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Sergeant.”

We trotted down the tunnel, making good time. We figured out five minutes later that we’d guessed right. When we caught up to the enemy, I think the Worms were more surprised to see us than we were to see them. We came up right behind them without them sensing us, because they were driving a sled the size of a diesel truck and it made a lot of noise.

“Grenades first, then we beam them until nothing moves,” I told my troops.

“Won’t that set off the nuke?” asked Kwon.

“No, at least not in an effective way. If we light the explosive shell around the warhead’s nucleus, it should cause an explosion, but the compression from the explosion won’t be evenly distributed enough to cause critical mass.”

Kwon said something else, I think, but I was already winding up with a grenade. I threw it—but didn’t quite land it under the big sled. It hit the ceiling and bounced down under some Worm tails that slithered along in the rear of the formation. Other grenades flew after mine, and then the tunnel rippled with concussive explosions.

I didn’t wait until I could hear or see right again. I had my rifle up in my functional arm and I squeezed off one-second bursts, firing at the big drilling sled where I figured I might do the most damage. I marched forward as I fired and a pack of marines advanced with me. Everyone on the front line was blazing and it felt good to be tearing them up for once.

We killed every Worm and their machine without a loss. It felt good to win one cleanly. I noticed that most of these Worms were different, as we picked over the bodies. They were smaller, and had different tattooed symbols on their skins. Were they females? Civilians? Scientists or sappers? I didn’t know, and I barely cared. We’d stopped them.

We found the device, riding in the center of the machine. I counted myself lucky they hadn’t thought to set it up with a dead man’s switch. I had no idea what the yield was, but I was sure I was looking at enough kilotons to take out our base.

We slagged the box-like device with our beamers until radiation registered on our suit warning-meters. We all got a dose, but our suits stopped most of it. I knew from experience that radiation poisoning was like getting the flu when you had a body full of nanites to rebuild the tiny holes the subatomic particles blew through your cells. We’d live.