Extinction

-50-

We reached the mouth of the target tunnel without further incident. In a way, the fact the Worms had given up so easily was disconcerting. I knew they were inside their massive stronghold, waiting for us. What did they have planned for us once we’d entered their domain?

I reviewed our plan as we massed around the tunnel entrance. The more I thought about the plan, now that I stood there at the foot of the vast monolith, the less I liked it. Heading into the Worm tunnels seemed the height of folly. The trouble was, we didn’t have any other options. Not if we wanted the Macros to give us a ride home.

I took a deep breath as we climbed out of the shells and scanned the area closely. This was it. This was go-time. There was no turning back, no hesitation. We were here to do or die.

The scanners showed nothing obviously threatening. I’d worried about the enemy setting mines around the outskirts of the mountain. Perhaps a certain level of damage would be worth it to them to stop us early, right at the doorstep. One well-placed, nuclear mine could blow us all off the planet surface and even though it might grievously damage their home, they would be rid of us as an effective force.

“Sir,” said a sensor officer, Lieutenant Chen. She had a precise step and physician’s attitude. I’d met her before. I considered her a sharp-troop.

“What is it, Lieutenant? Do you have contacts?”

“Yes, thousands, possibly millions of them.”

I stepped up to the scope and peered inside. “I don’t see that many.”

“Look at the glimmers, sir. The trace contacts.”

“You mean—under us? Are they down below? They are registering as cold and motionless.”

“Yes. They’re dead, sir,” said Chen.

I looked at her, then looked back into the scope. There was a three-dimensional image inside—or what appeared to be inside, but which was artificially generated. I knew I really looked into a small box that simulated depth and registered interesting objects the scanner had picked up, displaying them with symbolic shapes and colors. My troops were bright blue circles. I could see a few Worms, they were—worm-shaped and bright yellow. Very faintly glowing green contacts were everywhere, however. There were indeed thousands of them. I waved my hands near a pickup, and caused the point of view of the scope to drive deeper, into the landscape. There were layers and layers of worm-shapes beneath us.

“They are all dead?”

“Yes sir. We are standing on a vast graveyard. The piles are thousands of bodies deep—below our feet, sir.”

I looked at her. She looked back at me, evenly. I nodded. “Thanks for telling me. Keep me informed about anything else that strikes you or your team as odd, Lieutenant. But I’m primarily interested in live Worms.”

“Of course, sir,” she said.

I stepped away from the scope, uncertain of what to make of this development. Maybe the Worms had been burying their dead out here at the edge of the mountain for generations.

I stopped worrying about dead Worms. I had plenty of live ones to think about. I had the Macros on my mind as well. I set up a communications box at the tunnel entrance and buried it under a light layer of loose dirt. With luck, the Worms wouldn’t destroy it. I attached a nanite strand to the unit. We would pay out the strand behind us as we advanced into the mountain. My officers liked the idea, figuring we could use it to communicate with our base. Heading into a mountain with no way to communicate to anyone on our side was a frightening prospect. What I didn’t tell them was I did not intend to chit-chat with Robinson on this system. Sending signals with it would only alert the Worms to its existence. I had set it up to follow the Macro instructions. When we got to the heart of this mountain we’d use it—not until then. Even if we never got out of the mountain again, maybe the Macros would count our mission as accomplished and at least pick up Sandra and take her home.

The drill-tanks finished reconfiguring themselves after a few minutes of making sounds like rusty hinges. I ordered the first tank to enter the cavern, with a company of marines behind it. I held back the second machine for a full minute. If the Worms destroyed my first group, I wanted reserves with which to respond.

Nothing happened to my scouts, so the rest followed. I was in the middle of the column. As the cavern blocked the big red sun of the surface world from view, I found that I missed it. The tunnel walls were about a hundred feet apart and were ribbed, like the smaller tunnels we’d found near our base, but on a much grander scale. The huge tunnel could have held a train, and I was reminded of the Atlanta subway system, much of which is carved from solid rock.

We marched forward into the gloom. Soon, we had to switch on our suit lights and every man had his light beam-rifle in his hand and at the ready. No one looked happy to be here.

“Kwon,” I said, speaking on a private channel.

“Sir!” he said, hustling up in the long line to march at my side.

I’d put Kwon in the unit I marched with. I could have ridden inside one of the drilling machines, but I wanted to see and hear what my troops did. I didn’t believe in leadership from air-conditioned comfort. Especially not when walking into a den of traps.

“What do you think we should do, Kwon?” I asked the Sergeant.

“Sir?”

“Just tell me.”

“We march into the heart of this mountain and kill whatever we find, then go home.”

“Clearly stated, Sergeant,” I said. “Do you think following these tunnels is going to work out for us?”

“No sir. The Worms will dig underneath us and trap us. Just as they did before.”

I nodded. “Column, halt!” I ordered.

Everyone looked surprised. The drill-tanks glided forward another few paces, then stopped. Their nosecones twitched from side to side. It was an affectation of their past designs. They still sought distant targets, even though they had very limited range now. I hadn’t had time to rewrite all their scripting.

We were close to taking the first big bend in the route, which would swing us to the east. I looked back down the tunnel behind me. Out there, in the red glare of the sun, things looked a lot safer.

“Drill-tanks, turn west. We’ll plow right into the walls here. Let’s have a look at what’s on the inside.”

Autoshaded goggles flipped to black all up and down the column, on the faces of every marine’s hood I could see. Then my own went dark, and the big, short-ranged lasers flared up with blooming light. I closed my eyes, but still the glare was painful. I dropped my rifle, letting it dangle from the power cord and put my gloved hands to my face. I ordered everyone else to do the same, using the command override channel. I didn’t want to be blind, or even have splotchy vision, when these tanks finished chewing holes into the walls.

Eleven big, smoking holes were drilled into the stone wall. The main tunnel we were in filled with gray vapor. Atomized rock roared around my suit. I felt the air-conditioners kick on as the temperature soared. The fans quickly ran up several octaves to high.

Then the light leaking past my fingers dimmed. I dared to peak with my left. The drill-tanks had inched forward, sliding into the holes they’d bored. The tanks farthest back, however, hadn’t moved in yet. I frowned at them.

“You three in back, stop drilling. Forward tanks, keep going,” I shouted. I trotted back toward the last tanks in line. Their drilling nosecones glowed a deep cherry-red with intense heat.

“Nothing sir,” said the nearest pilot as he climbed out of his tank and came down to stand next to me.

We examined the wall together. We were only a few hundred yards from the entrance at this point. The stone was blackened, but seemed almost impervious to our drill-heads.

“This rock isn’t the same as the stuff farther in,” said the pilot. “It’s a lot tougher closer to the exit.

I nodded. “Bring your tank in deeper. You can follow another unit that has had an easier time of it.”

I trotted back to my unit and thought about what I’d seen. Perhaps the dead outside and the density of this outer area were connected. The Macros had indicated that the mountain had a tough shell, and that blasting at it from space had not been effective. I suspected they had done so previously, and at length. Perhaps that explained the dead Worms outside. Maybe, like a giant anthill, they had died in their thousands and their millions, but their mountain had withstood the assault.

I came up to the first drill-tank that was making progress. It had fully half its length inserted into the hole it had burrowed. I judged the process as too slow, however. We would never be able to drill our way into this mountain’s heart if it took a full minute for every yard of progress.

“Sir, up here!” said Major Yamada, my tank commander. “Lead drill-tank, reporting a sudden change in rock-density!”

“Talk to me, Major.”

“If you get in about thirty feet, it gets a lot easier, sir. A lot easier.”

I slapped Kwon’s chest as I ran by him. He caught on and trotted after me, as we ran toward the front of our long line of drill-tanks and men.

My celebration was short-lived. The Worms chose that moment to make their objections to our presence in their territory very clear.