Steel World (20 page)

Pushing aside such thoughts, I kept up a steady hail of fire. Natasha, who’d been standing behind me, fell. She was from the second rank, the standing rank. I guess I was lucky to be on my belly as I made a smaller target. I took a fraction of a second to glance back, and I knew instantly that I couldn’t help her. She was dead, eyes staring, mouth open. There was blood on her cheek.

I didn’t bother to look back at her again, I could feel her weight draped over me as I fought on. It was horrible, but I didn’t have time to care for her, or even to push her off my back. I just kept firing into the charging line of angry lizards.

We sent a hail of steel in their direction, but it wasn’t enough. They reached our line and overran us. The whole firefight so far had only taken thirty seconds, but lizards move fast. They were all over us.

“Gunners, hold your positions!” Graves roared. “Keep firing. Center people repel the enemy. Knives out!”

I heard clicking sounds and blood splashed over my faceplate. I had to wipe it away so I could see. I wasn’t sure whose blood it was—enemy or human. The saurian blood was about the same color as ours, just a little darker and thicker. In the dimly lit tunnel, I couldn’t tell the difference.

Trusting my struggling comrades, who were literally battling over my head, I kept putting bullets into the saurians that were charging in. So many! I didn’t see how we could—

Something clamped down on my leg. The back of my right calf was in the jaws of a saurian, and the teeth went right through the tough smart fabric of my uniform. I hissed and howled, rolling over to face my attacker. I slashed up at it, opening up the leathery belly with my combat knife.

The razor-sharp edge spilled lizard guts all over the floor. This made the saurian release me and it raised its head in pain but wasn’t finished yet. It made another attempt to bite me, the head darting down toward my other leg.

I jerked away and the jaws snapped shut on nothing. Carlos and I managed to nail it with a burst of shots each, and it fell as dead as a stone.

The saurians stopped coming after that. A few of them ran off into the dark. We chased them with bursts from our snap-rifles. They slid in their own blood and screeched. The sound of their pain did my heart good.

By this time, I’d had enough of laying on my stomach, so I got to my knees painfully and tried to stand. By the time I was on my feet, the next wave came. I’d dared to hope we’d seen the last of them, but there were more.

The final wave was comprised of six juggers. They weren’t the biggest I’d seen, but they were knocking their heads against the rough roof of the tunnel. All of them had red scales, with bellies of silvery-white—almost a pearly color. I might have thought the look of these beasts to be entrancing on a travel brochure but not when they were hell-bent on eating me.

Carlos and I glanced at one another. We were both covered in sweat and blood. Our sides were heaving from exhaustion and fear. This was too much. We couldn’t bring them down with small arms. There was no way we were going to live.

But I knelt and began to fire steadily into the lead monster. Carlos did the same.

“Aim at the throat!” I said, remembering the tactic from my past. I’d read about and simulated legion engagements on Cancri-9 since I was a kid. Juggers were hard to kill with tiny bullets, but if you could do enough damage to vital arteries…

We peppered the face and neck of the leader with red sprouting wounds. But it seemed to catch on and ducked its head low, putting the crown of its thick-skulled head into our stream of fire. There was no way we could penetrate into its brain with these weapons.

“Good try, recruits!” Centurion Graves boomed. “It was an honor to serve.”

I marveled at the evenness of his voice. He sounded like he wasn’t even sweating.

“You too, sir,” Carlos shouted.

I looked up, bewildered, and Graves’ eyes met mine. “You’re in charge,” he said.

Then the Centurion did something unexpected.

“Ceasefire!” he shouted. “Put your heads down!”

Then he sprinted forward, rushing directly into the charging mass of juggers. The leader didn’t see him until he darted by. Confused, it faltered in its lumbering charge and turned.

I watched with my mouth sagging open. What the hell was he doing? Did he think he could make it past them all and leave us behind as a sacrificial dinner?

Then I saw the glaring blue light, and I knew what was happening. He’d pulled out a plasma grenade, and he was standing in the middle of the juggers.

Fortunately, juggers were not geniuses. They whirled on him and lunged with snapping jaws. When the explosive went off, I doubt Graves had a limb left on him—but he was past caring by that time.

We followed his final orders and ducked low. The whole tunnel rippled with the force of the blast. Magnified by the closeness of the metal walls, the concussion reverberated painfully.

That did it for the enemy. However many of them were left, they’d had enough. They pulled back and licked their wounds leaving their dead behind them.

We weren’t in much better shape. I did a headcount and came up with seven survivors. We’d lost half our original number, and we weren’t out of these tunnels yet.

-14-

The rest of the mission was a sweaty haze. I kept thinking of Natasha, and how she’d died on my back. There’d been nothing I could do—it was galling. I tried to push those thoughts away. Lots of people had died. It was no big deal. If we could get out of here, we could all cry about it later.

We huddled in the tunnel for the next hour treating our wounded and talking about what we should do. We were down to seven recruits, and all of us were as raw and inexperienced as they came.

“Graves put McGill in charge,” Carlos said to the rest. “Yeah, I know, it’s crazy, but I heard it. Granted, he was probably certifiable by that point... One second later, he ran into the middle of a pack of juggers and offered up his juicy parts.”

“It was a noble sacrifice,” I said.

Carlos scoffed. “Yeah, right. He knew he would be back in camp sipping coffee in a few hours while we’re still stuck in this rat-hole.”

“I didn’t see you doing it.”

Carlos snorted, but he did finally shut up. The peace that fell over the group once he stopped yapping was blissful. No one else felt much like talking. We were all thinking too much about the grim fate that probably awaited us when the next charge came.

Plasma grenades weren’t cheap. We couldn’t make them on Earth, and they cost Galactic credits—real money—to buy. For that reason only a few troops had them, weaponeers and officers who requisitioned a charge for their own personal use. Graves’ grenade was the only one we’d brought down here with us.

So we were left with snap-rifles, a few extra magazines and our combat knifes. The dead were all around us to remind us what might happen any minute. The group was in a depressed mood.

I took a deep breath and struggled to my feet. I pushed away Carlos’ hand and took a few painful steps on stiff legs.

“Maybe dying would do you some good,” Carlos observed. “Fastest way to heal up.”

I frowned at him. “Enough with the quitter routine. Graves put me in charge. Get up, everyone. We’re moving out of this damned tunnel.”

“Where?” demanded Kivi. She was the last living woman on the team. Her eyes were big, blue and a little crazy.

Carlos jumped in before I could answer. He pointed down the tunnel. “Back to the shafts. If there is going to be a rescue, it has to come from that direction.”

I slapped his hand down and pointed in the opposite direction. “We’re going to see where this shaft leads.”

They all looked at me like I was mad. I had to admit they could be right, but I didn’t care. I wanted to complete our mission. I wanted to know where the enemy was coming from.

“Look,” I said to them. “We’re screwed anyway. We might as well find out how they got into the mine.”

“We’ll all die for sure,” Kivi said. “What’s the point of that?”

“If we find the end point, we’ll have completed the mission. When they revive any one of us who’s been down here, we’ll report then.”

Carlos stepped forward and put a hand on my arm. “Hey, McGill,” he said, “I don’t want to rain on your parade, but your idea could get us permed.”

I frowned at him until he pulled his hand away. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s one of the ways it happens. It’s against Galactic Law to copy anyone who’s not confirmed dead. If we wander down into the bowels of this shit planet and get burned to ash by lava or something, they won’t be able do ID our bodies. No ID, no reconstruction. Perma-death.”

I paused, having not considered that possibility. Throughout our battles so far, we’d been on the surface and easily located by sensor equipment. Down here, however, it was a different story. We were cut off by the planet’s metallic soil. No one back at HQ knew if we were alive or dead. Probably, they hadn’t revived any of the team members yet. Not even Harris. They wouldn’t do it until they had some kind of confirmation—which I doubt they had yet.

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not talking about walking ten miles or jumping into any lava chambers. I’m talking about exploring this tunnel. What’s the difference if we’re a few hundred meters farther away from the shaft when they get down here?”

“It’s a risk.”

“One which I’m willing to take,” I said, and I began walking.

They grumbled, but they were used to following unreasonable orders, so they fell into line. I headed down the tunnel in the lead, not having the heart to order anyone else to take point. This was my idea, after all. The least I could do was get myself eaten first.

As we progressed, it did seem that the level of heat in the tunnel was increasing. I didn’t know what to make of that. All Carlos’ talk of lava chambers might have had me spooked—or it might be real.

“Check the external temp,” I said, halting.

Carlos frowned and did as I suggested. “No change,” he said. He looked toward Kivi, who was next in line.

She shook her head, looking up from her tapper. “Nothing.”

I frowned and examined my systems. I found a fault within seconds. “It’s me,” I said. “My suit must have been damaged during that last fight. Really, I’m not surprised.”

“You’ve got a leak?”

“Maybe…either that, or my air conditioner is dying.”

“Bad way to go. This planet runs a fever of forty degrees Celsius, even underground.”

I shrugged. “I’ll be hot, but I’ll survive. The tunnels won’t broil me the way the open land would.”

I kept going. We’d gone far more than a hundred meters. We’d gone at least a thousand, but as my troops weren’t complaining, I didn’t stop.

After nearly three kilometers had passed, however, Carlos tapped me on the shoulder.

“McGill? This is crazy, man. This tunnel might run forty kilometers for all we know. And the rescue party might be behind us, baffled as to where we went.

I leaned against the wall of the tunnel and sipped water. My suit’s reservoir was running low.

“All right,” I said at last. “Let’s give it ten more minutes. We march that much farther, then turn around.”

They groaned, but they followed. I had to admit that even I was giving up hope.

Fifteen minutes later, we rounded a slight bend in the tunnel and saw daylight only a hundred meters ahead. That was a stunner.

We crouched, stared and zoomed with our optics. We spoke in whispers despite the fact we couldn’t see any lizards.

“I can’t believe it,” Carlos said. He was working on his tapper, bringing up data. “My GPS doesn’t work down here—no surprise. But the computer counts every step you take. I reset the counter when we started. We marched over four frigging kilometers. Ten minutes…you’re such a liar, McGill. I hate you.”

“I found the way out, didn’t I?” I said, smiling. “Okay, what we’re going to do is poke our noses out. Take off your safeties and be ready for anything.”

I took a half-step, but Carlos’ hand fell on my wrist. I pulled it away and almost shoved him. He’d never dare try that crap if I had real rank on him.

“McGill? James?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s
over
man! You found what you wanted. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“That’s what I intend to do. I’m going to march out of this tunnel and radio our report in. They can come pick us up. That will be much faster than walking back.”

“But they don’t have any airpower. That wasn’t in the contract. We’d have to wait for the ship to send down a lander or walk all the way back through the forest.”

I thought hard for a second. The rest of them looked scared. We all knew that going out onto the surface was dangerous. Walking through that forest was going to be close to suicide, and my suit’s AC was already failing.

But I wanted to see where this tunnel went. The answer was so close I couldn’t give up now. I came up with an angle that I thought would give them a good reason to follow me.

“Listen,” I said, “this is all about avoiding perma-death at this point. If we walk out there and get wiped—well, at least the finish will be recorded by our GPS systems. We’ll be back in camp
within an hour, healthy and fresh. If we stay down here in this hole, anything could happen. We’re all taking the risk of being permed if we stay in the tunnels.”