rear.
Burton hiked ahead, checked for enemies, then doubled back. “It looks clear this far in,” Burton said.
“Did you see any openings along the walls?” I asked.
“I did,” Burton said.
“The fun starts once we enter one of those openings,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Burton said. “Harris, do we really need two bombs? I could use four extra guns.”
“We need them …both of them,” I said.
“We’re not just bringing the second in case we lose one?”
“Major, did you ever fly through Mars Spaceport on a busy day?” I asked.
“Sure, it’s a real zoo,” he said.
“Shoulder-to-shoulder crowds; you can’t even swing your arms without hitting someone. That’s about how crowded it was last time I stepped into those caverns—except instead of people with suitcases, you get drone spiders.”
“You said they weren’t any more dangerous than a footlocker,” Burton said.
“I meant a footlocker with a forty thousand-volt charge. If one of those spiders so much as rubs against you, all the electronics in your armor go dead, then you either have to walk around blind or breathe whatever that lethal shit is in the air.
“I’m betting that we lose both bombs long before we reach the target area. This is one of those ‘the fate of humanity is resting on us’ moments, sir. Do you really want to cut the odds in half by leaving one of the nukes behind?”
Burton made a laughing noise, but it sounded short, sour, and forced. “So we’re going to set off a nuclear bomb to save humanity? Did I ever mention that my parents left Earth and moved to the Norma Arm because they did not approve of all the violence?”
“They’re probably dead now,” I said. “Norma was one of the first arms to go.”
A bat came flapping down from the ceiling. It was hit by green flashes from so many particle-beam cannons that all that was left was a fine, red mist and a few shreds of fur.
“Steady,” I said over the open frequency, just glad that no one had fired a rocket at it.
“They probably are dead,” Burton agreed. “Are you a praying man, Lieutenant Harris? I heard somewhere that you read the Bible.”
“I stopped reading it,” I said. “I lost my faith.”
“I’ve never been much for religion, but I said a shitload of prayers on the flight over here.”
“Yeah, well, if God is any good with a particle beam, we sure as hell could use him on our team right about now,” I said. “We better move out, sir.”
Major Burton gave the order to mount up, and we walked ahead. The ion light faded slightly as we moved deeper into the caves. Freeman led us toward the tunnel opening that would take us into the cavern.
“Breeze went in through this tube,” Freeman said, as we came to the first opening. Under normal circumstances he would have communicated this over the interLink, but this time he used his external speaker so that Sweetwater would hear.
“Maybe we should go to the next one,” I said over the open mike as well.
Sweetwater stared into the darkened doorway. “We want to see him,” he said. It was hard to hear him, and I wondered how much of the gas his mask allowed in. The damage to his throat might have already begun.
“Okay, if you are sure,” I said. Then I switched to a company-wide channel on the interLink. “The angle is going to be like going down a spiral staircase. Got it? The tube is wide with a low ceiling. You men on point, no stopping until we get to the bottom, then fan out. I want the first men down to form a shield by the time the nukes make it through.”
I heard a collective “Aye, aye, sir.” Burton led the way in.
The tube was just as I remembered it, long and wide with a six-foot ceiling, deep scratches in the walls and ceiling. Like me,
Burton had to duck his head to get through. Because their helmets added an inch to their height, the general- issue clones had to bow their heads, but Sweetwater could have skipped rope in there.
The light from the curtain faded out quickly. By the time we reached the second bend in the downward- spiraling tube, my visor had switched to night-for-day vision, and I saw the world around me in blue-white images. I listened to my men over the interLink. Some of them were breathing heavily, a sign of fear.
“Steady,” I said. “There are two kinds of spiders in here, small ones and big ones. The small ones are drones. Don’t bother shooting them, they won’t know you are there. It’s the big ones you have to worry about.”
This was all review, of course, but Herrington asked, “How big are the big ones, sir?”
“What the speck!” Burton gasped.
“Hold,” I told the men.
Burton had located a guardian spider. The damn thing had had to climb in here with its legs spread wide, and its girth left the tunnel half-filled. It remained perfectly still.
“Please tell me that is one of the big ones,” Burton said.
“Stay here.” I stepped past Burton and the men on point as I approached the guardian spider. It lay there absolutely still, just lurking there, blending into the darkness. I watched it for several seconds, then said, “It’s dead.”
As I approached, I saw that two of its legs had broken away. Its body was cracked and desiccated. The gash in its underbelly stretched from its head to its tail, and dust poured out of it.
Arthur Breeze had killed the creature that killed him. He sat against the far wall of the tunnel, his legs spread out before him. He held a standard-issue particle-beam pistol in his right hand. The spider-thing had slashed his white combat armor, breaking his chest plate and shattering his visor. I don’t think I felt any special bond with Breeze; but looking at his corpse, I felt outrage. I spun my particle-beam cannon around and smashed the butt into the guardian spider’s head. I hit it a second time. The hollow shell of the monster cracked under the force of that blow, and I hit it again and again.
“Harris, is it alive?” Burton sounded scared.
“Mother-specking son of a bitch!” I yelled. Spit was flying from my mouth into the microphone. I hit the spider again, and the uppermost ridge of its back and its exoskeleton crushed in on itself.
They had killed each other. Breeze probably died first, but he broke the spider. He would have fallen back and fired, but the spider-thing had still slashed him, nearly cutting off his head and channeling a deep, deep gash that ran from his neck to his thigh. Arthur Breeze’s glasses lay on the ground along with the jigsaw puzzle of glass that had once been his visor. Beads of blood had dried on his snowy white armor, and a puddle of blood covered the floor.
His face had never been much to look at, but the only parts I now recognized were the big, square teeth that would have looked better matched in the mouth of a horse. The other features—the cheeks, the nose, the chin, and the forehead—had turned to sponge. The eyeballs had wilted so that they completely filled the sockets in which they sat.
The face lit up. Sweetwater stood beside me, shining his flashlight into his dead friend’s face.
“Harris? Harris what the speck is going on?” Burton asked as he came over and joined us.
I ignored both Burton and Sweetwater, listening only to the echo of the insane scream I made inside my helmet. This was not just about Breeze, and I knew it. This was for Philips and Huish and White, and the nine hundred thousand clones who had died defending this goddamned planet. I spun and smashed my boot into the side of the dead spider. I kicked it as hard as I could, and the side of its body shattered. I felt something tug at my shoulder.
“It’s not getting any deader,” said Freeman.
Maybe it was the calmness in his voice or the weight of his hand on my shoulder, though more likely it was the way my combat reflex had sneaked up on me, but I whirled around and prepared to shoot Freeman. He was ready for me, though. As I came around and raised my gun, he shoved me hard, and I stumbled into the giant carcass. I fell on my ass angrier than ever, but before I could bring up my gun, the bastard had his particle-beam pistol pressed straight into my visor.
“You are going to get yourself killed,” Freeman said, sounding so specking calm it made we want to piss myself. I was in a rage. I tried to bring up my cannon, and the bastard stepped on it. So there I sat, leaning
