I was impressed by Captain Roku’s brave offer. “No, don’t pursue. They’ve found us. It was bound to happen. I’m not going to lose any men in their tunnels. They will have to fight in our tunnel, now.”
“Orders, sir?”
“I want your platoon to hold your position for five minutes, then withdraw to catch up with the rest of us. Burn any Worm-noses you see poking through. And watch the walls for more breakthroughs.”
I hailed the drill-tank pilots next and ordered one of them to reverse and babysit Roku’s group. I also ordered a second drill-tank to come up and join the first one at the point of our column. I wanted two of them to drill forward from now on, side-by-side. We would make a wider avenue for our people, allowing the drill-tanks to maneuver. With a wider passage, my marines wouldn’t be strung out into such a long, vulnerable column.
We were about three miles from the marked heart of the mountain when Corporal Jensen waved for my attention. I could tell from the urgency of his gestures, something was wrong. I grunted and hustled over to look over his shoulder.
He was tapping at his sensor screen dubiously. “Sir,” Jensen said. He appeared worried, as always. “Sir, there’s nothing up ahead.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” I asked.
“No sir, I mean there’s
I pressed the com-link override, broadcasting to everyone. “Column halt!” I roared.
But it was already too late.
— 53-
It was the loose soil that got us into trouble. Anyone who’s ever tried to dig a hole on the beach knows the story: the sandy walls cave in on the sides of the hole, filling the bottom. We’d been drilling along, making our tunnel and hardening up the walls with the heat of our lasers. We were creating a tube-like structure of stiffer material as we went through the mountain. But when we reached an end-point, a spot where the light dirt had somewhere to go when we drove into it, the dirt fell away from our tunnel in a rapid, sloughing motion. Our tunnel and its glassy walls were exposed to open space. The ceiling cracked and earth poured in. The dirt below us shifted too, and sent us down into the void we’d reached. The dirt above came down after it, pelting us. Within seconds after I’d called the halt, my forward team found itself helplessly sliding down into a pile of soft earth, tumbling at a forty-five degree angle a hundred feet or more downward.
I went down with the rest of them, trying to bodysurf and failing at it. I went under, and dirt buried me. I reached up with my hands as I realized I was being buried alive, trying to keep them up and visible. I wondered, as the dirt first roared, then finally pattered over my head, if my suit would keep me alive for days, and if I would ever be found and dug out. Something heavy hit my hand, cracking my fingers. I winced, hoping another drill-tank hadn’t just rolled over my hand. I wiggled my fingers experimentally, they hurt, but I thought they were all responding to my brain’s commands.
I tried to operate my com-link with my chin, but it didn’t work. I had no way of trouble-shooting it. Maybe the unit had been ripped loose during the fall. Life-giving air still hissed out of the rebreather into my suit, however.
Something grabbed my fingers after I’d spent about a minute down there. Something that pinched horribly, pulling them out of their sockets. I would have pulled them back under the ground, if I could. The pinch stopped, for a blessed moment. I felt the walls pressing in on me, suffocating me with the weight. Many people who died in avalanches died because the pressure compressed their lungs and would not allow them to breathe, even if there was an air pocket available. Here on Helios, with the nearly double gravity to contend with, the earth weighed a lot and my lungs labored to suck in each gulp of air.
There was a fluttering sensation around my upraised glove. Was that a Worm? Were they rooting around up there, looking for good morsels amongst my men? The sensation of movement around my exposed hand increased, and for a moment, I wished I’d never put it up there, like a flag on a sand castle.
Another crushing grip closed over my hand. Wrenching force was applied. I felt my shoulder give first. It slipped out of the socket, and I screamed in my enclosed suit, the sound of my cries was muffled inside my crumpled hood. It sounded as if I were screaming underwater.
I squeezed whatever had me and held on. I was hauled out of the dirt like a carrot, dribbling brown earth everywhere. When I was half-exposed the horrible ripping sensation stopped. My arm flopped down at my side. I used my other hand to smear dirt from my goggles.
I was still buried up to my waist. Standing over me was Kwon. He had both hands on his rifle now. He was twisting this way and that, shouting something. My com-link still didn’t work, and I couldn’t make out what he was talking about.
Then the autoshades triggered as light-weight beamers flared around me. The men were firing at something. Painfully, I extracted myself from my early grave and got to my feet.
Kwon looked me over. He reached toward my head with those thick, ungentle fingers. I flinched, but let him do it. He fumbled with something near my ear. I heard a click, and suddenly my head filled with sound. My com- link had become disconnected in the fall.
“-we’ve got at least thirty down, Sergeant,” I heard someone say.
“Worms north and east. They are staying in the growths.”
“-sniping at us!”
I looked around, staggering, holding my wrenched shoulder. I tried to take stock of things. Men were everywhere on the slope, nearly a hundred of them. There wasn’t much cover, but we were in a depression of sorts, and if the Worms were to the north and east, they didn’t have a good firing position on us. My own men, I realized, were up on the rim of the mound formed by the landslide. They were the ones firing back at the snipers. Others worked to scrape out a trench for cover.
We were near the bottom of a fantastically large cavern. The ceiling appeared to be a thousand feet up in the gloomy distance. The floor of the cavern was covered with growths, things that looked like rubbery, slimy crystalline formations. I could tell by their flower-like structures were living growths, not some kind of mineral deposit. They reminded me of large fans of coral. It was as if I looked out into a drained undersea grotto.
I looked upslope. I could see the broken mouth of the tunnel. My men poked out with their lasers, looking down at us. No one seemed to be in charge.
I looked down slope. Tumbling wasn’t good for tanks, I thought. One of the two drill-tanks I’d had leading the way had landed nose-down at the bottom of the slope. I could tell by the trail of dead, flattened marines that led down to its resting place, the machine had taken a few men down with it. The second drill-tank had fared better, it was upright and the torn skin of it was slowly reshaping itself. That meant the brainbox was still intact. The gun didn’t have enough range when configured for drilling to hit the snipers. If the Worms tried to rush us, however, that tank would be a powerful defense.
I shook my head and tried to think. “Riggs here. Anyone got a fix on the snipers?” I asked on the operational channel.
A few men cheered. “Good to hear you made it, sir,” said a familiar voice. I glanced down at the HUD readout. It was Captain Roku.
“Captain? Did our lead pilot make it?”
“No sir. That slide down the hill killed a number of good men.”
“All right,” I said, “Roku, you are in command of the remaining hovertanks. You are now second in command of this expedition.”
“Ah, yes Colonel,” said Roku, surprised.
He shouldn’t be, I thought, he was next in rank. There were two other captains in the infantry, and they may or may not be senior, but I wanted one of my pilots in the lead if I didn’t manage to dig my way out of the next hole I fell into. Knowing the chain of command was critical in a place like this, where deaths could alter the face of things at any moment.
“Captain, can you get your tanks down here with us safely?”
