Dolphiam Sector, Agua System, Azura
Admiral Gives came to expecting to hear the screech of decompression alarms, the wail of fire alerts that came from a ship in combat. Given the crushing weight upon his back, he expected a warning that the inertial dampeners were offline, and the chaos of a crew needing orders.
What he found was silence. A perfect, horrifying silence.
…And darkness. A darkness every bit as perfect as the lightless void between the stars. He struggled against the restraint that pinned him. He couldn’t get free, but he could move one of his arms, reach up and turn his helmet light on.
The light cleaved into the darkness, a beam of clarity among fog and wreckage. A wall of beams, wires and drywall had come down in front of him, more of it landing on his back. Barely, just barely he could make out the large legs of a body in front of him, and the tri-barreled fortification turret that accompanied it. Johnston. The heavy-grav worlder who had braced the door behind them.
It all came back to the Admiral in a rush: the negotiations, the flight to this stairwell… They’d been attacked. Fired upon from orbit. “Corporal,” he called, unable to see the rest of the team.
Hearing noise through the helmet radio of his suit, Johnston’s feet stirred, twitching, as if looking for traction. Still, the big man didn’t respond, and soon went still again.
“Corporal,” the Admiral called to him again. “Are you injured?”
An indecipherable grunt answered, a sound of strain, but not agony. The big man was probably out of it. Holding the doors behind them, he’d taken the brunt of the impact. By the look of it, several hundred pounds of concrete and rebar had come down on top of him.
Straining under the rubble that pressed down on his back, Admiral Gives knew he had no chance of getting free on his own. Something was painfully tight around his leg, and getting tighter the more he struggled, the pile of wreckage slowly compressing. “Can anyone else read me?”
“I read you,” came another voice on the radio. “But I’m trapped.”
Havermeyer. The tech-monk had survived. His transmission came in crisp and clear. He had to be nearby, but the Admiral couldn’t see him from this angle, or maybe he was just completely buried. But from the other two members of their party, Valentina and Frenchie, there was silence. Before the Admiral could ask after them, a thunderclap shook the room, the sound a physical wave that he could feel through his chest. The remains of the ceiling above visibly buckled, bowing another few feet down, and loosing a rain of small debris. A second impact hit a moment later, slightly smaller and slightly further away, but the force of it was unmistakable: missile strikes. The Hydrian bombardment was still ongoing. A strike any closer would collapse this entire structure, bringing it all down on top of them. The Admiral struggled harder, but that only constricted his trapped foot more, making it painfully tight, as if a vice was clamping down upon his ankle.
A distant screech sounded above. In the basement of this old building, it was a quiet sound, but a damning one for the few seconds the rocket motors were audible. The ensuing impact cracked the ceiling, bringing a six-foot chunk of concrete crashing down an arm’s length away. “Corporal,” the Admiral hardened his tone. Johnston was the only one strong enough to free himself from this debris. “We need to move.”
Johnston groaned, and began to push himself upward. “Aye, suh.” Concrete and unidentifiable rubble tumbled off his back in a cascade, as if he were a stone giant rising from hibernation beneath a hill. With a final push, one of the steel doors he’d braced, now warped and bent like a piece of foil, slid off and he stood. He shook his head, freeing smaller fragments that had found homes in the dents on his helmet, then reached down and yanked his tri-barreled fortification turret free from the debris. He hefted it easily back into place on his back, then strode over to the Admiral, and began yanking the larger pieces of debris from the top of the pile. “You alright, suh?
Could be better, could be worse. At least they weren’t dead. “Can you see Ensign Havermeyer?”
Before Johnston could answer, a shudder wracked their basement shelter, accompanied by the thunderous wave of a large explosion. The ceiling buckled further, sending a wash of ashy gray dust down as Johnston stumbled unevenly. In that, it became obvious there wasn’t time to extract him safely. One of those strikes would come down on top of them any second. They had to find the rest of the team. Admiral Gives offered his one free hand to Johnston. “Pull.”
Johnston hesitated a moment, too aware that his heavy-grav strength could crush the bones of a normal human easily. It was difficult to even spar with his fellow crew without risking injury to them. Marseddai people like him were feared for reasons that went far beyond their history in the Frontier Rebellion. But he took the Admiral’s hand in the careful way he knew to interact with normal folk. “If it hurts, best start hollerin’.”
“Your concern is noted, Corporal,” the Admiral braced himself as Johnston began to pull. It hurt. It felt like something was digging into his ankle more the harder Johnston pulled. Then the tension snapped and he was free. Johnston yanked him from the wreckage and grabbed a shoulder to put help pull him upright. Before the Marine could start fussing over him, the Admiral waved him off. “Start looking for the others.”
“Yes, suh,” he drawled as another more distant impact drew his attention upward. The crack on the ceiling was growing. He didn’t waste any more time, moving further into rubble piles to look for the rest of the team.
Admiral Gives took quick stock of his kit, checking for his sidearm and sword, both present, then for holes in his suit. He couldn’t identify any, though the rubbery material had been scratched shallowly all over. Above his left ankle, where the suit leg met his boot, it was noticeably abraded, as if something blunt had been trying to saw through. He returned his attention to the rubble he’d been pulled from. Without him in its midst, it was slowly collapsing, smaller bits running down the now convex slope like sand through the center of an hourglass. And yet, he could swear there was something moving within the pile, churning the rubble more than it should.
He wasn’t given time to contemplate it. Johnston called out, “Got Havermeyer. Can’t find the others.”
Admiral Gives turned to study the wreckage around him. Piles of crushed concrete, riddled with rebar, wiring and drywall reached the collapsing ceiling. The light on his helmet carved through the darkness like a searchlight upon the sea, but it found uneven shapes and dust. The slight iridescence of the environmental suits was missing, and these piles of debris were plenty large enough to hide a body, or an unconscious victim. “No eyes,” he said, moving to the nearest to start digging through. A helmet, a hand, even a finger, any of those would tell him that Frenchie or Valentina had been buried, but he could find none. There was only rocks, dust and loose wires. Soon the surface of his gloves were stained gray, coated in a fine powder. Quickly, he moved to a second pile of debris, and started digging.
The scream of a rocket motor stopped him. He barely had time to react before the impact split the ceiling above him. Larger debris came falling down in ten-foot chunks, the whole area quaking with a horrible tremble as the pressure wave came through, pushing him backward. Across the room, Johnson staggered, his massive hand still on Havermeyer’s shoulders.
Suddenly, the space they’d found below the stairwell was collapsing. The walls were shuddering and breaking, pieces of concrete raining down in larger and faster pieces. “We have to find the others!” Havermeyer bent down to dig through the nearest pile, but Johnston yanked him back.
“No time.” A massive bit of flooring came down onto Johnston’s shoulder and snapped in two, even as the big man fell to a knee. He tightened his grasp on Havermeyer, then shoved the monk further into the darkness, into the stairwell that descended down into the catacombs below Azura’s colony. “Run.”
The area began crumbling, larger and larger pieces filling the small room at the base of the stairs where they’d initially found themselves. It became an obstacle course, sidestepping and jumping the largest pieces as debris rained down with the awful crunching and grinding of structural collapse.
Admiral Gives ran, dodging the larger pieces of rubble. It pelted him as he tried to follow the light of Johnston and Havermeyer’s helmets, and then it was too late. A large piece of concrete came down on top of him, knocking him from his feet, and he scrambled, desperately, fruitlessly trying to pull himself into the more stable tunnel beyond, but the weight was piling up, slowing him further… Trapping and burying him.
Then Johnston was there, shrugging the impact of six-foot rocks off his shoulders. He grabbed the Admiral’s suit and yanked him free, then started sprinting. The big Marine caught up to Havermeyer in a second, put a hand on the monk’s back and pushed him forward. They ran two hundred feet over to the next stairwell, then down another flight of stairs, chased by a plume of concrete dust and a wall of crushing debris as the building collapsed down the stairwell behind them, blocking any hope they had of digging their way out.
Two more levels down and another two hundred feet onward, Johnston threw open a door to reveal a larger tunnel where the dust faded, and the structure stabilized. Here, the missile impacts above were relegated to small earthquakes, the likes of which the colony had been built to withstand. Only then did Johnston slow, turning to watch the smallest rocks clatter down the stairs behind them.
Havermeyer turned back immediately, running back to the ruin that blocked the path upward. “The others!” He began clawing at the rocks, trying to dig his way back toward the room they’d woken in. “They’ll die!”
Johnston dropped the Admiral and pulled his weapon off his back, carefully checking it before he readied it to study the large, dark tunnel they’d entered. “They’re dead.” The weight of a multi-story building had just come crashing down. Their environmental suits weren’t structurally reinforced. The others, if they had still been alive after the first impact, would have been crushed.
“How can you say that?” Havermeyer demanded. “They’re your team! We don’t know where they were! Maybe they were sheltered!”
“Even if they lived, we can’t get to them,” Johnston said. It would take days and equipment they didn’t have. If Frenchie or Valentina had lived through the collapse, they would die trapped there, and that was not a kinder fate. “The Hydra will continue to bombard the colony. We ought to worry about ourselves. Chances are, we’ll be joining them soon enough.”
Admiral Gives picked himself off the floor once again, brushing the dust and gravel from the crevasses of his suit. He spared a brief glance back to the tunnel they’d fled, packed with concrete rubble and now impassable. They could dig for days and not get through. “The Corporal is right. We must focus on our mission.” That mission now, was to get back to the Warhawk.
“Easy for you to say,” Havermeyer felt at the blockage of the tunnel, prodding at it for weak spots or a stable path back in, anything he could use to go back and check for the others.
“The hell does that mean?” Johnston said in his low, slow baritone voice.
“Our mission was to get the translator to the rendezvous and back alive, was it not?” Havermeyer reminded. That was the way the mission had been worded. He gestured vaguely in the Admiral’s direction. “Now you’re alive, they’re probably dead and you aren’t going to give us an honest word of explanation on what the hell happened.”
“The Hydra happened,” Johnston said. “We tried to negotiate. It didn’t work.” Now, they were trapped in the catacombs below Azura’s colony.
“But it was working.” Havermeyer was certain of that. “We handed over the prisoner. That negotiation was over. Why did they attack us?” Except, no, that wasn’t accurate. The team hadn’t been attacked. Those initial attacks had been focused entirely on Admiral Gives. “Why did they attack you?” The Admiral had lied about his rank to the Ambassador, and wore no identifying rank insignias on his suit. As far as the Hydra were concerned, he should not have been a target worth starting a war over.
Admiral Gives did not recoil from Havermeyer’s gaze, too used to being under the tech-monk’s scrutiny. “This negotiation was never expected to succeed.” Not really. “This was a delaying action,” not a complete solution. “The Hydra are planning to invade.” The Admiral had not yet identified their strategy, but it was happening soon. Representatives of the Hydrian High Queen, such as that Chieftain who had escorted the Ambassador, were already patrolling near the Neutral Zone. “It was my job to convince them that humanity is unaware of their plans,” which was mostly true. As far as he knew, the Singularity had been the only ship to stumble onto their plot. “That was intended to buy us time.” Time to gather evidence, time to suss out the Hydra’s plans, then move to counter them while the Hydrian Armada made final preparations.
But there was an element he hadn’t been able to account for. The Angel of Destruction was the largest threat against Hydrian invasion that existed in human space. The AI of Rowin’s ship had surely reported that the Angel was present, and it seemed Rowin’s testimony had been enough to confirm that Admiral Gives was associated. Anyone associated with, let alone thought to be the controller of that weapon was worth killing at any cost – even if it meant accelerating the Armada’s war plans. Still, he did not believe the ghost would have sent him here without some chance of success, albeit a low one. There had been a chance that the Swordbreaker AI’s instability would render its evidence invalid, and that the ghost had managed to distort Rowin’s memory, but that would have been difficult, given the extent to which she’d interacted with the Hydrian prisoner.
“Valentina and Frenchie died for a chance to delay the inevitable?” Havermeyer asked. “That’s cold.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“That’s tactics,” Johnston corrected. “And now ain’t the time to debate it.” Havermeyer was not a ground combat veteran. Things were a lot crueler and more personal here than they were in naval combat, ship-to-ship. “Suh,” he said to the Admiral, “cover.”
“Aye,” the Admiral acknowledged, stepping up beside Johnston and drawing his sidearm. They studied the waiting path beyond for a moment together. It was dark and damp, its ceilings arched. Two sets of long, straight tracks striped the center, indicating a mass transit or cargo distribution network had once run below the colony.
Satisfied the team was covered, Johnston stepped back and pulled the subspace transceiver set he’d been carrying off his back. The protective case was badly dented and punctured in places, but he set it down gingerly and opened it up. What waited inside was a mess of crushed circuit boards and a snapped antenna, riddled with fine dust turned to mud by the humidity. Tentatively, Johnston tried to power it on, but the electricity fizzled. “Comms are down. We’re cut off.”
Havermeyer stepped up to look over Johnston’s shoulder, but he could see there was no hope of repair. Subspace transceivers were fragile, and this one had not survived being crushed in debris brought down from the missile strike. “No chance of reaching the ship.” They’d be trapped here.
“The Warhawk is sheltered,” the Admiral reminded. Parked below one of the colony’s pylons, the Hydra wouldn’t pick it up on sensors, and it was miles from where the missile strikes had been centered. The Warhawk had a full suite of subspace communications equipment. “These tunnels should cover the area of the colony. We can follow them around the perimeter.” They would grant cover from Hydrian battleship searching and striking the surface.
Havermeyer looked around, the light of his helmet illuminating eerily preserved walls covered in white subway tile. Conduit and lighting fixtures traced the ceiling in neat lines, long since dormant. It was damp, and mold had begun growing in the lines of grout, subtle and greenish, but it was clean. Beyond the rocks that had tumbled down the access stairs behind them, there wasn’t anything on the floor. The tunnel, stretching into the darkness to the left and right of them was empty. Perfectly empty. “They didn’t try to flee down here when the Hydra attacked?” These tunnels were almost perfectly preserved, even decades after an orbital bombardment had destroyed a good portion of the colony. They would have made a good shelter.
“They probably did,” Johnston answered. “But the Hydra aren’t what killed Azura.” Where they stood was on the outermost, most preserved edge of the colony, and they now stood within in the subsurface sections most shielded from the elements… This was where aspects of the Cataclysm were most likely to have survived.
Behind them, a few more rocks abruptly rolled down the pile and clattered onto the ground, the sound deafening in the otherwise silent tunnel. Havermeyer flinched, and turned, half expecting to see something emerge from the debris. Faintly now, he could hear something rubbing, grinding between the concrete and rebar. He stepped away from it, knowing it was too soft a sound to be a survivor. More likely, it was shifting weight, more pressure coming down upon the ruin, and threatening to cascade into this tunnel like a flood. “We should go.”
Johnston boxed the broken transceiver back up and loaded it onto his back, thinking it best not to leave evidence of their presence, then grabbed his weapon and took point. “You got a compass, Stonewall?”
The Admiral pulled a compass from a sealed pocket on his suit. Magnetic compasses were standard issue for pilots in case they were shot down and had to navigate toward friendly territory. It was an archaic tool, but one that proved useful enough for the fleet to continue using it. “Head right.” They had landed west of the rendezvous when they came down, so moving that way would get them closer. After a few miles, they would have to find another access point, climb up and check their surroundings.
“Aye,” Johnston grunted, and started moving. He took cautious steps, sweeping the light and the tri-barreled turret he carried edge-to-edge across the tunnel in front of them. Havermeyer kept watch on the group’s rear, expecting to see a flood of rocks to chase them down the corridor, but there was no movement.
An inch of water thickened with algae splashed below their boots, sending out ripples that rode across the stagnant fluid, but it bounced off the walls and washed back in, erasing their trail. Their headlamps were all the lit the darkness, carving perfect beams into humid air that had been undisturbed for half a century. They walked for several long minutes; the noise of missile impacts relegated to distant thunder this far below the surface. Only then did they find any sign of disruption on the tunnel walls.
An electrical junction box hung crookedly on the wall, its access panel ajar and streaked with rust. A few stray wires emerged from it like scraggly hairs, spiny and burgeoning with the blue-green growth of oxidizing copper. They were all that remained. The rest of the wiring, fuses and circuitry had been ripped out of the junction box and wall behind, an ugly and uneven hole awaiting there. Havermeyer reached out to it, feeling at the ends of the wires with his gloves. “What happened here?”
“It was harvested,” the Admiral told him. “Same as the bodies.” Azura’s Cataclysm had harvested every piece of useful material, biological or mechanical, from the worlds its subsumed. Nothing had remained. It had all been brought back here, to the heart of the Quarantine Zone, collected to enable the creations of a mad AI.
Havermeyer closed the access panel of the junction box with a slow, mournful hand, as if that could be enough closure as squeal of the rusty hinges echoed down the tunnel. “What was it trying to accomplish?”
“Unknown.” Nobody knew what the intent of Azura’s Cataclysm had been, what had driven the AI to start attacking its allies and harvesting people and machinery from the surrounding worlds. “Singularity saw to that.” The mad AI’s core, containing its programming, memory and the rationale of its insanity had been obliterated in the orbital bombardment that cratered Azura’s colony. Most of the AI’s materials had been destroyed with it. But, since a portion of the colony still stood, it was possible a number of the physical creations the AI had used to harvest Azura and the worlds within the Quarantine Zone still survived. Aberrations, they were called. Creations of unknown form, borne from an inorganic mind in the throes of madness.
“Best we keep moving,” Johnston rumbled. “But at least the Lady’s looking out for us.”
Always, the Admiral knew. What had been done to stymie Azura’s Cataclysm had been no stopgap measure. It had been the end of a world, and the demise of a force that had doomed several more. The Singularity had lived up to her mission to save humanity that day, and the mission had not ended there. She still served that same mission, and if she’d been here… If she’d been here, Valentina and Frenchie might still be alive. Not for the first time, Admiral Gives questioned the wisdom in coming here, the wisdom in leaving the ship a sector away.
But no, it wasn’t that simple. Coming to Azura had given them a chance to delay the outbreak of war. It had bought Zarrey and the rest of the crew time to rid the ship of the drones. The Singularity had been protected in this gambit, and that gave the rest of the crew a chance. That gave humanity a chance.
They continued through the dark, damp tunnels, following the rails of the subway and cargo cars that had once serviced Azura’s colony. The sound of their feet splashing through the standing water echoed in the empty, undisturbed space, rivalled in volume by the thunderclap of missile strikes above. Eventually, the tunnel curved around a bend, then split off into two smaller forks.
The right fork continued on into moist, sticky darkness, but the left fork showed signs of damage. A small trickle of water rained down from a fracture in the ceiling onto a small pile of rubble formed of broken subway tiles and concrete. None of Azura’s dull ambient sunlight reached this far down into the colony’s structure, it was just water from the planet’s endless rain trickling down, down, down and finding somewhere to go. Doubtless, the water that permeated this tunnel system was draining slowly from other parts of it. It had become and artificial cave system where the water was nearly stagnant and mold thrived in the humidity, sheltered from the raging seas and storms on the surface. But that wasn’t the most interesting part of the left fork. No, that was the figure slouched against the wall.
“I’ve got a body,” Johnston said, picking up the pace until a churning wake splashed out behind him.
They all but ran toward the first sign of life they’d seen on this world, but a closer look proved it wasn’t a body at all. It was tall and bipedal, but its figure was too tall to be human, and its entire form was made of metal. One arm lay uselessly at its side, disconnected at the shoulder joint, and dangling by the wires running below the pieces of its metal hide. Its other arm lay limp, still clutching the long rifle custom built to be held in its long, metal fingers. All extruded metal, ball joints and servo motors, a black automaton sat slumped against the wall. The filth of algae was slowly climbing up its long legs, green and reddish mold beginning to grow between its back and the wall it rested on. Its chest was caved in, the left arm ripped nearly off, and one of its legs was missing below the knee. It had been through a fight, but many years ago.
Havermeyer knelt in front of it, too curious to be cautious. Johnston didn’t scold him, simply stepped onto the end of the rifle in the automaton’s hand, pinning it down in case the derelict came back to life.
The tech-monk took the automaton’s boxy head in his hands, and tilted it carefully, this way and that, studying it. “This is a Knight Industries model. Security automaton.” He ran his fingers along where the serial numbers should be stamped, but it was smooth. “No manufacturer serial.” That was peculiar, but not as peculiar as the automaton’s very presence. “This model wasn’t manufactured until after the Frontier Rebellion ended, 4217 at the earliest.” They’d been built to help police the poorer nations of the Frontier, and become popular choices for enforcers on corporate installations. “It shouldn’t be here.” Azura’s Cataclysm had occurred during the Hydrian War. This automaton was two decades too new to have been part of it, and that meant someone had violated the Quarantine Zone and deployed security units here in the years since.
Not only that, but this unit had clearly been in combat. It had ceased functions due to damage, against this wall. Admiral Gives studied the position of the rifle, following its trajectory back to the center of the room. The automaton had been looking upward. He followed its gaze, noticing that the crack on the ceiling was no crack at all. It was a carved-out chunk, weakened by the impact of a high-penetrating rifle – a rifle like the automaton still had clasped in its grip. A piece of the ceiling had been brought crashing down onto the center of the room. The Admiral took a step, studying the rubble from a new angle.
Then he saw it. The gray, mottled texture of rotten flesh. The bones of a hand whose white tendons were too well preserved. There was a body below the concrete. A human body. He took one cautious step closer, weapon drawn, trying to see where the rest of the body lay. Then the hand twitched, something more squirming below the surface of the shallow water. Its decaying fingers convulsed as Johnston shouted, “Movement!”
Except he wasn’t talking about the body. The splish-splash of feet moving through the water became suddenly audible. Water ripples suddenly lapped at their boots in small waves. Something was coming, some shape marching down the tunnel with large, reflective eyes.
“I-I’m scared,” came the whimper, echoing down the curved walls. “C-can you help me?”
It was the voice of a child. A frightened child, pleading to be comforted, yet abandoned on this stars-forsaken world.
“I-it’s so dark… I’m scared.”
The perfect terror in its voice brought Admiral Gives to do the one thing he drilled his crew to never do in combat: he froze. His right hand still held his sidearm, but his left went instinctively for a first-aid pack.
“C-can you help me find Papa?”
The plea echoed across the rippling water, enough to make Admiral Gives hesitate. Enough to force the memory of the last child who pleaded with him back to the surface. Enough to turn those reflections into innocent brown eyes.
And that hesitation cost him dearly. Something clamped around his foot and yanked, sending him tumbling into the slime of the algae-filled waters. It constricted, tighter and tighter, climbing up the leg of his suit as he kicked, trying to throw it off.
The splashing steps grew louder as the high whine of Johnston’s turret spinning up to speed split the air. “Motherfucker!” the Marine cursed.
It was too big to be a child, its footfalls too infrequent, stride too long. The Admiral knew that even before it ran past him, barreling toward Johnston. He caught barely a glimpse of it, just the head that was stitched onto its side. Big, sad, empty eye sockets stared at him. A mottled gray face, caught between decay and preservation and framed by moldy locks of long stringy hair. A child. What was left of one. Yet its mouth moved, split lips and rotten teeth forming words with desperation. “Papa… I’m scared.”
And then the head exploded. A shower of black rotten flesh splattered everywhere as the buzzsaw sound of a fortification turret erupted in the tunnel. A hail of bullets, dense as a steel wall, ripped into the shape above him, pushing it back, blowing away chunks of putrid flesh, even plinking as it hit metal buried beneath. Yet, it didn’t stall its advance and kept marching onward, a golem of stitched together flesh and tech.
“Fuck!” Johnston yelled, releasing the trigger and throwing the turret into its storage position on his massive back. He yanked the greataxe he favored as his melee weapon out, then ran forward and dropped his shoulder. He charged straight into the golem’s center mass, pushing it three feet back, then turned and swung. His greataxe cleaved across a tapestry of dead, yet not entirely decayed flesh, severing three of its uneven arms clean off. “Grab him, Havermeyer!” the Marine shouted, pivoting his feet for another massive swing.
Havermeyer sprinted from where he’d knelt beside the automaton and fumbled to latch onto the Admiral’s suit. Eventually, his fingers found purchase on an armor strap and he yanked, but the thing holding the Admiral’s leg only tightened, painfully constricting it as it had been while buried in the rubble of the first missile strike. Whatever had him now had been there too, and it wasn’t letting go. “Run,” he ordered.
Havermeyer pulled harder, his feet churning on the algae-slicked ground. “Saint of Angels, grant me strength, because I am not leaving you behind, Admiral!”
And then he was free. Whatever held his leg dropped it in that instant, and the tension of Havermeyer’s pull yanked him a few feet away. The Admiral scrambled to his feet, sighting the pistol that had never left his grip as he saw Johnston wedge his axe deep in the golem’s torso. It stuck when the big Marine tried to rip it out, and the Admiral could see a few of the aberration’s surviving limbs starting to reach forward for a grip on Johnston. “Cover fire!” the Admiral said, watching Johnston react with the lightning-fast instincts of a Marine. The big man jumped backward, and the Admiral fired four times, aiming for the massive, swollen legs of the golem. Four hits barely even staggered it. “Pull back!”
Johnston didn’t give any acknowledgement, just started sprinting, hot on the heels of Havermeyer, leading them back the way they’d come. Admiral Gives followed close behind, firing twice more into the bulging, now oozing flesh of the golem’s legs, trying to slow it down.
There wasn’t time to think, nor time to study, but as he ran by the downed automaton, its head seemed to turn, watching him go, a dim light in its eyes.
Havermeyer, Johnston and the Admiral sprinted back to the point where the original tunnel forked, and rushed into the tunnel on the right side. It seemed the only option, for the path on the left held the aberration, and the path back led to a dead end.
“I see light!” Havermeyer called breathlessly as they ran. A white light was shimmering ahead. At first, he thought it an exit, an escape they could use to get back onto the surface of the colony. But as he drew closer, it grew smaller and smaller in proportion, and by the time he reached it, he realized it was nothing more than a flashlight. Left on and abandoned, it illuminated the tile on one side of the tunnel brightly, showing every blemish of mold on the white subway tile.
“Stop,” Johnston commanded, “we’ve got enough of a lead on it.” They needed to stop and navigate, study their surroundings before something could surprise them again.
Havermeyer bent to study the flashlight wallowing in the shallow water at his feet. It was metal and cylindrical, the handle textured for a good grip. A little wrist strap was attached to the back to keep it from drifting away during zero-G work. It was identical to that carried on the toolbelt of his own environmental suit.
At the rear of the group, Admiral Gives scanned the tunnel behind them, heaving in breaths. He could see nothing approaching in the darkness now, the water still beside their own movements. But given a moment to breathe, to recognize the rotten flesh splattered across his visor and the front of his suit, he could see a piece of stringy hair attached to a fragment of scalp draped across his wrist as he held his sidearm. He was nauseous, and his left foot felt wet.
Suddenly uneven on his feet, he staggered and glanced to the side of the tunnel that hadn’t been illuminated by the light.
It was red. Splattered and smeared with blood. Not old blood. Fresh blood. Then he understood. The left tunnel hadn’t been an attack of opportunity.
Strange sounds.
Strange movements.
Something had been aware of them, hunting them since the moment they fled underground, and that golem had funneled them here, like rats running in a maze.
