The ATLAS lowered its weapons.
"He is a friendly," I said.
"He is a friendly," Hornet repeated.
"But if he tries to run, you have my full permission to gun him down." I grabbed a Mark 12 from a storage rack behind the mech and went to the shaft.
Only Big Dog, Alejandro and I were still here. And Mao.
Big Dog tossed the SK Officer into the shaft. "In you go!"
I saw the rope swing and I knew that Mao had grabbed it. Lucky for him—his trimmed-down jumpsuit didn't include jumpjets.
Big Dog ignored the stunned look I gave him, and leaped onto the rope.
"See you in hell!" he said cheerfully, and slid down.
I was the last one to go in. I secured my rifle, activated my helmet light, and hesitated.
That sixth sense was just going crazy.
I ignored it, and jumped onto the rope, lowering myself into the bowels of this planet that was 8,000 lightyears away from everything I had ever known.
I traveled maybe ten meters down when the walls abruptly fell away.
I lowered myself to the floor of an eerily circular tunnel, about five meters in diameter. The polished black walls looked like obsidian.
My platoon brothers had already deployed in a zigzag pattern down the chamber.
"Creepy how smooth the walls are down here," Trace was saying on the comm. "What do you think made this? Laser cut? Or burrowed by giant alien slugs?"
I could just imagine the disturbed look on Alejandro's face.
"Cut the chatter," Facehopper sent. "Rage, in case you missed the order: Single squad, zigzag formation. You get to be dragman."
"Any luck on the ship comms, Snakeoil?" Chief said.
"No sir. I'm still getting static. That goes for the MDV, too."
"All right," Chief said. "TJ, send Hummingbird back up. Let the Captain know we're in."
An HS3 hovered past me and flew up the shaft.
I started forward, assuming my position as dragman. Everyone had their helmet lights on, so I could see quite a ways down that long, obsidian tunnel.
A moment later the HS3, "Hummingbird," hovered into place behind me, maintaining a constant drag position five meters back.
"Captain sends his regards," TJ said over the comm.
It wasn't long before the tunnel opened into a broad, underground cavern of astounding size. This seemed more of a natural cave, versus the artificial, too-round tunnel we'd just traversed. Immense formations of stone thrust from the floor, veritable pillars, wider at the bases than at the tops. Similar formations bit down from above. Stalactites and stalagmites. I could never remember which was which, though. I resisted the urge to look it up in the dictionary on my Implant, because as I strode forward, I had the unnerving feeling that I was passing between a mouthful of teeth.
Still, there was beauty here, I had to admit. The black, jagged walls yielded in places to sparkling crystals, radiant translucent hexagons that jutted forth at different heights. Above, entire portions of the ceiling twinkled with color.
"Ever do any spelunking?" Bomb asked me. His mohawk was back to its original, black color, not that I could see it from here. But his mohawk was the first thing that popped into my head whenever I heard his voice.
"Me? No, not really. You?"
"All the time, baby. All the time. Never seen anything quite like this of course. Guess it helps that we're on a different planet." He went to the one of the crystalline walls and ran a hand across the surface. "External scans say its Geronium-275 mixed with impurities like Calcium Oxide, Magnesium Oxide, Silica, Aluminum Oxide. Right here's the oxygen for your terraforming."
"Look sharp, mates," Facehopper said. "No time for sightseeing."
We continued down the cavern. We came across an HS3 waiting beside a formation, acting as a sentry, and the Chief had TJ send it closer to the entrance shaft to act as an intermediary with the ship, so that Hummingbird wouldn't have to travel as far back for the check-ins.
Bomb sent a message direct to my helmet. "Thanks for the kind words in the hangar, by the way. Trying to get me the mech and all. A bit misguided, but I do appreciate it."
"Sure thing," I said.
The cavern narrowed again,
and we entered another unnaturally circular tunnel roughly five meters in diameter. The Centurions continued on about twenty meters ahead of us, scouting the way. The green dots that represented them on my HUD map winked out occasionally, then returned moments later as their signals waxed and waned within the tunnels.
"Sir," TJ said. "Lucky, Lucy, and Larry have reached a fork."
"Have them hold there," the Chief said. "How's the signal degradation?"
"I'm getting pixelization and frame freezes out the yin-yang."
We reached the fork. Five tunnels of equal size branched off in different directions.
TJ reported that three of the forks had not been explored yet: the middle one and the two on the right.
The Chief had him send the robot scouts down the middle fork while we stayed behind, waiting to see if it was worth exploring.
I watched the map on my HUD expand as the robots went deeper.
The dots abruptly winked out.
I glanced at TJ urgently.
The three green dots came back.
"That's about as far as I can send them without losing contact," TJ said. "But if I split them up, I can string out the signal for all its worth."
"Do it," Chief Bourbonjack said.
I watched two of the green dots proceed while one stayed behind and acted as a signal booster for the other two. Eventually, TJ had another robot halt, and he sent the last forward.
"You think Bravo Platoon still has any O2 left?" Trace said, while we waited.
No one answered. We all knew how dire Bravo Platoon's O2 situation was. Let alone their radiation situation.
They were okay.
They had to be.
Hang in there Bravo,
I told myself.
"Lucy's almost out of signal range," TJ said. "Have to halt her."
"All right, time to move forward, MOTHs," Lieutenant Commander Braggs said.
Hummingbird returned behind me, and Braggs had TJ send the HS3 straight back to check-in with the ship again.
In single file we proceeded down the middle passageway of the fork.
We reached the first Centurion, Larry, and TJ sent the robot hurrying ahead to leapfrog Lucy.
A few minutes later:
"Larry just entered a new cavern," TJ reported. "There's some kind of metal object embedded in the floor."
"UC make?" Chief Bourbonjack said.
"No sir. Not SK either. Larry's scanning it, but he's not sending anything intelligible back. Must be the signal degradation. But that's not all. There are charred objects on the ground. Seem to be organic. Human."
"Pick up the pace, people!" Chief Bourbonjack said. "TJ, have the Centurions gather around Larry."
We all hurried forward, assuming the worst.
The passageway enlarged into a natural cavern, not as big as the previous one we'd come across, though. Soon enough we found the three Centurions, standing beside about five charred objects on the ground. The outline of each one was vaguely human. I couldn't tell if they were UC, or SK.
Snakeoil knelt, and touched one. A thread of black goo followed his gloved finger as he removed his hand. "
It's mostly a super-heated mass of carbon. Definitely organic."
"Human?"
"I am reading some ribonucleics, but no full DNA strands. But yes, the RNA does appear to be human."
"Look at this." Alejandro pointed out shrapnel embedded in the rock wall, and bullet marks.
Ghost knelt and picked up a shell casing. "UC design. Bravo." His voice choked up.
I know I felt my own eyes moisten. Members of Bravo had made some kind of stand here. I couldn't pretend they were all right anymore.
"Toughen up, MOTHs," Lieutenant Commander Braggs said. "We don't know that these are their bodies. We—" He had to stop. He was taking this pretty hard, like the rest of us. "Whatever happened to Bravo Platoon, there's going to be hell to pay, I can tell you that. I swear to you. No one touches my boys. No one."
It was a small speech, but it was enough. Those words hardened us.
"Here's the metal object TJ was talking about." Snakeoil crouched beside a small, metallic box set into the bottom of the cave. Lucy, the Centurion, was standing guard beside it.
"And what in the hell is that supposed to be?" Chief Bourbonjack said.
I came closer, and saw swirls reminiscent of Fibonacci spirals engraved all over the metal surface. Also known as golden spirals, because they recurred everywhere in nature, from the shells of mollusks to the spiral arms of galaxies.
"Seems to be some kind of communications device," Snakeoil said. "I'm getting a signal. Beamed straight up."
"I can confirm that," TJ said. "Lucy just picked up the signal. Seems to have activated with Snakeoil's approach."
"We tripped some kind of alarm?" Lieutenant Commander Braggs said.
"I don't know," TJ said. "Have a listen."
A garbled, robotic sound filled our hearing.
"Sounds like gibberish," Chief Bourbonjack said.
TJ nodded, then cut the noise.
"Anything else to add, Snakeoil?" the Lieutenant Commander said.
"There is. And you're not going to like it." Snakeoil ran a gloved finger away from the artifact, up into the air. "The signal comes out of the device but then seems to vanish about a meter up. I'm actually detecting a Slipstream signature.
In here.
"
I stepped back in alarm. I wasn't the only one.
"What the hell are you saying?" Chief Bourbonjack said. "A Slipstream? In here?"
"A quantum-sized one, yes. I think... I think this is some kind of trans-space antenna, for communicating over vast distances. Sort of like one of our InterPlaNet nodes, except with zero lag between it and the destination node."
"I didn't know the SKs had technology like that," Trace said.
"No one has technology like that," Snakeoil stated, rather ominously.
Right then I heard what sounded like a distant rustling, similar to leaves stirring on a breeze in the woods. No one else seemed to have noticed though, so I assumed my ears were playing tricks on me.
Mao stepped forward, panting, making frantic gestures with his fingers, as if he were trying to tell us something but was so afraid his voice no longer worked. His wrists were still bound by fibroin, so he couldn't move his gloves very much. It was a disturbing thing to watch.
"Big Dog, you're canary's firing again," Trace said.
Mao dropped and started pawing at the cave bottom with his bound hands, like he just wanted to get away. His gloves didn't even make a dent.
"He's going to depressurize his suit if he keeps that up," Trace said.
Big Dog shrugged.
Then I heard the rustling again. I glanced at Facehopper. I was about to say something but he forestalled me with a raised fist.
I boosted the volume in my facemask. Above Mao's frantic pawing I definitely heard something, a noise that brought me right back to one of my earliest childhood memories.
About a year before I met Alejandro on the streets, I was still living with my parents at the plantation. That one summer, an infestation of caterpillars had overrun everything. They were everywhere. The grass, the trees, the farmhouse, the machinery—every single square centimeter was covered. No blade of grass, no leaf, no branch was spared. You couldn't take a step without crushing a hundred of the things. You'd walk under the trees and the larvae would just be falling down on you in clumps.
The thing I remembered most about that infestation was the noise. The eerie, spine-tingling chitter of a hundred million caterpillars chewing up a hundred million leaves. Chewing up anything and everything that had any shred of life in it, turning our plantation—our livelihood—to ruin.
I heard that very same sound now.
"TJ," Chief Bourbonjack said. "Send the Centurions in. Dark."
The recon lamps on the Centurions deactivated, and the robots moved lithely down the tunnel.
"Dim the lights, people," Chief said.
We did.
Mao stopped clawing. He just perched there, listening like the rest of us.
I stared straight down the passageway the Centurions had taken. I couldn't see a thing, even though I had the night vision on my facemask cranked up to max. I decided to stare at the three green dots of Lucky, Lucy, and Larry on my HUD map instead, watching them move slowly away.
The chittering grew louder.
I swung the Mark 12 down from my shoulder, slid the safety off, and held the rifle at the ready. Beside me, my platoon brothers were doing the same with their own weapons.
The three green dots halted.
Red dots started popping up on the map, positioned directly in front of the green ones.
More red dots appeared as the Centurions cataloged and transmitted enemy positions to our Implants.
More.
I glanced sharply at Facehopper.
"Hold," he said.
I heard shooting in the distance, and saw flashes of gunfire down the cavern as the robots fired at whatever was attacking them.
"What do they see?" Facehopper said in a soft voice. "TJ?"
"Death," Mao gurgled from the floor. "Death!"
"Shut up!" Big Dog kicked him in the side.
There were so many red dots now I couldn't count them. There was just this big mass of red bearing down on the three green friendlies.
"TJ?" Facehopper said. "Turn on the Centurions' lamps."
"Already on, sir," TJ said.
"Then what the hell do you see? TJ?"