Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

And the instant Tolliver touches Noam’s head, all hell breaks loose. The monsters come from everywhere at once, scuttling masses of bone and bioluminescence. From the ground, Elliot realizes dimly even as he backpedals, keys his night vision, opens fire. The rest of the squad is doing the same; splinters fly where bullets hit bone but the skin of things, the blue algae, just splits and reforms.

Subterranean fungi. He remembers that from the topography scan as Tolliver clicks empty and fumbles his reload.

“Get the fuck out,” comes Mirotic’s voice. “They’re coming on your twelve, your three. Lots of them.”

Doesn’t matter. The thought spears through Elliot’s mind. Doesn’t matter if he dies here or on Kettleburn or wherever else. He’s been dead for ages.

Then Tolliver goes down, tripped by a monster clamping its bony appendages around his legs like a vice. Elliot aims low and for gray, shattering enough bones for Tolliver to wriggle out, to swap clips. But bullets aren’t enough here.

Elliot loads the incendiary grenade as Tolliver scrambles free. He tries to remember the chemical compositions here on Pentecost. For all he knows, it might light up the whole fucking swamp. For all he knows, that might be a better way to die than getting digested alive.

“Run,” Elliot orders, and sends the fire-in-the-hole warning spike at the same time. “Leave them.”

Santos rips past him, then Snell, then Tolliver right after, no protest, his reflective eyes wide and frantic in the dark. With adrenaline turning everything slow and sharp, Elliot fires the grenade where he thinks the splash will be widest, hitting the dirt between two of the surging creatures. He remembers to blink off his night vision only a nanosecond before the explosion.

A wall of searing heat slams over his body and even without night vision the blossoming fireball all but blinds him. He feels Tolliver grabbing his shoulder, guiding him out of the thicket. Through the roar in his ears, he can’t be sure if Jan is still screaming.

They are sitting in the husk of the downed Heron, not speaking. Every so often someone glances toward the cyclops, which is still whirring and spinning and searching. Santos has a bruise on her forehead from where the butt of Snell’s gnasher clipped her in the dark. Tolliver cut his thumb falling. Other than that, they are all fine, except Elliot hasn’t been able to get to his syringe.

“So there was no plague,” Mirotic finally says. “Only a predator.”

“That thing was artificial,” Snell says. His eyes look wild, bloodshot, and his hand keeps going to the spot where his knife used to be. “No way could that evolve, man. It’s a weapon.”

“It’s organic, whatever it is,” Mirotic says. “Looked on the scan like a fungus.”

“It’s a weapon, and they dumped us here to test it.” Snell’s voice ratchets high. “That fucking smartmine was probably one of ours. We’re expendable, right? So they dumped us here to see if it works.”

Elliot waits for someone to tell Snell to settle the fuck down, but instead Santos and Tolliver and Mirotic are all looking at him, waiting for his response. Tolliver plucks at the bandage around his hand, anxious.

“The colonists stay out of these swamps,” Elliot says. “You said that yourself.” He has a flash of the twins’ twisted bodies, the scuttling monsters. “I figure now we know why.”

“When do we get extracted?” Santos asks flatly. “Sir.”

Elliot knows they are low priority. Maybe five days, maybe six. Maybe more. “They know we’re rationed for a week,” he says.

“A fucking week?” Snell grinds his metal teeth. “Man, we can’t be out here a week with that thing. I’m not ending up like the twins, man. I say we carry what we can, and we get out of here.”

“To where?” Mirotic asks. “The fungus extends under the ground in all directions.”

“If you knew about this, why didn’t you tell us?” Snell demands.

Mirotic’s nostrils flare. “Because fungus is not usually predatory.”

Elliot tries to focus on the back-and-forth, tries to think of what they should do now that they know the swamp is inhabited by monsters. He realizes he is scratching at his arm.

Santos looks over. “What the fuck?”

But she isn’t looking at him. Tolliver, who has been silent, ash-faced, is clutching at his bandaged thumb. He looks down at it now and his eyes widen. A faint blue glow is leaking from underneath the cling wrap.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit, I feel it.” Tolliver is twisting on the cot, sweat snaking down his face. “I can feel it. Moving.”

The bandages are off his hand now and his cut thumb is speckled with the glowing fungus. The autosurgeon unfolds over his chest like a metal spider while Mirotic searches for the right removal program, his eyes scrolling code. Elliot feels a panic in his throat that he never feels during combat. It reminds him of the panic he felt last time he spoke to his daughter.

He crouches down and holds Tolliver’s free hand where Snell and Santos can’t see. It’s slippery from the sweat.

“Got it,” Mirotic says thickly. “Biological contaminant.”

The autosurgeon comes to life, reaching with skeletal pincers to hold Tolliver’s left arm in place. Carmine laserlight plays over his skin, scanning, then the numbing needle dips in with machine precision to prick the base of his thumb.

Tolliver’s free hand clenches tight around Elliot’s.

“Hate these things,” he groans, locking eyes for a moment. “Rather let the Smell use that big old fucking knife than have a bot digging around—”

“Shouldn’t have dropped it, then,” Snell says.

Tolliver swivels; his mouth pulls tight in a grimace. “Fuck you, Snell.”

The autosurgeon deploys a scalpel. Metal slides and scrapes and the sound shivers in Elliot’s teeth. Mirotic is looking over at him, and when he speaks he realizes why.

“The spores are moving. Autosurgeon wants to take the whole thumb.”

A wince ripples through the tent; Santos clutches her own thumb tight between two knuckles. Tolliver’s eyes go wide. He tries to yank his arm away, but the autosurgeon holds tight.

“No!” he barks. “No, don’t let it! Turn the fucking thing off!”

“It could spread through his body if we aren’t fast,” Mirotic says. “How you said it did to Prentiss and Prentiss.”

Elliot swallows. He isn’t a medic. What they drilled into his head, from basic onwards, was to trust the autosurgeon. And he doesn’t want Tolliver to end up like the twins.

“Do it,” he mutters.

“Turn it off!” Tolliver wails. “Listen! Listen to me, you fucks!”

His free hand thrashes but Elliot holds it tight, not caring anymore if Santos and Snell can see it, as the scalpel descends.

“The program’s running,” Mirotic says. “Too late to stop it.”

The blade makes no sound as it slices through the skin, the tendon, the bone. The autosurgeon catches the squirt of bright red blood and whisks it away. Tolliver howls. His spine arches. His hand clamps to Elliot’s hard enough to bruise.

Elliot sits underneath the cyclops, listening to it whir. He said they would sleep in shifts, that he would watch first, as if his vitreous eyes might catch something the sensors miss. Partly because he had to say something. Give some kind of order. Mostly because he needed a hit.

Now, with the morphine swimming warm through his veins, he feels light. He feels calm. His heartbeat is so slow it is almost an asymptote.

“He screamed so much because there was no anesthetic in the autosurgeon.”

Elliot turns to see Mirotic, holding a black plastic cube in his hand. He understands the words, but his guilt breaks apart against the high and then dissipates. Tolliver will be fine. Everything will be fine. He tries to shrink the chemical smile on his face, so Mirotic won’t see it.