B. Larson - Extinction

“Are they blue, sir?” Kwon asked.

“No,” I said shaking my head. “The only color I’m sure they are not , is blue.”

“Okay….”

“But maybe Sergeant, if we live long enough, we’ll get our chance to explain our feelings to the guys behind the scenes-whatever color they turn out to be. Maybe we’ll get to see what color they are on the inside, too.”

“I look forward to that, Colonel.”

We made it pretty far before the Worms caught on. I wondered if they had laid in ambush for hours, suspecting we would show up at any moment, walking along one of their big, roomy tunnels. No doubt, they had a dozen traps set up, and were busy arranging deadfalls and cave-ins. But at some point, some bright Worm commander must have noticed that we were coming, that we weren’t following their twisting, looping passageways. We were off the track and digging our own way in.

The first sign they’d figured it out came from my men at the rear of the column. I saw, rather than heard, the first evidence. Flashes of light bloomed up from far behind me. At this distance, the autoshades were slow to react to laser fire. Magenta afterimages splotched my vision. But the glassy walls of the tunnel had reflected it back up to me.

One of the odd things about laser-fire, as compared to ballistic weaponry, was how quiet it was. The weapon itself did little more than hum when it went off, unlike a gunpowder weapon, which boomed. Sometimes, depending on what the beam hit, the target exploded with a considerable sound, but that was the exception. My marines made most of the noise in battle, rather than the beamers themselves. Often, combat was fought in relative silence except for a few shouts and the screams of the wounded. I suspected that even ancient battles, when men hacked at each other with swords, had been louder.

Everyone stopped and craned their hooded heads around. We saw the green flashes, and now my autoshades were working, dimming the view of everything around me. The dimming effect was an odd one, making me feel as if I sank into deep water-or maybe a lake of ink.

“Rearguard company, report,” I said into my com-link.

“Enemy sighted, sir!” came back a young tanker Captain’s response. Roku, I thought his name was.

“Are they advancing?”

“Negative, sir. We saw them pop out of the tunnel walls way behind us, and we took some shots at them. They seem to have retreated, sir.”

“How many?” I asked.

“No more than three confirmed,” Roku said. “Request permission to pursue. They might be scouts and thus give away our position.”

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 nothing . We’re drilling into some kind of void. Some kind of big, empty space.”

I pressed the com-link override, broadcasting to everyone. “Column halt!” I roared.

But it was already too late.

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.