B. Larson - Extinction

What was I not understanding? Possibilities presented themselves inside my fertile mind. None of them were good. What if they weren’t sending troops, but instead a bomb of some kind? A wave of sickness rolled over me.

“Everyone get away from the ring!” I shouted, keying the command override. Every headset rang with my words. I took a step forward, then two more. I screamed into the microphone, causing my voice to distort and break into a scream. “I repeat, move all units away from the ring! Head south, to me! Priority one! NOW! Go, go, go! ”

The ring began to… thrum . It was gentle at first, but grew into an undeniable force, a sound that could not be ignored. Every skull felt it, whether they had ears or not. It was a deep, forceful, brain-shaking vibration.

I saw perhaps half my tanks shudder, halt, and reverse direction. Hundreds of marines looked around, confused. Their unit commanders reinforced my orders. I could hear them, yelling at the troops and waving for them to pull back. As the ring was at their back, they had no choice. They rose up and charged the advancing Worm line. The enemy met them eagerly, but recoiled in shock as beams, knives and howling marines ran upslope into their ranks.

I experienced a moment of hope. I felt maybe they would escape whatever was coming, but my elation was a very brief affair.

A strong breeze came up next. I took another five steps downslope, toward the ring, toward my struggling troops. Kwon laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“We gotta go, sir,” he said. His words were gentler than his grip.

Maybe he knew what was going to happen. Maybe he’d witnessed the wrath of an alien god before. The breeze grew into a wind, then to a howling gale. My suit ruffled around me. I felt it move and shift.

“What are they sending through?” I asked.

“Nothing, sir,” said Kwon.

I looked at him suddenly. I twisted back to look. I saw the first man lose his footing. It was Warrant Officer Sloan. He’d been standing at the base of the ring, closer than anyone. He lifted up, pin-wheeling his arms for balance. He lost it and landed on his face. His body, dragged by an unseen force, began to thump and roll toward the ring. He flipped over and over, tossed about like a leaf as the force of moving air grew ever stronger and then-then he was gone. He slipped into the span of emptiness that was the gap in the arch of the ring and vanished. There was a spot of color on my vision, where it had happened. I’d never seen something go through the ring like that-not this close. It was like an… an event . A sparkling change to reality.

I knew, in my heart, that Warrant Officer Sloan was somewhere else now. Most likely, he floated in space. Perhaps he orbited a world no human had ever laid eyes upon until this moment. Or perhaps he was on the surface of a neutron star. He might have been instantly burnt to a vapor, or crushed to the size of a flat coin by unimaginable gravity. Or he might be simply floating somewhere, calling mayday to no one in a heartless void without even starlight to accompany his ending.

I grabbed up the com-device that connected me to the Macros. I could see by the glowing green LED the channel was still open. I almost broke the device in my fury and desperation.

“Turn it off!” I shouted.

“ Mission accomplished. Return to base for pickup. ”

“You are killing my men! Turn it off now!”

“ Mission accomplished. Return to base for pickup. ”

“Fucking machines!”

“ Mission accomplished. Return to base for pickup. ”

I destroyed the com-device. I smashed it through with my fist, and I enjoyed the sensation immensely, despite my agony of spirit. Kwon pulled me away, and I let him drag me toward the rim. We stumbled along until we caught a passing tank. Several of the drill-tanks had escaped. They were heavier than my troops, and denser. They were able to resist the hurricane force of suction that now drew everything up into a swirling tornado in the area around the ring. Worms twisted in those winds, hundreds of them. My troops drifted between the Worms. They still fired off and on, burning Worms who came too close with pencil-thin beams of brilliant light.

Kwon dragged my fingers to a handhold on the hovertank. There were plenty of handholds around the base of every tank for soldiers to hang onto. Kwon crushed my fingers around one of these loops of metal. I would have shouted in pain, but I didn’t care about pain just then. Kwon then used one of his ham-like fists to grip another handhold himself and placed his second hand on the back of my neck. I kept hold of the grip he made for me, but he still held me by the scruff of the neck, as if he didn’t trust me and I thought I might let go.

There were marines around me, inside and outside of the tank, but not many of them. I craned my neck back to watch as we raced away, half-dragging marines and smashing down coral-like growths.

I looked back and watched hundreds of marines and Worms, swept high up in a maelstrom. Many of them embraced. Knives and beamers flashed, maws snapped. By ones and twos and clusters of up to a dozen struggling forms, they were all sucked together into nothingness.

I wondered if, when they reached the far side, they continued fighting to the bitter end. I suspected-knowing both my men and the Worms-that they did.

When we reached our base of bricks, the Macro ship had already landed. Ice crystals, formed no doubt in this strange planet’s upper atmosphere, crackled and fell away in blue-white sheets. I assumed they were formed from water vapor, but I couldn’t really be sure and didn’t care to ask.

The base itself was a mess. They’d suffered a Worm counterattack-possibly one motivated by revenge. I leapt off the tank I’d been riding upon, one that was positively roomy now that we’d lost three quarters of our troops. I sprinted into the bricks, leaping atop the first one I saw. The command brick, which had been situated upon a stack of others in the central compound, had been knocked over. It lay on its side, canted downward so one end was thrust into the ground. The airlock was up high, stuck up into the air. Bodies were everywhere. Most of them were Worms, but one in ten was a marine.

I ran up over a steaming pile of corpses and leapt to the top of one brick, then another. I went to the command brick airlock, and ripped at it.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I whirled. It was Major Robinson. I could tell from the look of him that he’d finally gotten his chance to prove himself in combat. He had a fixt-sized hole in his side that was black and oozing.

“She’s not in there, sir. We evacuated the command post when the Worms flipped it.”

“Where then?” I said, panting from my run and my panic.

Robinson pointed out toward the limits of the camp, to the north. I saw a figure sitting out there on the top of a brick. I ran to her, but didn’t sweep her up in my arms. She had a knife in her hand, and it was covered in gore.

“Sandra?” I asked, kneeling beside her.

“You came back,” she said. She didn’t look at me.

“Yeah. I’m back.”

“I didn’t really think you could survive walking into their nest.”

“Most of us didn’t. But we have to prep up. We have to go now.”

“I killed them. Lots of them. Some were our own men.”

I looked at her and eyed the knife in her hands. Some of the gore on it was dark red, not the usual brown that filled the Worms. I wasn’t sure what to say. Had she lost her mind?

“I’m still not very good with a knife,” she said.

“What happened?” I asked.

Sandra shook her head, and drew her knees up to her chest. She rocked slightly while she told me about Worms tearing holes in the suits of men and injecting them with some kind of bio-poison. They’d died slowly after the battle, beyond the help of nanites or corpsmen. They had screamed and raved and begged her to kill them. In some cases, she had done as the marines had asked.