Chapter Forty-Six

I gave them an extra half an hour, resting a little myself, before waking the pair, all three of us triggering stims—they had opened their reservoir and shared some for me, I’d not even considered that they’d not be already loaded in my armor, but they’d not been—and then the three of us gathered up at the entrance to the cave system.

“You’re sure about this?” Richie asked me.

“Not even fucking slightly.”

“That would have been a great place to lie, you know that, right?” Sync said. “What happened to all that long term NCO training? Lie to your operators, always.”

“That’s officer training,” I pointed out. “Lie to everyone, but especially to yourself.”

“Who do NCO’s lie to then?” Sync asked, amused.

“Hookers,” Richie added quickly. “Things like ‘no, it’s the first time this has happened’ and that old favorite ‘I’m over six inches and can go all night’, you know, the one that all engineers say.”

“Then the next morning they admit it was an estimate.” Sync snorted. “Okay, so—”

“SO!” I interrupted, stopping them before they could go any further, despite the smile I couldn’t help. “According to the Lidar there’s another big cave a few hundred meters down from here, and then more passages beyond that. Hopefully we can make it a fair distance down the mountain and then get outside, we’ve got six hours before the helo is due, every meter closer to the city we can get gives us a better chance of being picked up.”

“Just waiting on the order,” Richie pointed out and I growled.

“Sync you’re in the lead, Richie, bring up the rear, we take turns hammering the Lidar, see what we can find as we go, some of these rooms have collapsed, forming massive caverns, and they’re likely to have multiple exits I’d imagine, while other areas, well. We’re not going to want to stand in certain areas. Go.” I ordered.

“Moving,” Sync said, her rifle ready as she led the way, with the pair of us following.

The passage was a narrow one. I’d cleared enough stone and debris that we could get in, and a little past the collapse just in case, but after a dozen meters it opened wider and then narrowed down intermittently, the constant downwards angle we ran made more difficult by the constant run off of water that ran down one wall and formed a rushing, gurgling river.

Minutes passed as we went deeper, radioactive warnings spiking, temperatures rising, then falling as we passed location after locations.

They were minor, on the whole, but the radiation helped to keep the temperature inside considerably higher than outside, and kept the water running.

But twenty minutes later we reached the first large cavern, and all that changed.

My Lidar had mapped out part of the cavern, including the branching passages that ran off in all directions, but it wasn’t a great tool for real pictures. The image I’d had was of a cave system with a load of thin, almost translucent overlapping returns disrupting the result.

When we got there?

Well, we started fucking swearing alright.

“Boss this isn’t supposed to be here,” Sync told me flatly, while Richie giggled over how cool everything was.

“I know,” I agreed, sharing my theory on what the mountain actually was again. Some of it certainly was looking likely as we looked out across the cavern full of fungal blooms, massive mushrooms and lines of growth that dangled from the ceiling.

The various counters and sensors were going nuts as well, telling us that we’d better not linger in this chamber unless we wanted either some new limbs, or a new description for our armor that included ‘half-life’ as part of it.

I had to guess that it was the radiation that was providing the warmth and the growth medium, and the fungi the bioluminescence, but either way, I was damn well recording, and I ordered the others to do so as well.

Moving forward, it was clear as our clawed feet crunched down on gravel, before being carpeted in moss and growths, that this wasn’t a minor detail for the cave as well.

“We need to move here through quickly,” I ordered them. “The radiation is too high.” The suits could take it, admittedly, but the helo pilot wasn’t likely to let us aboard if we were fucking glowing.

Sync led the way, weaving in and out of the cave, doing her best to touch as little as possible, even as Richie stomped straight through, enjoying that in his APS he could mulch the organic growths with ease.

That lasted all of a minute, as we reached the center of the cavern, needless to say.

“Boss.” Sync growled, highlighting and sharing an image.

I frowned looking at it, then winced. “Chances it’s hostile?” I asked.

“Fucking likely,” Richie said suddenly. “I’ve got two more back here, suit didn’t pick them up on scans, but a search and isolate algo brings them up clear as day.”

“Share it.” I ordered, getting a file a few seconds later and approving it instantly, knowing that while he was mad, he wasn’t mad in a bad way. The file that ran integrated a pattern recognition algorithm, using the face of the half hidden creature to scan the area for similar matches.

“Oh shit.” I whispered. “Twelve…”

“Look up.” Sync whispered.

“Thirteen,” I said after a second of staring up into the nest suspended above us.

“I’m betting that’s their mother, and we’re about to be fed to the kids,” Richie said conversationally, eyeing the thing.

It was spider-like, a dozen legs led off a small body, almost comical in the tight clustering, but the massive head was clearly designed for nightmares, five eyes gleamed malevolently, arranged in a half arc around a mouth filled with serrated teeth. The body ended with a tail that it was using as an anchor, clinging to a section of the roof and dangling, watching us.

“No explosives.” I ordered. “We can’t risk the cavern roof coming down.

“Railguns and rifles?” Sync asked and I grunted an agreement, ordering my own to deploy. Clearly when we’d stopped, that was the wrong thing to do, as before my railguns could even finish sliding out from the locked position in my back, the fucking thing above us dropped, and that set them all off.

The spider—I guessed that was what it had started off as anyway—was insanely fast when it moved, and when it landed on Richie, he went apeshit. The thing was perhaps two meters tall, the ‘little ones’ about a half a meter to a meter and a half in size, as they burst from cover and closed on us.

They almost blurred as they darted here and there, the mother clinging to Richie’s back and vomiting a clear, sticky liquid over him as he screamed and spun, trying to get his rifle into play, before abandoning it and grabbing the damn thing by the head.

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It screeched, trying to get off him, or to bite him, I guessed, as he panicked and squeezed in return.

While it might be an unholy terror of the cave system, it was still organic, it was bone and chitin and whatever else, and we were titanium and powered more by fusion cores.

The head burst, the body spasming and going crazy, twitching, kicking and trying to crush him as the final signals ran through it. Richie gagged and hurled the body free of himself, before stomping on a smaller one that tried to attack him.

It exploded, literally, bits flying everywhere.

My first instinct was to fire on them, to take them down in a hail of flying bullets, but honestly? It wasn’t needed. Sync was the sharpshooter, and even she hesitated, having seen the result of Richie splattering the mother.

Then it was melee range, and it didn’t matter anymore.

I punted one that ran at me, crushing the head in, sending it flying backwards, knocking over another of them, and stepped up quickly stomping on that as well.

One leapt onto my railgun, dangling from it and scrabbling for purchase on my chest armor, lunging forwards, maw like a descent into hell and nightmare opening up and… I smacked it.

It crumpled.

In seconds we’d gone from surrounded by freaky, possibly terrible enemies, to pest control detail. Ten seconds later, the last two survivors were running like fuck as Richie screamed and ranted, grabbing a boulder and hurling it after them as they ran.

“Well…” Sync said brightly into the silence. “That got the blood flowing.”

“Yeah, not ours as well, which is always good,” I admitted.

“What is this shit?” Richie swore, dragging his fingers across the crap covering his carapace, and Sync stepped up, scanning it.

“Acid,” she confirmed, then snorted. “Some sort of flesh dissolver, not dangerous to us in the suits, probably lethal if we weren’t though.”

“Wash it off.” I ordered Richie, nodding to the running water on one side of the cave. “You don’t need to risk that shit when you come to clean the suit later.”

“Ah man, I forgot about that.” He groaned. “No maintenance and cleaning crews!”

“Yeah, so unless you want to be scrubbing it off your armor with a toothbrush?” I pointed, and he went.

“Wonder what the hell they fed on?” Sync asked while we waited, searching around and finding piles of mush here and there that we assumed were spider shit, or dissolved remains. “No bodies.”

“No clue.” I admitted. “But that they’re here, and all of this?” I gestured around at the thriving ecosystem, taking the time to look, and seeing bugs and more running here and there. “There’s going to be a fuck load of stuff in here.”

“Think it might be a better idea to fuck off outside?” Richie asked, and I shook my head.

“We’ve got more than five hours left before the helo is due, we can continue for an hour, then if we’ve not found a way out we turn back. I’d much rather climb down a gentle slope like this than try and leap our way down, especially as fucked as my jump jets are, but if that’s what we have to do? We will.”

With Richie clean—more or less—we set off again, clearing the rest of the cavern with no more attacks, and headed down into the first of the passages.

Worryingly, the one we were following quickly narrowed down, and we were forced to kneel, then crawl, the ceiling coming lower and lower by the second as we moved, the decline growing steeper and steeper as we continued, until we were forced to pause, sending a long, and powerful mapping pulse ahead, making goddamn sure we were heading the right way.

Several of the other passages that we’d checked were wider, but they all ended in sections we couldn’t pass, or went nowhere. This was the only one that didn’t end, as near as we could tell, and was judged to be high and wide enough we could pass through.

An hour more we continued for, making me more and more uncomfortable, as we pulsed again and again, crawling over piled debris, under sagging sections of roof and occasionally being forced by the angle to slide into the swift running river and submerge ourselves.

We passed things that were clearly once rooms, and occasionally even power systems that flickered and ran, pulsing weird interferences as we emerged from the gloom, then vanished again, wondering at the millennia since living, sapient beings saw these things.

We passed recognizable weapons systems, some of them terrible, bomb-pumped neutron laser banks were VERY identifiable after all, but looking at them, we knew they’d never be salvageable, and even if they were?

They couldn’t be fired, not without such an extensive repair and refit that it’d be cheaper to build them from scratch.

Still, it was terrifying to see, regardless.

Another hour came and went, and the sweat that was soaking me over this decision became a river of regret. I was dealing with the sure knowledge that I’d fucked up, and that we were going to be walking to the city, when Sync set off her latest pulse.

“Exit!” she comm’d, and we all paused, looking at the map.

At the very outer edge of the Lidar’s reach… was an exit from the passage, and considering we were still passing tracks and more down here? There had to be something up ahead.

“Move it.” I ordered, renewed hope rising as we kicked off, crawling with more vigor. Meters flew by as we scrabbled along, minutes passing as we closed on the cavern, and after three hours of travel, we could at last, stand again.

The dropping temperature the last few minutes had made it clear that there was indeed an exit coming up, and when we reached it? We burst out into the storm with a sense of relief I’d rarely ever experienced.

We were over a mile down from where we’d started and nearly two closer to the city than we had been, the decline having done a hell of a lot for the speed we’d travelled, but still, the storm raged.

“Move out!” I ordered, taking the lead, Sync’s battery heavily drained by the constant Lidar pulses, as I started running my own.

We ran then, as fast as we safely could, following a valley that ran more or less in the right direction, passing more caves, most covered from above, overhangs that created the impression there was nothing here, but the Lidar?

“You know there’s more fucking life here than in the entire wastelands?” Richie commented as we ran. “Seriously boss, if your little kit works? We could harvest this place for months, and I’m betting there’s a shit load of nanites here.”

I slowed for a few seconds, seeing his point and seriously wondering at it, we’d need to test it after all, and should I not…

“Next time,” I said, picking up the pace. “But good point, Richie!”

There was no way I was opening my armor here, the storm was battering us with constantly shifting winds as it was, and we weighed multiple tons each, and that didn’t even mention the fucking temperature.

It was still well below freezing, and the winds were vicious. Now that we had the new design though? We’d make some changes and make some kit for each of the APS. Maybe make use of the section on the back that was supposed to hold our termination charges, we’d need a section mounting that would look like that after all, so maybe fill it with the nanites in a storage chamber?

Either way, it was only a few more minutes before Richie managed to pick up the helo, and I set a rendezvous point, two hours from where we were, and a solid run according to the mapping systems.

We made it in ninety-seven minutes.

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