The Navy had been trying to hammer prudence into Gunny’s platoon since the day they hatched. Tardigrade Augmented Marines grew at a hyper-accelerated rate, attaining physical maturity in just four years. The fastest growth took place in year four, where a Marine would triple in mass.
This was by design. A standard template human could not hope to physically control a full grown T.A.R.D.S. Most of the Marines’ earliest memories were of being disciplined. For the first three years of their lives, drill sergeants hammered them every moment of the day, trying to beat their innate volatility into a usable form. By year four, most of the untrainable had been locked. All the sergeants could do was pray they wouldn’t run amok. Most didn’t.
After basic came three years of technical training, with extra years for specialists. Pilots, stickmen, gunnies, and members took even longer.
In all those years of continual training, there was one constant repeated in every lesson, shouted at them every single day of their short lives. Two words a Marine would hear more times than any others.
SLOW DOWN.
Walk, don’t run. Listen, don’t shout. Be patient, don’t punch. Haste will get you wasted.
For years, the Navy ground on them unrelentingly. Those who did not comply were openly culled. Every Marine had seen at least one of his broodmates get airlocked before he was a year old. The drill sergeants made them watch. No one ever forgot.
The cameras zoomed in on their brothers, in perfect focus as the defectives convulsed and boiled away. All the ones who couldn’t stop running, couldn’t stop fighting, couldn’t listen, they were all fed into the void. Joining them were the ones too stupid to train, who couldn’t take the radiation or the constant pounding, the ones who mutated, the ones who were defiant.
They were all gone, and the Marines of the 37th platoon were what was left. Once they got into a whale, all the training made sense. Everything was dangerous. Something as innocuous as dropping a used rod could get you skulled.
Haste really would get you wasted. A single mistake could wipe the whole squad. The training was brutal and cruel, but it had to be done. As veterans, they could accept that.
But for all the years of beating prudence into them, it never really took. Every Marine smiled as they clambered over the walkway like apes, rail in one hand and weapon in the other.
Aziz had the big beamer pointed at the ceiling, and the mirrored surface illuminated the whole tunnel. With every step, they were primed for an attack. If the monster tried to take another Marine, it was going to eat a hundred bullets in less than a second.
They made it to the other side of the walkway, and Heafs waited for an order, the sledge in his mitts.
“SMASH AND GO FAST!” Gunny howled. This was their true nature. It couldn’t be beaten out of them. No more careful readings, their stickman gone. Heafs wailed on the disk with the sledge, loud bell-like notes reverberating up the shining corridor.
When he stopped, the vibrations went on for longer than they should, ringing through their feet and humming in their bones. A low and ominous drone came through the door, but there was no progress breaking through it.
Gunny fought the urge to take the hammer out of Heafs’ hands and show him how it was done. His eyes darted around the platoon and found other hands clenching, ready for action. Only one Marine was not fixated on the door. Yakov stared back the way they’d come. His gauntlet traced a t over his chest.
“Let’s go, Yakov,” Gunny said, clapping the Marine on his shoulder plate.
“Aye-aye, Gunny,” Yakov replied, blinking to clear his vision. He stared back once more, and Gunny was afraid he’d have to wop him, but then Yakov pointed at the other end of the tube.
“Oh, jit!” Yakov’s cry was punctuated by a ringing strike of the sledge. An orange glow was visible through the breach disc they’d entered the corridor through. It grew brighter as they watched.
“FIRE!” Gunny bellowed loud enough to send a jolt through the entire platoon. “Heafs! We need that door open!”
Choppa, the axman, had joined Heafs. The two of them wailed on the door, but this disc was made of some brassy material that would not give.
“She won’t go, Gunny!” Heafs cried.
“Bango! Go! Blow the door!”
Hot air wheezed through the breach at the other end of the tunnel like a punctured lung. The fire was in the teardrop now, magenta sparks flying out of the room and hissing into the black gunk. One small mercy, the fluid didn’t ignite. Gunny watched, grinding his teeth as he tried to think of a plan.
“Black don’t burn. Maybe the fire won’t come through. Might burn through that plugged shaft, and we can get out!”
“Shaft’s fulla silane, Gunny,” Member reminded him.
“Oh, chuck,” Gunny gulped.
“Ready to pop, Gunny!” Bango had the charges rigged in a ring around the door. The bulb timer was in his hand, ready for Gunny’s order.
“Blast shields up! Form up at the center of the walkway! It’s gonna spray debris. Watch out for the monster that got Sticky!”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
The Marines retreated to the center of the walkway and clustered behind the chrome pillar, flipping up their blast shields to protect their visors. Ahead of them, the fire raged, then a thump like a giant drum sounded from the teardrop, something had blown. Beneath their feet, a shockwave raced through the black fluid.
“BLOW IT!” Gunny ordered. Bango pulled the bulb’s tab and ran. Bulb fuses had a lot of variance. It was best to get away fast.
“BACKS TO THE BLAST! COVER AND HOLD ON!” Gunny reminded everyone, glancing around the unit to make sure the other Marines had their shields up.
Gunny put his head down and prepared to flip up his own shield. Through the grid, he noticed the black fluid had stopped its ceaseless movement. A hard skin, like a sheen of ice, had formed on the surface, he could see the shockwave’s progress in crescents that radiated out from the teardrop room.
At a crescent’s edge, Gunny saw a hint of something dark and eel-like probing from beneath. A shudder began between his shoulders. Gunny hated snakes. His hand was on his sidearm when the door charge exploded behind them like a huge hand had whopped the whole platoon at once.
Gunny’s ears rang as he rose to his feet, pistol in hand, shaking his head to try and clear the shellshock. He hadn’t gotten his shield up. He was lucky his visor hadn’t popped.
Now, the whole surface of the tunnel was rigid. Gunny could see spiky protrusions where the second shockwave met the echo of the first. Twisted bits of the brass disc littered the surface. Gunny scanned for the eel-thing but didn’t see it.
“READY CHECK!” Gunny shouted. His voice seemed tiny and far away. A hissing sound came through the tinnitus. For a moment, Gunny wondered if it was the snake. Instead, he saw it was a punctured tank.
“CHOPPA! You’re hit!” Gunny shouted, grabbing the Marine.
“I’M OK, GUNNY!” Choppa shouted back, but he wasn’t at all. A shard of the brass disc had punched through his center tank. It looked bad.
“I’LL TRIAGE! PLATOON! ADVANCE! FIRING POSITIONS AT THE DOOR!”
The Marines filed around Choppa, headed for the door they’d blasted.
“Can you stand, Choppa?” Gunny asked.
“No legs,” Choppa said, sounding strong but looking scared. “Press it.”
Gunny didn’t want to do it, but down the pipe, the blaze grew stronger. There was danger below and danger ahead. Choppa saw Gunny hesitate and gripped his forearm.
“We’ll meet again, Gunny. See you inside. Semper Lucet!” Choppa held out his ax.
“Semper Lucet. See ya, Choppa.”
Gunny took the ax. He flipped the protective cover on the emergency flush button on Choppa’s tank assembly. Gunny pressed the big yellow F that killed Choppa, then he disconnected Choppa’s tank three, planning to give it to Sipper.
Choppa convulsed. It was strange the way his upper body thrashed but the lower was just limp. He wound down quickly. Gunny gave him a final rap on the back of his helmet and left him to die. The odds were good Gunny would join him within the hour.
Gunny scooped up Choppa’s tank and made his way across the walkway. Beneath his feet there was activity seething beneath the solid crust. Whatever was down there was hissed. The remaining members of the platoon were clustered around the door, and Gunny’s heart sank. The charges hadn’t blown completely through.
There was a curling ring of warped metal all around the door, large enough for a Marine to get through, but embedded in it was an untouched grid of reinforcing bars. Now, he could see why Heafs couldn’t dent this. The disc was almost forty centimeters thick. The reinforcing bars were completely impervious to everything they tried, torch, saw, acid. Member furiously jotted it all down in the rutter.
“Something movin’ in there, Gunny!” Aziz cried, beaming his light around the enormous chamber.
Gunny peered in. He could make out three towering brass statues of starfish. They stood on two arms, and their third was raised high. The trio leaned together to form a pyramid. Each tapering arm forked into three more, and each sub-arm had three fingers.
The statue made an eerie ringing sound, like a polyphonic tuning fork. The walls of the chamber were all shining copper, riven with the knurled lines of the language they’d seen on the plaque in the teardrop room.
“Looks religious,” Bonzo said. “Ain’t there supposed to be three of that carpenter guy?”
“Yeah, ‘cept one’s a haint. Father, son, an’ ghost. Ain’t none of ‘em got three arms,” Lefty judged, his lower lip sliding from side to side as he considered it.
“A ghost could have three arms. They’re made outta erectoplasm,” Heafs countered.
“Ectoplasm,” Gunny corrected. “If you two keep yammerin’, you’ll get a chance to see the carpenter yourselves. What was in there?”
“Seen a bunch of shadows, moving weird, kinda cartwheelin’. Looked like a bunch snakes tied together. They melted away when we was lookin’. Spooky jit, Gunny.”
“Chuck. I hate snakes.”
“I know you do, Gunny. Ya mind if I hold that ax?” Lefty’s eyes were locked on Choppa’s fire ax, gleaming with want.
Gunny had to admit, it was a good lookin’ ax. A solid drop-forged slab of the absolute toughest alloy the humies could make. It had taken Lt. Jeanie a lot of time to figure out how to inscribe it the way Choppa wanted. Along the cheek of the ax she’d painstakingly etched its name: MIGHTY SIS.
“She’s all yours, Lefty.” Gunny passed the ax over, and Lefty beamed like he’d been awarded the Navy Cross.
The blissful look reminded Gunny of Bennie, and he caressed the flamethrower, catching a piece of that joy. Gunny looked down the pipe. The orange glow from the teardrop room grew brighter all the time, like a sunrise in a movie. It was time.
“PLATOON! Telephone formation!”
Gunny wanted to be sure anyone whose hearing had been damaged in the blast heard him over the ringing from the statue room. Gunny trunked with Member, Bonzo, and Lefty, and each of them trunked with the Marine at their left. Soon, they were ready for Gunny’s speech.
“Boys, we’ve truly done it this time. There’s bars at our back, fire at the fore, and we’re sitting here on top of a giant toilet pipe full of monster snakes.”
“Yep. It’s Thursday,” Bonzo cracked, and the whole unit guffawed. Gunny let the laughter die before he went on.
“I couldn’t tell you this before ‘cause your heads would get too swole to fit through the hammer-holes. But you Marines are real ones. The 37th is the best platoon I ever led. It’s been an honor. If there is another side, I hope I see you all there, even you, Heafs.”
There was another round of laughter, chased with notes of melancholy, little sniffles caught in the trunkline. Gunny could see a tear shake loose from Lefty’s eye as his bottom lip worked furiously from side to side.
“Alright, enough blogging. I got just one question for ya. How’d you like to get ahold of that chucker that ate Sticky?”
It wasn’t even a question. The unit roared with approval.
“Let’s go fishing.” Gunny grinned. He unslung the flamethrower.