Gunny’s face lit up.

“Hey, Bango, remember when we watched The Enemy Below?”

“Naw, Gunny, I was slept,” Bango made an excuse without thought. His fingers ran over his bandolier, his eyes fixated on the hole.

Gunny shook his head. They’d seen the movie at least five times. T.A.R.D.S. loved anything that had big machines and lots of explosions. A movie with submarines, tanks, or mecha would get played over and over.

“Think Bango. Remember them drums they were rolling off the destroyer, tryna blow up that U-boat?”

“Oh, yeah, them deck charges. Gadooosh!”

“Depth charges,” Gunny corrected. “Howzabout we rigs one up?”

“Ain’t got no barrels though,” Bango griped.

“Chuckin’ improvise!” Gunny ordered.

Bango’s left eye shut, his tongue ran under his lips. He peered down at the hole, calculating.

“We could stuff Choppa’s suit with HiEx then drop him in with a fuse going. Gunk’s gonna dampen the blast plenty though. Might not be enough to skull the beast. How deep you figure this pipe goes?”

“I’m guessing 300 meters. How big a bang can you give that?”

“Oh wells. That’s deep. Two bars of hex are the biggest I’m s’posed to light off at once, Gunny. Only did that once in Bango school, half a klick away still thought my teeth were gonna shatter. Two’s the biggest they say to ever light, ayup…” Bango trailed away, rolling his eyes up and to the right.

“Supposin’ I said bigger?” Gunny questioned. “I got my backup bar, so do Bonzo and Member.”

Bango’s eyes were suddenly blazing with interest. He’d been waiting his whole life to hear those words.

“Trunk up Gunny,” Bango’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial rumble as he offered his trunk. Gunny was surprised, but too intrigued to refuse.

“Hokay, this here’s meant to be a secret for Bangos only. Don’t tell nobody never,” Bango said.

“You got it Bango,” Gunny promised, certain he could keep it a secret for another hour until they were all dead.

“So, each of youse three, pilot, mission recorder, gunnery sergeant, you all get issued a different flavor of HiEx. Wrappers are different colors cause there’s different stuff in ‘em. By themselves, they’re pretty much just regular hex. But if ya know how to mix ‘em, everything is different. It’s the big one, Gunny.”

“How big?”

“Dunno. Reaction ain’t linear. Might pop the whole whale,” Bango cautioned with a dreamy sigh. He relished the thought.

“No chuckin’ way,” Gunny protested.

“Wanna see?” Bango leaned in with a grin.

“Bells yeah I do. Make it so, Bango.”

Bango de-trunked from Gunny, pulled three silver-foiled bars of HiEx out of his satchel. The wrappers always reminded Gunny of chocolate. With his thumb, forefinger, and pinky, Bango indicated Gunny, Bonzo, and Member at once, then he flexed his fingers, beckoning. It felt a little like he was casting a spell.

“Cough up your HiEx bars, boys. Bango’s workin’ some magic here.”

Dutifully, they opened the protective cases on their belts and surrendered the backup HiEx each carried for when Bango inevitably got skulled.

Bonzo’s wrapper was gold, Gunny’s was metallic blue, Member’s was a shiny purple. For a dumb moment, Gunny wondered why they gave him blue. He would have preferred purple or gold.

Bango shuffled away from the unit, peeling off the wrappers with his back to the others, trying to keep what he was doing a secret. But Gunny could watch his reflection on the ceiling. The HiEx bars were the same colors as their wrappers. Bango deftly stretched them out like taffy, braiding them together into a colorful cord that might be a noose for all of them. When Bango was through, he propped Choppa up and wound the cord around his helmet like a crown. Grinning, Bango even formed the top line into crenelated little points.

Gunny eyeballed the halo of hurt, getting a last look at the big blue ox painted on the back of Choppa’s helmet. He was glad they were all gonna go at once so he didn’t have to miss anyone else.

Gunny ordered the Triple Trouble Marines to assist Bango with winching Choppa into the hole, then ordered the rest of the unit to retreat to the platform near the half-blasted disc.

“Unit! Shelter against the busted door! Steer clear of the jaggy part. This one’s gonna hurt! Blast shields up!”

Gunny ought to have ordered blast formation, with the gunnery sergeant, mission recorder, and pilot in the center of the huddle, and the expendable riflemen at the outside. He didn’t give the order. He was through with that jit. It was his call, and he would take the fall. Gunny took his place on the outer edge of the huddle.

Looking down the mirrored tunnel at the four Marines working by the impromptu ladder-crane, Gunny felt an itching sensation he was forgetting something. It was a bad time to get that feeling.

“Ready, Gunny?” Bango called out, barely audible over the roar of the flame.

“WAIT!” Gunny shouted. He’d figured out what bugged him. He spun towards the linesman.

“Winchester! Clip everyone in, tether to the bars on that door, double-time! Add enough slack so those four can clip in, too. When Choppa blows, we’re gonna get swamped.”

“Right-o, Gunny,” Winchy blurted, and then he was in a flurry of running line, hooking the platoon’s donut rings to the bars of the door.

“READY, GUNNY?”

“GIVE IT ONE-FIFTY, BANGO! RUN OVER HERE AFTER AND CLIP IN!”

There was a flurry of activity out on the walkway. Bango primed the bomb crown with three bulb fuses, and then the ladder squad winched the dead Marine over the melted hole. Heafs let the cable go and Choppa dropped, disappearing in a blop of gunk.

The four Marines dashed up the walkway like madmen, boots clomping as Gunny counted down from a hundred and fifty. They clipped in and got into the huddle. At thirty count, Gunny gave the order.

“BLAST SHIELDS UP! EYES SHUT!”

Awoooga!

The explosion took Gunny in a roar of pure white hurt and, at once, he was enlightened. No thought was possible. Gunny’s body and his gear were just a medium for the transmission of Bango’s epiphany. They’d been smote by the hammer of God herself, front row seats at a re-enactment of the Big Bang.

Inconceivably, Gunny survived. Pain had infiltrated every millimeter of his body. Every atom had been jarred out of place and re-assembled wrong. Gunny kept blinking but couldn’t fully wake. The fug was unshakable. He couldn’t see anything, and he was afraid he’d been blinded.

Gunny felt the platform beneath him swaying and reasoned the whole whale must be reeling from the titanic explosion. Then he remembered his blast shield was up. Gunny lowered it and, miraculously, he could see again, just in time to get clobbered by a wave of thick black fluid. The whole platoon rolled in the gunk like driftwood in the surf.

Gunny felt the wave crashing over him, but he couldn’t hear it. The silence was total, and Gunny thought it might be permanent. T.A.R.D.S. ears could take a pounding, but everything had a limit. He knew if his hearing didn’t start to come back within fifteen minutes or so, it wasn’t ever coming back.

Shaking his head, Gunny struggled to rise from the gunk, which was now as thick as pudding. His last-second idea to secure the Marines to the bars of the half-exploded disc had saved the 37th from getting swept into the sea of darkness.

When he could string two thoughts together, Gunny scanned his Marines for signs of life, heartened by the number he saw attempting to rise.

What a beating they’d taken!

Their eyes were dark red, with burst vessels, their movements halting. They winced with every motion. The whole platoon was one big bruise, inside and out. But most were alive. One by one, they gave Gunny the thumbs up.

Gunny returned the gesture to each Marine, still not quite convinced he’d really made it. No one should have survived that, yet here they were. Bango had a look of utter bliss on his face. He kept signing “Six Bars!”

By some weird trick of physics, it was the three Marines at the center of the huddle that bought it. Yancy and Esess were skulled and motionless. Aziz’s eyes were open, and he still breathed, but he’d brushed too close to nirvana and was never coming back.

The big beamer was still locked in his grip. As the waves sloshed over him, the light glittered crazily from the mirrored ceiling. The silvery surface had fractured at the epicenter. There was a vast spiderweb of fractures catching the light and twisting it into a million rays. The platoon was in the strangest discotheque in the universe.

“Lefty, take the beamer,” Gunny tried to order. He couldn’t hear his own voice, and Lefty looked loopy, probably still half-scrambled. Gunny did it himself, finding it surprisingly difficult to wrench the beamer free from Aziz’ grasp. A lampsman unto the very end.

With the big beamer, Gunny scanned the tunnel. The magenta fire in the teardrop room had been snuffed. The waves were dying, and the crust wasn’t reforming. The intensity of the blast had fricasseed the hardened crust into a sea of black gelatin. It was some kinda multi-phase plasmic something-or-other.

Weird jit.

Gunny wanted to order Member to take a sample. He scanned the platoon, but he found their faces were so beat up it was difficult to tell them apart. Finally, he spotted the elephant skull herald. Member was battered but alert. For a moment, Gunny was relieved the mission recorder hadn’t been mindwiped, but then he remembered they were still trapped and running out of air.

The explosion had snuffed the fire, but it had also completely destroyed the walkway that bridged the lake. The edge attached to their platform had been warped into a crazy, twisted spiral and sheared off three paces out. Again, Gunny blinked at the force they’d somehow withstood.

Reaction ain’t linear.

Gunny looked out at the black lake. If they hadn’t blasted the crust into goo, they could have walked across it. But now, it was liquid. There was no chance they could swim in their armor. They were stranded here, with no way across and no way to get through the door at their backs.

Gunny scanned the corridor, racking his brains for a solution. Could they drive spikes into the ceiling and swing across somehow? He doubted they could make it out that way before they ran out of air. He wondered how long they had left, but his watch had stopped. If there was no way out, it was better not to know.

The waves had died, and the sea of gunk was tranquil again. A small island rose a few meters from the jagged edge of the ruined walkway. Gunny turned the beamer on it.

The floater was a three-armed starfish-like creature. Each of its tapering arms branched into three more, and then each sub-arm had three pointed fingers. Its skin was mottled, granite-like material walled in by raised lines of dark red webbing. At intersections, the webbing rose into brilliant crimson spines.

Three Marines already had their shredders trained on the starfish. Lefty had Choppa’s ax drawn. Gunny handed off the beamer, and then unslung Bennie, whispering a mute thanks his beloved TwinJet was unhurt.

As they watched, the starfish’s brilliant red spines purpled. Color bled out of its webbing. The starfish darkened until it was completely black, and then a spasm shot through its arms, and it went rigid. Gunny didn’t need a xenobiologist to know it was dying.

GOT ‘EM, Gunny signed, but the other Marines looked skeptical. This dead starfish looked smaller than the thing that got Sticky. It was only about three meters in diameter. Could it really have taken out a Marine in armor?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

In the distance, Gunny heard the welcome preamble of tinnitus. He wasn’t deaf after all. If not for the imminent suffocation, things were looking up. Every Marine who could stand glared at the starfish, clenching their weapons. It didn’t feel like enough.

But then another island rose, and another after that. Then there were a dozen starfish floating, then two dozen. They popped up all over the corridor of gunk until there must have been hundreds of them.

“Whoops,” Gunny said. His voice seemed very far away, but he heard it. He turned to Bango, who had still had the same starstruck expression.

SIX BARS! Bango signed, his hands trembling with excitement.

Skulling a thousand xenos wasn’t how Gunny had meant to end his career. For a moment, there was an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach. He assumed it was guilt, but it kept growing.

An ominous vibration began beneath their feet. The high ringing in the distance built into a low, droning roar. The sea of dead starfish was on the move, building into a clockwise spin. A burbling rumble from the center of the corridor burbled into the most impressive belch any of them had ever heard, and a whirlpool formed.

“CLIP BACK IN!” Gunny shouted, and then he swapped to sign language when he saw how few could hear him.

The Marines hastened to secure themselves to Winchester’s line. The vast chamber was draining too fast for it to be gravity alone. The low burbling roar of the gyre was suddenly silenced as the air was sucked out of the chamber. The vacuum wrenched at the platoon, but Winchy’s line held.

The Marines waited until the rumbling abated, and then scrambled to unclip themselves and peer over the edge.

Lefty shone the big beamer down on the city they’d destroyed. Gunny felt his knees get weak looking down at the three-hundred-meter drop, but he couldn’t look away.

Gunny had assumed this corridor was just a big pipe full of jit. But, beneath the surface, there had once been a massive honeycomb of structures. All the way down, they could see interrupted tubes that looked like they had once webbed the entire chamber. In places, they swelled into dipyramids and tetrahedrons. Everything was made of the same silvery metal as the tunnel walls.

Once, this must have all been a seamless mirror, but now, every surface was smashed into a googolplexian nightmare of reflections. As Lefty scanned the ruins with the big beamer, Gunny struggled to visualize what the city would have looked like if they hadn’t blown it to bits. He couldn’t. It was just too complicated for his mind to hold.

The edges of the tubes were ragged and twisted from the incredible violence of Bango’s epiphany. Gunny had an eye out for any sort of power or gas lines, but there was nothing, no sign of any tech. Was this an aquarium? Were the starfish food for the whalers? Pets?

Whatever they were, they were tough. There were still thousands of them clinging to the shattered tubes. One by one, they turned black and lost their grip, falling into the ruins below in a continual rain of the dead.

Gunny spotted a few mottled orbs caught in crooks of wreckage. For a moment, he wondered if they were a different kind of lifeform, but as he looked closer, he realized they were clusters of three or more Starfish twisted into balls. Were they hugging? Mating?

Whatever they were doing, it was only buying them a little time. They were fading to black just like the others.

There was burst of motion below, and a tube fell and struck a dipyramid. It burst open, and a torrent of black fluid shot out, spitting three starfish against the chamber wall. Gunny watched the beings thrashing as they plummeted to the bottom.

Rough go.

Gunny surveyed his platoon. He saw nothing but unease at the destruction they’d wrought. But air was running out. There was no time to wallow if they didn’t want to suffocate, too.

Gunny waved for attention, and then pointed to the drain hole that had emptied the chamber.

OPEN SPACE! THERE MUST BE A PORE! WE CLIMB DOWN.

The unit huddled at the lip of the platform like a flock of armored penguins, uneasily eyeing the drop. It was a long way down at two gravities, and the nearest structure seemed impossibly far away.

Gunny puckered just as hard as the others. T.A.R.D.S. weren’t good with heights. He wondered how in bells they were going to get down there. The closest tube was almost five meters away.

CHUCK IT, Bonzo signed. HOOK ME UP, WINCHY!

Winchester clipped his spool to Bonzo’s donut, and a cluster of marines grabbed hold of the linesman to anchor him while Lefty shined the beamer to illuminate the closest tube.

Bonzo got a running start and dashed to the edge of the platform, taking a flying leap at the illuminated bullseye. He came up almost a meter short. It was a hell of a leap, but there was no way.

The unit reeled him in, but Gunny stopped them.

TWO METERS MORE LINE, Gunny signed. Then he caught Bonzo’s attention.

SWING! Gunny signed, and he got a thumbs up back.

They swung Bonzo back and forth until he could clamp his mitts onto the edge of the tube and pull himself up. He motioned for more line, Gunny couldn’t understand why, but then Bonzo hopped off the other edge, and Gunny realized it was so his weight could be an anchor for others to slide down. Marines pursed their lips in silent whistles at the daring move.

Bonzo’s the bravest.

SLIDE DOWN! DOUBLE-TIME! Gunny signed.

One by one the Marines were sliding down the line to the tube. Gunny, Winchy, and Lefty were the last on the platform. Lefty was struggling to fasten Choppa’s ax to his back. He didn’t have the right clip for it.

Gunny thought about ordering Lefty to leave the ax behind, but he knew Lefty wouldn’t comply. Instead, Gunny bent over Aziz, waving his hand over the Marine’s face, but there was no sign of comprehension.

“Semper Lucet, Aziz,” Gunny prayed. He disconnected Aziz’s tank three and passed it to Winchy. Then he flipped the blast shield up and pressed flush, extinguishing the lampsman.

LEFTY, STOP. Gunny ordered, and he could see Lefty clutching the ax, ready to protest. Instead, Gunny first swapped his tank three with Yancy’s, then he used a gob of suitseal foam to stick the ax to Lefty’s back. Finally, Gunny took Esess’ last tank for himself, swapping his third tank. Lefty slid down the line as Gunny braced Winchester.

CAN YOU HOLD ON YOUR OWN? Gunny signed, and Winchester gave a thumbs up. Gunny slid down the line to the tube below, and it was only Winchy left on the first platform.

JUMP DOWN! SWING! Gunny signed.

Winchy was frozen on the platform, willing himself to leap down, but he couldn’t do it.

CAN’T, GUNNY, Winchy signed frantically, almost in tears.

IS CABLE BRAKE ON? Gunny signed.

AYE-AYE, GUNNY, Winchy signed back.

Gunny nodded and yanked the cable hard, pulling Winchy off the platform. For a split second, they could see Winchy’s mouth open in a silent scream, then he dropped and swung beneath them, narrowly missing hitting the next tube.

The Unit braced to take his weight. Below them, Winchy swung his fists in the air, hissing mad. There was no time to waste. They swung him to the next tube and began the process again.

Bar by bar, they leapfrogged their way down the pipe like they were climbing through a giant jungle gym. The going got harder, gravity increasing as they made their way down the tube. Midway was almost 3G, Bonzo could barely make the leaps now.

WE SLIDE, Gunny signed now that the edge sloped down.

They slid along the wall to the next tube. Gunny kept an eye out for suits getting shredded by the fractured surface, but the tough fibers of their armor held so far.

The platoon made good time. It seemed almost possible they could make it out of the pore. Gunny didn’t want to think about the difficulty of then finding their way back to the RHATS, or the radiation they’d soak out on the ghostskin. He had room in his head for only one disaster at a time.

The pore that had drained the chamber was ahead, surrounded by wreckage. It looked like a pyramid had covered it once, but the structure had been so thoroughly destroyed that only the feet remained.

Gunny wondered if Choppa had landed right on the point before he blew. The bottom of the pipe was a ravaged graveyard of shards, carpeted with thousands of dead starfish.

Gravity had risen to almost 4G. The Marines felt it with every step.

They hit us first, Gunny tried to tell himself, but it was too big a stretch. It wasn’t like the 37th had RSVP’d for this visit. They were scavengers. Gunny hoped the enneapods weren’t intelligent, and rationalized they were all doomed, anyway. Pinchy was too damaged to dive, and when it was time to breach, the whale would go nova for sure.

At the lip of the pore, the T.A.R.D.S. rappelled down the pipe, Gunny watched the uncanny moment where the Marines passed the airlock’s threshold, and the four crushing Gs of gravity just vanished. If only the Smarts could figure out how that worked. Gunny felt a tug at his arm. Member wanted his attention.

GUNNY, LOOK!

Member pointed out a note of color among the silver shards and the dead black starfish. On an arm pinned beneath the rubble, there were three smaller starfish embedded in the skin. The little starfish still had coloration, even though the webbing of the arm had gone dark.

STILL ALIVE, Gunny signed. SMARTS WANT. LEFTY! CHOP!

Lefty tried to hack off the arm, but the ax couldn’t get a good bite. It was like trying to chop down a steel beam.

BONZO, HOLD! Gunny signed.

Bonzo pulled the starfish limb taut so Lefty could get a better shot at it with the ax. Together, they managed to sever the limb. For a moment, their eyebrows raised at their good fortune.

Bringing back a living xeno was Nod for sure.

I’LL STICK ARM TO YOU, Gunny signed to Lefty.

Gunny reached for his suitseal foam when he saw movement. Something huge loomed behind Lefty.

DUCK! Gunny signed, but Lefty was confused, trying to process two ideas simultaneously. The tendril struck the side of Lefty’s helmet and flung him nearly ten meters. Lefty crashed into the sharp edge of a jutting tube, and it sliced him in two.

“LEFTY!” Gunny shouted into his helmet. His mind was paralyzed with horror, but his hands knew what to do. Gunny unslung Bennie and racked the igniter.

At Gunny’s side, Bonzo drew his Compensators and opened fire. In spite of its size, the starfish was quick, hard to draw a bead on. It lashed out at Member. A strike from one of its trifurcated arms smashed a section of metal tube to flinders. Capping each of its limbs was a teardrop of silvery metal that came to a talon point.

At once, Gunny knew this was the monster that had taken Sticky. The big starfish was five meters in diameter, its limbs as thick as gunny was tall. The big starfish was hissed, and it had every right to be. It wanted Member.

The mission recorder emptied his sidearm into the center mass of the starfish, but his bullets couldn’t penetrate. They ricocheted everywhere.

Gunny let Bennie roar. The TwinJet worked in vacuum, though its effect was considerably reduced. As the starfish raised a tendril high for a killing blow, Gunny nailed its underside with a gout of chemical fire. Instantly, the starfish was engulfed in flames, and it bought Member a split second to roll out of the way.

The force of the strike sent shrapnel flying, and a jet of blood shot from Member’s suit. He’d been pierced. Gunny never let up on the trigger. He hosed the starfish with fire until Bennie ran dry.

Seemingly blinded, the starfish whipped its limbs around like a dervish, destroying everything it touched. Member clutched the breach in his suit, trying to scramble out of its path. Getting close to that monster was suicide, but Gunny didn’t think.

He rushed in, ducking under a swing from a flaming tendril that would have beheaded him, and hitting Member with a gob of suit seal foam. Member had an ugly three-inch gash in his breastplate, but the foam sealed it up.

A tendril slammed against the ground just centimeters from Gunny and dragged the talon across it. Watching the talon carve through the mirror metal like soft cheese, Gunny made the connection. Nine arms, nine talons, nine triangular holes in the floor of the teardrop airlock. The starfish breathed through their hands. The talons were its space suit.

SHOOT THE CLAWS, Gunny signed at Bonzo, trying to catch the pilot’s attention as he reloaded.

Gunny tapped his own hand, then pointed at the starfish. He saw Bonzo nod in understanding. Then there was a flash of motion at the corner of Gunny’s eye, and everything went black.

For a confused moment, Gunny wondered how the chamber had flooded again so quickly. He was floating, and somewhere behind him, a huge bell rang. Instead of waking him up, the bell lulled him to sleep. All the climbing, shouting, and torching of the day had finally caught up with him. He drifted, thinking if he could just catch a few winks, he could save Member afterward.

Save Member!

Gunny’s eyes shot opened, and he gasped. His vision was blurry, and there were brown flashes in his peripheral. Gunny knew the symptoms well. He was nearly out of air. One of his tanks had been ruptured.

Gunny rose dizzily and lurched forward with his hands balled into fists, as if he could box with the monster starfish. Bonzo danced backward, firing as the smoldering beast advanced on him. Member picked up shards of mirror and hurled them, trying to distract it.

The big starfish moved slower now. It was badly burned, and Gunny could see ropes of black fluid seeping from a crevice between two of its limbs.

Gunny tripped over something. His lungs were on fire, and he was sure he couldn’t get up again but, somehow, he did it. His hands groped at the bar he’d tripped over, and his fingers closed around Choppa’s ax.

MIGHTY SIS, the inscription read.

Gunny grinned. His vision cleared, locking onto that seeping orifice.

One shot, one swing!

With his last gasp of breath, Gunny dashed forward and swung Choppa’s ax as hard as he could. He felt it bite deep and hung on, riding it down as the starfish collapsed. Everything moved so slowly. His eyes were closing. The last thing he saw was Bonzo’s Compensators flashing, then blissful darkness.

Too soon, Gunny was wrenched out of his rest. Fresh, wonderful air poured into his lungs. He felt Member compressing his chest through his armor. The mission recorder’s worried expression turned to joy as Gunny sputtered to life. Behind him, the monster starfish was pure black. The metal talons had been shot full of fourteen-millimeter holes.

“How?” Gunny stammered, wondering how he was breathing. There were no oxygen tanks left.

He saw Bonzo standing over him, a slight bluish tinge to his face.

“Semper Lucet, Gunny,” Bonzo said. Gunny couldn’t hear him speak, but he knew the pilot so well, his mind filled in the sound of his voice.

Bonzo saluted, then reached behind his neck, flicked the safety, and hit his own suit flush button. He slumped to the ground and was gone.

Gunny stood up, immediately feeling the ringing pain of his concussion. He’d had many, but this one felt like it might be the worst ever. It hurt to think, but he couldn’t rest. He motioned for Member to trunk up.

“He gave me his last chuckin’ tank?” Gunny wheezed, aghast.

“Aye-aye, Gunny,” Member replied. His voice was low and solemn.

“Why the chuck did you let him do that?”

“Couldn’t stop him, Gunny!”

“He’s the pilot! How are we supposed to fly out of this? Lefty’s gone, too.”

“Can you fly it, Gunny?”

“Double pigger, I can’t even see straight. C’mon, let’s get out of here before we run outta air.”

“Can you walk?”

“I’ll have to.”

Gunny de-trunked and scooped up Bonzo’s Compensators and tucked them into his belt. Then he slung Bennie on his back. There were tiny fireworks exploding in his head with every step, but he knew it would be better once they got into zero-G.

Member scrawled a sketch of the scene in the Rutter as Gunny collected himself, then he strapped the severed limb to his back. The little starfish were still alive somehow.

As they climbed down the pore, Gunny had to take a last look back at Bonzo. The light caught his visor in a funny way, made it look like he was smiling.

Gunny got out of there double-time.