Chapter 10: Compost Heap

“What is that?” Garcia asked, gesturing to something on the wall above them. Evan shone his flashlight beam on it, illuminating another gelatinous pustule. This one reacted to the light, seeming to recoil from it, something that bore an uncanny resemblance to an iris contracting.

“That’s a camera,” Bainbridge replied.

“A camera?” Garcia repeated, his tone far less calm than the lieutenant’s. “You mean those fuckers can see us right now?”

“I told you that they know we’re here,” Bainbridge said as he checked another blind corner ahead of them.

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize that meant they had a real-time video feed,” the Marine added as he glanced at the organic device warily.

“A human structure might have data cables running through it connecting things like doors and cameras to automated systems,” Jade explained. “In a hive, most of that is handled directly by the Queen, and most computers that you see are just terminals linked up to her neural net. She plugs her nervous system into the hive’s network in the same way that Sunny connects to her suit, translating nerve impulses and electrical signals into data. She sees through those cameras as if they were her own eyes.”

“So, this whole hive is basically using her brain as a CPU?” Evan asked incredulously. “Just how smart is she?”

“Smart enough to perform superlight calculations or sequence a genome in her head,” Jade replied, her deadly serious tone letting him know that she wasn’t exaggerating for effect.

“Their skulls are big enough that you could attach an outboard motor to one and take your buddies on a fishing trip,” Bainbridge added. “They’d better be smart...”

“That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to take out the Queen as fast as possible,” Aster said as she walked along behind Evan. “Given enough time to gather information – to learn and adapt – she’ll find ways to counter and outmaneuver you. The only thing holding her back is a lack of data.”

“So, what’s to stop her from just sending an army through the tunnels to take us out?” Garcia asked.

“The fact that there are dozens of other teams doing the same thing we are,” Bainbridge replied. “After the losses during the battle for the hill, there’s no way she can respond to every incursion with full strength. How much resistance we encounter will scale with how much we piss her off.”

The tunnels were getting even more winding and confusing now, the layout defying any kind of human logic. Whether they were intentionally designed to disorient invaders or if this was a product of a completely alien mindset, Evan couldn’t say. As dark and as confusing as the passages were, navigating by smell was essentially like having glowing signposts on every wall, so it was probably no hindrance to the locals.

“Ladies?” Bainbridge began as he placed another of his repeaters at a five-way junction. “I’d appreciate a little guidance here.”

The three Jarilans spread out, sniffing around the junction with their antennae like bloodhounds tracking down an escaped convict.

“More armories and feeding chambers that way,” Jade said, gesturing to a couple of the tunnels with two of her arms. It seemed that she was learning the pheromonal language used by the Bugs, perhaps making a mental note of what they had encountered previously. “These lead deeper, and there’s a breeze coming from these two. I suggest we go this way.”

“Your nose is the best GPS we’ve got,” Bainbridge conceded, setting off down the passage.

They marched through the dingy tunnels, the resin walls no more than three meters apart now, another path branching off their tunnel after every couple of bends. Evan better appreciated the danger of getting lost down here now that they were heading into the further reaches of the hive, the structure growing ever more complex. Bainbridge suddenly raised a hand to tell them to stop, the Marines taking a knee, the lieutenant waving his flashlight beam across the passage ahead as if trying to get a better look at something. Evan caught it too – a shimmering strand reflecting the light when it caught it at just the right angle.

“These are Stalker webs,” Bainbridge warned.

“There are fuckin’ Stalkers down here?” Hernandez hissed under his breath, as if the Bugs might hear him. “I thought those things lived in trees?”

“It’s not like they’re at any real disadvantage down here,” Bainbridge mused. “They’re smaller and more agile than a Warrior, so they won’t have any trouble maneuvering in these narrow passages, and they have some pretty nasty close-quarters weapons.”

“This is a problem,” Jade added, turning to glance back up the tunnel warily. “Stalkers don’t give off pheromone signals – they’re essentially mute by Betelgeusian standards. We won’t be able to smell them coming like we did the Drones.”

“That’s by design,” Bainbridge said. “On the bright side, it means that the Stalkers can’t coordinate – they’re operating on their own.”

“One Stalker is still more than enough to fuck up our day,” Simmons said. “Borzka, Tatzi, keep your ears open. Maybe you’ll be able to hear the things coming.”

“We’ll double back and go around,” Bainbridge said as he turned away from the web, the thin strands blowing gently in the breeze. “There are plenty of other passages down here.”

“You ever hear the story of the Minotaur?” Hernandez asked, giving Tatzi a nudge as he walked beside her.

“No,” she replied. “Tell me later, little one. I must listen.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Jade said, Hernandez switching off Tatzi’s channel.

“Okay, so,” he began. “Way back in ancient Greece, there was this king called Minos. He was supposed to sacrifice a bull to the Gods, but he skimped out, so the Gods cursed his wife to be seduced by it. She had this wooden cow built, then climbed inside it, and had the bull fuck her.”

“Does this story have a point, Hernandez?” Evan sighed.

“I’m gettin’ to that!” he replied indignantly. “You oughta learn your history, Evan. Anyway, she fucks the bull and gets knocked up, and what she gives birth to is this half-man half-bull that only eats human flesh. The same guy who built the wooden bull ends up buildin’ a huge labyrinth beneath the castle to keep the thing from gettin’ loose, and they sacrifice virgins to keep it fed. So, the hero Perseus-”

“Theseus,” Donovan corrected. “Perseus was the guy who killed Medusa, not the guy who killed the Minotaur.”

“Whatever, Theseus,” Hernandez continued.

“You remember all the details about the woman who fucked a bull, but you forgot the name of the protagonist?” Donovan added.

“Anyway,” Hernandez said, resuming his spiel. “He goes into the labyrinth to kill the monster, and he finds his way back out again using a ball of yarn. It’s kinda like what we’re doin’, right? Instead of yarn, we have the repeaters, and instead of the Minotaur, we have the Queen.”

“Or the Stalkers in this case, since they’re gunning for us,” Garcia added.

“I feel like you were going for something insightful there but didn’t quite think it through,” Evan said. “Points for effort, though.”

“I’m confused,” Jade said. “Is that story real? What’s a bull?”

“No, it’s a myth,” Evan explained. “A bull is a kind of-”

“Silence,” Tatzi hissed. “Did you hear that?”

“We are not alone,” Borzka confirmed, hefting his rifle. “Something hunts us.”

Evan glanced back down the tunnel, seeing only the dim light of the luminescent moss reflecting off the resin walls, his view blocked by blind corners in both directions.

“What are your orders, Lieutenant?” Simmons asked. He hadn’t said it out loud, but his tone conveyed that his question had been more along the lines of what the fuck do we do now?

“We’d usually have more microwave guns,” Bainbridge grumbled, pausing to consider for a moment. “Keep moving, and find a way around that web. Our objectives haven’t changed. I’ll take point, and I want whoever takes up the rear to keep an eye on our arse. Watch for an ambush from adjoining tunnels – these things strike fast.”

They pressed on, following the trail of repeaters back to another junction, the team standing back to back as they covered all of the branching passages. Jade identified another suitable path, and they set off again, Bainbridge planting more of the coin-sized repeaters as they went. He kept his microwave gun aimed at the tunnel ahead, walking slowly, checking every blind corner. It made their pace sluggish, but Evan suppressed his frustration, trusting that the lieutenant knew what he was doing.

“Hold,” Aster warned, waving her antennae.

“I smell it too,” Jade said, moving to join Bainbridge at the front of the group. “Workers, disturbed earth. Traps, maybe, or walled-off tunnels.”

“This is getting too risky,” Garcia said, shaking his helmeted head.

“This is the job, Marine,” Bainbridge replied sternly.

“Not my job,” Hernandez muttered, using the private channel so that the lieutenant couldn’t overhear him.

“Switch to thermals,” Bainbridge said, reaching up to tap at the touch panel on his helmet. “Sometimes, recently disturbed ground or power sources from concealed devices will show up.”

Evan did as he asked, plunging the tunnel into shades of dark blue that bordered on black, his companions taking on brighter hues of red and orange. The fungus that grew on the curved ceiling formed an illuminated trail that ran down the length of the passageway, giving off a little residual heat, but he couldn’t make out much else.

They rounded another corner, coming across a tunnel that was indistinguishable from the rest at first glance, but something was wrong here. Beyond the resin walls were small heat signatures, barely perceptible, but standing out against their otherwise cold surroundings. There were more of them beneath the dirt floor, spread out in an irregular pattern.

“I’m seeing batteries,” Jade warned.

“Mines,” Bainbridge confirmed. “Probably chemically triggered rather than proximity. The Bugs will want to avoid blowing up their own guys.”

“Should we go around?” Simmons asked, keeping an eye on the tunnel behind them.

“No, I got this,” Bainbridge replied as he raised his bulky gun. He fired it in a wide beam that filled the passage, heating the moisture in the air, making it ripple like the haze above a sun-baked road. Evan could see the mines heating up in real-time, their faint signatures growing warmer, becoming defined enough that he could make out the vaguely circular shape of the objects. These were not the same spider mines they had faced on the battlefield – they seemed to be stationary. He braced himself, waiting for them to spontaneously explode, but nothing happened.

“That should do it,” Bainbridge announced, lowering his weapon.

“Are they deactivated?” Evan asked. “What did you do?”

“Most Bug tech has organic components,” he explained, setting off again with no concern for the lingering heat signatures that surrounded him. “Hit them with a microwave burst, and all of the fluids in those organic components will boil, killing them before any explosives or plasma charges reach a high enough temperature to go off.”

“So, you just cook ‘em like a microwave dinner?” Hernandez asked. Even with Bainbridge’s reassurances, he was still stepping over the mines carefully, like a kid making a game of avoiding the cracks on a sidewalk.

“That’s the idea,” the lieutenant replied. “We don’t get too many of those, though – it drains the battery on this thing. I’m used to having a team of Trogs with me, so we’re going to have to be conservative with our power usage.”

“Look,” Jade said as they came across another junction. “More webs.”

One of the two branching tunnels was covered over by a thick net of shimmering strands, the tiny threads only just visible as the flashlight beams bounced off them.

“Don’t touch the fibers, and watch for tripwires,” Bainbridge warned. “You walk into one of those things, and the Stalker might come running. They’ve been known to run tiny strands from their webs that get tugged when you disturb them.”

They took the clear tunnel but quickly encountered more webbing, the obstacle blocking another junction to leave only one path open to them.

“I’m getting worried that we’re being corralled,” Brooks muttered. “Are they smart enough to do that?”

“I wouldn’t make any assumptions to the contrary,” the lieutenant replied.

The two Borealans suddenly whipped around to aim their rifles back down the tunnel, the furry ears that protruded from their helmets focusing on something beyond the range of human hearing.

“I do not think the creature lies in wait for us,” Borzka warned. “I think it stalks us through these warrens.”

“Could be Drones,” Collins suggested.

“I have never known Drones to move so quietly,” Tatzi replied warily.

They kept moving, venturing deeper into the labyrinth. Many of the tunnels seemed to link together in strange ways now, looping back around on themselves, making finding a straight path through far more difficult. It was only thanks to the Jarilans’ antennae and Bainbridge’s repeaters that they didn’t become hopelessly lost.

“I’m picking up a pretty clear pheromone trail,” Jade said, pausing to bring her antennae closer to the ground. “It smells like ... Workers.”

“I don’t like this,” Bainbridge grumbled, sweeping his weapon between two tunnel openings that branched off their path. “They could come at us from any angle in here.”

“There aren’t any webs down this way,” Hernandez said, stepping into a side tunnel. He shone his flashlight down the long passage, the beam reflecting off the uneven resin. “Maybe we could-”

As he took another step forward, the ground beneath him gave out, Hernandez letting out a yell of alarm as he plunged out of sight. Tatzi was moving before Evan had even registered what was happening, somehow going from a standing position beside the squad to skidding on her stomach in the time it had taken him to blink. One of her arms had vanished into a dark hole, and she was using the other to anchor herself, driving her long claws into the loose soil. She grunted, hauling Hernandez out of the pit by his rucksack, depositing him on the ground beside the opening.

“Holy shit,” Hernandez panted, sitting up to look at the hole. “Tatzi, I could fuckin’ kiss you.”

“Later,” she replied, standing up to brush some of the dirt off her pressure suit. She helped him to his feet, then leaned a little closer to get a view down the shaft.

“This is what happens when you wander even a few feet,” Bainbridge snapped. “Stay in line, Marine. Your friend might not be there to protect you next time.”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” he replied as he stood to attention reflexively. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”

Evan entered the branching tunnel, taking a few tentative steps closer to get a look down the hole. The soil had been held in place by an ice-thin layer of resin that was placed just beneath the floor, not unlike those that had trapped the tanks back on the surface. The brittle substance must have given out when Hernandez had put his weight on it. When he shined the flashlight on the end of his barrel down the shaft, it didn’t reach far enough to reveal the bottom, vertigo tugging at his stomach.

“I dunno where the fuck that goes, and I don’t want to find out,” Foster muttered as he leaned over Evan’s shoulder.

“Pitfall traps,” Bainbridge explained. “They’ll either break your legs, impale you on spikes, or worse. These aren’t recent, or we’d be seeing disturbed soil. That’s gonna make them a pain in the ass to detect, so watch your footing.”

“There’s no pheromone warning, only the trail of Worker scent that we’ve been following,” Jade added. “Maybe it’s a map – a route laid out for them so that they don’t trigger any of these pitfalls.”

“And whatever else they’re hidin’ down here,” Hernandez muttered.

“The pheromone trail leads this way,” Jade said, gesturing ahead with an upper hand.

“Let’s keep moving,” Bainbridge said, leading them on.

“Got something up ahead,” Bainbridge said, leaning around a corner. “I want you guys to set up a firing line right here, aiming down this tunnel.”

They did as he asked, six members of the team forming the same firing line they had been trained to use in the trenches – three of them kneeling while three more leveled their weapons over their heads. Bainbridge lowered himself to a prone position just ahead of them, resting his microwave gun on the floor.

As Evan knelt, he saw their target. There were clusters of heat signatures in the walls and ceiling, far larger than the mines they had encountered earlier during their explorations. They were deep enough that the soil partially blocked their warmth, but it was very visible near the surface, where only a thin layer of resin separated them from the tunnel. As he watched, one of them moved, and his brain suddenly recognized the shape.

“Are those ... Drones in the walls?” he asked.

“I’ve encountered this before,” Bainbridge replied, his heavy armor rustling as he shifted his weight to get a better angle on them. He lay the barrel of his weapon on his forearm, elevating it just enough that the three-pronged emitter was pointing at the hidden figures. “The Bugs will entomb Drones and other nasties in the walls, sometimes accessible by hidden hatches, and sometimes not. They don’t need to eat a lot, and they don’t get claustrophobic. They’ll wait until their sensors are tripped, then they’ll hop out right on top of you.”

“We know that the Bugs on this moon can enter a low metabolic state to conserve energy and reduce their body temperature,” Simmons added. “The fuckers have ambushed us using that method before. If we’re seeing them on our thermals, they must have only set up here recently. A few more hours, and we might not have noticed them at all.”

“Well, they’re toast now,” Bainbridge chuckled. “Get ready to fire. I’m gonna cook the bastards, and when they come piling out of their holes, gun them down.”

“Ready!” Simmons replied, the squad aiming their rifles.

Bainbridge fired his weapon, heating up the tunnel, Evan watching the temperature rise. He switched back to his normal view mode, seeing the air in the dimly-lit tunnel start to shimmer again. After a few moments, several curved hatches on the resin walls flipped open, so seamlessly integrated into the tunnel that they would have been invisible. Four of them swung wide, disgorging half a dozen Drones each, enough for four squads. The Bugs were armed with knives and handguns, prepared for brutal close-quarters fighting, but they fled from their hiding places like they were on fire now. Steam was already rising from their carapaces, their exposed flesh blistering under the heat of the radiation. It seemed that the wider the beam, the less of an immediate effect it had, most of them still alert enough to turn their weapons on the Marines.

Gunfire echoed through the tunnel, the team cutting the Bugs down. The Drones were packed tightly together in the limited space, and there was no cover, making them easy targets. The slugs tore them apart with ease, carrying enough energy to pass through several Drones before they finally shed their velocity, turning protective carapace into deadly shrapnel as they blew gaping exit wounds in their targets. The hail of automatic fire ceased as the last Drone slumped to the floor, the tunnel now filled with their still-twitching corpses.

“Textbook,” Bainbridge said, signaling them to cease fire with a wave of his hand. He struggled to his feet in his cumbersome armor, walking over to appraise the dead Drones.

They moved past them, Evan trying to step over the corpses and failing, feeling their smooth carapaces beneath his boots. There were too many packed too tightly to avoid.

“Looks like this tunnel network was designed to slow down intruders,” Bainbridge mused, pointing out the heat signatures of more concealed mines ahead of them. “We’ll be facing more pockets of resistance like this for sure, so keep your eyes open and report anything that stands out, no matter how minor you might think it is.”

“Clear!” Bainbridge announced, rising to his feet.

Ahead of the team, another four or five squads of Drones were lying in a bleeding, smoking heap in the narrow tunnel. They had encountered maybe two dozen minefields – if they could be described that way – along with six or seven more of these Drone ambushes. With the IR cameras and the microwave gun, it was a simple matter of taking things slow and making sure that they used caution with each corner that they turned. Thanks to Jade and the Jarilans, they had been able to follow the pheromone trail left for the Workers, avoiding pitfalls and tripwires. It made Evan better understand why Bainbridge seemed to work so slowly and approach every situation so meticulously. He never did anything if he couldn’t be sure that he could do it right, and he left no room for mistakes, as even one could prove fatal.

“Not seen any of those Stalker webs for a while,” Brooks said as they waded through the dead Bugs. “Do you think we got away from them?”

“There’s no getting away from them,” Bainbridge replied, gesturing to another of the organic cameras that turned to track them as they walked past it.

“There’s a bad smell ahead,” Jade warned, Bainbridge stopping.

“Bad?” he asked. “Can you elaborate, Private?”

“It’s not Bugs,” she replied, Aster and Cardinal approaching to sniff the air alongside her. “Smells like decay.”

“Maybe rotting plant matter?” Aster suggested, Jade giving her a shrug.

“Well, this is new,” Bainbridge muttered. “I guess keep your eyes open and be ready for surprises.”

As they rounded the next corner, Evan saw that the tunnel ahead opened up into another chamber. He heard Garcia let out a sigh of relief over the radio – the claustrophobic passages full of mines and hidden compartments concealing angry Bugs had done his already frayed nerves no favors.

They stepped into this new space, the team spreading out to cover all angles, and Evan’s breath was quickly taken away by the sight before him. This was another domed chamber like the rest, but it was far larger than even the room that had housed the Repletes, the ceiling curving high over his head to make him feel like he was standing inside some kind of indoor stadium.

“It’s ... a garden?” Jade whispered.

“Holy shit,” Hernandez added as he craned his neck to get a look at the massive clump of luminescent moss at the apex of the dome, its glow casting the room into a kind of eerie twilight.

The immense floor space was taken up by a veritable forest of tall, irregular towers, some of them reaching ten meters high or more. They almost looked like porous tree trunks, but without any branches or leaves. It took Evan a few moments to realize that he had seen these before. They were the fungi that had been encountered on the surface, where pockets of them had grown in the woods. None of those had been quite this numerous or as impressive, however. This species was thriving down here.

As the team advanced a little deeper, he saw that the living spires were growing on mounds of what looked like compost, comparatively smaller species of mushroom with wide caps covering the decaying matter like a carpet. The soil here was deeper than it had been in the other chambers, and there were dead leaves everywhere, despite the fact that there were no trees in sight.

“What the hell is this?” Collins asked. “Why is there a mushroom forest down here?”

“They’re growing them,” Jade mused, making her way over to the nearest cluster carefully. There were winding paths between the mounds of dirt and compost, clearly designed so that the clusters of towering fungi could be accessed easily. “Look at this,” she added, kneeling to push one of her lower hands through the fat mushrooms. She withdrew a handful of dirt and leaves, along with what might be husks from grains and nuts. “That explains why it smells so bad in here,” she continued as she let the stuff fall. “This is all garbage – food waste. They’re using it to grow mushrooms.”

“I guess mushrooms don’t need any sunlight,” Evan mused, glancing up at the faint glow that emanated from the ceiling above. “Why are they doing this, though? I thought the Repletes could digest basically anything and turn it into honey? They didn’t even leave any bones behind.”

“Maybe they get more bang for their buck doing it this way?” Jade replied, shaking some of the wet soil off her hand. “I’m guessing they can grow more usable biomatter in the form of mushrooms than they’d get just by feeding this waste to the Repletes.”

“It’s a fuckin’ greenhouse in here,” Hernandez added. “My suit’s coolin’ system just kicked in.”

“It is unusually hot,” Bainbridge confirmed, glancing around warily. “Ambient temperature is high enough that it’s fucking with my thermals. That’s not good...”

“Very high humidity, too,” Collins added as he wiped away some of the moisture that was starting to condensate on his visor. “Probably good growing conditions for the mushrooms.”

“What’s that shit on the ceiling?” Foster asked, nodding above them.

Now that Evan was looking more closely, he could see what looked like large, organic vents spaced out around the dome at regular intervals. They were breathing, opening flaps that resembled lips in a regular rhythm, revealing gill-like structures with feathery cilia that waved in the breeze as they inhaled.

“Oh, I get it!” Jade said as she planted a lower fist in her palm. “They’re not just harvesting mushrooms for biomatter, they’re farming the bacteria that are breaking down the waste, and those vents are filtering out the methane that they produce. They’re turning decomposition into energy. That’s why it’s so hot in here and why the airflow is coming into this chamber.”

“You think they’re using it as fuel?” Simmons asked.

“It makes sense that they wouldn’t rely solely on the refineries that we destroyed,” Jade replied. “They can’t be getting anywhere near that amount using this method, though. Even if they have a dozen chambers like this, I’d guess that they’re only using them to power systems inside the hive.”

“They’d want to be self-reliant if their supplies were cut off,” Bainbridge confirmed with a nod as he began to lead them into the forest.

“And we sure as hell cut them off,” Hernandez chuckled.

They made their way deeper, following one of the winding paths between the scattered mounds of rotting plant matter, Evan thanking his stars that his helmet filtered out what must be an abhorrent stench. It was like being transported from the narrow tunnels to a moonlit forest, the dense clusters of pillar-like fungi blocking their lines of sight, making it impossible to see very far in any direction. When he switched to his thermals in the hopes that it might help, all he could see were the fumes of heat rising from the mounds, like smoke visualized in shades of orange and red.

“Movement!” Foster warned, the team spreading out to take cover. “False alarm,” he added after a tense moment. “It’s just a Cultivator.”

Crouched in the knee-high carpet of mushrooms nearby was one of the creatures that they had encountered tending the fields during their assault on the Bug farm. It resembled a Worker, but it had long arms with dexterous hands designed for picking crops. It was filling the little resin basket on its back, plucking the mushrooms from the ground with surprising care, paying the Marines little attention as it toiled.

“Watch your fire,” Bainbridge ordered as they resumed their advance. “Don’t waste your ammo on these things.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna need it for that,” Hernandez said as he gestured to some nearby pillars.

“Oh, fuck,” Evan sighed.

Two of the spires to either side of the dirt path ahead of them were joined by silvery webbing, bridging them to trail shimmering threads in a sparse curtain, the feather-light strands floating on the air like the tendrils of a jellyfish. It was clearly a trap designed to ensnare the unwary.

“So, this is why they were blocking off tunnels,” Bainbridge grumbled. “They wanted to reroute us into this chamber so they’d have more cover when they engaged.”

“A safe assumption, Lieutenant,” Simmons added. “Should we turn back?”

“Let’s keep going,” he replied, pressing on. “We’re going to have to deal with them sooner or later.”

Their heads were on a swivel as they marched along, every pillar potentially hiding a sniper, every sign of movement that was revealed to be a harmless Cultivator giving Evan palpitations. He remembered their last encounter with the Stalkers, how the aliens had tied that poor vehicle crewman to a tree, using him as bait to lure the Coalition forces into an ambush.

“Fuck!” Foster snarled, almost jumping out of his skin as he turned a corner to see another Cultivator staring at him blankly. “Fuck off!” he continued, reaching for an empty magazine from his rig and tossing it at the creature in frustration. It bounced off the thing’s head with surprising force, the Cultivator slinking away into the spires as though it had realized that it wasn’t welcome.