Chapter 12: Pyroduct

They made their way deeper, the tunnels eventually leading them to some kind of larger passage. It wasn’t a chamber, nor was it one of the more spacious routes reserved for large vehicles like Scuttlers – it was far more cavernous than anything they had encountered thus far. It must have been forty meters wide, more oval-shaped than circular, their tunnel terminating abruptly as they intersected.

“There’s no resin lining these walls,” Evan said as he stepped gingerly into the open, shining his beam on the naked stone. There was no soil underfoot, only bare rock with a few loose pebbles, his footsteps echoing. “Are these natural formations?”

“This is volcanic rock,” Bainbridge replied, glancing up at the towering ceiling. “It’s a lava tube – the ones that UNNI warned us about in our briefing. The mesa isn’t the only reason that the Bugs chose this spot for their hive. Volcanic activity created a natural superhighway that runs throughout this whole area. The moon’s crust is riddled with old magma chambers and lava tubes like a giant fucking sponge, and the low gravity here just makes them bigger.”

“It’s like termites taking up residence in an old log,” Simmons added. “Why do the work yourself when nature will do it for you?”

“For a superhighway, there ain’t a lot of traffic,” Hernandez said as he shone his flashlight down the tunnel. It was truly massive, the beam petering out after a few hundred meters. “How can we be sure the Queen hasn’t already bailed?”

“Oh, she’s here,” Bainbridge replied. “She couldn’t abandon this place if she wanted to at this point. If there’s a bolt hole within two hundred klicks of this mountain, we’ll catch her.”

“She mounted her last stand at the Ant Hill,” Jade added. “She seems to have pooled the last of her resources here. To abandon this stronghold would guarantee her death.”

“So, we going left or right?” Hernandez added.

“Right,” Jade replied, stepping forward. “They once moved armies through these tubes – I can smell the residue.”

“They ain’t got no armies left to move now,” Hernandez chuckled.

“If we hadn’t decimated their forces in the way that we did, they could have moved entire battalions right under our feet and have them pop up behind our lines,” Simmons added as he swept his flashlight across the ceiling.

They made their way down the passage, Evan feeling more like he was exploring a cave than a hive now. It was much colder and damper down here than it had been in the tunnels above, suggesting that the same climate control wasn’t present. These were purely highways, as Bainbridge had said. No Bugs actually lived here long-term. Rather than the clusters of moss that lit up the chambers, the lava tube was lit by pockets of the bioluminescent fungi that were growing on the walls at intervals, their glow creating uneven pools of light that almost resembled street lamps. The ground beneath his feet was very uneven, the bare rock pocked with holes that formed shallow puddles of stagnant water. The Bugs had filled some of the larger ones in and had used resin in places to level out the ground where it was especially uneven. There were no sharp corners or bends here – it was as straight as nature could make it, the tunnel tapering off into darkness.

“Movement!” Donovan yelled, shining his flashlight on another entrance that branched off the tube on the left side.

“Hold your fire!” Bainbridge warned. “Those are friendlies!”

Their IFF signals soon popped up on Evan’s HUD, and he lowered his rifle, the surge of adrenaline still making his heart race.

A Trog and a squad of Marines came piling out of the tunnel opening, led by a solitary Jarilan, the newcomers seeming just as surprised as Evan and his team were.

“Bainbridge?” the Trog said, patching into the local comms channel. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yates, is that you?” the lieutenant replied. “Glad to see you’re still kicking.”

“Barely,” the Trog replied. “Did you guys encounter the flooded tunnels full of tentacles?”

“Aye,” Bainbridge said with a nod. “Have you met any more teams on the way down here?”

“No, you?”

Bainbridge shook his head.

“I hope you guys have a clear route out of here,” he added. “We had to collapse a tunnel to hold off an army of Drones, and we lost our repeaters as a result.”

“Yeah, we have a way out,” Yates replied. “The tunnels behind us aren’t exactly clear, though. We came across some kind of staging area and had to loop around. There were a couple of hundred Drones gearing up for a fight.”

Evan was amused to see that the Jarilans had formed a little circle and were all touching antennae – a form of greeting or identification, perhaps. Aster was still clutching Tatzi’s rig, watching the exchange from over the Borealan’s broad shoulder.

“Well, I’m glad we have some extra manpower,” Bainbridge said as he turned his attention back to the lava tube. “Our Jarilans say the Queen’s chamber is this way.”

“Ours was pretty sure she’d caught a scent,” Yates confirmed. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any spare batteries, would you? I’m afraid I’m almost out of juice.”

“Last one,” Bainbridge said, tossing the man a blocky battery from his rig. “The fuckers keep popping out of the walls.”

The two groups fell in, continuing down the cavernous tunnel, the Jarilan guides leading the way. Evan felt a little more secure now that their numbers had been effectively doubled, but it wouldn’t be much help if a Scuttler or a team of shielded Warriors came marching in the opposite direction. He found himself wishing that they had Scalpels like the SWAR team they had encountered. They made conversation with the newcomers as they walked, learning that these Marines were from the UNN Tabor and that their Jarilan’s name was Cherry.

They had entered the hive from a completely different direction and had followed the same pheromone trails to arrive in the lava tube, meeting similar resistance on their way down. It seemed that the Bugs were putting up a fight, but they were struggling to split their remaining forces as each team probed the hive from a different ingress point, taking random routes as they explored the winding tunnels. It was hard to predict the actions of an enemy who had no idea what they were doing or where they were going. Other than reinforcing strategic areas, the only answer the Bugs really had was to send out patrols and hope that they chanced upon an intruder. That certainly wouldn’t be the case if the Coalition hadn’t thinned their numbers to the extent that they had.

“Do you reckon the Queen’s chamber is at the end of this lava tube?” Hernandez asked. “I can’t picture that.”

“No, but if the tunnels that we’ve been exploring are veins, these tubes are the arteries,” Jade replied as she stepped around one of the puddles. “They’ll lead us to the heart.”

“If you say so,” he added with a shrug.

“Wait,” Tatzi said, the echo of their footsteps carrying down the tunnel as the group halted. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” one of the Marines asked skeptically.

“It is ahead of us,” Borzka added. “They are coming.”

“Spread out, form a firing line!” Bainbridge ordered. Yates relayed the command to his men, seeming to trust the lieutenant’s judgment, and they began to scatter. There was no cover in the tube, but it was wide enough that their near thirty-man force could stand shoulder to shoulder, their rifles aimed into the darkness ahead. There were no blind corners, and there was no obscuring haze in the air, giving them excellent visibility in spite of the gloom. Evan switched view modes to night vision, casting the details of the rock walls into shades of green, causing the little patches of glowing moss to flare for a moment before his system automatically adjusted itself to compensate.

He heard them before he saw them, the echo of chitin claws on stone carrying down the tunnel, growing louder as the enemy neared. It was impossible to tell exactly how many there were, but it was a lot. The sensors on his helmet detected motion at the limits of their range, starting to pick out individual targets, red blips filling the tunnel. They were on the walls, on the ceiling, packing the lava tube in a swarm. Some were even flying, using their wings to leap over their comrades like grasshoppers. These were not the cautious, regimented movements of Drones.

“Tweakers!” Yates warned. “Open fire!”

The rock walls were illuminated as a stream of fire poured down the tunnel, trails of molten tungsten reflecting off the moisture that clung to them, their glow mirrored in the puddles. The Bugs began to drop, dozens of them succumbing to the first volley, the rounds chewing through their ranks to send them toppling to the floor. There were so many that Evan didn’t even have to aim – hundreds of them packing the tunnel, accelerating once they realized that they were under attack. They didn’t try to lay down covering fire or make themselves harder to hit, they just flooded towards the line, running and leaping with abandon. They had no rifles clutched in their four arms, only an assortment of blades, wicked daggers and swords made from chitin. There was something wrong about the way that they moved – their limbs twitching erratically, their gait jerky and uncoordinated.

“What the fuck’s wrong with ‘em?” Hernandez demanded, pouring another long burst into the approaching insects. They were a few hundred meters away, but approaching fast, the losses doing nothing to dissuade them. “They look like they’re on amphetamines!”

“You guys haven’t encountered Tweakers before?” Yates asked, firing his sidearm. They must be out of range of his microwave gun. “They’re males – winged Drones – and they’re off their fucking tits on combat pheromones. In the Green Zone, they used them to soften up our positions before an assault. They’d try to overwhelm us through sheer weight of numbers before sending in more organized squads to mop up.”

“We mostly fought heavy armored units in the Red Zone,” Evan added. “Seems like the Kings each had their own way of doing things.”

The Tweakers were relentless, scrambling over each other in their bid to reach their targets, Evan watching them absorb multiple rounds before they dropped in some cases. Normal Drones seemed to feel no pain and would keep fighting when injured, but these creatures didn’t even seem to realize that they’d been hit. He watched one of them lose a leg to a slug, the round shattering the carapace and shredding the limb at the thigh, the creature falling on its face as it tried to support itself with a leg that was no longer there. Undeterred, it began to crawl along the ground, quickly disappearing beneath the stampede of Bugs.

Dead Tweakers fell from the walls and ceiling where they crawled like spiders, the flying creatures knocked out of the air, their fragile wings torn to shreds. The only pauses in the constant hail of gunfire were when one of the Marines had to reload, the glow of the red-hot coils on their barrels reflecting off their visors.

Evan’s confidence was rapidly diminishing. For every one they felled, two more were there to take its place, and ammo wasn’t something they had in abundance after fighting their way down here. At this rate, they were going to run out of slugs before the enemy ran out of bodies.

“We need to pull back!” Simmons yelled. “Find a smaller tunnel and bottleneck them!”

“No dice!” Bainbridge replied. “If we stop firing and try to retreat, they’re just going to overrun us! We’ll use the microwave guns when they get close enough.”

“So, bull-baiting, basically?” Garcia added.

“It’ll work!” Bainbridge added. “Trust me!”

The crazed insects were gaining ground, Evan having to turn off his HUD’s targeting system to be able to see anything other than a blood-red wave of signatures sweeping down the tube towards him. He turned his sights on another of the creatures, peppering it with slugs, the rounds blowing holes in its carapace and taking out several Tweakers behind it as they passed through its body.

“Get ready, Yates!” Bainbridge warned as he readied his microwave gun. “You take the left side, I’ll take the right – wide beam!”

The swarm was within maybe fifty meters now, so close that Evan could see the glow of his flashlight reflecting off the many lenses of their helmets, the thundering echo of their footsteps reverberating off the tunnel walls. The two Trogs fired, the moisture that clung to the stone starting to turn to steam as they heated the air, the puddles boiling. The effect seemed to taper off with enough distance, the Tweakers that charged into range of the microwave emitters staggering, but continuing all the same. While pain was not enough to give them pause, having their very muscles cook inside their shells was, the leaders of the frenzied charge faltering as their bodies betrayed them. Their carapaces warped, their flesh blistered, steam rising from the joints in their armor.

The rest of the group took full advantage, pouring fire into the burning creatures, putting them out of their misery. Even though they were being cooked alive, and the pain must grow all the greater the closer they came, they still tried to fight through the invisible field like it was a physical barrier. They threw themselves into the beam, clawing their way across the hot stone, boiling fluids spilling from their bodies as the building pressure ruptured their organs.

It slowed their charge – just enough to make the difference – the two squads starting to slowly walk backwards to keep their distance as they chewed through the Bugs. How many had they killed already? A hundred? More? Piles of dismembered and steaming bodies littered the tunnel floor, but they persisted, leaping and crawling over their dying companions with a thirst for blood that would surprise even the most seasoned Marine.

It felt like they were walking up a beach to avoid the tide, the surf inching towards their toes, the creatures tripping over each other in their mad bid to reach them. One of them fell close enough to reach out and try to grab Evan’s leg, and he kicked it away, turning his XMR towards the ground. The slugs punched through its twitching body, chipping the stone floor beneath it, turning the fragments of rock into shrapnel.

“Stay together!” Bainbridge yelled. “Keep firing!”

“I’m out!” Hernandez shouted, holding his empty rifle in one hand as he drew his sidearm with the other. He kept firing into the crowd, the Bugs packed so tightly together that aiming was an afterthought.

“I got a spare!” Brooks said, handing him a magazine. Hernandez hit the release, dropping the empty mag on the floor, trapping the stock of his rifle in his armpit as he slammed in the fresh one. Only then did he holster his sidearm, bringing his XMR to bear again.

As Evan glanced to his right, he saw that even Aster was helping, firing her handgun over Tatzi’s shoulder as the Borealan unloaded from the hip.

The momentum of the attack finally slowed, then stopped, the last few Tweakers that stood above the carpet of dead Bugs falling to join their comrades. Evan paused to reload, glancing down the line to his left and right to see that nobody was hurt, their barrels glowing like hot coals in the darkness. The two Trogs lowered their weapons, Bainbridge soon stowing his on his back as he realized it was out of juice, drawing his sidearm once more.

“That all of them?” Yates asked, adrenaline making his voice waver.

“I think so,” Simmons replied, sweeping his flashlight across the veritable graveyard ahead of them. “What do you reckon that is – two, three hundred?”

“Fuck me sideways,” Hernandez exclaimed, his crassness inspiring a chorus of relieved chuckling over the radio. “Some of those fuckers got within a few inches of shankin’ us. If it wasn’t for those microwave guns...”

“Told you it would work,” Bainbridge said with no small amount of satisfaction. “Everyone still in one piece?”

Nobody reported any injuries, and the soldiers passed around ammo as they took a few moments to calm their nerves. There was something about these brushes with death that was starting to become exhilarating, Evan feeling his heart hammer beneath his chest piece as he looked over the steaming piles of dead with fresh clarity brought on by adrenaline.

“I’m afraid that’s pretty much it for the microwave guns,” Yates added, walking over to give a nearby Tweaker a prod with the toe of his boot. “These bastards aren’t so tough once you know how to deal with them.”

“I feel like we’re gonna need a snowplow to get through that,” one of the members of Yates’ team sighed as he appraised the pile of Tweakers ahead of them.

“Watch out,” Yates added. “Some of the fuckers are probably still hot.”

“You ever burn your mouth on a microwave burrito?” Hernandez asked.

“Fall in,” Yates ordered, stepping over the nearest bodies as he began to lead them deeper. “My team will take point – I still have a little battery charge left.”

His men followed after him, starting to trudge through the bodies, wading like they were walking through a bog. After a few moments, Bainbridge gestured for Delta to proceed, the squad lagging behind as they formed a narrow column.

“If they’re throwing this much fodder at us, we’re on the right track,” Yates added. “We can’t be far from-”

Yates exploded into a cloud of gore, fragments of his armor peppering the nearby Marines, his blood splattering their pressure suits. What was left of him was spread out across the floor behind them like a smear on a road, Evan watching an arm that was still wearing its wrist display roll to a stop on the bare stone. A thunderclap followed shortly after, the sound jolting everyone out of their stunned silence.