Chapter 14

This was another cavern similar to the one that held the power plant. That cavern was several klicks high, but this one was much larger. The cavern was so wide that there were supports, living biological supports. At first I thought of trees, but they looked more like mushrooms. They were varying sizes, with some as small as ten meters across while others nearly a hundred. As the trunk of the fungal tree rose out of the floor it narrowed slightly, and all the way to the top were flowers and what looked like fruit.

At the top, the supports glowed and bathed the cavern in the same bluish light found in the passageways. The passageways followed the glowing lights and not the other way around, or maybe they trained the roots to follow the passages. The glowing trails were the mushrooms' root system, or part of it, I realized.

Those were not the only things growing. Smaller varieties, some as large as a hundred meters tall, were growing among the structures the lizards lived and worked in. Some were a kind of growing thing while others resembled something a human might make out of metal, stone, or something like wood. There were streets on the floor and streets in the air, with elevated roadways almost creating two and three layers of city in areas. It was incredibly dense. Lizards must like living cheek to jowl.

The city looked crowded to me. It looked like the gators and skinks had moved down to the security underground when we invaded. There were gators and dragons armed and patrolling, but they were not guarding from attack. They were there to maintain order.

"Fucking amazing," Amy said watching the feed from my sneak.

"Yeah. Now if we could only ask for some directions."

"A man asking for directions?"

"It happens."

"How in the fuck are we going to find the way up in there? There has to be one."

"Not sure. If we knew where it was it'd be pretty simple to run through that mess and get there. No way they could mount any response fast enough."

"We might wait," she said.

"Yeah. Like rats and a sinking ship," I said.

"Just hope we are far enough away."

"No way to tell. From the B4 alone, we are. What that hive thing does is anybody's guess."

"I'd like to be on the far side when it goes."

"Me too. Don't see how. We jump and they see us," I said, leaving out the part where we get shot in the air like ducks trying to land on a pond surrounded by rednecks.

"I know. We've made it this far. Let's see if your luck holds," she said, teasing me.

I really wanted to spank her for that comment and when I did not say anything, she laughed.

As we watched the lizard city it appeared that they were at least partially without power. Some of the transports were not moving, at least the ones on rails. With the biological source for lighting it was hard to tell exactly what ran on power from the grid.

"So if we are not crushed under millions of tons of rock or burned up in a fiery inferno, we follow the mass exodus hoping they lead us to a way up?" Amy asked.

"More or less. Or we go back and try one of the other passages we skipped."

"No I think this is our best bet."

"What if they all come rushing this way?"

"Let's hope not."

Watching the city, if you removed the fact that they wanted to kill and eat us, the lizards had an impressive civilization. No one had seen what we were seeing. It was pretty damned impressive. The scope and complexity of it was incredible. The eggheads guessed that the dragons' civilization was much older than ours. I never really saw why they thought that before now. Sure their tech was far more advanced than ours in one sense, but it was stagnant and limited. It matched their needs perfectly though, which was not the case for us. We were still striving to improve. Many new colonies that had them burned fossil fuels as a large source of energy, because it was so cheap and easy, even though it was poison to the world and would eventually run out.

It seemed such a waste that we had to destroy this.

"Thad."

"Yeah."

"If things go bad. I just want you to know that I'm glad we are together and that I love you. Whatever happens, I love you."

"Me too, but I'd be happier if you were safe on the Demios and I was down here alone. I love you too."

As the timer reached to the last few tics we forced the doors and got out of the shaft. The doors were at the end of a short wide hallway so we appeared to be unnoticed. We moved to the wall and stood against it hoping to reduce our visibility a little.

When the timer hit zero we waited. We thought nothing was happening. For five seconds nothing changed. Then our battlecomps picked up a shockwave passing us. We felt the rumble then the doors to the elevator exploded outward and went flying, followed by an intense jet of plasma, and then the earth moved.

Our battlecomps flashed temperature warnings as the furious jet of plasma burned for a seeming eternity. I didn't wait for it to end. Amy was right on my six as I skipped out of the tunnel while ignoring the heat alarms.

Our Class V's sprouted emergency heat sinks on our backs, trying to radiate the heat away from us as soon as we left the infernos direct influence. The tunnel behind us, though, disappeared as the stone was shaken and melted at the same time, forming a new continuous piece of red hot stone.

Assault Armor was really good and handling heat. The network of sensors and energy net that gave the suit its incredible responsiveness and strength also super-conducted heat. The heat sinks were fins that mostly lay flush on our backs. The suits power pack is what collected the heat. Hell the heat even served to boost the charge but too much heat would turn a Marine into a walking explosive which made the B4 look like a party favor. The suit would shutdown if it got too hot from the environment or weapons fire and to bring it back online required a manual switch. At that point the wearer was most likely well done like a very expensive piece of meat.

We moved further away along the city's cavern wall, taking notice of what was happening in the city itself. It was chaos.

Sections of the ceiling of the city were raining down. As we watched, one of the fungal trees was breaking away from its uppermost connection and starting to fall. Amy launched a bumble bee to get us a better look.

There were pieces of the ceiling as large as the size of football stadiums falling to the cavern floor crushing whatever was underneath. Millions of Lizards were in the streets, confused and acting like they were trapped in a cave during an earthquake.

It truly was a city. The cavern went on eighty klicks and was fifty klicks at its widest. We were near one corner. The destruction was not limited to the end we were on either. We could see large clouds of dust all over where large sections had fallen.

We both saw that and felt a little bit like the Lizards for a moment. Then she panned the drone, and towards the far end we could see some organized or at least common movement. Looking closer we saw lizards all along the edges moving towards exits. We had no idea where they were going.

When the giant fungus nearest us fell it created yet more chaos. The cloud of dust it sent up was commensurate with its enormous size.

"Do you think the whole thing is going to collapse?" Amy said recalling the drone.

"I don't want to hang around and find out."

So far we seemed to be unnoticed. Nothing was trying to exit from the direction we came yet. Of course the ones near knew not to.

I leapt to the top of a four story building with Amy following and the drone catching up. Most times the drones were fire and forget but that was her last one so she was making sure it had enough power to return when she used it.

The roof tops looked like the best way to move so we started skipping from roof to roof, staying with the multi-story buildings. The first few were empty. When I landed on one occupied, my ax or a small slug silenced any alarm before moving on. We were moving at a pretty good rate to start.

The area over the cavern ceiling where the tree fell started to drop rocks the size of houses. We had yet to pass that area and I felt we should get to the far side anyway. The further away from the explosion, the better chance we had of finding an intact route up.

"Take the lead at your best pace," I said.

"We need to be over there when this place really collapses."

"You said it."

The battlecomps were busy showing us trajectories as the sky started falling. We could not risk longer jumps even if we wanted to now. Once in the air there was not much you could do to change your direction or velocity. We might find ourselves under one of those house sized rocks with the Lizards.

Amy was not even pausing if she landed on a roof with Lizards. She skipped away immediately. I ignored them too, unless one was within reach. It was pretty much second nature for me to kill any Lizard within ax reach. I figured any alarm raised would not make any difference to our chances of escape at that point.

We were moving faster now but I was starting to think it might not be fast enough. The shower of rocks, both big and small, was intensifying.

"You can go ahead. You're fast enough to make it," Amy said.

"Just go faster. I'm not leaving you." I said.

"I could order you."

"Go ahead."

"Asshole."

"Bitch."

"I'm your bitch."

She found some more speed. I could see her shift her focus from listening to the battlecomp to concentrating solely on moving. It's a leap of understanding that not many make. You find yourself paying less attention to trajectories and optimal applied force multipliers and shifting it to looking at where you want to go and just jumping and running. Each skip got a little longer and the way to get a longer skip without gaining altitude is with speed.

With any new skill comes mistakes. She misjudged and hit the side of a building instead of landing on the top of it. Landing in the middle of a mess of dragons any other time would have been a deadly mistake. They were unarmed though. She jumped back up.

"Sorry," she said.

"Don't. Keep going. You are doing great."

Her skip was back to her old norm.

"No. Like before."

"Okay," she said and was back in the groove on the next skip.

I'm sure she was concentrating on where she was going and trying to avoid getting crushed. I wasn't. Most of my skips were full rotations as I watched our six and tried to keep an eye out for some opportunity to get the hell out of this impending mass grave. Nothing was tempting though. At least, until we were nearing the far side, further down towards the far end.

"There," I said highlighting a point on the grid.

Amy just turned and headed for it no questions asked. There was a large mass of Lizards trying to get into an entry way to an elevator or at least it looked like the one we had used to enter with. This one, though, had armed Dragons guarding it. They were letting Dragons in but controlling the flow. We had found our rats.

I took the lead and dropped right in the middle of the guarding Dragons behind their line. Amy landed right next to me. Most were not snailed. Those that were died first. It took them and the crowd a full ten count to realize what was going on. By then we were moving to the elevator as the crowd was panicking. The elevator was about half full. We cut them down without pausing before busting the top access hatch.

We both breathed a sigh of relief as the battle comp indicated that the shaft rose ten klicks. This shaft, though, was different in one respect. It was oval shaped. There were guide rails on either side, but no cable.

"Fuck," I said.

Jumping back down, I said, "Stay up there."

I looked at the control panel. There were about two dozen buttons in two vertical rows. I pressed the top two. Nothing happened. I looked at the panel again. They were lit. Then I looked at the elevator door and saw the dead dragons laying there.

I fired some small hyper velocity slugs into the crowd to keep them in full panic mode. Then I quickly moved the bodies. The doors closed.

"Get in here quick," I said.

Amy hopped down just as the elevator started to move. It was a slow acceleration at first, then faster. The battlecomp had us moving rapidly upward.

"This is some elevator," Amy said looking at the same readout I was getting. Four hundred fifty klicks an hour is one hell of an elevator. A minute and a half later the damn thing stopped and fucking went ding like one of our elevators.

Looking up the open top hatch, it was a couple hundred meters up to the top level. When the doors opened, though, there were lizards in the hall. They were not waiting, it looked like, but were there nonetheless.

A few were armed, and we quickly shot them while I pushed the still lit button on the control panel again. Of course more showed up and a longer firefight started.

Some quick thinking Lizard must have overridden the controls because when the doors closed they just opened again.

"Fuck. Up through the hatch. Ready. Steady. Mark," I said and laid down some covering fire. As soon as she was up I jumped up with a parting burst at the control panel and hit the top of the shaft and found something to hang onto.

Amy was still standing on the elevator. I swung and flung myself at the upper level doors. There wasn't much to hang onto, just a little ledge a few centimeters wide. These were much larger doors. I pulled my ax and swung it, burying the head in the door, and used it to pull myself up. The battlecomp was signaling that Amy was firing as I forced the doors open and ripped one off, bending it back into the shaft.

There was a fucking mass of lizards in the hall in front of me.

"Get up here now," I said, and pulled my ax out of the door and rushed into the hall.

I stopped to cut a wide swath through them, clearing some space until Amy caught up. When she jumped and landed in the hall I got busy.

"Follow me," I said, and started like a prop in neo-rugby, charging through the hall. Batting aside or rolling over anything that got in my way, I kept moving. The Lizards did not thin out. When I found a larger concentration I just picked up speed and tore through them.

The battlecomp showed us gaining elevation and the semi regularly spaced ramps told me even without its help that we were at least going up. When I came to an intersection, I chose the route most populated with Lizards. I felt we had no choice but to follow the path of the crowd and hope they were leading us to a way out.

Amy started to fire at our six just as the blue glowing light above us went out. We hit our ultraviolet and saw the Dragons in even more of a panic, if that was even possible. I got a display from her and a dragon would pop out of a hall or room and try to pursue. I made sure that any armed or snailed gator caught in front of me received some attention as I passed by.

"Subway ahead maybe," I said when the tunnel started to look familiar.

There were a hell of a lot more armed and snailed dragons in the subway station. There was some form of backup lighting there but it was not enough for them to see clearly. Amy held our six, which was anything but secure, while I forged ahead. They either did not know that we were coming or simply did not understand. I burst into the middle of the plebes waiting for the next train and the guards that where there ensuring things remain civil and killed everything that was upright. The battlecomp was incredible at tracking and identifying armed verses unarmed. Instead of killing the closest and working my way out I selected the guards and fired through the crowd so they would provide me cover. In the first few tics of the fight they killed more Dragons that I did.

When the train rolled into the station the fight was nearly over. It was empty though, not even a driver. I kicked the subway terminal control and broke it loose before turning to the train. I ran at the train and hit it hard enough to rock it and that let me tip it over.

"Let's go," I said.

"Coming," she said firing at the pursuit.

When she jumped up on the train I quickly checked with battlecomp to see if one direction went up. The direction from where it came did. It was totally dark.

"Run ahead and I'll hold them."

"Let's go together."

"Won't work. Go, I'll catch up. Best speed. Go."

"You better," she said and skipped off at her best pace.

I held them for three mikes before I jumped down and ran. She was about two and a half kilcks ahead. It took me just a couple mikes to catch up.

"Thad, I..." she started.

"Shutup and run," I said not wanting to hear her suggest I go without her or hear her apologize for slowing me down. It was fast enough. She may have been getting better but actually running in armor was the hardest thing to learn. A tunnel is no place to learn.

The battlecomp had us at a depth of four klicks still. It was still a long way to go.

The first station we came to had a welcoming party and was in the dim backup light like the other. I don't know why they did not confront us in the tunnel. They probably couldn't see was my guess. We were like fish in a barrel. They waited in the station. We did not stop and shoot it out. I advanced with Amy, firing as we went. We had to keep moving and a steady controlled advance was what it took.

Clearing the station I kicked over that station's control console which only had one dimly blinking red light. I had no idea how much effect it had but it sure would not hurt our chances any.

As we advanced up the tunnel they closed the blast door which seemed to rise slowly. I jumped up and forced it like the others. They were as surprised as the Lizards before when it came down. Amy cleared them and we jumped over and kept moving. We saw some dragons ahead, not firing at us but into rooms. We killed them anyway.

This area was different than what we had seen before. It felt like a brig. There were doors all along the hall that were mostly bars. We both got a very bad feeling about it.

"It looks like..." Amy began.

"A prison," I said and went to the first cell. Inside was an alien. Only this alien was not the thing of nightmares. It wasn't a lizard. It was something else.

She, and I say she, because it was naked and had what were obviously boobs, was about one and a half meters tall. She had two arms and two legs, with feet that were wider and having four toes. Her arms ended in hands like ours, with four fingers and two of them being thumb-like on either side of her hand. Her skin was pink, a real pink like the color of a rose. On her head was fine brown hair that continued down her neck to the base of her spine. Her face was alien but not repulsive. Her eyes were too far apart and her nose was wide and flat with two nostrils like a human. Her mouth was wide as well but not freakish. I could see wide white teeth like exaggerated versions of human teeth in her mouth.

Large brown eyes the same color as he hair looked at me with at first terror, then puzzlement.

Amy went to the other side.

"Fuck me," Amy said in a surprised voice.

I turned and looked and saw another captive much like the one I saw. This one had darker brown hair though.

Moving down the passageway quickly, I saw three more, then I found two more humans. A young woman, and the man was middle aged. A quick look showed he was missing the little finger on his left hand from an old wound. There were a few scars on him and he was thin but appeared healthy enough.

He looked shocked and confused at first then he started to weep.

I grabbed the bars and pulled the door loose setting it aside. In standard I asked, "Are there any others?"

He just wept but he did nod. Amy was with me by then and we checked the other cells. The dragons had executed several humans and what we were to find out were called Farans. There was a woman but no other humans alive. The woman was calmer so Amy questioned her.

"Do you know of any other humans?"

"No. Just us."

"What of the others? The aliens?"

"They are Farans. They are another species that has fallen victim to the lizards. Please free them too," she asked.

"Do it," Amy said to me through the comm.

I walked up to the other five cells with Farans, our females and one male, and tore their cell doors off. They appeared frightened and none ventured out of their cells.

"We need to move," I reminded Amy.

"What's your name? I'm Lt. Swanson. That's Pvt. Sweeney."

"Hillary Davenport."

"Great, Hillary. We need to move. You are going to have to keep up as best you can. It's just us two against however many millions of Lizards down here. And they are not happy with us."

"How? Only you two?" She said, even more confused for a moment. Then she mentally shook herself and I could see her switch from prisoner and victim to survivor mode.

She called out, "this is our only chance. Either stay here and get eaten eventually or follow them. Falara, Gizeel, F'seera, Rililta, Geelra, come. These are human soldiers. They are going to help us escape.

"Could you take off your helmets so they can see you are human?"

"For a second," Amy said removing hers. I lowered my coilgun and put my ax on my back and did the same. The Farans saw us and ventured out of their cells to hug and comfort each other. I noticed that the humans were in the mix, hugging and holding the Farans.

I started to put my helmet back on when the first female I saw looked directly as me and said, "I Gizeel thank you and owe you a life debt." She held her backs of her hands over her temples as she said that. The other Farans did the same and repeated the words, "life debt."

I simply nodded and put my helmet back on. The Farans spoke standard well, I noted. How in the fuck I was going to get these civilians and Amy out was beyond my comprehension. Being killed escaping had to be better than waiting for death in a lizard cell, though, I thought.

As I moved further down the hall, letting Amy play kindergarten round-up, I noticed more dead humans and farans, but most of the cells were empty.

If the lizards were predictable, there would be an elevator straight ahead. The train cars full of Dragons must not have been stopping here from the numbers we found. Of course, they may not have been stopping here because there was no way up and no elevator. There was no further resistance.

I saw that Amy and our kindergarteners were keeping up. I heard her tell them that if something happened they were to move to their left side against the wall and crouch down. If it was a running fight they would have to follow as best they could, but to always make sure they were against a wall and out of the way. She warned them that we could crush one of them without knowing in the middle of a fight.

Past another blast security door, there was an elevator shaft at the end of the passage. Amy saw, as I did when we forced the doors, it went up and there were cables. The car itself was only fifty meters up though with no levels before it.

The battlecomp showed that the car was occupied.

"Ready?"

"Yeah," she said.

I jumped up grabbing the underside structure and swung my legs up and busted through the floor flinging myself up into the car. It was occupied with a few dozen trapped dragons in a dim red light. They never stood a chance.

"Clear," I said.

Amy instructed the former captives to begin climbing, using the rungs built into the elevator shaft instead of the cable, because it was faster and easier.

When Amy made it up she looked around.

She flashed me an image of what I looked like. It was gruesome. I was covered with blood and bits of bone and tissue. None of it stuck to my face plate but the rest of me looked -downright terrifying.

"I think we might just be able to walk out of here when they look at you."

"Not likely. They might try to hump me. Gets Dragons all worked up," I said, jumping up through the top access onto the car's roof.

"I kind of want to hump you," she said teasing me.

"My caveman testosterone act working then?" I asked looking up.

"It must be. I'm a little juicy," she said in her fuck me voice.

"Evil woman," I said and jumped.

She just laughed at me.

"Tell them they had better climb faster if they can."

She waited for them.

Once they had gotten above the elevator car and started the climb, she jumped and had to climb the cable starting only a hundred meters up. That was nearly double what she could do before in such a confined space, straight up.

At the top, three hundred and ten meters above the car, my sneak was extended under the doors. The lights were out on that level. I hoped it would be that way until we found a way to the surface. There were several levels before this one, but we were not interested in any more of the mysteries of lizard life.

Waiting for all of the civilians to climb up was going to take way too long. Figuring I had to do something, I slid back down the cable. I hopped down into the car and started to strip Dragons out of their battle harnesses and clothes.

They were a little gory but that could not be helped.

"I know this is pretty nasty but put these on," I said and kneeled down in front of Hillary. I helped her put the harness on upside down forming a basket of sorts for her to sit in. Amy helped the others into them as well. I started to use other harnesses to buckle them all together.

Once everybody was together I took out my sneak. It was plasteel and would hold their weight easily. I tied it around Hillary's harness and started to pull myself up the cable bringing them up behind me. Satisfied they were secure enough, I climbed faster. Amy was bringing up the rear until we got to the top. She then used her sneak to check the hallway and forced the door. We pulled them up and separated them, warning them to keep the harnesses on as we were still a long ways underground.

Amy and I then advanced. We noted that it looked like the same sort of maintenance facility we had seen before. We agreed that was a good sign. It was also empty. It looked hastily abandoned too.

This level was also much bigger than the other maintenance facilities. It took long enough to find the elevator shaft up to make us nervous.

The shaft only went up again. This time it was almost a klick straight up to the car which we guessed was at the top.

"Thad, let me pull them up this time. If there is company up there you're better than me."

I was reluctant to let her. I would drop the former captives to save myself without much regret. Amy would not.

"Only if you don't hesitate to drop them to save yourself. If you don't I will kill them and take the choice from you."

"I ... Okay. I understand," she said.

"Buckle up. It's a long climb," Amy told them.

I jumped but only a hundred meters.

"Why didn't you jump higher?"

"No need. Something happens, we don't want to be that far apart. Plus I've gotten kind of fond of being close to you."

"Thank you," she said clearly pleased at the last part.

The hall was clear with a quick look with a sneak. I forced the doors, then moved up, watching. Amy quickly climbed up and hastily pulled everyone up.

We had found more barracks. These were not hastily abandoned. As we moved up leapfrog we started to find the Gators left behind.

An unsnailed Gator popped out of a doorway unaware and caught a subsonic slug in the head. Amy quickly moved past me and checked the doorway with her sneak.

"Clear," she said tossing the body back in the room. It went like that until we found a security blast door and I forced it. A little ways further we found a bank of elevators going up. There were four down a hall to either side, and the tunnel went further with another intersection almost two hundred meters ahead with more doorways to squad bays in between.

"About 500 meters to go and this thing goes 450," I said.

"Let's do it," she said.

She climbed up towing and I leaped and climbed up quickly to get an idea of what we faced. I noted on the way up that there were other many other levels.

The car was stopped at a level and not in-between like the last one. My sneak showed finished tunnel and, eventually, snailed dragons and gators in the dim backup lighting. It really made me wish we knew the way out and could just run and gun. I thought it was a good sign there was activity, though. It hopefully meant the tunnels were not sealed above.

Figuring discretion was the better part of valor, I used my plasma cutter to get us inside the car as the elevator doors were shut. Inside we waited for the coast to be clear before forcing the door which, thankfully, was quiet.

I went first as I could be nearly silent when I wanted to be. Amy thudded when she moved. The first room was some sort of war room with large tables and displays. It was dark but there were a couple of dragons in it. I stepped in and they were dead before they made a sound. Back out in the tunnel we moved forward.