Jess took low and inside, Teape right behind him with the motion sensor activated. A few tight seconds, and Teape visibly relaxed.
“Nothing. Deadville.” His tense voice echoed hollowly in the open space.
The Candyman walked in and scowled, lowering his rifle. “Figures.”
Jess took a few steps in, turning his head slowly from left to right to give ops a clear picture. Traon’s dim light cast their long shadows across the bare lift floor, an elevator room surrounded by steel mesh perhaps nine meters by ten; the surface hoist, according to Sturges, built to carry hundreds of tons of mining equipment to the levels beneath. There were catwalks and ladders on either side and several panels of buttons and softly banking lights. It smelled faintly of dirt and grease and work, as it should; the bugs hadn’t made it up this far yet.
Jess motioned for the other two to bring in Max and the nuke, then walked to one of the steel gratings. “We’re in the shaft head, free and clear, no sign of alien activity. Goin’ on down. Over.”
Lara’s voice was cool and calm in his ear. “Drop a relay, over.”
Jess pulled a transmission relay out of his belt pack and held it against one of the barrier’s panels, tapping the magnetic activation. The relay locked tightly to the panel with a barely audible hum. A simple enough device, it still always made Jess feel like he was in an old sci-fi vid; when he was a kid, they’d used glue.
“Check relay,” said Jess.
Teape cleared his throat. “Check relay.”
“Check!” Pulaski’s voice boomed through the hoist. He laughed at the echoes of himself, high on where they were headed; the Man definitely had a hard-on for killin’, no two ways about it.
“Reading you loud and clear—”
Pop’s gruff voice cut in. “Sturges says that we only got emergency lights down under. Break out the torches and let’s watch our asses, over.”
“Copy that, over.”
The three of them widened weapon-scope beams and activated their shoulder lamps. Jess studied the control panel in the bright light, frowning slightly. “CYA”; thanks, Pop. Jess supposed that Pop just wanted to feel involved, but sometimes he treated the team like they were dumbass kids. It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it—a kind of, “We’re all in this together, men” tone that Jess didn’t dig. What was all this “we” shit? Pop’s ass didn’t need covering, he wasn’t the one down here in the dark…
The second set of switches were the ones that would seal the barrier and lower their hoist. Jess briefly checked his team over, making sure they were in good shape. Pulaski stood by the back mesh wall where the shadows were deepest, fingers tapping against his slung M41. He looked stem and watchful, almost appearing angry in his intensity.
“You cool there, Candyman?”
Pulaski nodded once; his broad face radiated impatience, but he would hold. Jess knew from experience that the big man could jump the gun if he wasn’t reminded to keep cool; once he’d blown up most of a boiler system in a clear zone because it had hissed at him—not because he was scared, but because it pissed him off.
“Teape?” Jess was more worried about their baiter. He stood stiffly beside the inert mass of Max, scruffy face drawn and pasty in reflected light.
“Yeah, okay.” Teape didn’t sound happy, but he looked straight at Jess as he spoke, a good sign. In the brief prisoner’s H/K leadership program Jess had taken, they’d told him to watch for certain signals; inability to make eye contact was a red flag.
Jess checked himself over as he reached for the controls that would take them down to the halfway point. He felt alert and cool, tensions laid back for another time; he’d always been able to do that, even back in the bad ol’ days— grace in the heat, keeping his shit tight in times of battle. His eyes, head, and muscles were in tune with each other and ready to move, to lead the boys into the fray.
“Brace up, then,” he said lightly, and pushed the button.
* * *
God, they were cool; sitting alone at his console, Ellis was breathing deeply, palms moist and pulse racing. The lift jerked and then lowered the team into the darkness, the dull grind of the hoist’s gears the only sound in the small lab.
He watched on a flat video screen that folded up from the console, a cheap setup that didn’t do justice to the clarity of Max’s camera. The adjustable infra wide-angle on the Berserker’s chest showed the team in sharp detail, in spite of the Company cutbacks. This screen would also give the sensory reads when Max was awake. The rear cam would activate on first dosage as well, although the Max slept soundly for now—Ellis wouldn’t cut off sedation until the nest had been infiltrated.
He nervously wiped his hands on his shirt as he stared unblinking at the picture. Jess moved out of view and Ellis adjusted the lens with his thumb, rotating the small sensphere to widen the shot.
The three men paced the meshed cage, their rifles’ lights aimed out and down; the shaft’s pipes and walls slid past them in circles of dusty brightness, sharp against the progressive darkness. Ellis tried to imagine what it was like to be there— the cold air, the deepening shadows; the knowledge that just below were perhaps dozens of alien drones, their glistening bodies hidden in corners and waiting to attack…
As they neared the bottom, Teape’s beam flashed across a stain of some kind, then jerked back to illuminate it. A dark, weblike rope of something, strung against a pipe—
“Pop, Lara, you catch that? Over.” Jess’s voice, offscreen. Apparently he was in charge of reporting to ops.
Ellis felt a flush of excitement as the strange material slid up and off his screen, the lift dropping past. That was the alien secretion, the foamy webs they used to build nests and hold their victims; he’d heard about it but never seen any. As far as he knew, no Company scientist had even figured out what it was made from; saliva and some unknown internal substance produced by the drones.
Pop sounded unusually tight. “Copy, team leader. Get the motion sensor on the door, over.”
The lift suddenly jerked, a heavy metallic clank as it hit bottom. They were at the midway, the connecting shaft. Teape held up a tracker as the steel mesh went up, the three men stiff and poised, rifles still. Dull red light filtered in from somewhere, the emergency backups. The glow made the scene surreal and strange, blurring the edges of the void ahead.
“Pickin’ up something on the meter—” Teape’s tense whisper seemed impossibly loud in the still lift. “It’s small, looks like six meters away, barely moving—”
He stepped out of the hoist, tracker raised. Pulaski and Jess were just behind him to either side, weapons slowly panning back, and forth. The rifle lamps gave the impression of a huge open space, a corridor that led off into nothing. Ellis could see what looked like another lift directly in front of them and pieces of equipment scattered around haphazardly.
“Got it! Five meters, that way…” Teape looked to his right and then stepped out of view.
Ellis clenched his fists, searching the screen for some movement, wanting to help. Max was still inside the lift, unable to see.
Silence, only a faint beeping from Teape’s tracker. And Ellis heard it at the same time they did, a tick of rapid claws against metal.
“Face-hugger!” Teape screamed.
“I got it—!” Pulaski?
A flashing muffled light, the thrumming pulse of an M41— and a squealing shriek, inhuman, cut short by the blast.
A minute passed, then two. Ellis heard slow footsteps but saw only the red tunnel, the mute machinery. When Jess and the others stepped back into view, Ellis let out his breath, relieved.
“The Man took out a baby on the overhang, but nothin’ else moving, area secure. It must’ve crawled up on its own, over.” Jess sounded as calm as ever, almost relaxed. Ellis shook his head in amazement.
“We got a face-hugger up here, we’re probably dealing with a full-blown hive,” said Pop. “Jess, locate the break on the deep hoist cable and override. Teape can set up the fail-safe, and, Candyman, take the tracker. Let’s do it careful and let’s do it double-time, people!”
Jess was directly in front of the Max as Pop spoke, so Ellis’s screen was the only one that picked up the team leader’s expression. Ellis smiled as Jess silently mouthed the words “fuck you, Pop,” and rolled his eyes; maybe their commander wasn’t so popular after all.
His smile faded as the men went to their tasks, washed in the crimson light of a dead mining operation. That shrill and furious cry of the alien larva still echoed in his mind. And deep in the ground beneath their feet, there would be dozens more, and the queen that gave them life.
* * *
Jess found the faulty cable in record time, less than two minutes, and reconnected around it in another two. The subsequent test of the deep hoist went smoothly, and positioning the fail-safe simply meant locking the heavy disk to the wall.
They were ready in just under five minutes. Teape felt sick.
Jess shouldered his rifle and Pulaski handed over the tracker; Teape held it loosely in one unsteady hand, glad for the poor lighting.
“We’re set up, Pop, over,” said Jess.
Pop sounded pleased. “Good, all right! Arming failsafe…”
Teape heard the click and hum of the nuclear device as the timer switched on.
“You now have eight hours before your butts turn to taco sauce, boys. Get to it. Over and out.”
They stood in silence for a moment; Teape could tell that the others were looking at him, watching him, but didn’t care. He stared at the Max and thought about prison.
He’d knocked twelve years off his sentence in just over one year as a volunteer; eight more runs and he was free, home to wherever he wanted it to be. Maybe near his sister and her kids, maybe a decent job and a woman who liked the gaunt and witty type. Of course, he’d blown all chance of a legal credit rating, but he could have a life.
The nightmares, though. The Voice. What he was about to go through was already etched deeply enough in his mind to cause consistently horrible dreams and thoughts, and they were becoming a part of his soul, for lack of a better term. Things were getting worse.
There was quitting. Walking out of it now, back to prison—
—sure, only eight years left. Trapped, in a cage, being beaten and harassed by violent men. Eight more missions including this one, eight months, you walk out.
There wasn’t really a choice. Eight more years locked up would drive him insane in a different way, and Jess and Pulaski were waiting. Pop wouldn’t turn off the fail-safe until they were completed and clear; knowing that there was a nuclear explosion riding on one’s actions was a big incentive to get started.
Teape sighed. Max looked as deadly as ever, and Ellis had said all systems go; it would have to be enough. He walked to the repaired deep hoist.
“Bugs are gonna get you, Teepee!” Pulaski called.
The Candyman’s own special rendition of “break a leg,” probably; swell.
“That’s the general idea,” he returned and nodded to Jess, who pulled down the gate and stood at the controls.
Jess hesitated. “Stay alive, man.”
Teape smiled; nice of him to say, anyway. He hooked the tracker to his upper arm and activated it. Locked and loaded, relays stocked, first single offshoot opening to the gate. There was nothing left to do.
Jess pushed the button.