Earthcore, p.45
Earthcore, page 45
He turned, saw that lone shield, upright and sliding forward. Three rocktopi single-file behind it, the rest of them cowering in the narrow tunnel mouth.
A flash of spinning reflection and a hiss of air — a knife hit O’Doyle, sailed past him out into the cavern trailing an arc of blood. He turned away, eyes squeezed shut, hand pressed to his face.
The shield kept coming.
Connell stepped toward it, unslung his rifle and aimed in the same motion. Before he could squeeze off a round, another spinning reflection. He ducked — the knife whizzed past.
He heard it hit.
Or, maybe he just heard Mack’s scream.
Something inside Connell snapped. Fear vanished. Rage erupted. Primitive and explosive, the need to protect his own, to fight, to kill.
He rushed at the jagged rectangle, turned his shoulder, threw himself forward with all his weight and strength. He slammed hard into the metal — it rocked back, fell, him on top of it, rocktopi underneath.
He rolled off, rolled right, fast, rifle clutched to his chest, knowing that every second would bring the tip of a knife punching through the back of his neck, his belly, his balls. He lurched onto his right hip, saw movement, brought the barrel up and pulled the trigger twice, not squeezed because fuck that he pulled and the stock pounded into his chest, wham-wham.
A rocktopi twitched in front of him, spinning in death throes.
He saw a second monster slide out from under the shield, yellow and red and orange, saw it rush toward O’Doyle.
The third creature was up, stretching and leaping toward Connell, one long pulsating snake-limb holding a gleaming, double-crescent blade.
Connell lurched left as the blade arced down.
Lightning and fire laced through his left shoulder, the blade point digging deep through muscle and bone and arteries and he was going to die and be slaughtered, chopped to pieces.
He was on his feet. He saw nothing but the knife, the blade slick-red with blood, his blood. It came toward him, almost floating on its own, a magical blade carried by a cloud of color.
Rifle, still in his hands. He flipped it, gloved fingers clasping around the barrel and the forestock. He brought the rifle butt up to his ear, stepped forward, twisted his hips and swung.
The rocktopi tried to pull back, but it wasn’t fast enough. The rifle butt cracked into the knife, sent the double-blade flying across the cave floor.
Connell reared back for another swing — the rocktopi surged forward, leapt on him, enveloped his chest and head, pinned his left arm to his body. He fell back, landed hard on his ass.
He twisted, rolled his weight on top of the creature. He punched with his right fist, over and over, but it was like punching a waterbed.
Reeking skin molded against his face. Pliant and raspy, like rubbery sandpaper. He couldn’t breathe.
A lurch, a shift, and he was on his back again, the creature’s weight on top of him. Something around his right wrist, pinning it against the cave floor.
Can’t breathe, can’t breathe.
The weight, ripped up and off him.
Air, rushing back into his lungs.
A roar, the roar of primitive man that once lived in caves like these, the thonk-thonk-thonk-thoung of a knife blade punching home again and again.
Something screeching, a sound so close and horrible it made reality twist and bend.
O’Doyle, enraged face sheeted with blood, mask gone, KoolSuit shred hanging against his neck, another flapping from his bloody right thigh, the rocktopi squeezed under his left arm like some oversized pillow, his right hand driving the big Ka-Bar knife down again and again and again.
The hiss of dry leaves on concrete.
Connell looked to the cave mouth — they were coming, again.
He saw his rifle. He grabbed it, aimed it at the oncoming creatures, and they flowed away like vampires retreating away from a cross, sliding back into the cave mouth.
A hand on his shoulder.
“Come on,” O’Doyle said.
Connell walked backward, rifle still aimed.
He turned, saw Mack — one crescent blade curving down and away from his stomach, the other buried in his sternum. Blood covered his KoolSuit, from his chest down to his crotch, along his left leg, pooled beneath him, mixed with the yellow fluid leaking from a quivering rocktopi that O’Doyle must have just killed.
Mack’s half-lidded eyes stared out.
Dead.
O’Doyle reached up, sliced through the rope. Mack sagged to the ground, a marionette with the strings cut, as boneless as the things that had killed him.
“Drop the rifle,” O’Doyle said. “Take the rope, hold on tight.”
Connell did, standing over Mack’s dead body, clutching the rope with both hands.
O’Doyle cupped his hands, shouted up. “Pull!”
Connell felt himself lifted. His body dragged along rocks, but he focused only on holding tight, on enduring the pain of his shoulder, his knee. And why was he so hot all of a sudden?
Hands grabbed him, dragged him onto another flat stone cliff. People asking him if he was all right. He tried to talk, couldn’t.
Then, someone lying next to him. O’Doyle, all blood and muscle, mumbling.
“So hot,” he said. “So hot.”
Yes, so hot, scorching. What was going on? Connell struggled to draw a full breath. Every square inch of his body prickled and burned with a million tiny bee stings.
“Their suits,” he heard Lybrand yell in a dreamy, far-off voice. “They’re losing all the coolant!”
Connell again tried to speak, again failed. All he could think about were those chips of onyx he’d aimed at.
Out out, damn spot …
The spots didn’t go out — he did.
Book Five: The Rocktopi
Chapter Twenty-Eight
August 28
5:21 a.m.
Kayla found herself somewhere between admiration and rage. Squatting on her heels, she stared at the last of the pyramid-like devices Angus had scattered all over the mountain. She appreciated the genius that had gone into building the object but at the same time wanted to slice open the builder’s belly.
She stood, took two steps back, fired her Steyr GB-80. Angus’s device shattered into a dozen useless pieces of smoldering, twisted metal and ripped wires.
Now he was completely cut off. Tracking down and destroying all of his hidden machines had cost her six precious hours.
You fucking little prick.
She had to get to him. Did he have any other little tricks he could use to call for help? Hopefully, the first unit she’d found could provide some information, maybe even a way to track him.
Angus Kool would get the pliers. And this time, Kayla wouldn’t stop with just a knuckle or two.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
15,538 feet below the surface
5:34 a.m.
Randy Wright felt like a real piece of crap.
A pair of small portable lights lit up the small cave. Randy sat next to Connell Kirkland, keeping an eye on the sleeping, wounded man. Angus, Veronica, Sanji and O’Doyle slept as well. Lybrand remained awake, watching over O’Doyle, but she looked exhausted.
This whole thing had started out as an adventure. Not anymore. Mack Hendricks was dead. Killed by those strange animals.
If Randy and Angus had been up front with their technology, and with their alternate entry point into the tunnel complex, would Mack still be alive? Maybe. Randy would always wonder if he could have prevented a man’s death.
But at the same time, if he and Angus had sat back, done nothing, then Veronica, Sanji, O’Doyle, Lybrand and Kirkland would be dead as well.
Angus was a hero. Sure, he’d been scared at first, but Randy’s friend just needed some encouragement. When the guns started roaring, Angus — the more experienced climber — had done the right thing and gone down to get the others.
Connell lurched, screamed, sat up suddenly. Randy grabbed his arms, careful to avoid the wounded shoulder.
“You’re safe, Mister Kirkland. It’s all right.”
A wide-eyed Connell stared at Randy, then at the sleepers, then all over the small cavern, every move a hard twitch. He took in a sharp, deep breath, let it out in a whuff, seemed to calm himself.
“Gotta stop waking up like that,” he said. “Where are we?”
Randy let him go.
“We’re in a cave that Angus and I sealed off with rocks. We’re safe. For now, at least.”
Connell started to get up, winced sharply, stayed where he was. His right hand felt gingerly at his left shoulder. He looked at the KoolSuit material there — stitched together, just like the skin beneath it.
“I was cut,” he said. “How bad?”
“Twenty-one stitches. Looks like it missed ligaments and tendons. Sanji stitched you up while I followed behind, repairing your suit. Lybrand and Angus did the same for O’Doyle. We used up all the KoolSuit patches, though, so we have to make sure no one else gets cut.”
Connell’s gaze flicked around the cavern again, landed on O’Doyle and Lybrand.
“He was cut, too.”
Randy nodded. “Fifteen stitches on his face. Another ten on his leg. Sanji thinks he’ll be okay as long as we don’t move him for a day or so.”
Connell grimaced. “We don’t have a day.”
He started to rise. Randy tried to help, but Connell pushed him away.
So different. Whatever had happened in the past few days, it had changed Connell Kirkland. Made him harder. Gave him the air of a man Randy would cross the street to avoid.
“Wake everyone up,” Connell said. “We have to figure out our next step.”
5:36 a.m.
They sat in a circle at the small cave’s center. The people he’d spent the last twenty-four nightmarish hours with looked exhausted, defeated. Just like Connell felt. Even O’Doyle — tireless, indestructible — seemed broken, drained of his confidence. He leaned against Lybrand, so much so that she was the only thing stopping him from sliding onto his side.
Randy and Angus, though, seemed fine.
Connell started with them.
“Tell me how you two got down here.”
Randy looked at the ground. Angus did not. He stared right back, with that goddamn smirk.
“We faked the lab accident,” he said. “Hope that didn’t cause any grief.”
A bit of intensity returned to O’Doyle’s eyes. A nasty line of stitches ran from his left upper lip to his temple. Now both sides of his face were mangled. He glared at Angus, who didn’t seem to notice.
“That got you out of camp,” Connell said. “How did you get down here without anyone knowing?”
“I found another entrance. Don’t worry, it wasn’t suitable for mining, the adit had to be dug regardless. I believe it’s the same entrance that Sonny talked about in his report, the one where the geology students disappeared.”
Veronica pulled the plastic map out of her webbing, held it up.
“I’ve been over this a dozen times,” she said. “There’s no second entrance.”
Angus shrugged.
Connell felt an echo of the cold rage that had made him rush the rocktopi.
“You hid it,” he said. “You took it off the map entirely.”
The smirk became a grin.
“Duh. I knew you wouldn’t let me in the caves until they’d been explored, despite my notable experience in the field.” He tapped his pointer finger against his sternum. “I mapped this system. I deserved to be the first person down here. We knew Mack’s path would lead to what you call the Picture Cavern, so we left a little calling card there.”
Connell glanced at Randy, who kept his gaze fixed on the floor. Randy knew he’d done wrong. At least he knew it now, anyway. But Angus? Not even close.
“Being the first wasn’t enough,” Connell said. “You had to let everyone know you were first.”
Angus nodded. The look in his eyes spoke volumes: it wasn’t about everyone knowing, it was about Connell knowing.
“The signs prove we got there before anyone else.”
“Cocksucker,” Lybrand said. “This is a game to you? A goddamn dick-measuring contest?”
Sanji shook his head. “That is wrong, Bertha, because Angus clearly has no dick whatsoever.”
Angus rolled his eyes, as if anything those two had to say was insignificant.
Connell’s shoulder screamed, steadily fanned the flames of anger burning in his chest.
“Randy told me we’re safe,” he said, working hard to keep his voice level. “Tell us why.”
Angus pulled a walkie-talkie from his webbing belt.
“Because they network with radio signals. I modified this to jam them. They come near us, they get all scrambled. They can’t even walk, let alone spot us.”
Connell looked around. “Who has a walkie-talkie?”
“We do,” Lybrand said, indicating her and O’Doyle. “Mack had one, but I sure as shit ain’t going back down there to get it.”
Connell wished he’d insisted everyone carry one. Too late for that now.
“Angus, when you modify one to scramble, can you change it back so it works normally?”
The little man shook his head.
“One-way street, brah. If I make it a scrambler, that’s all it will do. You want me to modify the others?”
Two functioning walkie-talkies. Those might be vital if they needed to reach someone close to the surface or had to split up. But if the group did split up, and had only one scrambler, wasn’t that also a risk?
“No,” Connell said. “Communication might mean the difference between life and death. We’ll stay close together.”
Veronica’s face wrinkled with confusion.
“I’m still not getting this. You use a hacked walkie-talkie to give the monsters a cheap buzz?”
Angus closed his eyes, gave his head a small shake.
“No, Doctor Reeves, and I use that term loosely, it scrambles the artificial life probes, not the living creatures.” Another small shake, showing it was so beneath him to educate dumb people.
If Veronica was supposed to feel diminished, she didn’t know it.
“Artificial life,” she said, glaring at him. “What the fuck are you talking about, you arrogant dickless piece of shit?”
“He means silverbugs,” Sanji said.
The word seemed to amuse Angus. “Silverbugs? That’s quaint, considering how they’re made from platinum, but I’ll roll with it.”
Connell knew he should have felt surprised the probes were made from platinum, but the truth was he no longer cared about the metal. Or money. Or anything other than getting these people out alive.
O’Doyle gently pushed himself upright.
“The silverbugs aren’t the ones trying to kill us,” he said. “The rocktopi are.”
Angus glanced at him. “Rocktopi? You guys are so cute with all these little names. Yes, the Rocktopi are trying to kill us, when the silverbugs tell them to. Randy and I saw the machines bring those shields that almost cost you your asses.”
Connell thought of the silverbugs on either side of the rocktopi phalanx, herding them, maybe even encouraging them to attack.
“You think the machines control the creatures, and not the other way around?”
“It’s obvious,” Angus said. “Well, to anyone with half a brain, anyway. The monsters use knives against firearms. I doubt anything that stupid can work advanced machines. I think the ALs—” he held a hand against his chest, looked at Sanji “—oh, excuse me, learned sir, I think the silverbugs tell the creatures where to go and what to do.”
Around the circle, people glanced at each other. Connell knew what they were thinking — the long lines of jerking silverbugs, and the attacks that followed along those paths.
“So say you’re right,” Connell said. “Say the machines call the shots, and you can scramble the machines. We still need to get the hell out of here. Can you tell us how to do that?”
Angus sighed again — the dumbest question he’d ever heard. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a tablet computer.
“I invented a kind of GPS for underground exploration. The map updates every few hours, triangulates our location so we can’t get lost.”
He tapped the screen. A map of the caverns flared to life. He held it up for all to see.
Connell stood. He stared, stunned, as Angus turned the tunnel system, rotated it, zoomed in and out.
Veronica leaned forward, reached across the circle and snatched the tablet from Angus’s hands.
“You had a perfect map of these caves,” she hissed. “And you didn’t tell us?”
He crossed his arms, sneered. “The map I gave Mack was already a feat of genius. If you idiots can’t figure out how to read that, then I—”
Connell took a step toward him. Angus looked up just as Connell kicked out, drove the toe of his boot into the smaller man’s mouth.
Angus fell to his side, hands covering his face.
Connell kicked again, wildly, this time his boot caught Angus in the thigh. He reared back for a third, but strong arms wrapped him up, knocked him off his feet. Connell landed hard on stone, looked, expected to see O’Doyle, but he’d been tackled by Sanji.
“Stop this,” Sanji said, still holding Connell tight. “We need Angus, so stop it.”
That cold feeling, the need to hurt … it didn’t vanish, but it receded somewhat.
Sanji got up, once again clutching his fingers to his chest, his face wrinkling with pain.
Connell stood. O’Doyle and Lybrand were smiling at him. Veronica stared at Angus, who was still curled up in a ball.
They’d been lost, and because of that they’d been slow — this piece of shit had a map that could have fixed that, that could have kept Mack Hendricks alive.
Connell took a step toward him.
Randy Wright hopped to his feet, stepped between them, his hands balled into fists.
“That’s enough,” he said.
Connell stopped. He pointed a finger at Randy’s face.
