A twisting cloud of culus squadrons rose up from the blasted nest like a swarm of enraged bees. With alarming speed they flew to attack the source of the jamming, directly at Mai Lee’s lifters. Gouts of plasma and long lines of tracer slugs leapt out to meet them. She ordered her lifter to beat a spiraling retreat. She didn’t withdraw, but rather lengthened the time the enemy must suffer under her guns before closing.
Even while the culus horde approached, there was a slowdown in the bombardment. The firing slowed, became sporadic. Zimmerman called in a state of great distress.
“We must pull out!” he shouted at her, red-faced and sweating profusely. “There is a tunnel network beneath this peak. Aliens are sprouting out of the ground like fungus.”
“You will hold your position at all costs,” snapped Mai Lee, cutting off the connection abruptly. She wheeled the battlesuit and strode out onto the deck of her command lifter. The time for action had come.
With intense personal satisfaction, she called the commander of her helicopter gunships and ordered them to destroy the Zimmerman lifters.
She watched the graphics over the holo-plate tensely as the helicopters roared to the attack. Caught completely by surprise from behind, the Zimmerman lifters were blasted to fragments before they could get airborne. Only a few of the weaponeers even managed to return fire.
Mai Lee had been concerned that a few of the Zimmerman weaponeers would turn their artillery on her lifters, but she realized now that her fears had been groundless. Realizing that they were now trapped on the mountain peak, the Zimmermans fought a desperate struggle against the seemingly infinite number of aliens that now boiled from beneath the trees and boulders. They had no concern but for their survival. The fighting was hand to hand and to the death.
Before she could really savor the sweetness of having finally ridded herself of an ancient enemy, the culus squadrons were among her lifters. Although greatly reduced in numbers, they still managed to wreak havoc, dropping shrades among the troops, slashing open weaker human flesh and crushing men inside their own armor. The pilot of one of the lifters was stricken by a shrade and the lifter sagged down into the forests. A great explosion shook the deck beneath Mai Lee’s feet.
Soon, however, the attackers had been destroyed and with triumph Mai Lee’s forces moved to assault the nest. Lifters set down in the cratered forestland, disgorging hundreds of heavy troopers in full battlegear. Mai Lee marched with them, but had the caution to hold back, entering the smoking hole only after the bulk of her forces had cleared the way. Her heavy metal claws sank into piles of blasted alien corpses.
* * *
The throne-chamber, located at the deepest point of the nest, was built to last. The upper galleries and tunnel networks were forced open like cracked mollusk-shells under the bombardment, but the roof of the throne-chamber held. Sixteen layers of complex polymers (incredibly long molecules built from chains of simple molecules) buckled and sagged downward, but didn’t break. Thousands of pounds of explosives were spent in a few minutes. The hests had done their work well.
“Mom?” croaked Bili, his voice a gasp. He coughed up grit and inhaled more.
Sarah was lying on his chest, but at first she didn’t hear him, and she didn’t know he was there. The explosions had stopped, but in her head they rang on and on, with a sickening repetitiveness.
She simply rested her head on her son’s hitching chest, aware only of the pressure and the texture of his dirty shirt. He put his arms around her neck awkwardly and hugged her.
She tried to raise her head, but a great weight pressed her back down. Shooting pains ran down her side. She stopped moving. Better.
Her movement elicited a reaction from Bili. He stopped hugging her and leaned forward, shouting something in her ear. “I thought you were dead, Mom.”
They rested for a time, their senses slowly returning.
Pain returned with her senses. Sarah found her voice after several minutes. “Bili, what’s on top of me?”
There was a pause while she felt Bili’s hand reaching above her, probing in the blackness. “An alien. A dead killbeast, I think. I’ll try to get it off.”
There was a pause, then a wrenching pain from her back. A great weight shifted, rolled away. “I got lucky,” Bili shouted into her ear. “The damned thing shifted easy.”
Sarah found she could move now, although movement wasn’t without its cost in pain. She reached down and felt around with her right hand. Bruised, tender flesh met her probing fingers. She reached out with her left hand and bones grated in her wrist. She loosed a rasping scream. Fire ran up her arm. Clearly, her wrist was broken.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
“Bili, help me up,” Sarah said, reaching for her son. Together, they managed to get her into a sitting position without causing more damage to her wrist. Bili rubbed blood back into his legs, which had been under her body and that of the killbeast’s.
Suddenly, something came up and softly touched them both. A delicate hand brushed her cheek.
“Who is it?” whispered Bili.
Sarah reached out blind with her good hand and caught a handful of long fine hair. “The skald.”
“The nutso?”
The skald moved away from them, then returned. He touched each of their cheeks in turn and moved away again.
“He wants us to follow him,” said Sarah.
“Jeez, Mom. I don’t know about this guy.”
For some reason, she felt she could trust the skald to help them get out. He certainly didn’t want to stay here, of that she was convinced. “Maybe he can help us get out. I may not be able to go far without help, Bili.”
Grabbing hold of the skald’s fluttering hand with her good one, she was quickly hauled erect and together they began climbing a shifting pile of rubble and bodies. The side of the pit had collapsed, allowing them to escape. She was surprised at the strength in the skald’s wiry limbs. She leaned on him heavily.
Just as they reached the lip of the pit, they stumbled over Zimmerman. He was crawling on his belly, making his way out of the pit by inching along. His voice was bubbly, as though he spoke through a mouthful of blood. “Take me with you, or you’ll never find the flitter.”
“I know exactly where Lake Axalp is,” Sarah told him coldly. It felt wonderful to be free of the man’s controlling hand for once. “You have no hold over us.”
“Wrong.” he bubbled. He stopped, breaking off into a coughing fit.
“Come on, Mom. Let’s get out of here before the aliens notice us,” urged Bili.
Sarah hesitated. She nudged Zimmerman with her foot. “What do you mean, wrong?”
“I... I lied,” he said, “only I know where the flitter really is.”
Twenty
After many hours of vicious fighting in the black treacherous tunnels of the nest, Mai Lee’s forces reached the throne room. Inside the battlesuit, she was sweating profusely, despite the continuous gush of cool air coming from the overtaxed air conditioning system. The suit was finally overheating due to the continuous one hundred and ten percent output she had demanded unrelentingly from the reactors. Her haggard eyes, dark with exhaustion, had pressed against the vision scopes until livid welts had almost swollen them shut. Salty perspiration burned her swollen tongue.
“This is it. This has to be it, we’re at the bottom,” she said, striding over a morass of stiffening corpses. The twisted form of a multi-legged hest entangled one of the suit’s claws. Irritably, she shook it loose and flung it onto one of the empty thrones. She eyed the thrones disappointedly.
“Where are the queens? Are you sure there are no deeper levels?” she demanded of a nearby Captain.
The man shook his head, backing away from her in fear.
Her chest-guns tracked him on automatic, and she pondered the trigger lever with a sneer. Then she sighed. Another corpse would do little to help her now. Her troopers had been devastated in any case.
The situation was painfully clear. She had spent her strength against the nest in hopes of killing their queens and thereby breaking the back of her enemy. But the queens had vanished, probably fleeing into deep escape shafts, the entrances buried and carefully hidden. She had broken her own back, not theirs. She had lost all but a few companies of troopers.
The aliens had won.
Rage and frustration took hold of her fully. With a booming roar of intense fury, she drove the battlesuit in great crashing bounds toward the four thrones. She opened fire on the largest of them, letting fly a blue gush of flame as she neared it. Chips and splinters of the throne exploded around the great chamber. Echoing reports rang from the walls with deafening volume. Under the fierce heat of the Gi’s breath, the throne liquefied and ran like wax.
Bounding like a grasshopper, she pounced upon the largest of the thrones like a wolf leaping upon the back of its lumbering prey. Using the titanium claws, she ripped dark molten chunks of resin from it.
Then she saw the entrance to the larvae room. Pale squirming shapes turned their tubular eating orifices in her direction curiously. Inside her suit, a savage grin split her features. Clearly, the queens hadn’t managed to save all their children.
Without hesitation, she strode into the nursery and commenced a most gruesome slaughter. Humping about in mindless panic, the larvae were blasted to fragments, withered by searing flames and ripped apart with merciless metal claws.
When it was over, she had regained some degree of calm. Exiting the nursery, she ordered her remaining troopers back to the lifters.
On the surface she was surprised to see it was dark, the sky lit only by the lurid glare of the smoky fires that still burned among the horkwoods. The condition of the lifters was another shock. During her absence shrades that had been deposited aboard the lifters during the suicidal attacks of the culus squadrons had burst from hiding and taken a grim toll. Most of the pilots and crews were dead. Many of the lifters were badly damaged and inoperable. She led her weary army onto those that were in the best repair and managed to get all her remaining forces airborne. A few squads of battered helicopter gunships joined them as an escort.
On her way into Grunstein, she paused only to circle around the peak where the Zimmermans had made their last stand. She was gratified to see nothing move other than the blue cloaks of dead men, stirred by the ceaseless mountain winds. The entire crown of the mountain was choked with bodies. The blackened muzzles of the artillery pieces pointed at the skies, like the sightless eyes of the dead.
She put the battlesuit into standby mode, letting the engines idle. The external vents opened, puffing out moist hot air and sucking in the fresh thin air of the night.
She smiled again to herself. She had lost this chance for victory, but her enemies had suffered greatly as well. Indeed, the Zimmermans had paid the ultimate price of obstructing her path.
“How should I set our course, Empress?” inquired the wing commander politely.
The chest guns snapped to target him, still on automatic. He stiffened, his ingratiating smile fading.
“We fly to the Grunstein Interplanetary Spaceport,” answered Mai Lee. “It is time that we left Garm.”
* * *
“I think he’s getting heavier somehow,” grumbled Bili, struggling to keep his corner of Zimmerman’s makeshift stretcher aloft with his one good arm.
Sarah, taxed beyond making a reply, concentrated solely on putting her right foot ahead of her left. They progressed with agonizing slowness. Behind them walked the tall silent form of the skald, holding up the rear of the stretcher. She wondered what they would have done without his strange but strong presence.
Irritatingly, Zimmerman was awake and talkative, although reputedly unable to walk. “It’s not much further now. If there’s any way we can all pick up the pace here, our odds of surviving the night would be greatly increased.”
Sarah halted. The others bumped to a stop. Her limbs trembled with exertion and anger. Turning her head, she glared down into Zimmerman’s face. “We would all make a lot better time if we dropped you right here.”
“Ah, but that wouldn’t be prudent,” said Zimmerman with a knowing smile. With an expression of sudden alarm, he raised up his head and peered into the dark forest that surrounded them. “What was that?”
“What?” asked Bili, looking concerned. He eyed the forest with the distrust he had gained ever since seeing the digging alien after the crash.
“Could that have been a landshark?” asked Zimmerman. “They prowl this area all the time you know.”
Sarah watched this fear-provoking performance with dull awe. How could the man be so relentlessly selfish and manipulative?
She leaned close, hissing into his face. “Knock it off or so help me, I’ll drop you right here and you can crawl out. We may not make it, but you’ll be dead for sure.”
Zimmerman gasped and took on a look of great pain. He raised a hand weakly and closed his eyes. “Wait a moment, the hole that monster punched into my thigh is causing another spasm.”
Sarah just glared at him, unimpressed even if his pain was real.
“Look now, everyone. I’m very sorry to be such a burden. I really regret every bite of excess food I’ve ever indulged in right now, believe me. But if we can pull together, if we can stick it out, we’ll all survive.”