“Run,” Berto mutters. “They’ve got to run.”
Apparently someone down there has come to the same conclusion. One of the Security people turns half-around and waves at the reserves. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but from the reaction I can guess. Everyone not wearing combat armor turns and breaks for the dome at a dead sprint.
Not Cat and her people, though. The nine of them stand their ground, covering the retreat.
Nine rounds per second. How many creepers are left?
A thousand at least. Probably more.
Forty meters.
Thirty.
Twenty.
Ten.
One of the small creepers breaks through the wall of projectiles our people are throwing up and gets its mandibles into an armored leg before exploding.
“That was Drake,” Berto says.
The wounded man drops to one knee and keeps firing.
“Mickey?” Cat says. “I hope you’ve got a fucking plan here, because we’re about ten seconds from going under.”
Berto turns to look at me. I open my mouth, close it, then open it again, but nothing comes out. I thought …
Doesn’t matter what I thought. I’ve killed my friend.
No, more than that. I’ve killed the colony.
Cat’s people are trying to fall back now, dragging Drake with them, but it’s hopeless. They have to be able to see that. Berto shoves my shoulder. “Mickey? Mickey!”
Run, I think. Leave Drake and run.
I open my mouth to say it, but before I can get the words out, the ground erupts in a dozen places below us and creepers come boiling out. In no more than a second, our people are forgotten as the ones who had surrounded them and the new ones begin tearing one another apart.
“Cat!” I say. “Go!”
I didn’t need to tell her. Two of the Security officers already have Drake lifted between them. Those three take off at a lumbering run while the others continue to fire. When they’ve gotten fifty or sixty meters of separation, three more break and run. No more than five seconds later, the last three sling their weapons and go.
Berto and I watch the rest of the battle in silence. The collective’s fighters are mostly bigger, but there are a lot more of the locals, and honestly they seem to want it more. It takes ten or twelve of the little ones to take down a spider or one of the Speaker-sized creepers, and they lose a lot of bodies in the process, but over the course of thirty minutes the fight goes from a melee spread over two hundred meters of hillside, to a dozen or so scattered knots of combat, to what looks to be mostly collection of the dead and execution of the wounded.
“Holy shit,” Berto says. “What the hell just happened?”
My ocular pings.
<UNKNOWN>: Thank you. We will not forget.
“I’m not sure,” I say, “but I think we won.”
Berto turns to look at me. “Did we? Where’s the bomb, Mickey?”
I close my eyes and breathe in, breathe out.
“We know where it is,” I say. “So let’s go get it.”
“YOU SURE ABOUT this?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”
We’re hovering a hundred meters above the entrance to the collective’s tunnels. I’m half expecting creepers to come pouring out of the mountain at any moment, but everything below us is still and empty and silent.
“If they have any kind of long-range communications, you’re definitely persona non grata here, Mickey—and given what we saw with the spiders, we have to assume that they do. You heard what Speaker said about the way they see agreements. If there are any significant number of creepers left down there, you’re putting yourself in a really bad position here.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m used to it.”
“We could go back and try to round up some muscle. Cat would come for sure. Maybe one or two others if we asked.”
I shake my head. “A few extra guns one way or another isn’t going to make a difference. Speaker told me that the collective brought all of their ancillaries to the battle. If he was wrong and there’s anyone still at home here, we’re screwed. If that’s the case, I’d rather not take anyone else down with me, if it’s all the same.”
“Fair enough,” Berto says. “So what do I do if you don’t come back?”
I shrug. “Whatever you want. At that point, I won’t have much skin in the game, will I?”
I guess Berto doesn’t have much to say to that. He eases back on the gravitics, and a few seconds later the lifter settles onto the ground at the base of the rock face with a gentle bump. I unbuckle, strap on my rebreather, and take an accelerator from the rack at the back of the cockpit. Berto drops the atmospheric trap. I climb back into the cargo bay and wait by the door.
“I don’t know why I said that,” Berto says, “about you not coming back. You’ll come out of there. You always do, right? I’ll be waiting here when you do.”
“You might want to wait about fifty meters up,” I say. “Just in case.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Solid advice.”
The light over the trap flashes green, and the door swings open.
“Good luck,” Berto says.
“Thanks.” I duck through the door and step down onto hard-packed soil thirty meters from the tunnel entrance. A soft breeze pushes my hair back from my forehead, but other than that, nothing is moving.
Nothing for it but to do it. The gravitics cycle up behind me, and I go.
I’m twenty meters past the tunnel entrance when a Speaker-sized creeper scuttles up out of the darkness toward me, mandibles spread. I bring the accelerator to my shoulder, take deliberate aim, and fire. Its first two segments explode. I keep walking.
I hesitate before passing the first cross-tunnel. If they’re going to ambush me, this seems like the logical place. After a minute or so of thinking, though, I can’t come up with anything to do about it. I sprint through the intersection, clutching my accelerator and spinning half around as I go. Nothing comes for me, and after standing there panting on the other side until my pulse settles back into a mostly normal rhythm, I turn and straighten and keep walking.
It’s not until the tunnel begins to slope upward again that I start to believe that Speaker/not-Speaker might have been telling the truth when he said that the collective brought all of their ancillaries to the battle. This place really does seem to be deserted.
This raises a question, of course: What, exactly, do I plan to do when I reach my destination? I don’t imagine the bomb will be sitting there like a prize at the end of a puzzle game, and without Speaker I don’t have any way to communicate with the network.
I guess I could let it attach a tentacle to the back of my neck.
Better idea: I can just start shooting out nodes until something good happens.
As it turns out, I don’t have to answer the question. A creeper maybe half the size of Speaker is waiting for me, just outside the entrance to the chamber. I can see from here that it has Speaker’s mouth parts instead of a standard creeper’s maw. I stop ten meters away, accelerator at the ready. It begins to rise, then shudders and settles back to the floor.
“We had an agreement,” it says, its voice a flat monotone.
“I made an agreement with you,” I say. “I made an agreement with Speaker. I couldn’t honor them both.”
“We hold your device. What do the others hold over you that is of greater value than that?”
“Nothing,” I say. “They hold nothing over us.”
After a long pause, it says, “We do not understand.”
I shrug. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
It sits, silent and inert. I wait. After two or three minutes, it stirs and says, “We will not return your device.”
“You will,” I say. “One way or another.”
“We will destroy it.”
I … had not considered that possibility.
“If you attempt to destroy it,” I say, “it will detonate. That device contains enough power to vaporize this mountain.”