But I did not have time to worry about the drones or the way the ground shook beneath my feet. Maintaining a quick jog, I skirted one spider-filled divot, then the next as I headed toward the cave. I did not know how far we had traveled at this point but, according to my visor, we had approximately a quarter of a mile to go. When I looked back toward the tunnel from which we had entered the cavern, I saw that we had put a little more distance between us and the guardian spider. It had either slowed down or was hanging back to see what we would do next.
I did not have time to figure the spider-thing out. We reached the mound with the cave, a steep cone with no trails leading up its twenty-foot slope. Light shone out of the cave at the top like a search beam from a lighthouse. The silver-white beam stabbed into the darkness of the cavern like a flame from a welding torch, its glow so bright that when I looked at it, my visor switched from night-for-day to tactical view.
Loose dirt and rock shavings covered the sides of the mound; I had to scramble to keep my footing as I climbed toward the cave. When I reached the mouth itself, I played it by the book. For all I knew, the guardian spider had slowed because it had a buddy waiting for us in the cave. Crouching low to the ground, my particle-beam cannon ready, I spun around the lip for a quick glance in, then spun back out for safety. I did another peek in, this time darting from one side of the entrance to the other. Certain that I had not seen anything dangerous, I stepped into the mouth of the cave and scanned for spider-things. Then I went back outside to look for Freeman.
As I left the cave, I came within inches of a drone crawling along the outside of the cave. Two knife-blade legs pawed at the wall a few inches from my head. The spider-thing lifted one of its legs, then stabbed it into the granite. As it pulled that leg back, I saw that it had stabbed a three-inch gash into the rock, dislodging chips and fist-sized rocks.
I had been so intent scanning the cave that I hadn’t even noticed the specker. Had it been an avatar instead of a drone, it could have killed me. But it was only a drone. As I stepped away from it, it ignored me and continued digging.
“Careful on your way up,” I told Freeman. “They’re up here, too.”
Below me, Freeman no longer bothered taking readings with the meter. He pulled a line of explosive charges from his satchel and stabbed one into the ground.
“You planting charges?” I asked.
“I’ve placed twenty of them so far,” Freeman said.
“Didn’t you say these spider-things would just dig themselves out?” I said.
“I’m marking a path,” Freeman said.
“Like Hansel marking his path through the woods with bread-crumbs?” I asked. Freeman did not answer, leaving me to wonder if he had ever heard of Hansel and Gretel.
Waiting for Freeman to reach the cave, I searched the cavern for the big spider-thing. I scanned up and down the winding path along the ridge. Nothing. I looked around the cavern floor, nervous that this creature might have enough intelligence to flank us, and saw no sign of it.
“It’s gone,” I said. “There’s no specking trace of the bastard.” Maybe it was assigned to a territory, I thought. But I did not like that idea because if that big spider had a territory it protected, that meant there had to be more of them around.
Maybe, a fatalistic voice said in my head, it can camouflage itself. I felt a numbing tingle deep in my gut and realized that I was scared. The effect of the combat reflex had tapered off, and cold fear had replaced it.
“It has to be out there,” Freeman said.
“Stop it. You’re scaring me,” I said, hoping it sounded like a joke.
Freeman showed no signs of nervousness. He pulled out the T-shaped meter that Sweetwater had given him and did a sweep of the area. A drone climbed out of its pit and walked past him. Freeman drew his pistol and covered the beast as it scampered past, then said, “Let’s get this over with.”
Taking advantage of the light that spilled out of the cave, I used the tactical lens in my visor because it showed color—not that there was much color to see. The spider-things were a light shade of black, the granite was gray, the atmosphere was dark. Even with the light, I could not see more than a hundred yards ahead of me.
If that big spider-thing was trying to hide, I hoped using the tactical view would increase the odds of my spotting it. Just for a moment, I thought I saw something at the edge of the darkness, but it vanished. I switched back to night-for-day and saw nothing. I tried every gadget in my helmet—heat vision, telescopic lenses, sonic location—but still nothing.
“It’s out there somewhere,” I reminded myself.
Freeman stopped to scan the area, and said, “I don’t see anything.”
“Me either,” I agreed. We both knew that our inability to find the creature did not mean a thing.
Freeman walked toward the cave, and instructed, “Guard the entrance.”
“Last time I did something like this, the guy I came with did not make it out,” I observed.
“Thanks for the warning,” said Freeman. I spared a look back and saw him disappear into the entrance.
Now I was alone in the dark. Well, not alone. There might have been a million spider-thing drones around me, and somewhere out there, the king of the spider-things lurked like a shadow. Could something like that have gone invisible? Why would the aliens program that into the creature unless they meant to use the thing for combat purposes? I flipped through the different lenses in my helmet and spotted thousands of drones digging, but I found no trace of that guardian spider-thing.
“If there are more of those big bastards out there, this could be a one-way trip,” I told Freeman. Suddenly my nerves had me babbling. Here we were, a clone and a mercenary. Could any duo be more expendable? I asked myself, knowing I did not want to hear the answer.
“As long as we finish what we came to do,” Freeman said.
“Which is?” I asked.
“We find out what the aliens are up to,” Freeman said.
“And you think the answer is in this cave?” I asked. I still had my back to the brightly lit opening and my rifle ready as I kept a lookout for that spider-thing guardian. “You know, you never struck me as the self-sacrificing type,” I told Freeman.
He did not respond, not that I expected him to.
As I stood looking out into the cavern, I meandered toward the entrance of the cave, forgetting about the drone that had sneaked up on me a few moments earlier, and the little bastard caught me off guard a second time. It lifted a questing leg, then slammed it into the rock wall, barely missing my head. I spun, jumped back, and fired my weapon, hitting that digger in what passed for its face. The creature collapsed. No spasms. No struggles. It rolled out of its hole on the outside wall of the cave and tumbled down to the foot of the mound, where hundreds of drones dug around it.
I must have yelled, which Freeman would have heard over our interLink connection. “What happened?”
“I just killed a drone,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guardian drop out of the darkness, landing above the mouth of the cave. It was not invisible, but it had camouflaged itself. Its color had blended in with the darkness, and now that it was on the nickel-colored rock, its color faded to gray.
Shooting from the hip, I fired three shots with my particle-beam cannon, hitting the guardian spider each time. It toppled from its perch. Unlike the drone I had just killed, the guardian did not die. It landed on its feet and came toward me raising a leg high into the air as if issuing a challenge.
I fired between the legs, hitting the underside of the giant spider’s body. The creature convulsed, then came toward me again. It seemed weakened. The legs pawed at the ground as it pulled itself forward.