Chapter 24 - The Things that Crawl in the Dark

The single-person vehicle made her feel horribly exposed. Brackenshaw was used to having the armour of a full skiff wrapped around her, along with a platoon of hardened Scout Cadre soldiers. Now, alone with nothing but a thin canopy and personal body armour between her and Rychter's whipping sands, she felt like a sitting duck.

But by the Everflowing these things could move.

The skiff responded to the lightest touch to its control stick, whipping from side to side, rising over dunes and rock formations at the flick of a wrist. She marvelled at the sheer manoeuvrability of the thing. It reacted to shifts in her weight, to the squeeze of her thighs against the leg rests, almost like it could anticipate her moves. The canopy glistened with fiery lines of blue to form a HUD, the skiff's rudimentary brain picking out landmarks, assigning distance counters and sending out regular seismic pulses to search for any tell-tale vibrations in the sand.

A thin snake of dust snarled in her wake, and in a zig-zagging tail beyond it the other pilots raced, following her lead. Four volunteers including the bull-headed Corporal Hynan formed a queue, weaving back and forth with the ease of experts, the scouts quickly acclimatising to their new transports. At the back of the queue, to her surprise, Kelso Vannigan matched them step for step.

The kid might've been a spook, but she gave him his due. The machines delivered on his promises, so far, and he didn't seem like he was going to be dead weight. More than that, once they set off on his recommended course the specialist had kept his mouth shut, deffering to Brackenshaw's expertise in live fire operations.

They were getting close now. The HUD canopy blinked out a warning and she exhaled, long and deep. Less than a kilometre now before they reached the site of HK-Rupture's first encounter with this latest threat.

"Everybody stay tight, eyes sharp," she said over the local comm. "We're getting close."

"Seismics are quiet," Hynan confirmed.

"Just how I like them."

"But our new buddies don't show on seismics, do they?"

"Apparently not, but keep them running anyway."

She swerved deftly around a hunk of protruding rock and shot up the incline of the dunes that ringed the Scraegan warren they had assaulted not so long ago. Everything had seemed a hell of a lot simpler back then. Small waves of sand arced out from the flanks of her skiff, propelled by the swell of the lifter engines and soon she cleared the dune top.

Below her the jutting rock of the Scraegan warren squatted grimly, still pockmarked with craters and shell impacts. The ground was a torn up mess; nothing had been repaired, at least not at surface level. She took a moment to scan the area, swinging the her vehicle in a crescent where the HUD display outlined the features of the terrain. No sign of any hostile activity, Scraegan or otherwise. The other skiffs pulled up alongside her in a loose line, sensors blanketing the target area.

"Looks quiet," Kelso said after a moment. "Looks like we're not getting out of this, sergeant."

"You'd be disappointed if we could," she chuckled back. "After all the time and money you spent putting these toys together you've been itching to try them out."

"True enough."

"Don't worry, specialist, we'll put them to good use. Everybody on my lead. Time for some cave-diving."

She led the snaking column of single-seater skiffs hurtling down the slope, aiming straight for the battered and broken entrance of the warren. Darkness brooded there; a world beneath a world that she was about to go plunging into. Brackenshaw couldn't deny a faint thrill at being one of the first humans to delve into these depths, but it was tempered by a healthy dose of fear than any sane person ought to have had.

"Keep your lights off," she said as the blackness of the doorway rushed towards her. "Switch your HUDs to dark-displays and navigate with your seismics. Let's try avoid any unwanted attention."

Following her own instructions, she keyed a command into the small, holographic interface just below the main HUD. The canopy rippled for an instant before the lines of the display transformed to a searing green, outlining every crack and crevice in excruciating detail. Squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath, she led her flight inside.

A light tug of the control stick lifted her over the mound of rubble that marked the entrance, before she plunged into the entrance hall of the Scraegan warren. Like buzzing flies the other skiffs filed in behind her and the light spilling in through the doorway soon faded away as they moved deeper. No Scraegans came blasting out of the gloom and she saw no sign of any of the arthropods either. So far so good.

Watching the HUD display intently as she swept forwards, Brackenshaw could pick out the rough-cut Scraegan tunnels that splurged from the main hall in all directions, coiling down into the depths of the warren. She thought back to the combat reports and the images from the Hunter-Killer cameras of this place. The best assumption was that they had indeed discovered a Scraegan town of some kind down here, somewhere that had no direct military application.

Welcome to the club, she thought bitterly. Lack of military value hadn't saved the southern towns over the decades of war as one by one Scraegan warbands wiped them from existence.

As they coiled deeper into the depths they soon came across the signs of battle. Blast marks from furnace cannons, streams of fist-sized holes from armour piercing rounds, and the long, ragged scrapes in the rock that signified the presence of the arthropod creatures. Where once Scraegan hearths had blazed they now found ash-blackened mounds. They found no Scraegan corpses either, but when they emerged into an anti-chamber they found the monster Ryke and his squadron had killed.

It's legs were still curled in death. The HUD highlighted its massive dimensions and Brackenshaw swallowed hard. She already knew they were big, but seeing it in person was very, very unnerving.

"Sarge?" one of the other scouts, De Santis, called.

"What is it?" she swung her skiff around to face him and saw the pilot lingering at the edge of the hole where the beast had emerged from.

"It came up from here. You think that's our way in?" the man suggested. "Seismics show this tunnel runs dead south and branches off maybe a hundred yards down the line."

She drifted across the chamber, slewing to a halt alongside him and craning her neck to look down. Sure enough below the wrecked rubble a tunnel passed beneath them from north to south. She sighed. Nothing looked less inviting, but there was no fighting the logic.

"What do you think, Specialist?" she asked.

Kelso's skiff glided into position on the opposite side of the hole. "I think De Santis is right. It's our best bet."

"Terrific." Brackenshaw edged her skiff forward to the lip of the tunnel entrance. "Alright, on my lead. Hynan, watch our six."

Steeling her nerves, she took a firm grip on the control stick and pushed forwards. The skiff moved out into empty space and she felt an instant of weightlessness as she dropped several meters. The lifter engines caught her before the little vehicle could smash into the ground, however, and she spun in a quick circle, scanning the tunnel from all angles.

Nothing leapt out to greet her. Exhaling a held breath, she strafed sideways to allow the others to come down after her. One by one they dropped into the depths, and she led them off, deeper into the unknown.

A sense of discomfort settled on her as the smooth, circular walls closed in around her, feeling for all the world like the gullet of some titanic, subterranean monster. Brackenshaw knew the Scraegans and knew their handiwork. Their tunnels had a rough, natural feel to them, ripped from the rock and filled with open spaces to allow oxygen flow for the great beasts. Although the arthropods themselves were larger than Scraegans, their tunnels were narrower and more oppressive, designed simply to get from A to B as fast as possible.

As promised, barely a hundred yards down the tunnel she encountered the junction where half a dozen identical passages converged. Unlike Scraegan tunnels the point of intersection wasn't carved out to make more space – there would barely be room for two or three of the things to get through this crossroads, and every passage would only allow them to move in single file. The skiff's seismics and cameras were constantly running to map the network and she could see that further down even more tunnels burst from these, like roots of a tree.

"Alright, pair off," Brackenshaw ordered. "Hynan, you and Brenchley take the east tunnels; De Santis, Rikhotso, take the west. Vannigan, you're with me – dead south. Work your way down and regular radio check ins."

"Everyone remember your mission specs," Kelso put in. "Recon only – find and tag hostile targets. We're looking for a nest of some kind, probably deep in the tunnel network. It'll be a larger open space that should show on your seismics well before you reach it."

"And no heroics," she said wryly. "These skiffs have dancing shoes. Make sure you use them."

The other scouts fired off their acknowledgements in quick succession, and a few seconds later they split off into their pairings, vanishing down into the strange, smooth tunnels of the arthropod creatures. Brackenshaw gunned the lifter engines and shot off down the central passage, with Kelso close on her heels.

By now her HUD showed that they were nearly a hundred meters underground, every tunnel sloping deeper and deeper. Images of subterranean lava flows flashed in her mind, or earthquake cave-ins, or underwater floods – any number of hazards that might be encountered this far below the blazing suns of Rychter. She suddenly felt very claustrophobic, longing for the open badlands and dust plains where she'd cut her teeth as a soldier.

Things didn't feel so thrilling now.

Minutes passed by. The blackness beyond the glimmer of the HUD was all encompassing now, like they were plunging through ink than air. She had to slow down slightly, needing to read the display carefully to guide her. No surprise that apparently these things didn't need light to get around, but it only added to the feeling that the six humans had invaded region they did not belong in.

Then she saw it – the chamber. On the edge of the HUD mapping display the seismics reverberated their way into something large and open, where several dozen tunnel veins seemed to converge.

"Vannigan, you see this?" she asked quietly.

"That's our prize," he replied.

"Hynan – SC21," came the call an instant later. "Think we've spotted our nest chamber."

"Copy that, corporal, we see it too."

And sure enough, De Santis radioed to confirm that all three prongs of the scout mission were within seismic range, their paths all converging inward. Lots of smaller tunnels plunged away in different directions and on more than one occasion they encountered some passages that had caved in, where the ground was not firm enough to maintain its shape against the crushing weight from above. The bulk of the network – if such a term even applied – met at a rapidly expanding circle of empty space, nearly half a kilometre below the badlands.

"Everybody approach with caution," Brackenshaw advised as they closed in. "For all we know there might be nothing there, but if our friends are waiting, I want everybody ready to scarper when I give the word."

With Kelso drifting along behind her, she brought the skiff's engine down to a low level, just enough to keep her off the ground but minimizing the noise as best she could. Meters ticked away on the HUD until eventually she reached the mouth of the tunnel.

A void of nothing yawned out in front of her. Even the dark-display of the HUD could only give her basics, outlining a knobbly, rocky expanse that stretched away farther than her eyes could see. She didn't see any movement, but some of the shapes could easily have been motionless forms of the arthropods.

Was it just her mind playing tricks on her? Brackenshaw cursed her own nerves. The only way to be sure was to turn on the lights, but something told her that doing so would draw all manner of things out of the depths. She could just make out the other skiffs to the passages on her left and right, the faint shimmer of their HUDs and the glow of their engines the only thing visible in the dark.

"Close up," she murmured. "Slow and easy."

"Can't see a damn thing," Hynan grunted. "Even with the cams."

The others drifted towards her with painstaking slowness, but in the quiet of this underground realm even the engines idling at their lowest levels sounded unbearably loud.

"How do you want to do this, specialist?" Brackenshaw asked quietly. The sound of her voice wouldn't breach the canopy but she couldn't help herself.

"We'll need to move deeper in," he said, though the reluctance was clear in his voice. "If the cams can't give us enough, we'll have to risk low level lights."

"I think we've played enough cat and mouse, Vannigan. There could be anything in there."

"We need to know, Sergeant. It's worth the risk."

"Well, I think I have a better idea." Brackenshaw swallowed hard and made a decision. "Everybody make sure your cams are rolling at max resolution. Hynan, bust a flare straight over the top. Light this place up."

"Sarge, you sure that's a-,"

"Do it, Corporal!"

He did. A single flare fired with a dull thump and went soaring out over the empty space in a graceful arc of crackling white light. What it revealed put a shot of terror through her veins.

The cameras hadn't been able to pick out any individual arthropods, because the surface of the cavern was literally covered in them. Her eyes went wide with shock as she tried to process what she was seeing. There must have been hundreds of the things, carpeting the chamber floor and spilling up the walls. Scattered amongst them and embedded in the chamber walls – and even the ceiling – she could see what looked like smashed eggs. Eggs almost the size of a Hunter-Killer.

"Drown me," Vannigan breathed.

"By the Everflowing River..." De Santis' voice trailed off in disbelief.

The flare did not go unnoticed. The huge mass off the things started to move, recoiling from the bright light and a hissing sound that made her skin crawl began to seep through the cavern. She looked down from where the flare was finishing its arc and realised with a horrific jolt that several of the things were lying just a handful of meters in front of them.

They started to stir.

"Sergeant ..."

The closest lifted up on its immense, pillar-like legs, tail coiling and thrashing with a life of its own. The disc of its abdomen rotated towards them and the baleful, double-jawed head swung into view.

Its eyes looked right at her, cutting right through the canopy and gouging into the deepest, primitive recesses of her pain. Fear dwelt there, the most primal, instinctive fear she had ever felt.

Then the creature opened its mouth and let out a shriek that rose into the heights of the cavern like a call from hell itself. The thunder of thousands of legs mingled with the rising tide of hissing snarls, and every armoured carapace twisted towards the sound.

Then every creature in the chamber surged towards them like a living flood.

"Pissing rivers," Brackenshaw cursed. "On my lead, people! Time to go!"

Revving the skiff's monstrously powerful engine up to its maximum output, she spun the nimble machine on a dime and rammed the control stick forward. As though fired from a gun the skiff exploded forward, and she flicked the lights to full, knowing she wouldn't be able to react at these speeds if she had to also translate the HUD information.

The others piled in behind her, their spacing dangerously close at such massive velocities, but she wasn't about to chew them out for it now. Blood-chilling screeches echoed down the tunnels in their wake with enough volume to make her earpiece crackle and the audio filters of the skiff blink with warning. If she'd been outside and unprotected the noise would have easily ruptured her ear drums.

"Deploying flares!" Kelso barked from the back of the line. The next instant the white-hot phosphorus blaze erupted behind her, filling the passage with blinding white. A chorus of enraged, animal screams echoed after them, but she didn't take much comfort in that fact.

"Stick close!" she barked, rocketing through the narrow tunnels, swerving violently from left to right, banking up and down the slope of the walls, her hands strangling the control stick. Her neck muscles snapped taut with effort as she fought against the sheer momentum that she was carrying through the twists and turns.

That momentum very nearly killed her, when the tunnel ahead of her blew apart.

A whole portion of the right-hand wall disintegrated and something massive filled the gloom ahead of her. The skiff lights blazed into the thing's face and Brackenshaw got an awfully good look at one of the monsters as it reared up, horrific head snapping form side to side, limbs spreading out to fill the passage.

"Everflowing – double back!" she screamed wrenching the control stick as hard as she could and clamping her thighs tight around the skiff to prevent herself being thrown around the canopy. She slewed wildly up the wall to her left as she spun around, before racing back in the opposite direction.

"Sarge – side tunnel," shouted Rikhotso, the woman's voice tight with the effort of keeping control. "Fifty meters back from you at my position; alternate route to our POI."

"Go, go, go!"

"On my lead!"

Brackenshaw blazed her way back through the passage, watching on the HUD as the indicators for her comrades slowed and took a sharp right to follow Rikhotso's skiff. She launched herself around that same bend a few seconds later, nearly ramming right into the back of Vannigan's vehicle as she did.

Swearing, she eased back on the throttle as much as she dared, though they were still hurtling along at over ninety kilometres per hour. With Rikhotso in the lead the six humans raced on through the tunnel network their foes had left behind. Brackenshaw fired off her own flares to discourage further pursuit, filling the passage behind her with more blinding phosphorus.

She banked hard, following the improvised route and thanking every watching Lord for the people that had come with her. The veteran scouts did not panic, they adapted. Rikhotso had been part of the Cadre for nearly six years and that experience showed as she led the way, taking them in a winding course through the maze of tunnels, climbing meter by meter until they reached the lower levels of the Scraegan warren.

Crashed and screeches still reverberated through the passages behind them, but they grew distant and frustrated, the creatures thrashing around in the dark to try and catch up to the fast-moving scouts. Soon the six humans hurtled up through one of the arthropod tunnels and out into Scraegan living spaces mapped by the Hunter-Killers on their previous visit to this damnable neighbourhood.

However, it wasn't until she caught sight of the light of the entrance than Brackenshaw finally felt a glimmer of safety. In single file they bobbed up and over the debris, but one out into the open sand the scouts opened up their engines. The jets strapped to the rear of the skiffs bellowed and they company seared out across the badlands, putting as much empty space between them and the pursuing monsters as they could.

They finally came to a halt nearly two kilometres away.

"Well, now we know," Brackenshaw grated breathlessly, swinging her skiff to a halt and looking back in the direction of the warren. She finally let her shoulders relax, taking a deep breath to calm her pounding heart. "That's a lot more than you thought we'd find down there, isn't it, Vannigan?"

"It is," Kelso admitted.

"So what's the plan?"

"The plan stays the same."

"I think the odds might not be in our favour anymore, specialist."

"Maybe," he said, his voice firm. "But that's nothing a big damned bomb won't fix."