Nothing came back. I looked ahead, deeper down the tunnel into the darkness. There was no sign of the squad I’d sent down there behind their confident gunnery sergeant, nor of Robinson’s Company Three, which we’d sent earlier. There was nobody home.
I stood up. “Everyone retreat. Pull back out of this hole.”
They tried. They did it in unison, and with relief and speed. But it was already too late. Probably, if I’d given the order the moment we arrived, it would have been too late. The Worms had no intention of letting us out of their trap.
The floor collapsed under my troops. The middle of the tunnel gave way and fell, taking about a hundred of my men down with it. The hard, ribbed tunnel surface sunk about a foot, then paused for a fraction of a second before yawning open. An abyss was formed. A drop of unknown depth. Men fell scrabbling and sliding down into the dark. Bolts of energy flashed, burning the ceiling, the walls, the feet of fellow troopers. Fifty yards back I could see the remainder of my troops, crouching in the same tunnel we did, cut off from us. A wild melee began down below in the collapsed section. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it.
“Suit lights on!” I roared.
We couldn’t see much more with the lights on. Dust roiled up. I caught a glimpse of a silver suit, of a beamer flashing. I saw the hump of a Worm’s back. They were about thirty feet down. They had dug out the tunnel under us and ambushed us, even as we lay in wait to ambush them.
“Damn the dust. Don’t shoot unless you have a clear target.”
A few beams spat out from the men who still crouched in the upper tunnel, but only a few. Below us, men fought in the loose earth. Knives flashed. We heard screams and roars of rage. Worm-guns chattered, their streams of explosives popping with orange fire.
“Focus on the gunners,” I told my men. I aimed my beamer down and fired. A Worm blackened and twisted in a death coil. I’d gotten lucky. I could have just have easily hit one of my own men—if any of them had survived this long.
I turned to Kwon. “We’re trapped at this end of the tunnel. We might as well join in the mess down there.”
He hesitated, but only for a half-second. His big head dipped. “I’ve always hated worms, sir,” he said, and slid downward into the madness below us, roaring.
I bared my teeth and followed him. More men and boots rained down behind me.
I found myself on my hands and knees in a mass of soft earth. It was like mud-wrestling down there. I pulled out my knife, letting my rifle dangle. I slashed at anything Worm-like and crawled out of the way.
I got to my feet when I could and glimpsed a new kind of Hell.
-47-
There was more room down here than I’d expected. The Worms had been busy. They’d carved out a horizontal space in each direction—or maybe the region was a natural gap, a cave in the layers of rock and earth. I couldn’t tell which right now, and I didn’t much care.
I moved toward a wall. There was less confusion there, and the odds of being hit by my own men firing down from above was less.
“Form up against this rock wall, men!” I shouted.
A few of them heard me and put their butts against the wall. Occasionally, a Worm rushed us and we burned it down.
“Don’t trust your footing,” I shouted. “There may be more traps—more layers below us. Turn your beams into the larger area of the cavern and fire at anything that squirms.”
I took my own advice, peering through the dust, confusion and darkness. Columns of earth stood everywhere, blocking a clear line of fire, but I managed to squeeze off a shot every so often. The men around me did the same. Collectively, we stemmed the tide of Worms that rushed forward to kill the men who still struggled in knots in the pit. Twisted limbs, corpses and dirt choked the collapsed area.
It didn’t take long for the Worms to notice their new, organized attackers on their flank. They formed up a unit of their own and pressed forward, about twenty of them. They reared up and let their chattering guns stream fire into my group. We had no cover, and I directed my men to advance and hug columns in groups of three.
Both sides were exchanging fire at close range now, about a dozen yards apart. On each side, troops momentarily revealed themselves, fired and ducked back. Sometimes, the incoming fire from the other side overwhelmed one of my men. Two went down in less than a minute, then a third slumped, his head missing.
I activated my com-link. “Forget about radio silence. Everyone down here knows the score, this is a pitched battle. If you are up top, I’m talking to you now. I want the last Sergeant in line to stay up there with three fireteams. Keep sniping down into that hole and keep them off our wounded. The rest of you, come down. We’ll provide covering fire. Move north into the columns and hug the walls.”
I signaled my remaining men. There were less than a dozen who could fight. “When they start sliding down, we all cover them with everything we’ve got. No grenades, though. I don’t want this ceiling collapsing on us.”
It wasn’t long before more boots came sliding down with men behind them. My men roared around us and we all came out of cover at once, firing at the Worms.
The enemy recoiled, then returned fire. I was hit with a half-dozen exploding balls, and my left side was numb afterward. I drew my hand beamer and burned Wormflesh wherever it showed itself.
The men sliding down came in ever growing numbers. They picked themselves up, advanced and soon we had two fronts for the Worm ambushers. After another minute or two of fighting, the last of them died or retreated down black holes in the floor.
They’d killed half my men, and we’d never seen a sign of the bomb they supposedly carried. Maybe the whole thing had been a feint. At the moment, I found it hard to think. I panted and tried to push ribs back into my skin by kneading them through my suit.
“Sir, we’ve lost contact with the forward fireteam and Robinson’s Company Three,” said Kwon, hulking over me. “I think the Worms were waiting for us, sir.”
“No shit,” I said.
“Why didn’t we see them? With our scanners I mean, sir?”
I paused for a second, wishing I could scratch my face. It itched with sweat and droplets ran down from my buzzcut into my eyes to sting them. “I think we were only detecting the metal in their machines—their drilling sleds. I guess when their infantry digs, we can’t see them. Either that, or these tunnels were all here already, and they just slithered underneath us and dug until the soil was weak enough that it collapsed.”
“So, they could ambush us again? Anywhere?”
“Yeah. Pretty much,” I said. I crouched down on my heels. The idea of sliding down deeper into the depths of Helios didn’t fill me with confidence. It made me want to walk in a crouch and feel every step of the way.
“Orders, sir?” Kwon asked.
I tried to think for a second. “Send one scout down each of these tunnels. They are only to go about a hundred yards out, then come back and tell us what they find. If they make contact with the enemy, they are to retreat immediately.”
Kwon stared at me. “Should we maybe try to use ropes to get back up to the main tunnel, sir?”
“No. The Worms and their bomb are below us, not above us. We’re going to take them out.”
Kwon straightened and shouted for volunteers. He slapped the nearest four men who didn’t stumble away fast enough. These volunteers separated and headed for the darkest, narrowest Worm-tunnels we’d seen yet.
Two of the volunteers never came back. One did with a Worm on his tail. We hammered the monster down with a dozen shafts of hot energy. The last man crawled back a full six minutes after we’d sent him down.