I went down with the rest of them, trying to bodysurf and failing at it. I went under, and dirt buried me. I reached up with my hands as I realized I was being buried alive, trying to keep them up and visible. I wondered, as the dirt first roared, then finally pattered over my head, if my suit would keep me alive for days, and if I would ever be found and dug out. Something heavy hit my hand, cracking my fingers. I winced, hoping another drill-tank hadn’t just rolled over my hand. I wiggled my fingers experimentally, they hurt, but I thought they were all responding to my brain’s commands.
I tried to operate my com-link with my chin, but it didn’t work. I had no way of trouble-shooting it. Maybe the unit had been ripped loose during the fall. Life-giving air still hissed out of the rebreather into my suit, however.
Something grabbed my fingers after I’d spent about a minute down there. Something that pinched horribly, pulling them out of their sockets. I would have pulled them back under the ground, if I could. The pinch stopped, for a blessed moment. I felt the walls pressing in on me, suffocating me with the weight. Many people who died in avalanches died because the pressure compressed their lungs and would not allow them to breathe, even if there was an air pocket available. Here on Helios, with the nearly double gravity to contend with, the earth weighed a lot and my lungs labored to suck in each gulp of air.
There was a fluttering sensation around my upraised glove. Was that a Worm? Were they rooting around up there, looking for good morsels amongst my men? The sensation of movement around my exposed hand increased, and for a moment, I wished I’d never put it up there, like a flag on a sand castle.
Another crushing grip closed over my hand. Wrenching force was applied. I felt my shoulder give first. It slipped out of the socket, and I screamed in my enclosed suit, the sound of my cries was muffled inside my crumpled hood. It sounded as if I were screaming underwater.
I squeezed whatever had me and held on. I was hauled out of the dirt like a carrot, dribbling brown earth everywhere. When I was half-exposed the horrible ripping sensation stopped. My arm flopped down at my side. I used my other hand to smear dirt from my goggles.
I was still buried up to my waist. Standing over me was Kwon. He had both hands on his rifle now. He was twisting this way and that, shouting something. My com-link still didn’t work, and I couldn’t make out what he was talking about.
Then the autoshades triggered as light-weight beamers flared around me. The men were firing at something. Painfully, I extracted myself from my early grave and got to my feet.
Kwon looked me over. He reached toward my head with those thick, ungentle fingers. I flinched, but let him do it. He fumbled with something near my ear. I heard a click, and suddenly my head filled with sound. My com-link had become disconnected in the fall.
“—we’ve got at least thirty down, Sergeant,” I heard someone say.
“Worms north and east. They are staying in the growths.”
“—sniping at us!”
I looked around, staggering, holding my wrenched shoulder. I tried to take stock of things. Men were everywhere on the slope, nearly a hundred of them. There wasn’t much cover, but we were in a depression of sorts, and if the Worms were to the north and east, they didn’t have a good firing position on us. My own men, I realized, were up on the rim of the mound formed by the landslide. They were the ones firing back at the snipers. Others worked to scrape out a trench for cover.
We were near the bottom of a fantastically large cavern. The ceiling appeared to be a thousand feet up in the gloomy distance. The floor of the cavern was covered with growths, things that looked like rubbery, slimy crystalline formations. I could tell by their flower-like structures were living growths, not some kind of mineral deposit. They reminded me of large fans of coral. It was as if I looked out into a drained undersea grotto.
I looked upslope. I could see the broken mouth of the tunnel. My men poked out with their lasers, looking down at us. No one seemed to be in charge.
I looked down slope. Tumbling wasn’t good for tanks, I thought. One of the two drill-tanks I’d had leading the way had landed nose-down at the bottom of the slope. I could tell by the trail of dead, flattened marines that led down to its resting place, the machine had taken a few men down with it. The second drill-tank had fared better, it was upright and the torn skin of it was slowly reshaping itself. That meant the brainbox was still intact. The gun didn’t have enough range when configured for drilling to hit the snipers. If the Worms tried to rush us, however, that tank would be a powerful defense.
I shook my head and tried to think. “Riggs here. Anyone got a fix on the snipers?” I asked on the operational channel.
A few men cheered. “Good to hear you made it, sir,” said a familiar voice. I glanced down at the HUD readout. It was Captain Roku.
“Captain? Did our lead pilot make it?”
“No sir. That slide down the hill killed a number of good men.”
“All right,” I said, “Roku, you are in command of the remaining hovertanks. You are now second in command of this expedition.”
“Ah, yes Colonel,” said Roku, surprised.
He shouldn’t be, I thought, he was next in rank. There were two other captains in the infantry, and they may or may not be senior, but I wanted one of my pilots in the lead if I didn’t manage to dig my way out of the next hole I fell into. Knowing the chain of command was critical in a place like this, where deaths could alter the face of things at any moment.
“Captain, can you get your tanks down here with us safely?”
“With time, sir,” he said. “We we can drill down in a spiral to your level and come out nearby, safely.”
Kwon waved to me, pointing out toward the floor of the cavern. My vision had adjusted somewhat. The coral-like growths occasionally puffed smoke. The enemy was hiding out there, like crawling snipers in a forest. They were moving around on the open floor of the cavern to flank us. If they kept moving, they would soon have a clear shot at my men, with no cover between us and the incoming fire.
“Explain your current situation, Captain,” I said. As I spoke, sniper fire spanged off a nearby dead marine’s reactor unit. I wasn’t surprised, the Worms tended to shoot dead bodies. They didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between a live man and a dead one. I ducked down to avoid further fire, and Kwon knelt beside me.
“I’ve backed the tanks down the tunnels about a hundred yards,” said Roku in the calm voice of a man who sat confidently in his tank. “The last cave-in was caused by the combined weight of the two forward drill-tanks. If we drilled down and around—”
“Forget that, Captain,” I said, cutting him off. “That will take an hour or more. We’ve been exposed to the enemy. They are already on the move, and more of them will gather every minute. Soon, they will probably hit you from behind up in that tunnel and assault us frontally in this ditch we’ve dug for ourselves down here. Somewhere in the middle of this cavern is our target. I need your tanks and men down here pronto, to help us finish this thing.”