“Wong! You plastic mother-fucker!” Block was waving his arms and yelling at the distant sky. The off-white suit and helmet of Wong eclipsed the ring of sunlight.
“Sergeant Block, are you injured?”
“No, Wong. Pierce is down here, too. Get a line down to us, we need to get out of here before one of these mother-fuckers come back.”
“Please remain calm. I will get you out as soon as possible.” Wong vanished from view.
“Where did the worm go?” Pierce asked.
“Who cares?” Block was still watching the sky, waiting for Wong to reappear.
“Korbin probably cares,” Pierce replied.
Block turned and she could feel but not see his glare in the shadow of his helmet. “The fuck did you say?”
“Korbin is down here somewhere, sergeant. We need to find him and get him into medical, or recover his body. Without confirmation of death on mission, his family only get half benefits.”
“Our mission is to determine what happened to the prospectors on site. They are a company asset. We get paid when we have enough evidence to file a comprehensive report.”
“Korbin’s family deserve the same evidence.” Pierce stood firm.
“We’re not going to fuck around down here looking for a dead body. We still haven’t got a lock on Gordinski or Howard.”
“Wong should be able to find their beacons. If they were in the complex or on the surface. He could have gone straight to them.”
Block stared at the dirt floor for a long moment. “Which means they’re probably down here. Or in a hole just like it.”
“How long do you think Wong will be?” Pierce asked.
“As long as it takes. In the meantime, we hold here.”
“These tunnels—” Pierce gestured at the curved walls around them. “Those worms, those minhocão things, they burrow through the rock. They excrete some kind of fluid which doesn’t freeze. They must eat the rock; there’s no rubble left behind, and they move really fucking fast.”
“They also don’t react well to being shot,” Block replied.
“There’s no evidence of these things. Not in a hundred years of lunar exploration. You’d think we would have found something before now. A fossil, a track, a few bones—”
“Maybe they’re aliens.” Block maintained his surveillance of the tunnel and the shaft above them.
“I don’t think so.” Pierce had spoken before realizing that Sergeant Block was being sarcastic. “I mean, they’re clearly adapted for life in the lunar soil. I think they live deep, maybe in caves where it’s warm and there’s liquid water. Maybe miles deep in the crust. The water prospectors, the drilling. That might have drawn them up to the surface. If they live in the dark, then they have no use for visual senses. They could respond to vibration or hunt by smell.”
“Goddamn, Pierce. You should write that shit down. You’re smart as a Wong.”
“I’m serious. We don’t know shit about these things.”
“Sure we do. We know they fucked up an entire corporate water prospecting facility. More importantly, we know that a short burst of EM14 ammunition will fuck them. Is there anything else a corporate marine needs to know?”
“No, Sarge.”
“Where the fuck is Wong?”
Pierce put a gloved hand on the wall; a vibration like a deep bass tone was humming through the rock. “Sarge, we have incoming.” Pierce readied her rifle and waited for the worm to break through.
Block took a position nearby, looking both ways along the tunnel for a target. “Hold your position,” he warned.
“You feel it?”
“Goddamn amateur hour,” Block muttered. “Yeah, I feel it.”
The vibration increased until dust and small stones fell from the walls and ceiling. Pierce felt like she was in a subway tunnel and a train was coming. She hoped it would pass them by.
The rumbling increased. Pierce’s internal organs quivered. Then the intensity dropped away, the rocks stopped tumbling, and the dust settled.
“I guess they aren’t going to be sneaking up on us,” Block said.
“Can we get the fuck out of here?” Pierce replied.
“Wong?” Block broadcast on all available frequencies. “Wong. Come in, Wong.”
“Sarge, I have an idea.” Pierce marched off down the tunnel.
“Pierce? Pierce for fuck’s sake, where are you going?”
Block followed the corporal down the tunnel, stooping slightly to avoid scraping his helmet on the stone roof.
“I know how we can get out, if we’re really, really lucky.”
“Would you care to share this knowledge with your squad leader?”
“Sorry Sarge, it’s just that Lucy sent a wire beacon down one of the shafts. We thought it was a prospector drill site. What if it was made by one of these worms?”
“Well, that’s a sweet ass-umption, Pierce. What if the tunnels don’t join up?”
Pierce kept moving, Block almost treading on her heels as they followed the curves and dips of the tunnel. “Conservation of energy. It makes sense that they would link up. Why expend precious energy grinding a new tunnel when you can use an existing one?”
Block mentally shrugged. Corporal Pierce was smarter than your average block-head trooper by several orders of magnitude. Her analytical mind and clear eye for detail had saved their asses more than once. “You get us out of this shithole and I will buy you a beer.”
“You sure know how to turn a girl’s head, Sarge.” Pierce wished she felt as confident as she sounded. They followed the tunnel’s curve to the left, Pierce estimated almost fifty degrees to the left. The tunnel dipped again and they skidded down the slope, dragging their gloves in the dust and trying to avoid falling on their asses.
“Ohh shit!” Pierce yelled as she saw the lip of a vertical shaft coming up fast. A worm erupted out of the hole and Pierce scrambled to dig her boots in before she face-planted into the undulating sides of the thing.
The bullet head of the worm split open, the rows of translucent teeth glistening with drool. A cloud of rock dust puffed into the vacuum and Pierce slammed into the creature. It felt like hitting a rock wall under a thin layer of rubber sheet. Squirming backwards, she readied her rifle. Block opened fire from further up the slope, the donut-shaped rounds punching into the head of the worm and sending it into a silent, thrashing frenzy.
Under the concentrated assault, the worm retreated into the shaft. Pierce got to her feet and jumped over the void to the rising tunnel on the other side. With her boots planted on the loose lunar soil, she turned and fired into the hole. The worm vanished, reversing as quickly as it had appeared.
“You okay?!” Block yelled in the comm.
“Roger that,” Pierce confirmed. “Five by fucking-five.”
“I’m coming over,” Block said.
Pierce moved backwards, stomping her boots into the dirt and climbing away from the dark circle. Block leapt across the six-foot gap, only to crack his helmet on the low roof and somersault backwards into the pit.
“Sarge!” Pierce screamed. Charging forward, she dropped to her knees at the edge of the pit.
Block hung a meter below the edge. His arms and legs were splayed out and wedged against the spiral grooves of the wall.
“Sarge?”
“Goddamn amateur hour,” Block replied. “Pierce, you will not tell anyone that I fell in a fucking hole. That is an order.”
Pierce almost laughed with relief. “Roger that, Sarge. Can you reach my hand?” She lay down, wriggling her legs back and keeping her center of gravity behind the lip of the shaft.
“Grab the end of my rifle.” Pierce wrapped the strap around her wrist and lowered the weapon.
Block looked up and took a firm grip on the weapon. “Well, pull me up,” he said.