Chapter 146

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Six

Out of habit, Connor tried to bring up the stopwatch on his computer. It would have served no purpose other than to tell him how much time passed before he died fighting the alien horror coming for him or before the winch dropped back down.

He settled for counting in his head and hoped the winch came back down first.

Once more, the alien’s angry roars bounced around inside the huge chamber.

Its smell came to him as well—the putrid, rank defilement of the black pool.

The creature was close, maybe nearing the place where he’d left the sled.

Connor drew his swords and rolled his shoulders and neck. He paced.

Injured, without armor, without the help of the K’luuta and Toshiko’s amulet, he didn’t stand a chance. The creature’s teeth, the hooked tentacles…

He would be torn apart in seconds.

Somewhere overhead, the winch motor stopped its grinding whine.

Elise and Selen were out. Their odds of survival climbed.

Connor’s computer vibrated. He sheathed a sword and pulled the device out. “Yes?”

“Lieutenant?” It was Lem. “I have helped the captain and the archaeologist out of the harness.”

“Elise has been…impregnated by a creature. You see necrosis around her neck?”

“The flesh has begun to die, yes.”

“Treat that, too. But you need to come up with something to kill the eggs inside her blood.”

“The same solution may work for both problems, There will be risk involved.”

“She’ll die otherwise, Lem.”

“Understood. I have lowered the winch harness.”

The motor’s whine was there, then drowned by another terrible roar.

This one was definitely closer.

Connor tried to find the spot where the harness would drop down. “If you could get that harness down here fast, I’d appreciate it.”

What had a moment before been a motorized whine became a runaway squeal, and seconds later, the harness slapped against the hard floor.

Now that was service, Connor thought as he sheathed his other sword.

He stuck an arm through the harness straps. “Ready for express pickup.”

Far overhead, gunfire erupted.

It wasn’t the roar of Vicente’s Mamacita or Kalpana’s sniper rifle but an assault rifle.

Something was coming after Lem or those under his care.

Then Connor heard something much more troubling: a heavy, fleshy shape grunting and grumbling as it dragged itself through the passageway into the huge chamber.

He pulled his arm from the harness to draw his swords a second before the gunfire stopped.

A moment later, the winch motor whine began.

Connor barely managed to get a hand through the rising harness.

In his blurry vision, the pointy head of Sokkizarai poking through the passageway opening was like the birth of a terrible baby.

The monster was deforming itself to squeeze through the narrower passages.

Although that would take time, Connor wasn’t sure it would be enough. His rise out of the chamber was taking forever.

Unlike lowering the harness, where the gears could be disengaged, there wasn’t another gear for the winch when it came to lifting people.

So he had to hang on and hope as he rose toward a pinprick of light.

The angry creature seemed to figure out what was going on and shoved its head the rest of the way through the opening.

It roared in fury, then spat a glob of something at Connor.

Whatever it was sailed just beneath his boots and arced into the wall with a wet splat.

The glob hissed, and the sharp tang of acid rose on the heavy air.

Below, Sokkizarai shrieked.

Connor couldn’t figure why it wasn’t talking to him at first, attempting lies and delaying tactics to lure the naive human into bad decisions before attacking.

Then he remembered: It had been the amulet that had allowed all of that.

Good. All he wanted to do with the monster now was kill it.

What had been a small circle light was now big enough for Connor to see the sky. That was a welcome sight, despite its alienness.

Sokkizarai tried twice more to spit at Connor, then gave up and returned to squeezing its body through the narrow opening.

It was going to be close. Connor thought the first pair of wings looked tattered when they poked out and opened wide, but he couldn’t be sure.

Then he was at the rim of the pit, in the sunlight.

A hand grabbed his wrist and helped him up enough to scramble out.

Not until he was on his feet did he realize it was Kalpana.

The scout was covered in blood and grime, but she seemed to be smiling. “Nice combat uniform.”

He brushed singed fingers over the dried blood coating his chest. “Not my choice.”

She smirked. “I like it. Hey, what’d you do to your eyes?”

“We make it out of here, I’ll tell you.”

A few meters from the edge of the pit, Lem was hunched over Elise, brow furrowed as he sprayed something on her neck. Not far from her lay an insulation blanket-wrapped Selen, the silvery foil shine reflecting the light.

Connor turned back to Kalpana. “Where’s Vicente?”

The scout nodded toward a heap of what must have been shattered flying scorpion corpses. “Went down fighting just before you came up.”

No! Not Vicente! Connor’s breath caught—

Then a growl came from the bottom of the pile. “I’m not dead!”

Ruined bodies slid from the heap, then the big man’s head came up. His helmet was knocked askew and dented.

Now all they needed was the explosives.

Connor squinted to where the ruins ended and the ground sloped steeply up toward the tree line. “Where’s Yemi?”

Kalpana popped out her rifle’s magazine, then slapped it back in. “Should’ve been here by now.”

“We need the explosives from the Lucky Sevens.” Connor glanced over the edge of the pit.

Sokkizarai was now dragging itself into the chamber with its hooked tentacle-legs.

The scout whistled. “You know how to pick them.”

She dropped to a knee and fired a round, then another, then stood. “Explosives, definitely.”

A welcome sound caught Connor’s ear: the Badger’s tires grinding over the moss carpet.

Seconds later, the vehicle shot from the forest, went airborne, then plunged down toward them, plowing through the pollen-spewing shrubs with a hollow cracking crunch.

Then the vehicle disappeared among the ruins before reappearing again, speeding down the lane that led between the partially standing buildings.

When the vehicle braked, even Connor could see the dark gore coating its front and tires.

He dashed over, fumbled with the latch, then slid the side door open.

Yemi cackled from his seat. “Yemi drives fast!”

Connor waved and felt around for the explosives locker. It was big and hard, and the color should stand out.

There!

He unhooked gear and tossed it aside, then opened the unpowered lock.

How much money had they sunk into these explosives? Too much.

Someone was at Connor’s side: Kalpana.

She pulled bricks of the explosives out. “How much?”

They had easily half of the explosives now. “This should do.”

“This is your thing. I’ll follow your lead.”

Connor needed to keep it simple. As the old saying went, with explosives, if you didn’t know what you were doing, it was all about the volume.

He put his computer on top of her bricks. “When we get there, you do the honors.”

She kept up with him as he sped to the edge of the pit.

Activating the explosives was simple: They’d paid extra for that. And once that was done, it was a matter of pushing the bricks into the hole.

Kalpana held his computer up. “Which app?”

Connor could make out the basic shapes and colors on the display, so he swiped and tapped until he found what she wanted. “Ready?”

Below, Sokkizarai roared. Its wings flapped like claps of thunder.

She kicked her pile of bricks in with a desperate laugh; Connor did the same.

The explosives tumbled into the pit, quickly dropping from sight.

He pulled her back from the opening. “Now.”

A tremor shook the ground, nearly taking them to the mossy carpet. The pressure venting from the hole spat fine particles of debris skyward, sucking up a disgusting stench that burned Connor’s sinuses.

Somewhere during the seconds-long eruption, the ringing came back to Connor’s ears.

But he didn’t need to hear to know that the monster was dead.