A Day for Damnation twatc-2 Read online

  We had a huge bank of tactical displays at our command. We could see our approach on a representational map, or as a colorcoded radar scan of the surrounding terrain. We also had a dead reckoning inertial guidance display and continuous confirmation by satellite Earthwatch. When we were two kilometers away, Duke halted the rollagon and sent the attack vehicles scurrying off to their positions for Go-NoGo Point Kappa, and I launched a skyball-an aerial drone-for one last look-see before we went in.

  The image on the screen tilted and swooped dizzily as the skyball skidded and slid across the sky. It was having trouble navigating in the wind. After a moment, though, it figured out what it was doing and the image steadied into a long glide.

  The nest came up on the screen suddenly. It was a squat brown dome with a bulging circular entrance.

  "A textbook case," I said. "See the purple stuff around the outside?"

  Duke grunted. "You can spare me the narration."

  I nodded and tapped at the keyboard, bringing the drone lower. The image turned slowly as the skyball circled the nest. I punched for scanning. The image shifted colors then: blue for cold, red for hot, yellow for in between. Most of the screen was orange. I had to turn down the range.

  The corrected scan was mostly green and yellow. A faint orange track led to the dome. Or away from it. The track was at least an hour old.

  I glanced at Duke; his expression was unreadable. "Scan the dome," he said.

  We knew that the worms were hot when they were active. But we also knew that when they went torpid-which was usually during the hottest part of the day-their body temperatures could drop as much as thirty degrees. That was why the earliest mobile probes had failed to register their presence. The worms had been too cool.

  We knew better now.

  The worms went deep and they went cold. Men had died to find that out.

  The skyball came in low and close now. The dome filled the screen. I punched in a sonic-scan overlay. There was something there, all right-a dark blue mass, mottled with quickly shifting colors. It was large and deep below the surface.

  The screen said it massed four tons.

  "That's a good-sized family," said Duke. "Can we take 'em?"

  I was wondering the same thing, "Denver says the gas is good. This is at the upper end of the range, but it's within the limit."

  "How do you feel about it?"

  "I say go."

  "Good," said Duke. "So do I." He thumbed his mike. "All units. It's a go. I repeat, it is a go. Proceed to your final positions. This is it."

  We were committed now. There were no more Go-NoGo points. Duke leaned forward and rapped our driver. "Come on-let's move!" The big rollagon trundled forward, up a small ridge and then down the long slope on the opposite side.

  I pulled the skyball up and directed it to circle the dome on a continual scan. If there was any change in heat level, it would sound an immediate alarm. We would have between ten and ninety seconds' warning-depending on the worms. I checked my earphones and mike. This was the most dangerous part of the mission. We were too vulnerable to ambush on the approach.

  I had to read this dome quickly and say if it was safe to proceed. If not-if I thought it appropriate-I had the authority to abort the entire mission. This was the last Go-NoGo and I was the worm expert.

  The troops liked to believe that I had some kind of uncanny "worm sense." I didn't, of course-and the rumor made me nervous. But they wanted to believe it-I was as close to a lucky charm as they had-so I didn't try to squelch the story.

  And besides, I sort of halfway wished it was true. It would have made me feel a lot better about how little I really knew.

  The rollagon bounced onto level ground then and I stood up in my seat to peer ahead. There was the dome. It looked deceptively small in person. Most of the nest was underground. We really didn't know how deep the worms would tunnel. We weren't willing to let a family establish itself long enough to find out.

  I tapped the driver's shoulder. "This is close enough," I said. "It's spider time. I'll walk the rest of the way."

  The rollagon slid to an uneven halt. I sat down again at my keyboard, and activated United States Military Spider ARAC-57i4. Beside me, I could hear Duke acknowledging each of the other vehicles as they slid into position around the dome. I didn't bother to look up. I knew that the teams were already dropping out of their vehicles, torches at the ready. We were eight tight little islands of death. Priority one: survive. Dead heroes do not win wars.

  The green ready light came up. I slid the console back and pulled the spider control board up and into position. I slipped the goggles over my head, waited for my vision to clear, and slipped my hands into the control gloves.

  There was the usual moment of discontinuity, and then I was in the spider. I was looking through its eyes, hearing through its ears, feeling through its hands. "Forward," I said, and the point of view moved down, out of the forward ramp of the rollagon, and forward toward the quiet-looking dome.

  My point of view was closer to the ground than I was used to, and my eyes were farther apart, so everything looked smaller-and the perspective was deeper. I needed this walk to slip into my "spider-consciousness mode." I had to get into the feeling of it.

  The military spiders were hasty adaptations of the industrial models. This one had a black metal body, eight skinny legs-each ending in a large black hoof-and an observation turret. The spider could function with half its legs disabled; any two of its legs could also function as arms. There was a waldo inside each hoof, complete with tactile sensors.

  During the plagues, the spiders had been used extensively in situations where human beings could not-or would not-go themselves. The spiders had been very useful in hospitals. And in crematoriums. The spiders had gathered most of the dead.

  "Slower," I commanded. We were approaching the entrance to the dome. "Scan. . . ."

  The image before me shifted down the spectrum. The colors of objects changed, then changed again. Green and yellow again. Some orange, but very very faint.

  "Sonic scan..." I said, and turned my attention into the dome. The large blue mass was clearer here. I could almost make out the shape of four huge worms. They were intertwined in a circular formation, if I was reading the image correctly. And they were still cold.

  "Well?" asked Duke at my shoulder.

  "They're an awfully pretty shade of blue," I replied. "It's go." I gave the command, "Forward."

  The spider entered the dome.

  Turn right, go up and around and enter the central chamber. Go to the center hole. Squat over the hole. Look down. Nothing in the lower chamber?

  Look again.

  I made that mistake once. I won't make it again.

  The worms are huge. It's hard to see them as worms. They look like a huge furry carpet.

  Scan.... Still blue.

  I wonder what it looks like when they wake up-but I'm not going to wait to find out.

  Lower the nozzle.

  And ... give the command, "Gas." There is a hissing noise.

  The color of the worms goes darker.

  I slipped my hands out of the gloves and pulled the goggles off my eyes. I looked at Duke. "Done," I said.

  Duke grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. "Good job." He turned to the communications technician. "All right, bring the chopper down. We'll be ready to start loading in thirty minutes. Move the 'dozer unit into position and tell them to fix grapples and stand by for detox. Have everybody else move in to the primary perimeter. "

  The rollagon lurched forward again and Duke gave me a cheerful thumbs-up signal. He started to say something, but I didn't hear it. A second huge cargo chopper was just clattering in overhead. It sounded like a cosmic jackhammer-the one God uses for starting earthquakes.

  This was the machine that would carry the worms back to Denver.

  I wondered if it would be big enough.

  FOUR

  AS SOON as we pulled into position, I took a second reading on the
mass of the worms. They were too big. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was making a mistake here. Perhaps I should have said no at the last Go-NoGo point.

  I almost turned to Duke then, but I stopped myself. I did this every time. As soon as it was too late, I started second-guessing. It didn't matter any more what I thought. We were committed.

  I took a second reading on the mass of the worms, recalculated the gas dosage according to Denver's mass-ratio equations, and detonated another pellet. I wondered if it should have been two. I'd rather kill the worms than have them wake up while we were loading them.

  We gave the gas a full ten minutes. I took a final reading-the worms were the most wonderful shade of dark purple I'd ever seen-then brought the spider out.

  Then we pulled the dome off its foundations. We anchored grapples in its base, attached tow ropes to a jeep and backed up slowly. The hut ripped off like so much Styrofoam. The worms didn't build for strength. They didn't have to.

  We had to do it twice; the dome shredded too easily. I felt like an intruder, a vandal. We had to pull it off in pieces. Then we had to rip off the top floor too.

  That job was harder. We had to plant small charges in the floor to break it up. It was made out of the same material as the dome walls, but it was denser and had the strength of industrial Kevlar. It would have to be strong to hold the weight of a healthy worm family.

  The worms built their nests by chewing up trees and spitting out foam. Apparently they could vary the mix enough to produce lightweight translucent walls and heavyweight hardwood floors all from the same basic ingredients. A neat trick.

  When the lower half of the nest was finally revealed, there was a moment of... hesitation. The teams-men and women alike-gathered in silence around the edge to stare down at the exposed worms.

  They were huge. Just knowing they were huge from the readings on the screen was not the same as actually seeing them in the flesh. Even the smallest of them was a meter thick and three meters long. The "adult" was two meters high at its brain case and twice as long as the baby. I wished I'd given them that third pellet.

  The worms were coiled around each other like lovers, head to tail, head to tail, in a circular formation. They were shadowed in the lower half of the nest, but even so their fur still shone a brilliant red. It was almost alluring.

  Duke came up beside me to look. His expression tightened, but he didn't speak.

  "Looks like we interrupted a Chtorran orgy," I said. Duke grunted.

  "The baby's about three hundred kilos," I offered. "Papa bear is probably a thousand."

  "At least," said Duke. He didn't like it, I could tell. He was too silent.

  "Too big?" I asked.

  "Too expensive," he grumbled. "You're looking at fifteen cows a week. That's a lot of hamburger." He clicked his tongue and turned away. "All right," he bawled, "let's get down in there and get to work." He pointed to a man with a headset. "Tell that chopper to drop the slings. Now!"

  We had one bad moment with the loading.

  We started with the baby. One squad dropped into the pit while the other two teams stood above them with flame throwers, bazookas and incendiary bullets. The worm was too big to lift or roll onto a sling-it had to be lifted so the canvas could be pulled beneath it.

  The squad in the pit quickly slid a series of stainless-steel rods underneath the smallest worm to form a lattice of crossbars. These were then connected at their ends to two longer bars placed lengthwise against the worm. The baby was now lying on a ladder-shaped bed.

  The chopper was already clattering into place overhead, whipping us with wind and noise. Its cables were already lowering. The team didn't try to grab the free-swinging ends-instead they waited until the lines touched ground and there was enough slack. They grabbed the cables and ran to attach them to the ladder under the worm. Beckman gave a thumbs-up signal and the chopper began to raise the cables. They tightened visibly. The ladder shuddered and began to lift

  For a moment, the worm resisted-it was just a large limp bag of scarlet pudding-and then the connection with the other worms was broken and it pulled up into the air.

  Immediately, every worm in the pit began to stir.

  Papa worm grunted uneasily. The other two actually chirruped and rumbled. But baby worm was the worst. It writhed as if in pain, and let loose a plaintive wail of anguish. It curled and looped like an earthworm cut in half. The ladder swung recklessly. The cables groaned-and then its eyes popped open. They were huge and black and round-they slid this way and that, unfocused and unseeing.

  The team jumped backwards, flattening themselves against the nest wall

  "Hold your fire-!" I was screaming. "Hold your fire, goddammit!" Somehow I made myself heard above the terror. "It's still unconscious! Those are automatic reactions!"

  Indeed, the baby was already calming down again. Its eyes slid shut and it curled-tried to curl-into a swollen red ball, still hanging above the floor of the nest.

  "Oh, Jesus-" gasped someone. "I don't need this-" He started scrambling out. The two men on either side of him looked uncertain

  Duke didn't give the team a chance to be scared. He jumped down into the pit with them and started snapping orders. "Come on-let's get that bastard onto the mat. Come on, move it!" He grabbed the soldier who'd started to panic and pushed him straight at the worm. "You're riding up with it, Gomez. Thanks for volunteering." Gomez kept moving in the direction of Duke's shove. It was safer.

  "Come on! Move that mat! Pull it under! Under- goddammit! Under! Good! All right-" Duke pointed up at the communications tech, still bellowing, and waving his arm like a semaphore. "Down-! Bring it down!" And then back to the squad again. "All right! Let's get those bars out! Let's get those cables attached! Now! Goddammit! Now! Let's move!"

  The pit squad moved like demons then, detaching the cables from the bars and reattaching them to the canvas faster than Duke could swear. They pulled the bars out from under the worm and backed quickly out of the way. The chopper lifted then-just a bit, to bring the edges of the canvas up-and the worm was strapped into its sling. Two of the bars were slid through the straps then to seal the worm into a steel and canvas cocoon and four more cables were attached to the ends of these. It was for its protection as much as ours. We didn't want the creatures banging loose around the inside of the chopper. The worms would be kept strapped and hanging the whole trip.

  "All right! Take it up!" Duke hollered and waved. The clatter of the chopper drowned his words and the wind whipped at his face. He didn't even watch, he was already turning to the next worm. "What are you slobs waiting for? Let's get those bars under-"

  The other three worms were easier-but not much.

  At least now we knew that when we separated them, they'd react-but they wouldn't wake up. We could handle that. The team worked faster now

  The chopper hovered overhead, growling and rumbling, and we lifted the worms one by one into its massive cargo bay. The big creatures sagged ominously in the creaking slings.

  It was a terrifying job.

  The wind was rising and the chopper began to pitch and slide sideways in the air. I wondered if we were going to have to return without all four-but the pilot turned the ship into the wind and told us to keep going. Whoever she was, she was good.

  Once-the worm in the sling was banged against the side of the nest; it moaned in its sleep, a dark purple rumble of despair.

  The pit squad turned and looked with wild expressions on their faces. The monster chirruped like a crying woman. The sound of it was devastating. Suddenly, this creature was an object of pity. Then the worm cleared the nest wall and rose swiftly into the air-and Duke was pointing and waving again.

  Papa worm was last. As the big creature came rising up out of the ground, the afternoon sun struck highlights off its bright red fur. It shimmered with a thousand flickering colors-it looked like a heavenly pink aura. I couldn't help but marvel-it was the most beautiful color I'd ever seen....

  The creature l
ifted into the sky like a big pink blimp. I followed it all the way up. It disappeared into the belly of the chopper and the giant black doors of the machine slid shut with a whump.

  Duke signaled the tech, the tech said something into his microphone, and the chopper whirred noisily off southward.

  "All right," he said. "Let's go home and watch TV. Is T. J. going to tell Stephanie about the missing robot or not?"

  FIVE

  STEPHANIE STAYED in Hong Kong for an emergency meeting with the Chinese ambassador, so T. J. didn't tell her about the robot. Grant found out who the baby's father really was, and confronted Karen with the lie. The robot remained missing.

  Obviously, we made it back in time.

  Toward the end of the show, an orderly came and tapped Duke on the shoulder. He got up and left quietly. I noticed, but didn't follow. If he needed me, he'd let me know.

  A few minutes later, the orderly came back and tapped me on the shoulder. "Duke wants to see you."

  I thanked her and went up to the office. Duke looked unhappy. He was sitting at his terminal, staring glumly at the screen. His hands were hesitating above the keyboard.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  He didn't answer; he just punched up another display and studied it sourly.

  I walked around behind him and looked over his shoulder. He was sorting through the list of targets for the mission we'd just completed.

  "Those are the alternate targets, Duke. Are you planning another mission?"

  He shook his head. "Just looking." He lifted his hands away from the keyboard and stopped. "I don't see what we could have done different. We made the best choice we could." He swiveled to look at me. "Or do you disagree?"

  "No," I said. "We chose the right nest." I stood there before him, waiting.

  He said, "What do you think about the Lake Hattie site? Would you recommend going in there?"

  "You are planning another mission. What happened? Our worms died from the gas?"

  "I wish," Duke said bitterly. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "No. The gas wore off early. They woke up in the chopper. Thirty minutes short of Denver."