As we reached the edge of the grassy lands, the ground changed dramatically. Large natural crystalline formations loomed. Some were hundreds of meters high, thrust up at angles to meet the sky. Each mountain, or shard, wasn’t transparent, not exactly. You could see a meter or so deep into the stuff. It was like gazing into a massive chunk of agate, aquamarine or a cloudy emerald.

  For the most part, the crystals were colored liquid blue or green. There were dark streaks and cloudy white sections. I could only wonder what one of these mountainous gemstones might be worth back on Earth.

  “Keep moving,” I ordered as men stopped to fill their pockets with broken chunks of colored crystal. “It’s just glass. It’s worthless.”

  I was lying, of course. These massive gemstones were semi-precious at least. If anyone managed to make off with a chunk that was laced with stardust, it might even be priceless.

  But it was also heavy. I couldn’t afford to let my men weigh themselves down—so I lied.

  They grumbled, but they tossed aside the pretty rocks they’d picked up. We marched under the shadows of the great crystals. They soon swallowed us up, and we were forced to filter in-between them like ants seeking a picnic.

  It was hotter—that’s the first thing I noticed. The massive crystals focused blazing twists of light on the rocks between them, and heated them up. The ground smoked in places, and it even seemed to move when—

  An explosion crumped nearby, and I saw a single flying body, twisting in the air. The corpse flew overhead and landed in the grassy fields behind us.

  “Crawlers!” shouted a soldier up ahead—I thought it was one of Harris’ lights.

  Someone had found a trip-wire, or a crawling smart-mine. Surviving troops threw themselves this way and that, diving for cover.

  Taking cover didn’t work too well when the explosives were crawling toward you, seeking targets. Seconds later, a dozen more blasts went off. Our men fell back, some dragging mangled limbs.

  “Crawling mines, sir!” Harris said, coming close and breathing hard. He’d already led his lights back to Barton’s line of heavies. “They’re crawling up right out of the ground to meet us!”

  Graves probably would have ordered him right back into the crystals, suggesting he could make himself useful if he could fall on two of them at once—but I’d never been that kind of officer.

  “Kivi!” I shouted, making a sweeping wave for the specialist platoon to advance.

  The specialists were led by Leeson. They’d been skulking in the rear, holding their belcher tubes and other gear with tense hands.

  Kivi rushed to my side, and I ordered her to send in a wave of buzzers and the creepy-crawly drones that looked like centipedes. She released them in a rush, and we watched as they wriggled and skittered into the cracks between the giant crystals.

  One second passed. Two more seconds, then boom!

  First one explosion, then two more, went up in rapid succession.

  “What a shit-show this is!” Harris complained. “Helpless miners my ass, they’ve booby-trapped this place to hell and back.”

  I had to agree. I reported the contact to Graves, and he seemed unsurprised. All up and down our advancing lines similar stories were flooding in. You could hear the thumps of small explosions and see puffs of sparkling earth everywhere.

  “McGill,” Graves told me, “this rapid advance Turov has ordered is your fault.”

  “Huh? How so, sir?”

  “We could have spent a full day planning and scouting, but no, you had to go and start a panic.”

  “That’s not really fair, Primus, I—”

  “Whatever, shut up. Since you’re the one with all the bright ideas, I’ve got new orders for you. Figure out how to penetrate those crystals and get through the barrier with at least one of your troops left alive on the far side. If you can make it about a kilometer deep, our intel indicates you’ll reach the mine entrance itself. We’ll set that as the goal line.”

  “Uh…” I said. “Are these special orders just for sport, sir?”

  “Negatory. I’m sending in one unit from every cohort. You just happen to be one of my favorite centurions today.”

  “That’s very comforting, sir. 3rd Unit won’t disappoint.”

  “See that you don’t.”

  He was gone. I flipped my visor and rubbed my face. Just like that, he’d ordered me and my men to die hard and fast. My whole body was already coated with grit and sweat. It was making my whole head itch.

  “This is bullshit, McGill,” Harris said in a low voice. Naturally, he’d listened in and heard Graves’ orders. “You’ve got to figure a way out of this for us. Just because you—”

  “Shut up,” I said without anger. I stood and looked along my lines. Three dead in three minutes. At that rate, a kilometer was going to come hard.

  “Kivi,” I said, thumping on her helmet.

  She looked up in concern.

  “Are you having any luck detecting those smart-mines?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head. “They’re very hard to detect. No electromagnetics, no—”

  “All right, all right, I get it. Get out more of your little ground-buzzers. All you’ve got. Program them to thread a single pathway, one-man wide, into that china cabinet of breakables.”

  Without complaint, she bent to the task. She wasn’t a master like Natasha, but she was very competent these days. A decade or two of experience had done wonders.

  “Harris,” I said, turning toward him. To my surprise, I saw I was talking to his ass. He must have known I was going to assign him a duty next, because he’d suddenly seen the light and begun walking back to his light troops.

  “Get back here,” I ordered.

  He came back with poor grace and glowered at me.

  “Your light troops are going to follow the drones,” I told him. “When they’re all gone, my heavy troops will find the rest of the mines.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to find these mines?” he demanded.

  “I don’t care. Tell them to slap the ground ahead with their dicks if they have to. Move out!”

  Grumbling, Harris turned away and began abusing wide-eyed recruits. Soon, they were following Kivi’s congo-line of buzzers into the treacherous crystals.

  Graves called again, demanding to know what the holdup was. I told him we were working on it and would be moving in shortly. He didn’t curse at me, but it was a close thing.

  Looking terrified, Harris’ light troops filtered into the gloom between the crystals, probing each step ahead with their snap-rifles.

  -30-

  After Harris and his lights had vanished into the maze, I moved in with my heavies. Now that we were marching among them, the huge crystals didn’t seem so lovely. They seemed like evil, unnatural mountains. Ghostly, almost.

  Explosions, screams and gunfire echoed back to us now and then. Over time, the sounds drew closer, because the light troops were balking and their numbers were shrinking.

  “What’s the hold-up?” I demanded of Harris, who was having an ever more difficult time whipping his lights enough to keep them marching.

  “They’re about to break, sir. They need to fall back. We’ve lost half—”

  There was another echoing report—an explosion not too far ahead. A small tinkling wave of glass-like crystal slid down and crashed at my feet.

  “—we just lost Fredrickson,” Harris continued. “My men are over half gone now. I’m telling you Centurion, they’re going to break!”

  Using my HUD and my tapper, I confirmed what he’d told me. The 1st platoon was down to fifteen souls.

  “All right—stop your advance and stand in place. I’ve got another idea.”

  I contacted Sargon and ordered him to lead a group of weaponeers forward. It would be a shame to risk them, but they had much thicker armor than our lights did.

  Brushing aside lesser men, Sargon’s team marched with confidence among the crystal mountains. They spaced themselves out, six men in clanking metal suits moving deeper into the jagged peaks.

  For a time, this worked well. The smart-mines tried to get them, rushing in to detonate on heavy boots and ankles. But their weaponeer’s armor held.

  “Why didn’t you think of this in the first place?” Harris demanded.

  “Just be glad I came up with it at all—and be even more glad that it’s working. Graves would never approve this if I told him what I was up to. You don’t risk experienced men in expensive gear unless you have to.”

  Several more popping explosions were heard, and we made another hundred meters of progress.

  “Uh… McGill? Centurion sir?” Sargon buzzed in my helmet.

  “What is it, Veteran?”

  “These things are acting funny—different, I mean. They’re hopping at us now—trying to hit us higher. Pretty soon, they’ll reach our balls.”

  “Rotate the man in front to the back with each attack—and don’t worry about your balls. Gonads are purely ornamental on a weaponeer.”

  The popping strikes continued, and we marched another hundred meters. We were now easily halfway to the mine entrance. I was beginning to feel the creeping sensation of hope.

  Harris was right behind me, studying the feedback and grinning. He was really happy his team wasn’t the one being marched into the grinder anymore.

  BOOM!

  A different explosion echoed back through the glittering canyon we were walking in. This one shook the walls of vibrant crystals. Stalactites rattled and fell from above and shattered among us like bombs.

  “Sargon!” I called into my tapper. “Sargon? Report!”

  There was a buzzing, and I checked my HUD. There were two red names in his platoon now.

  “McGill,” I heard him say. “These drones are wising up. They hit us all at once, ten of them at least. That was enough to blow up Bennington and—”

  “All right, wait there. I’m coming up with Harris.”

  “Why do I need to be invited to every fiasco in town?” Harris complained bitterly, but he followed me anyway.

  We wound our way deep into the pathways and cracks until we found Sargon’s sorry team. Every armored plate they had was scarred and burned. They weren’t going to make it much farther.

  “Shit…” I said, looking over the scene. “We’re more than halfway there. It’s not that far, really. A man could run it in a few minutes.”

  “Not if his balls were missing after the first dozen steps,” Harris pointed out.

  I looked at him thoughtfully. “Speed… You’re right, Harris. That’s what we need: speed. These things are smart, they change their tactics all the time, but they aren’t fast. Certainly not faster than a running man. Harris, gather the rest of your lights. Bring them right up here to the line.”

  Reluctantly, he followed orders. In the meantime, I had my bio people pull back the wounded.

  Oddly, no smart-mines attacked us during this pause. They seemed to be programmed to react only when we were approaching the mine.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said, talking to Harris and the huddled squad of troops he had left. “You guys have done a bang-up job on this mission. You’ve gotten us halfway to the goal line. As a reward, you’re only going to have to perform one more time, then you get to withdraw to the rear lines.”

  They looked hopeful. That was sheer inexperience, of course. Harris was an old hand, so he was naturally very suspicious.

  “What’s this about a final task, sir?” he asked.

  I explained what I wanted, and the light troopers went from hopeful to horrified.

  “We’re supposed to run—but not in a single line, Centurion?” one young lady asked me. Her eyes were as big around as an owl’s at midnight.

  “That’s right. You’re going to scatter off to the sides. Everyone is to go two hundred steps, count them as you go, all in different directions. After you do that, your job is done. You can turn and run back for the exit. Do anything you want—avoid contact, flee, whatever. Just get back to the rear lines and escape this maze.”

  “I have to speak up, Centurion,” Harris said. “This mission is just sheerly unfair. These troops have gone through a lot. Half of them are dead, but us officers are going to watch these sorry bastards risk it all in a deadly charge?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head at him. “That’s not how it’s going to be at all.” My finger raised up and suddenly stabbed at his chest. “You’re going with them, Adjunct. Now, move out!”

  Part of the key to issuing insane suicidal orders was not letting the troops have too long to think it over. Once I got them moving, they’d be committed, and they’d follow through.

  Sure enough, when I shouted: “Go! Go! GO!” at them, slamming my gauntlets together and shoving anyone who looked like they wanted to loiter, they began shambling off in random directions. Even Harris himself, cursing as I gave him a push, raced away to the right.

  Soon, the group was mostly invisible, having moved into pools of shade between the countless glacier-like crystals.

  Sargon walked up to stand next to me. Together we listened, breathing deeply.

  BOOM!

  BOOM-BOOM!

  Sargon winced. He’d overheard my orders, and he’d expected this result, the same as I had.

  “Should my weaponeers advance again, sir?” he asked. “I mean, this is some kind of distraction, right?”

  “No, no, hold on for ten more seconds. Tell Leeson and Barton we’re about to sprint. Tell them to get their asses up here.”

  “Sprint, sir?”

  I shushed him and listened. I also used my HUD to display the relative positions of the spreading

  A few more explosions caused Harris’ platoon to shrink further. Most of the names were now clearly red.

  “Unit!” I roared. “Advance, double-time!”

  The second two platoons rushed forward into the crystals.

  “Spread out! Spread out!”

  All around me, my panting, half-panicked men raced on separate pathways through the glassy crags. To my mind, some of us should make it.

  The light troops were coming back our way now. Running like scared jackrabbits, they raced back toward us. People collided and cursed and shoved. Then I saw Harris, he was coming back, looking happy. He’d done his two hundred steps and lived. Was that a grin of relief on his face? I thought that it was.

  BOOM!

  That explosion was close, very close. I staggered, and glassy shards rained down. Looking around, I tried to figure out if I’d been hit—but I hadn’t.

  Then I figured it out. Harris lay sprawled in front of my path. He was a twisted bloody mess. The blue-green glassy walls around him dripped gore.

  Gritting my teeth, I raced onward. By the odds, we should break through to the center zone soon.

  The explosions stopped after we’d gone perhaps three hundred meters into the maze. A few minutes after that, we broke through into the open again. As I’d hoped, the drone mines had chased the lights I’d sent off in random directions, and when my main force rushed up the middle, they couldn’t catch up.

  Bleeding, cursing and panting, we stepped into a no-man’s land. All around us stood tall, cold-looking peaks like ice sculptures. The mine itself was here, and it was a pit in the ground. A crater-like hole dug in the center of the region we’d penetrated.

  I thought about the depth of it. Could that be the answer to how this place had been created? Had some kind of asteroid landed here eons ago, a broken-off chunk of something huge and dangerous? I could only conjecture on what had made the crust of this world vomit up these crystals. Or what strange body had struck this world and laced it with collapsed dust, the way our moon had pockets of ice in many craters due to impacts with comets in the past.

  I supposed that might be the story, or it might be something stranger still. The wild variation in planets and star systems we encountered as humanity spread through space had never ceased to amaze Earth scientists. Our best xeno-biologists and astrophysicists were still learning more about the galaxy every day.

  We walked as a group to the rim of the great mine. At the bottom of the crater, a winding conical pit had been drilled. It went down in a spiral, with a road circumnavigating it seven times. At the bottom of that… I could only see a final splotch of darkness. Maybe it was a tunnel, or maybe it was a kernel of whatever it was they were digging up. I really couldn’t tell from here.

  Sargon crouched next to me on the rim of the crater. “It doesn’t look like the drones are following us,” he said. “We left them behind in the crystals.”

  “Yeah. They’re probably programmed to work that maze where they have a big advantage.”

  “What are your orders, sir?”

  I looked around the circle of crystal peaks. I didn’t see any other units filtering through—not yet. Right about then, Natasha caught up to us. She came up to me, panting.

  “James, James!”

  “What is it, girl?”

  “I think we’ve found him. I’m getting an alert message on my tapper.”

  She showed me a blinking blue block of text, but I didn’t get it. Not at all.

  “Uh… what’s that?”

  “It’s Cooper! I built a detection system, just like you wanted. It’s not only looking for these coordinates, it’s looking for aerial DNA traces as well.”

  “You don’t say… where is he?”

  We both looked around. Natasha used her tapper like a divining rod, following it around until it beeped louder.

  “There. Isn’t that—?”

  We found some bones with scraps of meat on them. It was a dead man—a dead, naked guy.

  “Looks like the Vulbites ate him or something,” I said. “They’re worse than buzzards.”

  We checked the corpse and got verification. It was Cooper all right. Lifting my tapper, I uploaded my list of confirmed dead, including Cooper. Then I contacted Graves directly.