Graves went into immediate action when he heard this. He walked among the two units worth of troops and ordered everyone to shut down all non-essential systems.

  While he did that, I turned to Natasha. “You can’t reprogram the posts?”

  “I don’t think so, the problem is they’re built to synch-up with a certain set of posts just like these—not our brand. They’re not compatible with galactic units.”

  I suddenly got it. She’d tried to link the gateway to another set of posts we knew about, but they wouldn’t connect. And we didn’t know where Rigel had their posts.

  “We can’t risk changing anything,” I said. “We have to go through right now and test them.”

  “James—”

  “Switch them on.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to. I’m not having you walk through. We can send drones. We can—”

  “What’s the damned point, girl?” I asked. “It doesn’t matter. We have to go through them in force the minute we turn those on, before they can react. They won’t be expecting it, and there’s never going to be a better moment than right now. What if they dismantle the far end? We’ll be stuck down here forever.”

  Natasha touched my arm. “Winslade might send more men. He might send a rescue team.”

  “Sure. That’s why he made sure we ported down here with near-empty batteries. He’s got the best of intentions.”

  She pursed her lips, unable to argue further. Everyone knew Winslade could be pretty wicked when he felt like it.

  Calling for Harris, I hand-picked a team. Cursing and snarling, they geared up and stood ready. Harris looked at me like I was dog shit on his boots, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it. He knew better by now.

  Graves came along and saw what we were doing. He nodded in approval. “I can see you’ve figured out what my next order was going to be. That’s the way to take the initiative, McGill.”

  The gateway sputtered, buzzed, then glowed into life.

  “It doesn’t like our power frequencies,” Natasha explained. “But I think it’s working. The indicators say it’s connected—to somewhere.”

  Nobody gave me a goodbye kiss, not even Natasha. Graves tossed me a salute, at least, before I marched my team in-between those glimmering posts.

  There’s something different about traveling into the unknown. Teleporting in any form often terrified people who were new to the process, but for me, the gateways were the worst. If you let your mind dwell on the complete insanity of what you were doing, a man might even balk before stepping through.

  In this case, we didn’t even know where we were going to end up. Well sir, I’m here to tell you that’s a special kind of demon to face up to.

  The only good thing about using gateway posts was the more or less instant nature of the process. I will forever hold the opinion that gateways are entirely different animals when compared to teleport suits, although most find the gateways easier to deal with. One reason, I supposed, was that while teleporting you were somewhat aware. That semi-awareness felt pretty freaky to many folks. You typically spent about a second in limbo for each lightyear traveled, unable to breathe, but conscious.

  Not so with the gateway posts. When you stepped into that bug-zapper, you were disintegrated—I don’t care what the techs call it—and later reassembled someplace else. With teleportation, there was a feeling of being in a strange, altered state, while with the gateways, well, you didn’t exist at all for a time. I preferred the former.

  As a natural outcome of this experience, the hardest part was taking that actual fateful step. Many people say it’s like parachuting off a cliff, or out of an aircraft. But to me, it’s more like stepping into the maw of a volcano, trusting some nerd who’s patiently assured you they’ll build a new James McGill at the summit of another volcano on the far side of the planet.

  Steeling myself and showing none of my concerns, I marched into that disintegration field like I was taking a stroll down Main Street. I didn’t glance back to see if my troops were following me, or give them orders to do so. Instead, I presumed they would follow my example. Sometimes, that kind of leadership worked best.

  Stepping out on the far side, I was surprised I wasn’t gunned down or chopped apart immediately. The place was actually kind of quiet.

  Two gateway posts hummed behind me, and I soon was bumped in the butt by the next guy. I’d naturally paused to have a look around.

  Stepping aside and yanking the heavy trooper forward, I admonished him to seek and destroy. He did so after only a split-second of wonderment

  The chamber wasn’t occupied, but it was freaky. Hanging from the ceiling were suits—bear-sized suits. They hung like empty water skins all over the roof, which was natural and uneven.

  Running my lights this way and that, I thought maybe I was looking at another cave. Could it be we’d been transported to some other dank cistern in the guts of Glass World?

  Then, I noticed something different. It was the ceiling, between the hanging suits. It was shiny and sparkling, like a frosted spider web that covered the earth.

  Then I knew. I’d seen that kind of formation before. We were inside a Vulbite hive. A tunnel complex where they lived in semi-darkness and tunneled deep into the crust of the planet.

  More importantly—we weren’t on Glass World any longer.

  -58-

  Long ago, I’d fought on Dark World, a strange planet occupied by the Vulbites. As far as we humans knew, it was their homeworld.

  Most of the Vulbites living there dwelled underground. They lived like termites, or ants, in vast mounds that were hollow inside and sometimes as deep as five kilometers below the surface.

  Then there was the roof… that’s what really convinced me. The roof of the tunnels wasn’t just earth, which wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the fantastic weight of a Vulbite hive. The dirt was infused with resins—probably spit of some kind—that came from the Vulbites themselves. I knew the look of it, and the feel of the gravity here on this planet…

  “This is Dark World…” I said to myself, almost whispering the words.

  I’d been on the Vulbite home planet a few times before. It was there that I’d found Abigail’s body the first time. It was there that I’d met up with Vulbite cities, rather than just fighting them in arenas on Blood World.

  More importantly and recently, I’d been shown the planet by Claver-X. He’d done so as if imparting a great gift of wisdom. He’d shown me how the Vulbites and the bears from Rigel were rebuilding their space factory to churn out ships and annihilate Earth.

  “McGill!” Harris said, shaking my arm. “Snap out of it, Centurion! We’re inside some kind of tunnel. This is no way out!”

  I looked at him. He was worried, angry and aiming his rifle every which-way.

  “We’re fine,” I said. “There’s no one in here right now.”

  “It’s some kind of storage room,” he said, not hearing me. “It must be.”

  “Yeah. They store finished suits here—but where is the factory that spins these amazing pieces of armor? Go find it.”

  “Yes sir,” Harris grunted, and he advanced into the room.

  He led a full squadron of troops which fanned out, shining their lights everywhere.

  “Remember, watch for stealthers,” I called out.

  Carlos was our bio and the only non-combatant in the squad. I grabbed him and spun him around.

  “Holy shit!” he said, wide-eyed. “Damn, McGill, I thought you were a Vulbite jumping on my back or something.”

  “Nah. They’d never eat you first, they don’t like their meat to be so well-marbled.”

  “Har-dee, har, har,” he said. “If I’m such a fat-ass that not even these bugs want to—”

  “Listen up,” I said, halting his tirade, “I want you to go back through the gateway and tell Graves we’ve reached a Vulbite underground hive on Dark World. He can decide what he wants to do next.”

  Carlos brightened. “You’re letting me out of purgatory? Wow, man, that makes me feel kinda sorry about all the things I said about you today. All of the other days, too. It was especially uncool of me to—”

  I kicked him in the ass, which sent him staggering. I was wearing heavy armor, and he wasn’t, so he got the message instantly. He rushed back through the gateway. Hearing that familiar buzz and snap—it was enough to make a man’s skin crawl.

  “Couldn’t take Carlos anymore, huh?” Harris asked me. “I don’t blame you. This chamber seems to be clear by the way, sir.”

  “Let’s search these side-tunnels next. There has to be more to this place than this.”

  “Good idea,” Harris said, then he proceeded to stand there, looking warily around over the sights of his rifle.

  After considering giving him a kick in the ass as well, I pointed toward the nearest exit. “Take a team down there. Probe every hole, no more than a hundred meters down.”

  “What? Are you serious? I thought you were reporting this find to Graves and waiting for back-up.”

  “That’s an order, Adjunct.”

  Harris grumbled, but he moved off and angrily dragged a few of his subordinates with him. All of this might have been considered a breach of discipline in most legions, but old Varus lived by special rules. We allowed griping, as long as orders were followed. This was partly because assignments in hellholes like this one so often led to violent death. It was generally believed that troops who could be assigned to suicide missions over and over again ought to be able to at least complain about it.

  I didn’t have long to wait. Harris and his sidekicks came rushing back out of the first tunnel like panicked gophers.

  “McGill!” Harris called in a harsh whisper. “They know we’re here! I saw them forming up a team about fifty meters that way.”

  “Two men, stand to either side of each hole. Blast them when they come through!”

  They rushed to follow my orders. There were seven holes, however, almost too many for one squad to cover. I took the center, watching all of them at once.

  Harris whispered over tactical to everyone. “Mouths shut and lights out! This is it, people!”

  The chamber dimmed and soon the only light was coming from the coruscating colors of the gateway posts. Silver, pink and teal, the posts gleamed in the dark. There was nothing we could do about that other than shut them down, which I didn’t want to do.

  There was a spate of cursing and gunfire near one of the tunnels. Each of the tunnel openings was only about a meter in diameter, and something had popped out on our side, surprising two trigger-happy humans.

  The Vulbites were quickly cut down. They flopped and oozed for a moment, then everything quieted.

  “Do you think—?” Harris whispered to me, but I never heard the rest of it.

  The bodies were yanked back down into the depths. The troops fired down into the darkness again, like panicked kids, but I knew they weren’t hitting anything.

  “Conserve ammo,” I said calmly.

  The firing stopped. Everyone was breathing in puffs, eyes staring until they stung. No one said a word.

  Inside our suits, it began to get hot. Dark World was a tropical planet, and even this far down it seemed humid and close.

  “Where the hell is Graves?” Harris asked me on command chat.

  “Maybe he figures his chances are better on his side of the gateway.”

  “He can’t do that! That’s abandonment, and it’s pure bullshit!”

  I opened my mouth to tell him to shut up again, when the situation suddenly changed. A female regular in armor over to my right suddenly pitched forward onto her face. After a moment, I realized her legs had been chopped off just below the knees.

  “Stealthers!” I called out on the general channel. “Hose down every tunnel!”

  Rapid fire burst out everywhere. Caught from two sides, Vulbites screeched and lashed out. Two more troops died, but then the Vulbites retreated, dragging away most of their dead.

  “How many did you see in that cavern, Harris?” I asked.

  “I don’t know… maybe thirty?”

  I counted the tunnels again. There were seven, and Vulbites were sprouting out of all of them. I estimated there had to be at least a hundred of the enemy, with more joining them all the time.

  There wasn’t a chance we could survive this for long. Soon, we’d be down to one man per tunnel. After that, we wouldn’t be able to cover them all. In short, we were doomed.

  Walking among the hanging suits, I plucked several from the ceiling. They appeared to be sticky and covered in a foamy mass.

  “That’s disgusting, sir,” Harris told me.

  “Yeah?” I threw a suit at him, then another. I began plucking down more. “These are partly processed. We’re taking them back for analysis.”

  “Back through the gateway?”

  “Yep.”

  Eagerly, he set about grabbing every suit he could. There was another rush by the Vulbites, and we lost three more of our guys. Soon, there would be more tunnels than we had men.

  “We’re bugging out on three,” I said. “One, two…”

  Before we could rush for the gateway, however, it began to sizzle and pop. Troops began coming in, with Leeson in the lead. The buzzing and popping was continuous. A full squad of reinforcements had soon assembled.

  “It’s about damned time!” Harris shouted as Leeson’s team advanced. “Help us guard these holes!”

  “Vulbites?” Leeson asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Leeson ordered his group forward, and soon the all the entrances were guarded again. We waited tensely for the next wave.

  “Why are we guarding seven tunnels?” Leeson asked. “Let’s block-up some of them.”

  “We’re out of grenades,” I told him.

  “I brought some of my sappers.” Leeson soon had two men breaking out explosives kits. They had drone-driven automatics, the kind that could crawl and optimally place themselves for coordinated detonation.

  Leeson pointed at the various entrances. “If we close all of these, they’ll just tunnel a new one. But if we give them one easy route, they’ll keep using it, and we can keep popping them every time.”

  I nodded. “Do it. Seal six of them.”

  His sappers quickly placed crawlers on the ground near the holes and pecked out instructions on their tappers. The drones buzzed away and vanished.

  “We’ll seal each tunnel up tighter than a duck’s ass,” Leeson assured us.

  Carlos, who had come through with the reinforcements, gave me a puzzled look. “Um… what’s so tight about a duck’s ass, McGill?”

  “I guess because it’s in water… you know.”

  “Figures you’d get it!” Carlos laughed and shook his head like I was the biggest hick on Glass World—which may or may not be true.

  Normally, I’d have become annoyed with him, but he’d brought through desperately needed help, so I gave him a pass.

  “We’ve got two wounded,” I told him. “Patch them up.”

  He hustled away and a moment later a familiar cry went up. “Fire in the hole!”

  The dirt under our feet jumped, and dust shot out of six of the openings. A roar of crashing earth met our ears.

  Just in case, I posted one man at each of the six caved-in tunnels and circled the rest around the last, and largest, opening. Everyone took up their positions and waited.

  We breathed and sweated. No one talked for about a minute.

  At last, the Vulbite rush came. This time they weren’t fooling around. They led their charge with a throng of tiny robots.

  I recognized these devices in a moment. They were the same little drones that had suicided on our boots back on Glass World.

  We showered them with bolts, but a few got through. One man was left howling, but he shut up about thirty seconds later when he bled out.

  “They’ve called up reinforcements as well,” Harris surmised. “They’ll be sending in armored bears soon. We can’t just sit here in the dark until they wipe us out. There are too many of them.”

  His words were unwelcome, but they were also damningly correct. No one watching this struggle unfold would come to the conclusion that we were winning. We were under siege, and it was only a matter of time until we were overrun.

  “I’m going back through the gateway,” I said. “Leeson, you’re in charge until I get back.”

  “The centurion is bugging out!” I heard someone whisper over an open mic.

  “That’s not true!” I boomed, turning on them. “I’m going to get more help, just like Carlos did. But this time, I think we need someone with brains.”

  Wishing them luck, I stepped between the gateway posts and vanished.

  A moment later, I walked into the underground vaults on Glass World. Graves was surprised to see me.

  “Did you find a way out, McGill?”

  “No, but I found these.”

  Graves immediately stepped up to me. “You’ve found something?”

  I held up a rack of bear-sized suits we’d pulled from the sticky ceiling. I grinned hugely, like I’d discovered spun gold.

  He frowned at them, poked at them, then batted them out of my hand. They crumpled on the chamber floor.

  “What the hell is this crap?” he demanded. “That’s not a factory, or a documented process. That’s a few more bear suits. We’ve got plenty of those!”

  “Not so, sir,” I said picking one up and dusting it off. “See these crystals? The whole suit sparkles with threads like silk. These suits are incomplete. We think the Vulbites make the suits, sir. They do it like they’re spinning cocoons.”

  “What do you take me for, McGill? Are you saying these moron bugs can make some kind of spider webbing that turns into armor?”

  “Sort of…. yeah.”

  Graves picked the suit up and examined it closely, poking at it. Then he called for Natasha to examine my find.

  “This is different,” she admitted. “It’s a half-processed suit. They’re made in layers, fine layers, then we believe they’re cured with heat. This suit hasn’t been cured yet—and yes, it does look like spider-silk is holding it all together.