“How did we get to hell without a road sign?” Rollins said, his voice deep and scratchy.

  The creature seemed to notice them. It lurched forward, its large shape slipping from the shadows and revealing a grotesque alien form.

  19

  Hayden

  The alien was nearly the height of the tunnel, its full form challenging to discern in the darkness. It seemed as though it was composed of tentacles, dozens of which spread out from a central mass, forcing it to remain bent in the confines of the passage. Its flesh was slimy and moist, mottled and peeling. The end of each appendage featured an individual wide mouth of sharp teeth beneath a series of multi-faceted eyes. There were more eyes on the central mass as well, along with a primary maw that could easily swallow any of them whole.

  Hayden wasn’t easy to frighten. This thing terrified him.

  “Oh, hell no,” Rollins said, pulling to a stop. He didn’t wait for the order to start shooting, immediately unleashing bolt after bolt from his plasma rifle at the creature.

  The bolts lit up the tunnel, the sudden flashes disrupting everyone’s night vision. Hayden cursed as his eyes tried to adjust, his visor bathed in pure white and hiding the monster from view. He could hear its groaning increase in volume as the plasma struck it, but he couldn’t see if the attack was having any effect.

  “Hold your fire until you can see!” he shouted through the comm. He could still see the red outline of the creature on his HUD, the sensors trying to keep up with the movement of its tentacles.

  Rollins screamed, and Hayden watched his designation turn orange, indicating he was wounded. Impatient, Hayden grabbed his helmet and ripped it from his head, tossing it aside and spinning toward the stricken Ranger. One of the tentacles had reached out and grabbed Rollins, wrapping around him while the mouth at the end was clamped down on his arm, his combat armor keeping it from shearing the limb off.

  Hayden fired plasma into the tentacle, satisfied when the flesh melted away beneath the gas and the appendage relaxed. His victory was short lived. He caught movement from the corner of his eye, just barely dropping beneath one of the tentacles as it tried to scoop him up.

  “Fire at will!” he heard Hicks shout, the helmets finally adjusting. The Chief Ranger started shooting, targeting the creature’s central mass.

  It reacted immediately, wrapping a pair of tentacles around its face and blocking the bolts. The weapon was able to hurt it, digging deep gouges in the limbs that began to leak bodily fluids, but how much damage could each tentacle absorb?

  The creature heaved itself toward them, using some tentacles for locomotion and sending half a dozen forward at the Rangers. They shifted their fire to match, pounding the limbs with plasma as they tried to back away.

  It still had Rollins and was pulling it back toward its gaping primary mouth. Hayden charged forward, continuing to fire at the appendage, each bolt taking another piece out of the wet flesh.

  Two more tentacles came at Hayden, dropping from over his head. He dove aside as they hit the ground with a familiar wet slap, He rolled back to his feet, switching his plasma rifle from bolt mode to stream. He held down the trigger, a blast of superheated gas spreading three meters out ahead of him and into the tentacles.

  The alien gurgled loudly in response, nearly every tentacle on the thing suddenly reaching for Hayden. He swung the rifle across his body, keeping them back while the Rangers blasted the creature with enough firepower to take out a tank.

  The monster’s limbs began to fall away, detaching as they became too damaged and before they could negatively impact the rest of the creature. Four of them fell dead in a matter of seconds.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Rollins screamed again, the tentacle holding him nearing the monster’s primary mouth. Hayden didn’t give up. He kept charging, switching to a single-handed grip on his rifle and pulling one of his revolvers. He aimed and fired, sending bullets into the tentacle clutching Rollins.

  “Let go, you son of a bitch,” he hissed.

  His plasma rifle ran out of fuel, sputtering out.

  The creature didn’t hesitate, its tentacles closing in on him again. He punched the first one that reached for him, knocking it aside. Then he tossed his revolver from his right hand to his left, closing his right fist. The Axon blade extended from his augment, and he slashed it through the next tentacle to get too close, cutting the head of it completely off.

  Rollins screamed one last time as the creature dropped his body into its mouth and he disappeared.

  “Noooo!” Hayden cried, slashing another tentacle off. A second grabbed his ankle and pulled, yanking him off his feet. It lifted him into the air, where two more reached for him with gaping mouths.

  Plasma bolts hit the limbs, forcing them off course while Hayden curled up and slashed the one that had grabbed him. He fell back to the ground, the crash absorbed by his armor. He rolled sideways as another limb tried to smash him, and then stood up in front of the creature. It reared up in front of him, pressing against the top of the tunnel and filling the entire thing. More tentacles reached for him, and he noticed it had left its central mass unprotected.

  “Hit the center!” he shouted, firing at its mouth. His bullets vanished into its throat, and it began screaming much louder, clearly in pain.

  The Rangers reacted instantly, shifting their aim from the tentacles to its head. Dozens of bolts dug into it before it could defend itself. Blood and ichor poured from its mouth.

  A number of appendages reached for Hayden in a last ditch effort to grab him. He punched and clawed them away, their speed diminished, the monster finally dying.

  The Rangers advanced toward it with renewed hope, pounding it with plasma.

  It howled one final time and died.

  20

  Hayden

  Hayden wrinkled his face. The smell from the fresh carcass was nearly unbearable, made more so because he knew where it was coming from.

  He turned back to Hicks, who was in the process of changing the cell on his plasma rifle.

  “Is everyone else okay?” he asked.

  Hicks nodded. “I think I’m going to have nightmares for weeks, but I’m good otherwise.”

  “Sheriff,” Jackson said, holding his helmet out to him.

  Hayden took it and slid it back on. The network reconnected a few seconds later. He felt like someone punched him in the gut when he saw Rollins’ red designation.

  Another dead deputy. Damn it.

  “Where did that thing come from?” Ivanov said. It was the first time she had spoken since the Rangers had arrived.

  “It’s Relyeh,” Hayden said. “Part of the Hunger.”

  “How do you know?” Hicks asked.

  “Because it isn’t from Earth, and it isn’t an Intellect.”

  “What is it doing underground?”

  “Good question. We need to find out.”

  “Sheriff,” Ivanov said. She had his plasma rifle.

  He accepted it too, dropping the spent cell out of it and replacing it with a fresh one. “Thanks.”

  He approached the central mass of the creature. He didn’t want to look into its mouth, but he needed to know if there was enough left of Rollins to bury.

  There wasn’t.

  “Rollins?” Hicks asked.

  Hayden shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “You did your best to save him. More than any of us could have done. We’re lucky to only lose one against that thing.”

  Hayden nodded, though it wasn’t much comfort. He climbed over the prone tentacles, getting past the carcass to continue along the tunnel, the Rangers following behind him. The trife were all gone, having fled during the fighting. The path ahead was clear.

  “Solino, what’s our relative position?” Hayden asked.

  “You’re almost directly under the front of that building,” Solino replied. “The door is gone, but it has a reinforced metal seal still intact behind it.”

  Interesting. What kind of building was this that it was armored against intrusion? “Do you see any windows?”

  “Now that you mention it, not until about eight meters up. And they’re all still intact. No sign of squatters or scavengers getting inside.”

  Very interesting. “Bahk, I want you to stay in position here to maintain the network link to Deputy Solino.”

  “Roger, Sheriff,” Bahk replied.

  Hayden led the rest of the Rangers forward at a quick walk, eager to figure out what this was all about.

  He didn’t have to go far. The tunnel ended fifty meters later, at a metal blast door that had been torn open by the tentacled Relyeh as though it were made of paper.

  “Jailbreak?” Jackson ventured, eying the damage.

  “Seems like it,” Hayden replied. “But unless Proxima scientists are hiding inside, why would that thing have waited two hundred years to break out?”

  He approached the ravaged metal. The hole was a lot smaller than the creature, which must have compressed itself to slide through. He stepped inside and found himself standing in what looked like an airlock. The room was filthy from the passage of time. Dozens of small nozzles lined the walls and ceiling, and there was a drain in the center of the floor. A second seal sat directly in front of him, also punctured.

  “What do you think?” Hicks asked, stepping through the hole into the room.

  “Looks like it was intended to sanitize people on their way through this door.”

  “To keep something from getting out or to keep something from getting in?”

  “Good question. ” Let’s go find out,” Hayden said, waiting for the others to step through the seal.

  Hayden was impressed by the way they were handling the situation, staying focused despite what they had just seen and despite the death of their squadmate. Hicks and Rico had trained them well.

  “Stay tight. Stay alert,” he said, leading them through the second door. It fed out into a cement corridor lined with overhead LED bulbs. A trail of slime was visible on the floor, though it seemed too small to be from the creature they had just killed. Even so, it gave them a starting point.

  Hayden followed the trail down the corridor to an intersection, where it turned right. He did the same. The next hallway had a few doors along the sides, all of them made of rounded iron hatches as if they were on a naval ship instead of in a building. The Rangers tested the doors as they passed, pushing them open to reveal individual offices, most of which were completely bare save for a simple desk and chair. No computer, no paperwork, no personal effects.

  “Seems like the place was abandoned,” Hicks said.

  “Probably during the war,” Hayden replied. “Maybe when the ships left Earth?”

  “A reasonable assumption.”

  The marks from the Relyeh went to the right again, down another corridor, and then turned right a third time at a stairwell. The door to the steps had been ripped off its hinges, and it was resting on the floor below.

  Hayden started down. He drew his revolvers when he reached the halfway point, slowing to approach the lower level more cautiously.

  He made it to the bottom of the stairs, guns out and ready to shoot. He was in a large, tiled room. A laboratory of some kind. Computer terminals and scientific machinery filled most of the open room, their specific purpose unclear. Marked containers filled a pair of shelves in the corner, while what looked like a freezer door rested against the far wall.

  Hayden looked down, finding the trail of ichor again and tracing it across the room to a hole in the wall, about the same size as the punctures in the seals further out.

  “This is like a horror movie,” Hicks said.

  There was a collection of old movies and players in Sanisco that the residents were free to come and use. Hayden rarely had time to participate, but Ginny had told him about a few. It did remind him of one of the films she had described.

  The room beyond the wall was cool, as though it had been insulated and frozen at one point, but the loss of power had given it time to thaw. How recent was the loss of power? Had the trife come this way because they could still feel the residual radiation? This wouldn’t be the first location to house its own micro-reactor. The devices were common enough, especially in the wake of the trife invasion.

  The darkness of the facility made it difficult to see into the space. The night vision was doing its best, but it still required a minimum of light to enhance. Hayden could only see about a meter into the room, to the edge of something resting on the floor.

  “Time to switch to lamps, I think,” he said.

  “Roger that,” Hicks replied. It was important to keep the switch synced so that no one blinded anyone else with the sudden light. “On three. Two. One. Now.”

  Hayden squinted his eyes a few times to activate the light built into his helmet. The system handled the changeover with minimal interruption, the visor gradually filtering the new light until he had a clear, color view of the room ahead.

  And the creature crawling toward them.

  21

  Hayden

  Hayden took a step back as the creature lunged at the hole. It was a match to the one they had downed in the tunnel outside, though it was only about one-tenth the size. A baby? Or had the one in the tunnel grown that fast? By feeding?

  Either way, it was in the air and launching toward his chest. He squeezed his right hand closed, getting it up in front of him. Half a dozen tentacles latched onto his arm with their teeth, causing a blue glow from the energy shield beneath. Immediately sensing it couldn’t bite into his arm, the creature used it to pull itself forward to his helmet, wrapping itself around and trying to yank it off.

  “Damn it,” Hayden cursed, grabbing the monster and trying to pull it away. Its body was slick, making it hard to keep a grip on it.

  “Hold still,” Hicks said. He put his plasma rifle against the side of the creature’s central mass and pulled the trigger. The bolt went clear through it, and it fell limp.

  Jackson helped Hayden quickly remove it from his helmet. “Shit, Sheriff,” she said. “It cracked the material.”

  “Another few seconds, it would have cracked my skull,” Hayden replied. “Thanks for the save.”

  “Anytime,” Hicks said.

  Jackson tossed the creature aside. Hayden crouched to get a better look in the hole. His stomach churned when he saw the web of hardened slime that lined the walls, ceiling and floor. There were bulging pockets throughout the wet mess, two of which had been cracked, spilling slime and aliens to the ground.

  “Disgusting,” Hicks said, looking past him.

  “We need to burn it,” Hayden replied. “Jackson, Bahk, you’re up.”

  “Roger, Sheriff.”

  The two Rangers moved to the hole, setting their plasma rifles to stream mode. Hayden and Hicks retreated a couple of steps.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  The woman’s voice came from behind Hayden. He spun around, hand grabbing a revolver, drawing it and aiming it at the speaker’s head, all in one fluid motion. She was middle-aged, a little heavy, wrinkled and gray. She wore thick horned-rimmed glasses, a black skirt, white blouse, low-heeled pumps and a gray lab coat. She looked like a scientist, but there was something off about her.

  “Who are you?” Hayden asked. And why had the ATCS allowed her to sneak up on them?

  “I’m their mother,” she replied, smiling. “They are my Children.”

  “Congratulations,” Hicks deadpanned, his rifle trained on her.

  “If you kill them, you’ll make me very angry,” she continued. “Do you want to make me angry?”

  “Undecided,” Hayden said. “Which Relyeh Ancient do you serve?”

  The woman seemed surprised by the question, raising her eyebrows as her smile diminished. “So you know. Interesting.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “The one I serve has been waiting. We have all been waiting. The path is clear. The pieces in place. The Children prepared.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve already killed one of mine.”

  “It was trying to kill me.”

  “The Children will test humankind. The worthy will survive. The remainder will become fodder to our hunger. You have proven yourself worthy.”

  “Good on me,” Hayden said. “This is my planet. You, your Children, and your Master aren’t welcome here.”

  “Is it war you seek, then? It is war you cannot win.”

  Hayden held back his emotion. He didn’t know what this was all about. This was the last thing he expected his day to turn into. Know your enemy. The only thing he knew about these creatures was that they were Relyeh, and that meant they had to die. Could he tell Jackson and Bahk to go ahead without bringing hell down on the UWT and his family…again?

  On the other hand, could he walk away from this and leave them to emerge? The first one had grown ten times its size in a matter of hours.

  “I don’t seek war,” he replied. “I’d be happy to negotiate a peace settlement.”

  The woman’s smile returned. “We are the Hunger. We do not negotiate. You are worthy. You will await the coming of the Master, and then you will submit. There is glory in serving the Master. Accolades without end.”

  “What about my wife?” Hayden asked. “My children?”

  “The worthy will survive. The remainder will become fodder to our hunger.”

  “Sheriff?” Bahk asked. “What do you want to do?”

  Hayden stared at the woman. There was still something about her that didn’t seem right. He glanced at Hicks, spotting his eyes through his helmet. He saw it too.

  “It sounds to me like you’ve already got your intentions,” Hayden said. “And they aren’t going to change whether I burn your Children or not.”

  “But you will survive as a servant of the Master.”