I wake up the next morning with tightness in my temples, the previous night's dream slipping though my fingers. I can't remember the details, but the emotion lingers; a feeling of importance, of something greater that I'm missing out on, something that's quickly being washed away by the mundanity of real life. "Although, I guess it's not really that mundane anymore," I think with a chuckle. The sound makes my head pound slightly, and memories of the night before come back to me in fragments; more explicitly, the excessive amount of spirits we had been mixing with the powdered juice's from our MREs. The alcohol was strong, some sort of grain spirit, but it had an aftertaste that I couldn't quite put my finger on, which likely led to me drinking more than I should've in an attempt to nail it down. The drinking, while maybe not the smartest thing to do behind enemy lines, had helped us relax in the chilly stone ruins, something we'd all needed after the firefight with the Grineer... and Sarge.
"Probably not the healthiest way to deal, but it's a good bandaid," I think. My eyes glance over to the now currently dry patch of stone where we had "poured one out" for our field officer. Nobody had wanted to change the watch rotation, so Ko-lee's the only one currently awake, and she watches me as I slowly make my way to my feet, and over to the MREs to start prepping breakfast for the two of us. "Ready for some wildlife corralling?" she asks, a bemused grin on her lips. "Assuming Caz still wants to do it," I answer offhandedly. "He said he was," Ko-lee responds, and I grin at the memory. "Yeah, well, our esteemed squad leader said a few other things too, so I don't know how much we can hold him to his drunk ramblings."
"None of it," groans Caz, causing me and Ko-lee to chuckle. "...except the lakotay bit," he continues, after stretching and yawning. He gives a non committal shrug, before looking at me and Ko-lee. "I doubt we'll find the thing, but yours and Rease's tunnel won the coin flip. If we're headed down that direction anyways, we might as well prepare for it. Even if it is a long shot," he explains. "Hell yeah," say Rease, his head popping up from behind Caz. Caz jumps, a look of confusion on his face, before it grows red, eliciting another round of chuckles. "I guess I win the bet," Caz mumbles mumbles, very intentionally not looking at Rease.
"Money well spent," I say, digging into breakfast. Caz just rolls his eyes in response, pointedly not responding, before hopping to his feet and making his way over to the half filled bottle of spirit from the night before. I watch with morbid fascination as he takes a swig straight from the bottle, and swishes in his mouth, before swallowing it. "What the fuck?" I say, a bit more forcefully than I'd intend. Caz frowns at me, but I shoot him a look of confusion back. "You just woke up!" I point out, in defense of my exclamation. "Yeah? And I was drinking the night before," he states, like I'm the weird one. "It helps with the headache." I open my mouth to tell him that "no, it doesn't work like that," when I'm reminded of hair of the dog. "Oh, yeah, I guess that is a thing," I think to myself. "Maybe not in quite such a viscerally stomach turning way, but still."
"I'll stick with electrolytes and greasy food," I say, before turning back to my watered down juice and dry nutrient cubes. He just snorts and caps the bottle, placing it next to the three empty ones. He takes a few steps over to Ella and kneels down, gently touching her shoulder. "Mouse, you awake?" he asks, uncharacteristically softly. She opens her eyes, and looks around at the rest of us, before sitting straight up, a shocked look on her face. "I'm sorry! I turned my alarm off last night! How long was I asleep?" she says, the words spilling out half formed. "We've only been awake for a few minutes mouse," Ko-lee says to the smaller recruit. "You didn't miss anything."
"It's been an adventurous minute, actually. I don't know what you're talking about," I joke, before turning my attention back to Ella. "Also, we all owe Caz money." Rease clears his throat, a goofy grin on his face. "Correction, everyone who Caz didn't use as a pillow owes him money," I reiterate. The chatter continues for the next 20 minutes or so as we all go about our morning routine as best as we can in the ruins. As we do, I keep getting distracted by flashes of something, words being said that almost-but-not-quite dredge up memories of the previous night's dream.
It's clearly outwardly noticeable, as Ko-lee shoots me a message asking if I'm okay. I shoot her a quick thumbs up, while refocusing my attention on the current conversation. "I mean, Caz got to cuddle someone, and you all got a bit of enjoyment, but what about me? I didn't get anything out of being a pillow!" says Rease, with faux frustration. I raise an eyebrow towards Rease, a lecherous grin on my face. "Nothing at all?" I say, prodding. "Not the way my ship flies," he responds, shaking his head. "Bummer too, cause otherwise I'd be swimming in it," he exclaims, sighing dramatically. There's some more laughter, and during the pause, Caz takes the moment to stand, drawing everyone's attention.
"Okay," he says. The atmosphere sobers up as he glances at the four of us, not speaking a word. He doesn't need to say anything, since the plan is relatively straight forward, but there's clearly a moment where he considers laying it back out again, just to have something to say. He opens his mouth, then closes it, and gestures towards the tunnel with a hand. "Well... let's go see if we can catch a ride."
The walk to the cave is shorter than I remember, likely because we aren't taking any of the closed off paths, but also because my leg is in more of a functional state than the day before. It still hurts slightly, but it's a dull ache, easy to distance myself from, only noticeable when I place too much weight on it. I end up with a noticeable limp because of it, but I'm still able to make my way down without needing support from anyone (although Ko-lee is clearly keeping a close eye on me regardless). Trailing behind us is an empty hover cart being pulled by Rease, occasionally rising and falling as it maneuvers it's way around the rocky terrain.
"Fingers crossed that it draws the skates out," I think to myself, as I glance at the cart. The plan was that if it couldn't, Ko-lee would be bait, as she was confident she'd be able to climb back up much faster than any of us. No one fought her on that; even though we'd all markedly improved on every metric - from shooting to climbing to the rest - Ko-lee had managed to hold her position in this particular instance, even if the gaps between the placements had narrowed significantly. I'm a touch nervous, but unlike before, there's four people able to lay down covering fire, rather than just one, which should drastically improve our odds of this going well.
Still, the idea of using my girlfriend as bait sits uncomfortably in my stomach as we get close the drop. Like before, approaching the cave itself feels like approaching a void; it's only as we move closer that the light from the fosfor flare is able to reach the back wall and illuminate the space. A quick glance down doesn't show a pit of skates patiently waiting for their demise (as convenient as that would be) and so we all make room for Rease to maneuver the cart towards the edge.
It takes him a second for him to remove the harness, walk around to the "front" of the cart, and begin pushing it off the edge. I watch as the lifters on the backside of the cart suddenly have nothing to push off of, and with a loud clunk and a screeeeech, the cart begins tipping over the edge. Rease gives it one more shove, in an attempt to keep the cart upright as it hits the sand. It doesn't quite work; the cart tilts to one side as it goes down, landing with a whumph in the sand below. "I mean, if they have ears, they probably heard that," I think. The five of us stand there in silence, as the right side lifters push the sand away from the cart, creating little divots that slowly grow in size.
"How long did it take the skates to show up last time?" asks Caz, glancing over at me. "Instantly," I respond, as I try my best to spot shifting sand or strange, upright pillars. Nearly a full minute goes by, until Caz sighs and turns to Ko-lee. She doesn't even hesitate as she swings one leg over the edge, then the other, quickly scrambling down the rock face to the cave floor below. I've got my gun raised, sights aimed at roughly we're I'm imagining they'll come from, and I note from the corner of my eye the other three doing the same. Ko-lee tilts the cart back the right way up, but her eyes are scanning the cave floor, her body primed and full of untapped motion as she busies herself.
She paces back and forth a few times, and even gives a few shouts, but after 10 minutes of no activity, it's pretty clear that no skates are coming. "Guess they moved on," I mutter. I feel oddly disappointed. "I'm glad Ko-lee's safe, but it would've been nice to absolutely lay into the pricks," I think, as I make my way down the small cliff face. It's a few minutes before all four of us descend, and Ko-lee has her gun pointed down range the entire time, just in case. Luckily, it's entirely uneventful, and once we're all gathered, we head towards the barely visible tunnel entrance at the opposite side of the cave. There's a few glances; apprehension, eagerness, and so on, and conversation is light as we begin to map the new tunnels.
Much like the previous expedition, there's a lot of doubling back, as we encounter one dead end after another. The ever growing map shows a digitally rendered labyrinth of tubes as we make progress farther and farther in; some terminating, some hidden by the fog of war as we chose one route over another. "It'd probably be a smidge faster if we split up," I think, as my eyes scan the stone, "although I doubt anyone wants a repeat of last time." The ground vibrates under our feet, the sound of rocks tumbling over themselves bouncing down the tunnel, but we barely react. After the first ten times, the event had stopped being particularly noteworthy, and other than an indication that the lakotay was, in fact, located somewhere in the tunnels, the noise hadn't been particularly helpful.
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"Any guesses?" I hear Caz ask, from in front of me. "Farther away," I say. Ko-lee shakes her head. "Definitely closer," she counters. It's a pointless exercise; with the amount of split paths, and the way the sound echoes, it's entirely impossible to orient with. "An emotional roller coaster, honestly," I think. The plan to corral the lakotay had started as a pipe dream, but there had been an upswing in excitement when we started hearing the growls near the beginning of the hike. But as the day wore on, the idea began to slip back into the realm of impossibility, and with it, our high spirits. Caz's footsteps slow in front of me, and I mimic him to keep a distance, my eyes peeled for anything noteworthy.
Instead, he takes a breath, and turns to the rest of the squad. "Let's take a break," Caz says. There's silent assent from the rest of the team, and we go about setting up a perimeter with two fosfor flares some distance out from where we're sitting down; an arbitrary stretch of tunnel that looks identical to every other stretch we'd passed through in the last six hours. "Well..." starts Ella, drawing our collective attention away from the MRE's we'd started to dig into. "We haven't found the lakotay, but we've made a lot of progress," she tells us, her voice upbeat. An attempt to inject some cheer into the subdued atmosphere of the group. "Right," says Caz, after a few moments of awkward silence. "We haven't found the lakotay, or the Grineer... or anything, really, but we've probably mapped somewhere between 12 to 15 miles of tunnels total so far. Which, that's not too bad."
Ko-lee nods in agreement. "If they didn't twist so much, and all the tunnels we've explored were end to end, we'd probably be out of the field by now," she points out, in between bites of food. "Yeah, but that just means we need to keep going," Caz responds in agreement. "Not-not all day," he clarifies, likely in response to something I don't catch. "Every step in that we take, we need to take back out. But maybe we push in for another three to four hours, before we turn back? Remember, the trek out won't take nearly as long; we'll have a straight shot, relatively speaking, instead of running into dead ends."
"I just wanna know where those knock off stingrays went," I say, trying to find a comfortable spot to rest my head against the rough stone wall. "They had to have come down this way. Think they slipped under like, some part of a collapsed tunnel, or something? Juked us with all the dead ends?" I ask to no one in particular. "They probably just took one of the other paths that we haven't explored yet," answers Ko-lee, in response to my musing. "Yeah, but what was it mouse said? That they were running from something?" says Rease, jumping in. "I mean, we haven't seen anything; no skates, no conims-"
"Conits," says Ella, over enunciating the T. "Be healthy, mouse," responds Rease, instantly, as though she had just sneezed. Ella scrunches her nose, and he gives her a grin, clearly having baited the response. It gets a chuckle out of the rest of us, and Rease smiles, satisfied, before it melts off his face. I almost ask "what's wrong" on instinct... but I already know what the problem is.
"A dead FO. Being stuck underground, behind enemy lines. An unprepared squad leader, and no HQ support to lean on. A general lack in field expertise that this operation was supposed to solve. Although, getting thrown in the deep end like this? It'll end up being one hell of a learning experience once we get out," I think. "Or if we get out," a quieter part of my mind responds. I pull myself out of my head, and focus instead on my friends, my food, and the vibrations against my skull, in an attempt to avoid spiral-
"Wait," I say out loud, interrupting a back and forth about whether or not a conit would taste better than a nutrient cube. Everyone stops talking, and in the silence, it's easy to notice that the vibrations, which had been consistently inconsistent during our trip, aren't stopping. The recognition dawns on the others, one at a time, but I'm too busy readying myself. My MRE falls to my side, and my hands swing to my gun as I use the wall raise myself out of a sitting position. The other four do the same, and within mere seconds we're positioned back to back, our eyes scanning the tunnel in both directions for the source of the sound.
The vibrations, which were barely noticeable less than a minute ago, are violent. The tunnel itself is shaking, aggressively shaking, and I can feel my heart rate pickup as some primal part of my mind is stuck in yellow alert. The earth feels likes trying to tear itself apart, and I lower my center of gravity to avoid getting knocked on my butt. A stray rock bonks off the top of my head, and I glance up, my eyes widening at what is first a trickle, then a full on downpour of rocks. "GUYS," I yell, projecting my voice over the sounds of the tremors. I don't see their reactions, as my eyes are glued to the ceiling, and so I get a horrifyingly cinematic view of a monster breaking through.
A void with teeth; spindly legs attached to a cylinder of flesh and bone and chitin bearing down straight on top of us, dentine smashing and chomping and gnashing as the tunnel is lit by gunfire. The legs on it's face/head reach out, a horrifying fusion of spider and worm that almost feels designed to evoke fear, and no command is needed to convince us to book it down the hall away from the front end of the beast. It's body fills 90% of the cavern, and the legs near its face scrabble around, supporting it and pulling it so that it doesn't just come slamming down into the empty space. Small mercies.
As it becomes fully exposed, I unfortunately get a better grasp on it's size (roughly 10 feet or so in diameter), but with it comes the tiniest spark of hope in the dire situation. The creature - the lakotay - is only moving at a walking pace as it heads down the tunnel towards us. "Stop firing!" yells Caz, over the sound of scraping and groaning. "Fall back!" It doesn't take more than a single command to convince the squad, and we begin sprinting down the dark tunnels as quickly as we can, our fosfor flares sacrificed to the Martian terror. We have spares, but there are a few tense moments as we navigate the tunnels lit only by the point cloud representation of our headsets.
"Space Trauma!" yells Caz, and if I wasn't so tense I'd giggle at the way he said it. "It's not moving that fast! We need to pace ourselves, we can't keep sprinting!" His words are a light balm, and we all manage to slow our footsteps, at least to the point of not having Rush active. There's still urgency, but after some physical distance from the jarring sight of the lakotay nearly coming down on top of us, we all manage to get our panic under control. "Holy shit!" says Rease, his expression flush with excitement and exertion. He laughs, and it's tinged with nervousness, but it's infectious, and we all chuckle for a few seconds, as we power walk back towards camp.
"We should figure out how to get behind it," says Ko-lee. For a hot second, I'm convinced my girlfriend is insane, until I remember the plan. "Oh, fuck me," I think with exasperation. Any excitement I'd previously had had been doused by the appearance of the creature, but her eyes are shining with glee, and her familiar focus sparks something in my heart. Caz, on the other hand, is clearly not enamored with the idea, but credit to him, he doesn't immediately shut it down. "Well," he starts, "maybe if we use one of the other tunnels to back-"
The tunnel explodes.
Stone is thrown against the opposite wall, as the lakotay makes a violent reappearance. "WHY'S IT TRYING TO EAT US," I yell, as we all lean on Rush to make an expedient trip out. A quick glance at the map makes it clear what the problem is; the tunnels twist and wind and double back. The trip back to the cave is twelve to fifteen miles if you're forced to follow the path. The lakotay isn't. We're moving faster than it, but we have to take the long route while it can just barrel straight forward towards us. Why it seems to want to do that isn't entirely clear, but nightmare worm doesn't seem willing to open a dialog. "Double time!" order Caz, and there's not a single hint of disagreement amongst the squad.
We push ourselves, running a half marathon in what would've been records times back home, leaning on Rush during nearly the entire trip. Based on the decreased intrusions from the lakotay, we'd managed to put some amount of distance between it and us during the trek, but it isn't entirely clear how much. Still, any distance is good distance, and so as we break into the cave room, we all start climbing up the wall, sorting ourselves from fastest to slowest without needing to say a word. Ko-lee, of course, reaches the top fast enough that I imagine even Terror Wins would be impressed.
Ella, using Rease as a springboard, is nearly as fast, and Rease manages to follow up with an equally impressive showing. Caz's hands are on the wall itself when the lakotay decides to make it's appearance. I watch for a moment, as it's spindly arms crawl it's heft towards the two of us, before I glance over to realize that Caz is back on the floor. "Yeah, I don't think I'd want to rock climb in an earthquake either," I think briefly, before locking my gaze on the lakotay. One of my hands strays to a Talon, as a half baked plan forms in my mind. Something involving tossing the talon to scare it off, hopefully in some manner that doesn't involve me losing limb or life.
I never get the chance. Moments before it reaches me and Caz, it veers slightly to the left, and Caz takes the opportunity to tackle me onto the ground to the right, only an arms span away from the creature. It tears through the rock, and I watch as it's rough, chitinous form slides along the sand, headed towards some unknown destination, before exiting completely, leaving behind nothing but a sour smelling goop and a third tunnel out of the cave. Me and Caz have a perfect view of the tail of the lakotay, and we watch in silence as it tunnels in a straightish line, with only a small tilt up. After a minute or so, it fully disappearing, leaving us with nothing but a slowly quieting rumble. "Shit," says Rease, from above us. "Guess it already knew the plan."
Discord!
