Chapter Seventy-Two - Model Thirteen

“The amount of footage we have of an active hive is, even after all these years, very limited. Ten years, and nearly forty incursions, and this is all the video captured of the breeding ground of the enemy.”

--What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting Aliens, 2031

***

“Myalis, what the fuck is that?” I hissed after ducking down.

I didn’t want... whatever the fuck that was spotting me.

That was a giant squid thing. It wasn’t that big, but it took up a lot of space. I couldn’t count the number of tentacles on it. There were at least nine big ones, but dozens of smaller, whip-ier ones, like... Lucy liked pictures of flowers, so I’d seen my share, and the smaller tentacles looked like the little stems on lilies. Narrow and green, with a lump at the end. Only these were twice as long as I was tall.

The problem was that this squid-thing had three bodies, each of them about as big as I was, and connected together by some of those bigger tentacles. I was pretty sure each body had wings too, like a cockroach's.

It looked like something a drunk god created mid-hangover.

That is a Model Thirteen. It’s a hive-defence model. You must be close to the hive.

“The number’s nice,” I said. “But I need more than just that.”

Model Thirteens are mid-sized close-quarters combat units. They are, essentially, flowers connected to the hive itself. Once deployed, they will die naturally after twelve to fourteen hours, or faster if they exert themselves. They have no mouth with which to feed.

I nodded, encouraging her to go on.

They are generally the last line of defence for a hive. Not tough, but difficult to kill. They can’t quite fly, but they can leap very high and glide a little. It’s worth noting that all three brains must be destroyed to fully kill a Model Thirteen. Their primary appendages, the thicker ones, end in hardened blades. These are essentially just chitin plates with sharpened edges. The smaller appendages have blocks of waste material at the ends, usually quite heavy. They can whip these at speeds approaching the supersonic.

I took a moment to process that. Tough to kill, super mobile, and they had big chunks of fuck-you at the end of their big tentacles. Also, the little ones could whip out probably faster than I could react.

“Waste material?”

Materials an Antithesis hive can’t find a use for. Some heavy metals, radioactive elements, certain gases like ozone. Calcium nitrate. Anything the hive can’t find an immediate use for, but that it doesn’t wish to part with too easily. Storing it with a Model Thirteen keeps it close to the main hive and if a segment of the hive needs a small amount of a rare element, the Model Thirteen can detach and cross a great distance at high speeds to deliver it.

I was maybe some three hundred metres deeper into the mine, two forks away from where Gomorrah was likely waiting for me. I didn’t think the hive was right around the corner, but I was certainly getting closer.

Leaning forwards, I snuck my head around again. Maybe I could catch a glimpse of the Model Thirteen again and plug a few holes into it with my shiny new gun?

It wasn’t there.

That had to be half a tonne of tentacles and freaky squid bodies that was missing.

I swallowed, then looked up.

There it was, hanging onto the ceiling like some sort of spider. Its three heads were all turning this way and that, the many eyes on them scanning across the darkened tunnels.

I held still, the deer caught in the headlights. Could I take it? Probably. A couple of grenades with short fuses. My Icarus if I could get it out in time. For all that it had a bunch of tentacles, I was sure a few rounds of HE would do a number on it. Myalis didn’t say it was tough, just that it had a lot of... redundant biology.

The Model Thirteen moved, shooting down the tunnel behind me with a tick-tick-tick from its tentacles tapping the stone. It was ridiculously fast. “Tell Gomorrah that she’s going to have company,” I whispered.

Message sent.

At least I knew I was in the right direction. I asked Myalis for another chlorine trifluoride dispenser, which I carefully sat in a nook where a few rocks had fallen out of the otherwise smooth wall.

Myalis said the dispersal range for the aerosolized gas was going to be about a hundred metres, or fifty in both directions from the can. Being in a tunnel helped a lot. Still, the last dozen metres of that would only be lightly sprayed in the few seconds after the canister opened up, so I was setting a new bomb every twenty or thirty metres or so.

So I wasn’t being very accurate with my no-doubt-war-crime-level bomb placement, sue me.

I continued down the tunnel, now paying a whole lot more attention to the ceiling above in case another Model Thirteen decided to show up. The big bastards freaked me out. They were... wrong. Not just the tentacle-ness of them. That was not too unexpected. Model Fours had a lot of those and they weren’t too weird.

Ugly, but not too weird.

It took a moment to twig onto what was wrong with the Model Thirteens. They had three faces. Or at least three sets of eyes with noses and all that. Three heads on one creature was just... entirely wrong.

I paused a ways down, set another bomb out behind a little stone, then continued on my way.

There was another rock ahead, it looked like a good spot for another bomb. I slowed, eyes narrowing in the dark. I couldn’t see well, just from my cybernetic eye, and with absolutely no light to work with, even that wasn’t great.

Still, I was pretty sure that rock had just twitched, my sonar told me that much. Rocks weren’t supposed to move.

I pulled up my Claw, aimed right at the rock, and fired a shot. If I was wrong, then maybe I’d make a bit of noise. If I wasn’t...

The rock twitched, stood up, and took two steps before flopping down.

Target Eliminated!

Reward: 25 points

New Total: 2416 points

I lowered my Claw. “God damned Model Nines,” I muttered as I continued down the mine. I left a bomb on the end of the tunnel opposite the Model Nine corpse.

A little later I paused again. There was something very much alien out ahead. Big leafy things, each one about as big as I was, pressed against the walls and set so close together they nearly touched.

“What the hell are those?” I whispered even as I moved to be opposite them.

Those are fin leaves. They serve as both heat dispersal, and energy generation. A very interesting form of kinetic energy generation. It’s common with hives that are not able to collect sunlight or that are situated underground. The leaves are entirely harmless... unless you eat them. Do not eat them.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I muttered.

Approaching the leaves, I could actually feel the heat in the air. They were hot. Not oven hot or anything, but definitely a few degrees warmer than the ambient temperature.

I placed a bomb next to them. Maybe that would warm them up even more. .

“We’re close,” I said.

Very. Be cautious.

“Keep me informed about... you know, alien shit. I don’t like not knowing.”

I moved away from the leaves, still keeping a wary eye on them. I’d have blown them up, but the noise would have been a problem.

The passage bent again ahead of us, and strangely enough, it seemed to open up too. A larger section?

It sorta made sense. The mine was designed to go after specific spots in the ground, where whatever they were mining for was most common. That meant when they reached a deposit they’d mine it all out. A bit sloppy, maybe, but I was hardly complaining.

The bigger room was filled.

Roots, or something like roots, clung to the walls, with big, bulbous sacks hanging from them like grapes in a fancy wine commercial. The ground was covered in foliage, and in that mess were hundreds of aliens. Model Threes moving in packs, Model Fours in small units, a few Model Fives. There were others too, some of those giant worms moving in and out of narrow holes in the walls, and tree-like stalks across the room with big gourds on them had flowers that I recognized as Model Thirteens.

There had to be a few hundred aliens. Maybe a thousand. And that wasn’t including the tons of plantlife. The centre of the room looked like a jungle in miniature.

I was going to need a whole lot of bombs.

***