Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror

WHERE THE SUN DOES NOT SHINE Paul Mannering

“Okay Lucy, over you go.” The treads of the eight-wheeled robot bit into the grey powder of the lunar dust. Lights and cameras mounted on the front tilted up, staring blindly into the clear, dark sky, before pitching forward and illuminating the crater slope. “Lucy has begun her descent into the crater.”

“Christ. Would you look at this fucking mess?” Private Howard asked.

“No, because unlike some assholes, I have a real job to do,” Corporal Pierce snapped in reply. Her focus never wavered from monitors that showed her everything LUSE saw through its cameras.

“Howard, have you found any survivors?” Sergeant Block sounded calm over the comms channel.

“Uhh, negative, Sarge. I’m still in the control room with Pierce. This place is fucked up.” Howard picked up a twisted metal girder and casually tossed it aside.

“Pierce, how’s your grid search?” Block asked.

Pierce sighed in her pressure suit and responded to the voice in her ear. “Lunar Utility Survey and Exploration unit is conducting the first sweep, Sarge. The facility has depressurized in several places. No sign of corpses yet.”

“No survivors either?” Block replied.

“Not yet,” Pierce said, her hands hovering over the drive controls for the robotic unit.

“We’re on our way back to your position,” Block advised. “ETA, five minutes.”

“Roger that, Sarge.” Pierce brought the robot to a halt and swiveled the cameras, scanning her view over the featureless floor of the lunar crater.

“Hey Pierce,” Howard said over the comms. “I said, hey Pierce.”

“What?” She twisted in her seat, the lightly armored suit she was wearing moving with her.

“I found someone.” Howard grinned at her from across the room, his face turning skeletal in the halogen lights on Pierce’s helmet.

“Alive?” she asked.

Howard lifted a torn piece of meat and exposed bone that might have once been a human arm. “Possibly.”

“Christ.” Pierce turned back to her equipment. A shadow moved out of the ring of LUSE’s lights. “Whoa,” the corporal muttered.

Pierce moved the joystick and panned the camera through a ninety-degree arc. “Lucy, turn right fifteen degrees.” She waited while the robot responded to the voice command. The wheels on LUSE’s right side clicked into reverse while the left side rolled forward.

The camera showed a sharp deviation of shadow. Less than ten meters away, a gaping hole in the crater floor came into view.

“Lucy, hold position,” Pierce instructed. She checked the other sensors; nothing indicated a meteorite strike or subterranean gas explosion.

Bringing the camera feed up on a second screen, she rolled back the recording to the few seconds when Howard had her attention. The shadow appeared in the bottom right of the screen. A dark shape that vanished into the darker shadow of the crater wall. Pierce took a few stills and went back to the live feed.

“Lucy, move forward to the edge of that hole.” The wheeled robot moved forward, navigating over the rocks until it perched against the sudden drop off. Laser measurements said the machine was at the lip of a shaft with a diameter of nearly three meters, and the walls were marked with a spiral pattern like drill marks.

“Sarge, I think I have a drill site,” Pierce reported.

“We’re outside the door,” Block replied. “Howard, open the airlock.”

Howard crunched his way to the room’s only exit. Pulling on it, Pierce could hear him grunting with strain.

“Mi casa, su casa,” he said as three more members of the Black Light Security team entered the room.

Sergeant Block started issuing orders. “Gordy, get a link to the satellite. Korbin, see if you can put a tent up in here.”

The troops moved without question. Howard stepped forward, holding up the severed limb like a piece of road kill.

“And what the hell is that?” Block asked him.

“Casualty, Sarge,” Howard replied with no trace of guile.

“Where’s the rest?”

“Missing, Sarge.”

“Well, when you find a piece that can tell us exactly what happened here, you bring it to me. Until then, get that shit out of my face.”

Block moved across the room, his armored boots crunching Perspex rubble underfoot. “What have we got, Pierce?”

“Drill site. Lucy’s prepping a probe.”

“Show me.”

Pierce tilted the screen towards Block. He watched as Pierce relayed instructions to the unit. A cylinder popped out into the open space of the shaft, and then as the weak lunar gravity caught hold, it dropped out of view. The cable spooling out behind the probe relayed sensor data back to the LUSE unit.

“How deep is this?” Block asked.

“One twenty meters,” Pierce replied.

“Where’s the equipment?”

“Sarge?” Pierce asked.

“The drilling rig? A prospector drill makes a hole about ten centimeters across. That’s not a prospector shaft.”

“No sign of equipment, Sarge.”

“What about tracks? Any marks to indicate that any mining operations were ongoing in that area?”

“No, Sarge. Not yet.”

“Then why are you in that crater, Pierce?”

“Lucy picked up a beacon signal.”

“Where is the beacon?”

“Well, I’m not sure. It should be in this crater, but there’s nothing here.”

“Except a damn big hole in the ground. If the beacon is in that hole, I want you to find it.”

“Sergeant,” Wong’s voice came over the comms channel.

“Go ahead, Wong.”

“I have found what appears to be the remains of multiple base personnel. State of the bodies suggests violent trauma.”

“Decom?” Block asked.

“Sergeant, the highest point in this facility is five meters below the lunar surface. The redundancy systems on all airlocks with access to the outside mean that the chances of a decompression event are nine hundred and forty-six thousand to one,” Wong said.

“Save the details for your written report, Wong. Tell me what you see.”

“Sergeant, I do not believe these people died of exposure to null-atmosphere. It appears they died from trauma and were possibly consumed pre-mortem.”

“You’re kidding?” Block asked.

Pierce stifled a grin. She could almost see Wong’s puzzled expression.

“Sergeant?” Wong asked. “I request permission to patch you in to my helmet cam.”

“Pierce, hook one of these monitors into Wong’s feed.”

The corporal’s hands swept across the monitor. The interface sensors in the suit’s fingertips interacted with the touch screen surface, translating touch into keystrokes.

“Okay Wong, your feed is on screen,” she reported.

They stared in silence as Wong’s vision swept over a room painted in blood. Corpses, torn and mutilated beyond recognition, lay in a tangled heap.

“Jesus—” Block muttered.

“Wong, how many are there?” Pierce asked.

“I’m not sure. I could start sorting through them. Counting heads would give an accurate determination. Provided that the number of bodies equals the number of—”

“Get started. If you find any identification on them, put it aside,” Block said.

Pierce disconnected the video feed from her screen.

“Weapons check,” Block announced. Pierce picked up the EM14 mag rifle from where she’d propped it against the bench. The electromagnetic charge showed a hundred per cent and green. The magazine of projectile slugs was full. Propelled by a relay of electro-magnets, an aerodynamic high caliber slug would leave the end of the barrel at twice the speed of sound. The armor-piercing shot could penetrate plate steel and concrete to a depth of eighteen inches.

Block listened as the team counted off, confirming their weapons were locked and loaded. “Stay frosty, people, this is not your daddy’s desert patrol.”

“Sergeant, please come to my position on level four, Section H. I have found a survivor,” Wong announced over the team comms channel.

“On my way. Pierce, bring the med-kit.”

“Sarge, the Lucy unit and the probe?”

“Will be there when we get back,” Block snapped. “Move out, Corporal!”

Pierce scowled. She set LUSE to autonomous control and stood up. The soft tug of lunar gravity made her feel like she was bouncing. Pierce scooped up her rifle and the med-kit that sat among crates of emergency supplies next to the console.

“Sometime today, Corporal!” Block barked.

She followed the sergeant into the emergency airlock that secured the room.

“Crazy shit huh, Sarge?” Pierce said to break the silence.

“Bunch of prospectors blow themselves up? That ain’t crazy shit. Sending us up here to check for survivors and sabotage. That’s some crazy shit.”

“Yeah, but think of the overtime.”

The airlock cycled through and they stepped into a gently curving corridor marked section F of the mining base.

“Keep your helmet on; there’s pressure, but you know the rules,” Block ordered.

“Roger,” Pierce replied. The lightweight but armored pressure suit kept out the smell. “You know Sarge, with the amount of casualties Wong reported, the air-con in this place must be pushing around a lot of airborne particulates.”

“Pa-tick-u-lates?” Block replied.

“Yeah, Sarge. You know the tiny bits—”

“I know what the damn word means, Pierce. Now pay fucking attention. This is an unknown situation.”

“Amen, Sarge.” Pierce shifted her rifle to a ready position and together they moved down the narrow corridor.

“Shit hit the fan here, too,” Block commented as they stepped over torn wall panels and ducked under hanging cables.

“This is mining laser damage,” Pierce pointed to a burned streak along the wall.

“What the hell were they doing?” Block frowned through his helmet visor.

“Barbeque party? Maybe it got out of hand?” Pierce flashed a light into a room filled with supply crates. The floor panels had buckled upwards into bulging humps.

“Sarge, what’s below us in this section?”

“Ahh… nothing. Just rock. Wong, what’s the count so far?” Block asked over the comms.

“Twenty-three individuals, Sergeant. All American Water Corporation prospector personnel from their ID.”

“Which means eight unaccounted for.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Wong replied.

They reached a door lit by a flashing red strobe warning that the atmospheric pressure beyond was dangerously low.

“Suit check,” Block said.

“All green,” Pierce replied. Together they twisted the manual handle of the metal door. The air around them hissed out into near vacuum as they pulled it open. Stepping through, Pierce turned back to close the door. “Fuck me!”

Block’s rifle snapped to his shoulder. “Report!”

“Dead man. Startled me.” Pierce took a breath and prized the frozen hand off the door handle. “Okay… door is sealed,” Pierce reported.

“Keep moving,” Block said.

Pierce walked with her rifle ready, scanning the damaged walls. In places entire sections had collapsed, spilling moon rock and dirt across the floor.

“We’re in section H. How far to you, Wong?” Pierce asked.

“Forty-seven meters,” Wong replied. “Follow the trail of destruction around to the right. I will keep an eye out for you.”

Pierce swept her view over the torn panels that lined the corridor. “Sarge, what the fuck happened here?”

“Shit went down,” Block said ominously. Pierce took it to mean he had no idea either.

“Hold it,” Block commanded.

Pierce froze, sweeping her rifle in a surveillance arc across the darkness.

“Movement,” Block said in her ear. “Eleven o’clock. Something moved over there.”

Pierce moved to the wall, her rifle butt pressed tight against her shoulder. She eased the safety off and waited.

“Korbin, Howard, Gordy, advise your positions,” Block said over the squad channel.

“Still at home plate, Sarge,” Howard replied.

“I’m here too, Sarge. Working on getting the pressure tent up,” Korbin said.

“Gordy?” Block asked. “What’s your position?”

Howard came back on line. “She left right after you did, Sarge. You told her to go set up a satellite relay.”

“So why isn’t she responding?”

“You know what women are like, Sarge. Maybe she’s not talking to you?” Howard couldn’t keep the chuckle out of his tone.

“Stow that shit, Howard. Can you patch in to her helmet cam? Get eyes on Gordy and report.”

“With pleasure, Sarge. Howard out.”

“Goddamn amateur hour,” Block muttered.

Pierce kept up her scan of the grey dust that had drifted across the corridor.

“Feed’s dead,” Howard advised.

“Well go and get eyes on her. She might be in trouble,” Block said, clearly annoyed that he had to spell out basic support to a squad veteran like Howard. He waved Pierce forward to take point.

She crept forward, ducking under hanging tangles of cable and stepping over buckled plates.

“Wong?” Pierce activated her comms unit. “We’re closing on your position.”

“One moment, I will meet you in the corridor,” Wong replied.

Ten meters along the curving corridor, Wong stood with his rifle ready, the lamp on his helmet casting sparkling beams in the dust and ice flakes floating from the ceiling.

“It’s just us, Wong,” Block announced.

“Is Gordinski okay?” Wong asked.

“Howard is checking on her.” Pierce turned and looked back as far as the bend in the corridor, an uneasy feeling tightening the muscles at the base of her neck. Block marched towards them.

“Where’s the survivor?” he demanded.

“First, I would like to show you the casualties. I hope you are not easily nauseated,” Wong said and stepped clear of the door.

The room looked worse close up than it had via helmet-cam. The men — no women were deployed on lunar prospecting missions — lay in a neat pile. Along one wall, Wong had placed a line of heads.

“Those are the ones I believe can be matched to a body,” he explained.

“Jesus. H. Christ,” Block muttered. “Cause of death?”

“Initial examination suggests multiple contusions, lacerations, blunt-force trauma and some decompression injuries.”

“They were stabbed?”

“Stabbed, bitten, slashed, crushed and then exposed to null-atmosphere. Most of them were already dead when they were exposed, though.”

“Isolation psychosis?” Pierce suggested.

“Isolation psychosis would be a reasonable assumption,” Wong replied.

“It’s not our job to make that call,” Block said. “Where is the survivor?”

“He has sealed himself in a pressurized room. Breaching the seal would kill him.”

“He doesn’t have a pressure suit?” Pierce frowned. The idea of being anywhere on the moon without a suit made her shiver.

“It does appear that he locked himself in without following normal procedure.”

“Can we communicate?” Block asked.

“Yes, Sergeant. There are working communications outside the room.”

“Show me.”

Wong led them down the corridor. It ended at a sealed door and a shattered door control panel.

“Manual override,” Block said without a trace of sarcasm.

Wong went to the shattered panel and pressed its only remaining button. “Mister Salvatore,” he said.

“Still here, Sehnor.” The voice that crackled through their comms sounded tinny, a side effect of the limited transmission range of the intercom.

“Mister Salvatore. We’d like to find out what happened here and then get you to safety.”

Pierce felt the vibration under her boots in the airless corridor. Within a moment the entire section shuddered as if struck by an earthquake. She fell against the wall and steadied herself until the rocking subsided.

“Minhocão!” the voice from behind the door screamed.

“Howard, report!” Block barked into the comms.

“Shit, Sarge! What the hell was that?” Korbin’s voice crackled.

“Not sure. Howard, what’s your situation?”

“He went to get eyes on Gordy. Couldn’t tap into her helmet cam,” Korbin replied. “Want me to go and find them?”

“Hold your damned position, Korbin.”

“What’s Saliva saying?” Block snapped at Wong.

“Salvatore, Sergeant. I’m not sure what it means. He screams that word occasionally.”

“Pierce?” Block asked.

“No habla Espanol,” Pierce said.

“From what I have heard, I think he is speaking Portuguese,” Wong suggested.

“And do you speak Portuguese, Wong?” Block asked.

“Not currently, Sergeant.”

“Goddamn amateur hour,” Block muttered again. “Hey! You in there! We’re going to get you out of there safe and sound, comprende?”

“Please—” Salvatore’s voice came through the intercom. “Por favor senhor, me tira de aqui embora.”

“Wong, come with me. We’ll get a pressure tent and seal off this tunnel. Get some atmosphere in here. Then we can open this door and get him in a suit and ready for evac.”

“What do you want me to do, Sarge?” Pierce asked.

“Talk to him. A female voice might calm him down.”

Pierce stared in blank surprise at Block until he walked away down the corridor, Wong trailing him.

“Ahh… Hola?” Pierce said to the intercom.

“Sim,” came the hesitant reply. “Who are you?”

“Pierce, Corporal Pierce. I’m part of a Black Light Private Security team.”

“Black Light Security? Why did the company send you? Why not proper military?”

Are you kidding me? Pierce thought. Lunar territory was a complex jigsaw of corporate land claims. No Earth government or country had a claim to any part of the moon. Landing federal troops on the moon would start a war, or worse — a court action.

“Mister Salvatore? We are proper military. Bought and paid for by the same board of directors who sent you and your colleagues up here.”

“Have you killed them all?”

“Killed who, Mister Salvatore?”

“Minhocão,” came the hissed reply.

“I don’t know what that means, sir.”

“They burrow through the ground. The drilling, it brought them to the surface.”

“What are you talking about, Mister Salvatore?”

“They will kill you! Just like they killed everyone else!” Salvatore’s voice broke into high-pitched giggles. Pierce clicked off the intercom connection and shivered.

Backing down the corridor, she turned to follow Block and Wong. Her gaze swept over the room where the bodies had been dumped. Wong had tidied up, sorting the remains from the tangled pile they were in and laying them out in orderly rows.

Pierce stopped and stared at the floor. The thick rivers of blood that flowed from the corpses had frozen in the absolute zero of open space.

The bodies should have frozen too; the liquid leaking out of the gaping wounds welding the corpses together like slabs of hamburger in a blast freezer.

Pierce walked into the room, breathing in slow, shallow breaths. Even though she was carrying her own atmosphere, she could imagine the smell and that made her nauseous.

Sinking into a crouch, Pierce picked up a soft and floppy piece of meat. A clear gel-like resin dripped from it. Anti-freeze?

The ground shuddered again. Pierce thrust her hands out to keep herself from plunging face-first into the nearest body.

“Pierce, you okay?” Block came through her comms unit.

“Five by five, Sarge.” She straightened up and checked her rifle was clean.

“That one was definitely closer,” Block said. “How is our civilian?”

“He’s fine. Scared and, well talking crazy. But he seems okay where he is for now.”

“Hold your position, we’re on—” Block’s transmission collapsed into static as the ground shuddered again with renewed violence.

“Sarge?” Pierce reached up and touched the side of her helmet to improve the audio connection. It was an instinctive gesture but a futile one. “Sarge?” The comms link remained quiet.

Pierce left the room, her rifle leading the way as she moved down the corridor. The ceiling had collapsed, filling the passage with drifts of lunar dirt and rock. Pierce pushed the dirt away until she had excavated a narrow crawl space. Her helmet and air tanks scraped against rock as she wriggled through. Her progress ground to a halt when she was barely half way. Pierce scratched at the dirt with her hands and then froze as the ground vibrated around her. The dirt cascaded down, allowing Pierce to crawl out of the narrow gap and sending her rolling down the slope on the other side.

A dark shape with glistening black skin like a whale slid past a ragged hole in the wall. The clear gel scraped off the smooth hide, the drops leaving wet tracks in the fresh dust.

“Sarge!” Pierce yelled into her comms unit. She crawled backwards, away from the thing that continued to pass uninterrupted.

“Pierce? What is your situation?” Block barked in her ear.

“There’s something alive over here,” Pierce replied.

“Another survivor?”

“Sarge, I think it’s some kind of animal. It’s alive,” she added, feeling the need to clarify the point.

“Hold position. We’re en route to you.”

Pierce could hear Block running and yelling for Korbin to move with him. She stood, straining to feel any vibration, trying to hear, even though there was no atmosphere to carry a sound. Pierce touched the dripping gel with a heavy gloved finger. It hadn’t frozen in the vacuum of space. Just like the goo on the mutilated bodies.

The ruptured wall panel revealed a circular tunnel that sloped sharply downward. Something was in there. Pierce did not imagine things. She observed and analyzed.

No indicators of life had ever been found on the moon. Nothing in the water, nothing in the thick layer of dust and rock on the moon’s surface. In the hard vacuum, nothing eroded under the influence of wind or water. Footprints from the first men to set foot on this tiny globe were still out there, unchanged in nearly one hundred years.

Pierce moved her gaze slowly, assessing and cataloguing the signs. The clear gel glistened on the tunnel walls. The shape that passed her had ground through the dry stone at a phenomenal speed and left no waste in its wake.

When the squad had landed, they passed over a field of wreckage. The scattered debris showed the violence of an explosion that had ripped open the utility domes on the surface of the mostly underground facility. Now, this far underground, something had impacted the wall, tearing a hole too large for the emergency response systems to patch. Explosive decompression had done the rest. Sudden exposure to vacuum would not have inflicted the kinds of wounds they saw on the bodies. It also would not have piled the dead up in a single room. The loss of atmosphere meant that the tunnels either reached the surface or had enough volume to suck the air right out of the sealed environment.

Pierce noted the swirling grooves cut into the rock. It looked like rifling on the interior of an antique rifle barrel.

She shivered and turned carefully in the hardsuit. Looking both ways into the bored tunnel.

“Pierce, you gotta copy?” Block’s voice crackled through heavy static.

“Go Sarge.”

“Korbin and I are closing on your position. Any change in the survivor’s condition?”

The ground shuddered again. Pierce fell face forward and scrambled to lift her head as a wall of dust exploded silently out of the tunnel next to the corridor.

“He’s secure.” Pierce hoped it was true. Pierce rolled onto her back, arms and legs waving like a pale four-limbed beetle.

The floor bulged, and the panels burst out of their frames. A gigantic black worm emerged from the dust. From the ground to the top of the head that rippled with a peristaltic convulsion, the bullet-shaped creature stood over six feet.

Pierce wiped the dust away from her helmet with one gloved hand and stared, fascinated. This thing, exploring the cold vacuum around them, was clearly alive. How it could survive in open space was beyond her understanding.

The featureless head split open in four triangular segments, revealing row upon row of inward pointing teeth. A snake-like tentacle flicked from its mouth like a whip. Four other tentacles lashed from the worm’s gullet, striking the ground, the twisted floor panels, and one slapping against Pierce’s faceplate. She squirmed backwards, trying to see through the goo-smeared visor. Any sound the worm might make would not travel in vacuum. The only noise Pierce could hear was the panicked rasp of her own breathing.

Raising her rifle, she slammed the safety into the OFF position and fired. The firing mechanism ratcheted a donut-shaped round up from the magazine. The projectile accelerated down the barrel, reaching the speed of sound in a pico-second. One-thousandth of a moment later it left the muzzle of the rifle at Mach-2. The impact on the slug-like body was silent but explosive. The ring shot tore through the alien’s flesh, exploded through the back of it, and punched into the ceiling.

The worm thrashed its bulk. Mouth parts slammed shut and then flicked open. Its tentacle tongues flailed wildly. Pierce fired again and again, moving her aiming point to different parts of the worm’s head and tearing the thing into large black chunks of steaming meat. After four rounds, the worm collapsed. The moisture rising from its body froze immediately. Only the anti-freeze gel still dripped from the jagged wounds and mouth parts.

Pierce got to her feet, alarms in her suit systems warning that she was hyperventilating. The beams of her personal lights played on the destroyed corridor. Pierce focused on controlling her breathing and waited while Block and Korbin emerged from the darkness.

“What the hell happened, Pierce?” Block asked.

“I ran into something. Something big. Like a worm. But with teeth.”

As Block came closer, Pierce could see the frown on his face. “You losing your shit, Pierce?” he asked.

“No, Sergeant.” She pointed to the lumps of black flesh glistening under their headlamps.

“What the hell?” Korbin asked.

“Wong,” Block said. “You get that net relay set up?”

“Affirmative, Sergeant,” came Wong’s reply.

“Did you find a reference to that minnow thing?”

“Minhocão,” Wong replied. “Yes, Sergeant. It is a reference to a creature of South American legend.”

“Some kind of oversized worm?” Block asked.

“Minhocão means Big Earthworm, in Portuguese. Their existence has never been proven. Though there are numerous reports of damage being attributed to their tunneling activities.”

“Pierce may have found one.”

“That is interesting, Sergeant. I have taken the liberty of bringing your helmet cam feed on screen. If a sample could be taken, it would provoke interest in the scientific community—”

“Yeah, whatever. Wong, it looks like one or more of these worm things might have done for the prospector crew.”

“May I have permission to come to your position and assess the specimen?”

“Knock yourself out, Wong. Any word from Howard or Gordy?

“Negative. However, the activation of the satellite uplink would suggest that Gordinski has completed her assigned task.”

“Goddamn, Barbie dolls,” Korbin muttered.

Pierce shot him a look, which he ignored. Having an artificial like Wong on the crew took some getting used to. After three months, only his formal mode of speech made him stand out from his human comrades. Pierce didn’t get bothered by having a robot with a human face in the team. Korbin was one of those people who didn’t like working with artificials.

“Alright, Korbin, Pierce, we’ll find out what’s happened to Gordy and Howard. Wong can cut himself some worm steaks and then we’ll regroup at the primary camp. Got it?”

“Hooh-rah,” Korbin and Pierce said immediately.

“Wong, we’re moving out. Going to find Gordy and Howard. Get your samples and return to primary site.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Wong replied.

“Follow me,” Block said and tramped past the splattered carcass.

“We’re going around the outside?” Korbin asked.

“Yes, goddamnit,” Block snapped. “Gordy and Howard should be at the satellite relay tower, which is part of the surface infrastructure. That means outside the complex. If they’ve moved, or are injured, they’ll still be out here somewhere.”

Korbin didn’t look convinced. He held his rifle ready and followed the sergeant. Pierce took a deep breath and exhaled as Block led them into a stairwell and they headed up towards the surface. She tried not to think about the black sky they would walk under.

Block keyed in the access code to open the interior airlock door. They cycled through the chamber and stepped out onto the soft dust. The satellite relay station was several hundred meters away, a dome with metal fingers pointing to the sky and the familiar dish shapes of signal receivers.

Pierce noticed Korbin’s footprints shuddering. Tiny avalanches of particles falling into the impressions filled the grooves of his boot marks.

“Sarge!” she yelled, knowing what the tremors heralded. The ground rippled and the three of them stumbled as a boil of grey sand and rock swelled under Block’s feet. He fell backwards, landing hard on the ground. A gigantic, dust-coated, black slug burst from the ground. Mouth parts spreading wide as its tongue-tentacles flailed through the empty space, searching for prey.

Pierce dropped to one knee on the quivering soil and fired at the massive target. Korbin opened fire, a silent blast of projectiles blossoming along the worm’s side. Block rolled to his feet and fired. The creature convulsed, sweeping around and knocking Korbin off his feet. Pierce leapt and rolled, the lunar dust behind her exploding with the impact of Korbin’s stray shots.

She came up in a firing position, lunar silt blurring her face plate. Pierce fired at the dark mass until Block gave the order to cease fire.

“Fuck me—” he said.

“Korbin?” Pierce wiped the dust off her visor and stood up. “Korbin?” Block moved around the still creature.

“Shit. Korbin’s down. Wong? Life-signs check on Korbin. Stat.”

“Private Korbin is registering as alive, with significant crush trauma and suppressed respiration.”

Block dropped to his knees and scraped at the lunar dust. “Pierce, give me a hand for fuck’s sake.”

Pierce unclipped a tool from her belt, unfolding it into a wide-mouthed shovel with a handle as long as her arm. Digging their way under the collapsed worm, they uncovered the sleeve of Korbin’s suit. She put the shovel aside and dug his arm out by hand. Finding his glove, she squeezed it reassuringly while trying to get a verbal response over the comms channel.

Pierce hesitated in her efforts as the ground shuddered. Snatching up her rifle, she scanned the surroundings for movement.

A geyser of dust erupted from under the dead worm and Korbin’s arm jerked out of sight.

“Korbin!” Block yelled. “Hang in there, soldier. We’ll get you out. Pierce, help me shift this piece of shit.”

With lunar gravity less than 85 % of earth, the massive creature was light enough for the two soldiers to roll aside though Pierce felt her muscles scream at the strain.

Where Korbin had fallen a circular shaft had opened up. Pierce recognized it immediately. “Sarge, the prospector shafts, what if they’re made by these things?”

“Korbin!” Block was on his hands and knees, broadcasting his comms transmission down into the cold darkness without response.

“Sarge, we should get to the satellite relay. We need to report this.”

“Right, yes. Fuck!” Block shuffled backwards and stood up, the grey dust clinging to his suit in a random camouflage pattern. “Wong? Get a comms link established to GC. They need to know what we’ve found.”

Pierce felt the vibration through her boots and saw the fine lunar dust quivering a moment before the ground collapsed under her feet.

Her vision went dark in the cloud of dust. The sensation of falling was familiar, though the reduced gravity made it feel weird. Completely blinded, Pierce crashed against the wall of the worm’s shaft. The impact sent her tumbling against another wall and then finally, shaken, disorientated, and tasting blood, she hit the ground.

Lying face down, Pierce groaned and took stock, checking her suit sensors. Nothing broken or torn.

“Sarge?” Pierce said into the open comms channel.

Block groaned and crawled out of a drift of lunar dirt. “Goddamn amateur hour. Wong, you receiving?”

Silence hissed in Pierce’s earpiece. Climbing to her feet, she looked up to the faint ring of sunlight visible at the top of the shaft. The worm that had made the hole had vanished.

“Pierce? You alive?” Block asked.

“Hell yeah, Sarge.”

“Fuckin’ A. Now let’s get our asses out of this hole.”

“We’d need a line or something, Sarge.”

Block stood up and tilted back to stare at the hole high above them. “Well fuck,” he announced.

Pierce wondered how the giant worms could have existed in the lunar environment undetected for all this time. The creatures had no eyes and only the probing snake-like tongues. Did they sense vibration, or body heat? There was no sound in a vacuum, and they seemed to cope just fine in the extreme temperature fluctuations of the lunar surface. What did they feed on? Where did they get water?

“Wong! You plastic mother-fucker!” Block was waving his arms and yelling at the distant sky. The off-white suit and helmet of Wong eclipsed the ring of sunlight.

“Sergeant Block, are you injured?”

“No, Wong. Pierce is down here, too. Get a line down to us, we need to get out of here before one of these mother-fuckers come back.”

“Please remain calm. I will get you out as soon as possible.” Wong vanished from view.

“Where did the worm go?” Pierce asked.

“Who cares?” Block was still watching the sky, waiting for Wong to reappear.

“Korbin probably cares,” Pierce replied.

Block turned and she could feel but not see his glare in the shadow of his helmet. “The fuck did you say?”

“Korbin is down here somewhere, sergeant. We need to find him and get him into medical, or recover his body. Without confirmation of death on mission, his family only get half benefits.”

“Our mission is to determine what happened to the prospectors on site. They are a company asset. We get paid when we have enough evidence to file a comprehensive report.”

“Korbin’s family deserve the same evidence.” Pierce stood firm.

“We’re not going to fuck around down here looking for a dead body. We still haven’t got a lock on Gordinski or Howard.”

“Wong should be able to find their beacons. If they were in the complex or on the surface. He could have gone straight to them.”

Block stared at the dirt floor for a long moment. “Which means they’re probably down here. Or in a hole just like it.”

“How long do you think Wong will be?” Pierce asked.

“As long as it takes. In the meantime, we hold here.”

“These tunnels—” Pierce gestured at the curved walls around them. “Those worms, those minhocão things, they burrow through the rock. They excrete some kind of fluid which doesn’t freeze. They must eat the rock; there’s no rubble left behind, and they move really fucking fast.”

“They also don’t react well to being shot,” Block replied.

“There’s no evidence of these things. Not in a hundred years of lunar exploration. You’d think we would have found something before now. A fossil, a track, a few bones—”

“Maybe they’re aliens.” Block maintained his surveillance of the tunnel and the shaft above them.

“I don’t think so.” Pierce had spoken before realizing that Sergeant Block was being sarcastic. “I mean, they’re clearly adapted for life in the lunar soil. I think they live deep, maybe in caves where it’s warm and there’s liquid water. Maybe miles deep in the crust. The water prospectors, the drilling. That might have drawn them up to the surface. If they live in the dark, then they have no use for visual senses. They could respond to vibration or hunt by smell.”

“Goddamn, Pierce. You should write that shit down. You’re smart as a Wong.”

“I’m serious. We don’t know shit about these things.”

“Sure we do. We know they fucked up an entire corporate water prospecting facility. More importantly, we know that a short burst of EM14 ammunition will fuck them. Is there anything else a corporate marine needs to know?”

“No, Sarge.”

“Where the fuck is Wong?”

Pierce put a gloved hand on the wall; a vibration like a deep bass tone was humming through the rock. “Sarge, we have incoming.” Pierce readied her rifle and waited for the worm to break through.

Block took a position nearby, looking both ways along the tunnel for a target. “Hold your position,” he warned.

“You feel it?”

“Goddamn amateur hour,” Block muttered. “Yeah, I feel it.”

The vibration increased until dust and small stones fell from the walls and ceiling. Pierce felt like she was in a subway tunnel and a train was coming. She hoped it would pass them by.

The rumbling increased. Pierce’s internal organs quivered. Then the intensity dropped away, the rocks stopped tumbling, and the dust settled.

“I guess they aren’t going to be sneaking up on us,” Block said.

“Can we get the fuck out of here?” Pierce replied.

“Wong?” Block broadcast on all available frequencies. “Wong. Come in, Wong.”

“Sarge, I have an idea.” Pierce marched off down the tunnel.

“Pierce? Pierce for fuck’s sake, where are you going?”

Block followed the corporal down the tunnel, stooping slightly to avoid scraping his helmet on the stone roof.

“I know how we can get out, if we’re really, really lucky.”

“Would you care to share this knowledge with your squad leader?”

“Sorry Sarge, it’s just that Lucy sent a wire beacon down one of the shafts. We thought it was a prospector drill site. What if it was made by one of these worms?”

“Well, that’s a sweet ass-umption, Pierce. What if the tunnels don’t join up?”

Pierce kept moving, Block almost treading on her heels as they followed the curves and dips of the tunnel. “Conservation of energy. It makes sense that they would link up. Why expend precious energy grinding a new tunnel when you can use an existing one?”

Block mentally shrugged. Corporal Pierce was smarter than your average block-head trooper by several orders of magnitude. Her analytical mind and clear eye for detail had saved their asses more than once. “You get us out of this shithole and I will buy you a beer.”

“You sure know how to turn a girl’s head, Sarge.” Pierce wished she felt as confident as she sounded. They followed the tunnel’s curve to the left, Pierce estimated almost fifty degrees to the left. The tunnel dipped again and they skidded down the slope, dragging their gloves in the dust and trying to avoid falling on their asses.

“Ohh shit!” Pierce yelled as she saw the lip of a vertical shaft coming up fast. A worm erupted out of the hole and Pierce scrambled to dig her boots in before she face-planted into the undulating sides of the thing.

The bullet head of the worm split open, the rows of translucent teeth glistening with drool. A cloud of rock dust puffed into the vacuum and Pierce slammed into the creature. It felt like hitting a rock wall under a thin layer of rubber sheet. Squirming backwards, she readied her rifle. Block opened fire from further up the slope, the donut-shaped rounds punching into the head of the worm and sending it into a silent, thrashing frenzy.

Under the concentrated assault, the worm retreated into the shaft. Pierce got to her feet and jumped over the void to the rising tunnel on the other side. With her boots planted on the loose lunar soil, she turned and fired into the hole. The worm vanished, reversing as quickly as it had appeared.

“You okay?!” Block yelled in the comm.

“Roger that,” Pierce confirmed. “Five by fucking-five.”

“I’m coming over,” Block said.

Pierce moved backwards, stomping her boots into the dirt and climbing away from the dark circle. Block leapt across the six-foot gap, only to crack his helmet on the low roof and somersault backwards into the pit.

“Sarge!” Pierce screamed. Charging forward, she dropped to her knees at the edge of the pit.

Block hung a meter below the edge. His arms and legs were splayed out and wedged against the spiral grooves of the wall.

“Sarge?”

“Goddamn amateur hour,” Block replied. “Pierce, you will not tell anyone that I fell in a fucking hole. That is an order.”

Pierce almost laughed with relief. “Roger that, Sarge. Can you reach my hand?” She lay down, wriggling her legs back and keeping her center of gravity behind the lip of the shaft.

“Grab the end of my rifle.” Pierce wrapped the strap around her wrist and lowered the weapon.

Block looked up and took a firm grip on the weapon. “Well, pull me up,” he said.

Pierce heaved against the reduced weight of the man in lunar gravity, while he started working his way up the narrow pipe.

In less than a minute, Block reached up and Pierce took his hand in hers.

“Sarge, are you even trying, or am I taking your weight alone?”

“Hey fuck you, lady.” Block laughed. He jerked against Pierce’s grip and she opened her mouth to tell him to stop fucking around when his eyes met hers.

“Pierce—” Block jerked downward again. Hard enough to be ripped from Pierce’s grip.

“Block!” she yelled. The sergeant’s gloves scraped against the wall as he struggled to hold his position.

“Pierce, the fucking thing’s got my leg.”

Pierce swung her rifle around and aimed down the shaft. She couldn’t see anything beyond Block’s helmet and shoulders.

The ground vibrated and he dropped another half-meter. “Goddamn—” Block muttered. “Pierce. Get the fuck out of here. Find Wong. Find Howard and Gordinski. Gnngghh… Go! Fuck!”

Pierce strained to reach the sergeant’s hand. Like a cork popping from a bottle in reverse, he vanished into the darkness.

Her breath screeching in her ears, Pierce rolled away from the edge of the hole. The systems in her suit beeped and flashed the first warning that she was getting low on oxygen. Sobbing in terror, she crawled, pushing her rifle ahead as she went up the sloping tunnel.

“Wong? You copy?” Pierce followed the tunnel through twists and turns, dipping under smooth metallic meteorites buried deep in the regolith and climbing ridges of crystalized basalt lava.

Her suit oxygen alarm was now a steady beat, as rhythmic as her pulse and synched with her ragged breathing.

Sweat dripped into her suit, the smell of her terror growing rank in Pierce’s nostrils. She blinked furiously and kept moving.

The LUSE beacon hung in a vertical bend of the tunnel like the pendulum in a dead clock. Pierce grabbed it with both hands, almost crying with relief. She tugged on the wire cable and felt it hold. Hauling herself up, Pierce went hand over hand, letting her boots scrape against the walls as she worked her way up to the distant surface.

The rim of light in the blackness grew larger as she climbed. Pierce told herself the cascade of dust and the shaking was all in her head. The worms were not coming up behind her, digging their way through the broken rock and dust, reaching towards her boots with their tentacle tongues and grinding rows of teeth.

“Pierce? Pierce are you receiving?”

It took a moment to realize she wasn’t imagining the voice in her ear. “Wong? I’m here! The Lucy beacon. I’m coming up the line!”

“I am pleased you are safe. I will rendezvous with you in approximately forty-five seconds.”

“Okay!” Hand over hand, Pierce pulled herself upwards. The grey rocks tumbled down, bouncing off her helmet, striking her shoulders, and catching on her air tank backpack.

The edge of the pit was in reach, the wire cable sawing into the dust. Pierce reached and tried to pull herself up and out of the hole. The rim crumbled, fine lunar dust and gravel raining down on her.

“Fuck!” Pierce shook her head, clearing the worst of the regolith away from her view. A tentacle coiled around her leg. Clamping down on the dense suit material and tightening against her skin.

“Wong!” Pierce screamed. She wound her arm around the cable and tightened her grip as the worm dragged on her.

The wire dug into her sleeve and she could feel it creaking as the LUSE unit took the strain. After a moment, the tension released as the robotic vehicle slid closer to the edge. Pierce yelped as she dropped a meter deeper.

“Wong! Hurry up!” The LUSE unit moved again and a second tentacle curled around Pierce’s leg.

“Pierce! Don’t fucking move!”

“Howard?!” Pierce looked up. Two shapes crouched at the edge of the hole. One of them raised a rifle and fired. The shot gouged a furrow in the wall next to Pierce’s shoulder. She desperately twisted away, throwing herself against the other wall. Howard fired a second shot. The donut-shaped round hit the worm in its open mouth and blasted out the back of the head.

Wong seized the cable and pulled. Pierce flew upwards as the pressure was released from her legs. Wong grabbed her hand, swinging her out of the ground and landing her gently on her feet.

“It is good to see you again, Corporal Pierce.”

“You too, Wong.”

Howard was firing into the hole, a steady burst of high energy rounds. “We need to move,” Howard announced.

“I am detecting increased seismic activity,” Wong replied. “It appears further specimens are closing on our position.”

“Oh good,” Pierce muttered. “We pull out, back to the lander, now!”

“Roger that,” Howard replied.

Waves of dirt rolled across the lunar surface. Plumes of dust and dirt erupted in grey geysers, signaling multiple worms burrowing through the rock and dirt.

“Move!” Pierce yelled. She started running towards the landing pad, four hundred meters away.

A worm breached less than twenty meters from her; Pierce opened fire as she ran, her rifle counting down the shots until it buzzed the out-of-ammo alarm.

“Pierce, your oxygen alarm is sounding.” Wong ran beside her, his face set in an expression of concern.

“I can fix that at the lander. Right now, we have to keep moving!”

A silent explosion behind them rained rock and glass. Pierce kept running, Wong simply turned his head to make a visual assessment.

“Meteor shower,” he announced.

“Where’s Howard?” Pierce asked

“Close and moving on our trajectory. Satellite data indicates a severe impact event is likely to occur over the next twenty minutes.”

“How severe?” Pierce ranged the distance between herself and the lander.

“There is a reason corporate facilities are constructed under the lunar surface, Corporal,” Wong replied.

“That bad?”

“Only if you are out in the open.”

Pierce switched to a squad comms channel. “Howard! Get to the lander! We have incoming meteors!”

“Great, things were getting dull around here. Gordy, got a copy?”

The comms link crackled. A voice spoke and then dissolved into static.

“Wong, Gordinski’s alive?” Pierce felt a surge of relief. Howard and Gordy surviving was one for the good guys.

“Howard, you receiving?” Gordinski’s voice came through strong and clear.

“Gordy!? Hey! We’re receiving you,” Pierce chimed in.

“We have multiple inbound objects. The alarms are going off in here. You might want to stroll faster.”

“We are moving at maximum speed for the humans, given the conditions and mass they are carrying,” Wong replied.

“The lander is prepped for dust-off. Get your asses on board,” Gordinski said.

Like every LX-7 model orbit-to-lunar-landing vehicle, the lander was a squat box with only minimal design nods towards its ancestor aircraft. The wings were only there to provide a platform for attitude adjuster rockets. The back of the vehicle opened like a garage door, with a ramp for the on- and offloading of vehicles and personnel.

A worm breached the surface between Pierce and the lander. It dived immediately, the body spinning like a drill as it bored into the dirt. Meteors travelled so fast that they couldn’t be seen until they exploded on impact. Craters ranging from a dinner plate to a baseball diamond exploded into being. A rock hit the worm in the back. Chunks of black flesh sprayed in all directions.

“If one of those hits us—” Howard trailed off. He didn’t need to say it. Pierce knew that even a small rock would punch through an environment suit or helmet. She would be dead before the exposure to vacuum killed her.

“Where’s Block?” Gordinski asked.

“He didn’t make it,” Pierce replied. Details could wait. There were no guarantees that any of them were going to make it yet.

Wong reached the ramp and headed into the lander. Pierce stopped at the bottom, dropping to one knee as she turned to cover Howard who was still ten meters out.

“Gordinski, I will be closing the ramp in eleven seconds,” Wong advised.

“Roger,” Gordinski replied.

Pierce reloaded her rifle, firing at anything that moved. She aimed for the rising bubbles of dust, the eruptions where a worm might be about to surface.

Howard sprinted, leaping a fresh crater, and kicking up dust.

“We’re on!” Pierce yelled. She dragged Howard by the arm and they ran up the ramp. Wong worked the controls, the ramp sliding up behind them. Once it locked in, the door slid shut and sealed.

“Gordinski, we are onboard and ready for evac.”

The lander shuddered and tilted, Pierce grabbed a handle bar and steadied herself as the floor shifted. The drag of gravity intensified as the ship accelerated. Howard slid into a seat, slamming the buckles of the safety harness into position.

Pierce found her own seat. Wong walked easily, adjusting to the changing angles as the ship maneuvered.

The ship’s interior rang with the blows of meteor fragments striking the hull and then they were clear.

“We all good back there?” Gordinski asked from the pilot’s capsule.

“Five by five,” Pierce replied and closed her eyes.