In the tunnels below Cheyenne Mountain, Ethan led again through the darkness, just like their day had begun. It struck him, in the darkness again, how it had only been less than a day since they’d woken up in that dingy office bathroom, and where he was then.
The tunnels went straight for a hundred meters, then turned into a long stretch with a barely seen light at the end.
Freq flicked on a lightstick, revealing the low-ceiling concrete so rarely seen by anyone, that not even moisture or air had touched the dry, light brown walls.
“I think one of my personalities read this book before,” Freq commented.
“We can’t go too far without guidance from Liege,” Ethan said. “There’s no telling what this tunnel connects to. We could be lost down here for hours, if not days, looking for the right way out.”
“Cap will come through,” Freq assured. “Always does.” A distant explosion racked the tunnels. “That’s him now.”
Above them and hundreds of meters away, Liege found the elevator shaft, the doors broken open and laying out of sight below. The chimera looked down, but couldn’t see the bottom. The shaft looked like it ended in infinite oblivion.
The Captain looked up for the elevator, but did not see it there, either. There were no cables to climb down, so he morphed his hands into knives again, as he had climbed the Wyrm, and stabbed them into the metal shaft walls, clawing his way down hand-over-hand until he reached the next level down, to jump through the open elevator door onto the floor.
Above him, the first bugger came to a surprised halt at the elevator door’s lip, then was pushed in the back by its comrades, sending the first, and a few other buggers behind it, falling past Liege, a long way down to oblivion.
The chimera leaned out with his rifle, firing into what passed for the legs of the buggers above, sending more to falling, before moving on through the dark underground hallways, taking the two rights.
Liege stopped when a scraping, clattering sound came from behind him, from the shaft below.
A large centipede’s head poked its head up over the lip of the elevator shaft door, followed by a half-dozen more, and then more behind those: Wyrms, juveniles, minus the armor, but with all the pincers and sharp edges, were crawling up the shaft, woken from the falling buggers, gunfire, and explosions.
“Freq,” Liege called, aiming down his weapon sight at the broodlings. “You’re likely not alone down there. This site’s a Wyrm nesting ground.”
Freq stopped walking. The light at the end of the tunnel was nearer now, but he looked behind him and listened, both to his Captain and for the sound of enemies.
Ethan and Gally both heard the call, as well.
“Gally-girl,” Freq cheerfully asked. “I’ll need that extra pistol you have there.”
“Freq?” Ethan asked. “Liege kept saying he was backing up your dead.”
Freq took Gally’s pistol from her reluctant hands. “Yeah?” Freq asked. “You’re smart, sir. What do you think that means?”
“You’ve got backups in your heads, don’t you?” Ethan asked. “If one of you lives, you can recover the rest.”
Freq shrugged. “Said you were smart, sir,” he replied. “Don’t worry about it, though. They’re just memories. We’ll make more.” The chimera looked down at Gally. “You, on the other hand, die die,” he told her. “Permanently. Game over. No retry. No restart.”
“Then you’ll survive this, Freq,” Ethan said.
“You, sir?” Freq asked incredulously. “Honestly, you’re better off if we all die and forget this whole thing ever happened, Colonel. I’m afraid there isn’t a big enough army to stop Liege from taking your head off if he survives this. And he seems like he wants it badly.”
“He can fucking have it, if it means you guys survive this.”
Freq shrugged.
“Freq,” Liege said.
The other chimera straightened up.
“Move, Colonel,” Freq prompted. “Miss, please. I have a job to do.”
Across the way, Liege fired his coilrifle, and fired some more, holding his ground, empty the first one-hundred round magazine, at a chimera’s targeting and firing speed, then the second, the third, the fourth, until he was out, and even the electrically-fired weapon was overheating and smoking gray wisps out of the muzzle and the capacitor.
Over two-hundred juvenile Wyrms were splattered across the floor and the elevator shaft, yet still more emerged.
As Liege waited for the Wyrms to mass enough one shell from his cannon revolvers would destroy many in one go, he noted in his internal database, for future use, that Wyrms were mass-breeders, and how remarkable it was for one to grow to titanic size. And, in a way, how much damage his chimeras had done to the buggers earlier, in bringing down the armored anti-aircraft Wyrm outside Colorado Springs.
“Under another mountain again, Jake,” Liege spoke in his dry Roland Deschaine voice as he waited. “I won’t let Gally fall.”
Liege reached over his shoulders, unholstering like swords his cannon-revolvers: Havoc in his left hand, Valor in his right--the Roar and Howl of War, and took his aim down the seven-feet long, fifty-millimeter barrels at the Wyrms.
“Under the Mountain dark and tall,” Liege spoke in his firm King Arthur voice. “The King has come unto his hall.”
The revolver’s recoil-dampener clamps came down on Liege’s forearms, steadying, as the Wyrm reached a critical massing.
“His foe is dead,” Liege recited in his cold Colonel Fedhman Kassad voice, and followed in Seneca’s resolve, “the Worm of Dread.”
Liege spoke in his amalgamated Liege voice, “And ever so his foes shall fall.” and fired both revolvers.
Havoc and Valor roared to life, beyond deafening to even a chimera’s electronic ears in such a confined space, so that Liege’s audio pickups temporarily shut down, giving the chimera Captain a sense of Zen serenity as he fired and fired again, each shot spinning the massive cannon-revolver cylinders, the wake alone bloodily disintegrated the juvenile Wyrms and carried through their masses, punching two-feet deep holes six inches in diameter in the elevator shaft behind them.
The cannon-revolver cylinders spun past the sixth chamber, emptying, prompting Liege to finally give ground as he quick-reloaded from his leather shell belt with a speed, dexterity and surety to make the Old West’s best gunslingers blush.
Liege brought his revolvers back up, finding more Wyrm hordes replacing those, and fired again to his cylinder’s emptied, quick-reloading while giving ground until his sixtieth shell left Valor, leaving him empty of firearm ammunition.
Cannon-revolvers smoking, Liege considered reholstering them again over his shoulders for a moment, but decided against it.
Liege remembered the engineer who designed him--a custom chimera, the finest, most powerful of the line: combat engineering art--a man named Paul. And Paul’s only child and son, Peter, who had died in the bugger invasion, leaving Paul in despair, so that only engineering a dedication chimera brought Paul back to work.
Paul had built Liege--a legendary chimera, a hero to chimeras, badass of badasses--to honor Peter. And to honor and avenge Peter, Liege had sworn. But Liege also remembered Peter had told him to take care of his lovingly crafted weapons. His body was replaceable, but Paul would have hated to replace Liege’s beautiful custom revolvers, including Rathborn, his greatsword, for which Liege still had plans.
Thus, Liege fell back from the pursuing Wyrms until he found a supply closet with an iron door, opened it more gingerly than he would have any other door in the situation, setting Havoc and Valor down inside gently.
“Until next time,” Liege whispered.
Liege closed the supply closet, unsheathed *Rathborn*, holding the three-hundred pound greatsword easily in his right hand, took the two rights, and found the security door labeled ‘Engineering’. It had an code lock on it, but he tried the one Ethan gave him, and when that failed, he typed out a few more historical dates from his memory until one took, allowing him access.
The safe was hidden in the wall, but not hidden well enough. The chimera yanked the concealing panel off to reveal the access panel, typed in the same code as the door, and pulled out rolled-up blueprints of the most inner and secret workings of Cheyenne Mountain.
“Freq,” Liege called. “I’m scanning prints.”
The chimera Captain’s optics, hidden by dark reinforced visor, worked back and forth, taking in the whole sheets of paper, flipping one after the other and sending them to the other chimera.
“Any of these look familiar?” Liege asked Freq.
Freq paused, almost at the end of their tunnel. “I think so,” he replied. “I’m not an architect.”
Liege spun, backhanding a Wyrm broodling into a wall. More were coming in behind that one. “Work it out, Freq,” he told the only other surviving chimera. “I know you can, if anyone.”
“Except maybe the Colonel.”
“Fuck the Colonel,” Liege said, cleaving Rathborn into the Wyrms. “Get Gally out. I’m going medieval on these asses until I cannot, then I’m blowing my tokamak. Good luck, Freq. See you next time.”
“See you soon, Cap,” Freq responded, waving Ethan and Gally to continue.
Two minutes later, a burst of static came through their helmets, followed by an explosion that rattled the entire mountain from a fusion reactor so powerful the sudden heat exchange through the rock made the cold tunnels sweat, warming the survivors noticeably.
Freq looked up and back. He noticed Gally was looking, and turned back to wave at her. “Not done yet,” he assured her.