Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

listening with only half an ear, following the direction of the trace for a few feet, and then stopping to make sure I was on the right track. It took a few minutes for me to realize I’d gone past the cutting leading down to the next level. I stopped.
“I’ve gone past the down ramp.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Tens said. “There’s nothing to say she stayed in the mines any longer than she had to.”
“And there are breaks into the caverns just ahead,” Case added. “Has to be more than one way down, right?”
She was right, but I didn’t feel like admitting it. I took a moment to scan the trace, and fix its path in my head, and then I headed back into the tunnel. The floor was a lot more uneven, here, as though this section had been abandoned a lot longer than where I’d just been. I trotted forward, using the night-vis to avoid losing my footing. I twitched the resolution and added in another light level, to see if that enhanced the view. I knew if I raised the goggles it would be like trying to look through ink...kinda.
I also scanned the tunnel walls, remembering to look up at the ceilings, too. I remembered the arach coming over the ceilings, figured they weren’t the only ones who could do that, and wasn’t taking any chances. I couldn’t even tell myself that there weren’t any arach on planet. I’d seen at least two, and then two dozen, and they’d wanted to be seen. There was no telling exactly how many more there might really be.
“Cheerful, Cutter.”
Yeah, well, Tens would know.
I reached the end of the path I’d memorized, and stopped to pull up the trace. This time, Case provided an updated overlay. I’d moved out from under the upper layers of the mine, and the foundations of Barangail’s house, so the ship could get a cleaner scan of where I was. My day was looking up.
“Not likely,” Tens cut in. “Heads up. You’ve got company.”
Well, damn.
I took a couple of seconds to memorize the next section of the trace, and hoped I’d remember it well enough, to kick clear of whatever Tens had seen approaching. It took a couple of sweeps for me to pick the movement at the edge of the tunnel walls, and then a few seconds more for me to realize the mines had cut into a large, open cavern whose ceiling rose some thirty feet over my head.
Double damn.
I tracked the rising wall, and saw movement high up and off to my right. Hoping that was all there was, I quickly picked my way through the debris towards the long, narrow crevice the maid...concubine, had taken to get out of the mines.
“Looks like that will take you down a hundred feet or so,” Case said. “Watch your footing.”
Like I needed to be told, but I didn’t argue. I hustled. A quick glance at the critters on the wall showed they were descending. They also showed they might be the giant ants Easrick had said roamed the tunnels. Were they why this section of mine had been abandoned? Or was there something else?
“There’s always something else,” came from Tens, and I resisted the urge to tell him to shut up if he didn’t have anything more helpful to say.
Those bastard things were fast.
I was only half-way to where I needed to be, by the time the first one hit the floor.
Not good.
I took the risk, and ran, cursing as I stumbled over shards of stone, pebbles, and some kind of growth that squished beneath my boots. The smell that rose from that little experiment left a lot to be desired. Keeping my footing was difficult, but not impossible, and I slipped into the crack, just as the sound of a myriad feet grew loud enough for me to really worry about.
“Keep running,” Case said. “They can fit.”
They could?
Well, fuck me sideways, that wasn’t good.
“Shut up and run.”
Easy for her to say; she wasn’t the one trying not break her neck.
She had a point, though. The crevice wasn’t as narrow as it had looked from the other side of the cavern, and there was enough room for someone to have run on either side of me. Easrick, and his squad would have loved it... maybe. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have loved the creatures scrambling along behind me.
“You’re not going to be able to outrun them,” Tens said, just as I reached the same conclusion.
I bolted past an opening in the chasm wall, before I’d fully registered it was there. It looked a Hell of a lot narrower than what I was running down. Maybe I’d stand half a chance if I took it.
Turning back, showed me just how close the ants had come—and they were ants. I was wrong about them being bigger than the arach, though. Must have been a trick of light and distance that had made me think that with the last lot I’d seen. These critters were almost as big as the arach—and that was quite big enough.
I eyeballed the distance between us, and the distance to the hole in the wall, and I ran towards it.
“No, don’t!” and “Stop!” rang out in an alarmed duet, just as something the size of a very large dog came blurring out of the hole.
Well. Fuck. Me.
I did one of the least elegant reverse-full-thrust maneuvers I’d ever pulled, and backed up several hasty steps, pulling my blaster, as the thing bolted into the open. I tried to fire, and realized that Easrick and his boys had stored the damned blaster properly—with its safety on. I kept my eyes on the multi-legged beast as I thumbed the safety off. And, that was all it took for things to go from not-so-good to bad.
At first, the new arrival seemed focused on me, but then it noticed the ants, and swung towards them, sending out a series of curious chirring clicks as it did so.
It wasn’t