We round up the wolf beetles, and I settle them so that they will behave in the car. Cleve starts it up and takes us back out onto the semblance of a path. It remains an open question whether we should try to get anything from our cryopod site. Cleve wonders if the mining team is still active there. We should certainly hear the equipment from a distance away if they are. As we approach the area, we do start to hear a noise, but it’s not the regular clanging of Shu-Fen’s hammer drill. It’s more of a rumble, the sort of noise you’re not sure if you can hear or just feel. It occurs to me that I might be able to get a clearer answer. “Can you pause the rover?” I ask Cleve.
He stops it without questioning me. I open my door and slip out from under Mr. Fuzzy, leaving the wolf beetle in my seat. Then I crouch down and lay a hand on the ground. There’s a faint tremor to it with just my usual human senses. I slip into miasma-vision, trying to sense what is going on at the cryopods as I have several times before. Images and sensations, flavors and sounds, all swirl around in my perceptions. Mixed into that is the sharp stab of a nail jabbing into my leg—the hammer drill, I conclude. It’s stuck in its down position, not operating. There are still many other disturbances of Chiron flora in the area, so the dig site is all still set up, just not active right now.
But what is this shaking all about, if it’s not the hammer drill? The fungal vision draws my attention back towards where I’m physically located. Between the dig site and the rover there is a major disturbance of dirt being heaved out of the way. Something is clawing its way through the soil, disrupting all the roots and filaments. Something large.
“There’s a siege worm between us and the dig site,” I call into the vehicle. “It’s headed in this general direction. I don’t think we’re going to the cryopods today.”
“I think you’re right,” Cleve replies. His theory is that the siege worm is bothered by the noisy dig site, but I disagree.
“As far as I can tell, it’s not heading towards where the mining operation is,” I tell him.
“Well, hopefully they make enough vibrations that we’re undetectable,” he says. I warn him that using the mine as a decoy to lure the siege worm away from us won’t work. The drill is shut off, so there are no vibrations there to attract it.
Everyone in the rover can now clearly hear and feel the rumble. “Where’s your device?” I suddenly think to ask. “You don’t accidentally have the button depressed, do you?”
“It’s in my bag,” Cleve says. Since I’m already out of the rover, I go pop the trunk and dig around its contents. In one of the rucksack’s side pockets I find the Progenitor device from that first wolf beetle nest. It’s off, and it doesn’t seem like it was pressed against anything.
I awkwardly squeeze back into my seat under Mr. Fuzzy and hand Cleve the device. “Keep it in your jacket pocket,” I suggest, “in case we need to distract the siege worm. I don’t want Mr. Fuzzy accidentally stepping on it.”
“Let me know if it changes direction,” Cleve says, slipping it into his pocket and getting us going again.
I bark out a laugh at that. “I’m not a radar. I know which way it was headed when I felt the ground. I don’t know exactly where it is.” But as we drive onwards, it does seem to be tracking us. The siege worm can’t turn very quickly, but we can tell the rumbling isn’t receding. “Either it’s the vibrations of the rover, or else…” I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at the other possibility that occurs to me. “Or else it’s whatever ‘vibrations’ I put off.”
Cleve considers ways to benefit from the situation. If we lure the siege worm to the pass, it might be able to wreak the havoc we need there. He suggests dropping the teenagers off somewhere here before we go do that—which underlines how dangerous he must think it would be. I reject that part of the plan. We definitely don’t want Takuto and Arx stranded in the wilderness on the wrong side of Miasma Pass. But I think the overall idea has merit. We should just floor it towards the pass.
Unfortunately, the terrain does not cooperate with that plan. It’s simply not open enough for Cleve to drive quickly, particularly since he’s peeled off away from the tracks left by Morgan Industries projects. We’re back on the rough ground we plowed our way through on the outward bound trip. More often than he would like, Cleve needs to slow down to navigate around an obstacle before he can pick up speed again for another short burst. He mutters under his breath about not killing a bunch of teenagers who have just started their lives, his knuckles white as he grips the steering wheel.
Cleve spares a glance at the rearview mirror and curses under his breath. I swivel around to look out through the back window, and it’s just like being in a horror movie. Behind us, dirt is getting kicked up into the air, and shroom trees cant to the side. Something enormous is plowing through the ground a few hundred feet behind us. It is definitely tracking us, no question. Cleve stops the car up short and issues orders. Takuto and Arx are to detach the deadweight of the backhoe from the roof of the rover while he concocts an explosive from materials he bought for Chloe. “This is what I’m talking about here!” Louisa cheers. She’s happy to lend him a hand with that; I’m focused on keeping the wolf beetles calm.
They plant the improvised explosives somewhere that the siege worm is sure to pass through—and far enough from the abandoned excavation equipment to leave it unharmed. Cleve firmly intends to come back for it when things are less crazy. Assuming, of course, that an army of craws does not carry it off before then.