2953-08-27 – Tales from the Service: Prey on Lux Paradiso 

Utter bedlam reigned in Jorgen Goddard’s senses for several seconds. There was the hissing roar and loamy reek of displaced soil, the red and yellow lights and screeching klaxons of suit alarms, the squishy grinding sensation of flabby circular jaws and hooked teeth against armor-plate shell, and the unholy stench of the creature’s digestive juices. 

Fortunately for him, the suit’s helmet deployed a few moments into the attack, just before the creature’s mouth closed over his head. The armor-glass panels clicked into place, muffling sound and banishing stink. Jorgen had a moment to consider his situation as the creature’s teeth clicked against his faceplate, and its gullet started trying to pull his legs off. 

Fortunately, as a loosely invertebrate creature, the burrowing slug – which, he made a note to complain about, was not among the hazards he’d been briefed about – probably relied on envelopment and suffocation to subdue its prey, and lacked the strength and stamina to actually tear him limb from limb until he was dead. In his suit, he had plenty of air, and its armored exterior would render him at least mostly resistant to whatever was in its digestive juices. 

The problem of course was that the creature was burrowing down into the loam. How far it could go, he could only speculate, but if he got free or killed it, he would have to burrow his way back up with his bare hands. That would definitely damage the suit and tax both his energy and his suit’s atmo reserves, making it rather unlikely he’d finish his mission before his ride arrived. 

The alternative, of course, was waiting to see what part of his suit failed first from being digested, in the hopes it would crawl back up to the surface soon, which wasn’t better. 

Jorgen turned his helmet and wrist lights up to maximum, then twisted around as much as he was able. The slug’s flesh was slightly translucent, and the beams highlighted pulsing organs just outside the fleshy, juice-excreting sac of its gullet. He was past the last row of teeth now, and no doubt that was where the beast would keep him, as long as it remained alive. Fortunately, he could perforate a few of those organs with his side-arm, a hardy Vasilev flechette gun, and solve that problem in a few seconds, when it was time. 

Switching off the lights again, Jorgen tried to think. There was a possibility the creature had a burrow somewhere below the surface which, even if little more than a pathway of loose soil, would provide him a low effort pathway back to the surface. Obviously it didn’t need pre-dug burrows to move through the spongy, root-laced upper soil, but if the dirt were denser lower down it could never move through that without proper digging. Perhaps if he waited until the creature came to a stop, he could make his explosive escape and work his way out from this burrow. 

Unfortunately, though, it was nearly impossible to tell which way his captor was going, and even whether it was moving at all. The creature’s stomach twisted and churned, likely trying to evenly marinate him with its digestive juices, and Jorgen had no definite purchase with which to feel whether he was moving in any clear direction. He counted to thirty, trying to gauge motion, but he was turned over, squeezed, and stretched so regularly that he made no headway. 

With a sigh, Jorgen worked his hand to the protective holster where his side-arm waited. There was no sense waiting for anything when he couldn’t detect when it arrived. He doubted he’d even know when the slug went back above ground, unless it did so in full direct sunlight. 

It took Jorgen almost a minute to snake the gun out of its holster and work it as far from his body as he could. The suit would prevent the blast from hurting him, but it still wouldn’t be precisely fun. It hardly mattered where he aimed it, but he used his wrist light to line it up on a cluster of important looking organs before pulling the trigger. 

The blast of the explosive discharge briefly inflated the creature’s stomach like a balloon and lit up its insides like a lightning bolt. Everything around him spasmed and thrashed violently, so he turned his wrist and fired twice more. The thrashing immediately started to grow feeble. 

After jamming the gun back into its holster, Jorgen searched with his gloved hands for one of the holes created by the flechette cluster, then, grimacing, pulled it wide with both hands and shoved his body through it. The creature’s muscles still resisted him, but he didn’t sense any concerted effort; it was dying, if not yet precisely dead. Fortunately, there was less than a meter of gelatinous, freshly shredded tissue between him and the loose, crumbly soil. As soon as his head and shoulders had reached this, he kicked the slug’s oozing side to make himself a little room to work in, and began to claw his way upward. 

The loose earth parted easily above Jorgen, but it was a challenge to make much progress without burying himself. Fortunately, he encountered thready, fungal-looking roots almost immediately. He was near the surface. Perhaps he could get out in time to still finish his mission. 

While the Lux Paradiso raid remains rather carefully shrouded in operational secrecy, the experience of Intelligence agent “Jorgen” on its surface suggests the world is not likely to become a vacation destination after this war is over. For someone prepared with multiple weapons and a state of the art military grade environment suit, he was probably in little danger, but anyone less well equipped would have certainly been killed. 

[N.T.B. - I shudder to think of what would happen if there were to be a ground campaign on this world. These creatures would circle infantry formations like dirt-swimming sharks, picking off stragglers.]