Cake

"It'll be a piece of cake!" Gillian grunted as she hefted the plasma carbine over her wide shoulders. I stooped, picked up and threw a pebble into the air, caught it in my mouth, tasted and spat it out; not cake, just dirt I decided.

"All right, I hate caves but we need to take cover anyway until rescue arrives," I said. Doc, a large man with an Elvis haircut, and Gillian high fived grinning at each other. "We'll enter tomorrow at peak heat. Get some rest. Doc, you're on first watch."

Our distress beacon was still active at the crash site. So the next day, I remotely updated its encrypted signal with the cave's location and a log entry before breaking camp:

"Mission log, day 27, around noon. Run out of other options, we decided yesterday to explore the cave. Gillian claimed she knew enough about speleology to make this sound like a piece of cake. The doc supported her, and so I didn't tell them about my claustrophobia. Anyway, hopefully we're not in for any major surprises."

On entering, we activated the flashlights on our weapon mounts and the entrance looked innocuous enough. Its white walls reminded me of a monastery. Moaning sounds from the wind sounded like monks chanting. Precious water was ankle deep and made the ground look like a polished floor. Nooks in the sides completed the analogy and it wouldn't have surprised me to find candles in them. Anyhow, it all convinced me Gillian was right. Wearing that smug expression that her butch Germanic features portrayed so well, she clearly knew it too.

Crash-landing our shuttle on this parched wasteland of a planet nearly a month ago hadn't been part of our mission. The planet doesn't even have a name and I've long-since forgotten its designation. The pede, our enemies, held this world as a supply outpost on the edge of their space while they pushed ever closer to Sol.

We'd expected a battle against the pede outpost when we crashed after being shot down by one of their interstellar cruisers. To survive, instead our time here had been a fight against indigenous creatures and the elements, freezing nights and blistering days. We'd struggled to detect water and to crown it all we had less than a week's supply of emergency rations left.

Five survived the crash, but Hwang died last week from exposure and dehydration. Pedro was next, taken two days ago by some multi-tentacled beast he mistook for a super-sized squat thorny desert plant. He wasn't even edible, and it spewed his pulped body back out again a minute later. At least in the cave, we could stay out of the elements until help arrived. First though, we needed to check it over for hostiles.

Filtering the water into our depleted bottles, we drank our fill for the first time in weeks. In better spirits, we ventured further in. Then the walls grew tighter and darker. The water disappeared, gurgling down channels surrounded by loose ground that was now a ruddy brown. I started to feel the claustrophobic pressure building. Even though it was cool, I was sweating. I took slow calming breaths in the thin alien air but it didn't really help. We shouldn't have come here. Still, we were making good progress, clearing every little section as we went.

Gillian had just signalled "clear" in the latest section when the ground gave way and she fell with the floor. Her scream lasted a long time, then abruptly stopped.

Doc and I ran to the pit's edge. "Gillian! Gillian! Talk to me!" I yelled down. We strained to hear, but silence came back, not even an echo. Still, we shone our lights down, though all we could see was a shaft extending into blackness. Gillian was gone. We kept calling and listening, but eventually lapsed into silence, numb. We lingered in shock for I don't know how long, just looking at each other. I tried thinking of a way to get at least her body out, but came up empty.

I was about to call a retreat when we heard it from the previous section we'd cleared: sandpaper rubbing against rock. Only one creature makes that sound and from the worried look Doc gave me, he'd heard it too. No way we could've missed it, which meant it had followed and was hunting us. Why was I so stupid as to enter a cave with only one known exit and unseen dangers further in?

Training kicked in and we huddled together before killing our flashlights. Loving light, pedes rarely traverse dark places. This pede was making an exception, though. Quietly, I carefully opened my pack and grabbed my night vision goggles and put them on. Doc had done the same. The sandpaper sound came again. It was searching for us. Doc gave an involuntary whimper, and I urgently waved him silent. Too late, Doc took a pede prong through his chest and coughed blood.

I panicked and tried to run but only got about 10 paces when a tentacle snaked out and tripped me. It attached to my leg and dragged me back towards the pit.

Scrabbling, trying to get a purchase on the loamy ground, gravel gets into my mouth. Wait a minute, this dirt is cake. "Damnit, its cake!" The world dissolves to the white of the training sensorium and I hear Gillian giggle. Doc is laughing so hard he can't even speak.

"Got you good!" Gillian laughs. "You should've tasted the floor a lot earlier. You owe us each a round for missing that we were in the boss' lair." They'll be so dead when I've disentangled from my immersion couch!