by Scott Sigler
The yellow-shelled Warrior rushed toward the crawler. He leapt, reaching for the canopy, but the crawler’s grabbing arm whipped up fast and slammed into the Warrior, knocking him straight back at Yolanda. She dove to the ground as he sailed overhead to smash into Turon, crushing the Leader between a Warrior body and the desk. Turon let out a little squeal.
“Miss Davenport, come on!” Whykor was standing in the driver’s seat, the hinged canopy open behind him.
Yolanda scrambled to her feet and ran at the crawler. She had no idea how she could jump that ten feet, but the grabbing arm bent and recoiled — the claw was just three feet off the ground and twisted to the side, flat and waiting for her. She jumped on it and held tight as the claw reached back to the cockpit. She jumped into the trunk area.
“Get us out of here!”
The crawler turned in place as the canopy lowered. Whykor drove the machine at the tunnel. Yolanda saw the tunnel edge coming up fast.
“Lower, get low—”
The crawler canopy smashed into the edge of the tunnel roof. Safety crysteel cracked and dropped on her like a heavy, floppy blanket. Whykor forced the lurching crawler deeper into the tunnel. The canopy’s metal frame scraped at the blue crystal ceiling, showering Yolanda with shards and sparks.
“Whykor, what are you doing!”
“It was easier on the way in! I wasn’t going as fast. Should I slow down? I might damage this machine.”
“No, just go! What happened to the driver?”
The crawler slammed into walls and the canopy cage again ground into the ceiling, bending metal. Yolanda covered her face as crystal shards dropped all around her.
“I had to show him the city,” Whykor called back. “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
Whykor had thrown the driver over the cliff? She wouldn’t have thought him capable of that — but if he hadn’t done it, her skin would be bubbling from a welding torch.
The crawler banged hard against the sidewall as it exited the tunnel. Free of the low ceiling, the body rose up and moved faster. Platforms and broken-down crawlers shot by. Yolanda scanned left and right, hoping she wouldn’t see a crawler in one piece — she didn’t. Turon and the Warrior wouldn’t be able to chase them.
She grabbed the back of the driver’s seat. She stood, head poking through the dented canopy frame, and leaned forward to put her head next to Whykor’s.
“Take us down, and we’re safe,” she said. “Don’t slow down, just don’t let us fall!”
“The crawling part is mostly automatic,” he said as the crawler bounced forward. “We will be fine. Make sure you are holding on tight!”
She felt the canopy cage rattle in her hands — a rattle that wasn’t timed with one of the crawler’s quick steps. She turned, knowing what she would see, and felt her stomach drop to her knees when she saw it: the yellow-shelled Warrior on top of the crawler, clinging to the back of the smashed and bent canopy frame. His eye was a solid sheen of black. His middle-arm pincers held tight to the frame, while pedipalp pincers — streaked with blood — reached out for her.
She drew in a breath to scream but didn’t have the chance before the world fell away behind her as the crawler suddenly tipped down.
Her back slammed into the back of the driver’s seat. The Warrior had been riding on top of the canopy cage; his weight rocked him forward as gravity suddenly pulled him straight down. He slid across the canopy cage above her, heading down, but reached back and grabbed the last bent canopy bar. His arm snapped tight and his three hundred pounds yanked the crawler to the left. She heard the scrape of metal as clawed feet dug in, and the tinkle of broken crystal cascading down the vertical cavern wall.
The crawler started to skid, rear legs extending back and dragging like anchors. The machine slid down and turned to the right as it slammed into larger crystals, breaking them off at the base or shattering them explosively into shards of sharp blue. Too late Yolanda felt gravity shifting on her again — the seat back that had been the floor suddenly became the left wall, and the open canopy that had been on her right became the floor — a floor she fell through.
A canopy bar slammed hard into her stomach, knocking the air out of her lungs. She rolled off, stunned, and her body dropped through. She felt weightless, saw a wall of blue below her and the city lights impossibly far below.
Her left hand shot up on its own and her fingers wrapped around the canopy bar, then her full weight snapped down. Something gave in her shoulder, and the joint filled with fire.
The crawler continued to skid, clawed legs reaching out, breaking more crystal than they grabbed. Yolanda’s feet dangled in the darkness.
“Miss Davenport! He’s got my antennae, help!”
Yolanda swung her right hand up to grab the canopy frame. She pulled and strained, dragging herself up into the trunk. Her foot kicked up once, twice, then, on the third try, found purchase, and she hauled herself through the bent metal bars.
The crawler slipped again, sliding several stomach-lurching feet before the right-side leg-hooks dug in, slamming them all to a sudden stop.
She put her feet on the inside of the bars — what had been the left side of the crawler was now the bottom. She stood, her head peeking out what had been the right side of the canopy, which was now the top.
The Warrior lay belly-down on the right side of the crawler’s head, his body on the metal hull, his pedipalp arms reaching through the ruined canopy — one hand yanked on Whykor’s antennae, trying to pull him out of the seatbelt that held him tight, the other hand grabbing at the crawler’s joystick controls. The Warrior’s eye swirled with black and dark red. Whykor’s eye was a solid, glowing pink.
She needed a weapon.
She ducked back through the canopy bars. Her eyes flashed across the tools attached to the trunk’s lower-inside walls. There, that spike thing — maybe it was some kind of crystal pick? She grabbed it and pulled hard before she remembered the tools wouldn’t budge.
“Whykor, the magnets! Release the tool hold!”
The Worker was making a pitiful noise, half-cry, half-scream, but his pedipalp hands slapped at the controls in front of him. She kept pulling at the pick, but it wouldn’t give.
“Whykor, turn it off!”
The pick came free so fast she almost fell back. All the tools on the crawler’s inside right came free with a clatter, bouncing off the canopy bars as they tumbled out into the darkness below. Yolanda heard them smashing into crystals as she again stood, sticking her head and upper body out of the crawler’s right side.
The Warrior was only two feet away, but he was focused solely on Whykor. The Warrior’s chitin flexed as his muscles squeezed and pulled.
She had to act, or Whykor would die.
Yolanda leaned toward the Warrior and thrust out with the metal pick. The Warrior saw her at the last second and turned to look at the threat, but he was too late — the pick slid into his baseball-sized eye just before the armored eyelid slid down.
Yolanda heard a pop, then winced as a splash of fluid sprayed into her face.
The Warrior screamed, a deep sound of anguish. His pedipalp hands released Whykor and grabbed at the pick. He yanked it free and tossed it away into the darkness, then pressed his hands against his closed, oozing eye.
“Whykor, point it down.”
“Miss … Davenport?”
The Warrior started swinging wildly. Yolanda ducked back through the canopy bars as a yellow arm swept by just above her head.
“Whykor! Take us down!”
The crawler lurched as Whykor disengaged some kind of lock or brake. Yolanda saw the Warrior pause — he still couldn’t see, but knew he was in trouble.
Then the crawler turned to the left, which pointed the nose straight down the cavern wall.
The Warrior slid forward. All four hands swung out, grabbing at anything, but he was too late — his body slid off the crawler’s nose and silently dropped toward the glowing ci
ty over a thousand feet below.
• • •
The crawler stopped, allowing the silence of the night to wash over everything.
Yolanda lay back against the rear of the driver’s seat. The back of the trunk was now the roof. Her chest heaved. Her shoulder screamed. Her legs trembled, and every bit of her seemed to shake.
Down and down they went. She had time to think — too much time, perhaps. Had she just killed a sentient? Yes, she had, or at least caused him to die, which was really the same thing.
“Whykor,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I am … not,” he said. “I need some … assistance, but … the Regulator is not yet back.”
She clutched her shoulder. It burned. Her skin felt cool — sweat evaporating into the night air.
“So what’s wrong with a regular hospital?” she asked.
“It is likely that Gredok will have contacts at hospitals. As soon as you are scanned in, he will know where you are.”
She thought back to the confusing things Turon had said about Gredok wanting a progress report. “I’m not sure those guys worked for the Splithead. I’m thinking they work for Villani.”
That made a lot more sense than Gredok’s people casually kicking around a city owned by a woman who had serious hostility toward him. But why would Anna’s people pretend to be Gredok’s people?
“Then we must not go to a hospital,” Whykor said. “Villani will surely have sentients there. If she tried to kill you, she will … ” his voice trailed off. He made a squeaking noise, then said nothing.
“Whykor?”
He didn’t answer.
Yolanda flipped onto her belly. She held tight so as not to be thrown from the moving machine, then peeked around the left side of the driver’s seat. Whykor hung limply, held in only by his seatbelt. His eye was closed. His six antennae looked bent and swollen.
She grabbed his shoulder and shook. “Whykor, wake up!”
His eyelid fluttered open. “Miss … Davenport. I do not … feel well.”
The night was slowly giving way to light, not from above, but from the skyscrapers as the crawler moved back down to city level.
The crawler started to angle to the right.
Yolanda grabbed the canopy frame and slowly, carefully slid out the top and into the driver’s seat next to Whykor.
“Miss Davenport … there is not enough room.”
“Shut up,” she said. She wedged herself in next to him as best she could. “Show me how to drive this thing before you pass out.”
He did so, weakly but efficiently. The right joystick controlled the front arm, while the left controlled direction. Her left foot controlled speed. But as Whykor had said earlier, the actual crawling part seemed to be mostly automatic.
They moved past the top level of the highest skyscraper. Blue light from the translucent building played off of the blue crystals around them. She looked right and left: in both directions, she saw the familiar movement of crawlers — the night shift, keeping the city from being overgrown.
Whykor fell limp and started to make a strange hissing noise. She didn’t have to be a xenodoc to know that wasn’t a good sign.
The crawler’s shard-littered dashboard let out a beep. She found the spot and read the display: wireless networking established.
She was back in range of the city’s signal repeaters. What was she going to do? She couldn’t wait for the Regulator to return. And Whykor was right; hospitals were out of the question. Could she call Joey Clark? Not if he was with Parmot the Insane. Could she call Miriam? Maybe, but would that put her at risk?
She needed help, but who could provide it?
Then it hit her — Tarat the Smasher.
As the crawler continued down, she dug in her pocket for the message cube. She pressed the sides, then used her thumb to flip through the holoicons until she found the contact information she was looking for. She scanned the crawler dashboard for the communications interface, found it, then pressed the message cube against it, transferring the number.
“Call Tarat the Smasher, mark it urgent.”
She waited. As she did she lifted her head and looked at the skyscraper just a few hundred feet away. If anyone was looking out of those windows, all they would see was just another crawler — they wouldn’t give it a second glance, wouldn’t notice the damage, wouldn’t notice that there were two sentients crammed into the cockpit.
Tarat’s holographic head appeared above the dashboard.
“Yolanda Davenport. I am surprised to hear from you.”
“I need help, fast,” she said. “We were kidnapped and attacked. We got away, but Whykor is hurt bad.”
Tarat’s eye turned to look at the Worker. “You are correct, Yolanda. Whykor the Aware’s antennae indicate he is dying.”
“Dying?”
“You need to get him to a hospital immediately.”
“Whykor thinks Villani has all of the city hospitals in her pocket.”
“I doubt they would fit, Yolanda. I’m sure a crime lord could order a pair of pants the size of a hospital, but it would be an inefficient use of resources.”
Yolanda sighed. “I mean that she will have hospital staff in her employ, Tarat. We’d be walking back into what we just escaped.”
“Oh, you want to know if I know where you can get some safe medical attention?”
Yolanda gritted her teeth. “Yes.”
“You should have said so earlier. Go see Doctor Izykurala. She is the former team doctor from when I played for the Orbiting Death. I will send you the address. Tell her I sent you.”
A map popped up next to Tarat’s head. Yolanda reached out, turning the map until she oriented herself by recognizing the skyscrapers around her.
“Uh, this map says we are about twenty minutes away,” she said.
“Then perhaps you should proceed at maximum acceleration,” Tarat said. “From what I can see, Whykor has perhaps twenty-five minutes to live.”
She didn’t have time to freak out. She quickly studied the directions. To their right, a crystal arch grew off of a skyscraper and merged with the cavern wall. She could take that to the building, around the building to an arch on the far side, that arch to another building … as long as the crawler didn’t tumble off an arch or the sheer face of a building, she could do it.
“Thanks, Tarat,” she said. “I owe you.”
“Who's keeping track?”
She worked the joystick, angling toward the huge arch that ran between the wall and the skyscraper. “Wow, Tarat — I wouldn’t have expected you to be so gracious.”
“No, I mean who is serving in the role of accountant? Am I tracking the favors, or are you?”
She sighed. “You are. You’re up one right now.”
“Then I am winning,” he said. “That is what I prefer. I look forward to speaking with you again, Yolanda.” His head winked out, ending the call.
She concentrated on driving the crawler. Metal legs reached out, grabbed and pulled back, moving them forward. She could only make it go so fast — but would it be fast enough?
• • •
Yolanda stumbled down an 86th-floor hallway, peering at each door and looking for the right address. She carried an unconscious, black-and-gray-striped Quyth Worker on her shoulder. Her good shoulder, that was — the bad one hurt so much it was bringing tears to her eyes. Her lungs burned, and her legs begged her to stop, but there wasn’t time.
Even at this late hour, she saw sentients in the hallway. It was a residential building, or at least this floor was, and sentients seemed to come and go at all times. The residents barely noticed her, as if seeing a passed-out Worker was almost as common as seeing a crawler. At least no one recognized her, which wasn’t surprising considering her bloody clothes, wild hair and what had to be a look of sheer panic on her blue face.
She found the right apartment. She kicked at the door, waited for an answer, then kicked harder.
The door opened. I
nside floated a white Harrah.
“Tarat sent me,” Yolanda said, then stumbled into the apartment and wildly looked around. She had never been in a Harrah's home before, and she took a moment to get situated. While other gravity-laden sentients all had furniture on the floor, the Harrah had various amenities bolted to the walls and ceilings. She saw a white cot on the floor, with racks of medical equipment around it. Yolanda dumped Whykor on the cot, then leaned against a rack, trying to catch her breath.
The Harrah floated to the wall, where a flat-black metal box with straps hung from a hook. The Harrah slid her wings through the straps, then used her mouth-flaps to click the harness tight.
“Do come in,” the Harrah said. Her voice came from the box on her back — it sounded artificial, but not enough to hide the sarcasm.
Yolanda didn’t have time for an attitude. She pointed at Whykor. “He needs help. I can pay you whatever you ask.”
The GFL had far more money than Galaxy Sports Magazine, and if she had to, Yolanda would bankrupt both companies to save Whykor’s life. He had come after her when he could have just fled. She would not let him die.
The Harrah let out a heavy sigh. “I suppose I have no choice. I do not wish to have a dead Worker in my apartment.” She drifted down to Whykor's prone body. His eye was closed. Yolanda realized how much she had come to watch for his eye color to reveal his emotional state. She suddenly felt very alone.
The Harrah’s white mouth-flaps examined Whykor, touching him here, there, then expertly flipped him over.
“Doctor, are you—”
The Harrah raised a mouth-flap, silencing her. She probed at Whykor a moment more, then drifted to a cabinet on the wall. She pushed her tentacles around on the inside, then came out with two bottles and a small club.
“What’s that for?” Yolanda asked.
“Pressure points,” the Harrah said and floated back to Whykor. She dripped some of the first bottle in his mouth, then dripped the second on his body and began rubbing the oil into his sparse fur. Then she hovered above him and began beating him with the club.
