Carapace (Aggressor Queen Book 1)

by Davyne DeSye

  I move down the corridor. It is lined with the occasional almost human-sized vase full of flowers and ornamental branches, interspersed with small potted trees I don’t recognize. The delicate blossoms on the trees tinkle as I pass.

  At the first intersection of corridors, I pause, looking both ways. On my right, about half a dozen ants move away from me in a group. The left corridor is empty. I move on, grunting with small breaths as I put too much weight on my injured leg.

  It’s quiet. This should comfort me, but doesn’t.

  I’ve passed two more corridors when I enter a portion of the hallway that has doors opening into the passage on both sides. I creep past the first two. The thought that any of these doors could open at any moment causes my flesh to crawl and prickle with sweat. My heart speeds up and my breathing is irregular. The corridor lengthens in my vision as I count six more sets of doors before the cross-corridor at the end of this one. And I still have no idea where I’m going.

  I lurch forward slowly, too slowly. I blink my eyes to relieve a bout of dizziness, and press forward.

  Stiffening at the sound of a door opening behind me, I stifle the urge to turn swinging my walking stick. Instead, I cram my knife into my pants pocket and turn to face my enemy. An ant walks toward me, looking at papers held in one lower arm. It raises its head, probably smelling me, and stops.

  “Human,” it says.

  Painful as it is, I do what seems safest. I lower my walking stick to the corridor floor, bend to my knees – excruciating! – throw my arms wide and my head back, and say, “Master.”

  “Why are you here?” the ant clicks, moving toward me, head turning from side to side to scan the corridor.

  “The queen,” I answer, both because it’s the truth and because I can’t think of any other answer.

  The ant pauses, waving the papers back and forth through the air. Then it moves toward me.

  “You are lost,” the ant says.

  “I am lost,” I answer.

  “Follow,” it says, as it turns back in the direction I have already come. Apparently, he’s decided the queen can deal with me whether I belong here or not. He doesn’t see me as a threat. I can only hope to be.

  The ant pauses before turning left down the last corridor I passed. He waits until I’ve almost reached him before he turns and heads down the corridor. Twice we pass other ants; a group of two which passes without greeting, and one with whom my escort locks lower wrists.

  A faint human scream comes from the direction we are walking. Please, not Khara! My heart races and I stumble as I try to increase my own speed. My escort doesn’t turn to look at me and doesn’t change pace.

  I can’t arrive with my escort into the queen’s presence. I don’t need any more ants to fight than the queen and however many of her entourage she has with her. I look down the corridor behind me. My escort and I are the only ones present. I increase my pace yet again to close the distance between us.

  I raise my walking stick, grunting as I have to put my full weight on my leg to keep walking. As I did with the guard at the entrance to the garden, I swing at the head of my escort. He topples to the floor. The rattle of his armored body hitting the floor joins the clatter of my walking stick as I throw it aside. As he struggles to raise himself, I leap onto his back and jab the point of my knife toward his head, aiming for the jointed area at the base of his skull. I miss, and my knife glances off the thick skull. As his pincers rise toward his shoulders and me on his back, he emits a short shriek, but before he can reach me, I plunge the knife into his head through the base of his skull.

  As much as I need rest and a moment to breathe, as much as the pain in my leg screams I can’t go any further, another muffled human scream sounds from around the corner, and I know I have to move and move quickly. I drag the body of my escort toward the far wall, retrieve my walking stick and limp toward the end of the corridor.

  I push my head around the corner and then jerk it back. With my brief glimpse, I notice that unlike the other corridors, this one has a carpet running down the center, and far more potted trees to each side. Again, I peek around the corner, this time noticing the two guards at the mid-point of the hallway, one moving toward me, probably in response to the shriek of my escort.

  My accent is terrible, but I put my hand to my mouth and with my voice muffled with my fingers, call out some of the few words I remember from Diane’s lessons in the ant language. “Assistance please.” I hope only the one guard that was already moving toward me comes. I can’t take two. I’ll be lucky to take the one, since this one will be coming toward me, not moving away. Should I try stabbing the ant from under the jaw up into his brain, or try stunning it first with the walking stick? The thought of mandibles and pincers reaching for me decides me. I grip the walking stick in both hands and lift it up and over my shoulder, waiting, pressed to the near wall.

  The guard comes around the corner so quickly he’s past me before he realizes I am here. He moves toward the body of the ant sprawled on the floor at the base of the far wall. He turns – perhaps at some small noise I have made, perhaps because he’s caught my scent – and he faces me as I slam a home-run blow to the side of his head, and then another on the back swing. I manage to hit his head with a third blow before he hits the floor, and he isn’t moving as I plunge the knife into his skull.

  I dispatch the second guard with the same tricks, luck, and speed. I don’t bother to move the last body to the side of the corridor.

  I peek around the corner. Much farther down, I can now see two more guards, standing with backs to a large closed doorway. My mind races, trying to think how I can lure these two guards – one at a time – away from the door behind which I am certain lies my goal. As I watch, there is a roaring bellow, this time from an ant, although I can’t understand the word or words. I hope it’s a roar of pain or despair and not a roar of triumph. The guards throw open the door and rush out of sight. A brief flare of hope rises in me.

  Atta girl, Khara. Give them hell. The thought is irrational.

  I wait a moment more, but the guards don’t return.

  Now or never, Samuel.

  I turn the corner and head down the corridor toward my woman. I move with a terrible limp, but I won’t lower my walking stick. I may not have the time or the strength to raise it again, if needed. Every couple of steps, I glance behind me to assure myself I’m still alone in the long expanse. I am not certain I’d hear anyone approaching me on the softness of the carpet and over the strange noises coming from the open doors before me.

  I’m near the door, moving with more caution, walking stick still in both hands and over my shoulder when I hear another very human scream – pain and terror given voice. I don’t hesitate. I bound around the corner of the doorway.

  Blood. Everywhere blood. On the floor, on the bed cushions, everywhere. Human bodies crumpled to the floor in front of me – No! – ant bodies strewn on the floor near them. Steel sword-like projections stretching down from the ceiling. I take in this vision of hell in an instant.

  To my right, I see two giant ants and another human body, nude, covered in blood, this human moving, this human the source of the screaming, which comes again and again. Khara! I rush toward the ants, my own scream tearing from my throat, trying to make sense of what I see. While the ants attack each other, the one closest to Khara seems to be trying to push the other back.

  Protecting Khara!

  I twist my advance toward the other and bring down my walking stick on flailing outstretched arms. I’ve hit the arms of the attacking ant, but I’ve also probably hit the arms of the protecting ant. I can’t focus on this as the attacking ant roars again and turns toward me. Its movements are strange and jerky, but I can’t mistake the malice in the snapping mandibles and grasping, snapping pincers. Only one higher arm moves toward me. The other seems disabled. I hope this is because of my blow.

  I stumble as I try to back from the attacking ant and prepare to swing again. The swing
of my stick glances off the upper torso of the tall, raving creature coming toward me, but doesn’t appear to do any harm. As I try to pull the stick back around for another swing, the ant’s pincer closes on the stick and snaps it in two. I back another step and trip over something behind me. In slow motion, the ant’s pincer swings toward my head as I fall.

  The pincer swats my head with the force of a moving truck. My head cracks against something hard as I hit the floor, and lights pop before my eyes. My ears fill with a dull roar like rushing ocean waves.

  I try to blink the redness from my eyes. As blackness closes in around the red, I stare up at the glinting silver swords, sure I am rising toward them. Nothingness takes me.

  CHAPTER 47

  KHARA

  My world swirls violently around me: The swirling of the drug through my veins making my vision twist through fun-house mirror distortions; the swirling of the pain throbbing in taut burning lines from my feet to my brain; the swirling of the two ants, eight upper limbs dancing in macabre flashes of blue-black shell.

  I scream again in fear of the mad queen, in fear for my gentle friend Nestra, in pain as I slip from the back of the chaise lounge to the floor, wounded feet pinned under me. My agonized cry is echoed by another shout, this one harsher and pitched lower and glazed with anger.

  I turn my head in the direction of the hoarse shout, and the room spins and rocks, slowly following my eyes. I can’t focus on the blur of motion rushing toward the towering, battling ants. I turn my head back to the ants and the figure that has now joined them and again wait for the room to catch up with the turn of my head.

  Focus, damn you!

  I feel a trickle of hope as I realize the figure is human and an explosion of ecstatic relief as I recognize Samuel.

  My beautiful Samuel! I realize I hadn’t really believed he was alive until this second.

  The queen is attacking him, and I see the blur of a large stick as he tries to strike up at the towering crazed figure. Before my ecstasy at seeing Samuel – being rescued by Samuel! – can blossom, I hear the crack of the blow as her bowling ball-sized pincer connects with Samuel’s head, and he’s gone, crashing to the floor to join Diane and Tanner, head bent toward one shoulder, eyes open staring at the ceiling, one arm pinned underneath him.

  “Samuel!” I scream, and weep, wailing, eyes locked open, seeing only Samuel, my Samuel, through the renewed torrent of tears. “Samuel . . . Samuel . . . ,” I moan between my sobs.

  I’m shocked from my agonizing preoccupation with Samuel by the slamming of a pincer into the chaise lounge, which comes so close to my face the breeze brushes my skin. The force of the blow bursts the cushion of the chaise, and the small white foam beads that fill it pour into my lap and onto the floor in a slow lazy cascade as I crab-crawl backward toward the wall behind me.

  The queen roars, and Nestra roars, and the sound mixes with my own renewed screams. Nestra charges the queen and batters her back away from the lounge toward the filthy bed cushions. Pincers weave and dodge between the two, mighty blows are traded, and I can only hope Nestra’s greater control will win over the maddened strikes from the queen. Both are mottled with the pale yellow blood of their wounds.

  Nestra draws back and again rushes the queen, both pincers lancing toward the queen’s throat, both lower hands thrust out to her sides. The queen lashes and swipes in wild arcs through the air between them and bats Nestra’s pincers away as the two gigantic ants fall to the bed cushions. Nestra’s arms tangle with those of the thrashing queen beneath her.

  I look again to Samuel. He hasn’t moved. He’s dead, I’m sure. With small moans, and frequent glances toward the bed-pit where the two ants struggle, I crawl from behind the lounge toward Samuel’s body. A small coal of hope burns in me that he’s still alive. I have to know the answer, if only to extinguish the hope once and for all.

  I’m almost to Samuel when the queen, gaining some leverage among the cushions, rolls to one side pinning Nestra beneath her. Her mandibles click and crunch at Nestra’s face and throat. In a moment of random flailing with her pincers, I watch as the queen snips the slim fingers from Nestra’s lower arm. Nestra’s blood oozes from the stumps and mingles with mine on the bed cushions. I crawl with more speed toward Samuel, realizing this battle will be over soon, and determined to reach him before I, too, die at the queen’s hand.

  My hands are on Samuel’s chest, but I can’t tell if he’s breathing. I inch my knees closer and closer, sharp pain stabbing my feet. I lower my head to his chest, either to detect breathing there, or to bury my face in his warmth. As I put my right knee down close to his body, I flinch with a new pain. My knee has landed on something hard, maybe metallic. I look down and see a knife handle extending from Samuel’s pocket, resting on the floor. At first I think to bat it away so I can move closer to him, but instead, I close my hand around the handle and slide the blade from Samuel’s pocket. I look to the bed cushions again as with another great roar, Nestra rolls back, again pinning the queen.

  I bend and whisper into Samuel’s ear. “This one’s for you.”

  The tickle of Samuel’s damp hair against my nose, the smell of his sweat, ignites an anger in me that overcomes the pain in my body. That we should be this close and forever apart after all of this enrages me. I pull the bloody rags from my feet, grip the knife, and kiss Samuel’s slack lips before I push myself up to stand. My gait as I move toward the thrashing figures on the bed cushions is halting but sure.

  I reach the edge of the bed pit and crawl toward the heads of the flailing ants. Nestra is still on top of the queen but is only barely in control of the fight. The queen’s pincers and arms strike at Nestra and strike at the cushions to either side of the battling figures. One pincer slams into the cushions near my knee, but I’m beyond fear. I move in a slow dream-like trance. I crawl forward another foot.

  The queen’s pincer opens and slashes toward Nestra’s throat, and I’m sure Nestra won’t be able to defend this blow. My trance evaporates and, in a flash of speed and determination, I raise the knife over my head with both hands and bring it down into the face of the raving queen. Again and again, I lift the knife and plunge it down, into the queen’s eyes, into her throat, in between her snapping mandibles and into her palpus underneath. Again and again, my own war cry pierces the room.

  After a time, I realize the queen no longer moves, that Nestra is rising, pushing herself away from the queen. As I look into the horror that is the queen’s face – more hideous than the horror of her living face – the yellow mucus of her blood all around me, I realize what I’ve done. What we’ve done.

  We’re alive.

  Nestra moves around the bed cushions to the side nearest me. She’s bleeding from countless wounds. I reach my arms out to her as she approaches in the silence of the aftermath, ready to welcome her embrace, to thank her.

  The noise of gunfire in the corridor causes us both to pause, to turn toward the door. I look back to Nestra and she meets my eyes with her own large faceted ones. Although we aren’t sharing, I’m sure she’s filled with the same resigned knowledge that after all this danger and battle and blood – on the verge of our victory – we’re now going to die at the hands of the queen’s guards. Nestra takes another step closer to me, three limbs stretched toward me, injured lower arm tucked into her torso.

  The commotion, sounds of yelling and banging, reaches the door. I look up to see, not the ant-guards I’ve been expecting, but humans rounding the doorway and bursting into the room, rifles raised, muzzles swinging in arcs. They pause to take in the devastation, and then one points at Nestra and yells, “Get that one!” As several people bend to inspect the dead, two men leap over the bodies strewn at the door and rush toward Nestra, growling threats.

  “NO!” I screech, and manage again to rise to my feet, standing tall amid the bed cushions. I’m pleased that the sight of me – nude, covered in blood – seems to startle the advancing humans, who stumble to a halt, astonished looks on t
heir faces.

  “This is my friend,” I say, just before my world drains down a tight black tunnel and I fall toward Nestra’s outstretched arms.

  CHAPTER 48

  NESTRA

  I taste Khara’s relief at the sight of humans entering the room. I wish I could share that relief. While I am not an enemy to humans, they cannot know this.

  In my side vision, I see Khara crumple and fall toward me. Without allowing my head to turn away from the sight of the guns trained upon me, I reach for my friend and catch her before she can tumble to the floor and perhaps injure herself further. While I do not believe the humans will shoot at me while I hold Khara, I cannot know this for a certainty, so I bend to the bed cushions and, despite my trembling and my pain, arrange her body with care among them.

  I can taste the emotions that so filled Khara at the moment of her collapse: her relief at the sight of the humans – yes – but beyond that, her passionate feelings for her bond-mate, her hatred of the queen, her courage and determination to protect me. Unable to stand the sight of the evil queen so close to my human sister, I push the queen’s body as far from Khara’s as my reach will allow.

  I rise to face the two humans who still stand where they stopped at Khara’s command. I bend my head back and open my arms to the humans in a show of submission. Blood from my severed hand drips to the floor beside me.

  Never until this moment have I regretted not learning the human language. Before befriending Khara and Diane and Tanner – I quiver anew with a pang of the loss of two of my friends – I had never cared to learn their language. After sharing with my friends, I did not wish to temper their pride and enthusiasm for learning our language by learning to speak theirs. Now, I am faced with humans to whom I cannot speak, even to beg for mercy. I console myself with the thought that even if I could speak to them in their language, they would not believe my professions of friendship. I keep my head bent back and wait for the death I have thus far eluded.