Arach

by C. M. Simpson

  “It will be, if we cannot recover the operation quickly enough.”

  Operation? I wanted to hear more about this operation, but Mack didn’t care what I wanted.

  “Keep your filthy claws off my people.”

  “We aren’t hurting them.”

  And I remembered what it was like to be held, to feel the sharp pain of a spider draining the life from my throat. There was more than one way to hurt. No-one wanted to carry memories like that. I shoved my own memory away, and forced myself to concentrate on Mack’s response.

  I saw when he thought about taking a swing at his captor, and willed himself to stillness.

  “I need to feed,” the arach told him. “Who can you spare?”

  “Medical—” Mack began, but the creature cut him off.

  “We need living blood.”

  “You prefer living blood,” Mack corrected. “You do not need it.”

  “I will only feed from the living.”

  “I have no-one to spare.”

  “Then I will start with those I deem to be of least use to you—the very young, the very old, the sick, and the weak, those not occupied in a position of technical skill that would be difficult to replace.”

  The arach turned to go, and my heart thudded in my chest. The very young put Rohan right in the firing line. I wondered if he was well-hidden, or within reach, and my heart leapt to my throat. Mack, however, had another alternative.

  “You can feed on me.”

  “But you are the only one who can contact the girl.”

  “Then you’d better not take too much.”

  “And if I prefer another alternative?”

  “You will have to kill me, and your mission will be lost.”

  The arach turned back towards him.

  “What makes you think I will have to kill you?” he sneered, and Mack struck.

  Honestly, I’d thought Bendigo could move fast, but Mack proved to be just as quick, and I realized I hadn’t watched him in combat—usually I was too busy fighting right alongside him…or trying to hold my own against him on the mats. All that had told me was that he was fast. Watching him was another matter.

  Mack bounced to within arm’s length of the creature, and his hands were a blur of movement. I heard three thuds, followed by a crack, and then Mack lifted his knee and brought his foot down hard on the top of the arach’s very human-looking knee.

  There was another crack, and a shout of pain, and the arach shifted from human to spider. Mack ducked under the first stab of its foreclaw, grabbed the second claw, and then dodged the creature’s fangs to slide underneath it, pulling the leg after him.

  There was a third crack, as the spider refused to follow the dragging pressure on its leg, but Mack let go, slid to a stop on his knees beneath its abdomen, and slammed punches upwards into the monster’s gut.

  “Drink!” he demanded, emphasizing the word on a solidly delivered blow. “From! Me!”

  And then he slid out from under the abdomen and into the corridor, which wasn’t his best move ever.

  “You, pack-hunting, cowardly, blood-sucking, mother-fucking bastards!” he roared, trading blows with the waiting arach guards, but they outnumbered him four to one, and they out-massed him in their half-hybrid forms. They were also better armored than an unprotected human could ever hope to be.

  The arach leader was not smiling when he reappeared in the doorway, but he had returned to the human form he had adopted when he’d boarded the ship. Mack tensed against the guards restraining him, but didn’t try to break free. Watching him, I wasn’t sure whether this was because he couldn’t, or because he’d decided not to.

  The arach leader looked at the guards, and chattered in the arach tongue. They hesitated, and then let Mack go. Mack pulled himself up from the floor, and stood in front of the arach leader. He didn’t say a word, didn’t twitch an eyebrow, and didn’t even try to look smug. He just stared at the creature in front of him—and it stared back.

  They stood that way for a long moment, and then Mack spoke.

  “You touch my crew, and I will fight you and yours until one of us is dead, and then you will lose your link to my girl. You can drink from me. You alone. If you want to feed your crew, you need to find them supplies elsewhere, but you will not feed on anyone else on my ship.”

  The arach neither agreed, nor denied him

  “Kneel,” it said, and Mack knelt.

  I noticed that he hooked his hands into his belt, and didn’t take his eyes from the creature before him. I also noticed that one of the arach’s arms hung limply by its side, and wondered what it was going to do for treatment. That worry went straight out of my head, when the arach said four frighteningly familiar words.

  “You owe me blood,” it said, and Mack curled his lip.

  “I owe you nothing.”

  He stayed on his knees as it advanced towards him, and I watched as he tightened his grip on his belt. How he stayed where he was when the arach came and knelt behind him, I do not know, but he did. He even let it pull him against itself so it could feed more easily.

  The only sign I had that Mack was nowhere near as relaxed as he seemed was when the arach bit into his throat. His whole body jerked, and he let go of his belt, but he managed to fold his arms up over his chest, instead of flailing wildly. The arach gave a contented sigh, and wrapped two more sets of arms around him, settling in to its meal.

  For several long minutes, I watched in dread, wondering if the spider would let him live, or simply drain him dry, and then go rampaging through the crew, but it didn’t. It raised its head, and then licked over the bite mark, stopping the blood flow from the wounds. Even then, it didn’t let Mack go. It held him, staring at nothing, before turning him so it could look down into his face, and smiling contentedly.

  “It is good to know, my dear captain, that even you can feel fear.”

  “Fuck you,” Mack muttered, but he didn’t try to break the arach’s hold, and I wondered if he’d been paralyzed by the bite.

  “Not a chance,” his captor muttered, “but I could set you aside for when the queen wishes to lay.”

  “Why don’t you wait a day or so, and then introduce me to your queen?” Mack suggested, but he sounded tired, and he still hadn’t moved.

  The arach let him slide slowly to the floor.

  “Perhaps when the mission is done,” the arach murmured, and stood up, making a show of wiping his mouth, before he walked away. “Same time, tomorrow?”

  Mack groaned, but the arach did not look back.

  “Tell your cook you need something high in iron—or go and see your doctor. Don’t make me go looking for Tens.”

  Mack pushed himself slowly into a sitting position, and then paused, as though to catch his breath. The arach glanced over its shoulder and chattered something to the guards around it. Two of them snapped briefly to attention, and then went back to Mack.

  “I don’t think I’ve got any to spare, boys,” Mack said, but they hadn’t come to feed.

  They picked him up off the floor, and pulled his arms across their shoulders—and the implant faded out. The last thing I saw of Mack, was of him stumbling like a drunk between the arach, as they took him away.

  I woke up calling his name, and trying to fight my way free of the chair that held me.

  “Mack! What the Hell! Mack!” A rustle of movement caught my attention, and I turned my head. “Who the fuck are you?”

  The man-sized wasp beside me tilted its head and regarded me with one of its large, multi-faceted eyes. Its bright orange wings twitched, stretched and then settled flat against its back.

  “You have an extremely foul mouth,” it observed, “even for a human.”

  I heard buzzing, followed by a whistle. It was untranslated, but the gesture the wasp beside me made in return surpassed the need. I felt my lips twitch into what might have been a smile, if it hadn’t been for Mack.

  “Ma
ck,” I repeated, and tried to lift a hand.

  It was tied down, and I couldn’t. I also became aware of several points of pressure around my skull.

  “What’s this?”

  My voice sounded hoarse, like I’d done a lot of talking… or screaming.

  “You don’t sleep well.”

  No shit Sherlock. I remembered my dreams.

  “We have to get to Mack. He…” I couldn’t say it, but the wasp turned to its monitor and clicked at the keyboard.

  “We know,” it said, as I heard Mack’s voice.

  “I don’t think I’ve got any to spare, boys.”

  “The ship has returned to orbit.”

  I knew that voice!

  “Your majesty.”

  The wasp moved out of its seat, and then settled back as a familiar figure came to stand beside our chairs.

  “You’re looking better,” the queen said.

  I wanted to say I was feeling better, but my words had fled. I stared into her beautiful face, and wondered why.

  “Because I can trap your mind,” the queen explained. “Don’t worry. I won’t use it against you.”

  “Good to know,” I managed, and found she’d given me back control.

  “Mack…” I began, but she moved away and leant over the console of the wasp beside me.

  “What have you got, Poli?”

  “You were right. The implant went live, and we used it to trace the signal. The arach have hacked the satellites, so they don’t register their ship’s presence.”

  “That’s not very convenient.”

  I tested the restraints at my hands, and discovered I had some at my feet, as well. Bugger. Talk about not convenient. I didn’t bother fighting, figured I’d be hurting, by now, if they’d intended me any harm. rav bushes, aside—and that had been my own fault, anyway. I tilted my chin, and took a good look around the space I was in, instead.

  To my surprise, the wasps were not the only creatures operating the array of computers I could see around the room. And, when I say around, I mean, all around.

  I hadn’t known computers could operate upside down—Man, I thought, looking at the wasps tucked along the ceiling and happily operating the keyboards with their front pair of legs, while hanging on with their last two pairs. That would not have worked with human operators.

  Speaking of which, the humans worked from standing stations. I spotted three or four of them, and wondered what they were doing here.

  “They work for us,” the queen said. “Equal opportunity. Skill and loyalty should be rewarded.”

  I looked back to her. Mack valued skill and loyalty.

  “Mack…” I said, and had to clear the tears out of my throat.

  “We have not forgotten,” she said.

  “You don’t understand. Their leader said they were hungry.”

  She came over to me, then, and moved her hands across my head, taking away whatever was applying pressure to my skull. I studied her face as she worked, and wondered what she was thinking.

  “I do understand,” she told me. “I know the arach very well. My people have fought them for centuries. The ones on the ship are hungry, and they have no intention of sparing Mack, or his crew—especially after the damage he did to their leader. He is fortunate that terror cannot be hidden when it mingles with the blood.”

  “It can’t?”

  “No,” said a new voice, and the queen and I both looked towards it. “It has a most distinctive flavor.”

  “Askavor,” the queen said, as I did my best to climb out of the chair—backwards, away from the arach that made its way towards us.

  The queen laid her hand on my chest.

  “Be still,” she said, and I felt my mind calm, even as my heart continued to thunder.

  “Be still,” she repeated, and my heart slowed.

  It sped up again, as the monster that had entered the room, came closer, and I discovered what the queen had meant when she said she could trap my mind… and I thought she’d said she wouldn’t use it against me… Boy was I—

  “Hush!”

  How could I hush with that thing behind her?

  “This is Askavor; he is of the Weaver clan, an ally.”

  An ally? That was an ally?

  “Be nice, or I’ll let him into your head.”

  I gasped, but I stilled, and the queen turned to the large, long-limbed spider waiting at her side.

  “Did you do it?” she asked, and he turned his blunt-faced head towards me.

  “Yes,” he said, and I heard his words echo through my implant.

  So much for not letting him into my head.

  “Be quiet!”

  “The girl has a point,” Askavor said. “They are hungry, and even if the Star Eaters need the ones they call Mack and Tens, they hunger. Keeping their leader sated will only hold them for so long. They will either descend to hunt, or they will reach a point where they will consume all life aboard the ship, regardless of what they need them for. And then there is the penalty for the damage done to their hunt master.”

  There was a penalty? Well, of course there was a penalty, but…

  “They will not let him go, and they will punish him, and they will start by punishing his people in front of him.”

  Fear formed a lump in my chest, but the queen brushed aside his explanation.

  “That’s as it may be, but have you locked Mack and Tens out of her implant?”

  “I have, your Majesty, but it will not hold the Star Eaters long at bay. The code I have woven will give you an extra day, once they discover the implant is live. If Mack and Tens will not break it, they will be coerced until they have no option but to comply.”

  I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. I had no illusions about what that would entail, no illusions that Mack would not sacrifice me to save the rest of the crew. I was only one person. How could he do otherwise?

  “And how long will that take?”

  “That depends on the strength of your males, and the lever used against them.”

  My what?

  The queen made a slight buzzing sound, following it with a complicated series of clicks and hisses, and the arach turned its head back and forth between us. Even to me, it seemed surprised.

  “Truly?”

  “Truly,” the queen said. “Humans recognize few queens, and those are by granted title, obeyed only as tradition and power dictate, not by dint of nature.”

  “Oh… then what is the hierarchy between this one, and the ones they call Mack and Tens.”

  Oh… and now I began to understand. Oh. Oh, dear.

  I began to laugh, emotion bubbling into a sound that was far from happy, amused, or entertained. I had tears rolling down my cheeks by the time I was done, and one very confused arachnid standing by. I think it chose to hide its puzzlement in the facts of the situation, rather than fathom why I was laughing, when all I wanted to do was scream, or cry, or kill something. I pulled my emotions back under control, as it started speaking.

  “There is need for haste, your Majesty. The arach are not known for their patience.”

  7—An Incursion

  As my laughter subsided, the queen turned to me, placing one hand on my chest, and using a second pair of hands to undo the restraints at my wrists. I measured the distance between the chair and the blade she carried on her back, calculated my odds of reaching Askavor and skewering him, before I could be stopped.

  “Nil,” the queen said, kneeling down to undo the restraints at my feet. “Poli would stop you before you were upright.”

  He would? I looked at the orange wasp sitting beside me. He looked back, then indicated the screen.

  “The odds are not as good as you were hoping.”

  I leaned forward trying to see the screen, and I didn’t much like it, when I did. I looked at Askavor, and discovered the spider had backed away from me, drawing his legs tight in to his sides. That didn’t h
elp. For some reason the posture looked more threatening, not less.

  The queen must have still been in my head, because she glanced over at the lanky arach, and sighed.

  “Relax, Aska. I won’t let her hurt you.”

  Wait. She wouldn’t let me hurt him? I looked down at myself, trying to work out what made me so scary to a creature that out-massed me four times over in his natural form. Wait… why was he still in his natural form?

  “Because not all spider-kin are born with the ability to shift. The weavers are native to this world, and shifting is… not guaranteed.”

  Askavor moved uncomfortably, and I pulled my feet up onto the chair.

  “You can’t shift?”

  “No.”

  “But you still drink blood, right?”

  It was the first time I’d ever seen an eight-legged shrug. I could probably do without seeing it again.

  “It is the way we are made. All we can do is not drink the blood of sentients.” He paused, then added, “A lot like humans not eating meat from sentients. Such things are taboo in my tribe.”

  “Tribe?”

  “Each clan is made up of tribes.”

  “The Weavers are almost solitary,” the queen told me. “They form small family groups, and rarely travel.”

  I thought back to the one on the shuttle, but the queen had not finished.

  “The arach are a different species entirely. They are to weavers what other bipedal intelligent mammals are to humans.”

  It made sense, even if a part of my mind was screaming that it was nothing like the same, that the Weaver before me was exactly like the arach that had taken Mack’s ship—and that was all it took to snap me back to my only priority.

  “Mack…” I began, sliding out of the chair to stand beside it, but the queen was having none of it.

  “Weavers and Vespis have been allies before,” she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Even if some have forgotten. We will be allies, again.”

  I glanced down at her hand, shifted my eyes to her face, and then turned away to take a closer look at what was on Poli’s screen. Sure, it was rude, but I’d been dumped in the shit, and I didn’t see how these folk were going to help me out of it.