“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Kohl. “Where’d they go?”
Grace keyed her comm. “Nate?” A hiss of static, nothing else. She looked at Kohl. “Too much rock.”
“Sure,” he said. “That’ll be it.”
Grace closed her eyes, reaching out with her mind. Like Chad had shown her. She felt the warm solid fight/confusion/anger of Kohl next to her. It was like the man didn’t know how to feel fear like he should, when he should. Farther out, she probed, finding the bright spots of light and color that were Nate and Hope. She knew the shape of their minds like she could tell their faces apart, a richness and a texture to each living creature. Chad — and Amedea, too — had shown her things her father never had.
When she touched their minds, she felt their fear/panic/terror. Her eyes snapped open. “Come on.”
“Where we going?” Kohl stood next to the Queen’s husk, looking up at it.
“Nate and Hope are in trouble,” said Grace.
“You know what?” said Kohl. “I think we are too.” He was reaching a hand up towards the dead Queen.
That made Grace pause, her gaze moving back to Kohl. “Kohl?”
“Because,” said Kohl, “this fucker ain’t dead.” And he touched the Queen.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE THING IN the holo looked … plain fucking ugly, no two ways about it. It was squat, with a shell on its back. Like a snail, if a snail also had limbs that came off its back near the shell. The picture was in low blue tones, which might have been the holo stage not working for shit after a hundred years sitting cold, or it could be an alien race of snails liking blue light. Who knew? The snail was waving claws and stalks all over the show in a rhythmic series of patterns.
“That is really gross,” said Hope.
“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, Hope,” said Nate. “It’s probably an attractive example of its species.”
“Those stories from old holos, where people voyage across the galaxy to have relationships with aliens?” said Hope. “I don’t see it. Not at all.”
Nate’s comm crackled, and he keyed it. “Yeah.” Nothing, just more crackling. “Huh,” he said. “Hope? You figure on working out what’s going on here?”
“I’m recording it all,” she said. “I don’t think I can work it out here, Cap. This is an alien race. Best guess is they use sign language. Or something. But it’ll take years for us to unpick that.”
The holo stage flickered, and something else came to life next to it. It also looked like a super-ugly snail, but … well, if Nate had to guess, it was some kind of stylized rendition. Like what an artist might draw. The articulation of the limbs — stalks and claws — was more rhythmic, or predictable, or some damn thing. He looked at it for a while, walking around the holo, then said, “What the fuck is that?”
“Beats me,” said Hope. “Looks like another ugly alien.”
“Not recorded, though,” said Nate. “Like, it’s … manufactured.”
“Cartoons. A computer, maybe,” said Hope. “If we stay here a thousand years we’ll still be discovering stuff.”
There was another rumble, from back the way they came. Nate pointed his light in that direction. “You know what, Hope? I’m fixing for us to regroup. Check on the others. See what they’ve found. You’ve recorded this. We’ve found the signal. Everyone’s dead, so maybe we go back to the ship, grab a burger and beer, and talk this over.” He was expecting a little resistance, maybe a bit of static from Hope.
That didn’t happen. “Good idea,” she said.
Nate blinked. “Say what?”
“Great idea,” she said. “Because I am pretty sure this whole thing is a trap. Nothing about it is warm, cozy, and welcoming.”
“Okay then,” said Nate. “With me. Stay on my six, Hope. Focus.”
“You got it, Cap.”
Nate led them back the way they came, exiting the big cavern with its space radio and weird alien recordings. They walked swift and sure down the long tunnel they’d entered by. It was dark, quiet, silent, just the same as when they’d come this way the first time. Except for one small, tiny detail. Tiny, yet crucial.
All the doors were open. The irises had slid wide, black and ominous space behind them. Nate slowed his pace as they approached, finding his blaster in his hand again. He poked a cautious head around the side of one iris. His eyes widened in shock, and he stumbled back. He turned to Hope, and said, “Run.”
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN KOHL TOUCHED the carapace of the dead Queen, nothing happened. For about three seconds. Then the big head rose, dust sifting down, and Grace could hear — like tuning into a radio — that familiar static hiss of Ezeroc communication.
“Get back!” she hissed.
“No kidding,” said Kohl, backing up.
“How’d you know it wasn’t dead?” she said.
“Looked fine,” said Kohl. “Not dried out or fucked up in any particular fashion. I figured it was just sleeping.”
“So, you also figured on waking it up? Are you crazy?”
“Sometimes,” admitted Kohl. “I always like to make sure what’s dead is dead, and what’s alive is alive.”
The Ezeroc Queen was trying to rise, long years of somnolence making its movements sluggish. Grace drew her sword with a whisper of steel. She hadn’t tested this version of the blade, and there was no time like the present. Grace took five quick steps towards the Queen then swung the blade. She never hit, because it whisked out a limb, much faster than Grace expected, and knocked her clear backward. She felt the bruising crush of the blow against her chest, the air leaving her chest in a rush, and she lay on the ground, trying to draw in a breath. Kohl grabbed her arm, and was dragging her backward, away from the Queen. Into the safety of the tunnel.
Kohl was watching where they were going, but she was watching where they were coming from. The Queen was still attached to its feeding pipes. It wasn’t going anywhere. But its carapace flexed, bulging, and then cracked down the middle. The hissing in Grace’s mind grew … louder … for a moment, then the Queen slumped forward, head dropping. Dead.
The carapace ruptured, and out of that rupture burst … fluids. Food for a hundred smaller insects. The eggs started to rupture, cat-sized Ezeroc climbing free, bodies wet and slick with fluids. Grace knew what the claws promised, if they dug into your flesh. Larvae, under the skin. Bugs in your body that would eat your brain. Grace managed a breath, grabbing Kohl’s arm. He turned, took in the sight, and unslung his plasma cannon. “It’s time to get to work,” he said.
She stood next to him. “It is.” The first of the insects scampered forward. As it came at them, Grace stepped forward, her sword whisking out. She cut it in half, the two pieces flying past her to land on the ground. “One down.”
“Ninety-nine to go,” said Kohl, and opened up with his plasma cannon.
CHAPTER TEN
RUNNING WAS GETTING to be a habit. There were a lot of scary things in the universe. There was radiation, sure, that could kill silent and deadly, leaving you to bleed your internal organs dry, eyeballs leaking fluid and pus. It’d be a bad way to go. Then there was an accidental impact with a high-velocity object — say, an asteroid — that would crush the hull of your ship. If you were wiped out in the initial impact, that’d be a kindness, because dying from depressurization would just plain suck. The list went on, and on, and eventually arrived at the new dangers Nate had discovered: aliens.
Each of the rooms behind the irises were full of them. Ezeroc drones, insect-centaur forms lined up like soldiers on parade, silent. Waiting for something. The doors had opened, the air had rushed in, and the drones picked up movement. On waking up, they found that a hundred years or more of sleeping had left them hungry, and with hunger came a certain urgency Nate could relate to. The urgency gave speed, and those fucking bugs were boiling out of those damn rooms like roaches out from under a rock.
Nate and Hope were running — her rig lights leading the way as he held th
e rear — down the tunnel, boots slapping against the stone beneath them. The Ezeroc flowed out of the irises in their wake like water flowing out of pipes. They impacted each other, sometimes clawing over their comrades in the hunger that drove them mindless and mad. Where those claws hit, shells were cracked, limbs severed. Some of the aliens fell on their brethren, trying to get at the juicy interior. But far too many flowed on after Nate. He pointed his blaster, squeezing off shot after shot behind them, a steady salvo of bright light, plasma cracking with energy as it hit.
It’d be hard not to hit anything. There were hundreds of them.
They rounded a bend in the tunnel, and Nate saw lights ahead. Grace and Kohl, running back towards them. “Run!” said Nate.
“Already on it, Cap,” said Kohl, his big power armor lumbering along with the enthusiasm of a tank. “You get on now.”
Nate turned, dropped to one knee, and unloaded his blaster. He kept his finger on the trigger, the barrel glowing in the steady stream of plasma he was emptying down the tunnel. The weapon whined to silence, the spent battery falling from the bottom of the weapon.
“Stand back a second,” said Kohl, and braced himself. His plasma cannon was pointed toward the horde of Ezeroc, and he pulled the trigger. The noise that erupted was staggering, the tunnel reflecting the bright flare of plasma. But Nate would take the noise and light any day over the alternative. Pieces of Ezeroc exploded in the tunnel, smoking, smoldering chitin thrown out and back like they’d been hit with … well, high yield plasma.
Nate slapped another battery in his gun, turning back the way Kohl had come. He realized he was still on one damn knee, figured it worked for the moment, and leaned around Kohl to fire down the tunnel. Bright flashes of plasma fire turned Ezeroc into floating ash.
He could hear Grace on the comm. “El! We need an evac. Get the ship warmed up.”
“Situation?”
“Bugs.”
“Get your own ride. Just kidding, on my way.”
There was a brief lull in the firefight, and Nate rose to his feet, Kohl chuckling beside him. He gave the big man a glance. “You okay?”
“I’m great, Cap. Just peachy. I figure, I don’t know, we got to start keeping score. I want to make another visit to these assholes, make a short date of it.” Kohl lifted his plasma cannon, ejecting the battery. It fell, contacts glowing white-hot, smoke trailing from it as it clattered against the tunnel floor. He slapped another battery in, the weapon ready lights blinking. “Most of my dates are short, you know? It’s how I roll.”
“That’s not a good selling point,” said Hope. She was ahead of them. “There may be a small problem.”
Nate hurried after her, Grace ahead of him in the tunnel, Kohl behind. The big man was walking backward, the whirr-clunk, whirr-clunk of his power armor’s steps somehow comforting. Human tech, under human control, in this alien death facility that had been constructed to trap them. Or someone like them, here, with the Ezeroc. And that human, using his human tech, was still going strong. Nate’s good vibes didn’t last long when he caught sight of Hope’s face through her visor. Her expression was fearful. “What is it, Hope?”
“Well, it’s a long way up,” she said. “I figured, you know. We’d be able to winch Kohl out or something.”
“You what?” said Kohl. “You’d best hurry, whatever you’re planning. They’re, I dunno, regrouping. They don’t seem real smart, not like the regular ones.”
“Hive mind,” said Grace. “Queen’s out. Until they elect a new one—”
“Elect?” said Nate.
“Elect,” said Grace. “Until there’s a new Queen, they’re just animals. Hungry animals.”
“How do they elect a Queen?” said Kohl.
“Usually it hatches right out of someone,” said Grace.
“Get me the fuck out of this death hole,” said Kohl. “I don’t care if you need a winch or what, just get me out.”
Nate looked at Kohl in his armor, and at the lip of the hole. They could boost out Hope, Grace could probably just fly out because she was like a gymnast, and Nate — with a bit of clawing and scrabbling — could get out if he stood on Kohl’s shoulders. But that’d leave Kohl, with three hundred kilos of power armor, at the bottom of a pit of devils. That armor wasn’t coming off either; it was his suit. It’d be a long run back though ice-cold poisonous air to the Tyche, and while Kohl was big, tough, and dumb, he wasn’t indestructible. He just acted that way. “So,” said Nate.
“So,” agreed Kohl. “Why don’t you get on?”
“Because,” said Nate. “We don’t leave people behind.”
“What about if there’s a bunch of space insects who will kill everyone if you don’t?” said Kohl, glancing back at Nate.
“He makes a compelling argument,” said Grace. But she was standing there, sword in hand, held low and ready. Her teeth were showing, not quite a grin, like she wanted to fight. Like she was ready for it.
Nate keyed the comm. “El?”
“I’m almost there. Hold on to your knitting.”
“I need a winch or something,” said Nate.
“What does the Tyche look like to you, Nate?” There was a pause. “Captain. Sir.”
“A ship,” said Nate.
“She look like a tractor to you, Cap?”
Nate sighed. He turned to Hope. “If we get you out of here, can you get a, I don’t know, a rope or something?”
She blinked at him. “There’s no rope on the Tyche, Cap. We don’t keep rope on a starship. No rigging. Not the kind of boat that needs ropes.”
Hell. “Okay, well. See what you can do.”
“They’re coming,” said Kohl. He stood at the base of the sand pile, facing the tunnel’s mouth. Feet braced against the tide that wanted to swallow them all. “Best get going.”
“Sure,” said Grace, not moving.
“Absolutely,” said Nate, blaster in his hand. Somehow his sword had found its way to his other hand. It felt unfamiliar, wrong-handed, but comfortable with the touch of his fingers regardless. Like it wanted to be used. And it did. It was made for a better hand than his. It was made to kill the enemies of an Empire that fell long ago. Those enemies could be human or alien, didn’t much matter to the sword. Kohl took point position, Grace and Nate flanking him.
The insects swarmed towards them, the tunnel clouding over with the sheer number of them. Kohl pulled the trigger of his plasma cannon, and Nate joined in, his smaller blaster firing down the hole. Then the insects were on them, too many Ezeroc, the sheer force of the crush pushing one or two out of the tunnel.
Grace moved like a liquid, like a dancer, beautiful like the dawn. Nate glimpsed her sword moving through the air, pieces of Ezeroc flying apart. He swung his own sword, the black blade biting into the side of an Ezeroc drone, the creature rearing back with those deadly claws to land on him. Not today. He raised his blaster and unloaded three rounds into the carapace, pieces flying away. A smaller bug made it past Nate, scuttling up and behind him. He turned to see it making straight for Hope. She was standing behind them, up the sand pile aways, her face a mask of concentration. The Ezeroc made it to her, claws outspread to drive them home. The arms of her rig snapped out, all four at once, laser light moving in a complex pattern. The Ezeroc separated into about fifty different smoking pieces.
Nate turned back to the melee, firing wild. He took out another two drones, catching another smaller one on a jump. His sword moved in an arc, like his body remembered how this dance was supposed to go, like it wanted to live. He didn’t feel like it was going to get the chance.
Kohl’s cannon ran dry, the weapon ejecting the battery in a spiral of smoke, the bright red points of the overheated contacts tracing lines through the gloom. The action paused — the Ezeroc noting that they weren’t been mown down in great numbers, and the crew of the Tyche realizing that things were about to get worse. Kohl’s hands let go of his cannon, and he seemed to sag a little as a sigh came over the comm. “Well,”
he said, “there’s only one thing for it.” The big man reached behind him, tugging at the clasps on his belt. The belt came free, a chain of grenades strung together. Black Ezeroc eyes followed the movement.
“Kohl,” said Nate.
“It’s okay, Cap. Ain’t no way I’m going down as bug food,” said Kohl, and tossed the belt into the tunnel. The big man turned, power armor clanking as he barged Grace to the ground. Nate took the hint, grabbing Hope — eliciting a yell over the comm — and tucking her under him. The blast, when it hit, took everything away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THERE WAS A high-pitched noise, like a tiny angel screaming. It made Grace want to kill the angel, because whatever was mauling it wasn’t working fast enough. There was a weight on her chest, a big weight that made it very hard to pull in air.
Something bad happened. You need to get up, Grace Gushiken.
Her eyes were heavy, though. That was a problem. And that noise went on forever. She tried to get an arm up to touch the side of her head. Clumsy fingers found the side of something hard, halting her touch. Helmet. You’re wearing a helmet. You’re outside the ship. The Tyche. She’s waiting for you.
Another breath. She needed one little sip of O2, and she’d be good to go.
It felt like her father was standing above her. The weight of his regard, on her chest. His presence, pushing down like it always had. You’re weak. Half of what you need to be. You’re no daughter of mine.
But I am your little girl. She’d never said it, but she’d felt it a hundred times. Because fathers protected their daughters. Wasn’t that the deal?
I don’t have little girls. I have warriors. They stand tall and do what’s needed. You … you’re a mongrel. Disfigured. She felt him turn away, like he had a hundred times before. When you can stand tall, when you’re not so weak that you stumble through the steps of kata that should be easy, come find me.
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