Inside, they pointed for him to enter a cell. Here he still sat on the metal floor with only a metal chair too small for his bulk. But he was alive. Yet, the breath he drew was of strange air, sharp and dry. He was an alien on a strange, sunless world. He would likely never see his family again. If he did, they would beat him, perhaps to death. His superiors would shoot him. Then he realized his commanders were all dead. He was alone. He became afraid, again.
The hatch swung open. Three natives walked in. Two were male. Their uniforms, or rather simply made clothes, were clean. One woman watched behind them. She was an observer, perhaps a leader. Her garb was ripped, and she had dressed wounds beneath it. Su’anff recognized the different quality of her stare. She was fresh from combat, herself. Yet, obviously, she had stayed and fought her battle.
All of them took a moment to stare. Although he was large, and he reminded himself, a trained soldier, he flinched his beard-like mouth celaria from nerves at the alien’s presence. Their faces. Almost flat. Horizontal mouths sat beneath gently flexing gills at their centers. Their individual hues ranged from a whitish pink to near the deep brown and grey tones of his hide. What grasped his attention, and focused on him with stern determination, were the large, demanding eyes.
“You can understand us, now.” A dark male approached Su’anff. His posture held certainty. As did his words, even as translated and beamed into Su’anff’s skull, nearly instantaneously.
“Yes,” Su’anff replied as quietly as he could so he didn’t startle his jailers.
“I am Laas. You are my student. We have war accords in our history. You will be treated as they prescribe.”
“Student?” Su’anff asked. Then a more pressing question came to him. “Will I be killed?”
“No,” Laas answered. “Do you wish to be?”
“No!” Su’anff exclaimed and all Tectus natives flinched.
“Good,” Laas replied.
The man behind Laas stepped forward and spoke. “I am Niko, city leader. This is Myra. She endured other forms of your invasion.”
“And survived,” Su’anff rolled his head as a show of respect. The act was unrecognized. Su’anff took a deep breath. His large nostrils opened and all three from Tectus leaned back, warily.
“Quickly!” Myra chastised her colleagues.
“We were able to access and control a few of your fleet’s surviving reconnaissance satellites.” Niko continued. “Thankfully, once we broke your ciphers, we found technology and coding integration built in.”
“Multiple forces—species.” Su’anff added. “Multiple, um--?”
“We understand,” Myra snapped.
“We turned the satellites out to space as a warning system.” Niko said. “It’s working. The biggest warship of your fleet evidently escaped. It’s—”
“The Sword Wing?” Su’anff took another breath. Excitement raised his voice. “Did it really beat the hellship?”
“No.” Niko answered. “Like you, it fled the fighting.”
Su’anff slumped. He considered that if Buran fled, then Hell must still be a force whose power was unmatched.
“But it is coming back.” Niko said.
“And the hellship?” Su’anff leaned forward with a universally understood expression of widened eyes.
“Whereabouts unknown. But it left orbit and vanished.”
“Why—? why—?” Su’anff swayed his head as he searched for words and diplomatic expression.
“Aren’t we all dead?” Myra said in cold voice and with an unblinking stare at Su’anff.
“Yes,” Su’anff leaned back.
“Unknown,” Niko replied.
“But the Sword Wing, the Nemorosan Admiral’s super ship. It’s coming.” Su’anff looked to the sides as his mind felt bounced within his large, thick skull.
“Yes,” Myra stepped between the two men. “Now tell us, how we defeat it.”
Su’anff began to laugh at the question, but became lost in his own thoughts. The Sword Wing returned. Could he escape? And—would the Nemorosans execute him? He heard his Tectus interrogators speaking, but emotions overcame him. He did not know to be pleased by this news, or frightened. He realized the hellship might also return. He became afraid.
Buran stared forward, blankly. He was not alone. He could not see his crew in their bridge arcs. He saw open space and a distant dot. Another presence was much closer. It existed within his mind. Buran resisted its entry, but it had more dimensions than the admiral could conceive. Mentally, he was outflanked, struck from above, and to his aft as his ship cut a straight course through space.
“You have done well.” The intruder said as clear as a voice in his ears. “You know when to strike and when to retreat. All to attain the prize. Our prize. It makes me happy.”
Buran made no reply.
“Still, deep down, you resent my presence. It is ego? Is it knowing for all your military power, greater strength exists beyond you? I suppose that would anger me. In fact, it does.”
I am angry!
The voice paused after its outburst and then continued.
“No, no. I'm staying in control. I am--I have mastery of myself. How else can I conquer anyone one if I can’t conquer my emotions? I admit, some things in me are not fully developed. My rage is not one of them. I—well, I’m being called. It’s hard to resist. I think I need to focus. As do you, Buran.
“I have to leave you, little admiral. And right at the auspicious moment I have led you to, as if I pulled you on a string. Or a strand. As if cast from a spider’s web. And that is where I go, into silken depths. Into darkness. And so will you. Although, your journey will be physical. Mine, well, is the mind a dimension, a plane? It must be. It’s where I live and what I am. A mind.
“I must wait for our greater glory. Until then, good luck. Rather, good hunting. We will meet one day. Face to—well, in person. Good bye.”
Buran jerked suddenly in his command chair. Something loomed directly ahead. He drew in a breath to shout commands as a massive, dark sphere bore straight down and threatened to crush him. He blinked to wet his dried eyes and recognized the object. It was merely the projection of Tectus. The planet’s image hovered over his officers’ station arcs on the bridge. The Sword Wing neared the target anew.
Buran knew he was safe at the lone planet. The hellship was gone. It, the intruder, was gone. Yet the connection was there. Within his brain, a line was left open. A frequency was still tuned, but silent. He told himself its link to his brain had not brought him to Tectus. His research and quest through space had given him clues to locate the planet-sized machine and undertake the mission ahead. The intruder was more a parasite than a partner. The data it provided was useful. Not critical.
Buran waited for an angry reply inside his mind. It didn’t come. He looked back at projection of Tectus. He inhaled slowly, and allowed himself a moment of private joy.
Roelar turned his slightly crooked neck to aim his head back at his small, station screen after peering over his shoulder at Buran. He pretended not to notice Chelnar casting a questioning gaze toward him.
In real space, the Sword Wing sped closer to Tectus.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Great Widow became impatient. One, long, arachnid leg reached down and plucked the specific, silk strand again. The prey certainly felt the vibration through its quantum entanglement with the web. That it could resist this long meant it was remarkably strong. Few creatures had such power. She knew all of them. Those who still lived, and all that lay as corpses or scattered atoms. She could only guess this intruder’s identity. One possibility she denied, but shuddered at the thought. If it somehow survived, it would have such strength. But it would be a freak, and a subversion of Hell’s dark will. An abomination.
She noticed the strand still vibrated after it should have stopped. The intruder was here.
“Now, now. Abomination, am I? Some see a spider as a monster, large or small. And you, old one, are very, very large.”
Th
e voice came from the vibrating strand and entered the Great Widow’s mind. So far, the intruder’s mind resisted being channeled to the section she wove to focus and trap it. It was strong, indeed. It had entered her brain before she realized its presence. She contained her fear, and used time as an additional weapon.
“Your thoughts are clear, but your mind is far away.” The Great Widow spoke and thought in as entreating a voice as a massive arachnid could. “Come closer. Allow me to admire the mind that can enter, and then leave, my infinite web.”
The reply was a loud reverberation of laughter.
“Emotions,” the Great Widow said. “For you they are quite strong. Come here and share your joy with me, your kindly host.”
“Emotions. Thoughts.” The intruder paused. “Emotions are thoughts. At least when considered after they rise. They are, first, impulses. As were my first thoughts. What were they? Probably: hide. But no. That’s an impulse. An impetus to sate a need. What were my first, linked thoughts? My first plan beyond self-preservation? I mean, it’s odd. Self-preservation without a full sense of self.
“But you tell me how thoughts evolve. You are a spider. A bug. But you are now a powerful being. A powerful mind. Tell me how impulses to sate simple needs and preserve life become thoughts and plans to build, conquer, and survive. Or do they? Are self-aware thoughts merely more complicated structures for those same needs? Just as your web once caught small prey, but now captures thoughts across a galaxy. Is it evolution, or just compounding chaos?”
The Great Widow said nothing. She watched patiently as the vibrations of the intruder radiated along her stands, but as yet did not fall completely into her trap.
“Did I lose you?” the intruder asked.
“No.” The Great Widow replied. “I cannot be lost in a world of my own making.”
There was more, loud laughter.
“Isn’t that how most minds are lost?” the intruder asked. “I would imagine so.”
“Some, minds. Perhaps.” The Great Widow became more relaxed as she accepted her trap was not working. Yet, she knew many ways to ensnare prey, and continued. “You seem lost. Aimless. Let me give you focus. Come closer.”
“I have my own plans. They do not have me falling prey to fangs and silk. I have seen them before. If a brain can form memories before forming a full mind, then my first memories are of such things. I prefer this perspective. You are truly entering my mind, now, spider. You are in my web!”
Now, and for the first time in millennia, the Great Widow laughed for what seemed forever. Her web began to jostle. The vibration moved through the millions upon millions of strands and became more violent as the waves amplified across the dimension.
“Stop it! Stop laughing at me!” the intruder demanded.
The Great Widow flexed each of her long, spider’s legs and checked the remnant Dark Urge who wriggled, but stayed asleep.
“I thank you for that boon,” she said to the intruder. “But you waste time. You waste my time.”
“Was that rebuke? Have care, bug!”
“I have, outcast.” The great Widow said as she descended and stared all her eight eyes at the trap lines that now glowed. The intruder’s mind was too large for the strands she wove. But before she reset her trap, she thought of a new plan.
The intruder was strong, but ultimately she was safe from it. Its rage had been provoked, but it could only touch her mind, not harm it. Thus, it could be a way to not only communicate beyond Hell’s interior, but also engineer her exit from the planet. She focused on shielding her inner thoughts from the thing. It, this abomination, could serve her.
She plucked the strands connected to the intruder.
“I have not left,” it said with spite.
“I know. And I no longer deny that I know who you are. There is only one thing you can be. I took you out to the surface wastes, as the Dark Urge ordered. I left you there. I could have sunk my fangs through your cocoon and drained your life. Instead, I left you with a chance of survival.”
“Lies!” the intruder screamed from the strands. “You left me to be seared and die!”
“If so, then why are you alive now? It is because my silk protected you. Right now, it amplifies your connection to the web. Its resonance within you links with what surrounds and shields you.”
The intruder paused in consideration. The Great Widow hoped it would accept her reweaving of facts into a plausible story. Yet, of course, it was a lie.
“Perhaps,” the intruder finally said. “But you did act against me.”
“I acted in a way that served my ruler, yet also linked a potential strand to a point in time. A point I could come back to and find strengthened by my web, or that wove stands of its own that loop back to me. And here you are, child. Welcome home.”
“What if the loop becomes a snare?”
“Snare? It was a path back to me. I sit in Hell, at the seat of the almighty Dark Urge. The greatest threat was from the one I served. Others threats are, well, minimized.”
“You were the thrall of the Dark Urge. Yet you made plans of your own right beneath her. Cunning.” The intruder’s voice grew calm.
“I used time for very long plans.” The Great Widow suppressed a growing sense of triumph as the intruder eased its ire and still listened to her weave invisible silk around it. “As I lived day to day, as when I exposed you from inside Hell, I served my ruler. Your mother.”
“The Dark Urge.”
“Yes. She could have had demons drag you to the surface and then rip you apart. She bade me take you so that no other child of Hell would know you existed. But more so it spared her the murderous act, and perhaps some form a shame in the dark, heated labyrinths where her thoughts arose and burned.”
“And mother, now?” The intruder asked with tones of genuine interest, but not concern. “Where is she? She seemed to rage, to flood existence with radiation. It fully awoke and empowered me. I was able to reach out, find your web. Find Hell’s data stores. Her rage was a gift. A full birth. Psychically. Although, I suspect it was to kill. To kill everything.”
“She sleeps, child.” The Great Widow suppressed another sense of triumph. She understood that whatever the intruder saw, it still had no clue that the mass on her back was the avatar of its mother. It had also revealed it could move from the web to Hell’s circuits and read it data. That was disturbing.
“She is wounded, in her mind.” The spider continued. “She can spin forces and weave weapons to sunder worlds. For now, I hold her power as she heals, for she cannot accept that her own creations, made to fight and crush her fears, rebelled. Again.”
“Ironic, as she acted to kill her children. Perhaps I am the lucky one, after all. Oh! Right there. I made myself angry.”
“The Dark Urge raged against all life and sought a universe brought to oblivion. Death. Then, under such stress, her own web collapsed upon her. Her mind now seeks to climb from within the crush of its fallen strands.”
“Indeed, a spider's perspective.”
“Yes, child. But you can see, even with vast power, it is necessary to keep yourself under control. You can still achieve your destiny, even though I took you from the womb of steel and fire deep inside Hell, inside your mother. You were to be the seventh, if not the last General. But then came Anguhr. He—”
Rage rippled from the intruder’s strands. “Anguhr! ANGUHR! I will crush his skull! I will—!”
“Tsk, tsk, child. Think. It is the only way you can fight. I understand your rage at your usurper, but know that Anguhr killed two of his kind, his uncles, if you wish a familial context. But Sutuhr and Ursuhr were his equals. Anguhr fought them. They died. Now he stands alone.”
“And alone he will die.”
“Perhaps,” The Great Widow stroked the intruder’s strands. “But he is the last, living General.”
“No! I am. He is the abomination!”
“He is powerful, child. And is best treated as an ally. If you ask for his help, we c
an—”
“No. No-no-no-no!”
“All right, child-thing. Calm down.”
“I am not a child!”
“Then act as a General. I understand your enmity. No doubt you still bear some towards me. But if you seek to destroy Anguhr, you must fight him by means other than with physical or military strength.”
“In that you are wrong, spider. I have already begun my campaign. You say he is strong? He still has no clue to the traps I set. You would be proud old, old creature. It is a web even the Destroyer cannot sunder. You speak of alliances. Then you should ally with me. When Anguhr dies, and with mother in collapse, I will become Hell's heir. I will become the new darkness, and rule over all.”
“For my aid, there is a price, General.”
“For now, I will grant forgiveness for the insolence of a demand made of me. What is this price?”
“My freedom.”
Again, there was laughter.
“You live in the galaxy's seat of power.” The intruder finally said. “Where else would you go?”
“You see Hell as power. I see it as an old home that became a prison. If I aid you, I leave.”
“I suppose all homes must rid themselves of vermin.” A dark laugh followed the intruder’s barb.
“I will show you forgiveness for that,” the Great Widow replied, and allowed a small sense of triumph to rise from her contained thoughts.
“Then we have a pact, old spider.”
“Indeed. And so I propose we no longer call each other old spider and child-thing. I have been given many names over millennia and ages come and then forgotten, including Shia-Phring and Kodai kumo. I am the Great Widow. Your name was to be—”
“I was to be the seventh. But I will be the eighth and last General. I take the name Octuhr.”
The sensation was intense. Its physical analog would be similar to naked skin feeling a continuous blast of icy wind peppered by small cinders while an electric current coursed through the body. To Zaria, the stream of radiation was exhilarating. The source of her elation began at the middle of a brilliant, concave cloud that rotated as a cosmic cyclone. From there rippled a vast whirl of particles accelerated to incredible speeds. The radiant jet spanned a distance greater than the width of several thousand solar systems. The cloud and jet appeared luminous and peaceful from a distance. That distance was across the galaxy. Within the reach of a million light years, energy roiled as particles sped, collided, and split to make even faster rays powering the celestial dynamo.
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