by Foxx Ballard
“That’s no good,” he said as he looked down at himself. “No more underwater excursions for me until that’s fixed.” When he looked up, he had a smiling emoji on again. If he had been sad, it had lasted less than a millisecond.
“Try to remain as silent as you can, when we start getting closer,” Lais suggested. “I realize that we’re not all that quiet, but when we get close enough to see them, Jack, Mogul and Synth-E-Uh will split off from us and make some noise.”
Then a concern struck Rusty. “Ship have holes in balloon, it sink into trees.”
“I left the heater on, Cap’n,” Jack replied while giving a salute. “It should stay afloat, or my name’s not Jack Mortimer Hammer. It’s not by the way, I just made up Mortimer.”
Rusty stared at the robot for a moment, waiting for him to realize what he had just said, and when that seemed unlikely, he decided just to ignore it. Not like it would change anything now.
“They that direction,” Rusty said as he pointed south through the forest, sniffing the air. The wind was blowing toward them from the direction of the Chakran, so they wouldn’t be detected early by smell, anyway. If the ant-men even had noses. He hadn’t seen any. He took Angel’s hand and loped off at an easy pace into the forest, with her in tow. The others followed.
#
The group had been traveling for a couple of hours before Rusty could make out the first hives in the night sky. The smell of them and the worms, the wax, the myriad foods and peoples, was all a mosaic that automatically pieced together in his head the possibilities of what they faced. It didn’t help him get an exact picture, but he knew a lot about what was present. The hives were floating and drifting over one area of the forest, so that had to be the spot where the last hive had gone down. It still took another hour for them to get close enough to make out the crashed hive itself. Several times over that hour there were long and deep, reverberating horn blasts through the night, sounding like the foghorns of great water ships of Earth playing a game of “Hide or Headbutt”. Was this how the ants communicated between the hives? By blowing great horns? Now they had him curious.
Synth-E-Uh, Mogul and Jack made a fair bit of noise through the trees, so they split off from the rest of the group. Rusty could see them occasionally through the tree-trunks, about a hundred paces to his left, Jack’s monitors easily visible in the dim light.
Both moons were now above, two narrow shining crescents, each providing their sliver of light. Rusty still led Angel around by the hand, making sure the path that he took accounted for her height and the extra space for her wings, but she could obviously see well enough now because he didn’t have to direct her anymore.
Lais seemed adept at keeping quiet on her own.
When they were approaching the end of the trees, Rusty put up his free hand and they stopped. They had a clear view of the fallen hive. It was up to the robots now.
The ant-men had been industrious. All the trees around the hive had been harvested, making a clearing full of jagged stumps that allowed them to see anything coming from the forest for at least thirty paces. Smart.
As he waited, he gazed in awe at the sheer enormity of the worm and hive in front of him. And the semi-translucent skin of the worm taking on the color of the forest. The one worm alone, whose thick armored hull had crushed numerous trees beneath it when it had landed, could have swallowed their entire airship. Maybe not the balloon, but still, that it could swallow the ship itself was impressive enough. And on its back was an enormous orange hive that could have covered a city block, though its waxen dome was likely no more than four or five stories high, not as tall as the skyscrapers he’d seen on Earth stretching into the sky, but still a marvel. The hive took up almost the entire platform on the back of the worm, aside from a narrow walkway around it, and at each of the four corners, as best he could tell, stood a single Chakran guard. Numerous thick ropes of silk had been tied off to rings along the platform’s edge and were stretched taut to thick trees along the clearing’s edge. This was likely the only thing keeping the hive from tipping over while the weight of it rested on the body of the worm. There was no direct connection between the hive platform, and the armored hull beneath it. A design flaw. They obviously were not meant to be on land, something Rusty figured they could take advantage of if they wanted to destroy the hive, but he knew that wasn’t their mission. They were here to rescue a young woman named Keena that Rusty was sure he would be able to recognize because he had sifted through Angel’s memories of the girl.
A line of Chakran marched to and from ropes that hung down the side of the worm to a nasty burned hole. It looked like they were plugging the hole with wax. One Chakran hanging from a rope carried a large staff, and occasionally would pound the wax into the hole and then the worm would let out a foghorn moan, through the multitude of vents on its sides, a sound so sorrowful that Rusty felt a pang of guilt as the numerous hives above echoed the deep mournful wail. That explained the sounds. It was a living creature and obviously felt pain like the rest of them. He wondered how much discomfort the worm endured while carrying the enormous hive around on its back, and how much pain it must have felt when the bottom hull had been bolted directly onto its thick hide. Likely a great deal in both cases.
A strong smell of ash caught his focus again. The Boss was definitely here. And if he was catching the wind right, the proximity of his enemy was likely in the very hive they were looking at. Anger surged through him, and Angel glanced at him, but he calmed. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment. They were here on a rescue mission. If he ran across The Boss, he would deal with him then. She squeezed his hand.
On the opposite side of the clearing, there was a commotion as Gatling laser fire shot at the worm from the forest’s edge.
Lais looked ready to jump into the clearing, but Rusty held up his hand. “Wait more. They see us if we go now.”
Lais looked at him and said nothing, just acknowledging with a simple nod as she sat back on her haunches. She had drawn her daggers and anxiously flipped and spun them in her hands as she passed the time.
Angel let go of his hand and withdrew the pair of whips from behind her back, uncoiling each with a simple flick of the wrist. Each was constructed of a length of black metallic links ending in a sharp barbed blade for a head. It was the first time he had seen her use them.
His hands now free, Rusty pulled Buck off of his back. He looked through the scope and Buck quietly declared “Target acquired” as he settled his sights on the closest guard keeping vigil on the corner of the platform. Rusty didn’t have to fire, though. The guard, along with a group of twenty or more Chakran leading a couple of giant spiders, marched toward the commotion. There was more laser fire, and then a flying tree that Mogul had to have thrown, and several of the Chakran were knocked from the platform to the ground. Rusty couldn’t tell if the tree or the fall was causing more damage, but they weren’t getting back up. That was the important part.
Suddenly there was a scream in his brain, so loud it physically hurt. As he focused on it, the pain diminished until it crawled around in the back of his mind like an insect that had burrowed into his brain, but it was bearable.
Angel fell beside him, her wings splayed out beneath her, her eyes rolled back in her head. She twitched and spasmed beside him and then went still, unconscious. Panicked, Rusty grabbed her hand and squeezed, and then her shoulders, shaking her gently, but she was not recovering.
“What’s going on?” Lais asked as she stepped over Angel’s wing opposite Rusty and knelt beside the fallen woman.
“Me don’t know. Mind hurt, then she fall.” She wasn’t getting better, and he didn’t know what to do.
Lais looked from Angel to the hive and then back again, looking like she was having a hard time deciding what to do.
“Take her safety. I get your friend,” Rusty offered.
“Are you sure Rusty? I think it’s too dangerous. I don’t think Chais would shoot me, but she doesn’t kn
ow you, and she can shoot you in the eye from thirty paces. If you run across her…” Lais shook her head. “Maybe you could get Angel away from here and I could—”
Rusty sighed. “She too big for me to carry, not too heavy, but too big. I get your friend.” Without waiting for her answer, he flitted quickly between the trees along the clearing, circling the worm until the ropes around the worm’s wound were as close to him as they were going to get. He couldn’t help noticing that the pain in the back of his brain dulled the further he got from the place they had been. Hopefully that worked the same for Angel, if Lais got her away from there. He glanced back to where Lais and Angel had been, but they were no longer in sight. It was now up to him.
The ropes dangled loosely to the ground. They had conveniently been abandoned, as another barrage of laser fire sounded on the far side of the hive and Mogul let out what sounded like a battle roar. Hopefully, it was a battle roar. He didn’t like the thought of the giant crying out in pain.
He paused to aim Buck at the only Chakran he could see on this side, one of the guards that was diligently remaining at its post. When he had settled on the ant-man’s forehead, he squeezed the trigger. There was a quiet snap, and a hole appeared in the Chakran’s forehead the thickness of Rusty’s palm, as the Chakran pitched over the side of the platform. A hiss of steam emitted from Buck, but there was no cooling message. Buck was trying to remain quiet for a change.
It was now or never. Rusty sprinted for the ropes, vaulting one-handed over stumps as he reached them, constantly scanning the hive for any Chakran that might see him, but none had appeared. Yet.
When he reached the ropes, he threw Buck over his shoulder by the strap and nimbly scaled the side of the worm up to the edge of the platform. Peeking over the edge revealed a line of Chakran facing away from him, except for one giant spider that had its pedipalps being held in the hands of a painted yellow Chakran. It faced straight at him, its numerous bulging eyes glistening in the dim light. If that spider could communicate with its Chakran handler, this was going to go bad quickly.
Rusty pulled himself up over the edge of the platform and then drew Buck again, waiting for a moment as the spider continued to stare. The others still had their backs to him. He let out a quiet breath and slowly stepped toward the hive entrance, speeding up into a jog, and then a run as he slipped into the large tunnel leading into the hive.
CHAPTER FORTY
Rusty: Fallen Hive, Farrun
Normally Rusty would have let his nose guide him, but he couldn’t help noticing that the pain in the back of his head increased and decreased depending on how close he moved towards a certain location, like a line had been drawn from somewhere in the hive out to the spot they had hidden in the forest. Whatever had caused that was affecting Angel. He knew he was here to rescue someone, but Angel was more important. He would take care of that first. Maybe then she would recover. He could hope.
The large wax tunnels were smooth and hexagonal, and dark, though with his vision enhanced by looking through Buck’s scope, he could see quite clearly. One of the first large openings that split off the tunnel he was following had numerous smells of almost everything in it. Food, the humidity of water, a Galantar, numerous Chakran, a handful of humans, the clean smell of alien metal, like Lais, which had to be her sister… And then it struck him. The distinct smell of ash. The Boss was in there too, but so were many others. The entrance curved so he couldn’t look in directly, and it was lit, so if he stuck his head around the corner, someone could see him. His ire rose, and he was tempted, but then the ache in the back of his mind reminded him of Angel and he let it go. She was far more important than revenge. His family was long dead by now, but Angel—she didn’t deserve to go through whatever she was going through, and she had been so kind to him. And a few other things…
Rusty abandoned the large side passage and continued on in the tunnel he was currently in. It was taking him generally in the right direction, and he could smell the majority of hive denizens down the side passages. They were all focused on the commotion outside. It was ominously empty for such a large structure that had so many creatures living in it.
Rusty was preparing himself for enemies as he rounded each wall of the tunnel as it twisted back and forth, passages leading off both sides. Even though he knew his nose would likely warn him beforehand, his mind played tricks on him, like when he was in complete darkness, imagining things that weren’t really there.
His hearts were racing, and he caught himself holding his breath more than once. And then he noticed it. The pain had disappeared. Immediately, he stopped and backtracked to the nearest side passage. As he stepped close, he could feel the pain itching in the back of his mind again. Yup, this was the one. Several paces in the passage curved before ending in a wall with a hexagonal design on it. When he looked back, there were no other passages. He hadn’t missed anything. The passage had curved enough that he couldn’t see the main tunnel anymore either, but he didn’t think he had missed anything out there either.
Rusty sniffed around the wall, his nose leading him down to the floor. It was amazing. Normally, all Chakran smelled the same, or at least very similar with few distinctions, until he was close to their footprints, and then a whole orchestra of scents met his nostrils. The aromatic molecules were all sparse, but very distinguishable from each other, which would determine how long it had been since they had walked there. He had never discovered something like this before, a species that communicated by scent through their feet. Amazing. Which also meant the wall was a door, and it was probably pheromone controlled. Even if he figured out which scent would open the door, he had no way to produce it.
There was an audible scream behind the wall combined with a deep groan from the worm outside, followed by someone sobbing weakly.
Rusty held Buck close so he could whisper to the gun. “Can you cut through this quietly?”
Buck answered in a whisper as well. “Point me at the door.”
Rusty did as he was told, and a single red blink was all that emitted from Buck.
“It is thin and structurally sound, but easily melted. Yes, I can cut through it.”
Rusty aimed Buck in a wide circular pattern while holding the trigger. A clear red point of light followed where he pointed and as he neared completing the circle, a large portion of the wall sagged open. As he aimed through the hole a Chakran inside the door turned to face him, but Rusty shot it through the forehead twice before it could even react. The walls that were lit nearby dimmed as the Chakran fell.
A second ant-man was standing in a pit several paces across to which the floor in the room angled down until the hard wax met the skin of the giant worm. The Chakran was standing over a Valkyrie man that was spread-eagled on his stomach. His wings, arms and legs were stretched out and blood seeped around a myriad of tubes that had grown from the worm-skin floor and attached to him, holding him fast.
The macabre picture only took a moment to register in his mind, and as the Chakran turned to face him, he squeezed the trigger on Buck and its head exploded in a yellow mess, the decapitated body falling next to the man attached to the floor. The lights in the room dimmed and went out almost immediately.
“Wide beam, flashlight,” Rusty said to Buck and suddenly there was a bright light emitting from the weapon as he stepped through the opening in the wall he had created.
As Rusty got closer and ran the light over the man attached to the floor, he stopped at the man’s face, which was turned in his direction. The Valkyrie’s eyes were wide open, staring into space, as if he were unaware that Rusty was even there. His visage looked to be in a constant state of pain, and he quietly sobbed.
A thin but tall green beam of light emitted from Buck and passed over the man. “Valkyrie male, attached parasite. 0% chance of survival if separated, wounds are too severe and parasite is symbiotic.” Rusty could see through the worm’s semi-translucent skin that the tubes and nerve bundles ran deep below the man, out of sight.
“Any way free you?” Rusty asked the man. He didn’t know what else to say. When the man didn’t answer, he spoke louder. “Hello? Me help?”
Again, no response. Rusty stared at him for a few moments, feeling sorry for the man, but as he stepped towards his head, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his mind again. So it was he that was affecting Angel.
Suddenly the man screamed, and the floor beneath them shook as the deep reverberation of the worm’s cry echoed throughout the hive and then faintly in the distance as the other worms echoed its pain. Was he feeling the pain of the worm or the other way around? Rusty wasn’t sure, but they were definitely attached. Regardless, this is what was hurting Angel, and it had to stop.
Rusty aimed Buck at the man’s head. “Shoot k—” The Valkyrie’s eyes snapped towards Rusty and he froze, unable to act. He felt himself falling, but so slowly it would take hours before he would land on his back on the floor. His vision went black.
Suddenly the room was lit, and a Chakran was kneeling on his back, holding him down on the floor. He struggled, but the Chakran was strong and two others were holding his wings outstretched so he couldn’t get enough leverage to push himself from the floor. When his eyes caught movement, he looked down and saw tubes beneath the worm’s skin snaking up towards him. His struggles renewed in earnest, but it was to no avail, the tubes emerged and clamped onto his skin. They drilled into him and the pain was overwhelming. His screams died in his ears as he blacked out.
It seemed like only a moment later when he came to, but he was no longer himself. He was the worm, floating, as life was meant to be. The desire to connect with another was sated. Life was peaceful. His eyes opened, and he was in the pit in the lit room. He looked to his left and could just see the edge of a Chakran standing over him. A sudden sharp pain in his right side caused him to yell out, and he looked to see that the Chakran was lifting a staff for another strike. He could feel the worm floated instinctively to the left to avoid the pain on its right side. On one end of the staff were curved spines, and he watched as the Chakran slipped the staff beneath his chest and then levered it to stab him with the spines. He cried in agony again, and the worm instinctively expanded its helium bladder to allow it to rise above the pain.