Arach

by C. M. Simpson

  “Don’t,” and she sounded sick when she said it. “They start doing that, I suggest you kill your crew before…”

  Her voice faded, and the comms link cut. When she came back, she was just as brief.

  “Just get your crew in the damn pods. We’ll have rescue teams on stand-by.”

  I wondered if they’d be teleport teams, but didn’t ask.

  “We are hailing the arach, now,” Delight continued. “You can observe, but you’re out of the loop—and they won’t know you’re on the line.”

  She didn’t add anything more, but the forward-screen flickered, and split so we were looking at both Delight, and the view screen holding the arach that had answered her call.

  This one had chosen a mostly human shape, in which to respond, although its face was a blend of both human and arachnid features, with two large, dark eyes beneath a band of six smaller ones, and a mouth and jaw that had no humanity at all. I watched the creature’s mouth parts move, and heard the spider language coming out of the speakers at Delight’s end, and then it stopped, and looked expectantly at Delight.

  Delight’s mouth tightened into a thin, straight line, and then she spoke.

  “Unidentified arach cruiser, state your business and intent with the world of K’Kavor.”

  Again, the arach spoke. This time, its words were followed by a halting male human voice that came from off-screen.

  “We claim the world of K’Kavor, and everything in its system. Its people will serve our people, and its territories will, once again, be our territories.”

  “We do not agree. You and your people are to leave the system, and are never to return.”

  Again, the arach replied, but this time, there was a gasp, and, before I had time to wonder what that meant, the arach lashed out, and dragged a thin, naked human into view. Letting the man go, the arach rattled a single hard syllable at him.

  “Please…” the man whispered, flinching as the arach reached over and laid a palm against his cheek.

  The sounds it uttered in response made the man sob, and I heard a second sob echo him. The arach repeated the syllable, again—then followed it with a softer sound. The man’s shoulders slumped.

  “As you wish, master,” and he folded his arms across his chest, and stepped towards the arach. When he was less than a foot away, he tilted his head to one side, and the arach wrapped him in its arms and drew him close. Shifting a hand to hold the man’s head steady, the arach glanced once at the screen, and sank its fangs into the human’s throat.

  “Stop!” Delight ordered, but the arach ignored her, morphing from the human shape he’d worn to a form that was pure spider, as the human withered in his grasp.

  When it held nothing more than a husk, the arach’s form shuddered, and returned to the more human shape it had worn at the beginning of the call. Blood still glistened on its fangs, and it turned its head, looking at something we could not see. The next string of sounds it uttered was clearly a command, and a young woman stepped into view.

  Tears had left tracks down her cheeks, but she was not as thin as the man that had been summoned before her. She was just as pale, though, and her eyes were wide with fear. This time, when the spider spoke, she translated in a soft, clear voice.

  “The crew of the Shady Marie will surrender to the justice of the Hunt Clan K’Tkenach for their rebellion—and the Odyssey liner, Sugarsides, will leave the system, allowing us to reclaim our territory without interference.”

  “Your territory?” Delight asked, her voice as brittle as starlight.

  “We once ruled this system. We will rule it again.”

  “No.”

  “You would deny us what is ours by right?”

  “You lost control of this territory eons ago,” Delight told him. “You relinquished all claim to it when you left it to survive without your protection and rule.”

  “Factors we are now correcting.”

  “Too late,” Delight said. “This world has earned the right to determine its own future. In the name of the Inter-Galactic Coalition, I order you to abandon this invasion.”

  “It is not invasion, but reclamation,” the girl stated calmly, her tone at odds with the arach’s agitated chittering.

  “You left this world to stand on its own. You no longer have any right to claim it.”

  “We disagree,” the arach’s speaker countered. “If you do not leave us to our prey, you will be hunted next.”

  Delight’s voice was tight when she replied.

  "Last warning: Leave the system, or your will join the dead on the Shady Marie.”

  The arach’s gaze swept Delight’s control center.

  “We will not leave, and we will not become food for the wasps. This is your final warning. Leave the system, or you will be sentenced to death for assisting the rebellion fomenting on the planet known as K’Kavor. The Queen of Hunt Clan K’Tkenach has spoken.”

  This time, he did not wait for a reply, but cut the comms.

  “Here they come.” Askavor’s voice came through my head, just as his less-human vocalization split the silence on the bridge. “Stand by for boarding.”

  I dove into the ship’s security feed, checking to see that the queen and her teams were in place. I found them ready, but said nothing. Mack had taken control, once more.

  “Shuttles inbound,” he announced, and I heard the warning sounded all over the ship. “All crew to their pods. All crew to their pods. Emergency evacuation procedures are in process. All crew to pods. Odyssey is on stand-by for pod retrieval. All crews to pods.”

  I watched the scramble as personnel who had been outside the pods made for those nearest. They had hesitated, until Mack had said Odyssey were on stand-by. Once they knew there would be rescue, they didn’t hesitate, any longer.

  “Lock ’em down, Rohan,” Tens said, and I watched as the code shifted around the pods, until every pod containing a crewman was locked tight. When Tens next spoke, it was to me.

  “We’ve got them, Cutter. No-one’s going to be left like a packaged dinner for those bastards to eat.”

  And then he kicked me out of his system, and back to the control center.

  “It’s bad enough Rohan and the spider are in there, without you, as well.”

  Fine. Whatever!

  “Easy, Cutter,” Mack said. “Your turn will come.”

  I wondered how, exactly, given Tens wasn’t going to let me into the system to either see what was going on or defend against arach hacking attempts, and Mack was in control of the defenses—which was my fault, seeing as I’d handed it to him. Oh, and seeing as I couldn’t move without falling over. What exactly was I going to be good for? Bait?

  And where the everloving fuck was my gun?

  “Good point,” Mack said, and got out of his chair. “Tens, you need to let her in so she can fill the gaps.”

  I watched as Mack looked over at Tovy, and got the impression the two of them were talking. That struck me as a worry. Tovy was the sole vespis representative on the bridge, but he was also the sole medic. Mack had said it was best to leave Doc in his pod. We would need him once the arach had been defeated.

  I could see his logic, but I missed the Doc. He would have had me on my feet in time for the coming fight.

  “And so will I.” Tovy spoke from beside me, and I realized I’d taken my eyes from him and Mack long enough for them to come and stand, one on either side of my chair.

  I shifted uneasily, and whimpered as the injuries K’Tina had inflicted tore at the movement.

  Goddamnit! I had to be tougher than this. We had a battle to fight.

  And just as I thought it, Tens opened up a link back into the security system, and hooked through the external feeds so I could see what happened when the arach tried to open the hangar bays. They hadn’t been expecting the doors to stay close, and I didn’t wait for Tens, I started searching for the hack the arach had to be making.

  “Y
ou think they’ll just float about out there, waiting for the doors to open?” Tens challenged.

  “No, but they’ll try the easy way, first.”

  “Easy way?”

  “It’s how they got in, before,” I said. “Must have been something we missed.”

  I refrained from pointing out that the security system was his responsibility, and therefore the fact they’d hacked it was because of something he’d missed. He wasn’t stupid, and he didn’t need it rubbed in. We just had to fix it.

  “Shut it, Cutter.”

  Man, and I hadn’t said a thing!

  “You said plenty!”

  Not where he should have been able to hear it. If he chose to eavesdrop on my thinking, that was his own damned fault. I started hunting for the breach, realizing Askavor and I hadn’t found it before. Damn! That meant a second incursion would be partly my fault, too.

  “Just find the fucking thing!”

  I might have found it funny, if it wasn’t so serious. As it was, we found the breach, but it was clogged by dead code. That wasn’t going to hold them for long—although it might give them reason to slow down and think.

  “These are arach, remember?”

  Askavor’s voice told me the spider had joined us in our search for the weak point in the system. I got a sense of him studying the dead code, and then he danced out a new string of vespis symbols embedded in a line of Galbas. He passed it to Tens. “Here.”

  I’ll give Tens this, he might have hesitated, but he stuffed that code over the breach, anyway, even if he fixed the weaver with a slightly angry focus.

  “You will teach me this, when this is over.”

  Askavor didn’t argue.

  “Agreed.”

  I wondered what the arach would try next, and switched back to the external feeds. Well, that couldn’t be good. I had the vague impression Mack was talking to someone, and then he was right back in my head, pulling what I saw from my mind.

  “Well, fuck me,” he said, and reached out to the vespis queen.

  “Clear your people out of the bays. They’re blasting their way in.”

  Switching the feeds, I caught a glimpse of the queen and Tek drawing their people back into the corridor. Rohan was on the doors as soon as the last vespis had made it out of the docking bays. I’m not sure what the boy did, but I was pretty sure it was going to take more than knowing the pass codes to get the damn things open.

  Askavor flowed through the system, heading for the door controls. Logical. If the arach were able to hook into those, they could try another hack.

  I watched the arach shuttles back off, and then felt an explosion tear through the ship. I swear the Marie groaned under the force of it.

  “Sons of bitches,” Mack breathed, but he stayed in his seat, his eyes on his board. On the external feeds, bits of his ship floated away from the hull. Well, fuck.

  I watched as the shuttles landed in the hangars, and the arach rigged a pressurized tunnel to the nearest door. I might have watched to see what the arach were going to try next, and maybe joined Askavor in his defense of the door codes, if Mack hadn’t spoken.

  “Now, Tovy.”

  And pain seared through the injury in my shoulder, pulling me out of my head, and well out of the ship’s systems. Opening my eyes, I turned my head to see what had happened, and saw Tovy calmly depressing the plunger on a syringe of swirling silver liquid.

  Nanites… direct to the wound.

  My head swam, the world shuddering as Tovy slowly withdrew the needle, spreading the nanites through the wound as he did so.

  “You didn’t think to anesthetic might be a good idea?” I asked, my voice creaky with pain.

  He didn’t answer, but I saw his wings rustle.

  “You don’t have any anesthetic?”

  Again, his wing rustled, and I glared at Mack.

  “You raided the medical center and didn’t get any—”

  “Give it a rest, Cutter! I raided the emergency locker on the bridge and you’re lucky I found the fucking nans!”

  I was about to tell him exactly what I thought of that, when Tovy took a second syringe out of one of the saddlebags, and moved down to my thigh.

  “Oh, no! No you don’t!” I began, trying to get up out of the chair and out of his reach—and found myself just as tightly tied down.

  I guess nans weren’t the only things Mack had found in the emergency locker.

  “Mack!”

  “It’s easy, Cutter. Just don’t look.”

  He what? But before I could respond to that, Tovy inserted the needle through the bandages covering my thigh.

  “Goddamnit, Tovy!”

  “Ignore her, Doc. She just doesn’t like needles.”

  “That’s a pity,” Tovy said, “because I cannot apply the stims any other way.”

  Mack shifted so he could put his hands on either side of the area Tovy was working on, holding my leg still. Tovy kept injecting the nans, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it… which was a good thing.

  I yanked against the restraints Mack and Tovy had applied while Tens had distracted me in the security system. Talk about your fucking conspiracy. Tovy looked up from where he had been slowly injecting the nans into the second wound—and his hands froze, as he leaned towards my face.

  “Be still, Cutter,” he ordered, his mind-voice gentle but firm.

  Be still? When I got myself out of these restraints, the arach were going to be the least of his and Mack’s problems…or they were…

  I blinked, watching the air around Tovy’s mandibles turn slightly pink.

  “What’s that?”

  “Be still,” the vespis medic urged, and a vague sweetness filled the air around me.

  It was…nice…and maybe I didn’t want to punch him anymore….or Mack. Not really.

  “Tovy?”

  “Yes?”

  “What did you do?”

  “Are you calmer?”

  “Uh huh…”

  “Do you hurt as much?”

  “Uh uh…”

  “Are you sleepy?”

  “Mmmm…not really…”

  “Good. Now, hold still.”

  Now, that should have worried me. For a minute, I couldn’t remember why, and then he straightened, and the needle shifted in my thigh.

  Oh. Yeah… I should be cross about that… really, really cross.

  “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”

  “A little, and then it will start to feel better, okay?”

  “Okaaay.”

  “Wow,” Tens said. “I have got to get me some of that!”

  “Later,” Tovy said. “If you still really want me to breathe on you.”

  “You pheromoned me?” I asked.

  “You were in pain.”

  “But…”

  “Are you in pain, now?” and he depressed the plunger.

  I…That hurt!

  “Yes…”

  “But you’re not trying to get away.”

  “Nooo…”

  “So it’s helping. I’ll explain more, later.”

  Well, that was downright evasive.

  “It’s what the bodyguards use when they don’t wish to kill their opponents.”

  Oh, well, that explained why I didn’t want to hit anyone anymore.

  “Tell me it wears off.” Mack.

  “Five minutes,” Tovy said

  Another explosion rippled through the ship.

  “Good.”

  I was about to protest, when Tens cut across us to explain.

  “They used a cutting charge on the shuttle bay bulkhead.”

  I wanted to dip back into the feeds to see how the vespis on the other side of the bulkhead had fared, but I couldn’t. The pheromones formed a barrier between my head and the ship’s systems—a slippery layer that trapped me in my head, while Tovy worked. I was about to protest, when the comms went live, and Delight a
ppeared on the forward screen.

  “We’re almost in range. Let your people know we’re coming.”

  She didn’t stop to chat, but cut the call before any of us could respond.

  “They’re in,” Askavor said, but I didn’t think he meant Delight’s people. I sank in to inspect the feeds, felt the pheromone barrier stretch and split.

  In the hangars, the shuttles had sealed their end of the entry tubes, and were reversing slowly back into space. Well, at least our tactics had wrecked any chance they had at a record of three trips before the queen’s ship arrived. I wondered what the penalty was for failing to hit the target.

  “That depends on how the battle goes,” Askavor informed me—and, again, I wanted to know how he knew so much. “Another time.”

  Or never—I could hear it starlight-clear in his voice. I studied the feeds. The queen’s people were making a fighting retreat down the corridors, the two teams falling back to each other, before trying to make it back to the bridge. Somehow, I didn’t think they were going to get here—not without Delight’s help.

  “Shift your ass, Odyssey,” I muttered.

  “Call them, Cutter,” Mack cut in. “Tell them we’re going to need to start jettisoning pods, and that we’re not going to be able to hold them once the second wave hits.”

  “How much time have you got?” Delight asked, when I relayed the message.

  “Two, maybe three minutes, tops.” Mack flashed her the feed showing the arach forces that had broken through into the corridor beyond Tek’s team. “They’re making for the ship’s heart.”

  “In more ways than one,” Delight said, and looked at me. “On your feet, Cutter. You have to hold the bridge. You have to keep Mack alive… and tell the vespis not to shoot the silver light, or anyone coming out of it. Got it?”

  “Yup,” I said, but she was already gone.

  I opened my eyes, just as Tovy hit me in the chest with two stim shots. Well, that got me moving—just not very far, until he’d undone the restraints. As soon as I was free, I swung myself out of the observation chair, and stood back at a diagonal from the door. Tovy moved with me, handing me two Blazer 54s and an A-Level blaster, before reaching his forearms around me to strap on a long blade. As he did so, he huffed out a breath near my face. Bitter citrus wafted over me, and the rest of the barrier in my head lifted.