“Stay on the security system,” I ordered Tens, settling myself into a stance that would let me adjust my attack depending on what came through the door. Tovy settled himself opposite, covering what I could not. I was about to open my mouth to tell Mack to stay back, when he stepped down from his chair.
“Ship’s yours, Tens. Keep her safe.”
He didn’t say anything to me, just shot me a look, and moved right up alongside me, unslinging his own Blazer as he came.
“Delight can shove it,” he said. “The ship is my heart. They take that I might as well not be living.”
Well, there was no arguing with that—and Delight flicked back on the screen and in our heads.
“We are coming in five… four…”
“Don’t shoot the vespis queen,” I said, flashing her a picture of the queen, “and play nice with the guards.”
“Three…”
I followed that with a picture of the bodyguards, seeing as they looked so different to the other vespis. Delight wasn’t impressed.
“Two… I wasn’t born yesterday, Cutter. One,” and she winked out of sight, swallowed by silver light, and leaving behind an open comm line.
The technician that stepped in to fill it looked slightly overwhelmed.
“I… um, I’m the real-time liaison.”
“Sure you are,” I said, but there was no more time.
Those damned arach had gotten real handy with their cutting charges, and the door fizzed at the edges, before dropping inward. It would have been painful if I’d been standing right behind it. At the sound of it hitting the floor, Tens was out of his seat, and coming to fill the space between Tovy and Mack.
“I thought I told you to stay in the system,” Mack snarled, but Tens just shrugged and pulled his blaster tight to his shoulder.
He was firing even as he replied.
“Left it to the boy and the spider. The Marie will be fine.”
Mack was beyond answering that. He was firing, too. I let them take the targets that were right in front of them, but I’d had these eight-legged bastards come across the ceiling of a closed room. I looked upwards, taking out the first one to cross the threshold of the ceiling—and I wasn’t alone. Tovy was also focused on the space above their heads.
“Good shooting,” he said, and began walking his fire down the corridor.
I mirrored him in the other direction. When the ceilings were clear, we tracked our fire down the wall, taking out heads, and ripping chunks off arach torsos, until another one tried to make to the roof. At that point, we walked our fire back up the wall, and took out what we could.
The sound of a second cutting charge going off at the other end of the command center was not a good thing. Mack and I half-turned to face the new threat, and Tovy and Tens started moving to fill the space behind us. When they stood between us and the door, Mack and I pivoted all the way around.
We were all firing as the first arach came through the hole in the wall. The four of us moved to form a blockade between Askavor and the oncoming swarm, but there was no way we were going to be able to hold them for long.
“Come on, Delight…” I murmured, lifting my aim to take out two arach who were coming across the ceiling. “Come on!”
I took the next one, before it got all the way into the room, and had the vague idea of building a wall of arach bodies to fill the hole they’d created by. It didn’t last long. Even as I took out the arach coming through on the floor, two more came through on the ceiling and wall. We weren’t going to last another minute, let alone another five.
“Where the fuck are you, Delight?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
“Not coming,” Tens answered.
“Shut up and shoot.” Mack.
Spoilsport.
“I won’t wreck your day as much as these arseholes.”
This much was true, but he would wreck it.
“Let’s ruin theirs first.”
“As many as we can,” I agreed, and unhooked the second Blazer, tucking my elbows tight against my sides so I could fire both at once. This many opponents? this close together? Who needed to aim? I just held the Blazers tight and swept them in a steady arc from right to left and back again.
The only problem was that left the ceiling unattended.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I snapped, as four made it through the gap and started crawling towards us. If those fuckers made it over our heads, we were in a world of hurt. I raised one Blazer and waved it in the general direction of the roof, while keeping the other one facing forward.
That was about as effective as it sounded, although I did manage to drop several arach warriors on the heads of their companions—but that was all, before they were on us, and the blasters were no good anymore. I moved my head enough to avoid one fist, but caught a second blow across the face. Mack gave up trying to shoot, and started using his blaster as a club.
I didn’t have enough space to do even that. I guess there were some advantages to being cave-man large.
“Hey!”
I felt the Blazer ripped out of my hands, and then a hardened forelimb pierced the bandages on my shoulder, and my arm went numb. A second strike caught me dead-center in the chest and I was sucking wind, glad it had been a fist, and not another bladed claw. I caught a flash of silver as my legs were taken out from under me, but put it down to wishful thinking.
“I’m sorry, Askavor,” because I couldn’t protect him, and he was facing a fate just as bad as the rest of us.
Which was when the first arach head exploded above me. All I wanted to do was to curl up on the floor, and avoid the firefight, but Askavor didn’t have to die. The other spiders? Sure. They needed to be killed, but bad. Askavor didn’t.
I tried to reach him, but someone stepped on my calf, and kicked me in the thigh—and then an arach fell on top me.
I yelped, and panicked, fighting to pull myself out from under it, pushing its head away from me, like that had any hope of stopping me from getting bitten. This would have worked better, if I could have moved both arms. It would have worked better, if one of my legs hadn’t just quit on me, too. Didn’t. Stop. Me. Fighting.
I had to get to Askavor.
Don’t shoot this spider. Don’t shoot this spider. Don’t shoot this spider, ran through my head like a mantra, as I pictured him where I’d seen him last, so deep in the system, I’m not sure he’d registered the arach breaking through. Don’t shoot—
“It’s okay, Cutter. We won’t shoot your Stars-be-damned spider,” and the arach body above me moved.
I screamed and lashed out with the one good fist I had, connecting hard with the face that appeared above me as the arach corpse was rolled away. My second swing was caught in a swift, strong grip, and I caught a backhand to the head.
“Calm the fuck down, shit-for-brains!”
I stopped yelling.
“Delight?”
She slapped me once more for good measure—twice, and my head started ringing—but at least I wasn’t panicking any more. I was hurting, instead.
“Where’s Askavor?”
She reached down, and hauled my arm over her shoulder so she could haul me to my feet. Fire flared out of my shoulder and down into my chest, and she nearly dropped me again.
“What the fuck did you do to yourself, this time?”
I had to avoid answering that, or I wasn’t going to be any good to anybody.
“Where the fuck is Askavor?”
14—Rescuing Askavor
Askavor had locked himself in the system, and wouldn’t come out.
“You need to see if you can get him to come out,” Tens told me, “otherwise the only way I’m going to get to him is to tear apart the coding brick by brick—and I don’t know how much of his mind is attached to it.”
Delight had maneuvered me so we stood in front of the big spider’s still form. We both looked at him, and I sighed.
“
Don’t move me,” I said. “You do, and I’ll probably pass out, and we need him back on-line.”
She snorted.
“Whatever you say, kid. Just hurry up, or Doc will kill me for letting you bleed out.”
“Shutit.”
Last thing I needed was to be reminded why I wasn’t feeling so good, right now. I leant on Delight, as much to take the weight off my arm and leg, as to stay upright as I slid into the system. Askavor hadn’t gone very far… so to speak.
He’d walled himself off in the center of Tens’ security system, cutting all access to the door locks, the pod locks, and the security feeds. As a tactical maneuver, it was pretty damned clever. I eyed the construct he’d built around himself, and my heart sank.
Its soaring wall was a heavy-duty firewall, and counter-intrusion measures swam beneath their surface. I had no doubt the damn things could strike out through the code protecting them—and they looked savage. Maybe there was a door.
Like, something I could knock on?
Because arach wouldn’t bother knocking, right? They’d just try to barge right in. Maybe if I knocked, I’d be okay.
I walked the base of the wall, until I found one end of the security system. No door. Damn.
I turned back and walked the other way, until I hit the other end. Still no door. Well, double the damn.
Delight came to join me, and we stood, contemplating the barrier between us and Askavor’s mind.
“Doc says we need to get you to a tank, soon. You need to hurry it up.”
Doc? I wondered which one, and then decided it had to be THE Doc, since Tovy probably didn’t know about the tank.
“Yeah, and I need my eyes back.”
Tens had appeared on my other side.
“Well, fuck me!”
Huh, looked like Mack had come to join the party, too. Unlike the rest of us, he didn’t give a damn about the counter-intrusion software swimming around in the wall. He just marched right up to the damn thing, and hammered on the outer surface.
“Hey, Askavor. You need to get your ass out here before Cutter bleeds to death trying to save you!”
The reaction was instantaneous. Half a dozen thick tendrils leapt out of the wall, and wrapped themselves around him, dragging him beneath the wall’s surface and out of sight—and that’s when I realized that the lurking programs were an illusion. The wall stayed firmly in place, but the programs swimming beneath its surface kept swimming. Whatever the real counter-intrusion measures were, those shadows weren’t it.
Before I could work out what to do next, Tens had spun up a series of code constructs that all hit the wall at once. I watched as the tendrils lunged out at each one—and then stared in confusion when they crushed the coding in their coils, dropping the remains at the foot of the wall, before vanishing into the surface.
“Well, that answers that, then,” Tens said. “He’s programmed something that can tell the difference between wet-ware and code-ware.”
“Not possible,” Delight responded, but I didn’t bother arguing.
If Askavor had done what Tens said he had, then there was only one way through the wall.
“Don’t you dare!”
Delight lunged for me, but I was already running. I hit the wall hard, just as she grabbed a hold of my metaphorical foot. It was still a relief when I wasn’t crushed—not so much of a relief that I could feel the program sliding through my mind and taking what it wanted.
“Askavor!” I shouted. “Askavor! Help me!”
The wall dragged at my face as I was pulled through the code.
“Askavor?”
Uncertainty uncoiled inside my chest. What the fuck had I done?
And, no sooner had I asked that than the wall faded from around me, and Askavor was crouched over me. The sight of him above me, had me trying to backpedal my way out from under.
“I’m coming,” he said, and vanished.
I just sat and stared at where he had been, relieved to see Mack, and Tens, and Delight, still there.
“He’s gone?” Delight asked.
“I think he’s back,” I told her.
“Yup,” Tens said, “and he wants you back in your own head.”
I hesitated, and that was all it took.
Tens kicked me out of the system—again!
The minute I was back in my own head, I wished I wasn’t. I definitely didn’t feel so good—and Doc was definitely pissed off with me. Mack, too, if the look on his face was anything to go by. Delight, also, wasn’t amused.
“I have shit to do,” she said, and pushed me over to Mack. “She’s your troublemaker; you take care of her.”
Well, looked like I’d won the trifecta.
“Where is the tank?”
Tovy was here? Cool.
Make that super cool. That calming pheromone was excellent shit. Doc seemed to think so, too, but it didn’t stop him from turning me into a pincushion, again.
“This way,” he said, as Mack lifted me into his arms.
Honestly! This was getting ridiculous.
15—Arach Infiltration
Mack was standing over the med box when I came round again.
“You missed one helluva party,” he said, as I opened my eyes, and I groaned.
Every time, man. Every. Time. He was always there.
“Someone’s got to make sure you’re okay when you wake up.
Yeah. Pretty sure that wasn’t it.
I frowned, and decided there were more important things to do, than snark back.
“Did we win?”
“Let’s see, Odyssey had to port over six more teams to clear the engine room, the med bay, and fix whatever they’d done to Bio… and then we found what happened to the crew who hadn’t made it to the pods the first time around.”
He paused, and I caught a flash of memory he didn’t hide fast enough.
The rec room had been filled with web, and crew members had been cocooned against the server stacks. Mack shook me out of it, when he shut the memory down.
“They’re all okay, but they’re going to need some serious ground-time before they can come ship-board, again. The wasps said they’d take care of it.”
“What was that?” and we both knew I meant the cocoons in the rec room.
Mack hesitated, and then shrugged.
“The vespis said the arach were preparing a place for their queen. Askavor says it means the hatchery on the queen’s ship is full. He says this is more than an invasion force, that the arach intend to colonize this world.”
He stopped, just stopped, and I had never seen Mack look so haunted.
“How long was I out?”
“Doc stuck you in the regen tank and then boosted it. If we’d let things take their course, you’da been in there five days. Because we didn’t have that kind of time, Odyssey sent over one of their med teams and boosted our system. They said…”
“Mack,” I said, breaking into the flow. “How long?”
“Four hours,” and he didn’t look happy.
I wondered what the side effects were, but then decided it didn’t matter. I’d get Doc to fill me in later.
“Gonna help me out?”
He glanced down at me, and managed an almost-smile.
“Sure, you’re needed in the teleport center. We’re chasing the arach, and Delight said she’d stay with the queen’s team. You and me have to go.”
“Why?”
“It’s part of the contract.”
I didn’t bother to ask which contract. Four hours was more than enough time for Mack and Delight to have come to some arrangement. It was probably enough time for Mack and the vespis queen to have come to one, as well.
I sat up, carefully, given how much I remembered things hurting the last time I was awake. It was disturbing that all the pain had gone away.
“Yeah. That’s why Doc isn’t so happy with Delight, right now.”
“Why? B
ecause I don’t hurt?”
“No, because she’s treating you just like she’s been treated, and he doesn’t think that’s a good thing.”
I wanted to ask why not, but my mind shied away from the question. Truth was, I didn’t want to know. Right now, if treating me like Delight got me back on my feet in time to help my friends out, that was good by me. Mack hit the switch that turned the med box into a bed, and I swung my legs over the side.
“Let’s get this crazy show on the road,” I told him. “You got anything you want me to wear?”
I watched his eyebrows hit his hairline, and turned away, smirking. It was always good to catch him on the hop. He could take it any way he liked, but there had better be some armored underwear waiting in the closet.
“Picky, picky, picky,” he muttered, and pointed to a cabinet set into the wall. “Everything you need is in there.”
Cool.
I crossed over and pulled open the cabinet, found my armored leotard, and pulled it on, because, yeah, I’d woken up without a stitch on—pretty much like most times. It was a good thing, I wasn’t that good looking, or I might have been worried. As it was, Heaven only knew what Mack found worth staring at while he was waiting for me to come to.
“The wall.”
Nice. Way to go putting a girl in her place, Mack.
I pulled out the ship suit that went over the armored underwear, and then reached for the combat armor that had been shoved into the bottom of the cabinet. It fit like a glove, and Mack moved over to check the straps when I was done getting it on. Man could pick me up by the shoulder cinches, but at least I knew nothing was going to come adrift.
I turned back to the cabinet, and saw that it was empty. Not surprising, given this suit of armor came with its own built-in boots and gloves, but, then, I wasn’t looking for more to wear.
“Where are my weapons?” I asked.
“Doc wouldn’t let me stash them here. I had Tens put them in the teleport center with mine. We’ll pick them up on the way through.”
Well, that seemed downright strange.
I took a step back from him, reaching for the comms in my implant.
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