“You’re first out,” he said. “Queen Tekravzary demands it.”
I felt my cheeks grow cold at the thought, and I tried to think of ways in which I might have made the queen angry. I had left the battlefield early. Granted, I had left it in the company of her guards, but then I’d left it without even their permission. My heart sank.
I hoped she didn’t think I had betrayed her. I sighed, and was on my feet before the shuttle had fully settled. Well aware the trooper was watching me, I took a deep breath, shrugged, and turned to face the hatch. His expression gave nothing away, as I looked out towards the field.
No one else in the cabin moved, and I figured I was the only drop-off. I didn’t look back as I descended the stairs to the landing field. A walkway greeted me, with a small crowd of vespis and humans lined up on either side. It was as weird as hell, especially when they saw me and began cheering.
I looked back at the shuttle, trying to see who had earned their applause. It was a puzzle when there was no-one walking down the stairs behind me. It was more of a puzzle when laughter rippled through the crowd, but since that couldn’t be directed at me, either, I didn’t let it bother me.
I lifted my head and looked for the queen. If she had demanded I debark first, then surely she would be waiting to see me… or maybe she had sent T’Kit. I looked towards the end of the walkway, and was surprised to see the small stage that had been erected there. I was also surprised to see that it was empty.
Once again, I looked behind me to see who else they were expecting, and then to the sky for another incoming transport. Again, laughter rippled through the crowd. This time, the laughter bothered me, and I had trouble keeping my face to a mask of professional blankness. After all, I had been ordered off first. I couldn’t understand who these people were waiting for.
Whoever it was, I wished they’d hurry up. This was getting embarrassing.
I made it to the end of the walkway, and went to walk around the edge of the stage, only to find my path blocked by a single, golden, vespis warrior.
“The queen…” I began, and it flicked an antenna at the stage.
“You are to wait there,” it said, and I inclined my head towards it.
I turned back to the stage, and I stopped.
“Are you sure?” I asked, and it made a shooing motion with its forelimbs.
“The queen demands it.”
Well, I thought, if the queen demands it…
I mounted the stairs, and walked over to the closest chair.
The stage remained unoccupied.
“Where is everyone?” I thought, sending the question out through my implant.
My very empty implant. The implant that was usually crowded with every man and his dog just when I wanted a little privacy. Mack laughed.
“You don’t just want a little privacy, Cutter,” he said. “You want all the privacy.”
His words made me smile, and I looked around, expecting to see him close by.
“We’re coming,” he assured me. “The queen was… unexpectedly delayed.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. Just take a seat. We will be there shortly.”
I don’t know what was more unnerving: the fact that Mack was talking to me, but was nowhere in sight, the fact there was no one there to greet me, or the way the people who had lined either side of the walkway were now coming to stand in front of the dais.
And they were all looking at me.
I watched them, trying not to stare, but feeling uneasy all the same. At the foot of the stage the vespis warrior had been joined by another, the arrival mirrored by two more on the other side.
Just what the ever-loving fuck was going on?
I’d gone from feeling uneasy to thinking I needed to unpack the duffle bag I’d carried down with me. The Blazer 54 and Brahms needed to be returned, and the Glazer… I decided I should at least get the Glazer out. I could set it for stun. Avoid collateral damage if things went south.
I stooped down to unzip the duffle, just as the crowd began a slow, rhythmic clapping.
“What the…” I sat up, and saw that everyone was looking at me.
One of the men up front, waved at me. I frowned, and flipped him a quick wave in response. He cleared his throat, and my bad feeling got worse. I looked over at him, and he signaled for me to come closer. With a sigh, I abandoned the duffle, and walked over to the edge of the stage.
“Can I help you?”
“You Cutter?”
“Yeah…” and he smiled, then said, “You gonna come up front and say something?”
I knew I was scowling, but he didn’t seem worried, he just kept on.
“We’ve been waiting to meet you for an hour.” He must have caught my look, because he added, “Didn’t they tell you?”
I shook my head, and his smile faded.
“Well, what did you think we were here for?”
“I thought there was someone else.”
The folk closest him glared at me, and I straightened up.
“I’m no-one special. Why would you all want to wait for me?”
And laughter rippled through the crowd.
The man who had called me over, hoisted himself up onto the stage.
“Because of what you did downstream.”
“I had a lot of help,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for Queen Tekravzary, I’d have done nothing.”
“But you took down an arach king!”
“Uh, no,” I told him, and the crowd gasped.
I looked out at them.
“I didn’t take down the king,” I said. “I didn’t even know he had been taken down. Whoever did that deserves a medal, because he was freaking huge!”
The man came closer, and I took a couple of steps away from him. Guy was way too big to be letting that close, and I had no idea if he knew how to fight. This whole situation felt like a set-up, and I wasn’t ready for a fight. I didn’t even have a blade on me; everything was still in the duffle.
And speaking of which…
I glanced over at the duffle, just in time to see a grey-skinned hand drag it off the stage. The wasp guards closest to it were down, and man I hoped they were only paralyzed. I didn’t want to be responsible for any more deaths.
I looked back at the people crowded in front of the stage. They seemed riveted by what I’d said, and that was bad, because I had no idea where the arach had gone. The guy who’d called me out came to stand beside me, and I startled away from him.
“What?” he said, finally registering that I was as jumpy as hell.
“There’s an arach,” I whispered, and he gave me a funny look.
“Not around here,” he said. “The vespis…”
His words trailed to nothing, as he registered the fallen bodies of the two vespis guards, and he sidled closer to me, lowering his voice to a murmur.
“What do we do?”
“You need to get the others out of here. Get them to the shuttle, or out into the middle of the field. Get someone to call for help.”
Which was when one of the two guards at the other end of the stage went down, and its partner lifted into the air. The dark bitter scent of vespis alarm filled the air, and the humans nearest the stage stumbled back. The man and I turned to look at the vespis who’d just taken flight—just in time to watch it come crashing back down to earth.
I grabbed him by the arm, and pushed him towards the front of the stage.
“Go!” I shouted. “Get them out of here! Go!”
And I picked up the nearest chair. It was time to go arach hunting.
“You want vengeance?” I called. “You come and take it, you cowardly, eight-legged freak!”
The settlers at the foot of the stage, scattered, their flight helped by the man who’d greeted me.
“Get to the shuttle!” he shouted, and I realized the shuttle was still there.
As in, still on the ground. As in
, not gone… Like it had been waiting for something. An arach attack maybe?
It occurred to me that it was a set-up all right—and I’d been the bait.
Someone was going to get their butt kicked when this was over. I was going to find them and nail their asses to a wall. In the meantime, I had to find the arach, and hope Mack had meant it when he said he and the queen were on their way.
“Where the hell are you, you shit-for-brains, insect-gutted, fangless wonder?”
I figured these things might respond better to some species-specific insults. I just hoped I didn’t go too far, and insult the vespis as well. The arach still didn’t appear.
“What’s the matter? You afraid of a chitinless mammal with a chair, you larvae-sucking soft-skin?”
I turned slowly, trying to see where it had gone. The stage was only a meter off the ground. The damned spider couldn’t have too many places it could hide. I had to think of something that would make it really mad.
I let my gaze travel over the people fleeing towards the shuttle, and hoped the arach wasn’t among them. Until that moment, I’d forgotten they could shapeshift.
“Where the fuck are you?” I muttered, turning to face the side of the stage, I’d come up on. “You chicken-livered spit sack.”
Movement blurred the back of the stage, and I barely got the chair down between us. The thing had gone full spider on me, and those suckers moved fast. It hit me like a freight train, its anger and outrage, boiling into my head as the sharp dog-fur-and-cat’s-piss scent of spider filled my nostrils. I don’t know what I’d said, but it was really angry.
Oh, fuck. The chair wasn’t going to last forever.
The force of the arach’s charge pushed me back to the front of the stage and over—and that wasn’t the worst of it. Did you know that spider fangs extended? You know, like needles on extension arms. As in, they can reach around a chair and still have a good chance of stabbing you? Well, Hell, yes, they can.
All those books and horror movies that showed this huge maw behind the fangs? Yeah. They’re wrong.
And eight legs are much better for landing, than a mere two… that, and it hadn’t gone flying off the stage backwards. Without wings. The landing field might be grassy, but it was solid as Hell. I hit hard, the impact, driving the air out of my lungs, just before the arach’s full weight hit the chair, and crushed it against me. I felt something crack, and pain echoed over my chest.
Well, that sure as shit was going to make breathing a bitch. Not my biggest problem, though. Nope, that would be the pedipalps reaching out from either side of its fangs, ending in pincers that grabbed hold of my wrists and started pulling them away from the chair. Yeah, them and the fact that the chair had jammed itself between the spider’s fangs, and those suckers could still reach around it.
I lifted my shoulder away from the first strike, and pulled my head out of line with the other.
“Chitinless mammal with a chair?” Mack’s voice sounded in my head. “You couldn’t do better than that?”
“Spit-sack seemed to work.”
The arach hissed, curling its fangs back and shaking its head from side to side. I got the impression it was squeezing its fangs towards each other, with the sole aim of crushing what was between them. That was the end of the chair, and one of my wrists blossomed with pain—the newest one, the one I’d spent a month or so growing back. That was bad… but not as bad as when the bones shifted in the other one.
I wondered what the spider’s mission was, because I had a horrible feeling that it wasn’t planning on coming out of this alive… and that meant I probably wasn’t meant to survive it, either. I bent my knees, and jack-hammered out with both feet, hoping to hit where the arach’s abdomen joined the rest of it.
The impact threw its next strike off, and it screamed its pain—in my head, where only I could hear it, where it could share the intensity of what it felt as the abdomen started to tear. I pulled my knees up, preparing for a second strike, and it hooked a leg up, stamping inwards.
Goddamnit! Where was the body armor when I needed it? That. Hurt. I tried to kick out, but pain shot through my middle, and I stopped. The arach kept its grip on my wrists, and forced my hands against my chest. At the same time, it shifted its foot down to pin one of my legs. I flailed out with the other, but missed, and it quickly trapped that, too.
Well, fuck.
I felt it pull my body tight until I couldn’t move, and watched as those fangs drew back. They quivered with pent-up tension, and I took a deep breath. This was going to hurt—but probably not for long.
Sorry, Mack.
“Nah, we got you. You got nothing to be sorry about.”
That’s what I heard in my head. What I heard being shouted across the field was more like, “Hey, spit sack! Why don’t you come pick on the guy who really took your king down?”
To be honest, I don’t think Mack’s taunting would have worked, if it hadn’t been for the barrage of rounds that slammed into the spider’s face and fangs. It let go of my wrists raising its pedipalps as though trying to protect its eyes, but the solids kept coming and it stumbled back, and off me, releasing my legs as it reversed into the stage.
“Time to move, Cutter!”
Yeah, Mack. I’d love to help you with that…
“Fuck!”
Really? That’s the best you can come up with?
A low humming filled my ears, and the sharp scent of citrus told me the vespis were going to war. I lay there and watched them fly over. They sure looked good against that sky.
“Stay the fuck with me, Cutter!”
Sure, Mack. Just give me a minute. I’ll be right there.
“Smart ass,” he said, hitting the ground beside me.
“Don’t move her!” That cry stopped him long enough for the medics to arrive.
They had a stasis pod on K’Kavor? And it floated? Wow. When had that arrived?
28—Recovery
I was getting sick of waking up in a tank. For fuck’s sake! I wasn’t a fish.
“Oh no,” Mack said, getting up from the chair he’d pulled over so he could sit beside the tank. “No. You are a ‘mammal with a chair’.”
“Don’t make me come out there.”
“Like you could.”
I did a personal inventory. He might be right, but I wasn’t going to admit that.
“You used me as bait?”
“Yup.”
“I take it that was Delight’s idea?”
“Nope.”
“It was your idea?”
“Yup.”
“You are one sad, sad son of a bitch.”
“It’s better than being a mammal with a chair.”
“That’s chitinless mammal, you ass.”
“About that, how did you know spit sack would really set it off?”
“I didn’t. It was the best I could come up with at short notice.”
“Yeah? Well, use it sparingly. You horrified a few of our weaver friends.”
A few? As in we had more than one? And I’d thought Askavor had been the singular weaver we knew.
“You mortified Askavor. He asked me where you had developed a taste for such foul language.”
Laughing hurt, so I changed the subject.
“When are you letting me out of the tank?”
“Huh,” Mack grumbled. “I don’t get to let you out of anything. That’s Doc’s prerogative.”
Oh. Yeah. It was.
“So? When’s he letting me out of the tank?”
Mack came round the front of the tank, and made a show of studying me from head to toe. When his gaze had travelled from face to my feet, and back again, he looked me in the eye.
“I don’t know, Cutter. You still look pretty banged up to me.”
I did? And, of course Mack caught that thought and sent me a picture of myself.
“Holy Hell, Mack. What the fuck did I do?”
&nb
sp; He stared at me, and it looked very much like he was gathering his thoughts, and trying to choose his words with care. After what felt like a very long minute, he answered.
“Oh, I don’t know, Cutter. Are you trying to tell me you don’t remember going ten rounds with a pissed off arach, while holding nothing more than a chair?”
“No.” I shivered, and closed my eyes, seeing the arach’s fangs right above me, feeling its claws on my wrists, watching it shake the chair to pieces… “No. No, I remember that part pretty well.”
And I shivered again, trying to pull my hands close to my chest and curl up into a ball. Damned tanks. They always pinned you in place until the bits grew back.
“Count yourself lucky,” Mack said. “That thing could have cracked your spine.”
I remembered coming off the stage
“I think it was happy just destroying my ribs,” I told him, and looked around the tank.
All I wanted was to run away. I couldn’t do that surrounded by glass and whatever gunk they had me swimming in. I was seriously glad they’d let me keep the implant live.
“When can I get out of here?”
Mack reached out and put a hand on the glass. If there hadn’t been a tank between us he’d have laid it on my shoulder.
“Soon, Cutter,” he said. “Doc will let you know.”
He faded out, and I wondered when they’d allowed teleportation from the Shady’s medical center, didn’t work out what that swirl of silver was until I woke up, again. Nans… and sedative, which had now worn off.
And I wasn’t in the tank, anymore. I was back in bed. Mack was still there, and this time Doc was with him. That had to be good news, right?
Just like not finding myself stuck in the tank was good news. It was kinda cool to be waking up between clean sheets, and fully dressed—and in absolutely no pain, whatsoever. While I’d have loved to know how they’d accomplished that, I figured I’d ask it later. In the meantime, I pushed the blankets back, and realized what I was wearing.
Well, fine then. I guess pajamas from the nearest replicator were better than my bare skin, right? I mean, they just had to be.
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