by Ivan Cat
The reactor continued to make its ominous winding-up sound.
"The red breaker! Hit the red breaker!" Bigelow shouted.
Karr wrenched the access hatch open, slammed his right hand down on the only red switch in sight and was gratified by an immediate lowering in pitch of the overloading sound.
"Bad skin, bad skin!"
One of the male in-humans bowled into Karr. Karr jammed the Gattler tip into its mouth and fired a stream of adhesive down the creature's throat, but Karr lost his footing and tumbled backward into open space as the choking in-human's talons dug into his uniform. Wham! They glanced off a root buttress. Wham-wham! Krik! The in-human's talons went slack and its neck lolled at an unnatural angle. Splash! Karr hit bottom, in the deepening pool of water, his breath knocked out of him.
Buzzers spun to attack, attracted by the strong vibration.
Gasping, needles of pain squeezing his ribs, Karr staggered out of the water. He stumbled for a tube opening, spraying a wide semicircle of adhesive behind him. A wave of buzzers hit the goo. It wasn't much of a reprieve—a second wave of bugs poured over the first—but it was enough for Karr to stagger into a passage opening and plunge down a red-glowing tube. All too soon, buzzer feet echoed in the passage behind him.
Karr peered into side passages but they mostly turned downward, and those downturned routes were filling up with water. Finally Karr found a tunnel that ascended. He began to scale the confined space. Unfortunately, he was forced to retreat fast when the clatter of another buzzer horde began to rumble louder and louder from above. Karr slipped back down to the original tube and ran on, his feet hammering, making strong vibrations for the buzzers to follow. Their chattering grew louder. Dark helmet shapes poured around glowing corners behind him. More seriously, the source of the flooding water became apparent. Ahead and below Karr seawater thundered in where pulse-rifle hits had breached tube walls. Probably one of the Guards had put up a fight nearby, but Karr did not have time to search for clues to who it had been. He was trapped. He whipped around, frantic for any possible escape in the dim light.
The buzzer horde neared.
Karr's only option was a narrow tube going straight down. Knowing he didn't stand a chance against so many buzzers, Karr jumped in. He tried to slow his descent by spreading his legs, but the slick sides gave no grip. As the buzzers blotted out the light overhead, Karr plummeted down into the dark. The shaft squeezed tighter. Karr drew rapid breaths, expecting to splash into icy water at any instant.
Abruptly Karr hit bottom. The Gattler cracked painfully into his already hurting ribs. He was in another transparent blister, but there was no time to gawk at the undersea view. Karr wriggled onto his back and raised the multitool. A many-legged avalanche poured down at him. Karr ringed the tube with adhesive, but the sheer weight of creatures kept the mass moving, tearing off limbs and heads of those entrapped out front.
Beep, beep, beep, warned the Gattler. Low ammunition.
Karr fired in small, sparing bursts as the horde pressed down. Seven yards. Three yards. Any second he expected the Gattler to run dry. One yard. The mass slowed. Dead buzzers smeared along the sticky walls, living ones pressing through the center. Finally, Karr held the trigger down, spraying from side to side across the entire leading edge of the mass.
Pfisht. The Gattler ran dry.
Karr flinched as a fountain of scissoring claws and mandibles pressed into the blister and ground to a halt mere inches from his vulnerable human flesh. Slowly the moving parts stuck to one another and froze hanging over Karr's head. Milky buzzer blood dripped down on him.
Arrou bounded down a tube, his mind full of unfamiliar emotion, a burning-in-his-gizzard emotion that made the sounds of his own legs and claws underneath him seem remote and the roaring clatter of pursing buzzers seem almost quiet. He clamped his ring of teeth on the unknown feeling.
Hatred.
Arrou was familiar with a whole array of emotions common to domestics. He loved Jenette, disliked Tesla, and feared Sacrament, but outright malice he had never known. Slow to anger and forgiving by nature, Arrou nonetheless felt acidic hatred for the in-human Ferals. And for Arrou the most awful, angry thing about them was that they were not Ferals at all. The in-humans knew too much. They spoke human language. They knew human religious gestures and how to do things to a null-fusion reactor. No Feral knew those things. No, the in-humans were not Ferals.
The in-humans were domestics.
Domestics just like Arrou. But unlike Arrou, they broke the sacred human-domestic bond. They killed humans.
Arrou wanted to kill them.
Arrou hunted to eat, and he would kill to defend himself and the humans he cared about, but this was different. Arrou wanted to kill the in-humans, not to eat or save lives, but because they were wrong. He did not know if his Khafra instincts would let him kill another Khafra, but he very much wanted to try.
First, however, Arrou had to survive. He was better at running and evading than his biped friends. On four legs Arrou ran and climbed faster than the poisonous buzzers and his glowbuds provided good illumination. Initially he made good progress away from the reactor chamber, but the buzzers knew the winding passages better than he did. He heard them catching up, trying to get around in front of him through parallel tunnels, and every time he backtracked from a wrong turn or dead end, they got closer.
Arrou rounded a turn and clawed to a halt, barely avoiding a fall into a deep pit. There was no backtracking this time; the buzzers were too near. Trapped in the dead end, Arrou knew he had to think of something smart. He wracked his brain for a clever way to beat the horde, but the only thing that came to his mind was a stupid trick that he remembered from when he was a kit playing hide-and-go-seek around the Enclave nursery. Still, it was the only idea he had. Arrou turned around and ran head on at the rumble of pursuit, back up the tube to a break in the smooth surface. It was no more than an irregular niche in the ceiling, but it would have to do. Stretching up, Arrou sunk his foreclaws into the tunnel fiber. He pulled his body up, his stunted right paw complaining, sunk his teeth in for extra grip, and finally heaved his hind legs up to find purchase with his rear claws. Hanging upside down like a night creature, he then let go his bad paw and fished through a collection of Grubb's equipment, which was looped over his back. Pulse-rifle: no good. Ammunition belt: no good. Medikit: good, but not for this. Canteen. Canteen?
"Urrkurrkurrk."
Arrou did not want to use the canteen. In hide-and-go-seek the object was customarily a resin rock and the target a leafy bush some distance away. But the nearing echoes forced his choice. Twisting the cap off the plastic gourd, Arrou gulped down the precious fresh water, and then hung motionless. For his trick to work, he must not make any movement that the bugs could feel, not until the last moment.
Kekitekitek—kekitekitek—KEKITEKTTEK!
Arrou felt a rush of air, prelude to a mass of bitter smelling carapaces. Just before the awful legs and teeth were on him, he coiled his free foreleg and heaved the canteen. It bounced down the tube, making all sorts of vibrations in the process. Arrou felt the rumble of buzzer feet on the tube wall, then saw the many-legged terrors. Irrationally he dimmed his glowbuds. The buzzers passed underneath, slimy carapaces glancing off of him. They followed the offensive canteen vibration as it careened into the pit. Arrou, hanging motionless, both sets of double thumbs on his free hand crossed, did not exist as far as the buzzers' senses were concerned. For a long, long minute, they clattered under him and then they were gone.
Arrou's stupid trick had worked. He could barely restrain a yowl of relief. Good thing he did though, because as he began to let himself down, he abruptly jerked himself tight against the tunnel ceiling.
Sounds of a very different sort of threat were approaching.
XXXV
Tesla's nightmares are his torment.
It is always the same. Tesla is back on Coffin Island, back when it was still called Elysium. Fireballs rise from explosions.
Colony buildings burn. Screams of wounded and dying echo in the night as the Ferals close in. Ferals have overrun the island in retaliation for Tesla's attack on and occupation of Golconda island, the new home of the Enclave. Soon they will spot the hovering jump-lifter platform (a scaled down version of the heavy lifters used by Pilots) and Tesla will be forced to give the order to flee.
Again and again Tesla relives the same part of the dream, the part where the jump-lifter is overflowing with refugees. No one else will fit. There will be no rescue for the distant crying wounded. Below, faithful domestics struggle to attach jump-lifter lines to the colony's main null-fusion reactor, but the small lifter cannot carry the refugees and the heavy machine at the same time.
Tesla orders the cables cut. "Retreat."
Six loyal alien faces fall as the flying platform starts to leave. "Wait, wait!" they cry, running along underneath. "Throw down ladder! Ladder!"
Tesla's own domestic, Blacky, is among the stranded. "Master, master! Not leave! Please, please!" But there is no room on deck.
"Stay and guard the null-fusion reactor," Tesla says, trying to diffuse the situation before the human refugees become agitated. "We will come back. Keep the null-fusion reactor safe until then."
"Keep the null safe, keep the null safe," the domestics repeat, obediently running back to the hourglass-shaped reactor.
In the dream Blacky looks back, his bullet-shaped face perfectly clear, despite the fact that the jump-lifter is racing away.
"Tesla be safe, too," he says. "Come back soon."
Tesla turns away. There is no going back. Elysium is lost. There is no hope. And even if there was, the dream always ends the same way. Fire erupts on deck, from some colonist's improvised weaponry. A thruster engine explodes. The deck tilts. Refugees slide into ocean waters, Tesla amongst them, as the flying machine crashes. Tesla paddles furiously to keep his head above the waves. Choking heads disappear one by one as they pray for rescue....
And then Tesla wakes up. And remembers it was all too real. So many years ago, and still so vivid. A sleepless night or two elapses before he once again locks the memory out of his mind.
"Smell sweet, smell sweet by Null," whined a voice.
"Smell skin-in-white," said a cracked, ancient voice. "Smell jasmine. Smell... Pilot."
The voices drew closer.
"Pilot? Fugueship Pilot?"
The click of overgrown claws stopped directly below Arrou. It was the in-humans. They didn't notice him. Apparently the buzzer guts, which were splattered on his hide, masked his scent from the vile Khafra. Arrou didn't really care. He would just as soon drop down and tear out their throats, but Jenette had told Arrou many times that it was smart to be sneaky and listen. So he did that.
"Real Pilot," said the voice of the ancient female. "In-joan remembers smell from long time back, when in-joan was evil, when in-joan was friends with skins."
"Real Pilot," in-robert burbled excitedly. "Must catch."
"Yes. Because what do Pilots bring? More humans! Must catch. Must stop."
"Good, good. And then?"
The older voice dripped evil. "Then, do what in-humans do to humans...."
"Take skin?"
"Take skin."
The other gasped. "In-robert becomes in-pilot?"
Arrou heard a smack in the dark.
"In-joan becomes in-pilot. In-robert becomes in-bigelow."
Obsequious whining. "In-bigelow, in-bigelow. That what in-robert means. Good, good."
The abominations scuttled off down the tunnel.
Arrou let himself down. He needed to talk to Jenette, to find out where she was and what he could do to help. A way to do that popped into Arrou's head. It was not allowed, but then the pulse-rifle and ammunition on Arrou's back were also not allowed, and neither was throwing away a canteen. Arrou fumbled Grubb's headset up under his jaws (the only way he could get the human-scaled device onto his head), positioned the tiny speakers near his earpits and flipped on the power switch.
Water gushed into the tube from a breach somewhere out of sight above.
"That's your plan?" Jenette yelled at Skutch as they fought the current. "That's definitely scary."
Skutch attempted to brace himself against the slippery passage wall and not be swept away. "Scary is a matter of perspective," he yelled back. "Did I mention I can't swim? Besides," he gulped, "it should work. You saw the fissures on the surface, and you've seen skrags after a storm. That's what usually happens."
"It's the usually part that bothers me."
"I hear you," Skutch said with a fatalistic grin. "It's your call, Consul."
"I just wish we had less drastic options!" Jenette complained.
"We do," said Skutch. "We can do nothing and hope for a miracle. Or we can abandon our guys and head for the surface ourselves."
"Those are both out."
"Agreed. Which leaves the third option...."
Jenette shook her head angrily. "I'm going to strangle Pilot Karr." Jenette hated having her hand forced. If not for Karr's rash course of action, they might have remained hidden from the buzzers and in-humans for quite a while. That, at least, would have allowed them time to talk and think—and hopefully come up with a fourth, less drastic plan of attack: Jenette had had no alternative but to order Arrou to flee when Karr's plan went awry. Swarms of buzzers had immediately chased her and Skutch deep into the tendril tubes under Coffin Island. The creatures would not pursue them into the gushing water, but that was a temporary and very questionable reprieve; at any moment the torrent might sweep them away to drown in darkness. "What about the heavy lifter?" she asked Skutch. "If we lose the heavy lifter, we're as good as dead!"
Skutch grimaced, as if to say no plan is perfect.
More water surged into the passage. Skutch lost his footing. Jenette grabbed one of his epaulets as the current threatened to sweep him away and for several frantic seconds she felt as though her arm would be torn from its socket, but Skutch did regain his footing.
Jenette realized her comset was squawking at her. She adjusted dislodged earpieces. A throaty voice resonated from the speakers.
"Lose heavy lifter?" the voice protested. "Not good, not good. Must save heavy lifter!"
"Arrou!" Jenette exclaimed. "You got away from the buzzers?"
"Yes, got away."
"That's great! I didn't expect to hear you on comset."
Arrou's voice tensed. "Urrr. Sorry. Know comset out of bounds, but can not think of better idea."
"No, no, it's all right," Jenette said hastily. "You did good." Desperate inspiration came upon her. "Arrou, how long have you been listening?"
"Hear Jenette talk about losing heavy lifter."
"Well, maybe we won't lose it after all. Can you fly the heavy lifter all by yourself? Without Pilot Karr to help you, I mean?"
There was a pause. "Think so. What have to do?"
"Power up. Lift off and fly straight and level. You can do that?"
"Urrr. Think so."
Jenette looked around her. The flow of water showed no sign of lessening, and she had no reason to believe it would. It was decision time. "All right Arrou, here's the plan...."
The malevolent jellyfish, which was the underwater side of Coffin Island, glowed through the transparent blister. Karr was trapped, alone, sealed off from fresh air and with only the blister's waxy walls separating him from the deep, frigid ocean. A sticky tongue of buzzers protruded down at him from the plugged entrance, leaving barely enough room for Karr to lie on his back. The air grew warmer and warmer from his breath while icy water dripped into the blister; probably, Karr considered, the tube above was flooded and only the mass of dead buzzers kept that water from drowning him. To top all those unpleasantries off, he had lost his comset during his flight from the reactor chamber.
Karr was completely cut off, completely alone with his thoughts, and in that time he pondered his recent actions. He had done exactly what Jenette had warned against; he had made the situation
worse. It had seemed the proper course of action at the time. Certainly Karr's actions abided by all of his Pilot Academy training. Nevertheless, it began to creep into his mind that maybe he should have worked in concert with Jenette and the Guards, that maybe together they might have contrived a better result than the circumstance in which he presently found himself.
Karr shivered.
It was just so hard to trust other people. Karr's experiences on other planets had not exactly shown him that trusting was a prudent course of action—sometimes experience had shown trusting to be shockingly dangerous. There was no question that Karr trusted Jenette more than any other human in the last few centuries, but unfortunately that had not been enough to override his ingrained paranoias.
Well, he was going to pay for his sins now.
Freezing water seeped through Karr's collar and down the small of his back. He turned up his uniform's fabric thermostat.
The water would remain at a tolerable temperature for as long as the oxygen in the blister held out.
The walls of the beacon support strut were still moist with blue fluid as Arrou clambered up. Clawing up out of the tube tendrils had been hard: getting lost, hiding from marauding buzzers. Now that he had evaded the hordes, he moved quicker, pulling himself ever upward, talons digging into the gnarly roots, but his head swam with concern over Jenette's last transmitted instructions:
"Power up, fly at least a kiloyard off shore, then hover. Don't land, don't come back, don't do anything. Just hover and wait. Got that?"
"Power up, fly, hover," Arrou had repeated. "But what about Jenette? Arrou wants to rescue Jenette!"
"Never mind me. Do what I say and keep hovering until I contact you on comset. Okay?"
"But—"
"No buts. The only way to rescue me is to do what I say. Okay?"
"Urrr... okay."
"Good. We'll give you as much time as we can, but that might not be very long, so get going!"