Chapter Twenty-Four
Armada
All of us stared into the orb as Asteran lead the ship through the atmosphere and across the bleak and jagged terrain of Cavernia. Gigantic crevices as long as our entire colony and twice as wide as the ship plummeted into sheer darkness. Soaring stalagmites rose above us, pricking the black twilight in sharp, tapering pins. The surface squirmed with movement as thousands of leggy arachnids climbed on top of one another. The black, splotchy sun cast finicky light on a shady moon half the size of the horizon, hanging in the sky.
“This place sucks like a vacuum in deep space.” Leo shuddered beside me. “How are we ever going to land without them seeing us?”
“I’m working on that.” Asteran maneuvered us between two large stalagmites, tipping the ship slightly sideways to avoid scraping the wings. “I have to find the central shaft where the mother brain buries her eggs.”
The writhing mass below us reminded me of when I was a kid on a field trip to the biodome. I’d left part of my sandwich on the ground, but I didn’t realize it until later. When I went back for it, the whole thing was covered in ants, making my body itch.
These arachnids only looked tiny from the spaceship.
“What are those over there?” Nova pointed to a series of ships, like the one we flew, on a far ridge to the east.
Asteran turned the ship toward them. “That’s not good.”
“What is it?” I grabbed his arm.
His solemnity calmed my racing heart.
His face paled. “Their armada. Look at the trails of arachnids boarding. The mother brain is preparing an attack.”
Tauren’s chin jutted out. “You mean to tell me those ships are headed for our planet?”
Asteran shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. It could be any planet.”
“There’s one way to know for sure.” Nova moved to the orb beside Asteran. She clutched the jade crystal, tied around her neck with a piece of string, in her hand.
I moved to stop her. “You’re not going to...” She’d just told me how afraid she was to be found again.
She raised her hand to silence me. “I’ve done it before. Only now I have protection.”
Pressing her forehead against the glass, she accessed their thoughts. Tauren, Leo, and I all moved near her orb, watching panels of information that displayed as she blinked and moved her eyes. She sifted through a bunch of schematics.
“Here it is.” She connected to one of their orbs. “There are twenty-five of them. They’re fully loaded with enough crystal power to blast holes in Paradise 21’s crust. Each ship has thousands of arachnids.”
“Where are they going?” Tauren shifted beside her, trying to see over her shoulder.
“I’m bringing up their intended trajectory now.”
We all stepped back, breathless. That particular purple sun and conglomeration of planets was all too familiar. I whispered under my breath, “Paradise 21.”
Asteran had been right all along.
Swearing, Tauren left the orb and collapsed in the corner. He buried his head in his hands. Leo started pacing. “We can stop them, right? Tell me we can stop them.”
Nova continued to study their files. “I’m not sure I understand their timetables correctly, but if I do, they’re set to leave when the full moon falls below the horizon. Which, according to the star charts, is six hours from now.”
Asteran glanced up from the orb then back down again as the ship neared another cluster of stalagmites. “We don’t have time to get to the mother brain and destroy the ships.”
“So, we destroy the mother brain and the ships can’t fly, right?” My voice rose with illogical hope.
“That’s if there’s only one of them. They might have more, with the same psychic powers, waiting to assume control.”
“Then we destroy the ships first then find the mother brain.” We’d come all this way. I wasn’t about to just give up.
Asteran shook his head. “Once she knows we’re here, she’ll put a thousand of her drones in between her and us. There’s no way.”
“So, what do we do? Split up?” Denial tinged Leo’s voice.
Asteran nodded. “We’ll have to. Half of us should stop the mother brain, while the other half destroys those ships.”
“How are we going to destroy them?” Nova shook her head. “It took my entire team to bring down just one. There are twenty-five.”
“I have a way.” The certainty in Tauren’s voice caused us all to whirl around toward him.
Leo crossed his arms. “How?”
Tauren stood with reluctance, brushing off his pants. It was almost as if he enjoyed being in charge again. “I’ve never told you why I was on this ship in the first place.”
Dread settled in my gut. This couldn’t be anything good.
“This ship had more powerful weapons than anything on the New Dawn. If those weapons fell into the wrong hands, if any of us colonists wanted to go on a revenge spree, then it could wipe out our entire colony. My father couldn’t have that happen, so he sent me here to destroy it.”
“Why? There’s so much on here we can learn from. What if we need these weapons for the future to defend our planet?” Leo shook his head.
“That was a risk he was willing to take.” Tauren walked toward Asteran, as if he was the only one who’d listen. “There’s a nuclear bomb in the crystal chamber, great enough to blow this entire ship to dust. If used it within close enough range to the other ships and their crystals, it could start a chain reaction that would wipe out the entire fleet.”
Asteran nodded, his gaze far away, as if he calculated all of the possibilities.
“Then what the hell are we waiting for?” Leo threw his arms up in the air. “Half of us bomb the fleet, while the other half finds the mother brain.”
Tauren shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that. “The bomb was meant to destroy one ship with one detonation. With twenty-five times that explosion, I’m not sure whoever sets it will have enough time to get away.”
A cold hand closed over my heart. “You mean whoever goes is on a suicide mission?”
Tauren shrugged. “I’m not certain. That’s all. I can’t promise anything. I don’t want whoever volunteers to think they’re going to race back to a pink fluffy happy ending with puppy dogs.”
“I’ll go.” Asteran avoided my gaze, looking back into the orb.
His words cut a gash across my heart. Even though he’d gone on a suicide mission in the past, I still couldn’t get over the fact he’d leave me behind, and that he seemed okay with it. Did he ever feel anything toward me? Or had I just been imagining things?
Tauren nodded as if he knew Asteran’s answer long before he said it. “I brought the bomb over on a cart, which obviously won’t roll around in this terrain. It takes two people to carry it, so I’ll go with you.”
“No.” I turned to Nova. “There has to be a better way.”
Nova shook her head, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I’m sorry, Lyra.”
I positioned myself in front of her. She’d been our team expedition leader on two missions. They’d listen to her. “You can’t let them go.”
“I have to.” Nova’s voice fell so only I could hear. “Remember back at the ceremony when that weatherman said I’d have to make hard decisions, decisions I didn’t want to make?”
I nodded. I knew where she was going, but that didn’t help me accept any of it.
“This is one of those decisions, only we’re all making it together, including you.”
My world closed in around me. I covered my face in my hands, trying not to fall apart. We had a mission to accomplish, a world to save. I couldn’t be a baby, but that didn’t stop the tears from welling up.
Leo placed his arm over my shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay, sis. They might make it back just fine. Tauren says he doesn’t know for sure.”
I pulled my hands away from my face. “Is this one of your visions or are you j
ust trying to comfort me?”
Leo shrugged. “Sometimes I’m not sure what’s real and what’s not anymore.”
I hugged my brother back, feeling like this was the beginning of a darkness I wasn’t sure would end. We might all die here, and then everyone back home would die as well, eventually. There’d be no more future lives, because humanity’s span in the universe would end.
When so much gloom and doom threatened to tear down my very soul, the only thing I could hold on to was love, and the fact Leo was my brother and the universe couldn’t take that away from me, whether we lived through this or not.
“Here it is. The central shaft.” Asteran’s voice broke through the silence and the tears. “I’m using the collective memories of the arachnids to navigate through it.”
We all turned toward the orb, where a tunnel appeared. At the end, a large cavern opened to a floor of silky-white eggs. In the middle sat the largest, grossest bug in the universe. She didn’t have strong, hairy legs like the others, just an oversized pulsing, veiny brain sack that jiggled when she moved. A high-pitched piercing sound at the threshold of my hearing grew louder and louder until it hit my eardrum like a pin.
As if she sensed our gazes, she turned, and three inky-black eyes stared at us. The piercing sound grew louder until the veins in my head throbbed. Leo covered his ears with both hands, and Nova opened her mouth as if she was screaming. I couldn’t hear anything except that awful sound.
Asteran pulled away from the orb, throwing himself on the ground and covering his head with his arms. The sound cut off, leaving me with echoes ringing in my ears.
“Are you okay?” I ran to Asteran and collapsed on my knees by his side.
Vengeance ruled his gaze as he looked through me to the cavern beyond the ship. “I found her at last.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Foolish Inclinations
Asteran searched for a barren landing spot free of arachnids. As he plotted the shortest route to the mother brain and the armada, Tauren and Leo left to retrieve the bomb.
Nova placed a hand on my arm, jolting me out of my haze of shock. I still couldn’t get over the fact we were here, and we might not all leave here alive.
Her usually hard gaze softened. “I’m going to refill the water bottles and finish packing. Stay here with Asteran in case he needs help.”
“Okay.” I rubbed the jade crystal tied around my neck, the edges sharp where the multifaceted surfaces met. It was hard to believe such a small object would save us from the mother brain’s psychic superpowers. Around me, the ship settled, and the distant hum of the engines subsided. A loud creak rumbled through the tunnels. Then, silence. The ship had landed.
Asteran left the orb and came to sit by me. “I’m sorry, Lyra.”
I stashed the jewel under my shirt. “Sorry for what?”
“I have to finish what I started. I have to end this evil once and for all.”
I nodded, holding back tears. “I know. I just wish it didn’t have to be you.”
He brushed his fingers over my hand in circles. His touch calmed me and ignited fire inside me at the same time. “I never told you why the arachnids caught me.”
That’s right. He hadn’t even told Telehedron. My head snapped up and I met his eyes. “Why?”
Asteran pursed his perfectly shaped lips. “I’d managed to sneak onto one of their ships. I knew where the control room was. All I had to do was take control of the ship. Instead, I took the other tunnel, the one that led to the chamber where they stashed the prisoners.”
He shook his head. “I know it was stupid, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to look for Lavisha. They’d taken her weeks before, yet I still held out hope she was alive. There were many ships. Chances were she wasn’t on the one I’d commandeered, but I had to check and see for myself.”
He sighed deeply. “I was selfish. I put my own desires above the mission objective.”
“Was she there?”
He bit his lower lip. “No. Not one of my people was. Only a few magadons and other smaller species. By then, the arachnids had caught on to my plan. They surrounded me in the prisoner chamber, and before I knew it, a spire had hit me in the back.”
“My last memory was feeling my legs go numb, and then my whole body went as rigid as the metal cocoon closed around me.”
I took his hand, threading my fingers through his. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“It was.” He brought my hand to his chest where his heart beat, slow and steady, like the pulse to a mournful love song. “I can’t afford to make the same mistake again. To put my personal desires above what needs to be done.”
My breath hitched in my throat. “What are your personal desires?”
His face turned toward mine so his breath hit my lips. “You don’t know?”
My breath caught in my throat. I’d been waiting for this moment ever since I first saw him, but I didn’t think it would be like this, at the end of both our worlds, with me forced to say goodbye. “All I know is how I feel.”
“Lyra.” He brushed his fingers along my cheek, sending jolts of electricity through my whole body. “When I first touched you, we shared each other’s memories.”
“Yes, I remember. I saw you surfing on Priavenus.”
Asteran nodded. “That only happens with the person you are meant to be bonded with.” He moved closer to me, and the warmth of his body met mine.
Was he for real? Hope rose. He said he’d never spoken with Lavisha, so maybe I was his first. “Has it ever happened to you before?”
“Only with you.”
The reality of what he was saying unfolded like a beautiful flower. We were meant to be together, more so than he and Lavisha. He’d known all this time. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Asteran laughed softly against my ear. “At first I didn’t speak your language, and after that, I learned you were paired with someone else. I didn’t think it would be right to supersede your customs with mine.”
I had so many questions. We didn’t have much time left, so I had to choose one. “Which memory of mine did you see?”
He cupped my chin, bringing my face closer to his. “I saw you singing. It was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”
I almost died from happiness. In the midst of this hellish nightmare, I’d found a lovely dream. “Can we share memories again?”
“The more we share, the closer it brings us.” Asteran warned, putting his finger on my lips. “The more painful it is to part.”
“I don’t care.” I took his hand away and closed the distance between us. My lips met his, and tingly warmth spread through me all the way to my fingers and toes. I opened my mouth, inviting a deeper kiss, and he responded with passion.
Winged reptiles with brightly colored feathers sprang from the ferns around Asteran and two older alien men. The oldest in the group touched a finger to his lips, and Asteran and the other man stilled. A portly, round beast jumped from the marsh. Three tentacles shot from its toothy mouth, catching one of the reptile birds in mid-flight.
“Yatera!” The older man shouted, and all three leaped up, throwing their spears at the beast. The older man’s spear grazed the beast’s hind leg, while the younger man missed altogether. Asteran’s spear hit the beast straight through the heart. It fell, motionless, into the muck, and the feathered bird sprang from its jaws, free.
The other two men cheered, chanting Asteran’s name. Asteran gazed down at his reflection in the water, and a new inky swirl climbed the side of his face.
“The bomb is ready.”
I pulled back from the kiss, feeling as though someone had woken me from a sweet dream. Nova stood at the mouth of the tunnel, holding our packs. Thank the Guide it wasn’t Leo or Tauren.
Asteran kissed me one more time, quickly. “I’m sorry, Lyra, but we have to go.”
My first kiss was over. Now we had to fight for our lives. Determination hardened and I stood. I was sick of waiting. “I’m
ready.”
We met Leo and Tauren at the portal to the exit ramp. The bomb looked like a cylindrical missile with a panel on the side, pulsing green light.
Asteran’s fingers flew over the portal controls. “Breathe deeply and don’t overexert yourself. The air is thin, and the temperature is thirty degrees colder than on Paradise 21 and Priavenus. Large wind gusts come up from the east, tunneling in between the stalagmites. The gravity is heavier.”
“Sounds like a nice place.” Tauren smirked. He glanced over to see if I would laugh at his joke, but I avoided his gaze.
After kissing Asteran only moments ago, I felt like betrayal burned all over my face. Then, I remembered, I never did tell him how I felt. He’d walk to his death thinking we were still together.
Now it was too late.
The portal dematerialized and cool air blew in, whipping through my uniform. I hugged my arms around my chest. My lungs fought for air, and panic ripped through me. Had Asteran been wrong about the atmosphere? Could only he breathe the air?
Then, slowly, my throat opened, and I learned how to breathe slower and hold the air longer in my lungs. Running was out of the question. Not good when you had thousands of arachnids swarming just beyond the ridge.
We walked down the ramp, each step taxing my muscles. How was I ever going to walk all the way to the mother brain and back again? The trek seemed impossible.
“Tauren and I will go south, back to the armada.” Asteran took my arm and Nova’s, wrapping his hands around the locators on our wrists. Blue light emanated from underneath his fingertips. When he released us, each one of us had a map of the tunnel system and the coordinates of the egg chamber. We could use the navigator function to locate the mother brain.
“What about Leo?”
“He doesn’t need it.” Asteran pointed to his forehead. “It’s all up there.”
“Right now nothing’s up there, Tanny.” Leo handed him his locator. “Better just give me the info, too.”
Asteran shook his head. “It will come to you when you need it.”
Alliance Page 16