by Andrew Post
Together, they flipped it and pushed its top against the fireplace. It was barely in place before more thumping and screeching sounded outside, even more panicked.
“This is suicide,” Nevele spat.
To their left, glass broke. In nary a second, a Blatta collapsed into the room with them, the opening behind it immediately becoming crowded with others trying to charge in.
It didn’t hesitate. It spotted Clyde and Nevele and lunged in the same second, its mind clearly only on the kill. Luckily for Clyde, Commencement was feeling cooperative and slid from the holster on the first tug. He fired once, halting the Blatta’s careening dive, and then again and again as it fought to regain its feet.
Nevele shouted, “I’m telling you, this is a bad place to stay.”
He stared at the thing he’d just killed, his stomach turning. His voice came out soft. “I really don’t think going outside will be any better than this.”
Nevele growled.
Another Blatta dropped through the chimney and at once set to work chewing its way through the table blocking the fireplace. The ones at the window apparently decided who would go first and another plopped onto the floor. Nevele fired three times, then at the next preparing to push its way in.
The one in the fireplace speared a hole through the tabletop with its pincers.
Jamming a boot against the table’s underside to keep it held flush with the hearth, Clyde opened fire through the table. An emptied chamber gifted him with a silent fireplace. Still, his stomach twisted a little.
“I suggest blocking off a single room and remaining there,” said Rohm, muffled inside his hiding place. “It has proven to be fortuitous in the history books on military strategy that we’ve . . . I’ve . . . read.”
Nevele and Clyde took the advice. Together, they grunted and dragged a heavy crate of mining picks in front of the door to secure it.
“This is stupid. So very, very stupid,” she kept saying.
But he could scarcely hear her over the growing noise outside. “Get that end,” he shouted.
She obliged, and they moved another crate in front of another window that, to their horror, just had its glass shattered and rained to the floor. Nevele used one of the picks this time to impolitely dissuade the next Blatta from entering. But it was nearly pointless given how many were crowded right outside, waiting to take the place of their fallen.
The harder Clyde and Nevele worked, the harder the Blatta did as well. It wasn’t long before their barbed arms were jamming through all the available holes in the walls and gaps in the blockades. Razor mandibles gnawed at the openings. Deafening shrieks from every angle poured in.
This is hopeless, Clyde thought, backing away from a wall bristling with twisting insect legs.
Nevele took one of the shovels from the box and ran its blade up and down against the crumbling door to scare the bugs out of losing a limb, but it was tiring work. Every time she paused to catch her breath, they’d start again.
She threw down the shovel and began rolling up her sleeves.
Clyde blurted, “What are you doing?”
“They’re going to get in.”
She unwound herself a little, allowing a few yards of thread out and then bringing life into them with a twitch of her wrist. With a sweep of her arms one way, then the other, the front door was soon webbed. With some exertion, Nevele bound the thing up tight, using her threads as a glue between the broken pieces of the door as well as the pick handles and other pieces they were using for a blockade.
Clyde could hear them chew right through her threads, severing them with a single flash of their serrated mandibles.
Nevele unraveled more and continued, patching when one part broke down. Even as her right ear began to slide down her neck.
The fireplace became the Blatta’s next focus. Clyde left Nevele to tend to the front door. He drew Commencement but, with one pull of the trigger, realized no bullets remained.
The table blocking the fireplace scooted aside. Insect arms inched from the new gap.
He fumbled for ammunition, jamming it in backwards, frantically trying to remember his quick firearm lesson. He got the gun half reloaded, snapped it closed, and eyed the sights.
The fireplace was empty.
Outside, the noise began to dissipate. The scratchy flutter of Blatta wings was the only sound.
Daring a peek out the windows, Clyde saw all of them lifting off and collecting in a cloud at the far end of the cavern.
Once they had gathered into a solid pack, they set off, leaving their potential meal inside the way station.
Doused in abrupt silence, ears ringing, they listened.
“What happened?” Nevele said, approaching the window next to Clyde. “Did they decide we were too much of a fuss for such a small meal?”
Rohm peeked out from under the pocket flap. “They left?”
Nevele chuckled. “Maybe the mama Blatta rang the dinner bell?”
Although the imagery was funny, Clyde didn’t have time to laugh, for the most likely reason the insects took off so fast hit him like a ton of bricks.
“Flam . . .”
Chapter 42
The Encounter
The pregnant Blatta encircled by the dancing Lulomba bellowed, a hellish noise that set Flam’s teeth on edge. Covering his ears didn’t block it out.
Greenspire took to his feet and hobbled across the camp toward the bridge to the wendal stone deposit. Flam joined him. Even on the far end of the deposit, the echoing noise was unbearable.
“How is it that an insect is going to give live birth?” Flam said, still grinding his teeth. “Do you mean to tell me these people have . . . ?”
“No, no.” Greenspire chortled. “Nothing like that. Over time, I’ve dropped my Mouflon ignorance and have become much more open to ideas that differ from the teachings of Meech that are hammered into us. I’ve come to understand—and believe with all my heart—the stone’s power has rubbed off on these people and their insect friends and has melded two coexisting societies into one.”
“Rubbed off? Do you mean that . . .” He had to find the right words. “This sounds a lot like fabrick to me, Uncle.” He looked at the rock beneath their feet. Besides being flecked with flashes of the more precious ore within, the dark blue was otherwise unremarkable. Flam never questioned why wendal stone was so highly coveted, but if what his uncle was saying was true . . .
Greenspire threw his arm over his nephew’s shoulder as they walked on. Flam wasn’t sure if he did it so he could lean on him to speak confidentially or if he genuinely needed the aid. Either way, for a flash, Flam marveled at how much smaller his uncle seemed now—how they were now roughly the same height. He used to think of Greenspire as a giant among Mouflons, and now Flam easily outweighed his uncle by fifty or more pounds.
“Fabrick,” Greenspire chimed, tasting the word. “It’s not the term they use for it, but I suppose that’s the closest there is, really.” Greenspire led them around the circle, giving the dancers and the Blatta at its center plenty of room, as if he and Flam were surveying some casual event, like a band of jugglers in Geyser’s square, like he used to take Flam to see way back when.
“Anyway, the Blatta and the Lulomba are becoming a unified race,” Greenspire continued. “The Lulomba can communicate with the insects. And, as it is with their fabrick, for lack of a better word, a gift is given to the Blatta for sharing their dialect: the live birth of the first of a new race.” Greenspire took a second to breathe deep. “Simply a most wondrous time, Tiddle. It is truly great that you showed up when all this is happening. Kismet, it must be.”
“Yeah, lucky me,” Flam said, watching the dancing tribe members fan their arms out at the Blatta in the middle, skitter away, and then dance back in pulsing expanding and contracting circles. “Does this mean you, a Mouflon, can control fabrick now?”
Dismissively, Greenspire walked on. “Mouflon skulls are too thick for that, I’m afraid, but I can talk wi
th the Blatta. I can have meals with them, speak, and comprehend their tales about the things they’ve discovered within the caves. Some of it can be interesting; some of it not. Tales of their existence are what you’d expect from any society that’s lived in close quarters for so long.” He paused, his opaque eyes looking side to side.
Flam wondered if he was doing the math on how long he himself had been down here.
With a grunt, he went on. “But as far as being able to fully communicate with them, that is where the Lulomba’s gift is readily evident. Bzzt.”
“And this offspring, this live birth, what will it be?” Flam asked, partly nauseated at what his imagination conjured. A human baby body with buggy eyes, a million lenses, and snapping jaws? Or worse: the reverse. He tried to hide his shudder.
“The crusher of men,” his uncle replied, the already rumbling timbre of his voice dropping an octave. “It will be a great warrior from the second it draws breath. I’m honored, for when we go into battle tonight, I will be the one the child will ride with. I have been chosen to present it to the topside world and bask it in the suns’ glare and herald for all Gleese to behold what’ll become their undoing.”
Flam ducked out from under his uncle’s arm. “Hold on. There really are some good men, Uncle. I hope you’re hearing me when I tell you that. Not all of them need to be crushed.”
Greenspire grinned knowingly, as if to say, Stop fooling yourself, Nephew.
Flam was about to explain his point when the noise around them thickened. Twisting to look, he noticed the cavern above the wendal stone was becoming clouded with more Blatta. They were filing in from the gap he had fallen through, joining the others in their endless swirling near the ceiling.
It was hypnotic: the Blatta flew in a tight spiral a few yards above the heads of the Lulomba in matched tempo with their dancing. It was hard to tell who was setting the pace: the insects or the strange people. Flam put a paw to his face and rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to look away.
There was no way this could turn out well. He hoped Clyde and Nevele were safe. If Meech was up there looking out for them and liked what they were doing, possibly he’d already seen to it that they were outside.
His uncle thrust his spindly arms above his head. “It comes!”
Turning, Flam forced himself to look upon the Blatta, which let out a piercing screech. The ones flying above gave an equally shrill rejoinder. The Lulomba chanted, danced, and waved their arms about, the dance becoming disorganized, and the whole cavern was suddenly a riot of movement and noise.
The only things staying still were the pregnant Blatta and Flam. It was hard to tell, but she seemed to be watching him as he watched her through all the thrashing movement. Her expression seemed a mix of pain, worry, and discouragement, but it was hard to judge. Dismally, Flam came to a realization. The Blatta probably wasn’t making a face at all. It was probably just Flam projecting what his own face was doing.
Clyde stared into the darkness in the direction the Blatta had gone. There’d been so many of them, and even though Flam was the toughest person he knew, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance. Nevele’s hand on his arm snapped him out of his reverie.
“Do you want to go back?” she asked gently. “I know I was the one who said we should leave him, but . . . do you want to see if there’s anything we can do?”
Clyde estimated the distant calls of the insects. They sounded like they were really tearing into something down there, more raucous than he’d ever heard them before. As much as it hurt, he decided to face the hard truth of the matter.
“If we go back and there’s too many of them, and we die too . . . then there’ll be no one to stop Gorett.” He looked at her and made himself say, “We should keep going.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He drew a deep breath and returned his gaze toward the distant noise spilling from the darkness. “I’m sorry.”
When they turned to walk on, a glimmer of metal on the ground caught Clyde’s eye. He stooped to pick it up and found it was one of the robotic sparrows. It must’ve smashed itself on the wall when the group was making its approach through the caves, having made a zig when it should’ve performed a zag.
“It looks like they came this way,” Clyde said, showing Nevele the broken bird.
“Then we’re closer to him,” Nevele answered dully. “When we face him, I want you to stay behind me, all right?”
Nodding at the weapon on his hip, he said, “I know how to use this now. I’m not completely useless, you know.”
Nevele closed her eyes for a moment, then said, “I know you’re not, but I don’t really think you know how awful a man Vidurkis truly is. He’ll take any opening he can get. He’ll try to get us apart. He was always quite the tactician, and I do not mean that as a compliment.”
“I understand.” Clyde stepped aside to let Nevele lead the way.
They went on for a few more chambers, then had to climb the sheer wall of a drop-off to continue. They reached an opening where some daylight filtered through the atmosphere bugs’ mist. A few more twists led to the end of one tunnel where they saw not a sewer but an enormous floodway of the plugged geyser. Even though they were desperate to keep moving and wanted to make good time, both were struck dead in their tracks at the sight.
It went up forever, a corkscrew all the way up to the midmorning sky, just a glowing white dot high above. It hurt his eyes, but he couldn’t help but look. He guessed this was the same splendor Flam felt each morning.
Nevele tugged at his sleeve and pointed down. He followed the direction of her finger. Stretching from one side of the geyser to the other were narrow bridges the Blatta had apparently made. Farther down, the bridges overlapped in escalating numbers until they became one solid mass, a floor blocking up the entire geyser floodway. It looked like the papery membrane of a hornets’ nest, like the one his master pointed out to him in the gardens right before the husk split and a thunderhead of angry insects came out. The idea of the same thing happening here, except with Blatta, made the back of Clyde’s head go numb.
“We’re close,” he said and carried on, not wanting to look down for a second longer.
They made it three steps up the corkscrew before they stopped, slapping out hands for something to grab onto. The entire world around them quavered.
“It’s just the backed-up pressure,” Nevele said.
“That was worse than the other times,” Clyde said, tentatively letting his hand off the wall.
A pebble somewhere struck a wall and landed on the organic plug below with a wet thump. A puff of steam came by, a shrill whine. More rock rained down, having been sent skyward from the temporary leak in the plug.
The mist that fell on them stung, not like hot water but an itchy, noisome burn.
He wiped the back of his neck where the smattering of mist had reached, then adjusted his guardsman helmet so the neckpiece was covering him better.
Nevele wiped at the backs of her hands, her patchwork skin blotchy with red marks that weren’t there a moment before. “We should keep moving. When it finally gets too much for even that Blatta’s biological . . . cement, or whatever you want to call it, this whole chamber will be flooded with boiling, acidic water.” She ran her hands down the sides of her suit and daintily wiped off each eyelid.
“I thought the geyser gave off natural spring water, though.”
Some of it must’ve gotten in her eye, because she blinked over and over, though she didn’t seem to be in any serious pain. “It does, but there are traces of acidity in it. It’s diluted when the pressure can be let go regularly. But when it’s been held back this long, the stuff that’ll come out of there now . . .”
“Yeah, let’s keep going.”
Bang.
The stone wall between their heads sparked, the bullet singing as it ricocheted away. Nevele dragged Clyde behind a pillar of Blatta muck. Clyde fumbled with his gun, choking for breath. Nevele crouched beside him, pistol expert
ly drawn and cocked. She took a deep breath and risked a peek around the slimy, wet pillar.
A second shot.
Nevele pulled back, eyes wide.
“Is it him?”
She nodded.
“Is he alone?”
Nevele swallowed, her hand pulsing upon the grip of her gun. “It appears so.”
A third shot struck the wall beside them.
Clyde flinched, gripping his gun as the shot ricocheted around them. He felt the heat from it as it skimmed past his left ear. It pinged and panged a few more times before coming to a stop a few yards away. Only then could Clyde breathe again.
“The pathway’s a spiral,” he sputtered. “There’s no way to get around him.”
Nevele’s voice was dull when she answered. “I know. We’ll have to fight him.”
They could see their path ahead without risking their lives by ducking out from behind the pillar of stone. The corkscrew set into the floodway went up a few more turns until it reached a dark spot, where the path stopped.
Nevele pointed. “That must be how he got in here—the sewer. That’ll take us right inside the palace. We’re close.”
Clyde stared. As much as he wanted to be optimistic, it was hard. Their goal, even their exit from this place, might as well have been on the other side of the planet.
“Put your visor down.” Nevele hopped out and fired twice, her gun making the equivalent of an annoying pop in comparison to the boom of Vidurkis’s rifle. She ducked back in.
Stealing a glance around the pillar, Clyde saw Vidurkis was now on the bridge made of the Blatta building material, keeping low, his rifle tucked tight to his shoulder. He was walking with his head cocked sideways, as if to hear them better. He really was going blind.
Clyde’s boot scraped a rock.
The Executioner narrowed his sights toward the sound and fired.
Clyde felt a terrible strain in his neck as his head violently snapped back, the rifle shot deflecting off the helmet. He took cover and frantically undid the straps of his guardsman helmet. He felt all around on his forehead where he was positive the bullet had cleanly passed. He turned the helmet around and saw a smoldering square dent, the bullet a bent, alloy nub lodged firmly in place.