by M. G. Herron
Elya padded back toward her and peered through a gap in the prefab buildings to the front gate.
A man in brown robes stood there, hood still up. Hedrick sat on the ground, his knees clutched to his chest, rocking back and forth nervously.
Heidi got up as if to run to him. Elya grabbed her and forced her back into a crouch. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Wait,” said Elya. “If you go to him now, groundlings will be on you in seconds. Then you’ll both be captured—or dead. Is that what you want? Both of you as Kryl food?”
She huffed and looked down.
Elya tried to peer at the priest’s face, but he kept his cowl low and his back to the sun, so his face was cast in shadows.
Elya should have known better than to trust that bastard. Using the name of Animus to fool people into trusting him, and now here he was making some kind of pact with the Kryl, some kind of deal. What was he using Hedrick for? Better protection? Elya racked his brain. It didn’t make any sense. If the priest had come to parlay, what made Hedrick so valuable?
The only thing Elya could think of was that Hedrick would make a tasty Kryl snack. But what would that buy the priest and his followers? And who would Father Pohl even negotiate with to make such a deal? The groundlings and the sentinels seemed to have binary modes—guard or kill. They couldn’t be reasoned with. They didn’t possess rational thought or a language since they were controlled by the Overmind. Unless…
The sound of a door latching in one of the prefab buildings floated on the wind. The man in the robes straightened. Two sentinels flanking a third figure walked toward the front gate where the priest was waiting.
A sentinel hauled the gate open, one of the posts dragging a curved line through the dirt. Father Pohl grabbed Hedrick’s wrist and hauled him to his feet.
The boy resisted, but the man was too strong. He dragged Hedrick forward, throwing him to the ground in front of the Kryl. Heidi gasped, throwing her hand over her mouth, and then let loose a string of creative cussing that would impress even a drunken loadmaster.
His view of the two sentinels and the third figure was cut off by the prefab building as they walked back the way they had come. The sentinels were hulking figures. One of them, he saw happily, was missing an arm. That must have been from the explosion Thom triggered. The creature’s carapace had grown over the wound, sealing it. It reminded Elya how inhuman these xenos were, with abilities that were beyond human comprehension. They could heal quickly, absorb more damage than any person could take. They were dangerous. If he and Heidi wanted to save Hedrick’s life, they would have to be very smart and very, very careful.
Elya crawled to his left until the group came into view again. He could see the third person who was, unlike the sentinels, smaller, almost man-shaped. Tall, yes, taller than Elya, perhaps even as tall as Admiral Miyaru. And though it, too, was covered in purple-black carapace, like organic armor, its body shape was basically human.
Unlike the sentinels, whose weapons were ingrown talons and teeth, this creature carried a rifle slung over its shoulder. An older model, like the blaster rifles used in the Kryl War, with smaller battery packs and less range than the newer models. Perhaps this creature had stolen the gun from a Fleet soldier or one of the colonists.
The xeno gestured. The priest dragged Hedrick forward and the sentinels closed the gates behind them.
“Now what?” Heidi demanded.
“Now, we sneak in and try to get Hedrick out before they notice us.”
“Why the hell didn’t we do that before, when we had the chance and they were outside the damn gates?”
Elya glanced up at the sky. Even if they did rescue the boy, would they have time to get back to the Fleet? He sighed heavily as the notion that he may never make it back to the Fleet sank in. Up to this point, he had held out hope that there was still a chance that the Search and Rescue team would connect to his cube and then come find him, somehow, even though the cube had been taken from him.
Now he finally resigned himself to the fact that the rescue he’d pictured wasn’t going to happen. No one was coming for him. No one even knew where to look.
Elya was on his own.
A certain part of him felt that this situation was inevitable. He had always been on his own. The only person he had ever truly been able to rely on was himself. And Hedgebot, of course.
Only, now it was different. Heidi and Hedrick were also relying on him. No Search and Rescue team was coming for them. They weren’t his family, weren’t even his squadmates… but he was all they had. He and Heidi were Hedrick’s only chance to get out of the Kryl encampment alive. And even though Elya couldn’t get back to the Fleet, if he could save this boy’s life, if he could get Hedrick and Heidi to safety, if he could help them survive just a little bit longer, that was a good thing, a noble thing, and worth the risk.
In a flash of insight, Elya understood why Osprey had been giving him such a hard time about not acting like a team player. When things got ugly, they only had each other to rely upon.
Well, here he was. Elya may not ever be able to make it up to Osprey. But this new team he’d inadvertently joined needed him now.
That would have to be good enough. He could make it up to Osprey and the Furies later… assuming he made it out of this alive.
“All right,” Elya said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do.”
Twenty-Two
Hedrick clutched his bruised upper arm as they passed through the gate into the compound.
By the time he realized that Father Pohl wasn’t taking him back to his mother, it was too late. He hadn’t been lying about the shortcut through the caves. It spit them out into a shaded grove where a pair of skimmer bikes were chained up. Father Pohl asked him if he wanted to take one for a ride.
“You bet I do!” he’d crowed.
When Father Pohl insisted on riding with him, for safety, how could he refuse? Hedrick didn’t know how to operate the unwieldy vehicle. It hummed like a plasma cannon between his legs, the weight of it sending jolts of excitement through his body. He didn’t even get suspicious when Father Pohl turned the nose of the bike downhill. The wind whipped through Hedrick’s hair. But as they descended through switchbacks and came to the base of the valley, zipping along tree-lined trails and then along packed dirt paths, a shivery, distrusting dread had settled itself in the pit of his belly.
Hedrick tried to ditch Father Pohl in the woods when they finally stopped. The bald, hawkish priest had been busy shoving side-satchels into the bike’s storage compartment when he slipped behind a tree trunk, quiet as a mouse. But Hedrick hadn’t gone thirty meters when the priest’s bony fingers seized his arm and yanked him off his feet. Hedrick kicked and clawed but the old man was way stronger than he looked—or Hedrick was way weaker than he’d realized. Either way, after this escape attempt, the priest refused to remove his hand from Hedrick’s arm until the groundlings closed in behind them. A few minutes later, they paused on the blackened ground at the foot of the chain-link gate. The dirt looked as if something evil had been struck down by the righteous hand of Animus himself.
Ten or fifteen of the foul, hunch-backed spider-dogs Captain Nevers called groundlings made a half circle around them, cutting off their retreat. Oily strands of saliva dripped from their hinged, hanging jaws. When Hedrick closed his eyes, he remembered how they had pounced on a small girl, opening her throat with their teeth.
He knew very well that if he tried to run now, the groundlings would gut him in a similar fashion. Counterintuitively, the only person who could protect him was Father Pohl. He was the reason the groundlings kept a certain distance. The priest held that glowing green geode. It must have been the same one Hedrick had seen last night in the canyon, when Father Pohl had rescued them from the groundlings. As long as he held it, the Kryl kept their distance.
Hedrick hadn’t been able to tell what it was last night. They’d been too far away and Hedrick had still been in shock, totally preo
ccupied with his own survival to worry about anything else. Now, as Father Pohl led him around a puddle of black liquid that had pooled in the soot-stained soil, he recognized the orb as a sibling of the geode he’d discovered in the glowing chamber deep in the caves. Only, rather than blow into pieces and float over his head, this orb was mounted with a marble handle, and all of its green light came from three triangular apertures spaced evenly around its face. The amount of light each opening emitted could be adjusted by twisting the handle, like a lantern. The object was only about the size of a grown man’s fist, and it was currently inactive. Father Pohl gripped it tight as they followed the two hulking Kryl and the other one, who seemed to be their leader, a disfigured man-shaped creature armored in Kryl carapace.
Their escorts led them down a row of prefab buildings and stopped before the second-to-last one.
Father Pohl hesitated, holding up the lantern like a shield. “That’s far enough. We can make the trade here.”
Trade? Hedrick’s mind flitted about, like a panicked bird in a cage. What trade? Is he planning to give the Kryl that geode?
“After inspection.” The disfigured Kryl spoke as if it had marbles in its mouth. Hedrick snuck a peek up at the Kryl’s face and was startled to see that it had one glossy, multi-faceted bug eye—and one human eye, brown flecked with spots of neon yellow that reminded him of radioactivity warning signs on space stations.
“We had an agreement,” Father Pohl said.
Hedrick’s skin crawled. Who would make an agreement with these monsters? That’s when he knew Father Pohl had to be insane.
“We did,” the Kryl rumbled. “And we shall uphold our end of the bargain, provided you are not attempting to deceive us.”
Father Pohl clenched his jaw and stepped toward the Kryl, bearing the lantern and twisting the handle ever so slightly. The xeno hunched its shoulders and took half a step back.
The green glow pained the xeno, but the effect on this pitiful disfigured monster seemed muted. The groundlings kept their distance as if a physical force was pushing them back. This Kryl was more intelligent, if uglier, and seemed not only to understand what was causing the effect but was able to resist it to some extent.
What Hedrick had seen in that chamber had been nothing short of miraculous—an advanced artifact crafted by an ancient intelligence, or so he believed. This Kryl’s ability to resist such a power frightened him more than the groundlings, more even than the hulking security guard Kryl who had stepped back to take up posts on either side of the doorway the xeno wanted them to enter.
Father Pohl worked his tongue around the inside of his mouth as he considered this dilemma.
“Please don’t!” Hedrick blurted out. Only after he spoke did he realize he’d said it out loud. By then Hedrick was too scared not to finish. “Give them what they want and let’s get out of here. Please!”
The xeno who spoke opened the door to the building and gestured them inside magnanimously. It was such a human gesture, delivered in such a halting, half-hunched, stilted way that it gave him the total creeps.
Father Pohl’s face clouded over. Finally, he nodded and pushed Hedrick ahead of him.
Hedrick flicked his head rapidly from side to side. “No, no,” he said, “I don't want to go in there.”
Father Pohl grabbed his bruised arm and dragged him forward.
Hedrick had half a mind to fall to the floor and throw a tantrum. It used to drive his mother crazy when he did that, but when he saw the humanoid xeno had followed them through the doorway, suddenly moving forward seemed like a safer option.
He was beyond relieved to see that the hulking Kryl—one of whom he saw was missing an arm—remained outside.
The room they had entered seemed to be a kind of foyer or entryway. Double doors ahead of them led to the rest of the building. The door behind clicked shut.
The humanoid Kryl limped around them and pushed open the double doors, gesturing them forward. Father Pohl edged through the door, being careful. Not wanting to be stuck with the xeno alone in this tiny room, Hedrick scurried past, keeping close to Father Pohl, and gave a shout of fright when he walked face-first into a bunch of cobwebs. He batted at the sticky strands, which wadded up between his fingers. These were like spiderwebs times a thousand. Hedrick had to rub his hands together to get the strands to ball up and then flick them to the floor. The stickiest boogers you ever saw.
“Ugh, gross,” Hedrick blurted. “What is this stuff?”
Father Pohl, too, had run into cobwebs but was dealing with them better than Hedrick was. He held the lantern up and the green glow seemed to burn the goo away.
“Give me your hands, boy,” Father Pohl said. Hedrick held out his trembling hands. Father Pohl shined the green light on them from the triangular aperture, directing it with a twist of the handle, and they melted away from his hands too.
Only now did Hedrick lift his head and look around. He’d never been in one of these prefab buildings before. Walls which separated the building into several rooms had been knocked down to make a single large room. He could still make out the edges of door frames, the grooves where the walls would fit. The walls had been ripped away by a terrible force, leaving thin material behind—sharp, twisted metal shards sticking up out of the floor and ceiling. Perhaps those hulking Kryl outside had done the demolition.
The room seemed to glow, but not like the caves that had led up to the golden chamber. That had been a natural radiance, while this was a sickly yellow gleam, the same color which flecked the Kryl’s all-too-human eye. It was as if the disfigured Kryl and the growth coating the floors and walls of this building had each been injected with poison.
When Hedrick walked forward, his feet came down on something sticky. More Kryl goo, soft and squishy. Each time he lifted a foot, the glowing yellow imprint where his shoe had been glowed and dissipated. Every light fixture in the building had been covered over by the same fungus. Cobwebs hung along the perimeter, remaking the space into a series of pods with a hollow in the center where they stood.
“This way,” said the Kryl, stepping around them and leading them toward one of the pods at the back of the building.
To Hedrick, it felt like he was in some kind of spider’s nest. The whole place had an arachnid feel. He realized now that those hadn't been cobwebs, but some kind of fibrous Kryl goop they had slung from the ceiling.
Many-legged bugs, about the size of toy bots, scurried away from the glow of Father Pohl’s lantern, hiding themselves in the cracks in the floor and in dark corners. Though he didn't trust the man, Hedrick stuck tight to Father Pohl’s side, sheltering in the glowing green bubble of safety cast by the artifact. Whatever he did, Hedrick knew he had to stay in that ring of green light.
His eyes searched the walls, looking for an exit. There had to be a back door out of this place, didn't there? Or a window. A window would be fine, he was small. He hadn't been able to search the side of the building, but there had to be some way out.
Each webbed pod they passed was lined with veined, spidery-looking eggs. The smaller ones had translucent skin, so he could see the contents inside. Tiny Kryl, like the spiders on the floor or the groundlings outside, were growing in each. They were strapped to the wall with the cobwebs to keep them upright.
They were growing more Kryl.
“Bring the boy here,” the humanoid xeno said.
Father Pohl nudged Hedrick forward. “Do as he says.”
“No,” Hedrick said. “You do it!”
“It's okay, boy,” the Kryl said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Father Pohl pushed Hedrick forward. He scrabbled backward as he struggled to stay in the safe ring of green light cast by Father Pohl’s artifact.
“Take off your shoes,” the Kryl said. “And stand here.”
Hedrick saw there was a slightly upraised platform where the Kryl was pointing. It formed the base of some kind of machine set against the back wall. Some of the equipment looked familiar, manufa
ctured by Imperial printers like the building they were in. However, there were several Kryl growths on the equipment, large bulging fistulas that pulsed and squirmed unnaturally. Across the monitors, beneath the layer of Kryl cancer suspended in a clear liquid, text flashed across a screen and computer towers hummed as the cooling fans worked overtime.
When Hedrick didn’t move, the Kryl bent down and, with veiny hands bearing several purple-black splotches, he removed Hedrick’s shoes. Hedrick counted the creature’s fingers and knuckles. One of his hands was very human. The fingers each had three joints, same as Hedrick. It served to reinforce the contrast; whoever had built that glowing chamber in the caves was neither human nor Kryl, but something else entirely.
When his shoes had been removed, the xeno dragged Hedrick onto the platform. Immediately, the sticky goop seeped over his toes. Hedrick’s gorge rose and he vomited on the ground. The Kryl didn’t seem to care, he just stepped over the puke and pulled some kind of cords from the wall. They were long strands with a mucous texture that shone in the yellow light. The Kryl creature set them against Hedrick’s temples.
He tried to struggle then but something about the touch of those strands at his temples paralyzed his muscles. Hedrick’s breath began to come in quick panicky gasps. I can’t move, he thought. Why can’t I move? Oh, please, Animus, don’t let this be the end.
“What are you doing to him?” Father Pohl said. There was a tremor in the man’s voice that Hedrick hadn’t heard before. Not when the priest had scared off the groundlings in the canyon, not when they’d approached the gate. Only now did the priest seem frightened of what was about to happen.
And if the priest was afraid, Hedrick was terrified.
“It is none of your concern,” the Kryl said.
A warm stream of urine began to seep down his leg, pooling at his feet. Still, Hedrick was unable to move except to breathe. His eyes darted over as he saw the humanoid Kryl manipulate some of the computer equipment by touching the pulsing, liquid-filled sacs.