by J. J. Green
She had to escape. She had to reunite with her family and with the mercs. Together, they would find a way to get off the planet.
How long was the tunnel? Was she near the surface yet?
Black, wet earth surrounded her and covered her from head to toe. She didn’t dare look toward her feet in case the hole through to the pit had now closed up. She’d been steadily pushing away the dug material, but deep inside she knew that she must now be some way beyond the hole’s entrance. She was like a grub, wriggling underground, trying to find the light.
Was she even digging in the right direction any longer? She thought she was, but she could have turned without realizing. She had no way to confirm which way was up and which was down, and the low gravity didn’t help. She felt like she was digging upward, but she could be mistaken.
Grab, pull, push down past her body. Grab another handful. Kick her feet. Drag herself forward with her elbows.
The air was thick with moisture. Soil particles lined her mouth and nostrils and clogged her eyelids. Earth pressed in on her ribs and hips, and she had to force each breath, each onward movement.
Where was Carina? Where were her brothers and sisters? Where was Kamil?
What wouldn’t she give to see one of them right now? What would she not sacrifice for someone, anyone, to push a hand through the humus above her and pull her up and out?
Where was Mother? She wanted the dear, sweet, kind, tortured, sad woman, but she was gone. Gone, long ago and far away, and she would never see her again.
Fear and grief forced its way up from her stomach into her throat, and she gave a great sob. Immediately, she coughed, struggling to breathe in the scant air.
She was nearing the end of her strength. If she didn’t reach the surface soon, she would never make it.
What a terrible way to go. The Regians would see what she’d done and maybe they would dig her out, and then…
A spasm of revulsion passed through her, driving her out from her fog of despair. She realized she’d stopped moving, stopped digging. How long had she been lying there?
She would not die this dreadful death, buried alive in a grave of her own making.
She would not!
With a last, desperate effort, she plunged her hand into the earth—and broke through into empty air!
She’d paused in her digging only a short distance below the surface.
Energy flooded into her. She pulled down the soil above, closing her eyes and spluttering in the deluge. She felt air movement on her face. For a moment, she lay still, enjoying the simple ability to breathe freely.
Caution overcame her elation, however. If she emerged from the hole in front of a Regian, all her hard work would be undone.
She waited, listening for the telltale rustle of carapaces and for the aliens’ voices over her comm. No sound broke the silence.
Slowly, she lifted her head and peered out into the passage. The chitinous walls dimly shone, reflecting the soft green glow from the ceiling. She seemed to be the only living thing in the immediate area.
She pulled down more soil, and then grabbed the edges of the hole before easing herself up and out.
For the briefest moment Parthenia shook and wiped off the earth that clung to her.
Then she ran, but before she’d gone far, she stopped and ran back.
The hole she’d made gaped wide and obvious in the floor. She pulled in soil from the edges. If she’d dug a vertical tunnel, her efforts would have been useless, but she managed to fill the diagonally sloping space.
She quickly patted the earth flat, and then she was up and on her way, heading in the opposite direction to the king’s chamber.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Don’t worry,” Carina said. “We’ll get out of here somehow.”
She was trying to allay her siblings’ fears, but her words sounded hollow even to herself. She’d thought their abilities would protect them from the worst the Regians could do, but the fact that the aliens had placed them in the same area as their other victims indicated otherwise.
Why else would they have put them there if not to attach the cases to their stomachs and leave them to die, slowly and horribly?
She was almost certain what the cases contained, and what would happen to the bodies of the people who had already died. Certain insect species used other animals as hosts for their young, laying eggs inside the living bodies. When the eggs hatched, the larva would feed on the readily available meat, which would remain fresh for as long as the host survived.
The cases were probably Regian eggs, containing one or more embryos. When the eggs hatched the embryo would burrow into the stomachs of the victims and slowly eat them from the inside out. The next stage in the growth cycle usually involved molting and then moving away to find other food sources.
Among the rotting corpses she thought she could see the shed carapaces of small Regians, as well as some kind of fungal sprouting body.
She guessed that, at an earlier point in the history of their species, the aliens had parasitized a native animal, but these original hosts had become extinct, and so the Regians had sought a replacement to fill the role. The humans newly colonizing the sector had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that was that.
The only thing that puzzled her was why the people they’d captured didn’t appear able to get up and move around. The insects she knew of which employed that method of raising their young usually paralyzed the host with a toxin, rendering them immobile without killing them. But the people in the room could move, albeit only slightly, and their movements appeared random. She couldn’t see anything holding them down.
At least they didn’t appear to be in pain or fully conscious. They reminded her of the people who had suffered brain trauma and whose families couldn’t afford the splicers’ fee to treat them, so they remained in bed, eating and sleeping, but not really ‘awake’.
Carina turned her gaze from the appalling, pitiful sight and tried to see her brothers and sisters but the place was too dark.
None of them had answered her attempt at a reassuring comment.
“Hey, guys, did you hear me?”
Her question drew short replies from each. They were still there, just too traumatized to speak.
She wished the Regians had allowed them to be together. That would have been a small comfort, and she would have been better able to distract them from the ghastly spectacle in front of them.
Even better, she thought, glancing up at the hole in the ceiling where she’d fallen, I could have lifted them out of here. The distance she’d fallen hadn’t seemed great. If Ferne had stood on her shoulders, Darius, Nahla, and Oriana might have been able to climb right out of the hole, and Oriana could then pull Ferne up. She reckoned they all weighed about half their regular weight in the planet’s gravity.
Not that it would have done Darius or Nahla much good. They wouldn’t have lived long on that cold, dark planet, but perhaps it would have been a better fate than the one that now awaited them.
A thunk broke the silence.
Someone had landed in the cell next door.
“Parthenia?” she called out.
“No, I’m not your sister,” a surly male voice replied.
“Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?”
“No idea,” said the man. “Looks like I’ve got worse things to worry about than you being separated from the brats.”
Carina knew she’d heard him before, but she couldn’t put a face to the memory.
“You are one of the Black Dogs, right?”
“Yeah, and you’re the bitch who got me into this mess.”
His tone and attitude helped her make the connection. It was the merc who’d tried it on with Parthenia, the scarred man whose behavior constantly bordered on insubordination: Chandu.
“That’s rich,” she spat back, in no mood to tolerate his insult. “You made the choice to stay with the band. Cadwallader paid off everyone who wanted to le
ave.”
“And spend the rest of my life hiding out from the Dirksens? Some choice.”
He was exaggerating. He wasn’t easily identifiable like Cadwallader had been. A few well-told lies would have secured his safety. But she couldn’t be bothered to argue.
A dreaded sound suddenly emerged from the quiet—the rustle of approaching Regians. Several of them, from the sound of it. A few moments later she saw them. Four, walking rapidly in her direction.
Her pulse quickened. Were they coming for her? Were they about to stick an egg case to her stomach and do whatever it was they did to make people vegetative?
Carina shrank back against the far wall of her cell, her courage entirely failing her.
And yet, it was better they did it to her than one of the kids. She could only hope her siblings didn’t watch what became of her.
But the Regians walked past her cell and stopped at Chandu’s.
“What do you want with me, you…” He let out a string of colorful expletives.
One of the aliens opened the grid.
“Get away! Leave me alone. What are you doing? Get…Arghh, what the hell’s that?”
He darted from his cell and ran into the sea of human bodies. The four Regians set off in pursuit, their long legs stepping easily over the prone figures. Chandu tripped and fell, landing face first among the corpses. He must have hit one of the mushrooms too, because a cloud of spores rose into the air.
He screamed in horror and despair as the aliens caught up to him.
The sight of the spreading cloud of particles from the fungus sparked an idea in Carina’s mind. She thought she might have the explanation for the near-comatose state of the human hosts.
“Kids!” she yelled. “Try not to breathe in any of that cloud in the center there. Can you see it?” Luckily, Chandu’s unhappy accident was many meters distant from the cells, and the chance of inhaling the spores was remote.
Three of the Regians were holding Chandu down, one on each leg and the third pressing down on his shoulders. He flailed, but the creatures were too strong for him.
The fourth alien held a device in his front pincers—a cubic box from which a tube protruded, widening at its end. The Regian lowered the device in front of Chandu’s face.
“Stop! No!” he hollered, twisting his head vigorously from side to side. “No!” A pause, then “Arghhh! What did you do? What have you done to me?” He coughed, deeply. “Eurgh! What have you done?”
The aliens stepped back, releasing him, but Chandu didn’t attempt to run away. He turned onto all fours and coughed again, so strongly he sounded about to cough up his lungs. “What was that stuff?” Carina faintly heard him say. “What did you…”
He collapsed. His arms and legs moved briefly, then they were still.
The Regians moved in again and delicately removed his clothes. Next, one of them plucked an egg case from the nearest string, and pressed it onto his stomach.
Their work done, the aliens left him and walked away, high-stepping through the grisly carpet.
They were gone, and all was still again.
Carina expected some kind of response from the children to what they’d seen—expressions of their feelings, or attempts to seek reassurance—but nothing came. Silence reigned. Her siblings were simply too horrified to speak.
Another thunk sounded in Carina’s neighboring cell, making her jump.
A second host for the Regians’ young had arrived.
She prayed it was not Bryce or Jace. If she survived this ordeal, how could she live with the memory of either of them undergoing the same experience as Chandu? It would be an endless torment.
A groan and cursing emanated from the cell.
Terror exploded in Carina’s heart as she recognized the voice.
“A-Atoi? Is that you?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The cold had seeped into Parthenia’s bones again. She crouched, hugging herself, near the corner of a small passage that led from the main thoroughfare. At first, she’d been terrified the Regians might smell her while she waited to catch her breath and rest. She’d heard many species’ sense of smell was far superior to humans’, and they used it in the way people used their sight and hearing. But either the aliens’ olfactory capabilities weren’t great, or the earth that coated her body was masking her scent.
Several of them had passed by while she’d been sitting and resting. They carried things in their front pincers while walking on their remaining four limbs. The light was too dim to see what they were carrying, but she had the impression the objects were regular, household things, and she was in some kind of residential area, not a military or governmental place.
It seemed odd that the king lived so close to the common citizens, and she hadn’t noticed anything grand or decorative in his chamber. Perhaps the Regians’ society was very egalitarian, or their culture didn’t value external displays of wealth or power.
Another Regian oddity struck her: they carried no weapons. They fought using the acid they produced naturally. She had to admit the strategy was effective against humans who were wearing no armor, yet it was strange that a space-faring species hadn’t invented military technology. Unless they had, but it couldn’t be used at close quarters?
She shivered, wondering what to do next. Trying to understand the creatures who had captured her didn’t seem to be helping her to figure out how to escape from them.
One thing she knew for sure: she had to get out of that place somehow. It wouldn’t be long before her guard returned to her pit and saw she was missing. She wouldn’t be able to go far on foot, and the Regians would know all they had to do to recapture her again was to search for her. They certainly had the numbers to cover a wide area quickly.
But if she could leave that metropolis she might stand a chance. She might even discover where the aliens were keeping her family and the Black Dogs. If she could release them, that would really be something. The way things were at the moment, she would be content just to see a face she knew.
Deciding she’d rested enough and now she was only going to get even colder, she peeked out from her hiding place, and immediately drew her head in again. A Regian was approaching. It was impossible to hear them on the soft humus floors of their habitation.
Parthenia pressed her back against the hard, smooth wall and held her breath. The creature stopped directly outside the little alley. She froze, but not before shrinking her eyes to slits in case the white in them stood out against her besmirched skin and hair.
The Regian turned away from her, and her muscles relaxed a notch. It was doing something to the wall opposite.
As she watched, a section rose, revealing a slope of many tiny steps leading up. The Regian walked through the opening, and the section descended again. When it closed, it blended so well with the rest of the wall it was impossible to see.
Could this be an exit to the outside? The steps might only lead up to the next level, but she would be nearer her goal.
After checking no other aliens were approaching, Parthenia slipped from the alley and crossed to the wall.
How had the creature opened the exit? She hadn’t noticed it carrying anything, like a key or a security device.
Her gaze scanned the surface until it alighted on a small hole at the height of her shoulders, which was about the level of the top of a Regian’s limbs. She bent down and looked into the hole, but it was impossible to see anything. The dim light didn’t penetrate the orifice.
Her heart beat faster. The obvious thing to do was to put a finger in, but she feared something might cut or bite it off. Swallowing, she lifted her left, non-dominant hand, and poked her index finger into the hole. A sloping surface presented itself. A switch? She pressed the uppermost part.
Click!
The section rose.
Parthenia darted in and ran up the many narrow steps. As she ran, she realized it was edges like these she’d stumbled and cut her knees on when the Regians had brought her he
re. Not at all suited to human feet, they were perfect for the aliens’ slim pincers.
The stairs continued for about ten meters and ended with another section of wall. She quickly located the hole that held the switch and pressed it.
Beyond the open doorway stretched the desolation of the surface of the Regians’ planet. An icy wind cut straight to her skin, but Parthenia ran out anyway. Groups of large and small rocks peppered the landscape. She sped to the nearest group, which were sufficiently large to hide among. She leapt over a rock at the edge, and then hunkered down.
Looking back the way she’d come, she saw a low hill with the door to the lower level set in the side. The door was closed, and the Regian she’d seen go up the stairs was nowhere in sight.
It was nighttime, but it wasn’t too dark to see the barren surface clearly. The heavy clouds she’d seen earlier had cleared, and three moons shone down—one large and two smaller flanking it.
Where had the alien gone? She couldn’t see any other entrances to the habitation. The creature couldn’t have disappeared. It must have been going somewhere. Perhaps it had been on its way to the place where her family and the others had been confined.
She stood up and peered out in the other direction.
Moonlight illuminated every rock and pebble of the dusty surface. The horizon seemed close, though it was hard to get a sense of perspective in the unfamiliar scenery.
She caught her breath. Only a few meters away stood a group of five Regians. Their black carapaces were the perfect camouflage in the landscape of deep shadows cast from the three moons’ beams. One of them had moved a little, attracting her attention.
They were standing facing the same direction, as if waiting for something.
Parthenia shook with cold and her teeth chattered. Standing up brought her out of the shelter of the rocks, exposing her to the biting wind. She ducked down again, knowing she was nearing the limits of her body’s endurance. But returning to the comparative warmth underground was out of the question. Better to die out there, free from captivity. She only wished she’d had a chance to see her siblings and Kamil again.