“I know; it’s weird, right?” Nyna said.
“It looks like something important. Anything else?”
“Nope, this is it. And we’ve looked at this curvy, pretty thing from all sides, and I mean all sides. Doesn’t look like there’s anything else even remotely interesting—besides the fact that it’s a giant alien elevator car, you know? Hey… hold on.”
Nyna put up her hand to signal any further comments would have to wait and leaned in, then bent her knees to look at it from underneath.
“You know what this looks like?” she asked. “It looks like I should do this.”
As I watched, Nyna raised her hand and placed it on the spot we’d been inspecting. A second later, she turned to me, opened her mouth to say something, and gasped as her hand was thrown violently away from the car.
I rushed to her side and inspected her hand. She was wearing the Void-tech glove she’d found in Tortengar’s armory. I pulled it off and inspected the skin of her palm. Aside from the small dent in her skin, she looked unharmed.
A sliding noise drew my attention back to the spot she’d touched. I looked just in time to see a small, thin needle recede into the structure.
“Poison,” Nyna whispered.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. I think it’s a sampling device; otherwise, it would probably kill any Xeno who tried to get inside. Also, venom takes a long time for most other creatures to create. On a busy day, it might run out. Sampling makes more sense. I bet only Xeno can open it.”
Nyna inspected her hand and rubbed the spot the needle had struck. “Yeah, sounds right. Wanna drag a guard over here? Or just a hand? Probably all we need.”
I found a guard with a still-intact hand, avoided the blood pooling and sizzling in the dirt, and used Ebon to slice it from the body. When I returned, I held it up to the same spot and made sure my fingers were out of the way in case the needle was longer than I thought.
A second later, I heard and felt a small thump. But the door didn’t open.
“Maybe the guard has to be alive?” Nyna said tentatively.
I hoped not, and, deep down, I didn’t think the Xeno would operate that way. The guards we’d killed weren’t special in any way. They were the weakest I’d encountered so far. Like a colony of ants, they were the workers: they’d barely be able to save themselves unless they attacked in numbers. Their survivability was low, and they were probably inexpensive—biologically speaking—to produce.
“I bet it needs to be one of the skinny ones,” I said. “They’re some kind of elite Xeno. I’ll need to go back and find one of their bodies.
“Or,” Nyna said as she put her glove back on, “we can just do this.”
She reached out and touched my body armor. When she moved her hand away, I saw Xeno blood on her palm.
“This came from one of the skinny ones, right?”
“It did,” I confirmed.
I was still amazed that the blood wasn't burning a hole in her glove.
Nyna took a breath, braced herself, and placed her palm on the device. The needle hit her glove again, throwing her hand back a few inches with the powerful impact. She removed her glove again and showed me her hand. No puncture marks. A second later, a hidden door popped inward.
Nyna dove out of the way. The rest of the team took positions on either side of the door and waited for my signal. On three, we entered, but the room was empty.
The room was lighted by more of the glowing frogs. They moved through the long wall, which was translucent, more like an aquarium, and they cast light across the floor and ceiling. The center of the circular room was dominated by the climbing mechanism. It was distinctly organic and resembled three huge cat tongues protruding from a meaty, quivering mass on the floor. Between them, a thin, almost-transparent filament about as wide as my pinkie extended to the ceiling. It was the climbing system. It was how the Xeno would lift the heavy elevator base and lower it back to the planet’s surface.
“Damn,” Reaver said, looking around. “I was hoping they’d be here so we could blow this thing and bail. Then it’d take them a while to rebuild, and we could take them out every time they tried. It’d be all over for them. But now what?”
“I have to go to them,” I said, nodding upward. “But in case I fail, I can’t allow the Xeno to keep their precious space elevator. I have to make absolutely sure it’s destroyed.”
My team stood silent, except for Skrew, who was amusing himself by poking the tongue-things with the muzzle of his rifle.
“What do you mean?” Beatrix asked.
Reaver took a few steps forward to stand beside me. “It means that whoever goes might not be coming back. I’m a Martian Storm Marine. I’m going.”
Without a word, Beatrix joined her. She was truly alone on this planet. I’d given her my friendship, my companionship, and my purpose. I was the closest thing to family she had, so she didn’t have to say anything at all.
“Skrew doesn’t want alone, so Skrew will go,” the vrak said. “And Skrew wants to fits the pew in the Xeno butt.”
Everyone laughed, except Nyna, who stood alone, looking between the rest of us and the elevator car.
“I don’t know how useful I’ll be up there,” she said in a small voice. “What will you do once you find your people?”
“I plan on finding my people in the ship up there. Then, I’ll find the controller bug. I’ll kill it, steal their ship, and find a way to land it on the planet. If it’s not at all like the last
