“And I’m also a great pilot,” she said with a smile. “Let’s not forget that.”
“Is that a yes?” Reaver asked. “We might not make it back, but we might be able to use your help. It’s up to you. Are you coming?”
“Let’s go kick some Xeno ass,” she said.
Then, she returned to the entrance, placed her gloved palm against the indentation, and flinched when it was punched away by the needle. The door swung closed with a leathery crackling noise. We were sealed in.
“Now, we need to figure out two more things,” I said. “First, we need to discover how this thing works. I’m sure it’s the mechanism we’ll need to take us up to the ship. Second, we need to figure out how we’re going to cut the anchor. No matter what, we can’t leave this thing tied to the planet.”
“There’s another indentation on the floor over there,” Nyna said, pointing to a spot on the floor.
The rest of us took a step away. Nobody wanted to get an organic alien needle in the foot.
Beatrix reached out and touched the taut, spidery filament that extended from the gap between the tongues to beyond the ceiling.
“Can we not cut this with our weapons?” she said. “With Ebon?”
I shook my head. “It’ll be too tough for that. Plus, we want to get to the station before we do anything. Otherwise, the car will become a bolo, and we’ll whip into the side of the ship. It’ll kill us, and anyone aboard, including the people we’re trying to save.”
“Could we cut it when we get there?” Reaver asked.
“I thought about that, too,” I said. “But if we do that, we’ll have to cut it where we can see it. I don’t know if the car itself provides some kind of airtight seal. If we managed to cut the filament, it would be above these tongues. With nothing to hold on to, the car could drift away, exposing us to the vacuum of space.”
“Ah,” Reaver said. “That’s a silly way to go for a Marine.”
“We could cut it right here at the ground,” Nyna said. “After we get to the station.”
“What?” Skrew asked.
“I could use a Fex to overcharge something small. The explosion would be terrible. It would be plenty to burst open the floor and probably everything within ten yards will be kaput, maybe a little further. That would do the trick, right?”
“It would,” I said slowly, “but what would you use for the charge?”
She pointed to my ear. “Your communicators.”
It would work, but it would mean giving up some valuable tech. I wracked my brain for any other options as I absently watched Skrew poke the tongues with the butt of his rifle. Each time he did, they made squishing noises and lapped lazily in his general direction.
“I don’t see any other way,” Reaver said as she removed her communicator from behind her ear.
“Nor do I,” I said.
We placed our communicators in Nyna’s outstretched hand.
“This will only take a couple of minutes,” she said. “Maybe three.”
I watched as Nyna sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, and started taking one of the communicators apart. Skrew giggled when he discovered that if he ran the butt of his rifle from the base to the tip of one of the tongues, it would curl toward the rifle like it had been tickled.
“I don’t like being without the comms,” Reaver said. “It makes me feel exposed, like a babe in the woods.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’ll have to stick together. It’ll slow us down, but we’ll be close enough to see each other and communicate on this operation.”
“All done,” Nyna said.
I was amazed at how fast she did these kinds of things, she had to be some kind of genius.
“Now, we need to get it to the base,” she said. “Maybe we could lift it a bit, and someone could crawl underneath?”
“I have a better plan that won’t get anyone squashed,” I said as I held my hand out for the modified device.
It looked like the Fex had been absorbed by the communicator, creating a bulge at one end.
“How is it detonated?” I asked.
“With this,” Nyna said, holding up the other communicator. “Tap it three times within two seconds, and boom. And make sure you’re far away, like all the way at the other end.”
“You’re sure about the range?” I asked.
“I’m sure it’ll be able to receive a transmission up to 1000 miles away. Think we’ll be further away than that?”
“No,” I said. “Maybe 400 or so.”
Then, I turned to the tongues. Skrew saw me coming and stepped away.
“Actually,” I said to the vrak, “I need you here. Do that thing again. Make one of them curl out.”
“Is fun, yes?” he said as he demonstrated with his rifle.
As the tongue curled away, I leaned over it and searched for a spot to drop the bomb. I could see the elevator’s anchor, a smooth, dome-shaped carapace, but there wasn’t enough room to get the bomb all the way to the bottom.
“Reaver,” I said, “I need you and Skrew to do it at the same time. Curl all the tongues so that I can get the bomb down there.”
Skrew demonstrated how to do it once more. That time, there was plenty of room, and the bomb landed where I wanted it before the tongues returned to their resting position.
Nyna slapped her gloved palm to the indentation on the floor, and the tongues started to slap the filament with slow sucking sounds. Each movement pulled on the filament and lifted the elevator’s base several feet from the ground. Then, it sped up. If it kept doing this, we’d be up there fighting in less than an hour. The acceleration collapsed Nyna and Skrew to the floor. They both groaned. Nyna tried to stand, but a second later decided standing wasn’t all that important.
“Skrew’s eyes
