“A cleaning bug?” Reaver asked.
I shrugged, and Beatrix smashed it with her mace as she walked past. The thing curled in on itself and stopped moving. Its blood was almost clear, with only a slight tinge of yellow.
Right after that, we came to another intersection. We could either continue straight, or we could take a left. And on the wall in between, there was some kind of organic material growing out of it. It looked like something had run into the wall at high speed. Pulsating organs, an eyeball, and several dangling appendage-like cones of silvery flesh waved as if moved by an unfelt wind.
The eyeball didn’t stare at anything or anyone in particular, though it turned from time to time. It was larger than a human organ, and the lens was foggy, like it had once been a functional eye, but the years had clouded it.
“Eww,” Skrew said with a wrinkle in his nose. “Is a splat, yes? Skrew can pokes it?”
“No,” Nyna said. “This is something else.This is something special. I need to investigate this. Can we afford to lose a couple of minutes?”
Her tone was urgent and sincere. Whatever was driving her, it was more than mere curiosity.
I nodded. “Reaver, Beatrix, cover the two side passages. I’ll take this one. Skrew, you stay in the middle and don’t shoot any of us.”
We provided security as I counted down the seconds in my head. After 200, I was going to insist we continued down the path we’d started on. But I wanted to give Nyna a chance at discovery. Anything we learned about the place would be beneficial, granted we didn’t lose too much time obtaining the information. And, so far, it didn’t look like our presence had caused much alarm.
Either the Queen didn’t see us as much of a threat, or she was busy with other things. My guess was that her hive was falling apart, and that she was running out of workers.
“Wow,” Nyna breathed. “I’m in the system. I can see everything.”
I turned and nearly fell over when I saw what she was doing. She had something that resembled a segmented spider on her head. It was connected to the fleshy mass by a long, corkscrewing umbilical. The black connecting flesh reminded me of a nerve, and I doubted I was far from the truth.
“I can see you making that face,” she said.
The eyeball wiggled my direction in time with her finger as she waved it in front of the mass stuck to the wall.
“Relax,” she said. “This is a computer, sort of. I’ve hacked in. I’m searching the hive now. Oh, and you were right: it’s not a ship. There is a ship here, besides the one we saw being taken apart, but this is a hive.” She grew quiet for a moment and touched the spidery thing touching her head. “It feels like….” Then, she screamed.
The same instant, clattering started in the hallway in front of me.
“Contact!” Reaver said.
I repeated the announcement. Beatrix just started shooting.
The hallway was filled with Xeno troops. They skittered along the walls and ceiling as they used their long legs and arms to propel themselves forward against every surface. I dropped two and fired a few extra shots wildly down the hallway.The skittering was deafening. More were coming, many more than we could see.
“Status!” I ordered.
“Present!” Screw said.
“Not helpful, Skrew!” I growled. “What’s wrong with Nyna?”
“Nyna is to…” he grunted, “for to make…” he sputtered, “got it! The ugly Xeno thing on ugly girl head was bad thing for to have on head. Skrew did break it off.”
“I’m okay,” Nyna said. “My head hurts, though. There was someone else in the system. A female. That much I know. She… was angry. She tried to kill me. I think it was the Queen.”
There was no time to consider what that meant. The Queen knew where we were, and it was too late to do anything about it. We would have to deal with the consequences. The only silver lining was that we had three Void-touched warriors armed with energy weapons, and the Xeno didn’t seem intent on shooting back.
The realization gave me pause as the next Xeno came rushing toward me for me. None of us needed to announce when our own tunnel filled with enemies. We just shot them, and they kept coming.
This attack is absurd, it’s desperate, I thought.The Queen was throwing away her workers like they didn’t matter at all. Yet each one had a biological cost.
“They aren’t shooting!” Reaver yelled over the din of battle. “Why aren’t they shooting?”
“Do not ask, just kill!” Beatrix answered back.
Then, it dawned on me.
“They’re not shooting because they don’t want to break the hive! It’s falling apart! Something’s wrong with the Queen!”
My hallway was almost choked with Xeno corpses. The ones behind had to push the bodies of their kin out of the way to continue the charge. Based on the slowing rate of fire from the others, I guessed their situation was the same.
“Awww,” Skrew whined. “Is no more? All gone?”
Reaver laughed. “That wasn’t enough for you?”
I raised my pistol and obliterated the upper half of a Xeno who’d pushed its way through the tangle of body parts in my passageway. That’s when I noticed all the blood. It was still draining from the bodies and had pooled in spots. When those pools had overflown, it trickled into new spots, each time getting closer.
What do we do?” Beatrix said, panicked.
“We can’t dam it,” I said. “And we don’t have anything to try and absorb it. We’re going to have to find another way out. But we can’t just start blasting holes, or we’ll get sucked out into space.”
“Skrew is scary
