“Let go!” Nyna growled.
I turned toward the commotion. Nyna and Skrew were fighting over the remains of the spidery helmet Nyna had been wearing when the Queen attacked her through the biological
computer system.
“No!” Skrew bellowed. “Is too danger! Is hurt for Nyna!”
“Skrew,” I said, grabbing the vrak’s attention. “Let go. And Nyna, are you sure you want to put that thing back on? The Queen is still alive.”
“I was close,” Nyna said, her voice sounding a little sad. “I had a way out. I just need another minute, I’ve got this. I can fight her off. I know I can.”
I turned and glanced at the others as the little rivers of acid snaked toward us.
“Skrew,” I said, “take my tunnel. Maybe you’ll get a chance to shoot some more Xeno.”
I took the partly broken spidery interface from him as he hurried to his position.
Then, I turned to Nyna. “Are you sure about this? The Queen isn’t going to be happy you aren’t dead.”
“I know. But we need this. I can find out which bulkhead we can destroy. If I get enough time, I can probably find out which ones are occupied, in case she’s set another trap. I have to try. And besides, don’t we want to find the Queen and kill her?”
I didn’t like being funneled into one decision, but I couldn’t argue with her logic. She was right. Reluctantly, I handed the device back to her.
“Be careful,” I said. “I’m staying right here. If you look like you’re in distress again, I’ll break the cord and remove it from your head. Don’t fake that everything is okay if it’s not. Okay?”
She kissed me gently. The patience and softness I felt in her lips reassured me of her confidence.
She moved back, looked me in the eyes with determination, and placed the device on her head. “Do you know where the ship is?” I asked.
“I know it’s near the Queen. Very near. I think it’s her ship, one she could use to evacuate. But for some reason, I get the impression that she’s not able to leave. I’m not sure what’s holding her back, but I’ll see if I can find out.”
“Find us a way out of here first,” I said as I glanced back at the approaching streams of acid.
Nyna nodded and pressed the spidery headset against her head. She frowned and adjusted it several times before saying, “Ah, there it is. Skrew broke it good, but I’ve still got access. Not as good as before, but, oh, well, that’s easy enough. I found the way out, and the Queen.”
Just like that, she removed the device and let it drop to the deck.
That’s my girl, I thought. I was amazed at her courage, even more so because she hadn’t had the privilege of military training and experience like me and Reaver, and even Beatrix to some extent.
“We need to go through the computer,” she said. “Like, literally through it, you know? It’ll kill it, but we have all the information we need”
“Something is approaching,” Beatrix piped up.
I turned to her hallway and raised my pistol but didn’t see any movement beyond the wall of dead Xeno. Small noises filtered through the bleeding corpses, though: slurping, sucking, chewing.
“It’s those clean-up bugs,” I said.
“Too bad they’re on the wrong side,” Reaver said. “I need to move out of position. The acid is getting close. Let’s get out of here.”
Nyna stepped aside, and everyone backed as far away as they could without being burned by the acid. I stood in front of them, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The wet explosion of parts filled the junction with a cloud of foul-smelling gore and vaporized blood. There was no pain, though. The organic computer’s blood wasn’t acidic.
The adjoining corridor parallelled the wall left and right and was a little wider than the one we’d been in before. Beatrix was at my side in a second. A moment later, we moved in unison, me to the left, and she to the right. The corridor was clear of troops or traps.
“Which way?” I asked Nyna.
“Either way,” she said. “They both get us closer. If we go left, we’ll have to go through a couple of rooms, but it’s a shorter path. If we go to the right, it’s longer but it’s just a hallway.”
I wanted to avoid the rooms. It was too easy for our enemies to set up an ambush among whatever was stored in them or among equipment. Hallways, at least, put us on equal footing, though we’d already proven that a hundred bugs weren’t the equal of three Void-touched warriors, their techie lover, and a crazy vrak.
I noticed a slight difference between each of the hallways as well. The hallway on the left undulated more than the other. The one on the right, instead of being as opalescent, looked as though it gradually became more yellow as it slowly curved to the left and up.
I arranged my troops in a column, with myself on point, followed by Nyna, Skrew, Reaver, and Beatrix. I wanted to keep Nyna close to protect her and to allow her quick access to any Xeno-tech we found along the way.
The hallway also became progressively cleaner. The walls sparkled like they’d been recently polished, and there weren’t any cracks evident anywhere. We still saw the little red repair bugs once in a while, but they seemed to wander aimlessly as if they’d been assigned to the area but couldn’t find any work to do.
About six yards ahead, the passageway took a sharp turn to the left. I signaled everyone to slow down: there was danger ahead. The team, under Reaver’s coaching, repeated the signal among themselves to make sure everyone had seen it. They were getting good at it. I smiled. We were becoming a team. A damn good-looking, unbeatable team.
I signaled for Beatrix to join me. Together, we turned the corner, rifles raised, ready to engage whatever threat we found. What we
