When I approached, she buried her face in my chest. She wasn’t crying, but she sounded close to it.
“What is it?” I asked.
She shook her head and pointed. I gave her a quick hug and left her to go see.
At first, I thought it looked like another pupa—but it was too big, and the shape was wrong. I stared at the slowly squirming thing for another few seconds until I had to accept what I had verified from all sides.
It was a man. It was a crew member from the Revenge. Tatters of clothing still covered part of his deformed body.
He was twisting his neck to impossible positions as a white, shiny substance resembling strands of lace streamed from his mouth. The lower half of his body was already covered in the stuff, and it looked like he was working on the upper half. He was building a cocoon.
“Wow,” Nyna whispered, who appeared to have come to my side soundlessly. “It’s like… is that man turning into a Xeno?”
“Sure looks like it,” I said.
A sudden and unexpected wave of sadness suddenly crashed into me. I felt utterly powerless seeing this process take place, without being able to think of anything but killing him to stop it from happening.
You can’t do it. You can’t continue. You must surrender and give yourself to the Xeno. Your suffering will be minimal. Your pain will end.
I physically shook the words away and turned my head as I searched for the source.
“Maybe we should just give up,” Nyna said. “I don’t think we can win.”
“Whatever that voice was,” I scolded, “don’t listen to it. I think it’s the Queen trying to destroy our will. She knows she’s about to die, she’s doing anything she can to stop us. This is exactly the sign we needed that tells us we’re doing the right things.”
“Okay,” Nyna said, subdued.
Reaver seemed to have been affected by the mental assault as well, but she was recovering. Her jaw was set and she frowned, though she still slightly hung her head. But of course she was crushed by what she just saw too. It showed her dedication to our mission, our old mission. Which meant she was dedicated to our new mission too. We would avenge our lost Marines, and do anything we could to save those who might have survived.
I drew Ebon and began stabbing it through the thick membrane covering each cell. One by one, the residents twitched and died. When I’d run the last one through, an ear-piercing scream echoed through the hallway ahead. It wasn’t human. It was answered by hisses and clatters throughout the hive, seeming to come from all sides.
We were about to find out what the Queen’s last murderous act of desperation would be.
Chapter Eighteen
“What the hell was that?” Reaver asked when the monstrous scream faded into echoes.
“Um, do you think that was the Queen?” Nyna asked. “Because if it was, you just royally pissed her off, you realize?”
“Incoming!” Beatrix said, picking up the lingo.
From a passageway came the sounds of skittering, sliding, and scraping. The noises slowed and, eventually, stopped. I aimed my pistol and vaporized the head of the Xeno warrior when it poked its head around a corner about 90 feet down the hallway that was supposed to be our exit. Its body fell as it pumped great gouts of green, acidic blood onto the deck. I could see more hiding around the corner, their tear-drop shaped heads peering out from behind a bulkhead.
“Status,” I whispered.
“They do not attack,” Beatrix whispered back. “They cower far down the hallway. Why are they doing that?”
“I don’t know,” Reaver said. “Maybe they want to keep us here for some reason. But we’ve already proven we’re unpredictable. The Queen has to know that by now. She’s also got to know that if we can’t go down either hallway, we’ll end up shooting holes in this place. Damn, do you think that’s what she’s counting on?”
I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I was beginning to tire of the constant fighting against a seemingly endless horde of Xeno. It seemed like it was all my life had consisted of.
Growing them took time, though, as evidenced by the hatchery I found myself in. The Queen’s supplies were not inexhaustible. All we needed to do was outlast her.
Rapid energy weapon fire from behind me announced the first wave. My hallway, however, remained clear, though I knew the Xeno were still down at the other end. Then, they did something unexpected. It seemed the Queen had taken a leaf out of one of our books.
The Xeno troops began reaching around the corner and rolling oothecae toward us. I watched, fascinated at the ingenuity of the mindless creatures, and wondered at the spectacle.
That’s something I would do, I thought.
Ootheca didn’t explode like grenades. But if they were bumped too hard, thrown, or stepped on, they’d burst and fling their sticky, acidic contents everywhere. Although the first few only made it ten feet down the hallway, the next two made it almost halfway.
“We’ve got a problem,” I said to my team. “They’re rolling their eggs at us. Eventually, they’ll figure out how hard they can toss them without them breaking, and we’ll end up with a room full of the things.”
“Then, they’ll attack,” Nyna whispered.
The shooting in the opposite hallway stopped.
There is no reason to suffer, the disembodied voice of the Queen said in my mind. You may surrender to them. They will not harm you. They are kind and forgiving. They only want peace. They are like you. They are kin.
Reaver scoffed. “They’re not kin to us. They’re filthy.”
“Yeah!” Skrew added, before turning his head toward the ceiling and bellowing, “Dumb, poo-eating bug lady! No, not lady! Is gross and gaggy! Is stupid—”
His rant was halted by another unnatural scream that seemed to echo not only through the hallway I was facing
