She sighed. “I’ll do it. But don’t think we’re going to leave without you. Not a chance in hell, Paladin.”
I smiled. I hadn’t heard my nickname in what seemed like ages.
“She is correct,” Beatrix added.
Nyna and Skrew confirmed with nods and crossed arms.
“What if the worst should happen?” Reaver asked, clearly pained. “How would we even know?”
“Hold it as long as you can,” I said. “If I stay away, and it looks like you’re going to be overrun, take the ship and flee. Please promise me that. And then… avenge me.”
“I don’t think the Queen has a chance against you,” Nyna said. “So, that’s not even an option.”
“It is an option,” Reaver corrected. “There’s always chance, rotten luck. Anything can happen, anywhere, anytime.”
She remembered what I taught her. Boy, would I be broken if I never got to see her again.
She turned to me. “We’ll hold out as long as we can and not a second less. Kick her ass and get back here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Chapter Nineteen
I crept through the passageway alone while the others secured our escape craft. I tried to take in all the details of my environment. I wouldn’t allow the desperate Queen to catch me off guard.
Where the others had been wide enough for three Marines to march through them abreast, the passage continuing from the hangar began to narrow almost immediately. It was barely wide enough for me to walk through without twisting my shoulders slightly.
As I progressed through the twisting, winding passageway, I noticed other differences. The walls were less undulated, and there were more glowfrogs than in the rest of the hive, which made the walls shimmer and shine. This might be a kind of royal treatment. I knew I’d like it if I were their Queen. I chuckled at the thought process I’d just gone through, imagining myself as a huge monster breeding destructive aliens.
The air in the passageway also changed. It was warmer and far more humid than it had been in the rest of the hive. A foul odor began to fill my nostrils. It reminded me of spoiled milk, fried to a crisp. It was the odor of the Queen. It was the pheromone that kept her alive, well fed, and nurtured.
The Queen likely had workers with her, just the typical Xeno soldiers I’d already encountered. I’d killed thousands of them before, and they were no match for me. But the Xeno Queen had already proven her cleverness and her complete disregard for efficiency by wasting the lives of countless soldiers in futile attacks. Anything was possible.
With Ebon drawn and held in front of me, I turned every corner with caution. If there were any bugs waiting in ambush, the first thing they would see would be the razor-sharp blade. The second thing they would see would be their own innards.
The narrow passageway more or less straightened and began to ascend. The walls and floors were so smooth they were almost mirror-like. The reflection of the glowfrogs created a spectacular starfield effect. Had the air not been filled with the stink of the Queen’s pheromones, I might have had a moment of aesthetic pleasure.
Sudden movement ahead caused me to crouch into a fighting stance. I relaxed a little when I saw what was approaching. It was one of the gray-skinned bugs I’d seen taking apart the captured spacecraft in the cavernous storage room. It was carrying another Xeno egg. This one looked different, though. Rather than being a leathery, opaque mass, it looked more like a gemstone. It was green, but there was a little pink shape inside. It was fertilized.
I stepped to one side and kept my sword pointed at the creature in case it was bringing the egg to me as a weapon. But it skittered past, probably on its way to deliver the egg to an incubation chamber. I didn’t need to kill the creature or destroy the egg. Soon, the universe would have one less egg-laying Xeno Queen to deal with. Also, if the ship the rest of the team was securing had any weapons, I’d open enough holes in the hive to ensure there would be no others to take her place.
There is no hope for survival. No hope for victory. The only hope is surrender. You are full of sorrow and remorse. Surrender now, and you will be forgiven.
The Queen’s voice sounded familiar and soothing. It was salve on a wound. It was poison in my coffee.
It probably wasn’t in the Queen’s best interest to give up her secret communication tool. If I made it out of here, and I believed I would, this was another weakness I could share with my forces that we could exploit. But she was clearly desperate, this was yet another sign. I tried to picture my memories of a Xeno Queen panicking, legs flailing and eyes rolling, and grinned.
About 30 feet ahead, the passageway came to an abrupt end and opened into a strange chamber. I stayed in the doorway. The chamber was only about twenty feet deep, but it was at least three times as wide. Hooks and horns, some reaching three feet in length, pocked the walls and the ceiling, which was at least fifteen feet high.
Two archways roughly the size of a normal human doorframe were placed on the far wall about six feet apart. Across them was something that looked like a beaded curtain. Xeno didn’t use furniture, as far as I knew, so the curtain was more likely a defense mechanism. It looked like sundew, a tiny carnivorous plant that grew in Earth’s marshy regions. It could also be a Xeno equivalent of a spiderweb, designed to entangle me until something came along to finish me off or inject me with poison.
If I did die here, it would all be worth it to save Druma, the Ish-Nul, my companions, and those
