The queen laid her hand on my chest.
“Be still,” she said, and I felt my mind calm, even as my heart continued to thunder.
“Be still,” she repeated, and my heart slowed.
It sped up again, as the monster that had entered the room, came closer, and I discovered what the queen had meant when she said she could trap my mind… and I thought she’d said she wouldn’t use it against me… Boy was I—
“Hush!”
How could I hush with that thing behind her?
“This is Askavor; he is of the Weaver clan, an ally.”
An ally? That was an ally?
“Be nice, or I’ll let him into your head.”
I gasped, but I stilled, and the queen turned to the large, long-limbed spider waiting at her side.
“Did you do it?” she asked, and he turned his blunt-faced head towards me.
“Yes,” he said, and I heard his words echo through my implant.
So much for not letting him into my head.
“Be quiet!”
“The girl has a point,” Askavor said. “They are hungry, and even if the Star Eaters need the ones they call Mack and Tens, they hunger. Keeping their leader sated will only hold them for so long. They will either descend to hunt, or they will reach a point where they will consume all life aboard the ship, regardless of what they need them for. And then there is the penalty for the damage done to their hunt master.”
There was a penalty? Well, of course there was a penalty, but…
“They will not let him go, and they will punish him, and they will start by punishing his people in front of him.”
Fear formed a lump in my chest, but the queen brushed aside his explanation.
“That’s as it may be, but have you locked Mack and Tens out of her implant?”
“I have, your Majesty, but it will not hold the Star Eaters long at bay. The code I have woven will give you an extra day, once they discover the implant is live. If Mack and Tens will not break it, they will be coerced until they have no option but to comply.”
I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. I had no illusions about what that would entail, no illusions that Mack would not sacrifice me to save the rest of the crew. I was only one person. How could he do otherwise?
“And how long will that take?”
“That depends on the strength of your males, and the lever used against them.”
My what?
The queen made a slight buzzing sound, following it with a complicated series of clicks and hisses, and the arach turned its head back and forth between us. Even to me, it seemed surprised.
“Truly?”
“Truly,” the queen said. “Humans recognize few queens, and those are by granted title, obeyed only as tradition and power dictate, not by dint of nature.”
“Oh… then what is the hierarchy between this one, and the ones they call Mack and Tens.”
Oh… and now I began to understand. Oh. Oh, dear.
I began to laugh, emotion bubbling into a sound that was far from happy, amused, or entertained. I had tears rolling down my cheeks by the time I was done, and one very confused arachnid standing by. I think it chose to hide its puzzlement in the facts of the situation, rather than fathom why I was laughing, when all I wanted to do was scream, or cry, or kill something. I pulled my emotions back under control, as it started speaking.
“There is need for haste, your Majesty. The arach are not known for their patience.”
7—An Incursion
As my laughter subsided, the queen turned to me, placing one hand on my chest, and using a second pair of hands to undo the restraints at my wrists. I measured the distance between the chair and the blade she carried on her back, calculated my odds of reaching Askavor and skewering him, before I could be stopped.
“Nil,” the queen said, kneeling down to undo the restraints at my feet. “Poli would stop you before you were upright.”
He would? I looked at the orange wasp sitting beside me. He looked back, then indicated the screen.
“The odds are not as good as you were hoping.”
I leaned forward trying to see the screen, and I didn’t much like it, when I did. I looked at Askavor, and discovered the spider had backed away from me, drawing his legs tight in to his sides. That didn’t help. For some reason the posture looked more threatening, not less.
The queen must have still been in my head, because she glanced over at the lanky arach, and sighed.
“Relax, Aska. I won’t let her hurt you.”
Wait. She wouldn’t let me hurt him? I looked down at myself, trying to work out what made me so scary to a creature that out-massed me four times over in his natural form. Wait… why was he still in his natural form?
“Because not all spider-kin are born with the ability to shift. The weavers are native to this world, and shifting is… not guaranteed.”
Askavor moved uncomfortably, and I pulled my feet up onto the chair.
“You can’t shift?”
“No.”
“But you still drink blood, right?”
It was the first time I’d ever seen an eight-legged shrug. I could probably do without seeing it again.
“It is the way we are made. All we can do is not drink the blood of sentients.” He paused, then added, “A lot like humans not eating meat from sentients. Such things are taboo in my tribe.”
“Tribe?”
“Each clan is made up of tribes.”
“The Weavers are almost solitary,” the queen told me. “They form small family groups, and rarely travel.”
I thought back to the one on the shuttle, but the queen had not finished.
“The arach are a different species entirely. They are to weavers what other bipedal intelligent mammals are to humans.”
It made sense, even if a part of my mind was screaming that it was nothing like the same, that the Weaver before me was exactly like the arach that had taken Mack’s ship—and that
