“The Web Fishers have numerous lairs along the river. Any one of them could serve.”
“Yes, but do you have a way to see if any of them recently received a shuttle.”
“There are only a handful of caverns that could accommodate a vehicle of that size.” Askavor paused, and looked around the room. “I will need a console.”
Poli moved back.
“With my queen’s permission…”
A gesture from the queen invited Askavor to take Poli’s place, and I vaulted to the other side of the chair. He paused, eyeing me warily, and then glancing at the queen.
“Are you sure she’s safe?”
The queen smiled reassuringly at the arachnid, and cast a warning glance at me.
“She’s not going to harm you, Aska. Take the console.”
Inside my head, away from other ears, her voice continued, “Make one move towards him, and I will paralyze you for a month, while we decide how ethical it is to feed potential allies to our larvae.”
I froze, and stared at her, trying to reconcile that snarling threat with her serene smile—and then I remembered. Royalty. Riiight. Just because she was from another species, didn’t mean the ruling class didn’t face as many threats as those who ruled amongst humans.
“And you would do well to remember it.” Again, the queen’s words were for my mind alone.
I nodded, and went to lounge against an empty patch of wall. It let me see the rest of the room, while I tried to log into the wireless world around me. Just because it wasn’t a system I was used to didn’t mean I couldn’t try to get into it, right?
I was still trying to work my way round a wall coded in a pattern of symbols I didn’t understand, when Askavor gave a chitter of alarm. I heard him from inside the code, and it was enough to pull me back to the present. At first, I couldn’t see the queen, and then I realized she’d abandoned her human form, and was hovering above Askavor’s head, and looking down into the screen of the machine before him.
All around us, wasps dropped down from the ceiling, and humans ran for the lock boxes I hadn’t noticed along the opposite wall. I ran towards the boxes, as well. You never know what you might find in a good lock box—and I figured all the activity meant trouble.
As if to confirm my thought, an alarm hummed low and solid through me. It vibrated in the bones where my ears met the back of my jaw, and then continued to throb through the rest of my skull.
What the fuck was that?
Either way, the humans were grabbing gear, and some of it looked like it might fit me. And talk about your Blazer 54 being a popular weapon. Those and the good, old A-Level were amongst the weapons being slung over shoulders, and passed back to waspish claws. To my surprise, Askavor did not move from his seat, but his claws danced over the keyboard, and I caught a glimpse of imagery flashing across the screen.
“Cutter,” he said, his voice echoing through the implant in an unwelcome clatter, and I stopped, just as I reached the nearest box.
“What?”
“Here,” and the link I’d been trying to forge with the vespis systems was sent into my head.
“Thanks.”
I stopped, diving into the data stream, and thinking of function, hoping the programming could pick up my intent, hoping even more for a pictographic interface. I was shit out of luck for both—and then the computer hit me… or, rather, Askavor did. He grabbed the language interface, and rammed it through the link.
“Sorry,” he said, as the data rolled into my head, knocking me to the floor.
8—Raiders
I came round, lying on a hard metal floor that hummed and thrummed beneath me. When I saw what was standing over me, I gave a shout of alarm and started to scramble backwards, not caring that would bring me into better range of its fangs. The spider gave an impatient huff of air, and planted a foot in the middle of my chest, squashing me to the floor.
“Lie still!” was a command I heard in two voices.
It was echoed by a hisses, clicks and mandible clatter.
I lay still, but not because I had any sort of a choice. Askavor was damned heavy in his arach form.
“It is the only form I have,” he told me, but he didn’t let me up, not even now he knew I’d recognized who he was.
I guess he could feel just how fast my heart was beating and didn’t dare lift his foot. Smart, fucking spider.
“Queen says not to let you up until we arrive, and that you are to wait for her.”
Riiiight. Like that was… Wait.
“Where are we going?”
“To hit the arach base on the Sekekna River.”
“We found it?” I tried to sit up, and couldn’t shift. I slapped at the foot pinning me to the floor. “This isn’t fun, you know.”
“It’s safe,” Askavor replied, and didn’t say who for.
“What did you do to me?” I asked, remembering the data flood that had overwhelmed me.
“Taught you the vespis coding language. You’ll need it, to interface with our machines.”
That almost made sense.
“It is it the same as arach code?” The spider’s clawed foot curled through the material of my shirt, and I knew I’d asked the wrong question. “Sorry.”
“Were you attempting to be humorous?”
I shook my head, even knowing he couldn’t see it.
“No. I was being hopeful. I might need to hack through some to get back into the ship… or to access theirs.”
I watched as the spider body shuddered above me.
“Weavers have not developed their own code,” he said, “… and you do not want to go into an arach system, without knowing how they program it. Their systems environment is as hostile as their ships, and as I imagine their home-world to be.”
“How do you know?” I asked, and Askavor tensed.
I could feel the tension vibrating through him, as he held
