“If we can take the drop-ship, we can get to the ship faster, but we must stop them calling back and warning of our presence.”
That snapped me out of it.
“Or we can let them call the attack, and hope the arach on the ship assume a retreat when it returns.”
I waited while he considered the idea, then touched his leg.
“Let me up?”
I felt him inside my head. Honestly, it was like the damned arachnid was sitting in a corner of my mind, and staring at me. I stared back, daring him to keep me pinned to the floor, when I had a shit-ton of more important stuff to do. He said something in the Weaver tongue, and I tensed, my heart pounding at just the sound of his voice.
At least, this time, I didn’t try to kill him.
It was a relief when he lifted his foot off my chest—and, for just a minute, I was tempted to sucker punch him, as I rolled clear of his legs… except he was a spider. Which meant he had an exoskeleton. Which meant I’d hurt my hand. Which meant I might not be able to fire my blaster.
I was going to get a blaster, wasn’t I?
I looked around and discovered her Majesty, queen of the wasps, holding out a set of goggles.
“Put these on, before you stand up,” she said, “and hold on,” which was when I realized I could feel the wind pulling at the hair on top of my head. “Vespis flitters were not built with humans in mind.”
Figured.
I reached up to take the goggles, and felt the strength of the air racing past my fingertips. I got a good hold on the goggles, and put them on before looking around for something to hold on to. There was a rail, about a meter behind me, so I slid back to it and grabbed on, twisting around so I could peer over the small partition that held it.
It came as a shock to see I was sitting at the very front of a short-nosed craft with a very open top. The queen was operating the console in front of what I’d thought was a partition, using her foremost pair of legs, while she hung on with her second set. Her hindmost pair was braced against the back of the craft, and her wings were tucked tight to her back.
Askavor, for his part, was crouched as low as he could go, lower, now that I wasn’t underneath him. He too, had a set of hands operating controls, and a set of hands hanging on. That left him with two sets to spare to brace with—no wonder he’d been tasked with babysitting me. Which didn’t mean I had to like it… or approve.
“Focus!” the queen commanded. “I’m sure you can find something useful to do.”
As a reminder to pay attention to what was going on, it was as good as a slap in the face. I ducked back down, and tried to pull everything I’d learned into a nice, straight line… or some semblance of order. Okay, well, I guess I’d settle for a tangle that made a little bit of sense. Yeah, that would do.
First thing that needed to happen was that I needed to work out where the drop-ship was, and if I could hack my way into its controls using the link Tens had given me. I looped my arm through the rail over my head, and sank into my implant, searching for the link. If I was very, very lucky the arach hadn’t done anything to the programming on the ship, and I’d be able to slip in unnoticed.
“Brace.” The queen’s voice drifted over me.
I heard it, but I really didn’t register what she’d said. I’d found the link I needed, and landed in the shuttle’s nav-com. Oh, good. It didn’t take long for me to make sure the control coding was exactly as I remembered it. With a higher level of manual control than I’d remembered. That couldn’t be right.
The floor tilted beneath me, and I began to slide. I reached up and grabbed hold of the rail with my other hand—and then the tilt worsened, and I found it hard to concentrate on the shuttle’s progress, as I slid further. This time, I didn’t mind it when Askavor laid a clawed foot across my stomach, and pushed me up against the console.
“Spin the shuttle code,” he said. “I will keep you safe.”
Safe. Not a word I associated with arach.
“We are K’Kavoran,” Askavor said, “humans, vespis, mantid, and us.”
Us, huh. I wondered why he didn’t refer to his kind as weavers, or arach, or some other spidery name.
“Because weavers are but one race, and ‘arach’ is the term all use for the swarms.”
Swarms. Now that wasn’t a term I’d heard used for them. I wondered why it was a good alternative. A shudder rippled through Askavor’s mental presence.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Focus! Shuttle!” the queen snapped, her mind-voice dagger sharp.
Askavor and I winced, but he said nothing, and I returned to the other shuttle’s nav-com. It was on course, and I fed its progress to the ara…weaver lurking in my head—and then I looked for something else that might be useful.
Locking the drop-ship’s weapons in place seemed like a good idea, but also a bad one. If they tried to move them to intimidate the population—or to take out their communications—they’d know they’d been spotted. Likewise, if there was someone in the ship doing overwatch on the scans, who saw the shuttle making an intercept course.
Hmmm. I decided to deal with that, but, first, I wanted to see exactly how many arach had come down in the drop-ship. I knew they could shape shift, which meant their form would affect exactly how many they had on board. Tens’ estimate could be off.
Twenty arach would fill the drop ship, in spider form. They’d be
