“Indeed,” she said. “You will fight beside T’Kit, and Mack will fight to the left of me.”
There was a stir of wings as she made this pronouncement, but they settled at a flick of her antenna, and the hum that accompanied it died. Suddenly, she turned back to the front, reaching out take hold of handgrips attached to the bulkheads leading to the cockpit.
“Brace!” Her cry echoed through our heads, and a dark, bitter scent touched our nostrils.
“A warning,” T’Kit translated, indicating the scent. “You will learn to note it.”
She took a firm grip of the handholds nearest her just as the ship slipped to one side, and then jolted the other way, descending abruptly and swaying from side to side. I braced between the seat and the wall, and Mack braced against me.
Man weighed a ton!
“You calling me fat?” he asked, and even his internal voice sounded like it was gritting its teeth.
“If the boot fits,” I retorted, and he gave me a startled look.
Before he could respond, however, the drop-ship landed. It hit hard and the pilot blew the doors, leaving us exposed to whatever might be waiting in ambush outside.
“Go! Go! Go!” sounded in my head, but all my ears could hear was buzzing, the thrum of two dozen wings, while my nostrils filled with the sharp scent of citrus.
“Hurry!” T’Kit said, and I bolted after her, jumping the two meters to the ground, while Mack shot off after the queen.
I had no idea where we were, or where we were going, until a map flashed into my head.
“We are taking the outer buildings,” T’Kit said, but she didn’t sound happy. The queen would be leading her team into the tunnels behind the buildings clustered at the edge of the river, and T’Kit would not be with her.
She wasn’t the only vespis bodyguard to be given the duty of securing the perimeter; there were three others. Each had been assigned a team of slightly smaller wasps, colored in the oranges and yellows of soldiers or workers.
“We are all soldiers for the queen,” T’Kit said, when she caught the thought. “We might have other specialties, and bodyguards tend to have none of those, but when the hives are endangered, we all fight for them.”
I wondered if this extended to the humans and weavers, but didn’t ask. It was hard enough to focus on running through the scrubby undergrowth and around the trunks of towering trees without trying to carry on a conversation. Besides, we needed to keep an eye out for traps and ambushes. It was hard to believe the arach would have left the place undefended.
“You’d be surprised,” T’Kit said, and I found something else that needed an answer.
“What sort of settlement is this?”
“It was a weaver habitation,” T’Kit told me. “We do not allow humans outside the space set aside for them… although that will now change. They have lived in peace, long enough.”
By which I took it that the queen thought it safe enough to integrate.
“No, but it is now necessary, and the process cannot be as gradual as we had planned.”
“Why?”
“The arach will invade. If we meet them divided, we will become their cattle.”
Well, that couldn’t be good.
The first of the buildings came into sight, and all conversation ceased. T’Kit flattened her antenna out to either side, and the wasps flying with her settled to the ground. At her signal, I moved up alongside her. She indicated the buildings before us.
“You will go ahead,” T’Kit said, “and scout the nearest.”
Before I could feel as though I’d been singled out, she ordered the two nearest wasps to take the buildings on either side, and then divided her forces between the three.
“At the first sign of trouble, we will come,” she told us. “Now, go!”
24—Into the Processing Plant
I went, crouching low and scurrying quickly through the scrub, before stopping to ensure that nothing was looking through the windows facing my cover. The wasps flew into the air and out of sight amidst the leaves, and, for a moment, I envied them their ability to fly. They would come in over the buildings, and not have to worry about being spotted from a window.
It was strange, though. These structures looked almost like human dwellings—and T’Kit had said this was a weaver colony, and beyond where humans were allowed to settle. Why would the weavers live in human structures?
“Exactly,” T’Kit said. “There is something ‘not right’ here.”
Beyond the presence of the arach, I thought, and decided the path ahead was clear enough for me to take it. I came out from behind the leafy greenness, just as the wasps started descending, and that was when I realized they had one distinct disadvantage… I could hear them—and, if I could hear them, then anyone in those dwellings could, too. We’d be expected.
I hurried forward, hardly daring to breathe, until I was crouched against the wall beneath the nearest window. This building looked more like a warehouse than a dwelling. The next one over, did not. It had a veranda, running all the way around it, a roof that looked like it was made of plascrete slates, and windows at the height you’d expect for a bunk house… or hotel.
What would either of those be doing in a weaver settlement?
“Another excellent question,” T’Kit said.
“What sort of village was this?”
“Your meaning?”
“Their livelihood. How did they make it?”
“They were fishermen. The building you are about to enter is a processing and storage center for their catch.”
It was? It didn’t look like a processing center. I shrugged that thought away. The weavers were spiders; they probably had a very different way of doing things. I raised my head, listening for any sounds of movement coming from inside. It was still daylight.
Did this mean the weavers were still fishing, or would they be at work, here?
“That is what we must determine,” T’Kit said. “I believe there should be
