All those books and horror movies that showed this huge maw behind the fangs? Yeah. They’re wrong.
And eight legs are much better for landing, than a mere two… that, and it hadn’t gone flying off the stage backwards. Without wings. The landing field might be grassy, but it was solid as Hell. I hit hard, the impact, driving the air out of my lungs, just before the arach’s full weight hit the chair, and crushed it against me. I felt something crack, and pain echoed over my chest.
Well, that sure as shit was going to make breathing a bitch. Not my biggest problem, though. Nope, that would be the pedipalps reaching out from either side of its fangs, ending in pincers that grabbed hold of my wrists and started pulling them away from the chair. Yeah, them and the fact that the chair had jammed itself between the spider’s fangs, and those suckers could still reach around it.
I lifted my shoulder away from the first strike, and pulled my head out of line with the other.
“Chitinless mammal with a chair?” Mack’s voice sounded in my head. “You couldn’t do better than that?”
“Spit-sack seemed to work.”
The arach hissed, curling its fangs back and shaking its head from side to side. I got the impression it was squeezing its fangs towards each other, with the sole aim of crushing what was between them. That was the end of the chair, and one of my wrists blossomed with pain—the newest one, the one I’d spent a month or so growing back. That was bad… but not as bad as when the bones shifted in the other one.
I wondered what the spider’s mission was, because I had a horrible feeling that it wasn’t planning on coming out of this alive… and that meant I probably wasn’t meant to survive it, either. I bent my knees, and jack-hammered out with both feet, hoping to hit where the arach’s abdomen joined the rest of it.
The impact threw its next strike off, and it screamed its pain—in my head, where only I could hear it, where it could share the intensity of what it felt as the abdomen started to tear. I pulled my knees up, preparing for a second strike, and it hooked a leg up, stamping inwards.
Goddamnit! Where was the body armor when I needed it? That. Hurt. I tried to kick out, but pain shot through my middle, and I stopped. The arach kept its grip on my wrists, and forced my hands against my chest. At the same time, it shifted its foot down to pin one of my legs. I flailed out with the other, but missed, and it quickly trapped that, too.
Well, fuck.
I felt it pull my body tight until I couldn’t move, and watched as those fangs drew back. They quivered with pent-up tension, and I took a deep breath. This was going to hurt—but probably not for long.
Sorry, Mack.
“Nah, we got you. You got nothing to be sorry about.”
That’s what I heard in my head. What I heard being shouted across the field was more like, “Hey, spit sack! Why don’t you come pick on the guy who really took your king down?”
To be honest, I don’t think Mack’s taunting would have worked, if it hadn’t been for the barrage of rounds that slammed into the spider’s face and fangs. It let go of my wrists raising its pedipalps as though trying to protect its eyes, but the solids kept coming and it stumbled back, and off me, releasing my legs as it reversed into the stage.
“Time to move, Cutter!”
Yeah, Mack. I’d love to help you with that…
“Fuck!”
Really? That’s the best you can come up with?
A low humming filled my ears, and the sharp scent of citrus told me the vespis were going to war. I lay there and watched them fly over. They sure looked good against that sky.
“Stay the fuck with me, Cutter!”
Sure, Mack. Just give me a minute. I’ll be right there.
“Smart ass,” he said, hitting the ground beside me.
“Don’t move her!” That cry stopped him long enough for the medics to arrive.
They had a stasis pod on K’Kavor? And it floated? Wow. When had that arrived?
28—Recovery
I was getting sick of waking up in a tank. For fuck’s sake! I wasn’t a fish.
“Oh no,” Mack said, getting up from the chair he’d pulled over so he could sit beside the tank. “No. You are a ‘mammal with a chair’.”
“Don’t make me come out there.”
“Like you could.”
I did a personal inventory. He might be right, but I wasn’t going to admit that.
“You used me as bait?”
“Yup.”
“I take it that was Delight’s idea?”
“Nope.”
“It was your idea?”
“Yup.”
“You are one sad, sad son of a bitch.”
“It’s better than being a mammal with a chair.”
“That’s chitinless mammal, you ass.”
“About that, how did you know spit sack would really set it off?”
“I didn’t. It was the best I could come up with at short notice.”
“Yeah? Well, use it sparingly. You horrified a few of our weaver friends.”
A few? As in we had more than one? And I’d thought Askavor had been the singular weaver we knew.
“You mortified Askavor. He asked me where you had developed a taste for such foul language.”
Laughing hurt, so I changed the subject.
“When are you letting me out of the tank?”
“Huh,” Mack grumbled. “I don’t get to let you out of anything. That’s Doc’s prerogative.”
Oh. Yeah. It was.
“So? When’s he letting me out of the tank?”
Mack came round the front of the tank, and made a show of studying me from head to toe. When his gaze had travelled from face to my feet, and back again, he looked me in the eye.
“I don’t know, Cutter. You still look pretty
