But he laid the limb carefully on its own, and lifted the next one, free. This one, he laid beside the first he’d found for his sister, and I helped him adjust its position.
“Did they all fight?” I asked, although I knew they’d had no choice.
Askavor lifted his head, tilting it slightly towards me. He indicated the terrible wounds on the latest limb.
“They did not go easily,” Askavor said, and I looked at the pile of long, multi-jointed limbs, and then up at the dwelling.
“Where are their bodies?” I asked, and Askavor stared at me.
“The arach took the bodies of those who fought them,” he said. “They will either feast on them, or they will give them to their queen. If she does not spill their entrails for her hunters, she will preserve them in a form of living death, and fill them with her young.”
I stared at the discarded legs.
“Wouldn’t they bleed out?”
Askavor turned towards me, and revulsion filled his voice.
“The wounds were cauterized,” he said, “and then sealed with a light coating of acid to melt the chitin over them. The arach would have preserved every drop of blood they could. They will feast, and send the footage to every weaver colony in range. The offer will be to serve them, or be served on platters of bone.”
I shivered, and looked for something I could kill. Mack shifted uneasily, and I spun towards him.
“Don’t!” and T’Kit’s voice made all of us pause.
When she spoke next, it was to me.
“Cutter. There are no more enemies here.”
And I was outraged.
“Then where?”
“We have traced the transmissions guiding the shuttle to a house in Sanderamon.”
Sanderamon. The capital. Where the observation center had been compromised. I held onto enough of my sanity to try and ask what was expected of me next.
“Am I coming?”
It wasn’t what I wanted to say, but demanding to be taken to the battle zone was one piece of savagery I could contain. The rest… well, I didn’t know how long I had before it took over. When I got a hold of Delight, we were going to discuss the use of unauthorized chemicals in my regen tank.
And we were going to do it with extreme prejudice.
“Promise?” she taunted, and I spun, drawing the Glazer from its holster, and looking for her head.
“Cutter,” T’Kit said. “The flyer is waiting. Mack will take you.”
Mack wouldn’t take me. He’d already said that, but if he would lead the way to the shuttle that would be enough, for now. I could live with that. I turned, and caught the expression on his face.
“What?”
And he shrugged.
“I don’t know, girl.”
I watched as he tried to find the words for what was on his mind. In the end, he gave up and laid a careful hand on my shoulder.
“We’ve got a flight to catch,” he said, and turned away.
The flight wasn’t the only thing we had to catch, I thought. We had a human to kill… and arach. There could never be enough of those—and I was looking forward to it. Maybe I should have been worried about that, and maybe I would be, later. Right now, I wasn’t.
31—The Sanderamon Raid
The flight passed in a blur. I could feel the energy surging under my skin, and could barely contain it. I wanted to run, to jump, to fight. Even with T’Kit and her team filling the rows of seats behind Mack and I, the flyer seemed strangely empty—and I couldn’t work out why.
I was vaguely aware of a second flyer lifting into the air after us, and caught Mack’s quickly muttered explanation, as we sped away from it.
“The queen will lead.”
Of course, she would. Where else was the place for a queen to be? I startled when I felt a long, narrow hand rest gently in the center of my back, but T’Kit’s voice melted through my mind, taking the edge off the need to leap from the flyer and run ahead.
“I’m going to kill Delight,” Mack muttered, and I couldn’t quite work out why.
“I’ll help,” Tens added, and I wondered what he was doing, thought I should check it out.
“Get your grotty paws off my security system!” Tens said, and then directed my attention to the scans. “Here. Go find me a shuttle trail.”
Okay! I hunted through the data trails, vaguely aware that Tens had pulled up the records of earlier scans. I didn’t care about permission. I dived right in. After all, what exactly was he going to do about it? It’s not like he could catch me. I found him four shuttle trails, none of which had been reported. I did real good!
“Hells, kiddo,” Tens said. “Just how much of that shit did they give you?”
“Waaay too much,” Mack told him. “Just keep an eye on her and try not to let her break anything.”
I could break stuff?
“No!” came from three very cranky sounding adults.
Hey!
“Go find me an arach ship,” Tens said, and I dived back into the scans.
This was fun.
It was also hard, and it got harder the further out I went. I followed the signal from the farthest sat, and then bounced through the computers on an incoming cruiser.
Ouch! That wasn’t nice! But it didn’t matter, because I’d found something in the shiny new ship’s long-range scan feed. Oh yeah!
I dragged it back, and dropped it into Tens’ implant.
“Whatcha got, Cutter?” he asked, and then he saw it.
“Oh, fuck!”
What? But Tens wasn’t paying me any attention, anymore.
“Mack. I gotta go. I think she bounced through an Odyssey cruiser, and dragged its long-range scan results back.”
“Fuck!”
Ungrateful sods. I’d found the arach ship, hadn’t I?
But they weren’t listening. They were too busy talking to Delight.
That wasn’t right.
She was on the naughty list, wasn’t she?
“Shut it, Cutter.”
But he’d told me to go find him an arach ship—and I had. What the fuck was his problem? And Mack came right into my implant, wrapping his presence around me in
