“I can’t believe this! You’re killing us both, you’re killing everyone aboard the ship! This ship is the only way out! Can’t you understand that, you great freak?”
“You would have me risk all the Nexus trillions, not to mention abandoning the millions down on Garm to save ourselves?”
Steinbach sputtered, unable to answer. His eyes roamed the room, searching for a weapon. Rem-9 was unconcerned. He had already made sure that nothing effective was available. He placed his gripper on the final execution switches. Doors all over the ship slid shut as a thousand bulkheads sealed themselves. A roiling cloud of superheated radioactive gases bubbled into the reserve ventilation tanks.
Steinbach uttered a sound of terror and threw himself at Rem-9. He wrapped himself around the giant’s right arm. Rem-9 flicked his gripper in annoyance. Steinbach was sent staggering.
He closed the contacts, releasing the radiation. Alarms sounded, the control board lit up with lurid red and orange warning lights.
“You’ve killed us,” croaked Steinbach in dismay. On unsteady feet, he headed for the open corridor. the mech followed.
After a moment’s thought, he handed the General his pistol back. The man no longer had any call to use it on him.
For an instant, Steinbach eyed the sleek black barrel of the pistol with murderous intent.
“Fear has stolen your reasoning. You need me to survive, however slim that hope may now be,” the mech told him gently.
Taking a deep breath, Steinbach ran after him down the corridor, seemingly resigned to his fate. Rem-9 was vaguely glad that he didn’t have to kill the man. Enough humans had died, lately.
They rejoined with the governor in the corridors. Many of the remaining men were wounded, all of them were breathing hard. The aliens had not let them rest.
“So, we meet again, General,” said Droad. “For once, we are all on the same side.”
Steinbach said nothing. He gripped his pistol with both hands and watched the corridor intersections intently.
As they approached the laser turret, they were ambushed by a force of killbeasts with hand-cannons. The first rank of militiamen went down in a storm of gunfire. Rem-9 got in close with the killbeasts, smashing them down with his grippers. The things sprang back up, bouncing like rubber from the steel deck. Though the aliens’ limbs were broken they fought on savagely. The mech finally snapped the last killbeast’s carapace open across his knee. A sickening crunch sounded and the thing finally sagged down. The ambush had been repelled.
When they reached the correct side passage, Droad sent the mech Lieutenant into the contaminated regions to get the flitter and bring it back up to the external ports around the laser turret. It was time to abandon the ship after making sure the laser couldn’t be used against the human forces on Garm. There was no more point to staying with the Gladius. She had become a deathtrap, a tomb for men and aliens alike.
To reach the turret control room they had to cross a maze of catwalks that encircled the huge laser apparatus itself. A flock of culus squadrons attacked them when they were most vulnerable. Two men were knocked from the catwalks and fell screaming to their deaths. The skald fell too, but managed to latch onto the safety webbing. Sarah and Bili pulled him back up.
Above their heads the coils crackled with vast energy stores. Static lifted their hair and their clothing. Hot breaths of air struck them from the cooling vents.
“They’re readying the laser to fire,” said Droad in a dead voice.
No one replied.
When they reached the control center, they leapt through the smoking hole Jarmo produced with his plasma cannon. There was no hesitation anymore, little caution. Most of them figured themselves as dead, they took what little joy there was left in life from hitting back at the enemy.
Inside the control center was a Parent, a team of arls working with the controls and two juggers. The three large aliens were crammed into the limited space. Despite their situation, the humans gasped at the ghastly sight of the Parent. Quivering polyps raised sensory organs in alarm at their approach. The two juggers then rushed them, roaring their battlecries. They fought with great physical power and skill, but couldn’t face the combined firepower of the humans. Only Gunther was brought down, killed by a jugger’s teeth that mauled his head.
It was Sarah who sidestepped the fighting juggers and raced to the Parent. She emptied her pistol and reloaded five times before the monster finally sagged down in death. The arls were coldly blown to fragments by the victorious humans.
All of them took a moment to catch their breaths and marvel at the grotesque Parent except for the skald. Coming from his habitual spot at the rear of the company, he sprang forward, pushing his way to the laser controls. His pallid limbs swung in great strides, his peculiar, rolling gait more pronounced than ever.
He attacked the control boards in wild abandon, working levers and clittering at keys feverishly. He hummed an odd tune as he worked, shuffling his feet from side to side. Flecks of saliva formed white dots on his face, sprayed the controls. Warning lights flared into life, a deep rumbling sounded in the equipment, signifying that the laser was refocusing.
“Hey, stop that lunatic!” ordered Droad in alarm. He rushed to the control boards.
Jarmo and Sarah beat him to it, however. Jarmo grappled with the man, and was immediately surprised with the supple, wiry strength in his skinny limbs. He tried to contain the thrashing, moaning skald. He became concerned that the man would break his bones in his struggles.
“He’s trying to aim it,” said Sarah, frowning at the controls. “How would he know how to aim a weapon like this?”
“I don’t know,” grunted Jarmo. He felt more than heard a snapping sound. The skald’s arm had broken, but his struggles to get to the controls didn’t slacken.
Sarah moved to face him. “What are you trying to do?”
The skald locked his eyes with hers. She saw a desperate need to communicate there. His lips quivered and worked, his tongue rolled about slackly within his mouth. “Feasting.” he whispered. “The lines of the Feasting.”
“That’s what he’s been saying all along,” remarked Droad, joining them. “The mech Lieutenant has reached the flitter. He should be here in ten minutes or so. Any idea what he’s going on about?”
“He was with me in the nest. The Feasting was what the aliens did with us. The Parent and her commanders ate humans and other types of meat. The Feasting appeared to be some kind of ceremonial meal. They did a lot of it.”
“So what does ‘the lines of the Feasting’ mean?” asked Droad.
The skald’s struggles had subsided; he stood in Jarmo’s implacable grip, eyes flicking from one of them to another.
“Perhaps he means the queens,” suggested Jarmo. He loosened his grip a fraction, pitying the man. “Maybe he knows where the Parents are in their nests, and is trying to aim the laser at them.”
Droad frowned. “But how could he know? They’re all underground.”
Sarah had been examining the skald’s attempts at focusing the laser. She looked up at the others suddenly. “He’s linked the guidance computer to track radio frequencies. If the Parents utilize a different frequency for command, it would be possible to isolate them and destroy them.”
The three eyed one another in growing hope. Steinbach had joined them and was now listening intently. “The man’s obviously a lunatic. We should get off the ship while we have the chance,” he told the others. He looked at the skinny skald in contempt. “Nothing should delay our escape. I think we should be heading for the outlying islands in the tropics of Gopus. It will take years for the aliens to reach us there, if they ever do.”
“We have some time. The radiation is killing the aliens, although they seem to be taking their time in dying, as one might expect,” said Jarmo.
“Let’s try it,” said Sarah.
Everyone looked to the Governor. He nodded his head. “Let him go, Jarmo. Just watch that we know what we’re aiming at before we let him pull the trigger.”
They helped by using Steinbach’s codekeys, much to the General’s disgust. The laser was quickly aligned and focused on an area in the foothills of the polar range.
“It could be the sight of a nest,” Jarmo admitted, reading the scanning reports. “Heavy radio traffic on the
