Chapter 58

Connor’s flashlight hit the scorpion-tailed monstrosity square in the face, revealing a blue-black mass of twitching mandibles and above those what must have been antennae. Shiny bug eyes as big as a fist clustered between mandibles and antennae.

The thing hissed, and wings flared out, then flapped loudly, blasting them with a hot wind that stank like ancient tombs being unsealed after millennia. Dust and dirt filled Connor’s mouth, foul and gritty.

Kalpana shouldered her sniper rifle and fired. The shot roared like a cannon.

That quieted the thing for a second, as its wings stopped.

Its head flicked side to side, mandibles and antennae testing the air.

Then it launched itself into the black sky, and the wings flapped with a crazy flutter.

More stones cracked and crumbled around them. Flapping echoed inside darkened rooms.

Aubriella made a wordless sound and staggered back.

Connor grabbed her arm and hauled her along as he ran. “Let’s go!”

His priority should have been their client, but Mosiah hadn’t frozen. He’d actually taken the young woman’s other arm.

They ran upslope, Kalpana swiveling with her big rifle, ready for anything.

A crackle filled Connor’s hearing, then a series of scratches. “Selen?”

“Con—?”

He sped up. “Selen?”

“What’s going on?” Scratchy, with distortion and squealing, but it was her.

“There’s something down here. Bugs. Different.”

Gunfire erupted uphill, and voices filled the connection.

Selen ordered people to get to cover, and most of the shooting stopped. Connor recognized Mamacita’s deep, slow cycling fire, but even that cut out after a few seconds.

Vicente was covering the move to cover.

Connor tried to locate everyone on his heads-up display, but without a good radio connection, the data was choppy and unreliable.

Green dots flickered on his visor, then disappeared.

Something big dropped out of the sky and nearly hit Kalpana, who rolled aside at the last second: the bug she’d shot.

It crouched over her, wings flapping. Its stinger tail rose up.

Connor let off a burst from his Asp machine-gun. There were only a few fragmentation rounds mixed in with the regular ammo in his case.

The two spindly arms facing Connor and a segment of carapace tore free, and the bug thing staggered back.

Then fell.

Black fluid gushed from its ruined side.

Kalpana accepted Connor’s hand when he offered it, and she ran at his side. “That’s not good.”

He glanced back. The thing swung its tail at Mosiah as the old man pushed Aubriella around the twitching them. It was a wild swing, but the thing should have been dying, not trying to strike.

Connor almost went back to stomp the thing to death.

Up ahead, someone darted through a black doorway into one of the larger structures with an intact cover, and Connor caught the identifier: Rudy.

“In there!” Connor pointed to the doorway.

Mosiah pushed Aubriella in ahead of him; Kalpana followed.

Overhead, black shapes whipped around in the sky, silhouetted against the moon. There were at least twenty, maybe twice that.

How many had they woken?

He backed into the building, checking for light leaking through the ceiling, then setting down his machine-gun and drawing his swords. The things were a threat he hadn’t really had a chance to study yet, but he’d seen what a sniper round could do: pass right through.

The tail. That was the biggest threat. Maybe the mandibles.

Something scraped behind him, and he spun.

A flashlight revealed Rudy. “Hold up, Lieutenant.”

“Where is everyone?”

“I got some people in here, but the others…” He nodded toward the door.

They were split up, then.

Connor hadn’t heard any screams, and the gunfire had gone silent. For now. “What’s this place like?”

“Big. There’s another entry about twenty meters back that way. We’ve got a couple rooms off a hall.”

“Anything with only one entry?”

“Kalpana’s checking those rooms.”

“We need to get everyone together.”

“Understood.” The sergeant glanced at the swords. “Can’t replace a good gun—”

Connor’s radio squealed: Selen. “Selen, where are you?”

“We’re in a building with a partial roof.”

We. She had some others. “How many?”

“Vicente, the Moons. Yemi.”

That left only Lem unaccounted for. “I’m going to get to the roof and shine a flashlight. “Watch for it.”

“Bugs are crawling on our roof.”

“Watch for the light and come to us.”

He jumped out of the door before anyone could challenge him, spotted a place with some grips to climb, then sheathed his swords. Getting too the roof was easy enough, but the bugs were a chaos of buzzing shadows.

“Selen! I’m lighting now.” He lit his flashlight and waved it around, spinning.

“I see it! We’re coming!”

Forms darted from a building about twenty meters uphill.

Connor jumped down, growling under his breath at the tenderness in his ankles. Then he drew his swords again.

A scream rose above the maddening, alien ruckus.

He bolted back inside in time to see Rudy sprinting through another doorway. Connor followed after the sergeant, who nearly barreled into Kalpana and Mosiah. They were backpedaling from a hallway.

The sniper pushed Mosiah toward the room Connor and Rudy had just exited. “They came in through the other door. Cut me off.”

Now there was gunfire: a burst. It was from a Sandil.

Rudy straightened. “Aubriella.”

Connor couldn’t get past the sergeant, who sped through the hallway and into the other room.

Something black swung down from the ceiling, lifting Rudy off the ground for a second.

The sergeant brought his gun up and fired a burst above him.

Then a bug dropped to the ground, and the sergeant followed, landing on his boots, staggering uncertainly.

But an instant later, he was pummeling the thing with his rifle butt.

Connor saw Drew before she screamed again: backed into a niche just to the left of the doorway. One of the bug things was trying to figure out how to strike at her, its tail and spindly arms cracking against the stone.

“Drew! I’m coming!” He charged across the room, tumbling away at the last second when two tails swung down from above.

Two bugs dropped from the ceiling.

They moved toward him, striking at the air when he rolled away.

It was an attempt to drive him toward the bug trying to get at Drew.

Connor scrambled to his feet and darted to the right, drawing the bugs after him. When the nearer one shielded him from the other, he stopped.

Then he showed them what his own sting looked like: the swords whirled and twisted and danced.

A stinger flashed forward, and he sliced it off a half meter before contact.

Another swing, and the bug’s head flew off. Ichor gushed up.

Connor kicked the dead thing into its companion, and when the second bug stumbled backwards, lunged and drove the blades into the thing’s midsection. A twist and flex, and he cut the thing in half.

A deafening chorus of gunfire rumbled in the room.

There was time to realize more bugs were spilling in through the second doorway, then someone had Connor by the arm, dragging him back.

In the little niche, Drew screamed. “Connor!”

He tugged against the person dragging him back to no effect.

It had to be Vicente.

Drew was almost completely hidden from view now. “I’m clean! Connor, I swear it! All those things—it wasn’t me! Please!”

But he was being dragged away.

And then Selen was in his face. “She’s dead!”

Selen jerked Connor’s attention to the ground, where Rudy—his face puffy and discolored—lay between two dead bugs.

The sergeant who was going to outlive them all was dead.

She grabbed Connor’s jaw. “Martienne’s wounded. We have to fall back!”

Vicente pulled Connor back. “C’mon, Boss!”

There was nothing he could do but listen to the engineer’s cries for mercy, for rescue, for forgiveness.

And then she couldn’t do anything but scream in terror and pain.