The plummeting wreckage briefly lit Myla’s way deeper
into the caves, until it smashed into the ground outside in a shower of
sparks and white flashes of shorting power sources. Propelled by the
shock waves of thunder, Myla scrambled into darkness, acutely aware of dark
and empty sink holes scattered at her feet. The ground was otherwise
coated in a thick and malodorous loam. Something living heaved the earth
in protest of her footfall as she passed.
Behind her, billowing smoke obscured what was left of
daylight. She expected to be swallowed by the inky blackness, unable to
proceed without the risk of falling to her death in one of the sink holes,
although the darkness would not inconvenience the Hive who could see
equally well in the infrared. The choice was hers, to proceed despite the
danger, or to fall into the metal hands of heartless machines for
vivisection and storage as a still conscious specimen.
A peculiar blue-green light, though, held complete
darkness at bay. It took a puzzled moment to identify its shadows source
as a luminescent fungus covering the rock on the walls around her. Another species like strings of tiny beads sparkled orange and red against
the dimmer, blue-green glow.
An unexpected explosion and its concussion of superheated
air drove her into an adjacent chamber. A tongue of flame flared behind
her. Blinded now by the protectively darkened face shield, she sank
against a stone wall and drew her knees to her chin. Aware briefly that
she still held the spine of the mud dragon clutched in her fist, she
dropped the creature as her side.
Taking inventory of anything else of
value she might have on her person, she clutched at
her father's data coin hanging from her neck by the silver necklace given
to her by her mother. With a cry of relief that she had not lost it in the
violence, she burst into tears, but found self-pity of little
consolation. When her sobs quieted, she rubbed the metallic disk between
thumb and forefinger, wishing she knew how to make it talk. Her real
father had recorded a message for her. Her mother, her adoptive mother,
had assured her that someday she would find a way to play it, but not
until she had reached adulthood and could track down the obscure
technology of a distant world to bring it to life.
Nothing more was happening. She removed the face shield
and head, letting it fold itself back into
its pouch on her back. Cool breezes heavy with a dank, organic odor
filled her lungs. Maybe it was over now. Maybe she could curl up in a
ball in the dirt with the mud dragon and simply wait for rescue.
She knew better. Khalin would grieve, but Covonia's
safety would be his one and only priority. She would die here, alone,
although she could not imagine the form eventual death would take. She
would starve to death, most probably, or die of dehydration. If only Dikki were with her now.
She had never been without the comforting voice of her personal servant
for as long as she could remember.
It had quieted outside. She tucked her father's coin
on the inside of her body glove and accepted that she'd probably never see
Dikki, or Jeremy Kael, or even Khalin Nome ever again. None of this would
have happened had she surrendered to Khalin’s plea. She had thrown away
her entire life defying him. She contemplated everything wonderful that
could have been, and then her mind emptied itself of futile dreams and
became like a bright sphere of clean and cold fear. In the end, now or
later, death awaited every living thing.
She had no idea how much time passed before she
realized that she was not alone in the rock chamber. Something other than
the big worms churning through the loam shared her awful plight. Across
the circular chamber, a head moved. Eyes glimmered in the dim light. They were not even close to human eyes, rather the multifaceted eyes of
many insects, including the insects of ancient and lost Earth. They were
swept-back eyes on the slender head of a bug her own size.
Myla grew rigid, transfixed with utter horror that
this could be happening. The body stirred across the way, and she saw
that it had sticks for arms and legs, and even fingers. Because it was
bipedal and proportioned almost like a person, it could not have been an
insect, although it had an exoskeleton like an insect. It had only four
fingers and three toes like claws.
The head was enormous. Myla thought that it must be
intelligent to have a brain so large, except that it was not making an
effort to communicate with her in any way. It had just stirred ever so
slightly, and now it was still again, maybe watching her, maybe not even
aware of her presence.
Was she in any danger? She saw no teeth, and no
mouth or mandible large enough to be a threat to her. The creature looked
to be half her size and one quarter of her weight, which made it
exceedingly frail and delicate. It shifted position again and seemed to
favor one leg.
Myla closed her eyes to calm herself, not wanting to
bear the burden of more uncertainty and fear just yet. If she remained
very still and she rested for a while longer, maybe the creature would
just get up and leave.
It didn't, of course. Neither of them had anywhere
to go. When it was still, it was hard to see in the dim light, but it
seemed to be watching her with those enormous black eyes. How could it
not see her with eyes so large? Myla ran her right hand across the dirt
at her side in search of a weapon to use in case it attacked. The pebbles
her fingers encountered hardly qualified as weapons. The largest she
could find gave her a mild sense of security. She would fight if she had
to.
She raised her other hand slightly and moved it from
side to side to attract the attention of the creature, wondering if the
creature had even noticed her presence. The creature smoothly followed
the movement with its head.
"Then you can see me after all."
In response to the sound of her
voice, it made a gentle assortment of chirping sounds that
would never be duplicated by human vocal cords.
"Jeep to you, too. So, where did you come from? If
you're not from around here, then I'm thinking that you were on that ship
that crashed, except that in all of human history, we've never met other
kinds of people before. Not that there aren't any, but the ones we know
about are so far advanced, or so different, they won't have anything to do
with us."
A thought occurred to her. "Well, I suppose if
you're one of those, you never had much choice in the matter crashing like
you did. But it's something we've got in common, I guess, hiding from the
Hive. They're just dumb machines, you know, just a bit screwed up in the
microprocessors. Radiation damage. Kind of like amnesia. They forgot
who’s boss."
The bug stared at her and clearly understood nothing
of what she said. In hardly mattered. It was enough that neither of them
had panicked and that the creature seemed harmless.
"Overlord Nome will send somebody for me. I'm
wondering if you will want to come along when I'm rescued. I guess it's
either us, or the Hive. Or being marooned on Covonia. It's an empty
world now, you know. I don't know what General Hague would do with
you. He's not at all a pleasant man, but he won't hurt you like the Hive will."
Myla heard a sound.
"Oh, no."
Only in the quietest of moments had she ever heard
it. Maybe it wasn't even a sound, for it could penetrate an insulating
wall. A sound induced in the nervous system, someone had once told her,
the sound of an MI field generator, the power source that allowed them to
float in the air like dark bubbles. The Hive was nearby, and approaching.
She had been discovered.
Novels by
William G. Tedford