Aberrant

Chapter 52

An ocean of black. Whispers—urgent, unintelligible.

A flash of orange light. Then another.

Jinx jerked awake, bio-warnings lighting up her mask's HUD like Christmas. Pain poured into her skull, along with fragmented memories. Tras lunging forward to help cover Soh's overall-clad body. A shocking blast. Smoke and noise. Tras yelling. Then weapons fire, a web of targeting beams, and scrambling metal limbs.

A stun grenade had gone off in the Fire Witch's airlock. The Xykeree had swarmed before anyone could make it back to their feet.

Jinx fought to make sense of what had happened; where she was. Her senses felt dull. Her brain felt disconnected, as if her body lay in a different dimension. Breathing was difficult. Moving her head—even her eyes—seemed impossible. There was a queasy sense of motion in the dark haze enclosing her, and a rhythmic tapping beneath her, accompanied by the sly hiss of mechanical tech.

Something was carrying her—in its arms.

The andropod.

Consciousness snapped fully back with a rush of adrenaline. Her flesh came alive with a familiar pulsing hum.

She was on the Hydra. She could smell decay. The air-tightness of her suit had been compromised. Recall surged up: the andropod partially dislodging her mask when—

God. It had injected her with its venom. The disconnection with her body, the tightness in her chest. She was paralysed, her respiration depressed.

She tried to read the HUD information flashing in front of her, but could barely focus her eyes, let alone move them. Did one of the messages say the anti-venom had been auto-administered? Please, God. She wasn't dying like this.

Her world lurched dizzyingly: the andropod rounding a corner. She caught movement ahead. A swarm of dog-sized exskels—workers—dragging something down to a lower deck.

Bodies. Two armoured. One in orange overalls.

Jinx felt her world fall away. Tras, Dorf, and Soh. Limp, dead weights.

The roaches had got what they wanted. They now had no use for the other humans on board.

Not alive.

Recalled war footage rose: half-digested bodies; exposed flesh and bone. Choking on the images, Jinx fought to move—got nothing but a head rush and more queasiness. Helpless, she remained slumped in the andropod's arms as it carted her deeper and deeper into its hive. Damp, glistening bulkheads moulded to look like alien excretions rose around her; a vast black warren of res-plex.

The ship's drone strengthened, became a stifling hum of energy.

Everything revolved again as the andropod turned another corner into—

A seething cavern of metal, composite, and plex.

A troop-deployment bay, filled with exskels, vehicles, and weapons.

Jinx's laboured breath died. Her heart boomed. The entire space—even the vast, arching roof—swarmed with Xykeree workers; an undulating sea of metallic ants. Dark attack ships sat before launch airlocks, looming over lines of infantry exskels: scores of silver, spider-like huntsmen and hundreds of their smaller, black hivemates, soldier exskels. Two massive ebony hulks crouched next to a troop drop ship. Scorps at rest.

The roaches were preparing for a major offensive.

And she was being hauled into the middle of the main battle force.

The andropod scuttled forward. Towering bodies closed around her: huntsmen, fanged nightmares, their legs over four times the height of an average human. Workers raced over the larger exskels, preparing them for battle. Ahead of her—

An odd ship sat aligned for launch out one of the bay's many troop-deployment ports: black; almost spherical apart from its engines, thrusters, and the ramp extended out its port side.

Kaplan's hostile vessel. The one that had forced him out of the void.

Fear and panic poured through Jinx. She tried to move—achieved nothing. Curses lodged in her throat. She couldn't let herself be hauled onto that ship. She'd be screwed if it launched. Coalition troops might track the Hydra, but they wouldn't know to look for a smaller craft.

Regardless, they wouldn't be in time to save Soh, Tras, and Dorf.

Jinx tried to move again—and again—got nothing. Just the punch of her heart and her thin breaths as the black ship loomed larger and larger. Xykeree workers flowed from its hatch, up and over the hull like a dark, multi-legged fluid, clearing the path for their approaching hivemate. For her.

The andropod mounted the ramp, tilting her world upward. Pressure built in her lungs: a trapped scream. Her heart raced. The ship closed in, black and alien.

Then it swallowed her.

Glass-smooth bulkheads. Infinite reflections of her limp body and the exskel carrying her. Then—

A nightmare.

Fluid-filled tubes. Humming machines.

Bodies.