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. . . . . .and what are the chances that there's still anyone left willing to give us a lift? Or anyone at
all? If there were people around, they sure weren't interested in putting out the fire that was currently
consuming one of their landing decks.
"Briggs?" Jess asked, still watching as the ship shot away from the station.
Lara nodded. "Probably." She didn't say what she was thinking, what Jess and Ellis surely already knew.
If a high suit like Briggs, who'd wanted them so much that he'd come to Bunda himself was giving it up
 then things here are bad, really fuckin' bad.
Maybe the thing that had attacked Jess had been busy with the researchers, before; that might explain
the ceaseless alarm, anyway. Or maybe it was just the
fact that the station's platforms had continued their slow tilt, at least fifteen degrees now; if they slanted
much farther, there wouldn't be a stable deck to take off from.
"We gotta get out of here before the shuttle catches," Jess said, although he didn't look well enough to
do much more than stand upright. And Ellis looked like he was on the verge of some emotional col-lapse,
his entire body trembling, his eyes wide and shining with unshed tears.
"I'm so sorry," he said, taking a step away from them, his hands clenched into fists. "This is all my fault."
"Hey, I might've done the same thing," Lara said, "or Jess. It's "
"You don'tunderstand," he said, his voice rising, "I've done everything wrong since we got here,
every-thingl"
Instinctively, Lara took a step toward him, reaching out
 and there was a sound so deep, so powerful, that they felt it as much as heard it,WHOOOF, an
explosion of brilliant light, a massive wave of pressure that threw all of them against the waist-high railing.
The deck be-neath them slanted past forty-five degrees, all of them falling, landing and skidding
"Hang on!" Jess shouted, but there was nothing to hang onto. The deck was lit up like day and Lara
rolled over, trying desperately to find a handhold on the slick platform. She saw the shuttle, burning,
crashing across the deck and blowing right through the railing, a giant, tearing metal sound as it plunged
over the side. She saw Ellis and Jess, scrabbling to hang on, saw both of them slide beneath the high rail,
disappearing after the shuttle
 and she saw the burning envelope, an incredible fireball of ignited gas, the flame eating the pliable shell
like acid through paper. It was the last thing she saw as
she slipped over the side, falling through the shadow of the crashing station.
Within moments of her release, the alien queen had exacted her revenge on at least a handful of her
cap-tors; nine, to be exact, the only Hunters left on board. Noguchi was too busy flying theShell to
watch all of it, but she saw enough. The queen had somehow known where the yautja were gathered,
and made her way unerringly to the dock outside of the pilot's room. How she'd negotiated the lifts and
tunnels, Noguchi didn't know or care.
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The ship hadn't yet broken through Bunda's at-mosphere when Noguchi heard the queen's shriek, a
furious and somehow gleeful cry, echoing through the hollow dock. It pierced the clattering shouts of the
yautja trying to break into the control room, the sounds of metal banging against the door cutting off in a
heartbeat. She heard the Hunters cry warnings to one another, heard and felt the queen's thundering
ap-proach, and felt a kind of perverse satisfaction at the thought of what would happen next.
They won't use burners, not on a queen. Not without Topknot's leave. And all of them, experienced
veterans . . .Noguchi couldn't deny the curiosity she felt, wonder-ing how they'd fare against the loosed
queen. She fin-ished with her "programming," directing theShell to home in on the signal from Topknot's
craft, and hurried to the hatch's window. The battle was already in prog-ress, three Hunters down, dying
or dead. Six were left, and they'd circled the raging queen with makeshift weapons, mallets, pry bars, a
kind of pickax with one sharpened end; two of them were holding lengths of braided rope, and none
wore armor of any kind.
Stupid and arrogant.Any sympathy Noguchi might have felt for them was pretty much wiped out by the
simple fact that they were still there; instead of leaving, locking the queen inside and waiting for
reinforce-ments to return or just killing her outright, for that
matter they meant to capture her again, without even bothering to arm themselves properly.
The queen, crouched in their midst, was swinging her head slowly back and forth, tilting it as if to mark
their positions. Her tail curled restlessly about her gi-ant, clawed feet, its razor tip leaving long scratches
in the deck's floor, occasionally slapping against one of the dead yautja nearby. He'd been clawed open,
his chest a muddled soup of bone and green, and the queen's tail whipped streamers of his blood across
the legs of some of those circling her.
Noguchi saw one of the Hunters behind the watch-ful bug, Beads, signal to another, one of the rope
hold-ers; he was going to attack, and wanted both of the rope holders to move in while the queen was
dis-tracted. Noguchi watched as the signal went around the circle, each of the Hunters picking it up
 and as if she understood thatthey were distracted by their own foolish planning, the queen lunged
for-ward, her tail coiling up behind her. She snatched at the nearest Hunter with both sets of ebony claws
on her right side, her talons sliding into his chest before he could raise his pry bar. At the same time, her
tail slashed out, knocking Beads and two others to the deck. The sharp tip cut through tendon and bone,
crip-pling Beads and the Hunter to his left. One of Beads's feet was completely sliced off, toppling over
into the gush of pale liquid that spurted from his ankle.
In a single move, she'd halved the group. With a fe-ral scream, she flung the limp Hunter hanging from
her right hands away, his body smashing into one wall hard enough for Noguchi to hear the bones
snapping, even through the door.
A Hunter she'd called Inu seized the opportunity, leaping forward with his "pick," burying the sharp end
in the top of the screeching queen's left thigh. Even as a trickle of her blood started its bubbling erosion of
the metal, Inu was lifted off his feet and held up in front of her grinning, drooling face. Her inner jaws shot
out,
tearing into Inu's forehead, snapping closed and with-drawing in the blink of an eye. The Hunter's limbs
were still spasming when she threw him aside
 and theShell pitched forward suddenly, knock-ing the two yautja still standing to the floor, causing the
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queen to stumble. Noguchi grabbed at the door's handle, managing to keep upright. She turned, saw that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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