Empire of Stars #2

Chapter 1 Duct Work

Duct Work

Khoth’s HUD showed him the heat signatures of the two Cetixes within the room that would give Jace and him access to the ducts.

He watched them bustle around the much cooler human forms. His suit told him these humans were still alive despite their cool temperature. In fact, they squirmed with life.

The urge to flee was strong. To get away from this uncleanness.

But there was only one way out and that was through.

They were waiting for the optimum moment to burst into the room.

These had to be quick, efficient kills. No sound preferably.

Both of them had unsheathed their rahirs. But his gaze kept sliding to Jace.

Jace had surprised him. Though it was clear that the young human was horrified and shocked to the core by what he had seen, Jace had kept his head.

The horrors in the Hive had shaken even Khoth’s Xa.

It had hardened his resolve as well to defeat the Khul, but it had done something he hadn’t expected.

It had made Khoth not want to abandon the humans to this fate.

For he had no doubt that the Khul would be back to harvest Earth, especially if they destroyed this Hive.

The people’s faces in the tanks from the young woman to the plump elderly lady who Jace had clearly known still flashed before Khoth’s eyes.

And now, when they entered this room, they would see more horrors.

I have to be ready if these are people Jace knows as well, Khoth thought. And he has never killed before. Whatever training he has been given is exceptional, but the first death… one is never prepared.

Another thing that had struck him about Jace was that he was willing to follow the young human’s lead.

At first, as they had strafed low over the hangar bay’s floor to the door that would lead further into the ship, he had told himself it was an evaluation of Jace’s skills.

But in a Hive there was really no room for error.

The truth was that he had deferred to Jace. And he hadn’t been wrong.

With an almost preternatural ability, Jace had kept them just out of the Cetixes’ vision.

When he had been inclined to dash forward, Jace would stop and the Cetix would turn just then.

So if they had dashed forward they would have been seen, but stopping in what was the middle of the floor with no obstacles to the Cetixes’ lines of sight would have seemed mad.

But it was always the right move. And they had avoided the growing number of Khul that infested the Hive’s hallways.

So now he would trust Jace’s instincts–or whatever it was that was guiding him–and attack at the moment that Jace chose.

He sensed as much as saw Jace tensing. His hand tightened on his rahir.

And then they were moving inside. The door whispered open.

Khoth took in the room in an instant. It was circular with two individual pools into which there were two humans up to their necks in fluid.

The Cetixes were adjusting lines that led into the two pools.

It took Khoth a moment to realize that they were dumping larger larvae–likely ones that had burst out of other beings–into the pools so that they could feast on the humans.

Khoth couldn’t even tell the humans’ sex at that moment.

Their faces were twin masks of agony. But Jace, if he registered these things at all, did not react to them.

Like a ribbon of silk in the wind, Jace was across the floor to the farthest Cetix.

His rahir slicing through the Cetix’s head so swiftly and silently that the creature was still moving, its hundreds of legs, clattering as if doing a dance against the floor.

Khoth did the same. Cetix blood–acidic and dangerous in its own right–poured from their bodies. Jace neatly sidestepped the pools.

Now Jace was looking at the two humans.

His back was to Khoth so he could not see Jace’s expression. He was staring directly into one of the suffering human’s faces. It was a woman, Khoth realized when she spoke.

Her face was stripped of color as she gasped out, “K-kill m-me.”

Khoth shut his eyes for a moment for Daesah’s face was now overlaying hers with his sister’s voice saying the same thing. Khoth forced his eyes to open. He would end these poor beings’ lives so that Jace didn’t have to but it was already over. Both humans were dead. Their throats neatly slit.

“Find peace,” Jace whispered. It was so low that Khoth wasn’t even sure he had heard it.

“I would have done that,” Khoth said.

Jace turned to look at him then. His expression was so bleak, for a moment, that Khoth almost took a step back. But then he surged forward and grasped the arms of Jace’s suit.

“You do not have to kill your people, Jace, I will end their suffering,” Khoth found himself saying.

Jace gave him the saddest smile. “You want everyone to think that you feel nothing when you feel most of all.”

Khoth’s lips open to dispute that. But he didn’t. It was something that Daesah would say. Had said.

“Thank you, Khoth,” Jace told him. “You’ve no idea… how much… how much that means.”

Jace surprised him again when, instead of breaking down and falling forward into his arms, Jace gently disengaged Khoth’s hands and was turning towards the far right corner of the room where the trap door to the ducts was located. He started to pry it up with the tip of the rahir.

“Gehenna,” Jace said, “how are you doing?

Fine, Jace. I’m playing hide and seek with the Omull!

Despite there being no sound, Khoth could almost hear her delight in this dangerous game over her text on his HUD.

“Don’t have too much fun,” Jace told her. His voice was still leaden from what he had done and seen, but he was trying to act normally for the AI.

He is concerned about her feelings. So many would not think even an AI could feel, or even if they did, that their feelings were important, Khoth realized.

What do you need? She asked, and Khoth sensed an awareness in her of Jace’s true mood.

“We need you to make sure the Khul don’t come looking in this room to find out where their buddies are and raise the alarm on us prematurely,” Jace explained as he pried up a square section of floor, which Khoth grasped and moved to the side. “So can you lock the door or something?”

Yes! I can do that! The Khul language is still a little hazy for me, but I can also monitor their comms, she said.

“They have comms?” Jace sounded genuinely surprised by this.

Khoth found himself looking back at the long, segmented bodies as thick as he was around. He saw no sign of technology on them, at least nothing recognizable.

They communicate in many ways, she explained. Through body language and also through pheromones. But there is some kind of organ inside of them that… Well, that vibrates. So it's like an internal, organic comm!

“Eh, well, I see,” Jace said. “No wonder it’s hard to understand!”

Well, yes, because it’s really monitoring each and every Khul to see if there are vibrations that–

“Not now, Gehenna. Another time, we’ve got to concentrate here and you’ve got to get that door locked, not to mention keep out of the Omulls’ sight,” Jace interrupted her as he ducked his head down into the opening in the floor and looked right then left.

Oh! I could do all of this in my sleep! She protested.

With genuine amusement in his voice, Jace drawled, “Don’t get cocky, kid!”

Ah, am I Luke Skywalker to your Han Solo? Gehenna asked, which sounded completely inexplicable to Khoth.

“I am always Luke Skywalker,” Jace informed her archly.

But–oh, well, nevermind, I’d like to be Vader! Do you think I could play Vader? She asked, this conversation veering into the even more obscure.

Jace chuckled as he lowered himself into the ducts with Khoth’s help. “You’ve got the helmet for it, Gehenna.”

“I believe we should focus on the mission,” Khoth said. “You two should have your conversation… later.”

“I think we’ve just been scolded,” Jace said to Gehenna.

He’s just upset that he can’t be Vader, Gehenna said and put plenty of smiley faces after that statement.

Khoth shook his head. He would never understand this secret language of theirs or the joy they took in it. He jumped into the ducts and landed lightly on his feet.

“I thought these would be smaller and we’d have to squirm on our bellies, but it's not too bad. Just got to hunch over a bit,” Jace said as he surveyed the passage ahead of them.

While Jace just had to lean forward a bit, Khoth was practically bent almost in half.

His head would bump the ceiling of the curved duct if he was not careful.

Unlike the corridors that had been flooded with amber light.

These were dark, except for light that seeped through slit-like openings on the walls, ceiling and, occasionally, the floor.

He HUD adjusted so that night vision was enabled.

Also on the HUD, the route to the core of the ship was illuminated.

A dot streaked forward to show them the twists and turns ahead.

“This way,” Jace whispered.

They were both careful as they walked on the thinner metallic-like duct material.

It gave slightly under Khoth’s weight and if he released his weight from a panel too quickly, the material sprang up, making a metallic thunk-thunk sound.

Khoth hoped it was his nerves making the sound louder than it actually was. This slowed their progress down.

He found himself looking out the slits to see where they were. Amber light played over Jace’s helmet as he, too, turned his head to look out of the duct. They saw more pools, more Cetixes, and more humans.

The first time they saw another set of pools, Jace’s hand went to the hilt of his rahir. Khoth had gripped his shoulder.

“Remember, when we destroy the core, we destroy the Hive, we destroy all of this,” he whispered.