Chapter 2 Ten Minutes
Ten Minutes
The air whistled around Jace and Khoth as they fell-jumped from one duct to another.
Multiple escape routes appeared before Jace’s mind’s eye.
They were represented by orange lines that traced routes all of which led back to the hangar bay where they’d left the needle-like ship and Gehenna.
This was exactly what he had seen when he faced off against Khoth in the Armory.
“Osiris?!” Jace cried as he landed on top of another duct.
But there was no answer. Whether that was because the ship AI was simply being stubborn, or it couldn’t communicate more than this was unclear to him.
But he didn’t have the mental space to worry about it or figure it out.
If the AI was being an ass though, they were going to have to talk when he got back to Earth.
“Has the Osiris reached out?” Khoth called.
“Not sure! But I know how we can get out of here!” Jace answered.
As Jace landed on the next duct, his feet slid on the rounded top.
His arms pinwheeled at his sides as he sought to balance himself.
Finally, he did. Khoth then landed beside him, but the Thaf’ell Commander hit the edge rather than the middle of the duct with his feet, and immediately began to slide off.
Jace grabbed both of Khoth’s hands and pulled him up.
They both wobbled as they sought to balance.
Finally, they were securely on the duct.
Jace glanced over the side and quickly jerked back as vertigo hit him.
“That’s a long way down,” he let out a semi-hysterical laugh.
“Inside! We should get inside!” Khoth yelled as the duct started to vibrate wildly as three Cetixes dropped down upon it and scuttled towards them.
But the escape routes–which kept shifting as more Cetixes arrived from all directions–did not indicate that they should get inside this duct.
“No! Come with me!” Jace shouted.
He took out his pistol and aimed at a Cetix on the next duct to their right. It lifted its head and showed him row upon row of jaws inside of its mouth. Jace fired right into the center of that mawing pit. The back of the Cetix’s head blew off and its body slowly toppled from the duct.
“Jump!” Jace cried again as he launched himself at the now vacated duct.
Khoth followed. The Thaf’ell Commander shot as he jumped, taking down a Cetix that would have landed on Jace and him. The centipede-like body brushed Jace’s back as it fell into the pit below them. There was an angry rattling hiss from the Cetixes as their fellows died.
“I think we’ve made them angry!” Jace laughed, definitely hysterically this time.
“Indeed. And they seek to make us pay,” Khoth agreed dryly.
Jace pivoted to race up the one duct when a Cetix burst out of the interior of it and began to wriggle out towards him. Another dead-eye shot and it slumped forward, blocking the way both inside of the duct and beyond it.
The amount of routes to get out of the core was narrowing as the Cetixes swarmed. It didn’t seem like he and Khoth could move fast enough compared to the creatures. There were only five routes left when before there had been dozens!
“Over and down!” Jace shouted at Khoth.
He jumped and nearly slipped off the top of another duct.
For one moment, Jace saw the pit yawn below him and wondered how far down the bottom was and what it would be like to fall all that way.
But Khoth grabbed his shoulders and wrenched him back up.
In the short time it took to do that, the routes out had slipped down to three.
Just three...
The nearest exit was two ducts over, but it was up.
These ducts were four feet higher than their current position.
Jace brought both feet beneath him and jumped!
He went higher than four feet and let out a shocked cry of fear as he thought he would completely overshoot the duct.
But he landed in the middle of it. It rocked with his weight.
Thankfully, though his body knew what to do and expect even as his mind did not.
Khoth easily jumped up, making a simple leap with his much longer legs.
“Let me help you,” Khoth said.
Khoth grabbed Jace around the waist as he saw where Jace wished to go. The Thaf’ell Commander leaped and took them both up to the next duct. He let Jace go even as Jace thanked him with just a bob of his head.
“We can cut in with our rahir and–”
Jace got nothing else out as a Cetix uncoiled not a foot from his face, hanging down from an upper duct like a hideous serpent.
It opened its mouth and hissed. Jace naturally ducked just as it emitted some kind of caustic fluid that splashed onto the duct between him and Khoth.
He watched–as in seeming slow motion–the duct bent and separated at that exact spot, and Khoth started to tumble backwards.
“NO!” Jace cried and lunged for him, but missed.
Khoth twisted in mid-air and managed to grab hold of a duct below them.
His rahir and pistol though were lost as he did so.
They fell into the abyss. There was another warning hiss from the Cetix that was upside down behind him.
Jace didn’t even think, he brought his pistol around and shot it in the head.
It tumbled down and hit the duct he was on, shattering it.
Jace had only seconds to grab hold of the duct one over.
Khoth jumped to that duct and pulled him to his feet.
The routes out of the core had dropped to one.
“Where, Jace?” Khoth asked, even as he drew the draagves–his only remaining weapon–from its holster across his back.
There were so many Cetixes that it looked like the ducts themselves were wiggling and squirming with thousands of pointed, chitinous legs. The orange line showed him their final chance of escape.
“There!” Jace pointed frantically down and to the left.
Their escape route was through one of the ducts that must have broken long ago and was in the process of being repaired.
There were no Cetixes there as it was just a nub of a duct sticking out from the core’s wall, barely large enough for them to wiggle through and far too small for a Cetix.
They’d have to catch the lip of it and pull themselves inside before the Cetixes had them.
“Jace, they will be on us before we have a chance to get inside!” Khoth cried.
“Ah… I… there’s no other way!” Jace swallowed. “We have to go there!”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me!” Jace shouted even as he wasn’t sure at all.
But the other routes were closed as Cetixes were coming from every direction. The Khul thumped onto the duct they were on top of. Jace fired. Khoth fired. Cetixes fell dead and tumbled off the ducts like insectile rain.
“No other way out! It’s our only chance!” Jace cried.
Khoth and Jace jumped from duct to duct at a full run, firing as they did so, not stopping to aim, but there were so many Cetixes that even their blind blasts were hitting the creatures.
That was when Jace saw the timer in the right bottom corner of his mask.
They were already down to eight minutes to get out of the Hive! Jace pushed harder.
There was a slick, wet sound and Jace dodged as a section of the pillar sloughed off and fell over the duct.
The color of the flesh pillar was pink and black now and Jace swore that even through the helmet’s filters that he smelled the decay.
The duct bent then snapped off under its weight.
Jace saw that there were black veiny lines appearing on the ducts, too, where it had broken off just like had appeared on the pillar when he’d thrown the “thumb drive” at it.
It’s spreading! Jace realized.
Of course, it was. That was what it was meant to do!
Only three more ducts between them and the last route out of the core now. He and Khoth barely touched the first two before landing on the third. Cetixes swarmed. Khoth’s draagves made a throaty, thunking whine as laser blasts left its muzzle and found their mark.
“You go first, Jace!” Khoth yelled.
“No, I–”
“JACE!” And there was a command in that tone which Jace could not deny.
It was followed by a look from blue-on-blue eyes that said so much more than his simple name had in that alien mouth.
He was the Pilot. He needed to escape. Khoth was not as important.
But he was important. He was so important!
Yet delaying the final leap would only cause Khoth to be in greater danger.
So Jace shoved his pistol into its holder and jumped.
His hands caught the lip of the broken duct. He felt the material crumbling, giving way. With frantic speed, he hoisted himself up into the opening, the duct crumbling into dust in his hands. The Hive was truly coming apart.
Jace crawled in on hands and knees. He had thought to squirm around and give covering fire to Khoth as the Thaf’ell Commander jumped, but the duct was too tight.
There was no way to do so. He had to go forward.
His calves and feet were still sticking out of the duct!
Khoth couldn’t jump until he was out of the way.
Jace crawled forward as fast as he could. The duct felt mushy and sticky beneath his elbows and forearms. He heard the whine of Khoth’s draagves. It sounded more frantic to his ears than before. Was it possible for Khoth to shoot faster than he had been?
Jace’s calves were finally inside the duct!
He squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. His feet were inside.
He kept going though because Khoth was tall and he would need to get fully inside the duct too.
He imagined Khoth’s feet sticking out of the duct and being grabbed by a Cetix as it made a desperate last leap.
He then imagined its weight pulling Khoth and it out of the duct and them both spiraling towards the floor of the pit. That had him moving faster.