Chapter 2 Ten Minutes #2
Sweat coursed down Jace’s brow and dripped into his eyes. His eyes stung with salt. His breathing was all he heard in his helmet. Had the whine of laser fire stopped? Had he felt the thunk of Khoth jumping and grabbing hold of the duct behind him? He couldn’t be sure. He had to keep moving.
Six minutes before the Hive went boom or simply disintegrated. He wasn’t sure which. The duct was definitely mushy.
“Khoth? Khoth, can you hear me?” Jace asked, breathing heavily.
He crawled a few more feet and the duct was curving to the right. This wasn’t at all the direction they had come in. But there was a bright orange arrow telling him that he was heading in the right direction.
He saw that in addition to the timer and the arrow that there were two dots now.
One was red and one was green. He guessed that he was the red dot as it moved at his pace.
The green dot wasn’t Khoth, because it was ahead of him.
He then realized that the green dot was where he had to be in order to get out of the Hive alive.
He scrambled frantically to catch up so that the red and green dots overlapped.
Slime from those bulging sack creatures was everywhere.
It smeared over the front of his helmet, it coated his fingers, it suctioned the front of his suit to the floor of the duct.
Sweat seemed to coat every part of him and he felt it soaking his undersuit and even wetting the palms of his hand in his gloves.
But that sweat turned cold when he realized he hadn’t heard from Khoth. His earlier call had gone unheeded.
“Khoth?” he called again. “Khoth? Are you okay? Talk to me!”
The duct turned again and was now sloping upwards. He strained to keep his forward momentum. The green and red dots were pulling apart once more. He jammed his boots into the half-hardened slime and pushed off from it.
Gehenna?! He reached out for her.
Jace?! She sounded as frightened and anxious as he felt. Jace, you’re taking too long! You need to–
I know! But Khoth! I can’t reach him! Jace grunted out as he was practically climbing the duct now with his feet on the walls to brace himself as he hauled himself upwards. He’s not answering me. I can’t get a hold of him!
There was a very long pause.
The sweat went cold as ice on his skin as he listened to that pause. He stopped climbing.
Jace, don’t stop! Gehenna cried. You still have a chance to make it!
What about Khoth? Jace wasn’t moving.
He’s… he’s… you’ve got to keep going, Jace! Gehenna cried. Keep going! You can make it!
Gehenna! Jace commanded. Where is Khoth?! TELL ME NOW!
He’s pinned behind you, Gehenna said with a wretched gasp in her voice. He turned off his comm. I’m guessing that he doesn’t want you to come back. Because if you do, you won’t make it out and–
That idiot! That big blue idiot! Jace swore.
You’re the Pilot, Jace. A lot more people than Khoth depend upon you, Gehenna said with such sadness in her voice. Khoth knows this and that’s why he–
We don’t leave people behind, Gehenna, Jace said and unbraced his feet from the sides of the shaft.
No, Jace! She cried. Oh, I knew you were going to do that!
He slid down so much faster than he had crawled up. He tried not to think about how hard it would be to retrace his steps, how much time he was losing right now. He twisted his head and realized that the duct had collapsed behind him. He heard muffled sounds of laser fire.
Show me the schematics of this place! He demanded.
Immediately, he saw that there was a room to his left and that Khoth was still in the duct but fighting two Omull. Without even requesting it, calculations flashed before his mind’s eye, telling him that he could bust through to the room with some well-paced pistol fire.
He got his pistol out of its holster and by turning and twisting his body was able to hit the weak spots that had the duct and room wall giving way.
He burst out of the opening, firing where the heat signatures were even as he couldn’t see anything, but a dark haze from the particles of disintegrating Hive all around him.
The two Omull went down. Jace swung his head around towards the heat signature that was Khoth.
The Thaf’ell Commander emerged from the duct after using his feet to kick the wall out of the way.
“Jace, what have you done?!” Khoth growled.
“I’m saving you!” Jace snapped.
“No! You’ve just managed to condemn us both! I--”
“Gehenna, I want you to take the ship out of the Hive. Put it in orbit. Pilot it here,” Jace told her even as he sent a coordinate.
“What are you–” Khoth began.
Jace, I won’t leave you! Gehenna protested.
“We’re not going to make it back to the hangar bay, but we can literally blast our way through the Hive. Everything’s falling apart,” Jace explained even as he felt the floor starting to give a little beneath his feet. “We can survive in these suits in space. For a little while anyways.”
The thought of jumping into the vacuum of space had Jace’s stomach doing jumping jacks in his chest. But he knew it was the only way.
And the Osiris–for he was certain it was the Osiris now–agreed.
It was showing him how to make his insane plan work.
The orange arrow showed him the exact direction they needed to go, where they needed to shoot the walls and how he could use one of the grenades he had to blast the Hive’s outer hull.
That’s an insane plan! Gehenna responded. But let’s do it!
Damn straight! Jace told her.
“The odds of this plan succeeding–”
“Didn’t I tell you I don’t want to hear the odds, Khoth?!” Jace let out another hysterical bark of laughter. “We’re going to make it!” He holstered his pistol and brought out his draagves. “Shoot where I do!”
And the two of them were shooting through walls and busting through into hallways then other rooms then more hallways.
The Khul were in such a panic that the Omull and Cetixes were in such a panic over what was happening to their ship that they weren’t going after him and Khoth.
But when they did get in the way, the two of them blasted the Khul without hesitation.
But the Khul were not the true danger as they came across a hallway that was filled with the gel containing the larvae.
It was running down the hallway like a river of filth.
Jace reared back. Khoth grabbed him around the waist and they leaped over the material.
Please let them not be able to drill through the soles of our boots! Jace repeated with horror even after they had left the river of larvae behind.
But the ceilings and floors were faltering too.
And the heavy tanks that contained the humans and the larvae were starting to sink through.
There was a terrible crack when they bashed into one room.
Jace’s head shot towards the ceiling just in time to see a tank’s bottom start to emerge.
He and Khoth fired straight ahead at the next wall as they continued to run and blasted through it just as the tank crashed behind them.
He heard a wet splat as water and larvae–and maybe softening human–splattered on the walls, and floor of the room they’d just escaped.
He hoped to any god out there that the humans were dead. He prayed that they were before this happened to them.
“How much farther?” Khoth asked as one of his boots punched through the floor.
Jace helped him yank it out before they were blasting and running again.
“One more room! It’s a hangar bay!” Jace told him as they entered the final room before the outer hull.
Similar to the one that they had been brought into, this hangar bay though had no needleship as it was down on Earth.
The hangar bay doors though were closed and Jace saw no way of opening them except with the grenade.
He held up an arm to stop Khoth before he brought up one of the grenades that was attached to his belt.
“There are jets on the suits,” Jace told Khoth. “We should be able to navigate to the Khul ship.”
“Jace, the likelihood of us surviving and making our way--”
“It’ll work! Trust me!” Jace cried. “The Osiris has got this planned.”
“Ah, I see that my suit is now being operated by the AI as well,” Khoth stated.
“This is our only shot,” Jace told him.
“Yes,” Khoth answered.
They stared at one another through their faceplates.
“If this doesn’t work–”
“It most likely will not,” Khoth informed him dryly.
Jace swallowed. “Yeah, well, it’s been awesome getting to know you. Really, if there is an afterlife, I’m going to tell them you were the best part.”
Khoth’s eyebrows lifted. “I will do the same.”
There was no more time to say anything else.
Two presses activated the grenade. Jace then threw it at the hangar bay doors before grabbing Khoth and bringing them both behind some of the stacked and empty pods to use as a makeshift shield.
The blast had Jace’s ears ringing, but that was the last of his worries as he, Khoth and the pods were all sucked out of the huge opening that appeared in the Hive’s side. The two of them shot out of the Hive and into space.
The silence of space intensified the ringing in Jace’s ears and he couldn’t hear Khoth calling for him.
In fact, he was struck dumb with both awe and fear as he realized he was floating in the void.
The cold already wrapped around him like a lover’s caress even as the suit’s systems strove to keep it at bay.
He turned his head and he saw Earth, hanging below him, like some bright jewel.
He also saw Khoth and beyond Khoth, the needle-like Khul spaceship.
I see you both! I’m slowing! I’m–oh, the Osiris has control! Gehenna sounded both shocked and annoyed.
Don’t fight it. It’s controlling us, too, Jace told her as his suit’s jets were expertly turned on and off to direct him towards an opening in the Khul ship.
Jace relaxed and let the Osiris take full control. He and Khoth both were both brought back into the Khul ship. As the opening closed behind them and gravity was re-established in the door lock, he and Khoth looked at one another.
“That should not have worked,” Khoth said.
“I know, but it did,” Jace told him with a laugh. “The Osiris made it happen.”
“Yes, but even with an AI, the room for error was vanishingly small,” Khoth protested.
I do not make errors, the Osiris said, not only in Jace’s head, but it appeared on both of their HUDs.
“Really? Because we were just hijacked and taken aboard a Khul Hive!” Jace put his hands on his hips. “Unless you had something to do with that!”
The Osiris said nothing.
Oh, guys! Gehenna sent them both, you need to see this!
Abruptly there was a feed showing on their HUDs that showed them the Hive. Both of them watched as, in silence, the Hive disintegrated and the small pieces of it broke apart and dispersed into a glittering sea of destruction.
“We destroyed a Hive,” Khoth breathed.
“Yeah,” Jace said as he watched as the Hive, the Khul, and the humans inside of it had all been turned into space dust. “Let’s get home, shall we?”
Khoth swung his head towards Jace and asked, “My home or yours?”
Jace sighed. He’d seen the enemy. He understood what they were facing. He couldn’t forget the horror of what he had seen. The Khul had to be destroyed. “Mine first.”