Chapter 20 The Plan #2
He had a feeling that Jace knew better than he did where the cockpit was.
He had only his memories while Jace had the AI.
But just as he thought that, there was a little “bubble” from Gehenna on his HUD saying “FYI” and giving him the schematics of the ship.
He thanked her, which got him a floating smiley face in return.
He shook his head. Gehenna was… different.
He wondered what her makers had intended her to be or do.
Perhaps she was just a prototype model, one that had failed.
Yet she had been imprisoned within the Osiris so that indicated she was dangerous.
Unless the Osiris had simply trapped her in there itself.
Too many possibilities, Khoth mused. But we must get to the bottom of her and the Osiris’ origins so that we can control them instead of them controlling us.
Jace slid down the ladder and Khoth followed him.
They went down three levels. Jace’s boots squeaked against the rails as he tightened his grip to slow his descent.
Khoth did the same so that they didn’t end up on top of one another.
As soon as Jace had cleared the bottom, Khoth slid down the rest of the way.
“Wow, ah, I don’t really want to touch this,” Jace was saying. “I don’t want to touch anything. It looks slimy.”
The young man was looking at a U-shaped control console that wasn’t metal, but appeared to be made of a segmented chitin. He realized as his suit scanned the ship, that what he had been assuming was calcanth or some variation thereof was not, but more of this organic chitin.
He recalled faintly from VI training that Khul ships were potentially grown as opposed to built.
But since on a cycle to cycle basis he hadn’t had to worry about what the Khul ships were made of--the Precursor weapons took them down regardless--he had filed that information away in the deep recesses of his brain.
He had been so emotionally compromised when he’d gone after Daesah, that he hadn’t even noticed this fact back then.
Now, the skin between his shoulder blades crawled and he wished he remembered that training better.
“They grow this,” Jace was saying as he gestured around them.
“Out in deep space, they…” Jace shuddered.
“The Khul we’ve seen aren’t the only ones there are.
There are others that use organic material, digest them and secrete this and other things.
All the components, all the structures, everything we see came from one of them. ”
Khoth nodded slowly. “In the early days when the Khul ships were examined it was theorized that they were organic, at least their interiors were and then they were cloaked in calcanth.”
“I would be amazed by what they can do, but since they’re just out to turn us into sludge to be used for their purposes, I’m just going to say that this is gross,” Jace said.
Khoth snorted. “I tend to agree.”
There was no seat before the U-shaped control console.
The Khul were too large for this and their bodies were not made for sitting in chairs.
Jace would have to lean forward considerably to adjust many of the controls that appeared to be joysticks made of flexible chitin pieces that glistened with a layer of slime.
Jace suddenly pulled his arms close to his sides. His breathing was erratic again.
“Jace?” Khoth came up behind him and placed a hand on Jace’s left shoulder. “What is it?”
Swallowing hard between every few words as if trying not to be sick, Jace asked, “Did you know that there are pipes or tubes or veins or whatever throughout the ship filled with the larvae?”
Khoth froze and his gaze swept the windowless space--it was ovoid and the walls were crosshatched with what he had thought was a design, but now thought differently--but managed to say, “No, but that is all the more reason to get control of this vessel for if this ship is full of the larvae, the Hive will be full of larvae and fully grown Khul.”
“Right. Absolutely, right.”
His words had broken Jace from his horrified paralysis. The young man went over to the controls and--with an expertness that Khoth found quite impressive--started to manipulate the switches and levers as if he had been doing so all his life.
Khul language in red pictographs appeared on formerly blank spaces on the console.
The Khul language had been difficult to decipher and, even now, it was believed that they were not fully understanding the deeper nuances of it as the Khul’s insectile brains were far different than most of the species in the Alliance.
But Jace, at least insofar as those pictographs used on the ship, appeared to have no difficulty at all.
“Okay, okay, I think… yeah, I think I’ve figured out how to shut off the auto-pilot here,” Jace was saying, nodding his head in satisfaction. “Ah, got it! Yes, I… oh…”
“What ‘oh’? That does not sound like a positive thing,” Khoth asked.
A screen flickered to life in front of the console.
It showed what was happening outside of the craft.
They were in orbit around Earth. The planet glowed beckoningly below them.
It was, admittedly, beautiful with its blue and white swirls, but it was far away.
Ahead of them, however, was the Hive. It was far closer than Khoth had ever feared it would be.
“That’s not a moon,” Jace whispered with a trace of hysterical awe in his voice, “that’s a space station.”
“What do you mean?” Khoth frowned. “That is not a space station, that is a Hive--”
“I know! I know! It’s a movie reference--oh, forget it! It’s too hard to explain,” Jace said. “Moon, space station or Hive, we are too damned close to it! Does the Hive have weapons? Oh, of course, it does, but they’re not aimed at us as far as I can tell.”
“No, they do not want to lose their cargo,” Khoth guessed and his gut twisted.
The Hive was structured as a stretched circle, long on the sides and narrower on the bottom, with large, regular circular indentations all over the outside.
The comparison to an Earth’s wasp nest was incredibly apt.
They even were the brownish color that such nests were.
But this nest was one-hundred times the size of the needle ship they were on.
The Hive loomed before them as they flew ever closer to it.
“Can you tell if they are aware of us?” Khoth asked, imagining the Khul scanning them right that moment.
Even if the Khul realized they were there, they wouldn’t destroy this ship.
One Pilot, one Alliance soldier and a cleaning bot would not be considered a threat.
They would simply bring the ship inside of the Hive and meet them with overwhelming force.
Then Jace and Khoth would be in pods, softening and screaming with tubes stuck down their throats.
I will kill Jace and myself before they take us, Khoth thought with sudden clarity.
He had no desire to die. He wanted to live. He wanted to fight and win. Jace was a marvel and that he should die after just showing them endless possibilities seemed… pointless.
I should not have brought him here, Khoth thought as well.
He had believed that it was safe. Relatively safe. But it had not turned out that way. By insisting that Jace come along--and then by not objecting to it when the young man enthusiastically agreed--Khoth had been handing the Khul the secrets of the Osiris.
I am going to have to kill us both. Khoth’s hand went to the hilt of the rahir. I am going to have to...
“They’re--shit, they’re scanning us!” Jace cried. His hands danced over the controls. “Gehenna, shut that scanner down or cloak us! Do something!”
I’ve cloaked our signatures to make us seem like we are cargo, she said briskly.
Khoth drew in a relieved breath and his hand dropped again. But this was only a temporary reprieve.
“We are going to be cargo if we do not get out of here,” Khoth reminded them both. “Can you not pilot us away from the Hive?”
Jace’s hands moved over the controls like darting birds. “I--I’m trying but… shit! We’re in a--a tractor beam!” Jace let out a hysterical laugh. “Of course, we’re in a goddamned tractor beam!”
“Is the ship not powerful enough to break free?” Khoth already knew the answer and, if Jace even attempted it, the Khul would know they were inside.
“No, no, it is most definitely not,” Jace told him and shuddered.
They both watched as one of the indented spots on the surface of the Hive opened and the ship they were on was pulled into it.
I will do this quickly. I will not let Jace suffer, Khoth thought as he realized now that they were going into the Hive and there was no chance of escape. I will not let the Khul have the information we possess.
Khoth silently closed a hand around the rahir’s hilt and was about to unsheath it. The armor was formidable. He would have to convince Jace to retract his helmet and then--
“I’ve got a plan!” Jace shouted. “Gehenna, can you keep up the cloaking once we enter the Hive?”
Yes, I can! She answered.
“All right!”
The screen before them split in two. One side was the image of them being swallowed by the Hive, while the other was showing them both schematics of the ship they were on. Jace suddenly pointed to one area that looked to be a slender space hidden behind some of the tanks.
“We can hide there,” Jace said.
“And then?” Khoth asked.
“And then we take this,” Jace held up the chip that was to destroy the human pods, “and we sneak it to the core of the Hive. It can be programmed to destroy the Hive itself. Then we sneak back to this ship, and in the commotion and hubbub, we get the hell out of dodge! Gehenna will stay here and make sure our getaway is clear!”
Khoth regarded him. “This is a very risky play. I calculate our odds of success are--”
“I don’t care what they are!” Jace held up a hand. “Because… it seems to me, we have two choices. We attempt this and get away or… you cut off my head like you’ve been thinking this past five minutes.”
Khoth blinked. “You knew--”
“Of course,” Jace said with a small smile. “You wouldn’t want me to suffer and you definitely can’t let what I know get into the hands of the Khul.”
Khoth blinked again. “You showed no awareness--”
“Because if this doesn’t work… Khoth, I want you to kill me,” Jace said with seriousness. Then with a flash of a grin. “But not just yet.”