Chapter 5
- Nora -
The room is alive.
At first I think it's only the walls. They're curved and uneven, with no visible seams anywhere, and soft light glows beneath translucent layers of flesh-colored material.
Every surface looks grown instead of built.
The floor beneath me is warm, and every now and then a faint vibration travels through it, as though something immense has shifted somewhere deep inside the ship.
The light dims. Then another pulse passes through the room. I stay still and wait. A few seconds later it happens again. Slow and steady.
My eyes drift toward the nearest wall. "That's a heartbeat, or I am Minnie Mouse," I mutter under my breath.
Nobody answers. The giant Space Locust continues examining pieces of my flight suit as though he hasn't just carried me aboard the world's largest living organism. I pull the alien plastic sheet tighter around myself and force my attention back to my surroundings.
The more I study the chamber, the less comfortable I become. The walls curve upward into a ceiling that resembles the inside of some enormous shell. Thin veins of glowing tissue branch through it in intricate patterns. Even the furniture appears grown from the floor rather than assembled.
The refugees talked about ships like this, creatures large enough to cross the stars while carrying entire crews inside them. At the time I assumed they were exaggerating. Now I’m not so sure.
A ship is supposed to be built. This thing appears to have been born.
"Fantastic," I whisper to myself. "That's exactly what I wanted to discover today."
The Space Locust glances up from my equipment. For a moment his attention settles on me, and I find myself suddenly aware of how large he is. Then he returns to his work.
I lift both hands. "Don't mind me. Just admiring the décor."
Naturally, he has no idea what I'm saying. For a brief moment the absurdity of the situation almost makes me smile. Then I notice what's hanging on the walls.
A skull larger than my torso hangs above one archway.
Long fangs curve downward from a jaw the size of a snow shovel.
Beside it rests a weapon that looks specifically designed to remove limbs from very large animals, caked in what could well be alien blood.
Further along hangs a section of armored hide covered in deep scars.
My gaze continues moving around the chamber, and each discovery makes me less comfortable than the last. Another skull. Another weapon. A massive clawed talon. Something that might be part of a spine. Something else I sincerely hope isn't what it looks like.
The collection circles much of the room. They're trophies, proof that the owner of this chamber has hunted dangerous things and survived the experience often enough to build a collection.
Slowly, my gaze returns to the locust. The stories had prepared me for a monster.
The reality is more unsettling. The mandibles should make him easier to think of as a giant insect.
The antennae should help. The huge, dark emerald eyes should certainly help.
Yet every time I look at him, my attention keeps catching on the details that feel disturbingly familiar.
The posture. The expressions. The way he pauses to consider something before acting. The way he studies an object before making a decision.
There's too much person in him, too much male.
I watch him lift a damaged section of my suit. He turns it over in his hands, examines it from several angles, and sets it down before reaching for another piece. Every movement appears deliberate. Unhurried. Confident.
Around him, the room seems to belong to him in a way I don't fully understand. The ship responds to him. The crew obeys him. Even the creepy lobster defers to him.
Nobody questions him. Nobody hesitates. Whatever position he occupies among the Space Locusts, it clearly isn't a minor one.
"Great," I murmur. "Of all the aliens in the galaxy, I crash into somebody important."
His antennae twitch. For one ridiculous second I wonder whether he'd somehow understood me. Then he returns his attention to my equipment, and the moment passes.
I exhale slowly and look away. Beyond the transparent section of the wall, stars drift silently through the darkness. Inside, the living ship breathes around me while a giant alien hunter sits beneath a wall of trophies and calmly takes apart everything I own.
The day keeps finding new ways to get worse.
My gaze drifts away from him and settles on the pile of debris scattered across the floor.
Most of it is familiar. Small chunks of scorched hull plating. Pieces of my flight suit and the attached equipment and tools from the Intrepid 21. Seeing it all dumped together produces a strange ache in my chest. Those fragments are all that's left of my ship.
But there’s a small black shape among the wreckage, one that I saw the locust handle and put back down. I was worried Lucius would say something sarcastic and give himself away, but he stayed quiet.
He lies exactly where the Space Locust dropped him earlier. One side of his casing is blackened from heat damage, and part of his outer plating appears warped. His status lights remain dark, and at first glance he looks like just another ruined piece of equipment.
I hope he’s not. My eyes flick toward the locust before returning to the debris pile. The alien is still examining pieces of my equipment with intense concentration.
Carefully, I return my attention to Lucius.
Don't stare. If he's hiding, there's probably a reason.
The thought makes my stomach tighten. Lucius talks constantly.
He explains things nobody asked about, comments on situations that don't require commentary, and occasionally delivers entire lectures when a single sentence would do.
If he's staying silent now, then something has convinced him silence is the safer option.
I adjust the alien clingfilm around my shoulders and clear my throat.
"Lu-cough-cius." The sound is barely louder than breathing.
For several seconds nothing happens. I begin wondering whether I'm imagining things. Perhaps the crash damaged him more severely than I realized. Perhaps I'm staring at an expensive piece of dead hardware because I desperately need something familiar to survive this nightmare.
Then a tiny light flashes from deep within the debris pile. It’s red and gone immediately.
My pulse jumps. I force myself not to look directly at him again. Years of working with Lucius make the meaning obvious. Green means normal. Blue means miffed. Yellow means uncertainty.
Red means danger. Real danger.
“Well, what else is new,” I sigh. “I think this is a Space Locust,” I continue for Lucius’s benefit.
My rescuer slash captor looks up and growls something.
I turn my attention toward the stars beyond the transparent wall and force my breathing to remain steady while I process what the signal means.
For several moments I simply sit there. Part of me wants to run across the room and grab him. Another part wants answers immediately. Instead I remain exactly where I am, because Lucius isn't stupid. If he's pretending to be wreckage, then he's doing it for a reason.
A soft click draws my attention back toward the space Locust. He has picked up another fragment of my suit.
His huge hands turn it over with surprising care while he studies its construction.
He doesn't look angry, and he doesn't look impatient.
If anything, he looks fascinated, and he rumbles something. The lobster answers.
"Well," I mutter under my breath while keeping my eyes on the stars, "that's encouraging."
The locust glances up from the debris. I immediately produce the sort of smile people use when they're trying very hard not to panic. "Nothing important," I tell him.
For a moment he studies me, and then his attention returns to my equipment. To him, it probably looks as though I'm sitting quietly and behaving myself.
I decide there's no reason to correct that impression.
The alien lobster returns through one of the living membranes carrying something twice as large as itself.
At first I assume it's another piece of alien clothing. Then the object rotates, and I realize I'm looking into a pair of empty eye sockets. A skull.
The thing is covered in thick ridges that curve backward like horns. One side has been split open by a blow powerful enough to shatter bone that thick. Whatever creature it belonged to must have been lethal.
The lobster scurries across the room toward the locust and presents the skull with obvious pride.
His antennae lift and his posture straightens. Some expression passes across his face that I can't fully read, but the meaning is obvious enough: He's happy to see it.
The giant Space Locust rises from his seat, accepts the skull, and says something to the lobster before glancing in my direction. Both of them look at me expectantly.
A sense of dread begins forming. "Oh no," I whisper.
He carries the skull across the room and stops a few feet away. Then he holds it up for inspection.
I stare at the skull. Then I stare at him. "You're showing me your trophies?"
He says something and points toward a massive fracture running through the side of the skull. Then he taps his own chest carapace. When I fail to respond, he repeats the gesture more slowly.
"You killed it?" I ask.
His posture changes immediately. He spreads his arms slightly and raises his head.
I don't know enough about Space Locust body language to be certain, but I know enough to recognize pride. For a moment I simply sit there processing the situation. He's proud of this thing.
The same way somebody might proudly display a championship trophy or photographs from a successful expedition. The problem is that his trophy appears capable of cutting through steel.
"That's great," I tell him. "Really impressive. Horrifying, but impressive."
The lobster begins making excited gestures with both claws while the locust carefully places the skull onto a nearby stand. They exchange several comments, and then he turns toward the wall.
My stomach sinks. There are a lot of trophies on that wall. He selects a weapon next.
The thing is as tall as I am and appears designed for creatures considerably larger than humans. He carries it over and begins another explanation, occasionally pointing toward the weapon and then toward himself.
I begin developing a rough understanding of the presentation.
This one he killed, this one he trapped. This one tried to kill him first. This one was particularly impressive.
Several minutes later I've apparently received a guided tour of a giant skull, a massive spear, a section of armored hide, and what I sincerely hope wasn't once part of an intelligent lifeform.
By the end of it, I'm fairly certain I've attended the alien equivalent of somebody forcing guests to sit through vacation photos.
The strange part is that the experience changes my impression of him. The trophies are frightening. The creatures they came from must have been terrifying. Yet the locust doesn't behave like somebody trying to intimidate me. If anything, he seems eager to share something he genuinely enjoys.
That realization leaves me unexpectedly conflicted.
The stories we heard about Space Locusts never included this version of them.
Nobody described giant alien predators proudly explaining their hobbies to stranded pilots.
They described planets stripped bare, entire species gone, colonies reduced to rubble.
My gaze drifts toward the transparent wall where stars slide silently past in the darkness. Then I look back at the locust standing beside a weapon taller than I am, surrounded by trophies taken from creatures he personally defeated. Whatever else he may be, he's still a Space Locust.
I don't get much time to recover from the trophy presentation.
A membrane opens near the far side of the chamber and several smaller Space Locusts enter carrying trays. The smell reaches me before the food does, and my stomach immediately betrays me. Apparently nearly dying in a minefield hasn't cured hunger.
"Wonderful," I mutter. "Either dinner's arrived or they're finally getting around to the ritual sacrifice."