Arach C.M. Simpson (polar express read aloud .txt) 📖

queen…” and I wondered what the queen could provide that I could not. I hope she arrived soon.

18—Contracted to the Queen

The queen arrived, but would have been too late to save her guard, if one of the Odyssey agents hadn’t been carrying a syringeful of nans, as well as several applications of skin-seal.

“Can I help?” she’d asked, looking down at T’Kit, and brushed aside the wasp’s reply of ‘only the queen’. “She will not reach you in time.”

To my surprise T’Kit did not argue, but flipped an antenna towards me.

“She doesn’t know?”

I glared at the wasp. I might not know, but I’d guessed. May not survive, indeed!

Bandages would not work, but T’Kit finally agreed it would be a disservice to her queen if she allowed herself to die without trying to stay alive long enough for the queen to decide her fate. Odyssey combat operatives carried auto-injectors filled with nans, right alongside their emergency stim packs and adrenaline shots.

Man, I never wanted to meet these guys on a bad day…unless that bad day was mine and they were on my side.

It was both a relief and a disappointment when the operative didn’t respond. At least the party-line in my head was limited to the five usual culprits… oh, and every vespis psi in range.

T’Kit gave the buzzing laugh I’d heard from others, and I glared at her. I’d held the chitin apart while the agent emptied the syringe into one of the arach wounds—the ‘killing’ wound, if T’Kit was to be believed. After that, we used the skin-seal to close the opening, and hopefully keep any infection out.

I pushed away the nightmare thought that we had no idea what we were doing, that the vespis couldn’t tell which human treatments were safe for use on her species or not, and that we might be killing her with kindness, instead of saving her. For some reason, that made her laugh even harder.

“I die without help, when it is there, or I die from trying,” she said, when the buzzing jerked to a stop. “Either way I die, and bring my queen grief. It is better to try, than to do that without a fight.”

She made it to her feet when the queen arrived, and I caught the upwards quirk of antennae as the other vespis expressed surprise.

“What did you do?” the queen demanded, turning to the Odyssey agent, and me, and I didn’t know if she was relieved, pleased, or incredibly angry.

The agent explained, and the queen shamelessly dipped into her head to pull the extra information she needed.

“Oh.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then she very carefully peeled the skin-seal back and handed it to the agent.

“A good substitute,” she said, “but no replacement for this…” and she reached into a cavity on her thorax and pulled a sticky waxy-looking substance out of it. This, she smeared on T’Kit’s wound, nipping the broken edges of chitin together in her powerful mandibles. When she was done, she brushed an antenna over the closed injury.

“Please put more of your sealant here. It will aid the healing.”

Surprise touched the agent’s expression, but she obeyed, carefully smoothing another layer of the skin-seal over the queen’s handiwork. I saw her look at T’Kit’s wound, and pause, frowning. When she spoke, it was with hesitance.

“If it’s okay, we could analyze that… stuff you gave her, and see if the lab could synthesize it.”

Around us, the vespis reared back slightly, and I knew she’d offended them. The agent picked up on it, and raised her hands.

“I’m sorry. I meant no offence. I just thought if we could synthesize it, then anyone working with vespis could carry some with them, and use it as a sort of vespis first aid.”

The queen raised a foreleg, stilling the agitated chattering rising from her two closest bodyguards.

“Tell me of this first aid.”

And the agent did.

“And this synthesis?”

“Well, it might not produce something as good as the original,” and, here, the vespis grew less agitated, “but it might mean more of your warriors survive on the battlefield.”

What battlefield? I wondered, and the queen favored me with a quickly tilted glance.

“My people will take to the stars to find allies,” she said. “We will have Odyssey and your planetary Federation, Council, or whatever it is to guide us. The arach are coming, and the battlefields will be many.”

And may the Stars help us all, I thought, before I could stop myself.

Seven sets of antennae waved towards me, and I buried my head in my hands. That had not come out the way I wanted.

“I am sorry.”

“You have a very undisciplined mind,” the queen scolded. “Are you able to express what you meant?”

I was about to try, when Mack and Tens intervened, from wherever they were.

“Shut it, Cutter.”

I shut my mouth, and I shrugged.

“I’m sorry, your Majesty.”

“Never mind, Cutter.” She surveyed the room around her, and turned to her guards. “Help these people.”

She looked back at the Odyssey operative.

“Call your hive. Tell them we need their assistance. I will return to the control center to negotiate terms. Cutter, T’Kit, come with me.”

The walk to the control center was short and uneventful. Mack and Tens were waiting, and I realized the bodyguards assigned to them had accompanied the queen to the conference hall. I wondered if the freighter had been cleared, yet, and Mack paled.

“Odyssey cleared it,” he told me, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of human husks tangled in webs strung throughout the ship. “There were no survivors.”

I stopped, and closed my eyes. No survivors. I hadn’t known anyone on board the ship, but that…

“We will compensate the families of those who died,” the queen said, “and we have asked for purchase options. Odyssey will assist us in crewing the ship, and train our personnel. The humans of K’Kavor are in agreeance.”

I went to stand with Mack, and we watched as the queen negotiated a contract for Odyssey assistance, and Tens guided their cruiser in to dock. Their support