Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

‘Don’t smash the electronics,’ Lain warned. ‘We may need… was that a flame?’

There was a brief flash and flare at the ant’s abdomen, which it was directing aggressively towards them.

Aiming was the word that came to Holsten’s mind.

Then that end of the cabin was on fire.

The crew reeled back from the sudden jet of flame that sprayed burning chemicals across the confined space. Nessel fell back over Holsten and Tevik, beating at her arm. Suddenly there was a line of fire between them and the airlock, leaping absurdly high, seeming to burn fiercer and faster than there was any reason for. And the ant was still spewing it out; now the plastics of the consoles were melting, filling the air with throat-catching fumes.

Lain lurched to the rear, coughing, and slapped at one of the panels, hunting for an emergency release. Holsten realized that she was trying to open the shutters to the hold – or where the hold had been. A moment later the back wall of the cabin irised out into open space and Lain almost fell through.

Scoles and Nessel went straight out with Tevik between them, and Lain hauled up Holsten under the armpits and helped him follow.

‘The ants…’ he managed.

Scoles was already looking around, but somehow the great host of insects they had seen earlier appeared to have disintegrated in just the few moments they were inside. Instead of the purposeful coalescing of an insect horde there were now just little knots of fighting insects all about – turning on one another or just wandering blankly around. They seemed to have lost all interest in the shuttle. Many were heading back into the trees.

‘Did we poison them or something?’ Scoles asked, stamping on the closest just to be on the safe side.

‘No idea. Maybe we killed them with our germs.’ Lain collapsed next to Holsten. ‘What next, chief? Most of our kit’s on fire.’

Scoles stared about him with the baffled, angry look of a man who has lost control of the last shreds of his own destiny. ‘We…’ he started, but no plan followed the word.

‘Look,’ said Nessel, in a hushed voice.

There was something approaching from the treeline, something that was not an ant: bigger, and with more legs. It was watching them; there was no other way to put it. It had enormous great dark orbs, like the eyesockets of a skull, and it approached in sudden fits of movement, a rapid scuttle, then it was still and regarding them once more.

It was a spider, a monster spider like a bristling, crooked hand. Holsten stared at its ragged, hairy body, its splayed legs, the hooked fangs curled beneath it. When his gaze strayed to the two large eyes that made up so much of its front, he felt an unbearable shock of connection, as though it was trespassing on territory he had only ever shared with another human being before.

Scoles levelled his pistol, hand shaking.

‘Like on the drone recording,’ Lain said slowly. ‘Fuck me, it’s as long as my arm .’

‘Why is it watching us?’ Nessel demanded.

Scoles swore, and then the gun boomed in his hand, and Holsten saw the crouching monster spin away in a sudden flurry of convulsing limbs. The mutineer chief’s expression was slowly turning to one of despair – that of a man who, it seemed, would next turn the gun on himself.

‘What am I hearing?’ Nessel asked.

Holsten had somehow just thought it was a rolling echo of the gunshot, but now he realized that there was something more, something like thunder. He looked up.

He didn’t quite believe what he was seeing. There was a shape in the sky. It grew larger as he watched, slowly descending towards them. A moment later a bright wash of light seared down from it, illuminating the entire crash site in its pale radiance.

‘Karst’s shuttle,’ Lain breathed. ‘Never thought I’d be glad to see him.’

Holsten looked over to Scoles. The man was staring up at the descending vehicle, and who could guess at what bitter, desperate thoughts were passing through his head?

The approaching shuttle got to about ten feet off the ground, jockeyed a little, and then picked a landing site some way back down the devastated scar that the crash-landing cabin had created. Even as it came down, the side-hatch was opening, and Holsten saw a trio of figures in security detail armour, two of them with rifles already levelled.

‘Drop the weapon!’ boomed Karst’s amplified voice. ‘Surrender and drop the weapon! Prepare to be evacuated.’

Scoles’s hand was shaking, and there were tears at the corners of his eyes, but Nessel put a hand on his arm.

‘It’s over,’ she told him. ‘We’re done here. There’s nothing left for us. I’m sorry, Scoles.’

The mutineer chief gave a final glance around at the looming forest that no longer seemed so wonderfully vibrant and green and Earth-like. The shadows seemed to throng with unseen eyes, with chitinous motion.

He dropped the pistol disgustedly, a man whose dreams had been shattered.

‘Okay, Lain, Mason, you come right over here first. I want to check you’re unharmed.’

Lain did not hesitate, and Holsten shambled after her, feeling only the faintest deadened sense of pain, yet still having to labour at both breathing and walking, weirdly disconnected from his own body.

‘Get in,’ Karst told them.

Lain paused in the hatch. ‘Thank you,’ she said, without so much of her usual mockery.

‘You think I’d leave you here?’ Karst asked her, visor still looking outwards.

‘I thought Guyen might.’

‘That’s what he wanted them to think.’

Lain didn’t look convinced, but she helped Holsten up after her. ‘Come on, get your prisoners and let’s get out of here.’

‘No prisoners,’ Karst stated.

‘What?’ Holsten asked, and then Karst’s men started shooting.

Both of them had taken Scoles as their first target, and the mutineer leader went down instantly with barely a yell. Then they were turning their guns on the other two – Holsten barrelled into them, shouting, demanding that they stop. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Orders.’ Karst shoved him back. Holsten had a wheeling glimpse of Tevik and Nessel trying to put the crashed cabin between themselves and the rifles. The mutineer pilot fell, struggled to his feet clutching at his injured leg, and then jerked as one of the security men picked him off.

Nessel made it to the treeline and vanished into the deeper darkness there. Holsten stared after her, feeling a crawling horror.

Would I rather be shot? Surely I would. But it wasn’t a choice anyone was asking of him.

‘We have to get her back, alive,’ he insisted. ‘She’s… valuable. She’s a scholar, she’s got—’

‘No prisoners. No ringleaders for a future mutiny,’ Karst told him with a shrug. ‘And your woman up there doesn’t care so long as there’s no interference to her precious planet.’

Holsten blinked. ‘Kern?’

‘We’re here to clear up the mess for her,’ Karst confirmed. ‘She’s listening right now. She’s got her finger on the switch of all our systems. So it’s straight in, straight out.’

‘You bargained with Kern to come and get us?’ Lain clarified.

Karst shrugged. ‘She wanted you out of the picture down here. We wanted you back. We cut a deal. But we need to get going now.’

‘You can’t…’ Holsten stared out from the hatch at the deep forest beyond. Call Nessel back just to have her executed? He subsided, realizing only that, at heart, he was just glad to be safe.

‘So, Kern,’ Karst called out, ‘what now? I don’t much fancy going into that to get her, and I reckon that would just involve more of that interference you don’t want.’