From every corner of the room, Botanists charged. They popped off the vines where they had been dormant and raced toward me. The ones on the ramp lunged forward.
I tried to dodge out of the way, but they were everywhere, tumbling up the ramp in droves, little green bodies like a river flowing uphill.
A handful of them went over the edge into the pitcher. More barreled up behind me on the ramp, and I grabbed at anything I could—slimy heads, slapping tentacles, sharp pincers. It didn’t matter. The force of the Botanist flood pitched me off the front of the ramp and into the spiked mouth below.
I scrambled for the smooth, round upper edge of the pitcher and got a single hand on it. My boots landed on a pile of Botanists, and more rained down from above, careening off me and into the acid depths. Inward-pointing teeth all around the inside of the tall pitcher poked into my skin as I clung to the side, feet slipping on the writhing bodies underneath me. The smell inside burned my eyes, and thick bile bubbled up in the back of my throat. The golden cone of light from above shone down, throwing everything around me into crazy, spiked shadows.
This is it. It’s swallowed us all.
The entire plant rocked all around me. More Botanists piled in from above, bouncing off my arms and shoving me into the teeth of the pitcher.
I kicked at the Botanists under my heels, and acid splashed all around us. My left hand was digging into the slippery ring around the top, and my right flailed around, trying to grab at anything that wasn’t a sharp spike, or the continued rain of Botanists from the top of the ramp, impossibly far away. Beneath me they scrambled, kicking up more acid.
My legs burned, and my pants were shredding away in the chaos. Drops of acid ate into my boots from all directions, and I kicked frantically, scrambling for purchase against the slippery sides.
More Botanists tumbled in, and my fingernails scratched away the rim of the pitcher.
My grip let go.
I flopped down onto a pile of writhing plants. There was no time to think. No time to react. The slimy, acid-coated creatures roiled around me until the cone of light from above was obliterated by all the bodies inside the pitcher.
With a sickening shudder, the pitcher exploded.
Botanists from all around the outside tore their way in, ripping at the thick green walls, shredding the spikes in their frenzy. Along with the other Botanists trapped inside, I spilled out onto the floor in a slimy plop.
Every single one of the little green monsters scrambled to get back in.
I rolled away, tearing at my acid-soaked sleeves and pants legs, which fell in hunks off my arms and legs. My boots flopped on burning feet, and my skin was on fire in angry blotches all over. I crawled under a vine and peered out at the chaotic scene.
Blue lights shot up and down the woody vines, and the whole ship vibrated under my hands and knees. Hatchways opened all around, and more Botanists poured in from every side, leaping over the vines and their slower brethren to attack the shredded remains of the pitcher.
One of the Botanists emerged from the pile of thrashing bodies, holding aloft the silver bottle I had dropped into the spiked hole.
Twenty more dove on top of it. Bits of green plant flew everywhere.
The ship shuddered. All around the floor, Botanists tore each other to shreds, lost in the chaos of destruction, each one ripping apart anything with a trace of the pheromone on it.
They shredded the slimy sides of the pitcher. They flung themselves onto each other. Tentacles, pincers, and flat, lily-pad feet flew up from the melee. The smell of wet, green pulp mixed with the acrid acid stench that clung to me.
I stumbled to my feet and pushed my way through a hoard of Botanists, all racing into the room to throw themselves onto the remains of the pitcher. The hatch to the storage room was open, and I sprinted through it and down the hallway.
Botanist guns, empty crates, and all manner of debris littered the corridors. They must have literally dropped everything as the pheromone wafted through the ship.
In bugs and humans, the pheromone made its subjects adore the queen.
Apparently in the rudimentary, human DNA-infused brains of the Botanists, it ignited a single-minded frenzy. They would stop at nothing to get to the drops of scent. They would rip each other apart to find it.
I raced down the halls, struggling to remember the path they had dragged me down. The remains of my boots flapped around my feet, and I stopped for a second to kick them off. The farther from the pitcher’s room I got, the fewer Botanists I saw. I paused to scoop up one of their guns from the floor. Sooner or later the pheromone’s power might wear off.
The ship bucked and shook under my feet. Its brain, the great green pitcher, was dead, ripped to shreds by its own living buds.
How long could it fly with no brain? I envisioned it crashing back to the ice moon, splitting open on its surface. Or maybe we had escaped its atmosphere and would drift forever, just like the Horizon Delta.
The rumbling growl of the thrusters hitched. For an instant, my stomach lurched as the floor stopped pushing on my feet and the ship’s momentum faltered. It roared back to life and I stumbled, catching myself against a wall.
I careened around a corner and ran straight into three small Botanists. They were milling around in a circle, clearly confused and directionless as the ship shuddered around them, dying as the last of its pitcher brain fell to pulpy bits. One of the Botanists was the many-legged one I called Spider the first time I saw it.
A few drops of the pheromone must have dribbled onto my shirt when I dropped it. I was hardly wearing any of it anymore, with both sleeves hanging in burned, torn shreds around my arms.
They froze, turned, and attacked.