it!” Esra shouted over the fray.
Spread out along the land bridge, we fought the tide of agothe-faxl that swarmed up from the depths.
“You’re crazy!” Joan shouted back, but unless I was mistaken, I heard a note of exhilaration in her voice.
As for myself, the shel had stirred as if from a deep sleep, and energy zinged across my whole body. Armed with a blade in each hand, I found a rhythm and slashed and stabbed through the tangled mess of legs, aiming for their heads. I kicked the dead ones over the ledge, but they kept coming.
“Will this never end?” Amity cried. “I have a date with a cup of Brine Flower’s coffee!”
Smirking at Raxthezana’s nickname, I wished I could see his expression, but he was at my back killing the nasties on his side of the bridge.
When it seemed like not as many were climbing up, I chanced a look down the length of the bridge, this side of the boulder. Everyone was paired up like Raxthezana and I, and everyone fought the giant bugs, flinging their corpses aside to make room for more.
“These are the males?” I asked Raxthezana.
“Ik, the females are thrice as large,” he said, no sign of exertion in his voice.
Two more popped up in front of me, and I hacked downward in angled strokes, slicing through their heads with a single blow from each weapon. Peering over the side, I saw stragglers trying to come up, but for now there was a lull.
“Let’s get to the other side while we can!” I said and jogged to the boulder. Clipping in, I eased around it, unclipped then raced to the tunnel with my friends following close behind.
We clambered over a rockfall and slid down into the tunnel, expecting the stragglers to funnel in, but Esra and Naraxthel reported none followed as they perched on the rock fall and watched the opening.
I recognized this tunnel as a long and winding one that led to the one called Agothe-Fax Tunnel, and I realized we would reach the surface soon. I couldn’t wait.
The width of the tunnel required us to travel single file again, and when we reached the dead female agothe-fax that Raxthezana had killed so many days ago, the hunters had to shove and push its corpse out of the way to pass.
“If I had to guess, I’d say we’ve been underground for about fifteen years,” I said.
“At least,” Pattee agreed.
“I know I could ask VELMA what time of day it is outside, but I think I want to be surprised,” Joan said.
“Well, in some ways it doesn’t matter because my circadian rhythm is one hundred percent out of whack,” Amity said. “And what are the odds we’ll get any rest?” She started ticking things off her fingers. “We still have to stock the coffers with booty. Dethrone the Ikma. Install the BoKama. Defend both planets from invasion ….”
“When am I supposed to do my nails?” Pattee said.
Silence for five seconds, and then the humans filled the group channel with laughter.
We could do that for now, because we were surrounded by friends and our mates, and I decided to enjoy these last hours of relative peace. Sure, fighting to the death against fearsome beasts was nerve-wracking and heart pounding, but it was an honest day’s work.
Amity’s To Do list involved a lot of tension, angst, reconnaissance, and a hefty amount of luck if we were going to survive. Plus, I suspected Amity was joking. While I didn’t know her well, I guessed she wouldn’t involve herself or the rest of us humans in the political intrigues of the Theraxl people. I certainly wasn’t equipped to make those kinds of decisions, not to mention the fact that I came from a different culture and background—planet, galaxy and species—yeah no.
“Girls’ channel,” I said. “We’re not a part of the coup d’état, right? Because that’s above my pay grade.”
“No ma’am,” Esra replied. “We haven’t talked about specifics, like should we just hang out at home sweet Ikthe while the guys go help BoKama or what, but no.”
“Oh, we should stay at Pattee’s pod!” Amity said.
“That probably makes the most sense,” Pattee said. “Everyone can help me clear the rocks out of the field and reset my traps.”
“Mkay,” Amity said. “Not quite as fun as a sleepover but still fun.”
“What are the odds that two sets of friends would end up on the same flight path in their egress pods?” Joan said. “CeCe?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, not too bad if the person creating the pod assignments did extensive research and/or eavesdropping slash snooping to put friend or family groups together.”
“Wait, what?” Amity said. “You organized it that way? For everyone?”
“Well yes,” I said, feeling my face go hot. “Odds of survival go way up when you’re with loved ones, and I was really paranoid about getting discovered so making sure the friend groups were assigned was one of the very first things I did.”
“So, all the other pod groups are similarly organized?” Pattee asked.
“As much as I could figure out who belonged with who, yes,” I said. “I realize it was, um, intrusive and nosy. A bit random in some cases. But it came from a pure place. And I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“Oh CeCe,” Esra said. “I think you did a beautiful thing.”
“You’re a private person, Esra,” I said. “I couldn’t find out anything about you except that you’re a geologist. So, I selfishly stuck you with my group.”
“Co-Director Chris Clemmins was my partner,” she said. “He beat the shit out of me regularly and when I got the chance, I ran. I thought if I kept my head down, never made waves and stuck to my rotations, I could stay under the radar. I should have known I couldn’t hide anywhere in IGMC, but I thought the Kerberos 90 mission sounded like the farthest place in the universe I could get from him. Who knew he planned to babysit the mission all the way there?”
“There never was a Kerberos 90 mission,” I said. “It was a cover. We were about a parsec out from the place where they planned to evacuate the Lucidity and shoot 435 EEPs out into open space.”
“And with the acceptable loss of life at twenty percent according to VELMA-X, eighty-seven of those pods would have been expendable,” Pattee said.
Dead silence. There wasn’t anything else to say.