Raelik stood at the foot of his star tree, his head held high, his knights all around him, waiting for the crown prince to disembark. The royal star tree dwarfed all the others. It had a large great eye on the trunk, and, despite its old age, had buds nearly ready to spring open less than an hour after landing. The royal family tightly controlled the distribution of great eyes and elder trees, always ensuring they held the grandest- and most deadly- in their own line’s fleets.
The door finally opened, revealing a procession of robed guards and attendants, with the crown prince in the middle of it all. He stood a head taller than the rest, and his armor was encrusted with green jewels that matched his flowing cape. On his head he wore a simple silver crown, his fiercely bright eyes glowering underneath it.
The gathered crowd bowed before him as he approached. His attendants split a path for him as he walked up to his vassal.
"Lord Raelik," he said with an easy smile. "Where is the condemned?"
"Greetings, Prince Jylik," said Raelik as he stood. "The former Lord Jacrill is in the dungeon of my mother star tree. We have arranged for the execution to be performed this evening, and have prepared all the rites."
Jylik nodded. "Have him brought here, please."
There was utter silence as Raelik motioned to a guard and he ran off. No one dared to question the prince or even break the silence.
A few minutes later two guards came down the ramp of Raelik’s mother star tree, escorting Jacrill. The prisoner whimpered as he approached the prince.
“Mercy, your Majesty, mercy!” he cried.
“No,” replied the prince. He took a thorn gun from where it was holstered on his belt, raised it to Jacrill’s head and fired. His form exploded and condensed, leaving behind his death crystal.
“There,” said Jylik with a smile. “That’s out of the way. Now we can get down to setting this operation back on track.”
Raelik looked on in shock. Just like that, Jacrill was dead. None of the rites had been observed. A condemned prisoner needed to be brought before a gathering of nobles and priests to be given final judgment. The ceremonies were meant to be held during the evening, but the prince had simply shot a fellow Astralbian as though in the heat of battle.
Jylik walked towards Raelik’s tree, carelessly crushing Jacrill’s death crystal into the mud as he went. His attendants followed behind him, with Raelik and his underlings falling in after. Still no one dared to speak.
***
In the wreck of the Ferryman, Reclan was marking the crates they needed with a marker.
"Ugh," she said. “We probably ought to just take all the crates. I think we'll have the space."
Doc shrugged in reply. He was busy comparing the measurements of the crates to the size of the hatch they'd come up through.
"I don't think they'll fit anyway. We'll need the engineer's plasma saw to widen this hatch enou-"
BANG!
"Uh oh," said Doc. They heard agitated voices from above, but no more shots. Then they heard shots from below, distant but distinct.
"Uh oh," repeated Reclan.
"I'll go down, you go up," said Doc, already climbing through the hatch.
A horrible scream came from above.
"Oh boy," said Reclan, clamoring up the ladder.
Doc looked out through the hatch and saw four figures trying to pick their way up the steep slope, followed by a horde of huge black centipedes. Wasting no time, Doc crawled out the door and edged off to the side, clipping himself to the hull with a climbing line.
He drew a bead on the closest centipede, which was closing in on Dekken. His shot was true, but the bullet glanced off the centipede's armored head, making it recoil but doing no real damage. Doc flipped a switch on his rifle and fired again. This time a bolt of yellow energy shot out of the barrel, burning and crackling through the centipede's armor. Doc nodded and picked another target. When the first climber got close, he grabbed her hand and helped pull her toward the door.
Another engineer slipped, falling back into the swarming creatures below. He was immediately clenched in the jaws of a centipede, which scurried back up and into one of the hills. Doc watched with a mix of horror and a guilty, morbid interest, unable to get a clean shot on the monster.
He returned to covering the remaining engineers and led them safely inside. Once they were in, he kicked the closest centipede square between the eyes and watched with satisfaction as it tumbled down the side of the wreck. Then he unhooked his line and jumped in through the door, slamming it behind himself. They could hear skittering and hissing through the door, but they were safe for the moment.
"Anybody hurt?" asked Doc. No one spoke, but Dekken and his two remaining engineers shook their heads. Doc nodded and went up the ladder to check in with Reclan and the others.
"A what grabbed him?" Reclan asked incredulously. D'Jarric was shining a light up into the twisted duct work, craning his neck to look for threats or clues, while Vanbrook loaded his solar crystal rounds into his revolver. Raivyn sat quietly, eyes closed, as if she were listening for something.
"A centipede, I'm guessing," said Doc. All four turned to him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"There are three engineers in the room below us," he continued. "The other two were taken. Those mounds are all part of a huge nest of some kind of social centipedes."
"I'm gonna throw up," said Reclan, her snout wrinkling in an expression of disgust. “If I see even one I'm gonna throw up. I guess it's a good thing we know what boxes we need. If these things only come out at night, maybe we can stay locked down in the parts room until morning, then grab what we can and go."
"Not so fast," said Doc, "I've got a feeling our friends aren't dead, least not all of them." They looked at him questioningly.
"Look," he continued. “There are many creatures that keep a stock of food stored for later consumption. When those creatures are venomous, they sometimes keep their stock poisoned and alive." The thought sank in for a moment.
"Raivyn," said D'Jarric. "If there were any such survivors, could you find them telepathically?"
"No," she said, shaking her head, "I lost track of the man snatched from this room a moment ago. He was heading deeper down, but that's as much as I know. My range doesn't reach too far, especially if I can't see my target. He didn't die while I was tracking him, so there might be something to Doc's theory.
"I didn't have any luck with the centipede, either. Their minds are extremely simple, but that makes for its own kind of defense. Higher animals and sapients give you a lot of leverage to work with; brute instinct is hard to override."
"Well," said Doc. “Everybody else better lock themselves in with the engineers for the night, I'm going to look for those poor souls, if they are still alive, that is."
"Hold up," protested Raivyn. “You're not just waltzing off into a nest of deadly predators. We need a plan."
"I'm not made of meat," noted Doc with a shrug, "so I figure if I move slow and avoid the centipedes as best I can, they'll leave me alone."
"I'll go with you," offered D'Jarric. "I'm not made of meat either."
"Alright," said Reclan. "Stop saying we're made of meat and I'll send some drones in with you. They can scout ahead for you."
"The drones are also not meat," said D'Jarric with a grin.
Vanbrook chuckled. Reclan shook her head and they all headed down from the fab shop down through the spare parts room and into the utility level where the engineers were gathered.
"Alright," said Raivyn. “You two head out. We're going to hole up behind locked doors with the engineers. Are you sure you don't just want to let Rec's drones do the heavy lifting?"
"Yes. If anyone's down there, time is of the essence and they'll need medical attention. Also, I was hoping Dekken might have some blast charges on him. If things go badly I'd like a way to bury as many centipedes as possible."
Dekken’s antennae bent upwards in a smile as he dug through his tool belt. "I knew I wouldn't regret grabbing this.” He handed Doc a small stack of coin-shaped charges. Doc nodded his thanks and headed up the ladder.
"I'll keep my drones ahead of you as best as I can," said Reclan. "The ship is designed to passively mitigate interference, so even without power I should be able to keep up. If you're out of the ship and in the nest itself, all bets are off."
While Doc and D'Jarric headed off for the tunnels, Raivyn made a call to the shuttle.
"This is Drixen, what's up?" answered the pilot.
"Hey, it's Raivyn,” she said, her heart warming at the sound of the pilot’s voice. There was something comforting about his confident tones. “We've got a predator problem."
"Oh, no. Any casualties?"
"Unsure," she answered. "The 'hills' are some kind of centipede nest. They took two engineers and a survivor we found. Doc thinks they may keep live victims, so he's looking for them now."
"Yikes. I'll relay all that to Jasken."
"Good. We're planning on getting the tools we need tomorrow. We're hunkered down in a sealed off part of the wreck but the tools are mostly outside. If we don't check in before sunset tomorrow it means something went wrong."
"Okay. Providence shine on you."
"You too. See you tomorrow."
During the conversation, Reclan's drones had reached the edge of the ship that had crashed into the nest. A couple of centipedes were hard at work securing the new addition to their nest in places, building dirt up around a doorway and cementing it in place with a sticky substance that oozed from their mouthparts.
Reclan was sharing her live drone footage to Doc's comm device, and he saw the scattered remains of a fellow robot, its crushed core stamped into the ground in the middle of it all.
"Hmm," he said thoughtfully. "That's none too reassuring."
They approached the place where the centipedes were working and stepped through slowly and deliberately. The centipedes stopped working, turning their feelers towards the walking curiosities. However, the faint scents of ozone and oil that the two gave off didn't smell edible, so the creatures returned to their work. Pleased he was right, Doc nodded and ambled along. Seeing the massive, wriggling bugs on the screen, Reclan shuddered.
Reclan’s voice came over the comm. "Ugh, my reception is getting worse. I don't know how much further I'll be able to scout before the screen’s just static. "
"Well," said Doc in a low voice. “This passage here looks wide and well traveled. It's likely to go down to a food storage chamber, if there is one."
The drones' cameras became increasingly fuzzy as they reached a limit of poor signal.
"That's all I can do," said Reclan. If you guys want to take control of the drones from here I'll explain how to link them to your comm tablets.
Doc walked past the hovering drones and into a cavernous chamber. Something viscous dripped onto the floor right in front of him, making him look up.
"No need," he said dryly. “We found 'em."
Reclan panned her drones' cameras up to to see clusters of bodies - Dromeans, Humans, and others who were obviously from the crew of the Ferryman, as well as other species like red cranes, and even a small boar ape. They were glued to the ceiling with the same sticky secretion they'd seen the centipedes using earlier. They were all breathing, though it was shallow and ragged.
Doc looked at a pile of bones in the corner. There were Dromean and Human skeletons there, as well. They were too late for some.
D'Jarric reached up to the low ceiling and tugged on one of the Humans glued to it. With a bit of effort and a squelching sound, they began to come free.
At the first noise, a centipede scurried over, fangs outstretched at the Solaran. D'Jarric backed off, leaving the victim hanging, half attached to the ceiling. The centipede wriggled its feelers over D'Jarric's form and, confident it wasn't edible or posing an immediate threat, it stretched up and began gluing the human back in place.
D'Jarric and Doc retreated cautiously from the room.
"Alright," said Doc. “This is where the bombs come in. We'll come back up to you guys, but I'm gonna plant the charges a few yards back in every tunnel that crosses our route back. Then we can blow them tomorrow when we’re ready to start our rescue op."
"Oh," said Reclan, realization dawning, "So we get a centipede-free corridor to bring our folks back through. Sounds good."
"Sounds risky," said Raivyn.
"Yeah," interjected Dekken. “You'll want to place those charges about ten yards off your main route. That should give you plenty of buffer so you don't trap yourselves."
"We'll work through the details when we get back," said Doc.
Shortly thereafter, Doc and D'Jarric were back with the others, bedding down for the night to try and relax. Those who slept did so uneasily.