Zildiz guided the circle of her forehead light along the rust-ochred smear their prey had left for them to follow, marking where it disappeared round the corner of a crossroads. She dipped her hand in the sticky ichor and kneaded the sample between her fingertips.
Freshly wet, only just beginning to coagulate. With it came yellow streaks that gave off the sharp tangs of ammonia. It had urinated on itself out of fear.
Good. It was right to be afraid. She could all but taste the salt glaze of its sweat on her tongue. Had to be nearby. There was a faint trace of humidity in the air, the kind that people tended to create in an enclosed space. The signs were so clear that even the Fleet-man pointed out the trail with his monomachete and turned to her with a worried expression, momentarily blinding her by shining his light directly into her eyes.
“Sorry,” he mouthed, adjusting his head strap to lower his beam. Zildiz closed a fist in Rene’s face to reemphasize the need for silence and jutted out her chin in a wordless articulation that nevertheless managed to communicate three sentences at once:
“And so? You scared? Go on, then.”
Rene’s lips tightened into a straight line. Zildiz was more comfortable reading the true faces on people’s helms than the pudgy expressions of their innards, so she couldn’t be sure, but the pathfinder didn’t look too happy about being told what to do. Actually, he looked seconds away from wetting himself, too.
But if there was one thing she was coming to realize about Rene, it was that he did not lack for courage.
“Exar, are you getting anything?” he asked in a steady voice.
“There’s a slight increase in ambient temperature up ahead,” the sphere said, “He passed through here a few minutes ago. More than that, I can’t say.”
Rene nodded. He braced his shoulder against the scrap shield and muscled on ahead, his beam sweeping across the width of the vent as he brought his attention back to the front—
—moonlight jangled on the strings of a devil’s zither. In a synaptic flash of remembrance Zildiz was transported back to the time when her airwing had carried out a precision strike against the Night Weaver’s Loom, deep in the heartland of the enemy. Each commando had been equipped with whispering wings tailor-grown for noise cancellation, their blackened armour daubed with radiation-absorbing ceramic stealth composites processed by the special saliva of terrestrial caste Gallivants.
Seventy-five of them had flown into that seemingly deserted forest clearing. Only six had flown back out again, their black armour painted red all over.
One moment they were moving in tight formation almost wingtip to wingtip, silent and lethal, the epitome of aerial supremacy. Then the lead elements ran into the Night Weaver’s sieve. In the blink of an eye their bodies were ripped apart like paper figurines, men and women turned into spurting stumps and torsos, fountains erupting from their severed limbs to reveal the Night Weaver’s diabolical cobwebs drawn out in lines of dripping crimson.
Only sheer dumb luck and quick reflexes that had kept Zildiz from being scattered across the jungle along with the rest of the squadrons that night. Just as it was sheer dumb luck that now directed Rene’s beam, causing it to shine on the webbing at just the right angle so that their obsidian strands sparkled faintly. So faintly, in fact, that Zildiz almost mistook them for a trick of the light. Thankfully her battle-honed instincts knew better and she dropped her blade, grabbing Rene by the collar and yanking him back just in the nick of time.
Rene let out an involuntary yell, struggling against her, but Zildiz took a page out of his book and kicked out the backs of his knees. The door slipped out of his grasp and toppled into the hidden snare where it was divided into three uneven pieces, the webbing cutting through the glass windshield as neatly as it did the door’s many layers of metals.
“Holy Hollowores…” Zildiz swore, her voice shaking as the memory of the slaughter flooded back to her. Rene hung limply from her grip a foot away from the killing strands, too startled to utter a word
The fabric of his collar tore between her fingers, the pathfinder slipping out of her grip as he fell forward to his death.
No! Zildiz’s arm shot out snakelike, grasping Rene by the curly hairs of his head. He yelped as she hauled on him again, this time with so much force that she all but tore out his scalp. Rene fell backward onto her, banging and scrabbling at the walls of the vent in his desire to escape the invisible force which had ripped his shield part like it was nothing. So much for stealth.
“I’ve got you!” she shouted into his ear, “I’ve got you!”
It took Rene several deep breaths to regain his composure.
“What…the hell…was that?” he panted, pulling himself back up and rubbing at his back, “Ah gods, I think I twisted my tendons again!”
“The Leaper spun a trap with a special webbing mix. We call them devil's zithers. They’re almost invisible to the untrained eye.”
Zildiz got to her feet and chose to sheathe her blade. The last thing she needed was to accidentally destroy her own weapon by snagging it on the zithers. Then she unslung the coil of wire she’d brought along, supressing the surge of guilt she felt at violating a commandment of the Great Game.
‘Thou shalt spurn all tools and artifice save for that which is wrought by the All-In-One,’ the helixeers would intone whenever they applied a new graft.
Exomorphs were meant to be the only piece of technology the kindreds would ever need to thrive on Arachnea. The symbiotic armour answered every physical need they had, from breathing and eating to fighting and flying. Her people could adapt to anything the world had to offer with the right modifications to their gilt helix.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
In exchange for this gift, the Vitalus trusted them not to commit the same mistakes the Betrayers had made in submitting to the tyranny of the machine. Their way of life had accomplished nothing but ecocide on a galactic scale.
Now she was breaking that sacred trust. True, her exomorph was beyond repair and she was reduced to her soft innards, but it still felt deeply wrong to stoop to the level of Rene and his stunted culture. Tools of the hand were dangerous things that acted without conscience. Even a machine as simple as a wheel had the power unmake the delicate balance of the All-In-One, given time.
The ends would justify the means, she hoped. Once she accomplished her mission of signalling her position to the Vitalus, the god would surely forgive her. But first she had to take care of this verminous stowaway.
She tied the end of the wire repeatedly until she had a fat, heavy knot. She’d brought the wire along with a very different purpose in mind, but now she had to improvise. Zildiz tossed the balled-up end of the wire with an underhanded throw that sent it bouncing off the ceiling a dozen meters up the passage. As expected, her tool was immediately cut to pieces by the diadem webbing, Zildiz counting the number of segments and their respective lengths so that she could estimate the location of each strand.
There were six segments, so that meant five strands minimum. Three that were only an armlength away from Rene at neck height, and two more just around the corner set at hip level.
She unwound her remaining wire and began to spin it in a vertical circle, whipping it against the zithers repeatedly, pieces of cut wire skittering in every direction. Zildiz kept this up for a few minutes, ignoring Rene who observed her actions with growing perplexity.
“The strands are monomolecular, just like your sword,” Zildiz explained as she worked, “They can go through just about anything on the first cut. But with every cut after that they become increasingly dull. More importantly, their tensile strength is very limited.”
“But my sword never loses its keenness.”
“Yes, but it also has a power source built into its hilt. I suspect that the weapon somehow restores its edge after every incision you make.”
“And you’d be right,” Exar confirmed.
“Huh. How about that,” Rene said, glancing at his machete with renewed appreciation.
She felt a growing resistance through the vibrations of her tool and made Rene stand back for his own safety. Zildiz was down to her last meter of wire when the fragile zithers finally snapped from the repeated stress, their split ends carving into the sides of the tunnel. The thin aluminium walls of the vent warped and popped underfoot. They both froze in place, afraid that the whole tunnel would collapse and carry them hurtling down a fifteen-meter drop to the hard stone of the hangar floor.
The uncomfortable shifting sensation stopped after a moment and the pair of them slowly relaxed. Rene picked up the largest piece of the door and chucked it ahead of them just to be safe. The heap of scrap bounced off the far wall of the junction and fell to the ground in once piece.
“Heh,” he snorted, “Devious little beggars, aren’t they? I’m beginning to understand why your people hate Leapers so much.”
Believing that the immediate danger had passed, the pathfinder went to retrieve his shield, carefully avoiding touching the walls where the invisible zithers were no doubt still dangling. It was at this point that Zildiz also committed the crucial sin of complacency; her attention was still focused on the two remaining zithers around the bend that she still had to defuse. That, and the visible bloodstains had her convinced that the Leaper had gone past the junction up ahead.
Still rubbing at his sore back, Rene reached an overhead shaft where he could finally stand upright and straightened, raising his arms up high to get in a good stretch.
“Hhraaaghh!”
There was an ear-splitting screech as something came hurtling down the shaft at him. Rene only just managed to catch his attacker with his outstretched arms before its weight bore him to the ground. Zildiz saw a pale, slimy, emaciated youth sitting on Rene’s chest and trying to ram a bristling weapon into the pathfinder’s neck. The Leaper was naked except for the eight-eyed upper part of its helm—it had detached its lower mouthparts and was using them as a push knife. Rene had seized its stabbing hand by the wrist, holding off the venomed fangs as he tried to bring his monomachete to bear in the tight space. But his sword arm was jammed up against the wall, all while the Leaper had two arms driving down against his one.
“Zil…dizz…” he grunted as the points inched towards his throat, his triceps trembling with the effort, “Help…me….”
The Leaper saw an opening and drove a knobby fist into Rene’s throat, cutting off the rest of his words. As Rene choked and gasped for breath the Leaper tore its weapon out of his slackening grip and angled for another stab.
Zildiz snapped out of her daze, springing into action. It was too cramped in here for her long swords, so instead she wound the ends of her shortened wire tight around either hand and rushed at the Leaper with a shout of her own. It saw her coming and redirected its stab at her. Zildiz recoiled and brought up the taut wire between her hands, intercepting the knife hand and wrapping the cord around his wrist, immobilizing the threat. Not to be outdone, the Leaper slammed its forehead into the bridge of her nose.
Crunch!
Zildiz rocked back, tasting rubber and seeing double. The fangs! She had to keep her grip on the fangs! The venom would kill within moments. She dragged the push knife down, tried to rip it out of the Leaper’s hands, eating another flush headbutt in the process, then a punch to the side of her head. Knocked senseless, Zildiz sagged to the floor, still keeping her stubborn hold on the knife hand. The Leaper rained heavy blows on the back of her head, mashing her face against the floor as it tried to pull free from her cord.
The blows ceased. Zildiz lifted her groggy head and saw that Rene had grabbed the Leaper from behind, his face purple as he struggled to breathe through a bruised windpipe. Rene was trying to sneak his forearm under its chin to throttle it as he had once done with her.
But the little shit had other plans and sank its white teeth into the meat of Rene’s arm.
“Arrgh!” pathfinder howled and let go, clutching at a bite-sized hole in his arm, “What in the shit are you?!”
In reply the Leaper spat out the chunk of his bloody flesh and screeched again, a banshee’s yell that made Zildiz’s hairs stand on end.
Rene scooped up his monomachete, the blade singing its low tune as he activated it. But before he could bring it to bear the Leaper lashed out with both legs in a dropkick that sent Rene sprawling once again. His humming blade fell with him, sliced a huge rent into the side of the tunnel and through a supporting strut.
The floor sagged. There was a shriek of tearing metal, and through the rapidly widening gap Zildiz could see the cavern floor far, far below. An idea flashed through the dull haze of pain that suffused her.
The Leaper was still pulling hard at its knife hand. Abruptly she let go of the cord, letting it stumble back. In the same motion she pushed off against the side of the passage with her legs and drove her shoulder into the Leaper’s chest, slamming him bodily against the damaged section of the vent. The aluminium buckled beneath the impact, the entire wall crumpling and falling right out.
Too late Zildiz realized that she’d put too much strength into the tackle. They heard horrid grinding noise as the other struts tore loose from the cavern’s roof. Then all at once the entire ventilation system pitched to one side, and all four of them tumbled screaming into the sheer drop below.
#