The doors to the engine room clicked shut, locks bolting Arachna in. Even the air ducts had been closed, metal grating pulling over them like the bars of a prison window.

Bam.

This shot nipped the top of Arachna's thorax, grazing her carapace. Ouch, that hurt.

I have to admit, I suspected there was more than one of you, but a queenling? the voice said. My, my.

Arachna was trapped. They had known she'd come here. To the engine room. It was the one place with ample supplies of Xitherium. Of course, the Yumens would set up an ambush here. It was the obvious thing to do.

The game is up, Vapor said. I'm looking right at you.

Bam.

This one sliced off the tip of Arachna's rearmost left leg. Her tiny clawed foot was torn clean. Horde, that hurt. Arachna balled her hands into fists. She needed to do something. And fast.

Stealth cloak, stealth cloak, stealth cloak, she thought to herself. If she could only activate her powers, she'd at least put the rifter on equal footing as herself.

Bam, bam.

The rifter had remarkable accuracy to fire a hand weapon at that range. A bullet embedded itself into Arachna's side. It burned as it tore through her carapace into her cephalothorax. Horde, that hurt.

She scampered and closed her eyes. Black acidic blood rushed out of her open wound onto the floor below, eating away at the metal. She felt dazed and woozy. Hive Mother, what was she to do?

A spray of machine gun fire erupted in her direction, shots going wide. The clanking of metal boots up the ramps toward her direction.

"I'm on it," a gruff voice said. It was a soldier. "We've located the hostile."

More voices, more shouting. Even cheers.

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"Not if I get it first," another voice said.

"Cool it," Vapor said, cutting in. "I can't work like this."

Was Arachna a trophy to be won? To be stuffed and mounted on a wall? Arachna clicked and chitted her extensible beak. No, she wouldn't allow that. Not today. Not ever. She narrowed her eyes and relaxed her mind, focusing her will on being unseen.

As her mind went blank, something deep within her welled up to the surface. A hidden power imparted by the Hive Mother, awaiting the right moment to bequeath to Arachna the first key unlocking her formidable potential to access the rift.

At that moment, her body shimmered turning translucent, the contours of her shape and frame still visible to the cautious eye. Then, that too disappeared.

Arachna blinked. Had she done it? It was a life or death situation as it had been in the past but this seemed different somehow. This had been intentional, and she had been at peace rather than full of panic and fear. Determined.

She scampered to the side. More sprays of gunfire erupted in her general direction, which she easily avoided by flatting her body against the floor.

But the shots from the rifter stopped.

Where did you go queenling? the rifter said psionically. We are going to kill you. There is no escape. I will find you.

Arachna chitted to herself. So these Yumens thought they could catch her so easily? Trap her like a bug in a jar? Well, they'd be in for a surprise.

She got to work.

The Yumens were coming in her general direction, and they already knew she was a queenling, or at least the rifter did. There was no sense in trying to hide presence any longer.

Scampering up and down, she wove a web, her spinnerette secreting threads strong enough to slit a Yumen's throat. Just like she had before, her body did the work. She barely had to think.

Arachna danced. Her spindly legs lowered her down one strand and then up another, nimble and delicate like the melodic clicks of a Hive Mother singing to her unhatched offspring.

She wove strands in orblike patterns. Within her mind, she sorted through over over a dozen different patterns, but for now, she'd stick with those used for hunting.

This web was a series of strands fanning out from a center, interconnected by alternative lines in a circle. Within this invisible web, she built in secret phrases.

Certain strands were designed to break on one side with tension built into the other. When stepped on in just the right way, they would snap like a trap, pulling her victim into a trap. She wove sticky strands with ordinary ones, memorizing their placement so only she could maneuver her web without becoming ensnared.

It was like a secret hashcode that was encrypted by a Yumen computer, allowing only its creator to view its contents. Horde, did she really understand computers?

After each web, she silently scaled the walls and wove traps in other areas of the engine room, hiding her translucent threads in plain sight. She might not have the strength or size of these Yumen marines but she had the cunning, and she'd use it to her advantage.

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