10 days until Mars arrival

The gentle hum of the Xither-drive resounded through the enormous metal room illuminated in the violet light emitted by stores of synthetic Xitherium pumping throughout the chamber. A dozen engineers worked furiously down below, trying to repair the damaged control panel.

Arachna slowly lowered herself down a dark wall, careful to maintain her stealth cloak while also remaining in the shadows. There was no telling if Vapor was lying in wait. Or she could be somewhere else taking a rest. Yumens needed a lot of sleep.

Soldiers patrolled the room, maintaining their high alert.

This was it.

Arachna felt the metamorphosis upon her. She didn't have long. Could she do it? Could she hijack the engine room? It might just give her a path to survival. If her plan worked.

Are you sure you can do this? Beaky asked psionically. He too lurked in the shadows. Without a stealth cloak, the dactyl had to be extra careful. His reptilian body had an enormous wingspan but he could contract it to appear rather small if he needed to, about the size of a full-size Yumen.

No, Arachna said. But it's our best chance.

In reality, there was little that she could do on her own. It was the subconscious memories of Engineer Carlsen that she needed to put to work. She carried within her the quantum chip that she'd retrieved from Vapor. Her intuition told her it was important. Now she was here to find out why.

First, we need to clear the room, Arachna said, attaching a silk threat to the ceiling.

There are a lot of Yumen marines, Beaky responded. Will be difficult.

We fight, Arachna said. She increased the fluid flowing to her cephalothorax and scurried down.

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Arachna got to work.

The first set of webs was as sturdy and strong as she'd ever made them. These were designed to trap Yumens but they wouldn't be enough. She'd need more, stronger, and better traps.

So she made new ones.

She borrowed the patterns held within her mind, the infused knowledge passed down from Mother to offspring containing geometric patterns, trap designs of how to tension particular threads but not others, and whole webbed structures.

But there was more.

Within her was the creative knowledge to engineer, to create new patterns, fit for new enemies. She had inherited a creative genius from her host.

It turned out there were all sorts of things that could be done with a queenling's threads that she never contemplated. Silk thread could be bound together and twisted, forming an ultra-strong rope. If each thread were properly tensioned, that rope could be designed to be very useful.

The Yumen marines had large bulky armored suits that were clunky to navigate and could easily trip. So she tensioned cords of thread at a low level, designed to spring shut like traps, coiling around her victims' feet. She tensioned the bundles of threads so strongly that they'd not be able to get out with anything short of a laser saw.

Her thread could also be formed into cloth-like sheets if woven into interlacing patterns. While normally something she would never have been able to do, with the use of her hands she could weave them into a cross-hatch style to form a sort of sticky sheet.

These Yumens saw the world through the visor of their helmets. So she wove webs to fall from the ceiling like blankets, wrapping around her victims' heads, blinding them to their surroundings.

She also discovered that her threads would be the most useful if she coordinated their use with her most important weapon of all — Beaky.

The Yumens were on high alert for a loose dactyl. Why not use that to her advantage?

Arachna also made use of the tools she'd previously found in the utility closet: glue, screwdrivers, and a laser saw. First, she lathered the stairs with ultrastrong glue. Then she tensioned cords of silk, forming them into a sort of slingshot to which she attached the sharpest metal drills. Finally, she examined the laser saw.

The technology that powered the laser saw was not complicated—not for Engineer Carlsen anyway. When activated, the saw released a serrated tungsten stick coated in a liquid chemical compound that clung to the stick like resin. When a laser emitted at the base of the device shone through the compound, it solidified and glowed, turning so hot that it could cut through steel.

With a bit of tinkering, Arachna managed to release the liquid within the device and attach it to a strand of her webbing. To one end, she attached the hacked laser saw. What exactly would happen when she turned it on?

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