“Fire on the walls,” he shouted over the din.
Naxe and Riina immediately directed their fire at the walls and the facets began to shatter, letting in more and more real light. It stabbed into the dark, sending the fist-sized bugs into a frenzy and appeared to confuse the drones.
Tim deployed some weapons to fire on the walls too.
It happened so fast, Halliwell didn’t see it coming. But suddenly Riina went down, sprawled on her back. Then it hit him. It was worse than the frog jumping on his chest.
Naxe saw Riina, and then John go sprawling. She didn’t know if they still lived, just knew she’d be next. When the hit came, she was as ready for it as one could be. She hit the deck hard and she wished she hadn’t removed her headgear. She saw stars and had the breath knocked out of her. Her weapon flew out of her hand, clattering away into the semi-darkness.
Odon buzzed in, hovering over her, his legs just above her body. She had to assume he’d hit Tim, too. The robot would be hard to keep down, but she doubted if he’d be up fast enough to save her…
The bug face, with its multiple eyes and leering horrifying face, loomed over her.
“I just wanted to be your friend,” it hissed. “I just wanted—”
“You don’t know what it means to be a friend. You can kill me now, but you will never be me,” she gasped through lungs still struggling to regain their air from the hit to the floor. Her voice and thoughts froze as Odon raised one leg above her, the deadly spikes visible in the light they’d brought to the chamber.
“Then you and your voice will die, and I won’t have to hear it in my head ever again,” it cried.
The spike started down its downward plunge and Naxe knew it was over. She wanted to close her eyes as it drew out the moment, tormenting her, but she wouldn’t give it the satisfaction.
Then it gave out a startled cry as it was dragged off of her. It cried again, then the cry stilled.
Naxe pushed herself up on one elbow and stared.
Odon was half in, half out of Blooban’s mouth. Blooban’s tongue was wrapped around its body and pulling it inexorably deeper into a mouth that suddenly looked very large.
“Dang.” The word lacked John’s usual force, but it was his voice.
Naxe was not sure what the word meant, but if it meant what she thought? She sagged back down, staring at the broken lights over her head. She could only agree with the emotion in the word.
6
It would, Halliwell acknowledged ruefully, have been a photo finish if he’d had a camera. He couldn’t decide if he was sorry or sad he didn’t have photographic evidence of the bug’s final stand. Going forward? He’d have more respect for the frog. It had managed to dock with the Ugly Sucker ship and get down here just in time.
All that was left of Odon was a few pieces of leg and half a wing. The drones had dropped to the floor when the bug went offline.
Blooban had regarded him out of bulbous, phlegmatic eyes while it finished eating the bug, then said, “I had a search going through my databases to see if anything matched the Ugly Sucker ship. Just after docking, but before I boarded this ship, it found a match for this vessel. It is Anisoptian and once I’d read the data…” It paused for a blink and croak. “I was hungry, and we have a variation of the species on my home world.”
“I need to update my databases,” Tim said. He might have sounded annoyed. He’d left a dent in the floor where he’d hit it when the bug dived on him. But his armor appeared to be fine. He’d gotten up, but he’d have been too late if not for the frog.
And there it was. Another one of those thoughts he’d never expected to have.
“I have the ship on file,” Tim continued, “with a notation about superior cloaking, but nothing about the crew.”
Apparently getting knocked on his metal butt made him more talkative.
Tim, Riina, and the frog left for the bridge so they could get the cloak down and make contact with Halliwell’s people.
For himself, he was trying to figure out how to write his report on his Picard vacation. He glanced at Naxe. Now that it was over, she’d allowed herself to look shell-shocked. It was easier to think about what she looked like now rather than the moment the dragonfly had loomed over her, one leg ready drive to through her body. It had seemed as if it all slowed down. The drones kept hitting at him as he tried to get up. One had knocked his weapon out of his hand. He pulled his knife, even knowing it wouldn’t be enough. He’d been sure they were all going down when the frog’s tongue had wrapped around the bug and yanked him off her. And then it had eaten the Big Bad. He needed to get a new name for it though. It had lost its big bad creds when it got taken down by a frog.
Okay, he was shell-shocked, too. Even Picard would have been shaken up by this much crazy.
After standing irresolute when the others left, Naxe went and sat down on one of the fake tree stumps. With the fog dispersing and the lights full on, everything looked sad and fake, like a tourist trap gone wrong.
He crouched in front of her, suppressing a wince. His bones and muscles hadn’t liked hitting the deck. “Are you okay?”
“I am,” her gaze met his and she smiled wryly, “alive.”
“That’s about as good as it gets,” he agreed. This was the second time he’d come this close to dying in this galaxy. He hoped it wasn’t about to become a habit.
Tim’s voice came over his comm. “I have radio contact with our people, General.”
Our people. Halliwell liked the sound of that. And that meant the shield was down. He stood up and tapped his comm. “With the shield down, we probably need to have some eyes on the region until we get some backup to protect these ships.”
“I concur with your assessment, General.”
Which meant he’d already done it. “Thanks, Tim. For everything.”
“Of course.”
Did Tim actually sound embarrassed?
“Scanning only shows our people in the region. They should arrive—” Tim reeled off some standard space time that meant they’d be on their own for at least another day. As if he heard Halliwell’s thought, Tim added, “I’m working on getting some ships’ defensive capabilities online.”
“Thanks,” he said again. They could use the time to deal with, he hoped, the people on the troll ship. Naxe had spoken of her crew, but now that she had her memory back, would one of them mean more to her than she’d known? He was also anxious to hear her story. How had she ended up here? And what did it mean to be Tale Speaker?
She rose from her stump and seemed to take a minute to straighten her back. She saw him looking and grimaced. “I am not as young as I used to be and the deck was very hard.”
He nodded, trying not to notice that even tired and beat up his eyes liked looking at her. “Your…Blooban did well.”
“I don’t know how Blooban was able to sneak up on him. His eyes…” She shuddered.
“Dragonflies have a blind spot in their rear,” Halliwell said. Her eyes widened, so he added, “I had to research a similar species on our planet for a project when I was a kid. They aren’t that big where I come from, however.”