Chapter XLIII – Scapegoat Mechanism

  Some part of Nova’s mind appreciated the peril of their journey. At any moment the forest around them could become a writhing hungry mass. Movement through the thick undergrowth was slow. Visibility was low. She had been told that on the first trip to the crash site, the group had only escaped when Ostara had intervened to somehow calm the vines.

  But she was not focused on this.

  That was not to say she felt calm.

  Far from it.

  Instead, her mind was constantly replaying images to her. Sensations too. She felt callused hands grabbing her. She kept having moments where she suddenly felt as if she was bound and gagged again. She would instinctively struggle, only to find herself free. A few times Harry clearly noticed, but for the time being he said nothing.

  What concerned her most of all, among these many cruel tricks her mind was playing on her, was that she kept conflating images of Kal killing her captors with images of the captors themselves. Sometimes she would imagine it was them doing the killing. Sometimes as they leered down at her, it was Kal’s face, not theirs.

  He saved me, she told herself.

  But she felt that shower of blood and viscera descend on her time and time again. Her skin still felt sticky with it, mingling with all the accumulated grime. She remembered looking straight through a man’s body.

  He did it to save me.

  He isn’t one of them.

  A vine brushed against her as they walked. She startled, looking around wildly. Not because she thought it was trying to devour her. But because its woody surface felt like those hands that had been placed over her mouth, that had caressed her face.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, willing it all away, as if trying to awaken from a nightmare. But even before she opened her eyes, the images still played before her mind’s eye, a continual loop of those horrible… was it hours? She didn’t know.

  It won’t leave me.

  She opened her eyes. Kal was moving up ahead, vibro-saw in hand. At his waist was a weapon he had taken from her captors. Another was slung over his back.

  She shuddered involuntarily.

  She didn’t want to look at him.

  No: she couldn’t look at him.

  She turned her eyes elsewhere. Looked up through the canopy. The morning light poked through in a few places, but where they walked was still dark.

  “Be careful where you step,” said Jiwen. “If anyone notices bones, speak up immediately. The vines are messy feeders.”

  Bones.

  She remembered how the man’s ribs had swung outwards with that one mighty blow.

  Leave me alone! she screamed internally.

  But the images continued.

  Harry felt a slackening of the tension when they stepped out of the jungle into the clearing. Flowers bloomed across the wreckage. He only fully realised how tense he had felt when he felt that slackening. He had been ready. Ready for the coiling of a hostile vine, the ricochet of a bullet off a tree. Something. Danger felt as if it loomed near, though he did not know what form he expected it to take.

  At a certain point the sounds of gunshots behind them had stopped. He wasn’t entirely sure whether it was because the battle was over, or because they had journeyed too far from the settlement, but whatever the case, silence then reigned. Indeed, he was once again struck by how oddly quiet Luanyuan’s jungles were: he expected jungles to resound with the cries of birds and insects and mammals, but not here, not on Luanyuan. The vines, he supposed, produced no sound. And everything that did, had long ago become their meal.

  The ship before them was not large. Harry had heard from the others that it was much smaller than the Amrita, but this was truly a tiny starship. It was surprisingly intact. There must have been some attempt to decelerate before the impact for it to be so preserved.

  “Be careful,” announced Kal. “We don’t know what we’ll find.”

  They didn’t have long to wait, in order to find out. Tavian and Ostara emerged, standing atop the wreck. Tavian gave them a wave.

  “Good to see you all alive,” he shouted down.

  They wasted little time making their way up. Harry saw the moments Tavian and Ostara each noticed Kal’s and Nova’s appearances. He was sure they would ask, but Harry himself didn’t know what to tell them. Whatever had gone down, neither of them was offering any details.

  Ostara will know what to do, thought Harry, She always does.

  “Everyone intact?” asked Tavian.

  “More or less,” replied Harry.

  “What happened back there?” asked Tavian. He directed the question at Harry, but his eyes were half on Kal and Nova. “Things—”

  “Things went downhill,” said Jiwen.

  “The Commandant became a vine snack,” explained Harry.

  “And Michael was killed…” said Jiwen, quietly, his eyes downcast.

  “What condition is the colony in?” asked Ostara. When he looked her way, Harry noticed that her lower arm had a bandage on it.

  He was about to speak, but another voice came from behind Tavian and Ostara. “That religious woman. Mrs Fu. She now controls the colony. Or she will soon.”

  Harry only now saw that Mu had emerged. Yet there was something distinctly off about her. Ostensibly she looked the same as ever she had, but it was in the manner in which she carried herself, in her facial expression.

  “When we left Gao and Ma were fighting for control,” said Jiwen.

  “They won’t win,” said Mu.

  “How do you know?” asked Jiwen.

  “Because she will lead them here,” said Mu. “She has offered the Blood to the survivors.”

  “I—” began Jiwen, clearly not following.

  “Mu’s a Starseer,” said Harry. “She’s almost certainly correct.”

  “A Starseer…” he murmured.

  “She will bring them here. The mob. They will want to kill all of us. To claim the Blood,” said Mu.

  “Then we don’t have time to waste,” said Kal. “Let’s get everyone together and work out our next move.”

  “Kal’s right,” agreed Ostara.

  “They do not want us to leave,” said Mu.

  “Who is ‘they’?” asked Tavian.

  Mu herself looked puzzled for a moment. “Mei Xuelan. Sh-she doesn’t want us to leave.”

  “The Cap said to protect her,” said Nova.

  Harry whipped his head around. It was the first time he had heard her speak a full sentence since they’d reunited with her and Kal back at the colony.

  “The Cap did?” asked Tavian.

  “Apparently it’s important,” offered Harry, after it became clear Nova wasn’t going to say more.

  “We don’t have time to fuck around,” said Kal. “You got any idea how soon they’ll be here, Mu?”

  Mu shook her head.

  “Then what I said before, stands. We don’t have much time, so we should assume the bare minimum – the amount of time it takes to get here from Port Arthur – is all we have. And we need to work out an escape route. The Cap wants us to protect the girl – well the only way we do that, is by getting her away from that mob.”

  “We--she won’t leave,” stated Mu. Her voice was quiet, but firm.

  “Like hell she won’t!” shouted Kal. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Harry saw it out of the corner of his eye. The way Nova recoiled the moment Kal raised his voice. He must have seen it too, because a moment later he took a deep breath and slackened his posture.

  “Let’s go inside. We will discuss this further,” he said. His frustration was clear, but he was working to contain it.

  “I think that would be best,” said Ostara. Harry caught her gaze for a moment. Her eyes didn’t convey specifics, but the look she gave said much of the predicament they now faced.

  They headed inside. As Harry passed Ostara she placed a gentle hand on his arm, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He looked back as he stepped into the starship’s interior. Mu gave Nova a hug, the other girl’s arms hanging limply at her side, her posture tense. He saw Mu whisper something into Nova’s ear. She slowly nodded.

  Everyone else jumped in behind Harry, one by one.

  Beyond the room they now found themselves in, Toghrul appeared in the hallway.

  “Welcome,” he said.

  Harry hadn’t had much to do with the Yarkanese convict, but this was not the voice he remembered. No, if it reminded him of anyone, it was of Mu – it was the same voice she had spoken with moments earlier. Sure, he spoke with a man’s voice, with a Yarkanese accent, and she sounded distinctly like a young woman raised in the Imperial Court, but underneath those superficial aspects, there was an intonation, a cadence, an emotional emptiness that was eerily identical.

  The image of a torrent of viscous, many-coloured liquid flashed through Harry’s mind.

  “Hello,” he said, pushing the image aside.

  “This way,” said Ostara, and she stepped past the rest of them, leading them to another room.

  As Harry stepped into the room, he felt something drip onto him. He looked up just in time to see another drop descend. This time the liquid wasn’t in his imagination. From some crack overhead, it leaked. Like the ship itself was bleeding.

  The room they had entered had other occupants. The two guards. A young girl.

  And something huge. It was covered in some sort of chitinous substance. Feathery, moth-like protrusions came from its head, beneath them banks upon banks of opalescent eyes. Its head had the vaguest suggestion of human form, as did the rest of its body, but it was warped, its torso grotesquely elongated to allow for rows upon rows of limbs, each ending in distinctly human hands. From points along its back, other, decidedly inhuman, tendrils had extended, penetrating into the walls of the starship. They were semi-transparent and he could see the heartbeat pulse of many-coloured ooze, as it was injected into the metallic walls.

  He only now noticed that on certain spots the walls had what looked like pustules emerging, the many-coloured ooze threatening to burst forward from them.

  The young girl looked at the new arrivals with a beatific smile as Mu and Toghrul went to sit cross-legged on either side of her, paying no heed to the thing behind her.

  “Hello, friends,” she said. “I see you are admiring Xixi. They grow more magnificent by the day. It makes us so happy.”

  There was an unsettling quality to that voice. It did not sound like it should come from a young girl. And it didn’t sound like one voice. It sounded like there was an echo to it.

  “What’s happening here?” said Kal.

  The girl looked to him now. “Your desire brought you here. There are things we all want. Desires we all share. Drink Xixi’s Blood and those desires need not be in conflict.”

  Kal scowled. “I’ll do no such thing!” he snapped, all the while eyeing the being.

  “I think we should have a frank discussion,” said Ostara.

  “We supposed to ignore that, then?” asked Kal, indicating the alien presence.

  “Xixi will not harm us,” said Ostara.

  “I’d rather we speak as a crew,” said Kal, seemingly through gritted teeth. He was still restraining himself, Harry could plainly see.

  “Very well,” said Ostara, with an obliging smile. “Do you mind if myself and my crew have a private discussion?”

  The girl shook her head. It was a gesture that still had a degree of child-like innocence to it. “That’s okay,” she said. “There are no secrets in the Hive.”

  The Hive?

  “Of course,” said Ostara, an unreadable expression upon her face. “Mu? Shall we?”

  Mu hesitated a moment, then nodded and silently followed. They went a short way down the corridor, then stepped into another room.

  “So that thing is fucking terrifying,” remarked Harry, once they were inside. “Is that really where this Blood that everyone’s so keen on comes from?”

  Mu appeared almost offended. “I think Xixi is beautiful.”

  “Well, m’dear, I can’t say I’m with you on that, but to each their own… I guess.”

  Kal seemed keen as ever to press forward with the matter at hand. “Do you know of any escape routes?” he asked. “We have not been able to establish contact with either Kang or the Amrita yet.”

  Ostara shook her head. “There are no maps of this area. We are hundreds of kilometres from Heye.”

  Harry smiled. “So not to put too fine a point on it, but what you’re saying is that we’re fucked?”

  Tavian indicated Harry with his thumb. “I think Harry might be onto something. We’ve got some crazed mob of convicts on their way. We’re surrounded by a jungle that wants to eat us, and that thing in there is getting larger and stranger by the day.”

  “You can manipulate the vines?” said Kal, looking to Ostara.

  “They listen to me to some extent… but I doubt I can hold them off all the way to Heye.”

  “We can’t leave,” said Mu quietly.

  “We will leave,” responded Kal.

  This was going in circles. Any relief that Harry had felt upon reaching the crash site and getting away from the settlement, was rapidly abating.

  “Can that thing do anything apart from, y’know, bleed?”

  Harry witnessed a flicker cross Mu’s face. For a moment he saw something familiar there – something of Mu. Then it was gone. She didn’t respond to him. She fell silent.

  Kal seemed to be considering things. “I don’t want to rely on that thing, but perhaps – perhaps – there is some benefit in staying here. We will be outnumbered and we have only two firearms – unless there are any onboard this vessel – but the ship gives us a somewhat defendable position. Plus, we can assume that via the fighting last night, and the passage of the jungle, the enemy will suffer severe attrition.”

  “You sure turned around there,” said Harry.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” said Kal. “But if we head off into that jungle, with no clear route or destination in mind, sooner or later we will all die. At least if we stay here, we might have a little more time to try and contact the Amrita.”

  There came a knock. Jiwen was standing in the doorway. “I know you wanted to discuss things among your crew, but I overheard some of what you said. It’s not much, but I might have something useful to contribute.”

  “By all means, Mr Zhang, join us,” said Ostara.

  Jiwen entered.

  “What can you tell us?” asked Ostara.

  “I have been doing research on Luanyuan for years. Looking through old news sources, any documents – LPDC, Imperial Government, whatever – that I can get my hands on,” he explained.

  “And?” said Kal, impatiently.

  “Well, I recently discovered a significant trove. They outlined much about the origins of Luanyuan and…” he looked Kal’s way, “…that’s not important right now. But I also discovered that there may be an abandoned Imperial research facility somewhere in this area. I don’t know where…”

  “Well, what do you propose?” asked Kal. “We head out into the jungle and hope we stumble upon it?”

  “Let’s hear Mr Zhang out,” said Ostara.

  “All I can offer is that I can keep looking, trying to find its location. I have my tablet here. There are more documents I haven’t yet gone through yet. I only hit upon this particular tranche just before everything started falling apart back at Port Arthur. If Mr Nyx here wants to plan a defence, then that gives us two possible plans.”

  “I’ll definitely take two bullshit plans over just one,” said Tavian. “No offence.”

  Something occurred to Harry. “Do any of this ship’s systems still function? Maybe Nova can take a look at them. Could be a way to get a signal out?”

  Nova barely reacted to the suggestion.

  Whatever’s on her mind… maybe a task will distract her.

  “What do you think, Nova?” asked Ostara.

  “I can try,” said Nova, her voice affectless.

  “We’d appreciate it,” said Ostara, her eyes lingering on Nova briefly, before she addressed the group more broadly. “Kal, you’re in charge. Tell the rest of us what you need. Mr Zhang – not you, Harry; Jiwen – see what you can find about this research facility. And Mu?”

  Mu’s vacant eyes glanced Ostara’s way. “Perhaps you can talk to Miss Mei about our plan. She is our host, and she deserves to know what is happening.”

  “I can talk to her,” said Mu, “But she already knows.”

  Harry had suspected as much, but disliked hearing it spoken out loud.

  What are we going to do with you, Princess?

  “Find out if there are any weapons on board,” said Kal.

  “I will ask,” said Mu.

  Kal had lingered after everyone else had left. Ostara was the last out of the room apart from him. As she went to leave, he called out to her.

  “I don’t know if the ship itself is listening to us,” he said, “But we should talk. Just the two of us.”

  Ostara stepped back into the room. “What is it, Kal?”

  Kal paused a moment, considering his words. “I doubt we can defend this place,” he said. “But Mu doesn’t want to leave. She’s under the influence of that thing, or that girl… maybe you know more than I do about that?”

  “Not as much as I would like,” replied Ostara. “For now, though, I don’t think they mean us harm. At least not physical harm.”

  “But they want us to join them – like Mu and Toghrul have,” said Kal.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t do cults,” replied Kal.

  “I suspect this is more than just a cult,” said Ostara. “That being – Xixi – is a nexus of the Starflow. It’s almost like a miniature star descended from the heavens.”

  “I’ve noticed something else about this place. It’s not overrun by the vines. Sure, there’s plenty of them about, but there are no defences in place here. No vine wardens out each night. And yet while a whole colony has just about collapsed, this little girl has survived here.”

  “I believe Xixi is resisting them,” said Ostara.

  “Resisting, or controlling?” asked Kal.

  Ostara didn’t respond with words, but her expression plainly conceded the validity of the question.

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want to spend anymore time around it than we need to,” said Kal, “But Mu really doesn’t want to leave. I don’t want to put our hosts on alert.”

  “I see,” said Ostara, “So, you have no intention of actually defending the ship?”

  “We will die if we try,” said Kal. “Unless those convicts get slaughtered in the jungle, we don’t have the numbers, the weapons, nor the defences to hold this position.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “We have saws. We cut down trees under the pretence of building defences. We assemble a raft. You calm the river plants, we float away.”

  Ostara considered. “Do we have time?”

  “Fucked if I know,” said Kal, “But you got anything else?”

  “There’s Jiwen’s idea.”

  “Sounds like a shot in the dark to me.”

  “Probably.”

  “But we have other problems, one of which I was hoping you could shed light on: why does the Captain want us to protect that girl?”

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  “The Captain doesn’t share everything with me.”

  “It’d make it a whole lot easier to plan if I knew what was at stake,” replied Kal. “But if the Captain insists, then so be it. I follow orders. Which brings us to the last problem: we need to get that girl, Mu, and Toghrul out of here, and they do not want to go.”

  “We need to kidnap them.”

  “You can think of it that way. But none of them are in their right minds, as best I can tell. But, truth be told, I don’t give a shit about the morality. I came here with a mission: get Toghrul out. Now the Cap tells us to protect that girl. And we don’t abandon crew, so Mu comes too.”

  “There’s something reassuring about the way you think, Kal,” said Ostara, with a faintly sad smile. “The world seems simpler.”

  “Not much simple about the world right now. And we’re in the dark about everything. We don’t know what that thing is or what it’s done to Mu and the others. We don’t know what the Captain’s goals are. We don’t know how much time we have.”

  Ostara nodded.

  Kal continued, “But I’m gonna get to building a raft, unless you’ve got anything better. If you don’t, work out how we’re going to get everyone out of here.”

  “I will do what I can,” said Ostara. “And Kal? I know time is of the essence… but what happened to you and Nova back at the settlement?”

  “Some of the convicts grabbed Nova. I freed her,” said Kal. He had neither the time nor the inclination to go into any more detail. Even answering Ostara’s question, he was reminded once more of the way Nova had looked at him. He changed the topic instead, “You wanna tell me what happened to your arm? Every time I’ve seen you it has fresh bandages on it.”

  Ostara looked around the room before lifting up her arm. Taking a deep breath, she began unwinding the bandage. Before it was fully removed, Kal had already seen it. The inner layers of the bandage – those that were touching the wound – were stained. But not stained red.

  Stained with many colours.

  The vibro-saws used by the convicts of Luanyuan made quick work of the vines, but they were slower when used against the more substantial trees of the rainforest. They were small devices, held in a single hand, and their blades were not long enough to cut clean through a full trunk. This made Tavian’s work frustratingly slow-going – made even more frustrating by the most concerning aspect of the whole situation: they did not know how long they had until an armed and hostile mob descended on their location.

  Yet he hummed quietly as he worked, reaching out to the Starflow to gather its calming power, channelling it into his mind and body, strengthening both his physical endurance, and providing himself with a mental fortitude born of mystical calm. For the moment called not for reflection or questioning: it simply demanded work and hardened resolve.

  Without that calm, the situation may have been overwhelming. Kal and Nova had been drenched in blood, yet neither would speak more than a few words about what had happened. Mu was losing her mind, succumbing to the influence of the very Blood Tavian had given to her. Nor had it escaped his notice that Ostara bore an injury that she continually tended to, but refused to address. And beyond it all, their time was dwindling and they had only the slimmest of hopes of escape on a world profoundly hostile to humanity.

  Nor was it lost on Tavian that the Starflow was doing strange things here on Luanyuan. Not like the chaos of the Tempest on Yarkan – no, here it was a single great current, pouring down to the surface like a mighty river. He had sensed it when he’d reached out. And he was certain that creature with Mei Xuelan was the focus of it all.

  Presently, he completed his cut through the log he had been working on, the saw jerking free of the woody confines of the cut, having reached the far side. He switched it off.

  Something rustled in the bushes.

  He scanned the perimeter of the clearing, half expecting to see the writhing of the predatory vines. Instead, his eyes picked up on nothing. The jungle was dark, dense, unyielding of its secrets. Nothing emerged.

  He returned his attention to the log. They needed to make planks out of this. For a moment the task seemed impossibly large. Long ago, on misty Cáerthand, Tavian had done wood-working with his father. But that seemed another life. Now, their slender hopes of survival depended on completing this task in an impossibly short amount of time.

  He closed his eyes a moment, drawing more of the Starflow to him, letting that calm come back, channelling it through his quiet, but insistent humming.

  But he was interrupted.

  This time the noise was coming from the other direction. It was unmistakably footsteps. His eyes burst open and he turned to see Mu striding towards him. Quickly. She laid her hands on both his shoulders. Her eyes were frantic, her face alive with emotion.

  This was Mu. Truly Mu.

  “You have to help me!” she said.

  “I—” began Tavian.

  “I don’t know how long I can keep fighting… I don’t think I have much time left.”

  “The Blood?”

  “The Hive. I can hear them. Xuelan. Toghrul. The convicts. I can’t stop hearing them. And sometimes it’s like I can see through their eyes… it fills my dreams. It’s all I can think of—”

  “You are strong,” said Tavian, allowing the vibro-saw to clatter to the ground by his side. “You can do this.”

  She shook her head. Fear radiated from her eyes, wider than Tavian had ever seen them.

  “Please… Ostara’s been doing something… I don’t—” she interrupted herself, “It’s not enough. You must know something. A song. A ward… I can’t do this alone. There’s so many of them. And just me to fight them. Just me. Please…”

  Her final word was spoken quietly, softly, plaintively. “Please,” she repeated, even softer.

  He grabbed her shoulders, as she had his. “Come with me,” he said. “Just hold on.”

  He removed his hands and stepped past her, in the direction of the ship. Her own hands fell limply by her sides.

  “Come on,” he demanded, and grabbed her hand in his, giving it a tug. Now she followed him.

  The planks could wait.

  Or maybe not.

  But they would, regardless.

  He knew this was urgent.

  The had barely re-entered the ship, when Toghrul and one of the guards appeared, blocking their path.

  “Tavian. Mukushen,” said Toghrul. “What are you doing?”

  “This doesn’t involve you,” said Tavian. His preternatural calm had left him. He felt a tingle of anger at this obstacle. “Get out of the way.”

  “It involves us,” said the guard.

  Even as the words were spoken, Tavian could feel, through Mu’s hand, the slight tremor, the outward hints of an internal battle.

  “We will talk to you after,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” said Mu. Someone who didn’t know her might have thought she sounded calm. Tavian could hear that she was not.

  Neither Toghrul, nor the guard, looked like they were about to relent. Tavian reached out to the Starflow again.

  “Lady Anu: let intrusive gaze be swept aside by listless daze; let unbidden foe’s eyes to elusive distraction rise.”

  The change that came over the two blocking their path was instantaneous. He tugged Mu past them, leading her down the corridor. He found a storage closet, opened it, and pulled her inside with him, closing the door behind them, so that they were shrouded in shadows.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Sometimes Lady Anu will distract a foe so that they forget about you, even while they’re looking right at you,” said Tavian. “It won’t last,” he added.

  She gave the slightest of nods. Even in the dark he saw her swallow.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “You are under attack. What you’re feeling: it isn’t part of you. It’s something from outside. You are strong. That’s how you managed to break free long enough to speak to me. It’s how you’ll win. I am going to help you, but you need to do exactly what I say.”

  As he spoke, he did everything in his power to sound reassuring and confident. In truth he had no idea what he was doing, but his instincts usually led him down the right path. Sometimes.

  He began singing, very quietly. Nervous dark eyes watched him. It was a song he’d played once previously on Luanyuan. As he sung, he reached out through the Starflow, as he had in a distant bar, far down the mighty Cang Teng River. A hymn of calm in the face of horror.

  If you grant me this power a second time, Mighty One, I’ll make an offering at your shrine when I’m next in the League.

  He saw it – Letheion – burning in the void. He heard its timeless whispers from beyond. All became shrouded in nebulae of pink and blue and purple. Soon he and Mu were far from Luanyuan, drifting in the expanse of the Soma Spiral.

  “Give this warrior rest,” he said, and it was as if he was listening to his own voice from far away.

  Mu’s eyes closed.

  He ceased his singing and soon they were back in that dark storage closet. He caught her as her form slumped, propping her up with one arm. With two fingers of his other hand crossed over, he traced a bardic rune of fortitude on her forehead and whispered an invocation to Lady Anu.

  He pushed open the door, and peered out into the corridor. He could hear others somewhere in the wreck, but he could not see anyone. He picked up Mu’s limp form in both arms, then stepped out into the corridor.

  The room where we met with the others.

  He headed that way. Mu was light in his arms. He reached the door and glanced once more about before stepping in.

  He had heard no movement, but now he saw it, gazing at them from the far end of the corridor. Many eyes. Coiling form.

  Xixi did not move. Did not make any sound. Only stared, unblinking, at Tavian.

  “She’s not yours,” he said defiantly and stepped into the empty room.

  Kal was a man of exceptional focus. Even in the war against Xerxes, where the agents of the enemy would do all in their power to sew discord, fear, and madness, he had always clung tightly to a singular truth: destroy the Host. Everything else was distraction. Everything else was a ploy by the enemy.

  Yet, now, even as he committed to carrying out his escape plan, his mind spun, returning time and again to what Ostara had shown him. What did it mean? She had not tried to hide it from him. She had freely shown him when he’d asked. There was no reason to distrust her. Yet it was one more thing on this forsaken world that made no sense. What were they even fighting against?

  He shook his head. It didn’t matter. None of that mattered. He knew the goal: he had to get the crew, Toghrul, and that damned girl to safety. The enemy was anyone who stood in the way of that goal.

  If he had been able to hold onto his singularity of purpose in the face of the shadowy tendrils of the Writhe even as they dragged all reason and order into the Void, he would do so now. Complete the mission. That was all there was for it. He carried on, working at the task at hand.

  Even as he worked, he noticed Tavian was nowhere to be seen. That concerned him. They had too little time as it was, they all needed to be doing everything possible with what little they had. But he would not be disheartened: he just had to work harder and faster still. They just needed the most rudimentary of rafts to get them across the river. From there they would have the time to work on something better to get downriver.

  As it turned out, events were conspiring contrary to his plans.

  He perceived the distant sound only at the fringes of his awareness, but his instincts kicked in. His eyes shot up, scanning the darkened jungle. There was nothing to be seen by the naked eye. But he didn’t have to rely on the naked eye. He reached to his belt and pulled out the pair of multi-modal binoculars Nova had made for him. Switching them to thermal, he scanned the jungle again.

  What had been hidden a moment earlier, was obvious now. A large group of people. Moving their way.

  Well, shit.

  That wasn’t enough time. Not enough time at all.

  No time to waste.

  He grabbed the log he’d been working on and hoisted it up on his shoulder, then set off at a run back to the ship.

  The enemy wasn’t moving swiftly, carving their way through the jungle, but they weren’t far now.

  He hurled the log through the breached hull.

  Immediately, others came running.

  “What’s happening?” asked Harry.

  “Our friends from the settlement are almost here,” said Kal.

  “Shit,” murmured Harry.

  “My thoughts, too,” said Kal. “Help me gather up whatever timber we’ve managed to cut. We might be able to rig up a barricade of some description.

  “On it,” said Harry.

  Tavian appeared a moment later. “What’s happening?”

  “Where the fuck were you?” demanded Kal.

  “Something came up.”

  “Something else has come up: enemy’s here.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Come help us get the timber on board.”

  Tavian didn’t need more urging. Kal bounded out. He assumed neither Tavian nor Harry had the strength to lift whole logs, so he ignored the smaller pieces that had already been cut away and grabbed the logs himself. After he’d hauled a second on board, he scanned the jungle once more.

  Closer.

  Perhaps he could slow them down. He unslung the assault rifle from his back and took aim.

  This will give them something to think about.

  He launched off several bursts into the forest. Whether he hit anything or not was immaterial: what mattered is that they slow their advance.

  Distantly, he heard yelling.

  Good. They’ve received the message.

  When he returned to the ship with the third log, Ostara was there, as were Toghrul and Xuelan.

  “The enemy’s arrived, I presume?” said Ostara.

  “Just about.”

  “We don’t need to worry about them,” announced Xuelan.

  “Sure about that, kid?”

  “Certain.”

  “Well, I ain’t taking chances,” growled Kal.

  Tavian and Harry were returning, hauling more of the wood they’d cut.

  “That’ll have to do,” announced Kal. “Let’s start blocking the entrances to the ship.”

  “Alrighty,” said Harry.

  He paused.

  “Actually, I say that, but you’re gonna have to give me more direction, Big Guy. This really isn’t my area of expertise.”

  Kal set to work, directing the other two on what to do. These would not be serious fortifications. But they would be better than nothing.

  Xuelan and Toghrul seemed to watch them with detached bemusement. Kal, however, didn’t have time to be annoyed. He worked as quickly as possible, directing Tavian, Toghrul, and now Ostara as they worked on placing the wood in each of the hull breaches.

  He made his way into another room. There was a smaller breach here. It was a low priority, but the others had the larger breaches more or less covered now.

  He reasoned the enemy probably had the flame throwers they’d used against the vines, but wouldn’t risk using them here for fear of destroying the Blood. Hopefully, at least.

  The Blood, he thought.

  Was there any advantage in drinking it? Would it make them stronger?

  He banished the thought.

  But Xuelan seemed to sense it.

  He felt her presence behind him. He spared her only a single glance. She stood there – small and serene – smiling as if she had no cares in the world.

  “Would you like to drink of Xixi’s Blood?” she asked. “A burden shared is always lighter.”

  Somewhere deep inside himself he felt a pang of desire for what she offered.

  Instead, when he spoke, he said, “I will never drink it.”

  “No? But your crewmates feel differently, don’t they?”

  He paused just a moment at those words.

  Just a moment.

  “The Princess has already drunk deeply,” said Xuelan. “And what about the mechanic girl? She is afraid. But she doesn’t have to be. She craves the Blood. It would bring her peace. Perhaps if you are not ready, I will speak with her.”

  This time Kal did not merely pause. He swung around. Something had changed about the child that now stood there. There was a profound malevolence to her smile. The innocence was gone.

  And behind her loomed that damned thing.

  He never saw it move.

  Yet it did.

  “Do not go near her,” said Kal, his voice a low growl, loaded with threat.

  In response Xuelan merely smiled wider. “But we can bring her peace. You only brought her fear.”

  The room seemed to darken around Kal. Despite that focus of his, his tools dropped from his hands.

  And Xixi finally moved. Row upon row of human-like hands were raised, palms facing upwards, cupped. And from its wrists the Blood flowed freely, spilling over its hands, and splattering across the floor.

  “Why fight?” asked Xuelan. “Within the Hive you will want for nothing.”

  Nova sat on the bridge of the ship. She had spent more of her time staring at the controls than working on them. She simply couldn’t concentrate.

  Still, she had ascertained it wasn’t a lost cause. The ship’s main power source had failed, but the contingency power was functioning, at least intermittently. There wasn’t much to work with in terms of boosting signal strength, but she had managed to broadcast a distress signal. It was unlikely to reach the distant Amrita, but at this stage anyone turning up would be better than their current situation.

  Since completing this simple task, though, she had barely made any further progress.

  She stunk of blood. Her clothes, previously sticky with it, now crackled and crunched when she moved. Every moment was a reminder of that dark dorm, of the events that had transpired there.

  She slumped forward, elbows on the console in front her, head in hands. She let out a shuddering breath.

  I want to forget, she thought.

  A droplet of Blood splashed across the controls in front of her.

  She lifted her head, and saw another drop fall. With a shaking hand she reached out, scooping a little up on the tips of her fingers. Tentatively she raised those fingers, till the glistening droplets were right in front of her eyes.

  I want to forget.

  The panel beeped. A small red light was flashing. She wiped the Blood away and reached out, tapping the screen. There was a text-based message.

  We have received your distress signal. Please be ready for departure. I will be at your location shortly. Travel to extraction point will be on foot.

  The message was signed off:

  Dr Zhao Yingtai.

  Tavian saw the moment that Fu Yuanjing stepped out of the jungle into the clearing. He watched her through the firing slit Kal had instructed them to leave between their wooden ‘fortifications’. She did not move like a woman who feared being fired upon by hidden observers.

  Behind her the other convicts began emerging, a middle-aged woman and a young boy coming to flank Fu herself. Tavian recognised the boy: Chen Xiaoyu. There was still a nervous energy to the boy, but he was far from the sobbing child Tavian had encountered not so many days prior.

  Now he stood at the place of honour.

  A companion of the prophet.

  Tavian heard a noise and turned. Harry was there.

  “What now?”

  “Where’s Kal?”

  Harry shook his head. “Don’t know. He was finishing up blocking off some of the smaller gaps. Ostara?”

  “Checking on Mu.”

  Harry moved over to stand by Tavian’s side. “May I?”

  He glanced through the gap. “What happens if we shoot her?”

  “I won’t stop you if you want to try,” said Tavian. “But she doesn’t look like she’s all that worried.”

  “Isn’t she mad?”

  “Maybe. But she still managed to be the one in charge at the very end.”

  “Not much of a prize now, is it?”

  “Never was, if you ask me.”

  “You’re not wrong,” said Harry.

  Tavian walked to the doorway and leant into the corridor: “They’re here!” he yelled.

  No sooner had he done so, than Nova came running down the corridor, emerging form the bridge. “I got a message!” she yelled.

  Ostara appeared a moment later.

  “Dr Zhao!” declared Nova breathlessly. “He messaged me. He knows a way out.”

  “Dr Zhao?” said Tavian. “He died. The plants took him.”

  “I dunno, man,” said Nova, “But that’s what the message said.”

  Harry had overheard and came up behind Tavian now. “Could be a trap?”

  “Could be,” said Tavian, “But given we’re already trapped… eh?” he shrugged.

  “Have you replied?” asked Ostara.

  “Yep,” said Nova. “He’s on his way.”

  “Doesn’t that mean he’s just going to arrive in the midst of this shit-show?” asked Tavian.

  “I warned him we were about to be attacked,” said Nova. “I, er… they’re already here, aren’t they?”

  “They are,” confirmed Tavian. He needn’t have done so however – the voices from outside were audible now.

  He glanced around. Kal still wasn’t there.

  “Where’s Kal?” he asked.

  No one ventured an answer.

  That was wrong.

  There was no way Kal wouldn’t be among them directing the action. There was no way he hadn’t heard Tavian yell on a ship this small.

  Tavian knew where the other breach was. He darted down the hall.

  When he reached the doorway, he immediately saw Kal inside. He was on his knees, head bowed, like a penitent in prayer. And before him loomed Xixi, Blood flowing from its many wrists and drizzling over Kal’s head.

  And watching over them, a wicked smile upon her face, was Mei Xuelan.

  “Oh, fuck no!” yelled Tavian. He grabbed the pistol at his waist and fired it into the ceiling.

  Kal’s head snapped around. As did Xixi’s and Xuelan’s. Many eyes were upon him. He felt a menace permeating the Starflow all about them.

  “Ostara…” he said, taking a step backward.

  She was there in a second. It took her a fraction longer to assess the situation. Green light flared around her and vines detached themselves from the walls, lashing out towards Xixi. In response the alien being open its mouth and let out a high note, sounding like bells and choirs. Golden dust erupted from its great coiled form.

  Tavian felt a sharp pain surge through his head. He staggered. Forcing his eyes open as Xixi’s alien cry abated, he saw Ostara standing steady, unbent.

  “YOU HURT XIXI!” screamed Xuelan. She ran forward, a look of pure hate on her face.

  Ostara stepped deftly aside as green light flared once more about her. Xuelan staggered.

  Tavian ran forward and grabbed Kal’s shoulders. “C’mon, Big Guy!”

  Kal seemed to snap out of it at that moment, springing to his feet. Tavian barely perceived the fleeting disorientation before it was gone, Kal having sized up the situation. A fraction of a second later the rifle was off his back and fired directly into Xixi.

  Once more the unworldly cry went up. Tavian clapped his hands to his ears as he staggered under the assault.

  Then with a great lunge, Xixi whipped its form about, striking Kal, sending him flying through the nearby wall with a deafening crash, metal twisting and breaking about his form.

  There was another green flash, and before Tavian knew what was happening Ostara grabbed his arm tugging on it as she ran past. He got her point and sprinted down the hall, away from the room. Kal came thundering after them. Tavian didn’t look back, but the deafening clamour of automatic weapon fire assaulted his ears.

  “What’s happening?” demanded Nova. She was leaning on the wall, a little trickle of blood emerging from her nose.

  As if in answer to her question, Toghrul and two guards emerged from another room, leaping at Kal. One immediately copped the butt of a rifle to the face. Tavian didn’t quite catch what happened, but he heard a crunch and a wet squelch.

  Down the other end of the corridor the wall erupted outwards in an explosion of golden dust. Tavian’s eyes could make no sense of what he was seeing, a chitinous mass of hands and tentacles beginning to flood out into the corridor.

  He didn’t pause to consider what was happening, instead flinging open the nearby doors and grabbing Mu’s sleeping form.

  “Which way out?” asked Harry, once more behind him.

  “The cockpit,” suggested Nova. “It faces away from the convicts.”

  “Into the jungle!” yelled Kal, firing in the incomprehensible mass that was expanding into the corridor, even as the surviving guard and Toghrul tried to drag him down. They may as well have been flies trying to bring down an elephant.

  As Kal struggled, Jiwen emerged and darted up the corridor, glancing continuously over his shoulder at the monstrosity at the far end of the ship.

  “We need Toghrul!” yelled Ostara. Looking back as he reached the cockpit door, Tavian saw her whole form once more shrouded in emerald light.

  Both sides of the corridor started cracking. Then a seething mass of vines exploded out, reaching towards the expanding abomination.

  Tavian pulled Mu through into the cockpit. He lifted his pistol and aimed it at the cracked glass.

  “Think this will do it?” he asked Harry and Nova.

  “Doubt it,” said Nova. “That’s made to withstand impacts at a decent portion of light—”

  She didn’t get to finish. Golden light flooded across everything. Rising and falling notes began to sound out, coming from every direction at once. Tavian tasted blood in his mouth. His strength left him and he felt Mu’s unconscious form tumble from his arms, even as he collapsed to his knees.

  Something surged past. The cockpit exploded outwards. The golden light and sound abated.

  Kal stood outside, Toghrul in his arms.

  “Come! Now!” he bellowed.

  “Help me,” said Tavian to Harry, as he grabbed Mu. Nova went first, then Ostara. Jiwen followed. Finally, the two of them carefully lifted Mu through the shattered remnants of the cockpit, emerging into the daylight beyond.

  For good measure, Tavian held out his pistol and fired off several rounds into the ship behind them.

  Moments before he and Harry leapt from the ship, he saw her, against the backdrop of a pulsating mass of chitin and flesh: Mei Xuelan, standing and staring directly into his eyes.

  He and Harry leapt.

  Pu Mengqi had never known anything like the sound that came from the crashed starship. It rose and fell in volume and pitch. Soon it became impossible to tell where the sound was coming from.

  When finally it abated, her eyes were blurry, her sense of balance faltered. Yet when she looked about she saw Fu Yuanjing standing as resolute and unmoved as ever, gazing toward the ship.

  “What was that?” asked a convict, once one of Ma’s thugs.

  “There are some it seems, who wish to withhold the Boon of the Stars from us,” replied Fu.

  She took several steps forward. When she spoke, she turned to the armed convicts at her side. Her voice was firm and cold.

  “There is a girl inside,” she said. “She is keeping the Eutric Blood for herself. She no doubt has other wicked tricks up her sleeve. But she is all that stands behind us and our desires. Once she is gone, there will be no need for further violence. We will live in abundance.”

  “Do we… do we kill her?”

  “Yes,” replied Fu. “Storm the ship.”

  “A young girl, you say?” asked another convict.

  “This is no ordinary girl,” replied Fu. “You witnessed that just now, did you not? Yet, even if she were, it is sadly at times the noble duty of the innocent to die in service to the many.”

  She paused, examining each of the convicts around her.

  “We stand upon the final threshold. The deprivation we have long suffered on this world nears its end. We need only stay true to our faith a little longer.”

  The strange cry once again went up. Only Fu stood resolute against it as others bent and trembled.

  “Stay strong!” she cried out to them, her gaze never wavering from the ship before them.

  The inhuman sound ceased once more.

  Pu Mengqi wiped a tear away, and only on inspecting her hands saw that it was blood. She saw others with bloodshot eyes, crimson trails extending down their cheeks, or flowing across their upper lip.

  There came a great cacophony from the far side of the wreck. Gunshots.

  Pu saw a small group run from the ship, into the dense jungle.

  “Should we pursue them?” asked a convict.

  Fu shook her head. “They are not important now. We have no need for those who reject the Light of the Nine. The jungle will eat its fill.”

  Pu glanced back the way they had come. At least twelve of those who had set out from Port Arthur had not made it here. The jungle’s hunger was never satiated.

  Others never even made it out of Port Arthur.

  Pu had watched as it happened: Lieutenant Liao, Gao Yunqi, Ma Jinhai. They had been brought, hands bound, to the edge of the defensive ditch, even as it still smouldered.

  Fu had told them they had misled and brutalised the people of the settlement. That they had craved the Blood for themselves. She had asked them if they would embrace faith, disavow their previous ways.

  Gao and Ma were defiant. Liao was silent, trembling in fear.

  Pu remembered how she had flinched when the first shot was fired, how Ma’s body had rolled down into the ditch.

  “You’re mad,” Gao had yelled. “You will lead us to ruin.”

  The next shot rang out. Down went Gao’s body.

  “Please—!” began Lieutenant Liao, at last finding her voice.

  The shot was fired.

  Lifeless, she fell.

  Fu had surveyed the scene, looking from face to face, taking in the reactions of all present. Then Pu had watched as the Master’s countenance shifted. She smiled.

  “There are no obstacles here,” she had said. “Now it is time for us to claim the Boon of the Stars.”

  And with that, they had departed.

  And so here they were. What they all craved was before them.

  “The time has come,” said Fu. “Go forth. Claim the gift of the Nine Suns.”

  Those amongst them who were armed with the last of the firearms in Port Arthur began to walk towards the wreck. Pu could see even these armed convicts had a fear of what lurked within that ship. But fear would not stop them.

  Pu knew, because she had lived so much of her life in fear. And yet she had just crossed that all-devouring jungle to be here. Because her fear was no match for the desire that dragged her here. Was it even desire any longer?

  No.

  It was a need.

  A need for the Eutric Blood.

  The first of Fu’s soldiers was nearly at the ship when the first crack appeared in the hull. Not from the crash, a fresh crack. A moment later, more appeared. Then came the tendrils. Not vines – these were pulsating and translucent, and within them surged the Eutric Blood.

  One of the men stopped, staring at this strange sight until one of the tendrils swiftly struck, forcing its way into his mouth and down his throat. Another man suffered the same fate a moment later.

  Pu watched with morbid fascination. The Eutric Blood was being pumped down the throats of these two men. When at last the tendrils withdrew, they didn’t leave corpses, as the vines did. Instead, both men rose to their feet and turned to face back towards Fu.

  There was an ear-splitting crack and a huge panel of the hull went flying off through the air, crashing into the jungle beyond the clearing.

  From the new, gaping entrance that had appeared a singular, diminutive figure emerged, stepping forward and jumping lightly to the ground, straightening up her dress as she rose once more.

  She looked from one of the two still men to the other, then towards Fu.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” she asked. “You came for Xixi’s Blood?”

  “That’s her!” announced Fu. “Seize her and the Blood is ours.”

  But her soldiers hesitated.

  Despite the great crowd gathered there, everything was silent now.

  “I will not stand between you and the Blood,” said the girl, and Pu thought it sounded like many voices speaking, not one. “The Mimesis brought you here. Nothing now stands before you and the embrace of the Hive.”

  Fu Yuanjing walked closer to where the girl stood. All eyes were on her.

  “You lie. You speak of Mimesis, of the Hive. This Blood, it is a gift of the Nine Suns. A reward to the faithful who have so long suffered on this benighted world.”

  The girl smiled. “Not the Nine. The One. This is a divine gift. This is a moment of joy for all here,” she said, her smile never faltering. “But you, Fu Yuanjing, you misattribute its source. You look to lesser Stars. No—” here the sound of many voices speaking at once became unmistakable—“This is a gift of the Star of Desire’s End. The Great Unifier. The Light that will outshine all of the Cosmos.”

  Fu did something that Pu had never seen her do before. She scowled. “What is this nonsense?” she demanded. “This heresy?”

  “Everything you desire is here for the taking,” said the girl. “No more sacrifice is needed. For in coming to this world, this young girl gave up all she had. She embraced the Hive and extended the Mimesis to all of you. So that this moment could happen. So that you could join us. You see? The sacrifice has been made: it was made by the na?ve girl who came here in hopes of a better life.”

  There was a shaking of the ship. Then at last it began to completely disintegrate, what was left of the wreck falling away to the moss and mud of that jungle clearing.

  A vast and utterly alien form arose from it, towering above all those assembled there, row upon row of arms and wings and tendrils extending out from it, as its colossal form endlessly uncoiled. And from it came a flood of many colours, the light dancing upon its surface as it flowed and rippled across the clearing.

  “Drink of the freely given Blood of the Eutria,” said the girl. “Drink of the Sweet Wine of Mimesis. Become one with the Hive and you will achieve peace.”

  Pu felt the majesty of the moment. She knew little of great matters, but she knew instinctively that the Cosmos was changing in that moment.

  Fu must have sensed it too. She now took a step back, her feet splashing through the Blood. Her head was shaking from one side to the other, her eyes wide with horror. “No,” she muttered continuously.

  Then in one swift movement she yanked the weapon from the hands of one of the soldiers.

  “Stars why have you forsaken us!?” she yelled, then shoved the barrel of the rifle into her mouth and squeezed the trigger.

  Her body crumpled, her blood soon just one more colour among the many.

  Pu Mengqi could contain herself no longer. Along with every other person there assembled, she dropped to her knees, and with her hands began scooping up as much of the Blood as possible, thirstily drinking of it.

  Ah, Sweet Wine, she thought as the calm radiated through her entire being. She felt her fears ebb away, a burden now bourn on the shoulders of that young girl.

  And even as she stared at Mei Xuelan, something changed. Not physically, but in her perception of the girl.

  No longer a girl.

  Hive Queen.