Clive didn’t know how he was going to catch the Aranea. He had to catch it, though. The Captain made his orders clear.

  The Aranea scuttled around the reactor core. It kept its eyes on Clive. At least, Clive thought the creature was staring at him. He couldn’t tell where its eyes were looking.

  All those sci-fi games never trained you for this.

  Clive padded around the Aranea. The creature hissed.

  Theo stood on the other side of the Aranea. If the alien was really focused on Clive, Theo had a chance to blindside it, but the mechanic kept a distance.

  Clive wanted to tell Theo to attack, but he didn’t want to make noise. Then he realized it was silly to stay quiet; the Aranea wouldn’t understand English.

  “Theo, you can attack!” Clive called.

  Theo made a slow shake of his head. Was he afraid of the Aranea? Clive had never seen Theo afraid of anything. To be fair, Clive never saw Theo show any emotion at anything.

  “We have to do something!” Clive shouted.

  “We don’t have the tools to attack,” Theo stated.

  The Aranea spun around to focus on the new voice. Its back was to Clive.

  He lunged.

  Clive tackled the alien to the ground. It hissed and whistled and writhed. Clive couldn’t let go though; the Captain would never forgive him.

  The Aranea’s limbs stabbed at the air. The creature wriggled out of Clive’s grasp. He fell on his stomach.

  The Aranea skittered across Clive’s back.

  He tried to roll the creature off, but it scrambled with him. The Aranea stood triumphant on Clive’s chest. The alien rose two front claws. It was going for the killing blow.

  ? ? ?

  Erika made a final check to her net gun. It was loaded and ready to go, as it was a few seconds before. Petra and Aymeric stood with Erika in the elevator, both carrying shock spears.

  “Do you two remember how we captured the Aranea on Tartarus?” Erika asked.

  Petra and Aymeric nodded.

  The scientists captured the alien using a lure. They’d set the Aranea’s food in a ditch, then hid in the rocks. When the Aranea appeared to get the food, the scientists lunged. Erika, Petra, and Luther zapped the Aranea with shock sticks, and while it writhed from the electricity, Aymeric wrapped it up with the net gun. It had been the first and simplest capture on Tartarus.

  The Ark didn’t have a ditch to lure the alien into, nor did the scientists have time to print off the Aranea’s food. The Aranea, however, couldn’t scuttle away into the foliage.

  “I want us to follow that plan. We zap the Aranea, then we net it,” Erika said.

  Petra and Aymeric nodded again.

  Erika expected someone to add a new wrinkle to the plan. She hoped someone else would take up the reins of leadership; Erika felt like she was marching Petra and Aymeric off a cliff.

  Get used to giving orders. You’re the lead investigator now.

  The elevator doors opened before Erika could process that thought.

  The Aranea was close to the reactor with its claws poised over something. That something was Clive.

  Erika slammed her way into the reactor room.

  “Hey!” She screeched.

  The Aranea’s focus stayed on its original prey.

  Erika couldn’t shoot a net without tangling Clive and the Aranea together. She charged at the Aranea, and slammed into it.

  The Aranea crashed off Clive. Erika stumbled to the ground.

  The Aranea hissed, then scurried up the reactor core.

  “Are you okay?” Petra knelt to Erika’s side.

  “Good.” Erika hauled herself up.

  The Aranea stared down at the scientists.

  “Thank you,” Clive said. “I thought Ryder wasn’t going to send anyone, though.”

  “He didn’t; we had to come by ourselves,” Aymeric said.

  Clive’s expression darkened.

  “You and Theo should leave for now, just in case,” Erika said.

  “We’re supposed to capture the Aranea,” Clive stated.

  “We can handle that,” Erika said.

  “We’ll wait in the control room,” Theo said.

  He headed back. Clive cast a suspicious look Erika’s way, then followed Theo.

  The Aranea whistled from the reactor.

  “Hey, how are we getting this thing down?” Petra asked.

  Erika stared at the alien and tried to think up something herself.

  “We could throw a spear up,” Aymeric said. “Erika, should we javelin something up? Would that work?”

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  “I don’t know,” Erika mumbled, then instantly regretted her words. An anxious leader made for an anxious team; Erika needed to stay calm and confident, or the others would fall apart.

  What would Luther say?

  Erika cleared her throat.

  “A spear might get the creature down, but we’ll need to get a clean hit,” she said. “If we miss, we might damage something important. We’ll keep that in mind, but we’ll think up some other ideas, too.”

  The Aranea crawled to the top of the core.

  “Um, the reactor controls,” Petra said.

  “We’d be playing with fire,” Aymeric countered.

  “We’d be fine.”

  Erika stepped toward the reactor.

  The Aranea hissed. It was, for whatever reason, protective of the reactor core.

  “Maybe we could lure it down,” Erika mumbled.

  “Got an idea?” Aymeric asked.

  Erika took another step. The Aranea hissed again. Its limbs were tense. Erika was tense, too.

  “Uh, Erika?” Petra asked.

  “I can lure it down,” she answered.

  “How?”

  Erika took another step forward. She straightened her posture.

  The Aranea whistled at her.

  Erika shouldered the net gun, and held her shock spear ready. It would be more useful for what came next. Petra and Aymeric followed a few steps behind on either side of Erika. Good. They would need to be fast.

  “Hey, why are we approaching the psycho alien?” Aymeric asked.

  “Watch.” Erika took another step toward the reactor core. The Aranea launched itself down. Erika ducked and raised her shock spear.

  The alien cleared the spear, and landed on the ground with enough force to make it tremble. Petra and Aymeric shouted, and thrust their spears into the Aranea.

  “What the fuck!?” Aymeric shouted.

  The Aranea writhed as electricity scorched through its body.

  Erika dropped her spear and raised the net gun. She pulled the heavy trigger, and the gun punched at her shoulder. She wasn’t ready for the force, and it kicked the gun out of Erika’s arms.

  The net spun around the Aranea and tangled up its six limbs. The creature squirmed against the netting. Erika backed into the reactor core. The Aranea screeched.

  “Christ, Erika!” Aymeric shouted. “I’m sorry, I just–I really did not expect that.”

  Petra glared at Erika. It wasn’t intentional, but she was doing it. Then her face broke into a grin.

  “I didn’t expect that either, but the job’s done.” Petra nodded to the Aranea.

  “Yeah. Done.” Aymeric took a deep breath.

  Erika reviewed the last thirty seconds of her life, and realized what she’d done wrong. She sighed.

  “I should have told you what I was doing. I’m really sorry about that,” Erika said. She had to remember that she couldn’t come up with her own plans anymore; she had a team to lead.

  The Aranea squirmed in the net.

  “We need to get the Aranea somewhere it won’t do any damage, either to us or itself,” Erika said.

  “The lab is–” Petra stopped herself. The lab was a mess; putting the Aranea back was not a solution.

  “I don’t wanna see the lab anytime soon,” Aymeric said.

  “There are holding cells on the first floor, if we can carry the Aranea there,” Erika said.

  “We’ll make it work.” Petra puffed out her chest.

  The Aranea whistled.

  “Just one thing.” Erika took a step to the reactor core. The Aranea writhed and hissed. Erika stepped back, and the Aranea relaxed.

  “Weird,” Aymeric said.

  “It likes something about the reactor,” Erika said. “Didn’t Theo once say reactors bleed low levels of radiation?”

  “You think the Aranea likes radiation?” Petra said.

  “And jealously guards it,” Erika mumbled. “Okay, that’s all the experimenting I need. Let’s–”

  Darkness fell over the room.

  Erika tensed. She held her hands up as if she still had a shock spear.

  A second passed. The lights returned.

  A mass of insects crawled on the walls.

  The Aranea thrashed in its bonds and threw off its sour milk odor.

  The insects crawled toward the floor in unison, like a chitinous waterfall.

  “Cockroaches?” Petra asked. The Hell’s Ark wasn’t the cleanest ship in the galaxy, but it didn’t have unwanted guests aboard. From what Erika understood, roaches and rats didn’t survive space travel. She must have gotten that tidbit from an unreliable source.

  The bugs skittered along the ground. The Aranea’s limbs sawed away at the net.

  Erika’s intestines twisted into knots. She snatched her shock spear off the floor and held it ready.

  The cockroaches moved in on the scientists. But they weren’t cockroaches. The bugs were miniature replicas of the Aranea.

  “What the fucking fuck?” Aymeric snapped.

  The Aranea reproduced sexually, and there was only a single Aranea aboard the Ark.

  You and Luther assumed the creature reproduced sexually.

  The Aranea larvae drew close. Erika made sure the shock spear was powered down, then swiped away a row of bugs. The Aranea itself squealed and thrashed in its restraints. One limb broke free and waved around the air.

  “We’re getting out!” Erika said. “I want you two to carry the Aranea while I hold off the young! Got it!”

  “It’s freakin’ out!” Aymeric shouted.

  “Zap it!”

  Petra thrust her spear into the Aranea. It wailed and writhed.

  Erika swiped more of the larvae away. One crawled onto her shoe and she kicked it away. The army of bugs marched forward. Erika’s finger drifted to the power button on the shock spear, but she wasn’t going to use it. Killing aliens was a last resort.

  Petra and Aymeric approached the Aranea in the net, sticking it with their shock spears, but the creature was in full fury. Its limbs shredded the net, and the shock spears had less of an effect. The Aranea either had grown resistant to shocks, or its maternal instinct overrode pain.

  The Aranea tore out of the net.

  “Go! Run!” Erika ordered.

  Aymeric raced for the exit.

  “We can still…” Petra panted. She had a tight grip on her spear.

  “We can’t; come on!” Erika grabbed Petra’s arm and dragged her to the exit. The sounds of skittering followed behind them.

  Erika and Petra made it through the door, and locked it behind them.

  “Did you bring those bugs?” Clive asked.

  “Those are…” Erika didn’t know how to explain the issue yet.

  “Oh, shit! The door!” Aymeric kicked at the bottom.

  The larvae were squeezing under the crack.

  “How do we contain this?” Clive asked.

  “We gotta retreat for now,” Erika said.

  “Follow me.” Theo marched to the far side of the room, and climbed the ladder.

  As Erika waited her turn, she glanced back. She expected to see the horde bearing down on her, but nothing happened.

  Not yet.

  After Aymeric was up the ladder, Erika scrambled after. She pulled herself to the third floor, where the others waited.

  “Anything after us?” Aymeric asked.

  Erika peered down the ladder.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Seriously? I’m kinda disappointed; I thought they’d follow,” Aymeric said.

  “It’s good they’re not,” Petra said.

  Erika stared down the ladder a second longer, then focused on the group.

  “They’re not coming,” Erika said. “I think the Aranea is going to stick around the reactor core.”

  “Yeah, that’s really weird, too. Do you know why it’s in love with the reactor?” Aymeric asked.

  Erika shook her head. She was too embarrassed to speak. She’d studied the Aranea; she should have known the Aranea would be attracted to the reactor core. She should have known it could reproduce asexually.

  Movement caught Erika’s eye.

  Down the hall, something poked around the corner. It took Erika a moment to realize she that was looking at the Carnifex, out of its cage, and prowling the halls of the Ark.

  In her mind, Erika heard the Carnifex’s tail slicing through the air.

  “Guys.” Erika pointed.

  The group stared down the hall.

  The Carnifex stared back. Erika had seen pictures of tigers, eyes locked onto their prey. That’s what the Carnifex reminded her of.

  The alien slinked behind the corner.

  Erika took a shaky breath.

  The Aranea was loose in the reactor room, the Lamia roamed the lab, and the Carnifex stalked the halls.

  And you have no idea on how to deal with any of this.

  “I think we should head back to the bridge, with the others,” Erika said.

  No one disagreed.