NOVEL NEXT The Waterspindle
I wheeled around; Qalin was already forcing several of their bodies through the narrow door of the room. Most of them were the same identical centaur-ant-things that we’d seen before, crouching low and with their arms spread out to block us from escaping. But bringing up the back was a trio of things I’d never seen before. On a basic level, they were recognizable as still being Qalin, with the same fuzzy green carapaces and overall body plan, but these ones looked like they’d decided to sign up for an exercise program they found in the back page of a comic book. They were about seven feet tall, with inches-thick armor plating, no neck to speak of, and reinforced limbs the thickness of a sapling tree. They were also carrying weapons, electric stun batons from the look of it. Soldier ants, then.
Miri put her hands up in a fighting stance. “It’s too late, Qalin. We already know you’re with the Order.”
“You give me insult,” said Qalin through four mouths. “I find the Order distasteful, and I do not agree upon the matter of their doctrine. This is a relationship of business, no more.”
“So you don’t agree that Emissaries should be destroyed, but you agree that selling their locations to the group responsible for their genocide is good?”
“The currency is good,” all of Qalin’s bodies said in unison.
“Rich people,” Miri said with a sneer. “You’ve been at it since the emperors of Babylon, and yet you all still manage to one-up yourselves. Is it a fucking competition?”
“Don’t… don’t make it worse,” I said. “They’re after me, not you. I don’t want…” I don’t want you to get hurt protecting me.
The sudden shock of Qalin’s arrival had sent me reeling, spiraling. There was no way out; even with my claws and venom and Miri’s skills, we were outnumbered at least five to one, and they were standing in the only door out of the room. We weren’t going to fight our way out. Even if we called for help, Qalin had a massive advantage in numbers and coordination over the crew of the Lance of Croatoan; they wouldn’t be able to save themselves, let alone us. The best option would be for Miri to stand aside and let Qalin take me. That way she’d be safe… and maybe I could find some way to escape on my own. Or maybe I could just languish for a while. But I could barely put any of that into words. Instead I clutched at the crystal hanging around my neck and tried not to hyperventilate.
Two of Qalin’s bodies, the smaller ones, started moving toward me, arms primed for a grab. Miri wasn’t having any of that. She sidestepped to put herself in the way, launching a hard kick at the underside of one of the two bodies. It crumpled on impact, though the carapace was enough that Miri hurt her foot, grimacing in pain.
The other of Qalin’s bodies took a moment to assess, then lunged with a long jab. Miri sidestepped, only to get hit across the face by a punch from the other arm. She knew how to take a punch to the face, falling back with a grunt of pain, only to whip back in close with an elbow to Qalin’s face. The advantage of internal skeletons is that they can pack a lot more wallop. Qalin flinched, and Miri stepped back, giving her the space to do a spinning kick to its midsection, enough to knock it to the ground.
“Attack the underside, that’ll upset its equilibrium!” she said.
In any ordinary circumstance, I would have taken that as an opportunity, been inspired to fight by Miri’s ass-kicking, but this wasn’t an ordinary circumstance. I was sick, for one thing, weak enough that I couldn’t even jump, which was my one advantage. We were cornered as well, and massively outnumbered by an enemy that was smarter than us. Miri being in danger was almost paralyzingly scary, the idea that she might get hurt for my sake. Something had wormed into my mind, filled it wall to wall with fear, frozen me to the squishy core, leaving me totally incapable of doing anything but clutching onto the Waterspindle and stammering out words.
“Miri, you don’t need to… I’m sorry… just let them…”
But it was too late; Miri must have pissed Qalin off, because they stopped holding back. Their bodies poured in, squeezing past each other into the narrow doorway, and completely swamped Miri. Oh, sure, she fought back, and a couple even went down in a flurry of kicks and punches, but she was just one teenager, and those soldier bodies of Qalin’s were about as vulnerable to punches as a boulder. There was one holding onto each arm in a matter of seconds, the one on the left pointing the crackling tip of a stun baton at her face.
I wanted to do something, I really did; but everything hurt, and what could I have done anyway? What I needed was a very clever plan, or more likely a minor miracle. “Let her go, Qalin. She has nothing to do with this!”
“If she had so little with this to do, the Liberate girl would have restrained her fists. As it is, she is guilty of assault against an officer of the law. New Ivehar has punishments most strict for such a crime.”
“You’re a cop?” Miri said through gritted teeth. “Well, that’s just double-dipping. Seriously not cool.”
Qalin hit her on the head, a quick and perfunctory whip of the stun rod. She screamed, twisting convulsively in their grips, but unable to break out. Panic rose up in my stomach, and part of me wanted to charge in and rip Qalin to pieces right there and then. I staggered forward, torn between fear and hot burning rage. The bitter taste of venom soaked my mouth. I dropped the Waterspindle and flicked out my claws. For what little good it would do, with my strength drained.
“Put away your claws, child. Let yourself be kept for Dark’s arrival, and I will allow the Liberate to serve her sentence in peace.”
“Go to hell!” I screamed.
And that was all it took for the Waterspindle to wake up.
It started as a heat against my chest, starting vaguely warm and rapidly increasing in temperature. I was confused where it was coming from until Qalin’s dozens of eyes all locked on the crystal hanging from its string. My lower hands seized around it instinctually despite the heat and lifted it up. When I glanced down, it had started glowing, as though there were a bright light hidden by the solid metal exterior of the object.
But as my fingers wrapped around it, a second feeling filtered into my thoughts. Fury. My own anger doubled back on me, tripled back, my absolute hate at Qalin for their selfish, hateful, small-minded, petty, controlling bullshit, the desire to punch them in the face and destroy the machine they’d built for themself and leave them with nothing. It was more anger than I’d ever felt for anyone before, on Earth or otherwise, the kind of rage that’s almost impossible to hold back, the kind that sends your adrenaline surging and gives you strength you didn’t know you had. I ground my mandibles together and glared at the Qalin holding onto Miri with all eight eyes.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose. The Waterspindle glowed slightly brighter, and my head suddenly burst into a full-blown migraine. The air formed a crease in front of my eyes, and I felt like something was shaking all around me even though everyone and everything in the room had gone deathly still. It was an impossible thing, and for a moment I was sure that I’d accidentally broken reality and that at any moment I would disintegrate into a pile of atoms. Then the crease burst, and shot out in every direction as a huge invisible wave. As the wave rolled over Qalin, they screamed. All of them.
Miri, who didn’t seem to be in anywhere near as much pain as Qalin was, took the opportunity to twist out of their hands and dash over to my side. “What is that thing?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said, half-terrified and half-elated by the discovery of… whatever this was. “Are you okay?”
Miri rubbed at the spot where the stun baton had hit her. “It’s going to be sore, they did kind of club me over the head, but I’ll be fine.”
I grinned, some of the panic lifting from my mind. Suddenly, the Waterspindle dimmed, and the heat died down. My attention shot right back to Qalin. They had stopped screaming, but they were in obvious pain, moving weakly and slowly as they backed away from the source of the wave. Instinctively, I clenched my mandibles and forced myself to get angry, furious, reinforcing the feedback loop between myself and the Waterspindle. My headache was just as strong as ever, and I could almost feel a subconscious pressure emanating out from the Waterspindle to press against my mind, but Qalin was still held back.
“I’m not going to be able to keep this going forever,” I said. “I think it… feeds off of me, somehow. We need to get out of here.”
Miri shook her head. “I don’t think we can. You’re holding them off, but there’s enough of them to stop us going through.”
She was right; Qalin had surrounded the door with bodies, blocking us physically even if they were too distracted and disorganized to put up an actual fight. “Then what’s the plan?”
Miri hesitated, looking back and forth between me, Qalin, and the computer banks. “I don’t—wait, no. I think I have an idea. It probably won’t work, and if it doesn’t, then I’m actually at a loss.”
“What do I need to do?” I said.
“Give me as much time as you possibly can,” Miri said, running back to the computer terminal.
I nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at me, and turned my attention back to Qalin, and to the Waterspindle. Wrapping all three hands tightly around the little crystal, I held it out like a cross in front of a vampire and focused. As long as I could stay angry, stay terrified, work myself into an absolute frenzy of emotion, Miri and I would be safe, and there was still hope. So I poured my hate into it, every ounce of spite I had in my frail body, and threw it onto the cluster of networked bodies standing not ten feet in front of me. I remembered the Order that had destroyed my home, killed the people who might have actually been able to raise me properly, remembered that that wasp bastard was working with them! When that wasn’t enough, I let it all out, imagined that I was looking at my adoptive parents, the ones who had never told me what I was, more anger to fan the flames, and I imagined that Qalin was part of me, the part that had ruined everything and made Miri turn away from me, the part that couldn’t just be a normal person for once in my fucking life until the Waterspindle became so hot that my fingertips went numb.
I had no idea what the Waterspindle was, but it felt so much like a living thing in my hands, something dredged up from the deep sea that hid away inside a metal shell. There was no mechanical whine or whirr coming from inside it, nor anything besides the rapidly increasing heat to indicate that there was anything mechanical going on. The light was shining so brightly that it cast shadows, and through the metal skin of the device I thought I could almost see the internal structure of it. It looked like something impossible, almost fractal, like an illustration of non-euclidean geometry in a textbook.
“How much longer?” I said. My head hurt so much that I was starting to see colors.
“I don’t know!” Miri said, frustratedly. “There’s a lot of data to sort through here. Wait, navigational data?”
“Navigational data?”
“Navigational data for every ship passing through New Ivehar…” Miri said. “That’s useful for us, but not what I’m looking for.”
The feedback loop between my anger and the Waterspindle made it difficult to focus. “Then look harder! This hurts like hell, you know.”
“I’m searching as quickly as I can!” Miri snapped.
I went silent. Even with everything I’d done, the headache made it harder and harder to focus my anger. The invisible creases radiating from the Waterspindle started to weaken, and Qalin’s various bodies regained their composure, bit by bit. It was like a top just before collapsing, a slight instability that would soon run out of control, and it took every ounce of effort to keep the agonizing field going. Suddenly, from behind me, Miri gasped.
“You have to be absolutely kidding me,” she said. “Cathy, get over here.”
I started inching backwards, the need to focus making it hard to move or listen. “What is it?”
“Tower number five, stand next to it and get out your claws.”
“I…” I momentarily forgot the words through the massive headache. “…I think if I take any of my hands off of this thing, it’ll break the circuit.”
“That’s fine,” said Miri, “I know how we’re going to get out of here.”
I glanced over my shoulder for just a moment, looking at Miri. Then, again, to get a bead on tower number five. I trusted that Miri knew what she was doing. Part of me did a little countdown in my head. Five, four, three, two one… The moment my hands left the Waterspindle, it immediately began to cool, the headache fading away into nothing as the mental pressure vanished. I wheeled around on one foot and dashed over to Tower number five, extending my claws, and activating the monomolecular edge on a hunch. Not sure what else to do, I supported my back against the tower and put up my claws in what I was pretty sure from watching Miri was a fighting stance.
At the exact moment the Waterspindle left my hands, Qalin regrouped, the soldier bodies raising their stun rods into a guard and advancing through the door. The smaller bodies, apparently not wanting to have to face Miri again, stayed back.
“Stop right there!” Miri shouted. “You move another step, and Cathy destroys that tower!”
Oh, so that’s what I was supposed to be doing? I quickly pivoted to aim my claws at the tower instead of at Qalin, readying to slash right through it at any moment.
“What does it matter to me if such a machine is damaged?” Qalin said through one of their bodies, immediately slowing their charge. “It will be replaced.”
“Oh, sure, you can replace the hard drive,” said Miri. “But I’m not sure it will be quite that easy to replace the five hundred SolarCoins you have stored on this thing.”
“They do crypto, on top of everything else?” I said, my antennae sticking up like knitting needles.
“They sure do crypto,” Miri said with a nod.
All of Qalin’s bodies buzzed in unison, an angry buzzsawing noise. “Go die in a pit of spikes, bitch.”
I shifted my lower right arm forward a fraction of an inch, until the tip of my claw passed through the outer plastic casing. “Don’t get too heated, Qalin, or your precious environment-destroying fake money is going to wind up in several pieces.”
“Is this your only plan? To show your spite before I beat you senseless?”
“Actually, this is a hostage negotiation. It seems to me that you care more about money than about basic morality, so I figure it would work well to take some of your money hostage. Here’s how this goes: if you want all those… proof-of-ownership codes or whatever the hell to remain intact, you’ll let us go. Now.”
Qalin didn’t respond, instead having about half of their eyes glaring at me and the other half at Miri. I shifted my hand again. It was still a little unnerving just how little resistance there was as the monomolecular blade cut through the outer casing. “I dunno how many more times I can do this whole intimidation thing before I start actually cutting into circuit boards,” I said. “You should probably think quickly.”
For several more seconds, the room was totally still. I imagine if you could hear radio waves, you’d have heard Qalin’s network going absolutely crazy. Finally, in a single movement, the swarm of bodies moved back. “Leave this place unharmed, vermin.”
Miri moved quickly, pressing buttons and unplugging cords on the tower while I watched Qalin for any sneaky moves. When she stepped back, the tower had been turned off and totally disconnected from the network. I tried picking it up and failed, leaving Miri to actually carry it, though with my claw still resting against the outer casing. The two of us moved quickly, carefully, and calmly, out of the room. The scariest part was passing by Qalin’s bodies; if they made to grab us then, it would be a game of reflexes to see if I could grab the tower in time to make the proper threat. There were a few moments when I noticed one of their bodies make a twitch, or sensed a slight perturbation in their pheromones as greed passed through their group mind. My other claw went to the top of the tower, where it could slice the entire thing in half with a single motion; that shut them up just long enough.
We continued our slow walk through to about the center of the Administration area. Qalin followed us, but only at a distance. They had some other plan.
“So what do we do now?” I said, sheathing my claws.
“I think we just have to run. Make a break for the elevator.”
I sighed. “I’m really not in good running shape right now.”
“I know,” she said, nodding. “But I don’t see any other way. Maybe if you use your wings to take weight off of your legs?”
“That makes sense, yeah. Let’s do this.”
Neither of us did this, instead staring right into each other’s eyes. Miri looked downright frazzled, and if she looked like that, then I didn’t even want to imagine what I looked like. Her eyes looked so deep, so worried. But so damn pretty.
Then, without a word, both at basically the same time, we made a break for it. Almost immediately Miri shot ahead of me; she wasn’t much for track and field, but she was just in better shape, and even once I adjusted my wings to push me forward instead of up, I couldn’t keep up. Which is why it was such a surprise when she visibly slowed down. She would rather risk getting caught than leave me behind.
And getting caught was a definite threat. Almost the moment we started running, Qalin burst into activity. Several of their bodies went after us, with more seeming to join the chase every time we rounded a corner, while others went for a more indirect route of attack.
Qalin’s voice crackled through the entire colony, blasting through speakers so small as to be invisible. “The Emissary and the Liberate have taken what is mine. Whoever can catch those thieves can take a space freighter as their own.”
I wasn’t sure about the exact value of a space freighter, but I got the feeling that it would be a tempting reward. I pushed myself to go a little faster, despite jolts of pain running up and down my limbs. Just a little bit further, right?
It may have been only a “little bit”, but a little bit goes a long way when you’re exhausted, sick, and absolutely terrified for your life. Before long my heart was pounding, my lungs burning, my wings aching, my mind too exhausted to do anything but keep following after Miri through what felt like a never-ending maze of passageways. I could feel us getting slower and slower, as Miri refused to go any faster than I was, even as the corridors were stretched out by time, and Qalin got closer to catching up.
We reached the elevator room at a half-jog, half-stumble, and were almost immediately confronted by a problem: three of Qalin’s bodies had gotten there first. Duh, they knew the layout of the whole colony.
We didn’t have time to talk or do any tricks; the moment we noticed them, it was a fight. Qalin descended on us in a swarm, spreading out to block us from the elevator door. I raised my fist and claws to fight, then realized almost instantly that that was a pointless endeavor. Before I could start to panic at the thought of Miri having to fight three of Qalin with a computer tower in her hands, part of me pointed something out: one of Qalin’s bodies dying would hardly inconvenience the whole. And there was a bitter taste in my mouth.
So the middle of the three of Qalin’s bodies took a faceful of compound neurotoxins. It went blind pretty much immediately and proceeded to thrash around a bunch as it gradually forgot how to stand, stay awake, and breathe. Not a pretty sight, and even Qalin’s other bodies hesitated for a moment while they tried to figure what that was. Which was just long enough for Miri to run up and spin-kick one in the head.
The third one lasted a little longer, but it wasn’t much of a fight. They tried to throw a few punches, and were thwarted each time as Miri raised up the computer tower as a shield, causing Qalin to stop mid-strike. Miri and Qalin did their dance for maybe fifteen seconds, while I watched on with my hands on my knees as I tried to regain my breath. Miri won, first bashing Qalin with the tower, then sending them sprawling with a kick to the underbelly. And just in time; Qalin’s other bodies were about a room behind when we slammed on the elevator button.
Not sure where to go, I pressed the button on the inside for the uppermost floor of the colony while Miri dropped the tower in the corner. The mass of Qalin, over a dozen bodies including a couple of the soldier forms, charged through the door like an angry bull, just as the doors started to slide shut. One, the one in the front, reached us while they were still half shut, grabbing for Miri’s collar as the doors automatically opened again. I lunged to push them out of the way. My limbs gave out before I made it all the way. Miri let out a high-pitched scream, twisting her entire body as she kicked that body in the center of the chest. They fell back, stumbling into the gang behind it, falling over like bowling pins. The elevator doors slid shut.
I couldn’t bring myself to stand. My back hit the elevator wall and slid down as I gasped for breath. Miri was doing the same.
“What do we do now?” I said.
“Find the others,” Miri said between breaths, “get the hell out of here. Qalin’s already contacted the Order, so they might already be on their way.”
I nodded, unclipping my Ariel from my arm (painfully) and lifting it (painfully) to my face (which was in pain). I had a new message from Stellina.
“What the hell is going on?”
I really should have expected that. I mean, Qalin had just declared a reward for our capture, and who even knew if she’d seen what the Waterspindle had done. I had to type with one hand, and more quickly than my dexterity could account for. “Were are uy?”
“Third deck from the top, main corridor, heading toward the stairs.”
I shifted over, jabbing my fingers into the button for the indicated floor. “Ill explain when I get there.”
There was about five seconds between when I pressed the Send button on that message, and when the elevator doors clicked open. The first thing that hit me was the rapid buzzing and popping of blaster fire. Then, as I stood up, I realized that we were in luck. The elevator room had a single opening leading into an adjacent hallway, with the stairs a room over. In that hallway, a blaster pistol held in both hands, body coiled in readiness, was one Commander Xiuying Naga Carver.
“Hi!” I said, sheepishly waving my hand.
Miri leapt to her feet as if she wasn’t tired in the slightest. “What happened up here?”
“Qalin had some sort of attack, all of their bodies started… writhing and groaning for a while,” Carver said. “And then they went on the offensive. We have two people injured, and we’re trying to get back to the ship.”
“Seems you were right, kiddo.” I recognized Stellina’s voice coming from around the corner. “There was something up with Qalin. I’ll apologize for it when we’re not in—is that a computer mainframe?”
“It’s full of cryptocurrency,” I said.
“And also important navigational data that will probably tell us where the Emissary ship went.”
Stellina shook her head. “Fun. That would explain the PSA.”
“Yeah, we kind of—”
I was interrupted by the harsh crack of a blaster shot hitting the opposite wall, sending up a burst of sparks and smoke and throwing hot fragments across the room. I jumped back, and Carver winced as one of the fragments hit her in the arm, leaving a pin-sized wound.
Stellina stayed standing, ushering crewmembers of the Lance of Croatoan past her down the hallway, firing a few shots into the distance as suppressing fire. “No time for talking, we need to go, now!”
The next several minutes were an adrenaline-fueled blur. I know what we were doing: moving in a tight cluster up the stairs, into the space elevator, and out onto the ship. But when I look back on the escape, all I remember are brief bursts of sensory experience. The hot gas emanating from a fresh blaster shot. Huddling behind a corner as cover with my hands on my head. Shouting and screaming and the incessant buzz of Qalin’s voice. I was beyond the threshold of physical and emotional exhaustion, and it was entirely thanks to the others that I made it out of there.
As soon as we were safe back on the Lance of Croatoan, I found a soft corner, specifically a couch in the main common area, and collapsed into it. Miri did most of the explaining about what had happened and what we’d found, though I helped where I could. We didn’t hold any of it back. No point in lying when we’d nearly gotten everyone killed. While that was happening, I held the Waterspindle close, turning it over and over and over in my hands, looking for any sign of activity. There was none, not even when I tried to trigger some on purpose. It was still a few degrees warmer than the ambient air, like it always was, but apart from that? Nothing but a piece of oddly-shaped metal.
As it turned out, the Lance of Croatoan hadn’t been able to fully refuel in the few hours we’d been docked. But, fortunately, the fuel station was under a separate administration from the colony, meaning that they were more than happy to fill the ship with fuel as quickly as possible, no matter how many times Qalin screamed at them over the radio. While that was happening, Arana and Dr. Erobosh went over the data contained inside the tower we’d stolen. It did, indeed, contain navigational data, navigational data that included the last known course of a ship known as the Torn Memory.
Exhaustion overtook me, with the help of a bunch of painkillers, quickly enough that I was unconscious when we left the New Ivehar system. And good riddance. The last thing I thought of just before I passed out was a single question. What’s going to happen when we find the other Emissaries?
