Shadows in Flight, enhanced edition (9 page)

They took up their standard positions at the door and Carlotta opened it.

It felt as if all the rabs on the ship leapt at her. Carlotta was knocked into the opposite wall. Both Sergeant and Ender sprayed like crazy, but it took several seconds for the rabs to fall into a stupor, and in that time, two got claws up under Carlotta's visor. If they had understood human anatomy, they could have severed her carotid artery, but instead they went for the soft place under her jaw. The pain was exquisite.

Carlotta tried to crawl away, but something had hold of her leg and wouldn't let go.

Sergeant. It was Sergeant holding her. All the rabs that had poured out of the inner chamber were inert, floating and bouncing around with the force of their original launch. Ender was still spraying fog into the room. Nothing was coming out.

"Bloody mess," muttered Sergeant. "Who ever knew the girl had so much blood in her?"

Within a minute, he had a coagulant pad in place and anesthetic was doing its job.

"Can you still use your tongue?" asked Sergeant. "Talk?"

Carlotta made a try. The anesthetic was numbing her tongue a little, but she could move it. "Talk fine," she said.

Ender came back then. "How's she doing?"

"Just soft flesh damage under the jaw. Nothing to the throat, and the meds will have it all healed up in a couple of hours."

"Wish I knew how long the sedatives would hold," said Ender.

"What were you doing in there?" asked Sergeant.

That's when Carlotta realized Ender must have gone inside the chamber that the rabs had come out of.

"It's a breeding chamber. They were protecting their young."

"Any queens?" asked Sergeant.

"More like seals -- mothers and their pups gathered around them. Huge room. I think it's the control center," said Ender. "All the cabling is routed through there. Ductwork everywhere, ducts filled with cables and wires, lots of maintenance doors on everything."

"Let's go before they wake up," said Sergeant. "I think this might still be the level of the helm or helms. If all the controls are routed through the hub, they must be coming from somewhere and leading to somewhere. Might be on this level."

But it wasn't. It was on the next level aft, which they reached an hour later. They also learned that the recovery time from the sedative mix was longer than that hour, because no rabs woke up. For all they knew, the fog was lethal and they'd never wake up.

Carlotta knew the door of a helm room when she saw it. It lay in the floor beneath their feet, and it was exceptionally wide and high. There was also a window in the door, and there was light on the other side. Bright light. Sunlight. They were on the side of the ship facing the sun right now.

"This isn't it," she said. "There has to be a way to block the sunlight when it's shining in the ports, and it isn't being blocked. But it'll be a room like this, farther along."

It took a while to work their way around the ship. They fogged the corridors as they went, because there was debris -- but a lot less. And then Carlotta realized something and made them stop. "This sedative is going to work against the pilots, too -- they're bound to be biologically related to Formics, even if they aren't Formics themselves. We've got to wait for the fog to dissipate before we open a door."

"The ventilation system is slow," said Ender.

"Maybe we want them to get a little dose of the sedative," said Sergeant. "Not a full spray, but whatever seeps in from the corridor."

"They won't like it," said Carlotta.

"If they're asleep, they won't mind anything," said Sergeant.

Carlotta conceded the point, though she still didn't like it. They opened the next helm door, a fifth of the way around the ship, where the sunlight wasn't so direct. It was a helm all right, several Formic-shaped perches and control sets. Lots of unlabeled dials and displays that consisted of arrangements of small lights. And perches in front of the viewports, so observers could be stationed there.

But there wasn't a soul in the room. Not even a corpse.

"Proof of concept, anyway," said Sergeant. "Now we know that helm rooms are arranged symmetrically around the hull, and not hidden away in the hub."

"And we know the Formics wanted to look, not just take the Hive Queen's data," said Ender.

"Or this is how she got her data," said Carlotta.

"Could be," said Sergeant. "Observers in all the helm rooms, but actual pilots in only one."

"So let's go find the one," she said.

Sergeant seemed not to mind that she had, in effect, preemptively given the order. He led the way back into the corridor. No need for more spray -- the fog they had originally sprayed was still spreading through this corridor all the way around the ship. In smaller concentration, it wasn't so quick -- there were rabs still waggling their limbs and jaws. But Sergeant and Ender didn't spray again. These rabs weren't trying to attack anything, they were trying to stay awake. And failing.

The third helm was dark. Nightside. But when Carlotta shone her helmlight on the door, she pointed to shininess on the metal near the lower and upper sills. This door had been opened repeatedly in recent years.

They got in position. Carlotta stood away from where the opening would be -- lesson learned -- and shifted the lever. The door slid open.

Nothing came out. Not a sound from inside.

Sergeant lowered himself into the room and drifted downward, toward the wall with the viewports, setting his helmet to illuminate the room and do a sweep of motion search.

"No movement," he said softly. "But there's a heat source."

Carlotta came into the room.

Ender hesitated at the doorway. "Keep watch out here?" he asked.

"Come in and shut the door," said Sergeant. "We may have found our pilots."

Carlotta got to the windowed wall and then followed Sergeant as he walked lightly toward the control bay of the helm.

Unmoving, several small shapes with iridescent colors clung to the control panel. They were smaller than Carlotta, about half her height, but longer than the rabs. They had wings -- that was the iridescence. No claws. In fact, the two front arms on each side seemed to be fused together, parting only near the end. But the "Y" formed by the ends of the feet was able to grasp levers and controls. And the jaws were Formic-like, also able to grasp.

"What are they?" asked Carlotta softly. "Did the Hive Queens breed special pilot creatures?"

"No," Ender said, focusing his eyes on the creatures.

"Formics?" asked Sergeant. "These are Formics?"

"Pretty sure," said Ender. "Males, I think."

"Why didn't they die when the Hive Queen died?" asked Carlotta.

"Very interesting question," said Ender. "But maybe they don't react the way the workers do. Maybe when a Hive Queen dies, they stay alive so they can attach to the next one." Then he said, "Wait, I think we're as close as they can bear. That one is about to take flight."

Carlotta could see it now, too. The wings were extending. The eyes were standing straight up. "Is there any hope of communicating with them?" she asked.

"I hope we're communicating lack of threat," said Ender. "Don't point your hands at them. Set the shotguns down."

"No," said Sergeant.

"You're right," said Ender. "But the two of you back away, all right? Let me go in unarmed and alone."

Carlotta immediately complied; a moment later, Sergeant reached the same conclusion. Ender sent his shotgun drifting slowly toward Sergeant. He took off his helmet and sent it toward Carlotta. Then he rolled over onto his back.

Carlotta realized that this put his eyes on the top of his head, like the Formic eyes. She caught his helmet and held it.

Ender was keeping his arms down at his sides as he drifted toward the control panel where the Formics waited. Carlotta realized he was treating his arms like wings, showing them folded against his body. He was imitating their posture. Was this how the Formics showed submission? Were they submitting to us, and is Ender now submitting to them?

As Ender drifted closer to them, the Formics began to move. They were so small. Staying hooked to various controls -- controls that were definitely not designed for their use, Carlotta could see that now -- three of the five of them reached out for Ender's head.

She heard Sergeant's quick intake of breath.

"Let him be," came the Giant's voice softly through the helmets. "It's a chance that he has to take."

Carlotta could not help but marvel at Ender's stillness as the Formic males reached out and touched his head, bringing him carefully to a stop. Those Y-shaped claws, the mouths so near his face. The residual pain in her jaw reminded her of how dangerous it could be to let aliens near your head.

The three Formics who were holding him lowered their mouths toward his head. The other two were standing watch, it seemed.

They pressed the tips of their forejaws against Ender's head.

Ender let out a low moan, almost a cry.

Sergeant started forward.

"No," said the Giant.

Carlotta caught Sergeant, helped him back down to where his boots could remagnetize to the floor.

Ender sighed again. Again. Then his voice came, an urgent whisper. "Don't hurt them," he said. "They're showing me."

"Showing you what?" asked Carlotta, trying to keep her voice soft, to keep the fear out of it. Who knew what sense the Formics could make of the sounds they managed to hear?

"Everything," said Ender. "How they've lived since the Queen died."

Ender had never felt such loss of control over his own mind. Even in a nightmare, when nothing is going the way you want, the images still came from somewhere. You knew what you were seeing.

But the images that started passing through his mind the moment the Formic males touched him were chaotic and strange. Half the time he didn't even know what he was seeing.

Slow down! he felt as if his mind were shouting at them. Yet they did not respond at all. He caught glimpses of this and that. The Hive Queen alive. The small males flying around her, and then landing on her. Some she batted away, but others she helped stay in place while they attached. Images of the Hive Queen's own hand bringing slugs to the mouths of the males.

But as Ender experienced it, the slugs came to his own mouth. He smelled them, he saw them wriggle, and they looked delicious. His mouth watered. He was so, so hungry.

Ender tried to picture someone moving slowly, but their images overwhelmed what he was imagining. Then, desperate for communication, he tried simply
feeling
sluggish. Heavy-lidded. Tired.

He got a jolt of some strong emotion that would certainly have wakened him, if he had really been dozing off. The emotion wasn't anger, it was -- alertness. They sent him what they wanted him to feel.

They were definitely in control of this exchange.

He tried something else. He took an image they gave him -- this time it seemed to be rabs bouncing around in a corridor -- and tried to freeze it. Hold still. Wait.