Aces High

Bre

Tachyon massaged his forehead wearily. "You're right. Any suggestions?"

"Of course." Bre

"You?" Tachyon said hesitantly. "Are you up for it?"

"He was up for rescuing you from the blob," Fortunato broke in. He looked at Bre

"I'll do what I have to," she said quietly.

Tachyon nodded gravely and took her hand in his, but a cold chill passed through Bre

Lift-off was something Bre

There were three others in the Arabian Nights fantasy that was Tachyon's control room. Tachyon guided his ship in silence. He was still hurting from his mistreatment by the Swarm. Bre

Fortunato virtually crackled with impatient, nervous energy. He had spent the time before lift-off charging his batteries, as he had put it. He was now ready, and impatient for action.

Only Mai seemed calm and unmoved. She sat quietly on the control room's couch, her hands in her lap, watching everything with unworried interest. Bre

After a time, Tachyon spoke, tension and weariness cracking his voice.

"There it is."

Bre

"It's immense," he said. "How do we find our way around it?"

Tachyon turned to Fortunato. "Instruct the singularity shifter to take you to the middle of the thing. You should end up pretty close to where you want to be. You can find the nerve center by tracking its mind." Tachyon felt the mind of his ship tug at his brain. What is it, Baby?

We're approaching the Swarm Mother's detector range. Thank you. He turned to the others. "You'd better get ready. It's almost time."

Fortunato took out the singularity shifter from the backpack in which Tachyon had hidden it in the spare bedroom of his apartment. In the bottom of the pack was a. 45 automatic in a shoulder rig.

"What's this?" Fortunato said. He looked at Tachyon. "You may need it," the doctor said. "It's going to take more out of you than you know, to power this jump." Fortunato touched the butt of the gun, looked at Tachyon. He shrugged. "What the hell," he said, and strapped it on. He hefted the singularity shifter, and he and Bre

Remember. You must not allow Mai or Fortunato to be captured by the Swarm Mother.

He looked up at Tachyon, who stared at him steadily for a moment, then turned back to his viewscreen.

"Go!" Tachyon shouted.

Fortunato's eyes closed, his brow furrowed in concentration. Spectral ram's horns glimmered from the sides of his head. Bre

Then, suddenly, he was whole again. He and Mai and Fortunato were in a corridor that was dimly lit by large blue and green phosphorescent cells in the translucent ceiling and walls. Ropy tendrils ran below their feet, presumably conduits for whatever was used as blood and nutrients in the thing. The air was hot and wetly humid and smelled like a greenhouse gone bad. Its oxygen content was enough to make Bre

"Are you all right?" he asked his companions.

Mai nodded, but Fortunato was breathing harshly. His face was an ashen mask.

"The… space faggot was right.."he panted. "That was a bitch." His hands were shaking as he fumbled the shifter back into the backpack.

"Relax-" Bre

Somewhere ahead in the twisting, rolling passageway was a vast sucking sound.

"Which way do we have to go?" Bre

"Great," Bre

"No time for that," Bre

"Christ!" Fortunato swore. "What is that thing?"

It was plastered to the side of the corridor, scouring the wall and floor with myriad suckerlike mouths that were ringed by hundreds of foot-long cilia.

"I don't know, and I don't want to find out," Bre

He selected an arrow and laid it loosely on the string of his bow, and started to edge past the thing. Mai and Fortunato followed warily. The thing continued to scour away. The cilia of the mouths facing them quivered eagerly as they passed, but the creature made no move toward them.

Bre

The blue phosphorescent twilight tinged their surroundings with a sense of soft-focus unreality as they followed the passageway deeper into the Swarm Mother. The unmoving air was so thick with the scents of living things that it reminded Bre

They followed the undulating passageway for half an hour in tense silence, always expecting, but never actually facing, a deadly attack from the Swarm Mother's killing machines. They stopped when the corridor branched into a Y -shaped fork. Both tines of the Y seemed to be leading in the direction they needed to go.