<These are more than animals.>
<A reasonable hypothesis,> Quath answered mildly.
<But the Tukar’ramin said there were no significant Noughts! No civilization. No artificed works. Only the mechs.>
<So she did.>
Two quick bursts caught Quath in the side. She drew up a battered palp. A salty pus oozed forth.
<Evidently the inspection was cursory,> Quath said evenly.
<You miserable arachnida! These have weapons!>
<Yes, with considerable momentum density, as well. Simple, but—>
Beq’qdahl’s shrill cry pierced the air. Her fifth pod split ripely and belched a foul smoke.
<I am injured! Injured! Help me boost.>
<A minor breaching.>
<Minor? I feel pain.>
<Your waste system has ruptured.>
<Give me the extra boosters!>
Quath abruptly pitched forward. Her rear bulkhead puckered around two steaming holes.
<Off your knees! The boosters!>
<H-here.>
Beq’qdahl strapped on the blue cylinders. Sharp shots rang on her carapace.
<When you are above these Noughts…> Quath spoke slowly, <sweep the backwash over the ground. The flames will—>
<Maneuver where they can shoot into my underbelly?> A harsh laugh. <You are a grub.>
<Stay, then. We can perhaps ride over them and, and crush—>
<Flee, fool! This is not our task. Clearing of Noughts requires real weapons.> Beq’qdahl’s infrared antennae wobbled and sheared away with a grating noise. <Agh!—what pain! I’m leaving!>
<I…I’m trapped here.>
<I will go ahead, summon aid. You…you boost as far as you can and, and wait.> She finished hurriedly and made ready. Near misses hummed in the air.
Quath felt a stabbing gouge in her third pod. The gray animals—no, Noughts, she corrected herself—were nearer. They were fanning out. Metal glinted in their small feelers.
When Quath glanced skyward again, Beq’qdahl was a yellow dot arcing toward the distant Hive. Quath knew that even if she had boosters, she would lose valuable moments overcoming her own subminds. Their fear of flying was almost unmanageable.
Resigned, she turned to study the Noughts with no weapons to repel them. Small pellets ate—snick! ping!—at her skin. She hoisted her own boosters and locked them into sleeves, shrugging off the small bites as the Noughts’ shots nipped at her. Small, but so many.
As she articulated a telescoping arm, something caught her attention. Her stapler gleamed in the dawnlight.
The humble stapler which drove forked brackets into the Hive rock. No weapon at all…
Quath started to run. And then stopped. The Noughts could follow, after all. If she stood she would retain at least her dignity, if not her life.
Quath turned and faced the enveloping tide of piping Noughts. Something in her wanted this.
She raised the stapler and sighted along it with three eyes. A Nought charged into her center of focus and she fired. The staple split a rock, missing the Nought. She corrected. Fired. Another miss.
Quath felt a strange soothing calm. Shots struck her palps, fracturing one away. Steadily she calibrated and aimed. The stapler jerked. A Nought crumpled and fell into a gully.
The next gray target bobbed and weaved. Quath compensated and caught it on the third shot, splitting the thing in two. Beneath the gray shell it oozed sap.
High, frantic calls piped from the Noughts. Many ducked behind outcroppings. Quath quickly shot three.
Their weapons peppered her, stings nicking at her concentration. She killed five more.
They crowded in now, skipping like mites from one shadowed refuge to the next. Staples plowed through the soft, unarmored Noughts.
Her side dimpled and a hard wave of pain lanced through her. She lurched, gasping. Oil bubbled from two pods. Her remotely actuated hydraulic cylinders did not respond. She was trapped here.
She dashed sideways to elude a wedge of them and a massed volley slammed her into a rock face. Her lenses fogged. Oxygen processors rasped. Fiery fingers pulled at her guts.
Here it is, Quath thought. I have met it. Blackness closed in.
