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“What’s the plan?” Fal’ran looked at Patrick as Tar laced his fingers together and boosted Bar’in up to the second floor.
“We want to find a base. We don’t care about killing Insects, we just want to find out where they’re coming from.” Patrick jerked and ripped his arm away from the wall where creeping bristles had spiraled around his wrist.
“Ew, I don’t like it, don’t like it, don’t like it.” Bar’in’s pitch spiked as he pulled himself up onto the next level, little tentacles swarming over his hands and between his fingers. “God, that’s gross.” He popped up into a crouch and shook his hands.
“Are they secreting anything?” Sazahk stood on his tiptoes to get a better look at Bar’in’s flailing hands. “Any moisture? Liquid?”
“No, they’re just…squirmy.” Bar’in shivered and pulled his rifle up to his chest like a security blanket.
“And clingy.” Patrick bared his teeth and high stepped his feet a few times to break the holds of the cilia around the soles of his boots.
Fal’ran looked down at his own feet and stepped away from the bristles, causing ripples in the ones he stepped back into. “They don’t seem good.”
“No,” Patrick agreed. “All the more reason to keep moving. We’re not trying to hold ground, we’re trying to cover it. Get information, get out, that’s the plan.”
“Down!”
Bar’in’s shouted order hit Fal’ran’s ears a split second before three energy rounds hit the wall behind Patrick. Patrick threw himself to the ground as the third shot blasted through the wall, spraying Fal’ran with dust and grit.
“Get moving!” Bar’in’s rifle fired above them. “Around the back, there’s an alley.”
Fal’ran hauled Patrick to his feet, then grabbed Sazahk’s upper arm and dragged him out of the half-blocked back entrance he’d clocked when he’d swept the room. Tar covered their backs, sending an answering three shots through the hole in the wall.
“Toward the sun, ten paces.” Bar’in’s boots thundered above them as he raced along the connected second stories. “There’s a fallen roof, you can climb it.”
Fal’ran flashed back to the Moon Projects, running from security forces, a boy on the landing above him, shouting at him, gunfire. The boy had fallen. He shoved the memory away and swung into the narrow gap in the wall Bar’in had identified. Tiny tentacles grabbed at him as he forced his broad shoulders through the Insect-covered hole.
“Sazahk, follow Bar’in.” Fal’ran pulled Sazahk in after him and pushed him up the ramp of a collapsed ceiling.
“Tar, stay with them.” Patrick’s hand appeared through the gap, giving the huge klah’eel the extra shove he needed to get through. “Bar’in, don’t stop moving for anything. You hear me? Don’t stay still.”
“I hear you.” Bar’in anchored his rifle on a low wall and looked through the scope. “Shit, there’s a lot of them. Three, four, five. I see five.”
“Soldiers?” Patrick slipped in beside Fal’ran, avoiding the reaching tendrils.
“One,” Bar’in confirmed.
“One, we can handle. Fal’ran, with me.” Patrick ducked back out into the alley. “Bar’in, I mean it. Keep moving.”
“I know.” Bar’in pulled his rifle down and raced off along the edge of the low wall, Sazahk and Tar on his heels.
“We taking out the Soldier?” Fal’ran followed Patrick back the way they’d come.
“Yup. Or at least leading it away.” Patrick dragged a hand through the bristles of the wall as they ran along it, the tiny tentacles catching along his fingers.
Fal’ran gagged as the cilia rippled behind them like an undulating worm. “Why are you touching it?”
“Testing a theory.” Patrick stopped short and drove his shoulder into Fal’ran’s chest to keep him from barreling past. A second later, energy rounds shot through the open window in front of them. “That’s what I thought. Stay.”
Patrick spun on his heel and ran ten paces back the way they’d come, still dragging his hand through the waving bristles. When he turned again, he yanked his hand back and returned to Fal’ran, landing his boots away from the cilia.
“It’s talking to them.” Patrick crouched below the open window as he advanced.
“It’s all connected.” Fal’ran stooped low to follow him. “Like the Yelt trees from the Trial.”
“Exactly.” Patrick slid through a narrow gap between the row of houses, back towards the main road. “We need to get this information to Base Ship Givast. The Insects are hiding in the Dead Zones and growing communication—”
A massive black shape launched at Patrick from around a corner. Patrick pulled his rifle across his chest in time to block the thing as it slammed into him. The Insect Soldier—head and shoulders taller than Fal’ran—pressed against the rifle, its giant mandibles snapping for Patrick’s neck.
