Krinata, adept with the controls now, came to a stop at the lip of a ramp leading steeply down into a hole. The planking that normally covered the hole was drawn aside.
Light, possibly from an open fire below, silhouetted Prey's sled, which was stuck.
Jindigar came up from the rear to survey the problem while natives chittered and danced about. As they pondered, a team of furred warriors attacked the sled, pushing it down the ramp, ignoring the loud scraping of the top against an overhead beam and the shower of dirt that resulted.
Krinata squelched all thought of being buried alive and hauled her sled onto the ramp. Its cargo, being more dense, wasn't quite as high and didn't scrape.
The tunnel led down into a dimly lit chamber from which other tunnels opened, but they were too small for the sleds. They grouped the sleds on the beaten earth floor covered with rushes. The air was fetid, hot enough to make Krinata sweat, and ripe enough to choke on.
A few rustlemen examined the visitors and the sleds with the bright-eyed air of university scholars presented with confirmation of a hypothesis. Only a few furred and chitined ones stayed with them, while the white-skins played host, though their manners weren't exactly interstellar standard. Their first priority seemed to be to undress their visitors.
Jindigar and Frey complied unhesitatingly. The scholars examined their unmarred chests and lack of visible genitalia with approval, or perhaps recognition. Jindigar reciprocated, running his hands through the rustleman's scale-feathers, then petting them back into place. The rustleman petted Jindigar in return, then eyed Krinata.
"Oh, no!"
"Calmly," admonished Jindigar. "They see us as a hive-swarm made of different creatures than theirs. As long as they understand us as a variant on the familiar, they won't hurt us. Only—" He looked at the Cassrian children. "They're disappointed our group mind didn't embrace theirs in ceremony. And—there's something odd—"
Viradel cut him off with a contemptuous comment on Krinata's modesty and disrobed, urging the others to comply. Krinata stripped, then gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, suppressed the memory of nearly being gang-raped before the Emperor's court—and the image of Desdinda being led off to be raped by the Emperor in private—and waited for the rustlemas's touch. It came only as a whisper of air against her breast and again at her crotch hairs. She shuddered.
"He understands this discomforts you and apologizes," said Jindigar. "You can get dressed now."
But at that moment the attack began.
Alarm ripped through the hive, furred warriors scrambling through the central chamber. Then there was a low hum and a whump that shook the air. Chinchee crumpled, screaming in shock. He'd seen one hive destroyed starting just this way and had barely overcome the horror. She moved to comfort him—then the fire went out.
Jindigar's voice cut over the general racket. "They've closed the ventilation channels and extinguished all fires. The furred ones are preparing a sortie, and the shelled ones– yes, that's it, the shelled ones control the mind grouping! They're calling the hive to defend—"
That was the last Krinata heard, for everyone began screaming. The children, who had gravitated to her when darkness fell, now squirmed and kicked with their sharp chain-edged hands, forcing Krinata to let them go. She stood, sweeping her arms about, calling, "Shorwh! Find your brothers! Shorwh!" She nudged a piol with her foot, and it bit her shoe, howled, and scratched at her bare leg.
A sudden image flashed across her eyes—a wild beast eating her leg while she still lived. Revolted, she kicked free and ran, smashed into a sled's cargo, slid around it, and ran into the dark, smashing at whatever touched her.
It was one of her worst nightmares come true. Images screamed into her mind, seared her inner vision, and she couldn't elude them by running. It became harder to move. Panting, retching, she dragged herself along. Somewhere aside from the chaos in her mind, she felt cold air on her face, laced with the stench of burning machinery.
Scrubbing at her eyes, she peered through the mental images, as if fighting off a drug, seeing double, swallowing panic, and finding reality more horrible than nightmare. She lay prone at the head of the down ramp. Beyond, the door closing the entry tunnel had been smashed, and from outside came a dazzling blue-white light. Against this, Imperial troops advanced into the hive, their armor protected by thin-film energy fields, clothing them in shimmering rainbows, brighter than the light.
But these marvels of technology were not winning. Rustlebirds swooped in the tunnel, dropping their corrosive excrement on the intruders. After several direct hits the armor field shorted out in a plume of sparks, leaving the gray surface exposed to the corrosive, which quickly ate through to flesh beneath.
Such victims were writhing and screaming on the floor when Krinata first saw them. As she watched, their comrades broke ranks and turned their weapons on each other. The tunnel became an inferno from which she began to retreat.
A trooper fell close to her, wrenching off his helmet, which had been eaten through. She was riveted in place.
Before her lay Desdinda, face twisted in madness—unmistakable in her hatred. No. It's a hallucination.
The knowledge didn't help, even when another tortured, dead trooper turned into Desdinda before her eyes and seemed to rise, an animated corpse closing on her. No!
In panic, she lost control, and the images roiling at the bottom of her mind swamped her reason. She was sur– rounded by Desdinda, chased by Desdinda, possessed by Desdinda, and worse yet, Desdinda was perfectly correct.
How could she have missed this obvious truth? She ran, blinded by the searing light, into blackest dark, pursued by grotesque horror, and became the very horror that pursued her. No! part of her screamed, but was swamped by the power of focused nightmare made real.
Then, before her loomed the huge indigo shadow-form she knew so well. He thought he was such a righteous priest of Aliom, but he was just a dirty Invert. That hadn't mattered until he tricked Grisnilter into surrendering his Archive to him. Now she knew he was out to destroy the Dushau species.
Jindigar! Madman! Predator! Fiend!
For all that was good and clean in life, for her children and their children, she attacked, willing to expend her life, her very existence, to remove this ultimate threat. Enraged, she fought with all her strength.
But all of her strength was as nothing before his might. He held her at bay easily, toying with her. She was no threat to him. She was helpless in his grasp.
Helpless. Falling helpless into void. Desdinda's snarling face spun before her eyes, an ethereal mask depicting the gutted ruin of a soul, a reflection of her own visage. She clawed at her face. It's not me! Not me! The helplessness! The helplessness! / hate it!
Krinata squirmed and turned to beat at the Desdinda image, bent on destroying it, but feeling every blow on her own face and body—as if she were both of them.
"Krinata!" Jindigar's voice.
A spear of bright sanity lanced through her. Her eyes saw Jindigar standing before her, clutching her arms in his big hands, holding her bloody fingernails away from herself. His bulging eyes were glistening in the white floodlights from behind her. His lips were moving, but it was a while until she heard his words, as if his voice came from lightyears away. "Form in triad with us! It's the hive doing this to you. Form with us! They won't touch another group-mind!"
She fought that seductive lure, knowing he meant only to destroy. Then she thrust aside that absurdity and reached for the fulfillment of triad. Oh, yes, it's been so long!
The familiar triune consciousness blossomed, and for a moment, the multiple images of Desdinda, whirling about her head and chattering in madness, faded away.