It was Sarah who sidestepped the fighting juggers and raced to the Parent. She emptied her pistol and reloaded five times before the monster finally sagged down in death. The arls were coldly blown to fragments by the victorious humans.
All of them took a moment to catch their breaths and marvel at the grotesque Parent except for the skald. Coming from his habitual spot at the rear of the company, he sprang forward, pushing his way to the laser controls. His pallid limbs swung in great strides, his peculiar, rolling gait more pronounced than ever.
He attacked the control boards in wild abandon, working levers and clittering at keys feverishly. He hummed an odd tune as he worked, shuffling his feet from side to side. Flecks of saliva formed white dots on his face, sprayed the controls. Warning lights flared into life, a deep rumbling sounded in the equipment, signifying that the laser was refocusing.
“Hey, stop that lunatic!” ordered Droad in alarm. He rushed to the control boards.
Jarmo and Sarah beat him to it, however. Jarmo grappled with the man, and was immediately surprised with the supple, wiry strength in his skinny limbs. He tried to contain the thrashing, moaning skald. He became concerned that the man would break his bones in his struggles.
“He’s trying to aim it,” said Sarah, frowning at the controls. “How would he know how to aim a weapon like this?”
“I don’t know,” grunted Jarmo. He felt more than heard a snapping sound. The skald’s arm had broken, but his struggles to get to the controls didn’t slacken.
Sarah moved to face him. “What are you trying to do?”
The skald locked his eyes with hers. She saw a desperate need to communicate there. His lips quivered and worked, his tongue rolled about slackly within his mouth. “Feasting.” he whispered. “The lines of the Feasting.”
“That’s what he’s been saying all along,” remarked Droad, joining them. “The mech Lieutenant has reached the flitter. He should be here in ten minutes or so. Any idea what he’s going on about?”
“He was with me in the nest. The Feasting was what the aliens did with us. The Parent and her commanders ate humans and other types of meat. The Feasting appeared to be some kind of ceremonial meal. They did a lot of it.”
“So what does ‘the lines of the Feasting’ mean?” asked Droad.
The skald’s struggles had subsided; he stood in Jarmo’s implacable grip, eyes flicking from one of them to another.
“Perhaps he means the queens,” suggested Jarmo. He loosened his grip a fraction, pitying the man. “Maybe he knows where the Parents are in their nests, and is trying to aim the laser at them.”
Droad frowned. “But how could he know? They’re all underground.”
Sarah had been examining the skald’s attempts at focusing the laser. She looked up at the others suddenly. “He’s linked the guidance computer to track radio frequencies. If the Parents utilize a different frequency for command, it would be possible to isolate them and destroy them.”
The three eyed one another in growing hope. Steinbach had joined them and was now listening intently. “The man’s obviously a lunatic. We should get off the ship while we have the chance,” he told the others. He looked at the skinny skald in contempt. “Nothing should delay our escape. I think we should be heading for the outlying islands in the tropics of Gopus. It will take years for the aliens to reach us there, if they ever do.”
“We have some time. The radiation is killing the aliens, although they seem to be taking their time in dying, as one might expect,” said Jarmo.
“Let’s try it,” said Sarah.
Everyone looked to the Governor. He nodded his head. “Let him go, Jarmo. Just watch that we know what we’re aiming at before we let him pull the trigger.”
They helped by using Steinbach’s codekeys, much to the General’s disgust. The laser was quickly aligned and focused on an area in the foothills of the polar range.
“It could be the sight of a nest,” Jarmo admitted, reading the scanning reports. “Heavy radio traffic on the alien frequencies.”
“How many contacts of this special type have the computers isolated?” asked Droad. He had found a source of hot caf somewhere, and looked better than he had in hours.
“We’ve located twenty, sir.”
Droad rubbed his chin. “Destroy them all.”
And so the laser fired. Then it was aimed again, focused, and fired again.
“I’ve lost contact with another of my daughters,” said the Parent. She warbled her foodtube in despair. “They must have isolated our voices. They are all going so quickly.”
“Hush, my love,” comforted the high nife commander at her side. His orbs had sunk deeply within his cusps. It had all been so close. Another week and the world might have been theirs. “You mustn’t speak. They may have yet to detect you.”
The Parent rattled her tentacles, signifying a negative. She did, however, dampen her transmissions to a bare whisper. “It is too late. If they have any brains at all, and unfortunately it is apparent that they do, they would have discovered us all before beginning to fire.”
“Then we must flee.”
Again her tentacles rattled. She caressed his cusps idly, an unheard of familiarity which both exhilarated him sexually and depressed him at the same time. It was clear that she believed the end to be near. “The others have been trying. None have escaped. Their weaponry seems to be effective. Within minutes, all of us will be gone.”
Even as she spoke these fateful words, the roof of the nest rumbled. Distant explosions rocked the stronghold. The surface was under bombardment of some kind.
Trees, earth and stones were vaporized by the first pulses of the laser. It continued to fire, blasting an ever widening wound in the earth nearly as big around as the nest itself. A fountain of superheated gas and molten plasma rose up. Gouts of radiation were released, bombarding the Imperial warriors that rushed to defend the nest.
“The Imperium is defeated.”
The Nife commander knew sadness. He sidled close to the Parent, feeling the thrill of her touch. “We must meld during the last moments.”
She agreed. As he mounted her throne for a final time, he reflected that this pod had been expunged, but that the Imperium must have had other survivors. The Imperium would go on elsewhere.
As they reached their moments of ecstasy, the roof of the chamber vanished and their bodies were melted to glowing slag along with the birthing throne they perched upon.
As the threat of the Imperium diminished, Fryx regained some of his sanity. It became possible again to threaten and coerce him. Garth lunged forward, ravenous for power inside his own body. His ambitions knew no bounds, he wanted nothing less than for Fryx to abandon his skull.
The battle raged for several minutes after the last Parent had been located and destroyed by the laser.
“What’s wrong with him, Mom?” asked Bili. A concerned group ringed the skald, who lay on the steel deck of the redundant bridge, writhing and flailing in a pool of his own blood and mucus. An amazing amount of fluid was coming from his nostrils. The others looked on, at a loss as to what to do.
“He’s having some kind of fit. Maybe we should try to restrain him, to keep him from hurting himself,” said Sarah. She felt a pang of guilt, but couldn’t bring herself to take hold of the skald. He was too alien; his demeanor during their acquaintance had never made him into a comrade.
The skald went from bad to worse. His nostrils flared grotesquely, and an incredible lump of translucent fleshy material seemed to be squeezing out of the absurdly small orifice.
“His brains are leaking out!” declared Bili with certainty.