A Bug's Life (5 page)

I’d kept on cutting while I said this. I was
fairly sure I almost had the section safely removed.

“I feel that DeeDee will need assistance,”
Tresia said. “Because once we have cut out these young we will have
to also cut our way out of this section. So I am also going to stay
out, Roy.”

“I as well, my boy.”

“Have all of you forgotten the motto that’s
it’s better to live to fight another day?” Roy sounded upset and
resigned, and I could hear fear there, too, though he was hiding it
well. “We’re going to give the Diamante Families a great two for
one special in a very short while. And, frankly, this isn’t how I
envisioned any of us going.”

“They’ve never seen our actual ship, you
know,” I reminded him as I concentrated on cutting through what
appeared to be both a very strong beam and a delicate area both.
The Pillar designed amazing ships – who would want to destroy this?
“As far as whoever will know, we’re just a ship trying to salvage
at the destruction area.”

No one mentioned that the Diamante Families
didn’t like scavengers unless they were Diamante Family scavengers,
which was all of us choosing to ignore the scary situation I was
keeping us in

“A good point, DeeDee,” Doven said, excitedly.
“I have not been thinking, but I may have a solution. It will only
work for a short while, however.”

“A short while is all we’ll have,” Roy said.
“And, yeah, I think I know what you’re planning and I should have
thought of it, too.”

“Apologize later,” Tresia said. “What is the
plan and what do we out here do to ensure it succeeds?”

“Doven, I see what you plan,” Ciarissa said.
“I can assist. However, unless the three of you outside the ship
can return within the next minute, you will not be able to return
until or unless the Diamante cruiser that’s about to enter our
space leaves.”

“And you’ll have to maintain radio silence,
too,” Roy said tightly. “Meaning if you run into problems, we won’t
know.”

As he said this I heard Dr. Wufren chuckle and
realized he’d moved to the hole we’d crawled through. “Yes, we all
should have thought of this. Horror makes decent minds a little
slower, children, that’s all.” He returned, still
chuckling.

I was getting tired and nudged Tresia. She
took the laser cutter from me and continued the work I’d started.
My turn to go take a look at the ship. And, as I did so, I just
managed not to say the same as everyone else – we all should have
thought of this already.

A Quillian with Shaman Powers was able to
alter the look of any ship they were in. And Doven was the best of
them – at least, per Doven himself, the best of those still left
alive. However, even if the best Quillian Shaman returned from the
dead, I’d put Doven up against them in terms of skill. If it flew,
Doven could alter its shape and appearance at any time and in any
way.

Of course, this time, Doven had really outdone
himself.

He’d altered the
Hummingbird
to look just
like a Diamante Cruiser.

I had no idea how long Doven could hold this
apparition, nor did I know what Ciarissa was doing to shield our
minds telepathically while also giving any nearby telepaths the
idea that we were Diamante crew. But now that we’d all gotten back
with the program we ran regularly, I just knew that’s what they
were doing.

Whether or not it would work was the big
question.

I went back to find that Tresia had almost
finished cutting out the Birthing Sac. We’d left a lot of space
between what I hoped were still intact chambers and living Pillar
young and where we’d sliced through the remains of the ship holding
them, so if there was something we couldn’t see that kept these
chambers safe we wouldn’t harm it.

There was still plenty of ship between our
almost removed section and the exterior remains of the hull.
Meaning Tresia was right – we were going to have to cut our way out
of here, one way or the other.

As Ciarissa whispered,
“
Silence, they are here
,” in all our minds, Tresia made the last freeing cut. Dr.
Wufren and I grabbed hold of the now floating Birthing Sac while
Tresia turned off the laser cutter and hooked it over one of her
arms. Then she also took hold of the Sac.

As far as I could tell, the Pillar inside were
still alive and in some form of stasis. Of course, I wasn’t the
ship’s doctor, or a doctor of any kind, so my opinion was more hope
than science. And unless our gambit worked, we were all going to be
spaced, literally and figuratively, anyway.

As the last of my kind I probably should have
been more willing to leave and protect myself. And I might have
been able to be coerced, possibly anyway, if Willy and Roy hadn’t
made me angry.

We passed some hand signals to each other,
Tresia went to have her look at what Doven was superimposing over
our ship, then she came back and I went to look again. In part
because I felt it was better to face my fear, and now that the
Pillar were technically in our possession and we couldn’t go back
to the ship, I was afraid

As I watched the real Diamante Cruiser move
into our part of space, it occurred to me that Willy was rarely
this overtly anti helping any race that was a Diamante target. And
Roy knew me very well, and therefore wasn’t likely to make me angry
unintentionally, especially over saving innocent lives. Meaning
they’d made me angry on purpose, and probably Tresia, too, so that
we’d do exactly what we had.

So maybe Roy and Willy had wanted us to save
these Pillar as much as I had. Which raised a very key question –
why had Willy been openly against this recuse and why had Roy
resisted it at all?

This was an unsettling question, because
Tresia, Dr. Wufren, and I had no chance if the Diamante personnel
chose to attack. We were tethered to the Hummingbird, meaning that
if Roy flew off, let alone went to warp, we were dead. If they cut
our lines to be able to take off without dragging us along, we were
also dead. And Kyle was obviously working the airlock, meaning he
was probably in a spacesuit and therefore in a position to cut us
all free. For all I knew, Willy was in a suit, too, and also ready
to cut us loose.

Why I was even thinking this I
couldn’t say. I trusted Roy, and everyone else on the
Hummingbird
, with more
than my life – I trusted them with everything I was, with the truth
of all that I was. We all did. And Roy had as much to lose as the
rest of us. More, really. So, why was he resistant, or pretending
to be resistant, to save these Pillar and why was I suddenly
suspicious of his motives?

Roy was speaking. “Diamante Ship
Thirty-three-fifteen.” Presumably he was replying to the real
Diamante communications officer, and hopefully Ciarissa was feeding
him the correct information needed.

Back to worrying. Why hadn’t Doven come up
with this plan sooner? Why hadn’t any of us? Horror and grief could
be answers, but were they? Was someone affecting us? Ciarissa
certainly had the telepathic skill to do so. But, as with the
others, why would she? And why was I no longer trusting her, when
we’d just gone through one of the most bonding experiences we could
have when we’d been on Polliworld?

Roy shared something innocuous with whoever he
was chatting with. Then onto the things that could mean we were
dead. “Team searching for survivors. Yes, to destroy them. No,
found none.”

I was glad we hadn’t gotten done faster now.
The debris we were in hid the Birthing Sac unless you were looking
at it up close, as we’d done. And even if they were using
telesights to observe us, they wouldn’t see us inside
here.

They’d just see our tethers. Going inside
somewhere interesting.

Roy and whoever were engaging in more
meaningless spacer-typical chatter. More time for me to
worry.

How would we get the Pillar somewhere safe?
Was Roy right, and would us going to even the shortest warp kill
them as surely as the Diamante Families had killed the rest of
their kin? Was Willy right? Was a bug’s life, even a sentient bug,
even a dozen of them, worth more than ours? And even if they
survived the warp jump, what? Were we going to dump them off
somewhere? Where in the galaxy would they be safe? And who knew how
to raise Pillar young anyway?

Who would protect them? Who would love
them?

And suddenly, I realized why the Diamante
Families wanted this race destroyed.