Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

fire,” he said, but I’d already started, and the trigger clicked over as the Blazer’s muzzle dropped.
The shot went into the cave floor.
“Don’t fire!” he shouted, as another ant dropped off the ceiling and landed in front of us.
I froze, staring at it, while Varian reached over and plucked the blaster out of my hands.
“What...” I asked, as he stuffed the weapon into his belt.
“They’re friends,” he explained, “or they were...”
That was not a comforting thought as the ant grabbed me in its long, curving jaws and lifted me from the ground.
“Don’t struggle,” Varian said, as a second of the big creatures lifted him from his feet.
That was a hard order to obey, but it became a whole lot easier, when the ant’s mandibles tightened, and I felt the sharp serrations along the inside of them make indentations through the armor. One punched down over where one of Barangail’s trackers had been lodged and I whimpered.
“Stay still,” Varian told me, his advice echoed by Case and Tens and Rohan’s.
I half expected to be wrapped in silver and pulled onto the ship, but it didn’t happen, and I didn’t know whether to feel grateful or betrayed.
“Stick it out, girl.” Mack’s voice, and it made me happy to hear it—even if I was going to put him on his ass when I got back on board. “You and whose army.”
“Me, with one arm tied behind my back,” I muttered, and didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until an antenna dipped down and stroked my head.
I gave a yelp of surprise and tried to twist away from it, but the jaws tightened a little further, and I felt my ribs shift.
“Stay the-fuck still!” Mack snapped, and I wondered how he was handling his broken legs.
“Never you mind,” which only meant Doc wasn’t happy with him being up and around.
“You have no idea.”
I almost wished I was back on board the ship, with Doc taking a good look at where Barangail’s trackers had been dug out of my ribs, but I still had something to do. One way to keep my mind off the pain—and the fact I was being carried to the Stars only knew where—was to go into the implant and see what had become of Celia’s trail.
It was a surprise to find the ants taking the same path the concubine had used in her escape. How had she avoided them? I kept my eyes closed, and watched as the implant tracked our progress along Celia’s trail. When we reached a point where our paths diverged, I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was a huge crystalline vat set on the edge of a canal. The vat was full of a gleaming golden-orange liquid, the same liquid that flowed sluggishly down the canal beside it. As we approached, ants pushed levers and then maneuvered large stone half-pipes away from the top of the vat. Through the clear walls of the vat, dark shapes marred the honey-colored fluid.
Some of them looked like the insects that had attacked us in the cavern, but others looked distinctly human. All of them were ominously still. It took me a moment to register what I was looking at, and then I felt shock send a wave of ice through my insides.
“Oh, fuck, no.”
My barely breathed words didn’t have any effect on the big creature carrying me—and it didn’t change the fact it was taking me directly towards the vat, itself. I watched as the ants carrying Barangail’s guard took them to the edge of the vat and dropped them in. When my ant followed in their path, I looked for Varian. I caught the look of horror on his face when he realized where I was being taken, saw him twist in the mandibles holding him as he cried out.
“Wait! She’s not one of them!”
But the ants didn’t listen, and they didn’t wait. They kept moving. Only, now, the creature carrying the rebel leader took a different route across the cavern—one that took him away from the vat.
“Wait!” he called, but the ants were intent on their path, and I wondered how he was going to explain this one to Stepyan and Case.
Now, that would be a conversation worth sitting in on... if only I had the chance.
I scanned the cavern, taking in as much of my surroundings as I could.
“Stop!” Tens said, his voice suddenly tense with excitement. I stopped, and scanned back the way I’d already looked. “Take a closer look at that.”
‘That’ was a strangely angular piece of rock sitting in a raised section of the cavern. It was resting in a patch of yellow light, and I had the implant scan in closer.
“And there it is,” Tens said.
“Well, damn.” Mack was not impressed.
At least this time he had a reason.
“I’ll do a deep scan, see what we can turn up of the rest of the hulk. It can’t be that far off.”
He was whistling in the dark. We all knew the ants might have carried the piece of ship from anywhere, and we didn’t know if they’d brought it up from a wreck buried too deep for the Marie’s equipment to see through. It was good to know the trip hadn’t been a total loss.
The ant carried me up the side of the vat, and dumped me in. I remembered to spread my arms as I dropped, and took a breath, in case my head went under. It didn’t, and the ant above me hesitated. I wondered if it was going to push me below the surface, but it turned away, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well, damn,” murmured through my head, and I wondered what had happened to make Tens say it.
“I can’t get a lock,” he explained. “The, whatever that stuff is, it’s interfering with the signal. You’re going to have to find a way out of it on your own.”
“Yeah. Thanks for that.”
Personally, I thought the best way out of it would have been for them to