Page 15 of Aura Awakened
Of course, the instant he makes contact, they start beeping, no doubt alerting their masters to our location. As soon as we’re clear, he breaks unto a sprint. He yanks the hatch panel off the wall and shoves me in, panting. Once we’re ensconced in the tunnel, he pulls the little remote out of his pocket. Not the scanning device, but the thing he uses to control his malfunctioning ship.
“Good news,” he says.
“Please tell me we can leave,” I say.
“Not yet. But this ship is in motion, heading out of the nebula. It’s just very, very slow. Once we’re clear, I can activate my craft and transport us over. We just have to keep out of sight until then.”
“How? They have to know where we are now.”
He chews his lip for a second and then nudges me. “Back to the vertical shaft. That way we can get to another deck more quickly. If we have to.”
Even as we move, the hatch behind us clangs open, more of the bots flooding the crawl space.
“Faster!” Fillian urges, and I scurry as quickly as I can, given that I’m on my hands and knees. We manage to stay ahead of them long enough to make it to the shaft, and that’s when our luck runs out.
The bots are everywhere: directly across from us, in the crawl space on the opposite side of the shaft. Behind us, and coming up fast. Above and below, blocking the entrance to every other deck. The ladder is clear, but there’s nowhere to go.
All the same, I swing myself onto it and creep down a few rungs, making room for Fillian. “Now what?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. They have us basically cornered. They can’t get to us, but they can hold us in place indefinitely.
“To what end, though? The Malifects themselves are too big to come in here. The bots are no match for us—you can just stomp on them. Why herd us here?”
The answer comes all too soon.
A number of the bots sprout roach wings, like miniature versions of the ones their masters have, and flutter into the shaft with us. Four hover directly below us and begin working as a group. With a droning, mechanical hum, they set about their task, and it doesn’t take long to see that the roach aspect isn’t the only thing they share with their masters. They’re also part spider.
We watch in horror as they extend metal spinnerets and start weaving a giant web.
As a unit, they form a thick net beneath us, all the better to catch us when we fall. Simultaneously, a pair of bots flies above us and opens laser fire on the ladder, while a second pair starts doing the same a few rungs below the net. They’re going to cut away this chunk, catch and wrap us up in their awful web, and deliver us to the Malifects.
I look up to Fillian. “Do you have a knife or something? A way to cut through the web?”
He looks grim. “I do, but it won’t work. That’s no ordinary spider silk. It’s a heavy-grade polymer. You can’t just cut through it.”
“Awesome. Got any brilliant ideas for how to get out of this?”
“One. Although it won’t get us out of this, so much as it will postpone the situation while we think.”
“Hey, I’ll take what I can get at this point.”
He nods. “Climb up as close to me as you can and wrap your arms around me. Tight.”
I follow his instructions, ignoring the tingles I get from his electrified skin. Once I’m in place, he transforms himself once more. Only this time, instead of thorns, several thick, vibrant green vines emerge from his body.
“Seriously?” I mumble, watching as he winds them around any handhold he can find: other rungs, as well as the handles at the end of the crawl spaces from the various decks.
“Hang on,” he warns, and not a second too soon. The bots finish their work with the ladder, and we freefall—but only a few inches. The loose chunk of rungs clatters down the shaft, while the bots holding the web hover in place, seemingly confused as to why their prey isn’t neatly trapped.
Instead, we’re suspended over twenty-seven decks of empty air, much like an elevator shaft, lightly swinging as Fillian’s vines hold us in place.
“So,” I say. “Your knife won’t help, but do you have other weapons in your infinite pockets? Something to destroy the things blocking our path so we can reach the rest of the ladder?”
“Yeah, I have my plasma pulse. I’m hesitant to use it, though, because it has a limited number of charges. I’d rather save it in case we have to go up against the Malifects themselves.”
“That makes sense. But what do we do in the meantime?”
He grins at me, his expression slightly feral. “I’m gonna use one charge to take out the bots with the web. Once they’re out of the way, I have a plan.” He reaches into one a pocket and pulls out something that looks exactly like a space gun, silver and sleek. I laugh to myself at how perfect it is, like a prop from an old movie. But my humor fades when he fires a white-hot burst at the hovering bots, melting them into blobs that immediately plummet to the bottom of the shaft.