‹Shit!› Nancy exclaimed, her voice full of terror. ‹What the fuck is that?›
Dakota realized she had forgotten to warn Nancy what she was intending to do.
Sorry, I should have warned you. Those are the drones I detected on our way here. I've ordered them to head for the frigate, but they had to dig their way out of the ground first.
‹How fucking stupid can you be?› Nancy raged. ‹I thought we were under attack!›
Hey, I said I was sorry.
‹From now on, you even think about doing something, you clear it with me first. Do you hear me?›
Yes, Nancy, I hear you.
Dakota did her best to ignore the flash of resentment she felt at Nancy's tone, as she headed for the nearest slope. The spiders had already scaled the summit and were well on their way back to Trader's yacht.
Trader himself kept abreast of her as she ascended the hill, Nancy not so far behind them this time. Dakota glanced back and saw that debris was still slowly raining down on the ancient ruins. The drones were by now out of sight.
Dakota turned away and pinged the drones, finding they were functioning at peak capacity, and all accelerating hard towards the frigate. She fired a warning to Lamoureaux to make sure the others understood they were not being attacked.
‹All right, for what it's worth, that was some pretty spectacular shit,› Nancy sent, her tone almost bordering on respect.
Just doing my job, Dakota sent. Once we've got these field-generators back on board, I want to take the ship down inside the cache. We should take a good look at it while we've got the chance. Do you have any objections to that?
‹None. That was the plan anyway, wasn't it? And, by the way… those explosions around the cache. That was the drones?›
Yes, why?
‹So what's causing that glow coming from inside the cache?›
Dakota stopped to look back at Nancy, who was standing just a little further downhill, with one foot up on a boulder. Beyond her, the interior of the cache had indeed become brighter, emitting light that flickered as if derived from a hundred different sources, each one moving constantly in relation to the rest. It was as if a horde of giant fireflies was flying up the mouth of the cache from somewhere deep inside.
Dakota loped up to the crest of the hill with long, striding bounds to look back down at the cache from a slightly higher vantage point. When she looked again, the light had grown brighter, becoming noticeably more so even as she watched. Another tremor rolled through the ground beneath her feet. She glanced over at Trader, who had also turned to look back, and she felt an unpleasant churning sensation inside her chest.
Trader, what the hell is that light?
‹I have no idea. Query the drones, see if they have an explanation.›
Dakota felt a chill. Those probes you said you'd lost, is it possible they ran into something down there?
‹It is not outside the bounds of conjecture. I sent another probe down, but lost contact with it a short while ago
The sense that something very bad was about to happen overwhelmed Dakota, and she turned to look the other way, to where she could just see the uppermost spines of Trader's yacht poking up above the crest of a hill about a kilometre distant. She also spotted the train of spiders, still making their way back, in an undulating file, across the intervening hills and valleys.
She queried the recovered Meridian drones, hoping that they might be able to tell her what was going on. It took a few attempts to navigate her way to some kind of answer, and her eyes opened wide in horror when she got it.
We have to get out of here, she sent to the others. We have to get out right now.
She started running down the other side of the hill, desperate to get away from the cache, her legs moving with what felt like dreamlike slowness. She ordered the drones to reverse their trajectory and to return to the vicinity of the cache, but they had already lost precious seconds.
‹Dakota?› asked Trader. ‹Please explain.›
There are hundreds of unmanned Emissary scouts inside the cache, Trader, and we just woke them up.
Trader started heading back towards his yacht without further hesitation. ‹Then we must bring the drones back here to defend us.›
I already called them back, but I don't know if they can get here in time.
Dakota stumbled once, picked herself up and kept going. She could hear from Nancy's panicky breathing that she had finally taken the hint and started running as well.
On reaching the crest of the final hill before they arrived at the yacht, Dakota paused to glance behind her. She saw Nancy approaching the foot of the same hill, but Trader had already overtaken them both. She turned back towards the yacht in time to see him slip through the open hatch, and for one terrible moment she wondered if he meant to abandon them.
By now the spiders had neatly stacked the field-generators beneath the open hatch, in which two of them stood waiting as their brethren began passing the generators up to them with their instantly extendible arms.
As she reached the yacht, she swiftly climbed up on top of one of the spiders and pulled herself through the hatch. The two spiders already inside scuttled back into the yacht's interior to get out of her way. Once inside, she accidentally crashed into a pile of field-generators, and just managed to stop them toppling back out of the hatch. At that moment, she spotted Nancy making her way down the final slope, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that must surely have been visible for kilometres around.
A torrent of dark shapes shot upwards from the location of the cache, moving with such colossal velocity that Dakota barely had time to register their passage. Part of her attention was now focused on the approach of the Meridian drones, as she caught an equally brief glimpse of them vectoring in towards the Emissary scouts.
Around the yacht, the ground began to quiver yet again, sending up thick, choking clouds of dust that soon obscured the summits of the nearby hills.
Nancy stumbled and flailed about, and Dakota heard her yelling over the shared comms.
‹Did you see that? What's happening now?›
It's the Emissary scouts, Dakota replied. Get back here as fast as you can.
Nancy picked herself up hurriedly, staggering past a shoulder-high boulder. She was almost at the yacht.
‹I fucking told you something wasn't right!› she yelled over the comms.
You were right. We should have checked things out more thoroughly.
‹Next time, try listening to me. There's a reason they made me head of fucking security.›
Incandescent light suddenly blazed from the direction of the cache, as a beam of focused energy struck the crest of a distant hill, which erupted in a terrifying display of violence. At that same moment, something dark and oblong flew close above them, followed by a wave of intense heat that briefly overwhelmed Dakota's filters.
Nancy?
‹I need some help here.›
Dakota dropped from the hatch to the ground, and darted over to where the other woman had collapsed. Gravel pattered down all around them, falling slowly in the low gravity. The dust was so thick it made it nearly impossible to see more than a couple of metres in any direction. Dakota finally stumbled across her where she was crouching on her hands and knees, her breathing sounding ragged over the comms link.
Dakota hooked one arm around the woman's shoulder and pulled her upright, hearing her moan in pain. Together they managed to stumble back to the yacht, where Nancy almost collapsed again once Dakota let go of her.