"Identify the specimen above the pit or a killbeast will damage you."

  Sarah and the others were too busy gaping to even look at the specimen above the pit. All around them were hideous aliens. Pacing around the circumference of the pit was a creature with long stalks that appeared to contain his optical organs. The deadly soldier-types ringed the pit a pace or two back from the edge. Sarah immediately assumed that they were the killbeasts that the voice had been referring to. Further back, almost out of their sight, were huge dark shapes. Some of them had a single massive horn in the center of their heads while others appeared to be the digging types like the one she had first encountered. More grotesque than any was the bloated thing that perched on a chair or throne of some kind near the pit. The throne was built up of crude brown resins lumped together into an organic shape. Several more thrones were in the room, but they were empty.

  Directly above them was suspended a transparent globe containing what resembled a small dollop of grayish jelly.

  "Identify the specimen above the pit," the voice repeated. Sarah could locate it now. It came from a one of a cluster of tick-like things growing out of the roof of the nest. One of them had a mouth on it like a fleshy conch shell.

  "Will you let us go if we can tell you what it is?" asked Sarah.

  Rodney made a wordless hiss of warning. Sarah thought she saw the one with the eyestalks make a signal of some kind, but if there were any communications, they were silent. With amazing speed one of the killbeast guards leapt into the pit. Before the humans could do more than cower, the killbeast kicked at Sarah's head in a sweeping arc. The alien turned the blade flat at the last instant, knocking her to the floor rather than decapitating her. With easy grace it bounded back out of the pit.

  "Food is not permitted to question the Parent or her offspring," warbled the translating conch shell.

  Sarah climbed back to her feet, rubbing the back of her head and trying to moan softly. Bili came to her and embraced her.

  Sarah waved the others forward. Rodney only huddled closer to the wall in his alcove while the skald merely ignored them. Odd tremors coursed through his body at random intervals. Daddy remained flat on his back in delirium.

  "Help me look at this thing!" Sarah whispered to Rodney. "They might eat us if we don't identify it. It looks like some kind of sea creature."

  Finally, Rodney shuffled forward. He held his hands curled to his chest and peered up into the gloom. "Some kind of jellyfish."

  "We think it's some kind of jellyfish. A sea creature," answered Sarah loudly. "But we aren't sure."

  There was a moment of silence while the leader aliens seemed to digest and discuss this.

  "Food doesn't recognize the Tulk? They don't ride in your brain-encasements?"

  For some reason the skald chose that moment to jerk spasmodically and topple to the floor of the pit. It seemed as if he was having some kind of fit.

  Sarah looked at Rodney, baffled by the questions and the skald's behavior.

  "It means our heads, we carry our brains in our skulls," he hissed back. He eyed his alcove longingly and rubbed his fingers together.

  "No, they don't ride in our heads," Sarah said. "We don't know what a Tulk is."

  This seemed to set off a debate, during which the smaller alien with the eyestalks marched up and down before the throne of the bigger one. There were many gestures, but few audible sounds other than occasional blatting noises, reminiscent of the calls of air-swimmers during mating season.

  Finally, a decision was obviously reached. The smaller alien marched off out of sight, seemingly agitated. Then two killbeasts jumped down into the pit and tried to haul Daddy out of it. They had to get help from two trachs and another killbeast before they had him out.

  Then began a most horrid feasting. Sarah held her hands over Bili's ears and turned his face to the wall of the pit, but that only left her ears open to the ghastly sounds. The Parent, which had to be the monstrous thing on the throne, ate Daddy by tearing him into little strips with her fast-working crab-like mandibles and sucking them up with a tube-like orifice. The ripping of flesh and the sucking noises filled the air.

  Daddy regained consciousness briefly during the process. The other aliens easily constrained his thrashing. His desperate hoarse screams echoed through the nest. It seemed to Sarah that the Parent quivered a bit more excitedly as her food fought her.

  When there was little left but exposed bone, the Parent sent more killbeasts into the pit. Rodney shoved Garth toward them and tried to wedge himself between Sarah and the wall of the pit. This did no good however, as he was taken next.

  "How can it still be hungry?" asked Bili. He buried his face in her side, not expecting an answer.

  "Stop them!" Rodney shouted down to Sarah as he was carried like a babe in the arms of a killbeast. "Stop them or your chances of survival are nil!"

  "Tell me where the ship is! I can stop them!" Sarah shouted back.

  The killbeasts ignored his ripping and biting at their tough bodies and pinned him in front of the towering mass of flesh on the throne. Sarah opened her mouth, deciding to try to save Rodney despite of his crimes and his deviousness, but before she could speak he was crying out the location of the secreted flitter.

  "It's in the boatyard on Lake Axalp, on the south shore--" he broke off, shrieking as a pair of pincers sliced into his legs. "Do something!"

  "I lied!" shouted Sarah, cupping her hands to direct the sound to the translating conch shell on the roof of the chamber. "I know what the specimen is. I've see the Tulk before."

  There was no response for several seconds. Rodney continued screaming as a strip of his flesh was sucked down the Parent's foodtube.

  Suddenly, the feast halted.

  Sarah looked up expectantly, but the conch shell didn't speak. Instead, the majority of the killbeasts stiffened, as though they were receiving silent instructions, then raced off into the tunnels. The larger, horned shapes to the rear of the chamber stirred and trundled forward to surround the Parent in a protective ring of flesh. Rodney was rolled back into the pit where he lay in a heap, moaning.

  "What's going on, Mom?" asked Bili.

  Then she felt it. A tremor in the nest, then another. Soon, she heard it, and a few crumbling scraps of earth fell from the distant ceiling to dribble down on their heads.

  Suddenly, the roof shook and sprayed them with loose earth. Several of the tick-like things fell into the pit with them, including the one with the conch shell mouth. They broke open and splattered them all with soupy flesh.

  "Looks like brains, Mom," commented Bili as they scrambled for the alcove.

  Sarah was only mildly surprised to find both Rodney and the skald had beaten her into the alcove. The four of them squeezed together; it was a tight fit.

  "The nest is under attack," said Rodney fearfully.

  Sarah nodded. "It's probably Stormbringers out of Fort Rodney. I hope they blow these aliens apart."

  Then the light went out and there was no point in talking as the ear-splitting explosions began in earnest.

  * * *

  "This graphic clearly shows the location of the nest," said Mai Lee, pointing to the colorful mass of moving points of light that hovered over the holo-plate. "I've instructed the battle computers to display enemy movements by locating their radio emissions. You can see here that the central globe of the nest is buried between two peaks, in effect straddling the pass between Grunstein and the Slipape Counties. The larger of the two peaks is where you will land and set up your artillery, Zimmerman."

  "How much resistance will we face?" asked Zimmerman, studying the graphic intently and rubbing his jowls.

  "You can see for yourself that there are relatively few contacts up there, it's only a small outpost at most. You will land there, destroy any resistance, and begin firing on the nest immediately," boomed Mai Lee. The imposing head of her battlesuit swung to regard him.

  "And what will you be doing?" asked young Zeel Zimmerman, his face pinched in suspicion.

  "While you bombard the nest, we will broadcast noise on the preferred alien communications frequencies. They will be under a heavy surprise attack with their communications jammed. Their command control will break down. We will wait for the nest to be breached. When the breach is wide enough, you will stop the bombardment while I will lead my troops into the nest and exterminate the queen."

  Zimmerman's face took on an expression of great surprise. Even Zeel looked impressed. "You mean you personally will fight the aliens in their own nest?"

  The battlesuit seemed to stand a bit more erect. "Correct."

  The Zimmerman command walked out of the dome, muttering among themselves. They didn't like the plan, if only because Mai Lee had suggested it, but they couldn't come up with a better one.

  After they had left and mounted their lifters to lead the assault on the peak, Mai Lee returned to the graphic she had just displayed. She pressed a key and the battlecomputer instantly displayed an altered image. A tight mass of tiny lights appeared, buried beneath the peak she had sent the Zimmermans to. A long conduit of lights led from the mass beneath the peak back to the central mass of the nest.

  Inside her encasement of steel and collapsium, she chuckled.

  The battle began exactly as planned. Smoothly, the blue-clad Zimmerman knights swooped down on the peak and brushed away the few killbeasts that were stationed there, tossing their blasted corpses from the cliffs. The weaponeers unlimbered their heaviest equipment and sighted on the innocent-looking patch of forest that covered the nest site. The first barrage ripped through the still air, sang for a moment, then broke apart into a hundred thunderclaps. Horkwoods a thousand years old split apart and disintegrated.

  Simultaneously, the parabolic radio dishes mounted on her lifters focused on the nest and began broadcasting. She imagined the turmoil inside the fortress of her enemies and wriggled a bit in pleasure.

  The bombardment and the jamming continued for several minutes when the nest was finally breached. The upper galleries vanished; the aliens caught near the surface were vaporized. Mai Lee ground her teeth, considering using the one or two tactical nukes she had hoarded and hidden from Nexus inspections for so long. In the end she forbear, they were too much like her own children--in fact, she considered them even more useful and dear. Spending them in this battle when more conventional weaponry could do the job seemed frivolous.

  A twisting cloud of culus squadrons rose up from the blasted nest like a swarm of enraged bees. With alarming speed they flew to attack the source of the jamming, directly at Mai Lee's lifters. Gouts of plasma and long lines of tracer slugs leapt out to meet them. She ordered her lifter to beat a spiraling retreat. She didn't withdraw, but rather lengthened the time the enemy must suffer under her guns before closing.

  Even while the culus horde approached, there was a slowdown in the bombardment. The firing slowed, became sporadic. Zimmerman called in a state of great distress.

  "We must pull out!" he shouted at her, red-faced and sweating profusely. "There is a tunnel network beneath this peak. Aliens are sprouting out of the ground like fungus."

  "You will hold your position at all costs," snapped Mai Lee, cutting off the connection abruptly. She wheeled the battlesuit and strode out onto the deck of her command lifter. The time for action had come.

  With intense personal satisfaction, she called the commander of her helicopter gunships and ordered them to destroy the Zimmerman lifters.

  She watched the graphics over the holo-plate tensely as the helicopters roared to the attack. Caught completely by surprise from behind, the Zimmerman lifters were blasted to fragments before they could get airborne. Only a few of the weaponeers even managed to return fire.

  Mai Lee had been concerned that a few of the Zimmerman weaponeers would turn their artillery on her lifters, but she realized now that her fears had been groundless. Realizing that they were now trapped on the mountain peak, the Zimmermans fought a desperate struggle against the seemingly infinite number of aliens that now boiled from beneath the trees and boulders. They had no concern but for their survival. The fighting was hand to hand and to the death.

  Before she could really savor the sweetness of having finally ridded herself of an ancient enemy, the culus squadrons were among her lifters. Although greatly reduced in numbers, they still managed to wreak havoc, dropping shrades among the troops, slashing open weaker human flesh and crushing men inside their own armor. The pilot of one of the lifters was stricken by a shrade and the lifter sagged down into the forests. A great explosion shook the deck beneath Mai Lee's feet.

  Soon, however, the attackers had been destroyed and with triumph Mai Lee's forces moved to assault the nest. Lifters set down in the cratered forestland, disgorging hundreds of heavy troopers in full battlegear. Mai Lee marched with them, but had the caution to hold back, entering the smoking hole only after the bulk of her forces had cleared the way. Her heavy metal claws sank into piles of blasted alien corpses.

  * * *

  The throne-chamber, located at the deepest point of the nest, was built to last. The upper galleries and tunnel networks were forced open like cracked mollusk-shells under the bombardment, but the roof of the throne-chamber held. Sixteen layers of complex polymers (incredibly long molecules built from chains of simple molecules) buckled and sagged downward, but didn't break. Thousands of pounds of explosives were spent in a few minutes. The hests had done their work well.

  "Mom?" croaked Bili, his voice a gasp. He coughed up grit and inhaled more.

  Sarah was lying on his chest, but at first she didn't hear him, and she didn't know he was there. The explosions had stopped, but in her head they rang on and on, with a sickening repetitiveness.

  She simply rested her head on her son's hitching chest, aware only of the pressure and the texture of his dirty shirt. He put his arms around her neck awkwardly and hugged her.

  She tried to raise her head, but a great weight pressed her back down. Shooting pains ran down her side. She stopped moving. Better.

  Her movement elicited a reaction from Bili. He stopped hugging her and leaned forward, shouting something in her ear. "I thought you were dead, Mom."

  They rested for a time, their senses slowly returning.

  Pain returned with her senses. Sarah found her voice after several minutes. "Bili, what's on top of me?"

  There was a pause while she felt Bili's hand reaching above her, probing in the blackness. "An alien. A dead killbeast, I think. I'll try to get it off."

  There was a pause, then a wrenching pain from her back. A great weight shifted, rolled away. "I got lucky," Bili shouted into her ear. "The damned thing shifted easy."

  Sarah found she could move now, although movement wasn't without its cost in pain. She reached down and felt around with her right hand. Bruised, tender flesh met her probing fingers. She reached out with her left hand and bones grated in her wrist. She loosed a rasping scream. Fire ran up her arm. Clearly, her wrist was broken.

  "What's wrong, Mom?"

  "Bili, help me up," Sarah said, reaching for her son. Together, they managed to get her into a sitting position without causing more damage to her wrist. Bili rubbed blood back into his legs, which had been under her body and that of the killbeast's.

  Suddenly, something came up and softly touched them both. A delicate hand brushed her cheek.

  "Who is it?" whispered Bili.

  Sarah reached out blind with her good hand and caught a handful of long fine hair. "The skald."

  "The nutso?"

  The skald moved away from them, then returned. He touched each of their cheeks in turn and moved away again.

  "He wants us to follow him," said Sarah.

  "Jeez, Mom. I don't know about this guy."

  For some reason, she felt she could trust the skald to help them get out. He certainly didn't want to stay here, of that she was convinced. "Maybe he can help us get out. I may not be able to go far without help, Bili."

  Grabbing hold of the skald's fluttering hand with her good one, she was quickly hauled erect and together they began climbing a shifting pile of rubble and bodies. The side of the pit had collapsed, allowing them to escape. She was surprised at the strength in the skald's wiry limbs. She leaned on him heavily.

  Just as they reached the lip of the pit, they stumbled over Zimmerman. He was crawling on his belly, making his way out of the pit by inching along. His voice was bubbly, as though he spoke through a mouthful of blood. "Take me with you, or you'll never find the flitter."

  "I know exactly where Lake Axalp is," Sarah told him coldly. It felt wonderful to be free of the man's controlling hand for once. "You have no hold over us."

  "Wrong." he bubbled. He stopped, breaking off into a coughing fit.

  "Come on, Mom. Let's get out of here before the aliens notice us," urged Bili.

  Sarah hesitated. She nudged Zimmerman with her foot. "What do you mean, wrong?"

  "I... I lied," he said, "only I know where the flitter really is."

  Twenty

  After many hours of vicious fighting in the black treacherous tunnels of the nest, Mai Lee's forces reached the throne room. Inside the battlesuit, she was sweating profusely, despite the continuous gush of cool air coming from the overtaxed air conditioning system. The suit was finally overheating due to the continuous one hundred and ten percent output she had demanded unrelentingly from the reactors. Her haggard eyes, dark with exhaustion, had pressed against the vision scopes until livid welts had almost swollen them shut. Salty perspiration burned her swollen tongue.

  "This is it. This has to be it, we're at the bottom," she said, striding over a morass of stiffening corpses. The twisted form of a multi-legged hest entangled one of the suit's claws. Irritably, she shook it loose and flung it onto one of the empty thrones. She eyed the thrones disappointedly.

  "Where are the queens? Are you sure there are no deeper levels?" she demanded of a nearby Captain.

  The man shook his head, backing away from her in fear.