Mech 3: The Empress by B. V. Larson Page B

pursed lips, making him cry out. He tried to throw her off, but now she clung to him with maniacal strength. Even as he struggled, the neurotoxins began to paralyze him. His muscles became weak and rubbery within seconds.
    The thing in her mouth crept out upon his face as he lay there, helpless in her grasp. They were still coupled, and her hands pinned his wrists. Each of her thin fingers were like steel cables, so weakened was he by the toxins that flowed in his blood now, coursing directly from his stung lips to his brain.
    Inside his mind, Garth despaired. The Tulk had stayed in her mouth, with spines carefully retracted until this critical moment when she had spat it out onto his face. Now, it crawled over his cheek toward his nasal entrances, its spines stippling his skin with permanent, livid red tracks.
    As the rider named Ornth dug into his skull and mounted him, Garth wondered vaguely what the skald girl’s name was. If he ever managed to regain the reins of his mind again, he decided he would ask her—and then he would kill her.

 
    Five
     
    The Parent rejoiced on the lower decks of Gladius . Her gambit had been successful, right from the start. Many months ago as the left the Kale system, the humans had come after her invasion forces. She’d realized immediately she didn’t have the strength to withstand them. She also had known they would not stop searching for her until they found her and destroyed her. The decision had been a hard one, but she’d decided to produce an entire generation of offspring, including a decoy young Parent, and set them up with a nest in an obvious location in the main hold.
    Months ago, the humans had fallen for the ruse like credulous larvae descending on their first bloody meal. They’d swarmed her broodlings and slaughtered them with glee, burning out the nest and making sure every shell was blackened and every ounce of protoplasm was scraped from the hull. Even at this very moment, the Parent still trembled her orifices when she thought of the sacrifice. Her first live brood—including a fledgling daughter—all dead in the name of the Imperium.
    The important thing was it had worked . The enemy had been taken in, and had soon become complacent. She had retreated into the depths of their sewer systems, created a cocooned sac of fluids and hibernated for months. No doubt, they had searched for her in earnest at first, but these quixotic vertebrates seemed to lack conviction and rigid discipline, even in matters of their own survival. Not for the first time, she wondered how such a chaotic species could ever have come to dominate even a small slice of the cosmos. Whatever the reason, she felt she was here to set things right, to put balance back into the equations. The strongest would survive in the end.
    Feeding in the sewers for months, she’d carefully scouted with shrades. She’d selected the starboard lifeboat pods to make her comeback. Of all the regions of this vast, thrumming ship, the lifeboats saw even less traffic than the rest of the empty decks. Better still, they were well-stocked with foodstuffs and technological tidbits. In the future, the vessels could be used as seedships when they slowed down to a reasonable velocity and entered an unsuspecting star system.
    Matters had nearly become disastrous when the enemy had discovered her second nest and sounded the alarm. The humans had gathered quickly and without hesitation. Fortunately, she’d bred half a squad of juggers by then, and the monsters had broken the enemy line. Disaster had been averted again.
    Now, she had new decisions to make. Like her sisters before her, she had to assume she was the last of her kind in the region and could expect no aid from Imperial forces. She must act carefully, and yet decisively. Minor mistakes could be catastrophic.
    Studying what records were stored within her biotic memory sacks, she realized her immediate forbearer, the Savant who had failed to take the Kale system