Page 50 of The Inheritance
Bear dropped her bone and trotted after me. I halted by the first clump of mauve blossoms and flexed.
They glowed with pale lilac. I split the glow into individual layers of light blue and pink. The blue told me they were still mildly toxic to both me and Bear, but nothing our regeneration wouldn’t take care of, and the faint pink let me know that if properly processed, the plant could be used as contact analgesic. Made sense. That’s why we didn’t notice the effect the pollen had on us until it was too late.
The wasps displayed hive behavior. I didn’t need a vision to clear that up for me. It was obvious from their patterns. That meant that the moment I attacked the nest, every wasp would fight to the death to kill me. I had no idea how large that nest was. Or how many giant wasps waited inside. I had to be very sure, because once I started, there was no stopping. Earth wasps were vindictive, and it was safer to assume these would be, too. Even if I ran away, they would chase me through the caves and there was no passage narrow enough to lose them anywhere around this cave.
The nest rumbled.
I dropped to the ground. “Down.”
Bear hugged the ledge with me.
“Good girl,” I whispered.
A large wasp squeezed through the gap and took off, vanishing around the bend.
I wonder how they know when the eggs are harvested? Do the eggs emit a pulse or something…
A hoarse shriek echoed through the cavern. That was new.
The wasp zipped back toward the nest, carrying another silk-wrapped spider egg in its claws. The egg glowed with coral pink. I flexed, focusing on it, but the wasp was too fast. Half a blink, and it squeezed into the nest.
I’d seen them steal three eggs besides this one, and nobody screamed the first three times. Also, the rest of the eggs glowed with cream, not pink. There was something special about this egg.
This was my best chance. I had to act now or find a different way.
I flicked my wrist, elongating the cuff into a sharp, two-foot blade shaped like a machete. Bear let out a soft, excited whine.
“Shhh.”
I padded through the flowers, my dog trailing me.
This was a foolish plan.
Ten yards to the nest.
Five.
Three.
Something rumbled within the fissure.
I cleared the distance between me and the gap in a single jump.
A wasp thrust out of the gap. I swung the blade and lopped its head off. The blue and yellow body crashed down, and I grabbed it with my left hand, yanked it out of the fissure, and sent it flying to the ground far below.
Bear broke into barks. There goes our element of surprise.
The entire nest buzzed like a tornado spinning into life. Another wasp shot through the fissure, and I cleaved it in half, my sword cutting through the segmented thorax like it was butter.
“Sir?”
Elias’ eyes snapped open. Leo hovered in his view. Elias sat up.
“We found Jackson,” the XO said.
Two wasps tried to squeeze through the gap at the same time and got stuck one on top of the other. I twisted the sword into a spike, skewered the top one, because it was closer and let its dead weight push the second wasp down. It struggled, pinned to the ground, and I hacked at it.
The buzzing was deafening now. The walls of the fissure vibrated as the enraged hive mobilized for an all-out assault. Next to me Bear barked her head off, flinging spit into the air. She wasn’t just a dog, she was a guild K9, trained to alert when the breach monsters came near. The monsters were here, and she was alerting everyone.
