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There was the click, click, click of the Khul’s chitinous bodies as they moved. The dry, raspy smell coated the back of his tongue and throat. He wanted to vomit, but resolutely breathed through his mouth and not his nose to minimize the smell. Certain that none of them were coming his way to check on what had made those running sounds, Davies slowly peeked out. He quickly drew back again.

Two of the Khul--Omull--were standing guard, their gazes towards this part of the sewer though they had been turning back to look at what the others were doing. He had caught a glimpse of them too. The other five--several caterpillar-like Cetixes and a few more Omull--were fastening octagonal canisters to a wall that was covered in a glowing shield. There were various pipes coming out of the wall where liquid and debris from the Compound passed through the shield--it must work one-way--and join the sewer system. The octagonal canisters glowed a virulent green and though Davies did not know what compound was in them, he knew what they were.

Bombs.

Davies grimaced. He had expected this, but he was feeling just how under equipped he was. If he had a grenade or two or ten he would have sent those rolling down the sewer towards the bugs and blown them into smithereens. It would have likely set off the other bombs, too, but that was fine. No other Khul were coming in this way. The others would take them out. But he had no grenades. He had a draagves and a rahir.

But I bet if I hit their bombs with a few shorts from the draagves that will set it off and maybe the others, too. Bug splat.

He hoped the explosion wouldn’t splat him as well. But unless he got them all, he wouldn’t want to be alive if they caught him. And hitting the bombs was a better idea than hoping he could hit every Khul for enough damage that they would go down on the first or second go.

Davies breathed in and out to settle himself. He never really wanted to die, but he really didn’t want to now. Sure, he had accepted it as a risk of the job, but going into space, seeing the Osiris and Ylore and… well, there was too much to fight for and stay alive for to give up now.

Yet he was going to do this, because it was really the only way.

And he needed to do it now. They were almost done setting the bombs and they’d be shuffling back down the sewer to get away from the blast themselves. Then they’d run right into him.

Let’s get this party started.

Davies remembered where the nearest bomb was and he adjusted his draagves so that as he leaned out to take that shot he was nearly aiming right at it. Except there was something in the way. One of the Omulls was already ambling right towards him. The Omull saw him just as he saw the Omull. They both froze.

Oh, Hell…

Then Davies pulled the trigger.

Heroes

Meanwhile, in one of the buildings in Ylore...

Typhon drew his rahir as he approached the Omull who had its chitinous back to him. He made no sound. All he ended up being was a rush of wind before the rahir severed the long neck from the Omull’s body. The body quivered, spurting its acidic blood, that hissed as it splattered the nearby wall and ground. Then, finally, the body toppled over. Typhon caught it with the flat side of his rahir and slowly lowered it to the ground so the noise was minimal.

He glanced down at his comm. There were ten Khul still left in the building. They were arrayed mostly along the far wall of windows that faced the now closed gate into the Compound. They had set up shields between themselves and the glass that would repel most draagves fire from a distance. Clearly, they believed that, at some point, people would exit the Compound through the front. Jace was likely right that they intended to force him out to face them. Of course, the Khul intended to simply cut Jace down the minute they emerged.

The Khul have no honor.

This was not a surprise. This was nothing new to think about. Sometimes it appealed to Typhon to just think of the Khul as monsters with only the basest of thoughts and feelings. He knew they were more than that--much more--from what he and Amana had discovered in the database, not to mention the Alliance’s own observations. But these individual Khul seemed like drones to him. They were told to do a thing and they did it without hesitation or fear or guilt.

We’re just food to them. A warm slab of flesh to nest their young. And our cries are the lullabies of their children.

Typhon kept low as he moved through the once-pleasant rooms of a physician’s practice. There were the exam tables and the treatment rooms to calm nerves, soothe hurts and restore health. But now they seemed contaminated to him. Typhon was certain that they would be sterilized after this, likely with fire. Would his family’s Compound be the only structure standing and habitable once this was all over? Surely, the Khul could not get in there since Jace fixed the shields!

Yet the Compound was old, as were all of the structures on Haseon, on ever Altaeth world, and they had been able to do only minimal maintenance. Things had been damaged over time, simply stopped working, and Jace couldn’t fix that in a few moments of interconnectivity.

The Pilot does not understand how far we’ve fallen.

He spotted two Khul in a corner room. One Cetix had its underside practically pressed to the window as it sought to set up some kind of device against the glass. It was globular and a dark, pulsing purple. The Khul technology was very different from the Altaeth, more organic, one might say. The other was an Omull who was pacing near the other window, lifting itself higher than its seven foot height to peer at the underside of the overpass where Jace and Khoth were.

Typhon pressed his back against the wall just outside of the door. He listened intently and imagined where the Omull was in its pacing then he looked inside. He was off by a step. He ducked back and listened some more. He repeated the process of looking inside. He was correct this time. He drew back. He needed to take them both out and there was only one moment where a single strike of the rahir and that was when they were closest together. He counted the thumps.

One…

Two…

Three…

Four…

He moved into the room like a shadow. His blade pulled back behind him. He used all of his strength and his forward momentum to bring the blade around. It sliced through the Omull’s neck cleanly. The head bounced off of the glass and tumbled away somewhere. The blade clove halfway through the Cetix and stuck. The Cetix reared frantically, in pain and alarm and shock, as its life’s blood poured everywhere.