Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“They’re right above us,” he informed them as Fierce and Celia jumped back onto the narrow blank. “Here, Brother—take a rope. They’re going to be on us at any minute!”
As he spoke, they began lowering the sky-lifter down as fast as they could. Celia looked upwards and saw that many more sky-lifters, all filled with goat-men guards, were also descending. However, once they came level with Second Branch, things started to happen.
The holy spiders had reached the edge of the branch and, seeing sky-lifters filled with males—apparently decided to attack. They skittered forward, flinging themselves onto the goat-men, chittering and hissing angrily as they clamped their jaws and sank their claws into anything they could find—which happened to be the goat-men guards.
Many of the guards appeared to be taken completely by surprise. Several of them let go of one or both of the ropes of their sky-lifters, and subsequently went crashing to the forest floor below. The ones that did manage to keep hold of their ropes were also now fighting off the enormous spiders. There was screaming and shouting and Celia heard the Mistress of Silks crying,
“Oh, my babies! No, don’t hurt my babies!”
And then they were past the chaos and finally touching down on the forest floor.
The leaves around them were littered with bodies of goat men and some of the spiders too, which started to run at them. Fierce shot the two huge arachnids and they died, hissing and curling in on themselves.
“This way!” he shouted. “The ship’s not far from here!”
And then the three of them were running as fast as they could, finally getting away from the Mother Tree.
45
CELIA
“Hurry—there’s still a few of them behind us,” Hold panted, as the three of them piled into the long range shuttle and Fierce slid into the pilot’s chair.
“It’s okay—they’ve only got short range ships here. Probably why those two fuckers were planning on stealing ours,” the Dark Twin growled as he cycled quickly through the pre-flight sequence. “They can’t get us as long as we reach the wormhole before they do.”
“The wormhole?” Celia gasped, pausing for a moment in the act of buckling her harness. “Surely we’re not going in there again!”
“You got a better way to get home, sweetheart?” Fierce growled, grabbing the steering yoke and yanking upwards. “Maybe you’ve got a fucking dimensional portal hidden in your pocket? Oh, wait—I forgot—that dress doesn’t have pockets.”
“Stop being a sarcastic shithead and listen to me!” Celia insisted. “That thing isn’t safe you big pendejo!”
“It only destabilizes once every two hours, on the even hours” Fierce growled. “I learned all about it from working with the guys in the Repair Shop.”
“Every two hours on the hour, Brother.” Hold pointed to the chronometer on the instrument panel. “We’ve only got five minutes until two in the morning. Do you think we can make it?”
At that moment, the ship was rocked so violently that Celia thought they must have hit something. She was glad she’d gotten her harness buckled, because otherwise she would have been thrown out of her seat and directly into the viewscreen!
“I think we have to make it,” Fierce said grimly. “They’re firing on us. Everybody hang the fuck on—I’m taking evasive maneuvers!”
He yanked on the steering yoke, swerving hard to the left, then dipping down, then shooting straight up into space in a move so extreme Celia was pinned to her seat by the force of gravity. She felt like she had left her stomach behind her somewhere, back on JoCosta Twelve but she couldn’t complain—couldn’t do anything but stare in horror as the numbers on the chronometer registered that they were only two minutes away from two AM when the wormhole would destabilize again.
Abruptly, the ship leveled out.
“Think I lost them,” Fierce growled, glaring at the instruments.
“No you haven’t, Brother.” Hold pointed at the rearview of the viewscreen. “There they are—right behind us.”
“Fuck! Hold on—I’m punching it!” the Dark Twin snapped.
The ship shot forward, pinning Celia to her seat again. Ahead, looming in the viewscreen, she could see the whirling colors of the wormhole shining like a beacon in the blackness of space.
“Dios!” she gasped. “How did we get to it so fast when it took us half an hour to get from the wormhole to the planet last time?”
“The propulsion system was damaged and we had a fuel leak last time.” Fierce spoke without looking at her, his eyes fixed on the wormhole growing in the viewscreen. “Lucky for us, the goat-men did a fucking good job fixing everything.”
“It’s almost two o’clock!” Celia moaned, her eyes flicking to the chronometer and its blinking red numbers again. “Madre de Dios—the wormhole—look at the wormhole!”
The wormhole was flickering. It was blinking back and forth, from its usual brilliant, vibrant colors to the grayed-out look it had when it was destabilized.