Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

jumping from every side, but showed no signs of knitting themselves together. They pattered weakly against the hard suits, but did no harm. Beyond the opening lay a narrow milky-white tunnel with smooth, faintly glowing walls. It was barely eight feet in diameter, only just big enough to take the away team in their hard suits, and Silence couldn't help wondering if that was deliberate. There was no sign of any enemy.
    "I'll take the lead," said Frost. "This is Investigator business now."
    "Couldn't agree more," said Silence. "After you."
    Frost stepped through into the narrow tunnel, the gauntlets with built-in guns held out before her. Silence followed, and the marines brought up the rear. The floor of the tunnel gave disturbingly under their weight, as though it might rupture at any moment and spill them into whatever lay waiting below. But somehow it held. Silence pressed on and tried hard not to think about it. He'd lost all track of where he was in relation to the ship's exterior. He wasn't actually lost. The suit had kept track of all his twists and turns, and could
    easily lead him back. But he still didn't know where he was precisely; he just had a strong feeling he was getting deep and deeper in, being lured remorselessly toward the dark heart of the alien craft. He checked his air supply, but he'd barely touched it so far. Theoretically the re-breather could keep him alive for up to a week. Under normal conditions.
    He deliberately didn't finish that thought and instead studied the tunnel walls to either side of him. They were flat and smooth, not cabled, more like membranes. They pulsed and fluctuated to no apparent purpose, and waves of pale color briefly tinged the milky white like passing thoughts or dreams. The passage was also narrowing, slowly but inexorably. Silence used his suit's sensors to measure the diameter of the tunnel and compared it to the size it had been when they entered it. He frowned at the answer and calculated how long it would be before the tunnel grew too small for his team to continue on. He liked that answer even less. Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds. No buts or maybes.
    "Investigator, marines, stop right where you are."
    They did so. Frost didn't look back, but he knew she was watching him quite clearly on the inside of her helmet. Silence measured the tunnel behind him with his suit's sensors and wasn't at all surprised to discover that the tunnel had already narrowed beyond the point where they could pass through it.
    "I was wondering when you'd notice," said Frost. "It would appear the aliens have us where they want us. Shall I blast it?"
    "What the hell," said Silence. "When in doubt, make a loud noise. Let someone know we're here, and we're not at all happy about it."
    Frost aimed her built-in disrupters at the narrowing tunnel before her, and the milky-white walls split apart in a hundred places as insects beyond counting
    burst in on the away team. The bugs ranged in size from many-legged things the size of a fist, which swarmed all over the hard suits looking for weak spots and entry points, to huge bulky things with their own armor and vicious pincer claws. The tunnel was briefly full of flashing disrupter bolts, and insects fried as the tunnel walls blew apart, but once the guns fell silent the away team disappeared beneath a writhing mass of silent insect life. Tiny things swarmed over the suits' sensors, and Silence was suddenly blind and deaf. He tried to brush the insects away with his powerful steel hands, but there were just too many of them. Warnings flashed up before his eyes as acid began to eat into his armored joints, threatening the hard suit's integrity. Screams sounded in his ears as the insects invaded a marine's armor and began to eat him alive.
    More screams followed.
    "Frost!" said Silence. "You still have those explosives?"
    "Enough to blow us all to hell, if that's what you want."
    "I was thinking more of just enough to blow the insects to shit without rupturing our suits. Think you can manage that?"
    "No problem. Brace yourself."
    When it came, the explosion was powerful enough to briefly fill the inner screen of Silence's helmet with a dozen warnings, but they faded out one by one as the suit held. He brushed vaguely at himself, and sight and sound returned as dead insects fell away and the sensors cleared. The tunnel hung in tatters around them, and beyond and around them lay the secret of the alien ship; the vast, imposing shape of the Queen