Family from Beyond the Stars, Ch. 11 (Patreon)

CH. 11Bonds Stronger than Fear

The droning hum of the engines changed cadences as the warship darted back into slip-space after having cleared the atmosphere  Nova sagged against the controls before the wires and plugs disengaged from her spine.  She fell to the floor twenty feet below, nowhere near able to catch herself this time.  For her size, it was still a jarring impact.

Hissing breath exploded out of her at the dozens of injuries all across her body.  The armored suit was in need of repairs.  One of her tentacles had been cut off near to the root.  It was repairable, but the pain was excruciating.  She slowly picked herself back up and hauled her body over to the door.  The climb back down was even worse than it had been when Kenny had come to look for her.

Kenny.

A fresh wave of emotion welled up in her: sorrow, pain, anger, regret, fear, and resentment all warring for control.  Images of his face, so calmly confident in the choice he was making before sprinting away across the snow, her father hot on his heels, made her vision blur.  It nearly caused her to lose her grip on the walls and plummet the hundred or so odd feet down the shaft to the bottom.  The ship altered the gravitational fields so that the cargo bay and cockpit were the only areas with it.  The rest of the ship was forced to compensate, so not to overburden the power supply.  She felt her footpaws finally touch the floor and she sagged again.

Nova's eyes were glazed over and distracted as she half-dragged herself into the hanger bay.  She checked on the life signs of the cubs.  None of them were damaged, but obvious mental signs of distress caused spikes in their mental readouts.  Nightmares.  Nova was all too used to having them herself.  Tapping the ejection button for each, she watched the goo begin to drain slowly back out, ending the sleep-stasis.  She knew they needed more rest, but she couldn't let them suffer in not knowing.

She slumped against the wall as she heard the cubs beginning to stir inside their pods, the doors sliding open with pressurized hisses.  Her leaden paw tapped at a button on the armory locker next to her, unsuccessfully for a number of tries, and after tried not to move as the doors slid open.   Hooks, claws, tentacles, and wires extended to unburden her of the damaged gear and store it inside so the auto-repair functions could begin.

Finally divested of her armor, she slumped down onto her hindquarters against the cargo bay wall.  Pain had nearly turned her entire body numb save for the spikes and flares of agony coursing through her every few seconds.  Fumbling with a paw, she grabbed an emergency booster of the bio-fuel she kept in the armory and injected it into the receptor on her neck.  It stung and burned for several seconds before, with a great sigh of relief, she felt it begin to kick in.  The wounds closed over and scarred.  With her eyes still closed, she felt soft paws touch her leg.  She looked down at the trio of worried cubs staring up at her.

Nova, despite her exhaustion, smiled softly at her brood.  They were safe.  Wordlessly, she pulled them all into her arms, cradling one apiece and nuzzling them against her chest.  Their soft purrs were like music to her ears.  Her heart hammered in her chest even now.  She had come so close to losing them all again.  They had been lucky.

No.  She slowly looked up from the bundle of furry, quivering bodies in her arms as they mewled softly against her.  It had not been luck.  Once again, someone had saved her.  Once again, she had been forced to leave behind someone who meant so much to her, knowing he would be killed.  Their family had lost a Father for the second time.  The weight and pain of that lodged inside of her chest like a thorn, like a blade thrust between her ribs.  She shuddered, folding in around her cubs more as tears stained her furry cheeks.

Soft licks startled her.  She looked down as Joey lapped silently at her face.  Chandler pawed at her chest and belly in a kneading massage.  Phoebe shoved her face underneath Nova's chin.  Her heart trembled even more.  They were such good cubs.  She held them longer.  Then, it came.  She felt one of them squirm out of her grasp.  She didn't need to look to know Chandler was looking around the cargo hold.  He yowled.

The others stirred.  They clambered down out of her arms too.  Their plaintive, concerned calls echoed around the ship.  Phoebe darted over to Kenny's empty pod, which still stood wide open.  Joey dug through the padded container Kenny used to sleep in on odd nights.  Chandler even wormed his way in and around Nova's body as if their Daddy was hiding behind her.  Their cries got more distressed and worried the longer they searched.

Her head hung to her chest, top pair of paws folding in over her ears while her lower pair wrapped around her knees.  She shuddered as, at last, as she knew they would, the cubs returned to her as their fruitless searching for Kenny turned up no signs of where he could be.  They pawed at her, bumped her with their noses.  Phoebe yowled, a tearful sound of desperation.  Their mother clenched her fangs tight.

Nova slowly looked up from her crossed arms and the floor underneath her.  Her distraught face greeted the searching, hopeful gazes of her children.  She looked at each of them in turn, and then out, away from them, and where the doors of the hangar bay had been.  Her back arched up more and she closed her barely-glowing eyes as another burning wave of tears leaked out of her.

The cubs stiffened in front of her, her silence speaking volumes.  There were no words that would make this any easier.  The truth was right there in front of them.  She forced herself to meet their gazes, knowing they deserved that at least, no matter what their reactions might be.

Chandler's eyes had gone wide, his tufted ears and tail drooping and he stared at nothing.  He barely seemed to move at all, ruff deflating and his colors seemed to fade completely away.  Joey was not so taciturn or collected.  The always emotional male wailed, opening his maw wide and letting out a mournful cry that echoed all around them; it was a loud, ululating scream that seemed to go on and on.  Phoebe meanwhile just stared at Nova.  Her fur slowly bunched up, her hackles raised, and her teeth began to show.  Finally, her daughter exploded at her.  Her ferocious yowl cut even through Joey's wail, startling everyone.

Nova met Phoebe's furious expression.  She saw the tears behind her frenzied eyes, the shudders that threatened to shake the self-confident, take-charge Alpha child to her core and shatter her completely.  She reached for Phoebe, to try and comfort her.

Her daughter snarled and lashed out with a paw.  The short, sharp claws cut thin lines into Nova's closest finger.  She leaned back from Phoebe who yowled and wailed at her louder and louder.  She condemned her mother for abandoning their Daddy, for not doing more.

These emotions washed over Nova.  She wanted to refute them, to rise in anger.  But that wouldn't have been fair, to retort against a child who didn't know any better and was unable to accept the reality facing them all.  The little cub's shoulders slumped after a minute and she turned slowly away.

Her brothers looked after her silently as she crawled back into her tube and curled up into the smallest ball she could.  Soft sniffles and sobs came a moment or so later.  Joey's shoulders still shuddered and shivered from his more open crying, hanging his head to the ground.  Chandler walked over to him and wrapped his brother in his arms, hiding that he too had begun to cry.

Even so, the lanky prankster didn't let himself weep for long.  Chandler's eyes quickly hardened and he let go of Joey.  He leaped over towards Kenny's pod, groping over it to try and find purchase up the slick material until he snagged the lid with his paws and slammed it closed.  Joey walked over, yowling pitifully, curiously, at what his brother was doing.  Phoebe stirred in her pod but didn't rise.  Chandler then proceeded, to even Nova's surprise, to begin cycling through a display monitor, searching for Kenny's life signs.

Even for one so young, Chandler showed a knack for their racial technology.  Joey tried to help, even if all he could do at times was boost his sibling up on his shoulders to reach yet higher parts of the panels that were normally out of reach.  The source of his desperate endeavor became obvious: he was searching for Kenny’s tracker built into his livesuit.  She hung her head even more.  They couldn't give up yet.  They had to have hope.

It hurt Nova more than anything to see her cubs like this, to hang on so foolishly and innocently to the belief that the universe wasn't this cruel.  She closed her eyes and curled into the wall more, knowing exactly how dark it could be.

She saw his face, his smile, the way he flushed every time something rattled or flustered him.  So often it was when she returned his displays if intimacy or teased him, or caught him staring at her.  She smelled his scent, heard his laugh, felt his soft touch on her fur as he petted her.  So many things she had wanted to say, experiences she wanted to share with him.

This life, always on the run, had hardened her, made believing in such dreams as hope impossible.  Kenny had broken her out of her despair, first as another parent trying desperately to connect her with her children.  Then he had been a friend, approaching her with no ulterior motives but to want to be at her side.  His final sacrifice, however, had not been as a friend, or as just a co-parent.  He had acted just like her Mate had.  Both of them had been so stubborn, so selfish.

She narrowed her eyes for a moment.  How dare Kenny inflict this pain upon her again?  She had been ready to die for her cubs, bequeathing the ship to him to take care of them as she went to face her father one last time.  But no.  He had stolen her glory, her honorable death, to flaunt himself somehow as her protector.  His weak, pathetic, fragile body was not that of a defender, a warrior, or even, by her race’s standards, a suitable partner.

She saw him in her mind's eye, turning slowly at the sound of her building growl.  She was so angry at him for his sacrifice, for inflicting this kind of harm onto the cubs, onto her.  How selfish could he possibly be?  Did he care nothing for how they felt after he would be gone?  Did he value himself so little that he couldn't see how much the cubs needed him?

She roared at him in her mind.  Did he not see how much she needed him too?  She stopped cold in her tracks.  His eyes were uncertain upon her but, slowly, he smiled.  The scars on his forehead drew her gaze before he nodded once at her.  His mouth opened.

Blip.

Nova’s eyes flew open.  She blinked rapidly, cheeks burning and wet.  She waited for a long second or more then sighed.  Perhaps it had just been her imagination.

Blip.

She looked up and over toward the cubs.  All three of them were staring raptly at the lit-up display screen of Kenny's pod.  Nova blinked again, rising up onto all six limbs and stalking over, looming over them.  Chandler had his nose nearly plastered to the screen, gaze unblinking.  Joey and Phoebe were equally holding him up so he could reach the scanner button.

The display showed Kenny's readout, as well as his most recently logged information.  Most of it was grayed out, logs of body functions and organ health.  None of them paid any attention to those.  At his waist, the glowing nodule that was his tracker flashed on and off.  Chandler smacked it again with his paw.

They waited with bated breath, all four of them, as the lines of text rapidly cycled over and over.  Longer and longer they continued to try to give a reading.  Nova eventually looked away, ears folding down.  Even with everything she had been telling herself, she had dared to hope.  She knew better than that.

True, she had not felt Kenny die as she had with the King, but she and the Earthling had not been empathically bonded as Lifemates.  She doubted that was even possible but, even so, she was fond of Kenny, felt close to him, as close as she had ever felt to any living being, even her own children.  He was as much a part of this family as any of them were.  She knew the universe would never be so kind as to spare her this latest heartbreak.

Blip.

All eyes fastened onto the screen.  Sure enough, Kenny's display lit up brighter.  The lines of text swiveled to the side, displaying information.  It was faint.  But it was there.  Kenny...was alive!

The cubs let out savage yowls of triumph.  Chandler leaped down from his siblings' shoulders and they gambled about in rapid circles.  Nova stared nonplussed at the screen, barely able to believe what she was seeing.  She brushed past them all, reaching out with her remaining tentacle and rapidly tapping out more complex commands.  More lines of text flashed across the screen and streamed directly into her implant.

Her heart sank.  Lifesigns, low. Energy, low. Location, the planet they had just left.  One paw lifted, brushing against the side of the pod as if she could somehow reach out through all that distance and touch him one more time.  How was this possible?

Something thudded against her arm, causing her to jerk and then look down for its source.  Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe stared imploringly up at her.  Their eyes had never looked so big.  They knew that, even with this information, there was little they could do.  Little they could do.

Their eyes bored up into hers, beseeching her more desperately than they had ever done for anything else before in their life.  She was reminded of how they had all pleaded with her to help him when he had been sick and dying.  A pang went through her as she remembered the state of his life signs back then, visible even with just a quick scan.

Without meaning to, she looked over to Kenny's padded personal sleeping quarters, left empty and unused since he had begun sleeping in her bunk with her when not in his pod.  She looked past it, to the open bay window and the dark sleeve of slipspace outside of the ship.  She knew what lurked out there, which they had barely just escaped.  Kenny had given everything, knowing the probable outcome as evidently as she had for any who attempted to stand against her father.  A shudder of fear went through her at the memory.

She was not yet fully grown, an adult true but with many solar years ahead of her.  Her father had been alive for centuries, growing stronger, bigger, and more skilled with each passing cycle.  He was the last of the Old Guard of their planet, one of the original ruling Warlords.  The others had been killed off in the wars or turned to the King's side during the Reformation of Light.  The remaining members' lives had been snuffed out during the culling.  Even they had not stood a chance.  If he found them again…

Another bump at her waist disturbed her grim pondering.  Sturdy weight pushed against her paw, the one Phoebe had scratched.  She looked down.  Phoebe was thrusting her head hard against it, holding the massive paw against her skull by using two of her own.  Her eyes opened then as Nova slid her paw gently off the top of her daughter's head and they looked at one another.  Phoebe's mouth opened tremulously.  Her bottom jaw quivered.

'Please…Momma....' Nova heard inside of her head.  Her eyes went wide and she stared down at her child.  Her first words.  The first empathic bond.  Her voice was like music, lyrical and warm.  Her stripes even lit back up, blazing to life as grandly as Nova's had ever done.  She would have wept from joy ordinarily were this any other occasion.  Phoebe was staring right up at her.  Her eyes began to glow again, turning iridescent blue once more.  'Find.  Daddy.’

Joey pushed his way forward then.  His head took over rubbing one of Nova's other paws.  'Find.  Daddy,' he said.  His voice was low, harmonic, and rumbled deep in his chest; he sounded just like his Father.  His rosettes whirled back to their flashing colors again and his fur even seemed to fluff back up.

Chandler took a paw as well, his tufted ears sticking out from between Nova's fingers.  His tail waved back and forth behind his haunches.  'Find.  Daddy,' he said.  He sounded higher than his siblings, a voice that so easily could break into song, or laughter, or nervous tittering.  It reminded her of rain before a lightning storm.  Sure enough, energy crackled along the crimson tips of his neck and ears, all the way down to his tail.

Nova stared into the trio of eyes gazing up at her.  Their words resonated within her head over and over, imploring, demanding, pleading, begging, beseeching.  Each utterance broke her heart anew again, and again.  She couldn't even feel jealous that they may still prefer their Daddy.  That was how much he loved them, and how much they loved him.  And Mommy was the only one who could bring him back.

Right on queue, their voices synchronized into one.  'Bring.  Daddy.  Back.  Mommy.'  They shared one, slow, unanimous blink of trust up at their mother.  'This is.  Our.  Family.  We leave.  No one.  Behind.'

Nova looked up from her cubs, eyes hardening and she rose from her crouch against the wall.  The cubs fell back and away from her warily, unsure what she would do.  She lifted a paw and pressed something at her wrist, activating a simple, meaningful command.  The engines' hum changed tone abruptly, the hull shuddering underneath their combined paws as they came to a dead stop.

Crowing and yowling in joy, the cubs turned.  Their eyes went wide.  Nova was being bolted back into her armor.  It was not yet fully repaired; barely any work had been done.  Even so, their mother was gearing up for battle once again.  She checked every weapon system, every blade, and firearm.  She had ammo.  She had energy.  She even stowed several more vials of the bio-fuel in her emergency pack.

As the helmet clattered back over her face and then brightened up so that her face was visible once again through it, visor still cracked, Nova looked down at her cubs.  They traded a look.  She strode to the entrance to the hangar and disappeared out of it.  The three children were left to look at one another nonplussed, unsure of what would or was going to happen.

The engines roared suddenly to life a minute or so later, blazing at full capacity, and nearly knocking them from their paws at the intense reverberations of the quaking floorboards.  The cubs raced over to the window, seeing the slipspace corridor changing hues and the direction of the stars as they flashed by.  They were going back.

The slipspace sleeve opened back up and they once again hovered over the ice planet, the last one in a slowly receding chain of celestial bodies being slowly drawn towards the black hole at the center of the system.  From the way it had continued to expand, this cluster did not have much longer before everything in it would be swallowed up.  There was no time to waste.

The cubs felt their home's floor shudder once again, changing tone and humming strength.  The ship's engines, wings, and hull outside then shimmered as they went into stealth mode, blocking out all scanning technology that might try and locate them.  It was a low-power mode at best, meant for long period use, and every second would count.

From their mother's explanations of how the ship worked, they knew that it would keep their Grandfather’s tracer from finding them as easily than if they simply allowed the ship to idle.  As he had done.  They hated him, feared him, but they loved their Daddy more.  Any risk was worth it to try and find him again.

Nova reemerged into the hangar bay.  She did one last check as the ship slowly lowered back into the planet's atmosphere.  The atmosphere-integration protocol activated, shrouding them in dense clouds to protect the ship from descending into a foreign biosphere’s potentially hazardous effects.

As they finally neared planetside, Nova remotely steered the ship towards Kenny's last known location pinged on his pod.  They came to a complete stop beside a massive hill that overlooked a crevice, a deep canyon that spanned miles of terrain.  It was so deep that mist covered it, concealing the true bottom from view.

Nova activated her scanner on her helmet, sweeping the ground below for signs of life.  She saw none with the first pass.  She tried heat-tracking pings, then sonar.  Finally she switched to emp readings.  Still nothing, although she did at last pick up something.   There was movement down there though, a lot of it.  Other than that, her suit’s geographical mapping system could not paint a reliable top-down view of the chasm, ending right at the wall of fog.  There should at least have been latent electrical currents that signified ground from its surroundings.

She walked over to her armory, sealed the doors, and used the onboard, more advanced computer systems to perform an in-depth scan of the planet's biological and chemical makeup.  The constant snowstorms and blizzards did not help, but after a few seconds, Nova ascertained that the lower levels of the planet formed a shielding lacquer, similar to the material close to the geothermic pools they had lounged near to before.  This hardened material coated the bottom of the canyon, blocking out all attempts by scanners to pinpoint individual items or creatures.  But there was life down there.  What kinds, Nova couldn't be sure.

Her eyes panned over to Kenny's pod once again, tapping on the pod’s scanner one final time to reaffirm that his tracker was still active.  Reassured and morale strengthened, she next slid a paw into a crevice along the side of the tube and pulled out a connecting cable.  She pulled this over to the armory pod and plugged it in.  The blipping display flashed in a series of lights and humming tones before reappearing on the larger screen of the armory panel so the cubs could watch.

As they sat down in front of it, seeing the slow, monotonous Blip that was their Daddy's life signs, faint but visible, another one joined it.  This one was much stronger.  They looked to the side as Nova retrieved her paw from her waist, where she had just activated her own tracker.

Leaning down and opening her visor, their Mother rubbed her cheek against each cub's face, licking them once apiece as well.  They returned the gesture equally.   Then she stood back up to her almost four-meter height and stomped over towards the bay doors.  The hydraulics whirred to life, the claxon warning sound of the doors opening preceding a furious gust of frozen air.

As she hung herself halfway out of the ship, her eyes tracked ever downwards, trying to pierce through the mists so far below.  It was a long drop, but she had done many like it over the years.  Never before without adequate data, but passion outweighed self-preservation in this.  She traded one final look with her children, tapped a button at her wrist, and threw herself out.

The doors closed behind her as she fell, wind howling past her helmeted skull.  Nova streamlined her huge body as she plummeted, soon vanishing into the mists below.  Her visor rapidly fed her information, altitude gauge ticking down before, at the last second, showing an emergency reading of unseen ground hurtling up toward her.

She crossed her arms in front of her face and chest, activating a pair of boosters at her thighs and feet to spin her around and up, then bunched down into a ball right as she struck.  She hammered into and through a thick layer of the lacquer shielding with a colossal impact.  Lower and lower she fell, smashing through yet more layers of the hardened, polished material, until, at last, she reached the bottom.

She landed hard, paws spreading wide around her to maintain her balance as the impact stabilizers blazed to life.  Mist billowed out in a shroud, debris clattering across her hunched shoulders and the floor beneath her, where thick cracks spread out all like spiderwebs.

Several seconds passed, Nova letting her armor and senses refresh from the drop.  Her suit was still fully operational and at nearly full power.  She activated a scan of the surrounding area first before her eyes opened and did a visual one as well.

Nothing but dark, shaded-blue tunnels stretched out as far as the eye could see.  They crisscrossed and wove in and out of sight.  She could see perfectly in any natural shadow or gloom, thanks to adaptive sensors in the visor.  No light usually came to this place as she panned her gaze slowly about, observing the stretching catacomb of naturally formed tunnels and hollows all around her.

Her ears swiveled at the sounds of rapid skittering and scuttling as something nearby rattled along one of the walls.  Clinks and clatters of sharp nails and claws, as if on glass, resounded around her in echoing bursts.  She remained completely still as a sinister chattering began to build.  The occupants of the crevice did not like the look of this intruder.

Behind Nova, a section of the wall slowly detached itself from the polished, smooth features of its surroundings.  Dozens of sharp claws and legs unfurled and the sections of glass-like chitin that formed its camouflaging back made soft bursts as they broke apart to allow for movement of the serpent-centipede-like thing.  A multi-eyed head turned slowly to face the silent, unmoving newcomer.

Antenna rose above an insectoid face, where fanged, mandible-like jaws clicked and clacked, producing the source of the ominous chittering.  It revealed a double-set of much larger forelimbs, usually tucked underneath its belly, then as it silently skittered closer to its presumed prey.

It loomed above Nova from behind.   The long upper arms splayed out wide, ready to grapple its prey, each limb terminating in a massive bladed forearm, shaped like a scythe.  Freezing bile and venom dripped from its open jaws, barbed teeth extending.  The jaws clicked open and distended, bisecting the entire lower jaw, stretching wide enough to envelop the Mother's skull in one bite.  The panels along its back produced a bone-freezing rattle then, a hiss like that of a cockroach right before it lunged, lightning fast!

A flash of light briefly illuminated the perpetually shadow-shrouded cavern, causing the onlooking creatures to shrink back in surprise as they were momentarily blinded.  Once their sensitive eyes readjusted, they hissed their disapproval and shock at what they saw.  Their compatriot fell to the side, cut neatly in half.

Nova's extended blade sizzled with foul green, rapidly evaporating fluids upon its plasma-heated edge.  The upper body of the slain creature rapidly curled in on itself, claws and mandibles scrabbling in its death throes on the polished, tractionless flooring before finally it shuddered to complete stillness.

The other half remained standing before it too collapsed, parts of it nearest the cut having powdered away into black soot and foul-smelling particulates.  At the very least, the clean strike of the sword had kept the acidic bladders inside from bursting, although they smelled possibly the worst.  The gasses they released warned Nova through her suit that breathing them in was highly toxic.

She inspected what was left of the Chiteling impassively.  This wasn't the first of their number she'd run into, although she wasn't aware they could dwell on cold planets like this.  Ambush predators that preferred systems with dense, underground areas rife with tunnels like this, they were voracious carnivores and grew like bacteria when left unchecked.  This one had been an adult, a male.

More chittering came from around her as no doubt the thousands of its kind in the recent vicinity reacted badly to seeing this intruder cut down one of their own.  Even as casual a show of force as that wouldn’t fully deter them.  She stood slowly to her full height.  One pair of arms formed a short-muzzled firearm beyond her wrists that flared to life a second later with actual flame.  The burst of heat and light again stunned the eyes of the creatures around her and she pointed it at the remains of the dead male.

One quick flare and they all watched as the remaining limbs, curls, and chitinous body melted into goo.  She lifted her other arms, bearing aloft the glowing sword blades, and then she began to stomp forward.  Unseen numbers, anywhere between dozens and hundreds, parted around her limbs as she moved.  Now they understood; this was not some easy prey.  Still, she could hear them following her.  She even stepped on a juvenile that had not tried to break its cover, crushing it underneath her ponderous tread.

She put them out of her mind, reactivating her scanner.  Her visor latched onto the faint, barely audible signal that Kenny's suit was putting out.  Her Human was somewhere in here, lost amidst these emp-shielding tunnels, yet unspoiled by its natural denizens but for how much longer, she had no faith in knowing.

His signal repeatedly kept going in and out the deeper she went, seemingly going both downhill as well as up.  The tunnels were cramped for something of her size, and she was forced to stick to the larger ones, breaking through the walls only when strictly necessary.

Every so often, she turned, firing a burst of her flamethrower back at her pursuers.  The unlucky Chitelings that strayed too near to her found out the hard way that living specimens fared no better than the corpse she had used as an example.  One touch of those lethal flames turned whatever they touched into shrieking piles of smoldering limbs and carapaces that dissolved into puddles of steaming goo.

The use of the flames also had another factor in Nova’s favor.  To help deter the hordes even more, the chemicals used in her weapon left the corpse inedible to the cannibalistic insectoids.  Even the largest of their species quickly learned to stay well back from her as she continued her search.

Deeper and deeper, Nova ventured into the tunnels.  She knew that she didn't have long to be here.  The cubs were protected by the stealth systems being engaged, but for how long?  The only thing she could depend on was that her Father would never dream that she would dare return to a doomed sector like this, in pursuit of a being like Kenny.  He had never understood love the way her people had learned to underneath the guidance of their King.  And that wasn't the only time-crunch; there was still the issue of the black hole.

She still feared her father more.  His single eye haunted her dreams, waking or deep sleep, and their fight had only more heavily reinforced her desire to always be one step ahead of him.  He would never get a hold of her children, not so long as there was a part of her that still had the capacity to fight.  He was a monster, evidenced by his wearing of her Mate's pelt as a horrific trophy.  But even her fear waned in the face of the trial ahead of her.  Some bonds were stronger than fear.

'Kenny,' she thought to herself, smashing her way through yet another wall and torching the stunned collection of Chitelings beyond it that didn't get out of her way fast enough.  The Blip on her sensors had faded slightly and that lent strength to her limbs, burning away the aches and pains of her injuries that hadn't been healed completely by her bio-fuel injection earlier.  She would not be stopped by something so meaningless and trivial as pain.  No pain could be worse than losing the Father of her children again.  Losing her Mate, again.

This was her family.  No one was going to take even one more member from it ever again.

She smashed her way through another cramped section of tunnels and emerged into a wide opening.  In a depression a good forty feet below, the ground rattled to life in the form of a Chiteling that dwarfed even the male she had killed before.  A low-ranking Hive Queen, nowhere near as big as they were known to grow, but still massive in size.

The female was agitated and angry, rattling her spines and clicking her mandibles in rage.  Nova met this mother's eyes implacably.  She kept the flamethrower lifted and stalked around the edge of the room.  She did not want a fight with this Queen.  As grotesque and ugly as it was, it was like her, a mother trying to raise a brood.

The monstrous female took that choice from her.  Skittering up onto its hundreds of sharp, thorny claws, it scrambled toward her, intent on making a meal of this intruder.  She snarled right back and her blade lifted to hack at the horribly twisting and scything claws that rippled around her on all sides.

She sheared off one leg, then two, then four as they scraped and scrabbled at her armored flanks.  Then the flamethrower let out a howling burst and the Queen fell back in shrieking pain and terror, entire skull aflame.  Its limbs flailed as it fell onto its back.  Nova leaped forward, landing flat on the uplifted, segmented chest, and plunged the blade into the chitinous underbelly.  She sliced it up the stomach to the throat and out before jumping down and leaving the monster to die.

She checked her sensor again.  Kenny's signal was slowly but assuredly growing closer.

'Kenny,' she growled.  'Hold on.  Nova is coming.'