The engine whine stopped.
The ship was no longer moving.
Milo understood what that last bad thing was in Halflight’s report.
The red ship had already reached its destination.
“Oh no . . . ,” breathed Evangelyne.
“We have just landed on the hive ship,” said the sprite.
The sprite landed her hummingbird and stepped off, then bent to the metal decking. A tiny fire ignited on the tip of one finger, and with it she drew a rough diagram of the ship on the floor.
“Here is where we left the prisoners,” she said. “And here is the bridge. The cargo holds are here, here, and here. We are in the fourth of four holds. The one closest to the exit.”
They discussed the best way to go and assigned tasks.
Evangelyne went to the door, opened it, and sniffed the air. “No Bugs close. We should go now while we have the chance.”
They followed her out into the corridor, which was empty in both directions.
Around the far side of the left-hand curve, they heard noises. Evangelyne morphed into a wolf and ran quickly and silently to see what was going on. She returned just as fast and became a girl again. Milo wondered how many times he would have to see that before it stopped being amazing. Or creepy. He wanted to ask her what happened to her dress when she became a wolf but didn’t think this was the right moment for that.
“The Bugs are already crawling out of their holes,” she said. “They’re off-loading supplies. The prisoners are still in the locked compartment. Perhaps they’ll take them out last.”
“Could you see if Shark managed to cut the cables? Is everyone free?”
She shook her head. “Only a few are. It is taking time to cut those cables.”
“Rats,” said Milo. “Shark will do it, though. He never gives up.”
“He’s the fat one? The one who was with you when you fought the Stinger?”
“He’s not fat,” said Milo defensively. “He’s big-boned. And . . . yes. He’s my best friend.”
“A friend is sometimes more important than family,” said Halflight. The other orphans nodded. She climbed back onto her hummingbird and buzzed near Milo’s nose. “We will try to help you save your friends.”
“They’re not my friends,” said Oakenayl. Mook looked at him for a moment, then punched him in the chest. Not hard, but hard enough.
Point made.
“Sorry,” muttered the oak boy, though it was clear he didn’t mean it. Milo wondered how much fun it would be to run Oakenayl through a wood chipper. Then something occurred to Milo. “What do we do if we get the Heart back but can’t get off the ship?”
Evangelyne answered that. “We know how to destroy the Heart,” she said. “If we have to.”
“Destroy it? But . . . but . . .”
“Better that than let the Swarm gain possession of it,” said Halflight. “Better for us to destroy the last link to magic than have it turned against us all.”
What she didn’t say—what none of them seemed willing to say—was that if things got so hopeless that they had to destroy the Heart, then it meant there was probably no chance of escaping.
Milo’s great plan had morphed into what was almost certainly a suicide mission.
They all knew it.
He pasted on his best game face and stuck out a finger so the hummingbird could land.
“Halflight,” said Milo, “I hate to ask, but—”
The sprite gave him a weary nod. “I can manage a few more glamours. But they won’t last. And when they’re gone . . .”
She didn’t need to finish it.
They looked at one another, all of them knowing that this moment was the cliff they all had to jump off.
“For our mother, Earth,” said Halflight. “May we acquit ourselves with honor.”
“For Earth,” said Oakenayl.
Milo said, “For the Nightsiders.”
They stared at him. Then Evangelyne kissed his cheek.
“For the children of the sun,” she said.
Iskiel hissed.
“Mook,” said Mook.
They left the storage compartment, and as each of them passed through the doorway, they changed.
Instead of a girl, an oak boy, a stone boy, a fire salamander, and a human boy, they were a line of rust-colored five-foot-high cockroaches. Only Halflight remained in her true form. Her face was gray and haggard, and even her fiery hair seemed to be nothing more than tangles of sparks. She slumped in her saddle and let the hummingbird carry her into the hall.
The next few minutes were a strange blur for Milo.
He and the orphans hurried along the curved corridor until they found the place where the drones were climbing out of rows of slots in the metal walls. A knot of shocktroopers seemed to be directing their actions by shouting orders that sounded to Milo like clicks and pops. The drones turned around, formed a line outside of one of the storerooms, and began the orderly process of off-loading all of the supplies stolen from the destroyed camp. Milo joined the line and when he entered the storeroom, he tried to hurry over and pick up a crate of rifles, but a shocktrooper shoved him back into line. The ’trooper had his shock rod out, and there were more of the Bug soldiers climbing out of holes in the walls.
Milo shuffled back into the line, picked up the box the nearest ’trooper indicated—which contained nothing more important than cans of corned beef—and followed the rest of the drones outside.
He lamented his previous plan. If it had worked, not only would the orphans have recovered the Heart of Darkness, but he’d have stolen a working Dissosterin ship. If he could deliver it to the EA—or use it to find his mother—then the resistance would acquire a powerful weapon. Maybe a game changer.
Now that looked a lot less likely.
The drones moved down the ramp and into a vast chamber. Milo almost dropped his bundle when he recognized it. They were inside a great dark shell of metal whose curved walls were so massive that they were nearly lost in shadows. The air was so humid that clouds hung in the air inside the hive ship. There was a titanic column in the center of the ship, and it rose through the clouds and shadows. Hanging from it, or perhaps growing out of it, were hundreds of thousands of leathery sacs of various sizes. Some were as small as duffel bags while others were big enough to cover an attack helicopter. Each sac twitched and throbbed as things moved within them. Drones and shocktroopers and other creatures. Hundreds of different subspecies, jostling with others for space, for food, for air. Long strands of gleaming metal webs crisscrossed the immense chamber, connecting the sacs to feeding machines and other equipment so obscure that even having seen them from inside the Huntsman’s mind, Milo couldn’t understand them.
However, Milo realized now that the robot hunter-killers were not modeled after Earth insects, but were instead smaller automatons based on all of the dozens of living insect forms up here. And here, above and around him, he saw the true shapes of the aliens. The many, many shapes. Ten-foot-long wasps. Fiery-red ants the size of German shepherds. Ticks that were nearly as big as cars. Stick bugs as long as telephone poles.
And there were smaller ones, too. Smaller than the giants, but much larger than any insects on Milo’s world. Teeming lice the size of mice; flies that there bigger than pigeons. Foot-long worms the color of old paste. Red-shelled beetles in their thousands, each of them larger than Milo’s hand.
Centipedes with bodies as long as school buses writhed and crawled between all the sacs. Other creatures, like slow spiders of enormous size, climbed over the sacs, monitoring them, adjusting them, and killing any of the Swarm that showed even the slightest sign of imperfection.
The walls were encrusted with countless bays and landings, with ships magnetically clamped to the hull, with smaller hives of a thousand kinds.
There had to be a million creatures up there.
No, tens of millions. He could see countless green lifelights pulsing in the gloom.
 
; This hive was a world unto itself.
And there are seven of them, thought Milo. Not an invading army. It was an invading population. In those seven ships was the whole of the Dissosterin race, and he was looking at one-seventh of them.
The chamber was as hot as an oven and so humid that Milo found it hard to breathe. He’d read once that insects grow largest in the hottest climates, and the hive ship seemed to take that concept and magnify it thousands of times. Beneath the false drone skin of his glamour, Milo was pouring sweat, and he stopped to try to catch his breath.
A series of angry clicks made him turn. A ’trooper was glaring at him, his shock rod raised. Milo did his best to scuttle forward the way the other drones did. He could feel the ’trooper watching him.
There was no chance to break the line for nearly fifteen minutes, as the procession of drones made several loops back into the red ship for more of the supplies. Milo began to worry that the glamour was going to fade. He kept looking around to see if Mook, Oakenayl, or Evangelyne was suddenly there with boxes in their hands.
They were not. For now the sprite’s magic was holding.
At one point, on his fifth trip into the ship, another drone brushed against him.
“We need to get out of here,” it said in Evangelyne’s whisper. “We’re never going to find the Heart doing this.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” he whispered back. He wanted to find the captives as well, but that seemed equally as unlikely.
They picked up boxes and followed the line outside and, as if the universe wanted to finally cut them a little slack, a loud buzzer suddenly sounded from overhead. It shook the whole place, and Milo nearly dropped his bundle. Everyone—every drone and shocktrooper, and all of the insectoid creatures in the massive chamber, looked toward the gigantic central tower. One of the larger sacs was tearing open, and a creature was emerging. It was huge. The legs alone were thirty feet long and this had to be an infant.
A newborn monster.
As they watched, the creature shredded the leathery sac and clawed its way out. Its body was longer than a shocktrooper, but it had the same six-legged structure. However, its thorax was much bigger and banded with rings of bright scarlet and yellow. The monster crawled up the column, shedding the tattered remnants of the sac as it went. Once clear, it seemed to vibrate for a moment, and then its shell split apart and a huge pair of wings swept upward and out, the membrane glistening with moisture.
All around the chamber, the drones suddenly dropped their bundles and boxes, and the shocktroopers flung down their weapons as, in a mass, they bent and bowed to the ground. A chorus of clicking sounds—the language of the Bugs—filled the chamber like thunder.
It took Milo a moment to realize what he was seeing. This creature and the reaction of the Swarm.
This wasn’t simply a new Bug hatching.
They had just witnessed the birth of a new queen.
Only four drones stood amid the sea of prostrate bodies. And far across the chamber, standing like a colossus in a sea of insects, stood the Huntsman. He was framed in the entrance of a side tunnel, and he stood looking up at the newborn queen. Milo couldn’t see the monster’s face, but there was something about the Huntsman’s body language that spoke of an emotion other than blind adoration.
The Huntsman turned away and vanished in the tunnel while the masses still knelt in worship.
Had Milo been able to see the monster’s face, he was sure he would have seen emotions the Huntsman wouldn’t want the queen or her minions to observe.
After all, he’d been inside the mutant’s mind. In his memories. And though he couldn’t possibly remember everything in detail, Milo came away from the experience with the certain knowledge that the Huntsman did not care to bow to anyone. Or anything.
It was he who wanted the world to bow to him.
Did that mean he wanted the secret of magic for the Swarm or for some personal agenda?
Either possibility offered unending harm. Neither could be allowed.
Milo turned to the others and pointed to the tunnel where the Huntsman had vanished.
Suddenly, a voice spoke in Milo’s mind. A voice he had not heard in hours.
I have whispered a horror into life, said the Witch of the World. I have helped birth a monster so that you may have a chance. Do not waste it!
Milo gaped at the exultant queen.
I cannot offer more help than this. Time is burning, and if you don’t act soon, the world itself will burn. Now is your time, Milo Silk. Now.
Now.
And once more. Now. But that was like a fading echo in his mind.
“Come on,” Milo whispered to the orphans. “We have to go—now!”
They moved as quickly as they could through the hordes of insects, being careful not to speak and not to bump against any of them. The ritual of bowing to the queen seemed to be overriding all other actions.
Milo prayed that their luck would hold.
Just a little longer.
A little longer.
Once they reached the interior wall of the hive, the party cut left and began hurrying along it toward their destination. The crowd was facing away from them, which allowed them to run instead of shuffle. Evangelyne threw herself forward, and although to Milo’s eyes it was a drone running on all fours, the speed and fluidity told him that the girl had once more become the wolf.
So weird, he told himself.
He was the second fastest of their group, with Oakenayl and Mook falling behind with every step. Milo wasn’t sure if Iskiel was still draped over the rock boy’s shoulder or if he was slithering along in some other guise. The salamander seemed able to blend into the background of any location so as not to be noticed, and Milo realized that he actually had to work at noticing the creature at times.
Magic, he mused, and stopped trying to figure it out for now.
They reached the corridor and ducked inside just as the first of the drones were beginning to rise and the worshipful clicking changed in tone.
Was that lucky timing or more of the witch’s intervention? No way to know. Another mystery for later.
As they left the big chamber, the glamour vanished with the speed of a light switch being flipped. Evangelyne was a wolf again, and when he looked down at his hands and body, he was a boy once more.
The corridor was empty, and now they raced along it at full speed. Evangelyne was far ahead and the two elementals far behind. The Huntsman was nowhere in sight, but several times he saw the wolf stop to sniff the ground and raise its head, ears swiveling, to hear things that Milo could not detect. Each time, the wolf leaped forward again, racing to follow the Huntsman’s scent. Surely even on this ship—this hive of a thousand different life forms—there could not be two like the psychotic mutant.
The corridor ended at a T-junction, and Evangelyne took the left-hand turn without a pause and then another junction going right. A left, two rights, another left. So many that Milo lost all track of their path. He paused for breath and glanced back but saw no trace at all of the elemental boys or the salamander. When he looked forward again, his heart lurched in his chest.
Evangelyne was not there.
The corridor stretched on and on before him and it was totally empty.
He strained to hear the sound of sharp nails on metal deck plating.
And heard absolutely nothing.
Nor did he hear the stomping footfalls of the rock boy.
With sinking horror, Milo realized that he was lost.
And alone.
On a hive ship.
Milo knew that he could not go back. If it was a matter of him having taken a wrong turn, then going back would only confuse things. If it was simply that he’d fallen behind Evangelyne, then his only chance would be to keep going forward in hopes of finding her.
“No, no, no, no, no . . . ,” he muttered as he ran, alternating that with, “Come on. Come on. Come on . . .”
He reached a juncture of four corrid
ors and stopped.
All four were empty.
He tried to sniff the air the way the wolf had done.
Nothing. Of course nothing.
He closed his eyes and listened.
The hive ship had very quiet engines that made a soft hum so subtle he really had to strain to hear it.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then . . .
Something.
For just a moment he thought he heard a voice murmur his name. It came from the right-hand tunnel, one that was shrouded in shadows.
Was it Evangelyne?
No.
No, definitely not. He strained to hear.
Was it the witch?
Milo couldn’t tell. He took a step into the tunnel and immediately winced as a wave of stink came rolling at him and struck his senses like a punch. He winced and recoiled from a stench like rotting fish and old sewage.
Milo.
That time he definitely heard it.
Or . . .
He was so confused he wasn’t sure if he could trust his ears or his mind. Everything was a crazy jumble.
Did he really hear the witch call his name?
He didn’t wait for an answer he knew wouldn’t come. He forced himself to take a step. And another. Moving into the almost palpable wall of rotten air.
Milo plucked the slingshot from his belt, fished out a stone, and socketed it into the leather pad. It wasn’t much, but it was better than facing the unknown with nothing but nervous tension in his hands.
He kept moving forward, leaving the pale corridor lights behind and entering a space of total darkness. It felt like walking into the mouth of a waiting dragon. It felt like being swallowed whole.
It was even hotter in the corridor than in the rest of the tunnel system, and Milo felt like he was drowning in humidity. There was no light at all, and he had to feel his way along the walls. He was afraid to use his flashlight for fear of being seen.
The walls were metallic and slick with a greasy substance. Milo didn’t want to know what it was.