Читать книгу Bieber's Finger - Craig Nybo - Страница 13

Chapter 5

Meanwhile, somewhere on Planet Hull...

Hundreds of refugee Ice Beetles stood overground in the jungle as the Voles’ sonic thumper finished its work. They watched fissures form. Explosions from beneath shook the ground as their machines, boilers, furnaces, generators, their very infrastructure, collapsed.

Nichang and his Shreevers had led the Ice Beetle infantry valiantly into combat and killed hundreds of the enemy. But the surviving rodents had routed into the jungle. They would be back, of that Nichang felt certain. And when they came back, they would come en masse to finish what they had started.

In the meantime, the weapon the Voles had left behind to spend out the rest of its energy continued to churn. Chunks of stone and ice collapsed, breaking into shards and crumbling the long-time home of the Ice Beetles to ruin.

Nichang looked over the devastation, the fallen in his ranks, the furry bodies of dead Voles spread across the jungle like discarded trash. His soldiers had succeeded in protecting the innocent; none of the females, children, or elderly had perished. But as he surveyed the casualties, he couldn’t overlook the tremendous cost the battle had exacted.

One of the Ice Beetle children, a female, had found a bottle, a relic of her former home. She raised it to her lips, trying to draw some form of sustenance from it. But the bottle was empty. Others meandered listlessly, walking in circles, shocked with defeat. Most just stared straight forward, sitting on rocks or reclining against trees.

“Attention please,” Nichang shouted from where he stood on a knoll opposite the ice cavern entrance. Beetles turned their boulder frames to look up at their military commander. Nichang, injured in several places from the fighting, stood with as much poise as he could manage.

“Do not be disheartened,” Nichang said. In his mind, he fumbled for the right words to say in the face of such annihilation. “Although the cost has been great, we stand victorious today against the Voles. Hundreds of their numbers lie all around us, stinking and dead, a testament of the steel within us.”

Another tunnel collapsed. A rumbling clatter came from the ice cavern entrance.

Nichang went on: “Some have sacrificed their lives. Our home stands in ruin due to a new weapon. We are hungry. We are tired. But today I ask you to remember who you are. You come from a divine order. You are sons and daughters of Tyche the God of the Ice. Perhaps it is time for us, as an insect colony, to be tried. Perhaps it is time for us to taste the bitter herb of humility. Perhaps Tyche the God of Ice has decided to test our mettle. To that I say we will walk up. We will rise to the violence of our enemies. We will rise to the overland challenges that we now face. We will rise and become greater.”

Many of the Ice Beetles nodded in solidarity.

“Today is not our first day of defeat,” Nichang continued. “And today is not the last day we will find ourselves licking our wounds. But there is another thing about today, the most important thing, in fact. Today is the day that the Ice Beetles prove their strength.”

Someone in the crowd shouted, a non-verbal roar of agreement. Others joined the shout. Someone else sawed his spicules together, creating a high pitched, grinding whir. More joined in. Soon, hundreds of Ice Beetles showed their unification with a mighty accord of sound that could be heard from miles away.

Nichang looked on in wonder at his people, folding his top pair of rakes over his chest. His heart told him that there was no way a species such as theirs could ever taste defeat, not truly. But his head said something else. They had to find cover soon. They had to get underground. The Voles would be back. And when they came, they would bring hell with them.