Christine lifted her chin.
“I know I can do it. Please—just take me to him.”
Rarev inclined his head.
“He is being housed in a time-locked holding cell on the Dark Side of the ship, where all dangerous prisoners are kept. Come with me.”
He took Emilia’s arm and nodded for Christine to follow.
The Dark Side? That sounded ominous but at this point, Christine didn’t care. Heart in her throat, she followed the Monstrum commander and his wife.
She just hoped that when they finally reached Roarn, he would know her and be able to overcome the Fury once more.
FORTY-THREE
Emilia hadn’t been kidding when she’d said the Monstrum Mother Ship was like something out of a fairy tale, Christine thought as they exited the Docking Bay and walked down a long corridor that Commander Rarev said led to the main Transport Hub of the ship. The floor and walls both were covered in the deep blue moss which felt soft under her feet.
But that wasn’t the only vegetation. Rather than being sleek and modern inside, like the Kindred Mother Ship, the Monstrum ship seemed almost alive. In addition to the blue moss walls and floors, there were flowering vines hanging from the ceiling with blue and pink and green blossoms.
The most intriguing thing, though, was that the blossoms all glowed. They might not have generated much light if there had only been one or two of them, but there were thousands—perhaps millions, Christine thought as she looked up at the ceiling. At any rate, there were enough of the bell-shaped blossoms dangling from their curling vines to light up the corridors of the ship, though their light wasn’t like any she had ever seen. It was an enchanted kind of glow—like fairy lights, she thought as she marveled at them.
After the glowing corridor, they stepped out into a larger space which Rarev told her was the Transport Hub of the ship. It was laid out rather like a subway station, Christine thought, except instead of trains, there were huge millipede-like creatures. These had long, wide, flat backs with seats strapped to them.
At first, she didn’t know what she was seeing—it looked like the “train” pulling out of the station was like any other vehicle except it had no sides or ceiling, only a floor and seats. But then another “train” came in and she saw—to her shock—that instead of an engine it had a huge insectile head with enormous compound eyes and pincer-like mandibles as long as her arm.
“What…what in the world is that?” she exclaimed, staring at the flat, black eyes of the huge millipede-thing.
“Oh, this is a carpet-wole,” Commander Rarev explained. “We call it that because its back is flat and soft, like a carpet,” he added. “They’re a type of multi-legged macro insect that are common to a world in our ‘verse. As you can see, they run at great speed and are able to carry many times their own weight. We brought them to our Mother Ship and built tracks for them to run on—in this way they can carry us from place to place on the ship.”
“But…how do you get them to go?” Christine asked, frowning.
“It’s simple enough. Look above the carpet-wole’s head.” Rarev pointed to a silver ball which was hanging from a chain on a long metal rod. This, in turn, was attached to a broad collar that fastened around the insect’s first segment. The metal ball was made of many fine lines of wire and it had long fibrous stalks sticking out of it.
Kind of like one of those necklace charms you can keep herbs or loose charms in, Christine thought. Only this ball was as big as her head and seemed to be filled with purple straw.
As she watched, the ball was lowered so that the humongous insect could get to it. As soon as it was within reach, the curving mandibles went to work, plucking the long purple straw from between the wires of the ball with surprising delicacy and feeding them into its maw.
“It’s a kind of ‘carrot and the horse’ type situation,” Emilia explained. “The carpet-wole chases the ball—which is filled with its favorite food of thurpa grass—along the track. When it comes to the station, it’s allowed to ‘catch’ the ball and have a meal. Once everyone is loaded aboard, they raise the ball again and off it shoots, down the track to the next station, always chasing the ball which is just out of reach.”
“Amazing,” Christine remarked. Looking below the platform, she saw what looked like hundreds of segmented, chitinous brown legs. She could imagine how fast the carpet-wole could run with all of those!
“The next wole is ours,” Rarev remarked, as the metal ball was raised and the huge millipede thing started running after it. “Get ready to board.”
A new carpet-wole pulled into the station and began chomping the fibers from its silver ball. Two Monstrum Kindred came and pushed a rolling staircase against its broad back and Christine followed Rarev and Emilia as they climbed the stairs and boarded.