“Understood.” A rush of relief filled him. The team could get out of here. Not one of them was an Imperialist known to him. He couldn’t relay orders to Jahidh and the others in front of them. “We are a complement of eight Beholden, one Bio-tech, two Engineers, and myself.” He rattled off their names as fast as he could. As soon as he received the acknowledgment, he opened the general lines to his team. “We’re under orders to evacuate. Shuttle Pad eighteen. Walk quickly. Don’t touch the bio-artifacts.”
The Beholden grabbed hands, partnering up like they’d all been taught as children. In a quick march they stepped through the doorway. The crab ignored them. It kept tearing at the membrane. A third and fourth crab had found the air processor and had their claws into the hoses. The holes grew as if eaten by acid. A fifth crab hopped out of the tank and hurried to help chew away at the comm terminal.
The Engineers snatched up their personal terminals and dived out through the tattered membrane.
The Bio-tech hadn’t moved.
“Evacuate, Holrosh,” said Kelat. “Let’s go!”
“The artifact,” he replied doggedly. “We can’t leave it.” His hands danced across the tank’s control boards. “Help me get it into the support capsule.”
“We will get another.” A sixth crab had emerged from the tank. It scrambled straight toward the analysis pads that the Engineers had laid against the chamber’s far wall.
“I’m sure that’s what the Ancestors said.” Holrosh watched his monitors intently. “Now help me, Contractor!”
Kelat palmed the control on the gurney that held the support capsule. It hummed as it came to life and he shoved it toward Holrosh.
“They’re taking Broken Trail!”
“We have to let them. We cannot leave her there.”
She is an Eye. I will keep her safe. If the Hand will reach and the Eye will see, there are still ways to fetch her back to you. I will keep this Eye safe as I kept you safe.
“Stop!” ordered a voice in the Proper tongue.
Kelat and Holrosh froze. The voice came from the walls, it came from the ceiling and the floor.
“You will not remove her,” it said. It was neither a man’s voice, nor a woman’s. “She is not yours.”
The crabs had paused in their work like single-phase statues, or like drones suddenly switched off.
Kelat touched his suit’s wrist controls and opened the helmet’s speaker. “Who are you?”
“We are the Nameless Powers. This is our Realm. You will leave it now and leave the People alone.”
“No,” said Holrosh stolidly. “This is the Home Ground. This is our world stolen from our Ancestors.”
Kelat glanced down. “Holrosh.” He gestured to the floor. The entire surface gleamed with gel, the same blue-grey stuff that had swallowed the Beholden whole. “Holrosh, leave it. We need to get out of here, now. I hold your name,” he reminded the Bio-tech, committing a gross impropriety in doing so. “Walk out of here.”
Holrosh saw the layer of gel covering the floor. His hands fell away from the tank controls. He walked toward the entranceway, picking his steps carefully so he wouldn’t fall on the slick surface. The crabs returned to their work, scraping away the products of Vitae technology as if all the metal and polymer and silicate was as insubstantial as sand.
Holrosh vanished through what was left of the membrane. Kelat glanced at the pressure monitor on his wrist. There was no air left in the chamber. The gel had not receded into the floor.
“Jahidh?” he said, trying to force a measure of stern assurance into his tone.
“No,” said the voice.
Kelat’s heart slammed once against his ribs. “The artifacts,” he whispered. It had to be, that was the only other answer.
“The world,” the voice told him.
Kelat felt the littlest finger on his right hand, the one he’d had regrown, try to curl up. “This is our world,” he said. “This is the work of our Ancestors. It is ours to claim. You are ours.”
“Never yours. Three thousand years have passed and you still don’t understand that. Leave here now, Aunorante Sangh, or never leave at all.
“Leave.”
Kelat turned and fled. Shame followed fast on his heels. Holrosh was right. This was the Home Ground. This was what the Imperialists, what the whole of the Vitae, sought to claim. This was the war the Ancestors had left for them to fight and he was running like a child from a nightmare.
The world had ordered him to leave, though. The work of the Ancestors had ordered him. How could he defy the work of the Ancestors? How could any of them? His ears rang with the memory of the voice that had surrounded him like the walls of the chamber did.