Zarah Voss's Arc

Chapter 9 of 16

Zarah scrambled up the sand and dropped her satchel. The pearls could wait. The crabs could not. Behind her, the water broke open. Three of them dragged themselves ashore, blue shells slick, green leaf-tipped claws snapping. Their jaws opened like flowering traps, red and lined with teeth. She had killed one before. Now three came for her at once. Her armor lay ten steps up the beach. Not the heavy chest plate she had learned to hate, but the light suit she built after. Thin plates. Fast joints. Bladed heels sharp enough to split a seam. She ran for it, boots sinking, and heard the crabs scrabble faster behind her. She reached the armor and yanked it on. The plates locked around her legs. The heel blades clicked out, two curved edges of hardened plastic. The first crab lunged. It struck sideways, the way they always did, claw sweeping flat across the sand. Zarah remembered that. She did not dodge back. She dropped low and let the claw pass over her head. Then she kicked. Her bladed heel drove into the leg joint, the soft seam between two plates. The crab shrieked. Its leg folded. She spun and kicked again, and the joint split wide. The creature tipped and stopped moving. The second crab was already turning. Its jaws snapped shut where her arm had been. She ducked under the claw, planted one foot, and swung the other heel into its rear joint. The blade caught. She twisted her whole body and felt the seam tear. The crab dragged itself in a broken circle and collapsed. The third one waited. It had watched the other two die. It struck low instead of sideways, jaws first, aiming for her legs. Zarah jumped. The trap-mouth clamped on empty air. She came down on its back, drove both heels into the seam behind its head, and pushed with all her weight. The plates parted. Fluid poured out, thick and dark. The crab shuddered and went still. Zarah stood on the dead shell, breathing hard. Three crabs. Three broken seams. Her light armor had held. The design worked exactly as she built it. She climbed down and knelt beside the nearest body. Inside the cracked joint, the fluid pooled. This was what she had come for. Not just the pearls in her satchel, but this. The crab fluid guided her ants to build flexible seams between her power cells. She had run dry. Now she had three full bodies. She pulled a jar from her belt and scooped. The jar filled fast. She counted the pearls in her satchel, then the crabs on the sand. Enough fluid to finish the containment. Enough pearls for the conductor nodes. For the first time in a year, both halves of the problem sat in her hands. She carried the fluid and the pearls back toward her workshop. Now she had to build the drive.