The Conquering Queen

Chapter Two - Mining

Hungry, Icarus seemed to whine at her, hungry, hungry, hungry. Billie had been in the Hexapodlian tube for the last six hours trying to coax the ship onward, but he was starting to balk. Every time they passed a system, he had to be sternly rebuked for trying to pull out of subspace, to land and look for a meal. 

Soon, Billie soothed him, Calm, calm. Soon. She finally had to admit to herself that she was growing exhausted, and if she kept pushing the young drone past his tolerances, he would refuse her and the tenuous bond they had would be lost. She needed to feed him.

Billie disengaged from the tube and put on her comm set. "Shoo," she asked, stretching her back and shaking out her stiff legs, "how long until we reach the swarm?"

"Seventeen years, two-hundred and sixteen days, eight hours, fourty-two minutes-"

"Seventeen years?" Billie yelped, stopping abruptly. "How is that possible? Ten hours ago you said a week!"

"Icarus's velocity has been decreasing," the 'bot sounded happy to inform her, "I have extrapolated the current rate of deceleration to calculate-"

"Okay, yes. Bloody hell," Billie muttered. She turned the dial on her headset, cutting the 'bot off mid-sentence. "Lady Dappolla," she tried instead, "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to stop. Icarus needs to eat."

There was a long silence followed by the captain's languid voice. "We can't stop," Dappolla said sleepily. "We don't have time."

"We have almost eighteen years," Billie informed her dryly, "assuming we get there at all once Icarus decides to stop listening to me."

Another long pause. "Fuck." Billie was pretty sure she heard the rumbling basso of Theo's voice through the comm too. "Fine. I'll be in the Head when I'm needed."

*

The first thing they saw when they entered the system was asteroids. Billie could feel Icarus's satisfaction.

"Lot of asteroid belts we're seeing these days," Theo snarked, folding his arms over his chest. Icarus's Head wasn't nearly as well appointed as Iolaus' had been. Lady Dappolla had claimed the only seat, once they'd cleaned its former occupant's blood from it. The rest of the crew stood awkwardly and stared out Icarus's eyes.

"The outer heliospheres often have a lof a debris. Maybe Icarus feeds on something that lives in them," Billie suggested helpfully. The drone drifted towards the ice-filled heliosphere, bearing down on some of the larger asteroids, icy monuments of chasm and crevice, nearly invisible in the dim light. Black ice loomed large in Icarus's vision. The asteroid he had chosen was miles long; its pocked and crusted surface the only thing they could see as the drone approached, limbs reaching out to take hold for a landing.

The drone's sharp claws clamped on to the sheer ice of the asteroid's surface with all six limbs. Two of his stout pincers released the ice and stabbed forward, breaking through ice and mineral thirty feet thick as if it were linen, plunging into an empty space just below the surface. Icarus scuttled into the wide black tunnel before them.

With Icarus's specialized eyes, they could see the tunnel ahead of them lit in shades of blue and silver, sharp icy edges glistening white and regular scuff marks chaining ahead of them like a pale river. Icarus gripped the icy walls with four claws and used the last two to jab in front of them, shattering invisible ice barriers that seemed slung about the interior of this asteroid like webbing. 

"Is he digging?" Theo asked, fascinated.

"He's a miner," Billie pointed out. "They're bred to tunnel. Their colony was probably built like this, all burrows."