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Gradually his eyes adjusted.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” he muttered, for if they had been discussing Heaven a short time before, then now, with a sudden certainty, Abbott knew that they were about to descend through the circles of Hell. An alien Hell, but nonetheless...

I have died, back there in the jungle, and this is my judgement, Abbott thought. This is my fate.

The Kryte resumed its half-walk, half-jog, heading straight for the cavern.

The rock floor of the cave looked treacherous, its uneven surface slick with a pearlescent coating that glowed eerily. The Kryte had slowed its pace but still seemed unconcerned by the terrain. Overhead, even though they were now deep in the cave, there was the occasional heavy buzz of the flying creatures Abbott had seen at the entrance.

Abbott found that his vision was swimming and it was hard to latch onto any one thing for more than a second or two. He put it down to the jungle’s psychotropics, his exhaustion and pain and the alien’s cloying presence in his mind, but then he remembered that he was, in fact, dead, and he was being taken to face his judgement.

He drifted, nightmare images of giant wasps and hornets buzzing past his head, bouncing off his skull and shoulders, and the Kryte singing to them, softly, softly singing to them, humming, crooning, sharing something Abbott could not even begin to comprehend.

At some point he realised that he might actually still be alive, and only on the point of death, that this drifting, the dream-like images and sequences, might be what happens to a man’s mind when he is about to die. He recalled the soldier running a scan on him and telling her commander that Abbott was on the verge of death. But she had been wrong: he had survived this long, and if the Kryte had anything to do with it he would continue to survive.

And that was when he began to be scared once again.

As the cavern opened out, so the echo of the Kryte’s footfalls diminished. In place of the echo, other sounds stole in, the occasional distant buzz of flying creatures, sporadic high-pitched chittering cries that on another world would have been uttered by bats but here could have been caused by almost anything.

And there! The gentle slap of water on rock, the occasional splash as some creature or other surfaced or dived or kicked. They were coming to water, a large body of water, an underground lake, perhaps.

A harsh sing-song sound erupted close to Abbott’s ear – the alien, the Kryte: it had spoken, something in its own tongue, or at any account, another tongue, not English. It seemed perversely odd to hear it speak an alien language, where Abbott had rarely heard it utter more than occasional words in its own tongue before now.

An answering chatter came from somewhere in the gloom ahead.

Without warning, Abbott found himself dumped on the ground. The pearly coating of the rocks, which had looked like a film of luminous slime before, he found to be a hard, dry substance, a thick shell covering the rock below.

Sitting awkwardly on the uneven surface, Abbott felt himself start to shift, his centre of gravity off-kilter. He started to topple, and he reached back to stop himself, but his limbs were only phantom limbs and they offered no resistance as he fell. He managed to bend his back as he tipped, so that his shoulders took the impact. He lay on his back, tilted to one side by the slope of the ground. Somewhere, out of view, Kryte chattered harshly, and overhead occasional fist-sized buzzing creatures whizzed past.

He tried to listen to the Kryte, but did not know what to listen for. No human understood their language – indeed, Abbott was one of the very few who had ever heard it in person. They sounded aggressive, confrontational, but for all he knew they might be engaging in friendly chit-chat about the weather or progress with the war. It went on for a long time, after which there was a silence broken only by occasional buzzing fly-bies and the gentle slapping of water on rock, and then the exchange re-opened.

Finally, Abbott felt himself being hoisted onto a Kryte’s back – he assumed it was
his
Kryte. “We continue,” it told him, and he knew it was the same one.

When he saw the other Kryte he knew for certain that he was with his former captive. For one thing, the other Kryte was some twenty or more metres away, sitting at the stern of a stiletto-like sliver of a boat – such separation from Abbott would have killed his slaved companion. And for another, the Kryte in the boat looked so different: half as tall again, it was pale and stooped and naked but for a silky sash. And it was wired into its boat, joined where it sat. At first Abbott thought it must be some kind of interface arrangement, like the shuttle engineer’s smartware hook-up with the shuttle, but no; as the boat sliced slowly through the water, approaching the shore, Abbott saw that the two had grown together, conjoined with no clear boundary between one and the other.

The pilot chattered, still sounding hostile, and Abbott’s Kryte explained, “Chan-see offers you safe passage in his embrace. He casts his distrust into the waters.”

“Hnh?”

“The honourable Chan-see did not wish to afford you passage,” said the Kryte. “You are not us.”

“But you persuaded him.”

“No.”

Again, the Kryte seemed prepared to leave its answer as simple as that, but it must have detected Abbott’s need to know more, for even as he opened his mouth to pursue the point, it said, “We joined. The honourable Chan-see did not need persuading. He understood, and so now he offers us safe passage in the embrace of his vessel.”

Part of Abbott’s brain kicked in, the trained part, a part that he had almost forgotten about. The pilot’s words sounded formal... “What is the appropriate response?” he asked.

“The truth,” said the Kryte.

What was the truth? That he was terrified? That he had no idea what was going to happen next and he almost felt it would be better if he could somehow topple into the dark water? That he had nowhere to turn for comfort and salvation? That he truly had lost everything?

“I have already given him your answer,” said the Kryte, unexpectedly softly.

Abbott peered at the side of the creature’s face he could see from his perch on its back. “And what was my answer? My truth?”

“That you would die if you were not allowed to cross, and that you do not wish to die. That your heart sings with kreer if only you could find the key to unlock it.”

Abbott looked away.

That was not the truth: it was a formulaic response, a formal token given in lieu of a ticket to cross these waters.

Abbott’s heart did not sing with anything. He was empty, all but dead, lost, without love or faith or hope. If the Kryte could read his mind then let it share
that
truth!

The boat came to rest, the Kryte stepped smoothly aboard and placed Abbott at the prow, facing forward so that even if he twisted his head to its fullest he could not see the pilot and his former captive.

They moved away from the shore, the boat swinging in a smooth arc, and there, some distance ahead, Abbott saw a glow coming from somewhere obscured by a lip of rock. Flying things flicked through the glow, both small and ponderously large, and down on the water he saw other vessels, of a variety of shapes and sizes.

It seemed like an age before their boat drifted around the screen of rock and the Kryte settlement came into sight. A mound of bulbous, deeply-veined sacs broke the surface of the dark lake, their skins glistening in the soft light of the cavern. At this distance it was hard to judge their scale, but then Abbott saw the boats and flying vessels darting to and fro and he saw that each sac was large, easily of a size to swallow a human shuttle. The sacs appeared to be grafted onto one another, or to have grown together, or somehow coalesced.

They drew closer, and Abbott became aware of the chattering of Kryte voices, a cacophony that seemed to worm itself deep into his mind so that he began to doubt even if it were a physical sound at all. And he became aware of the smell, an adenoid-pinching reek of something like ammonia. It brought tears to his eyes, and yet at the same time seemed to clear his mind.

He looked up and saw that they were approaching some kind of luminescent curtain in the air, and seconds later they passed through it. Abbott felt a quick heat race through what remained of his body, and he wondered if they had passed through some kind of force-field, for the life-forms that had flown about the cave so far were excluded from here. He lifted his head, tipped it back, and saw numerous flying things approach the curtain of light and veer away before reaching the strange threshold.

He looked ahead, at the cellcity that swelled from the water and spread up the side of the cavern. He had seen only reconnaissance pictures of Kryte cellcities before, and even these had filled him with awe and a certain grudging admiration. The real thing, however, was both wondrous and awe-inspiring. The silver sheen of the subterranean megalopolis before him, the way each cell was anchored to the next in a framework, was both functional and aesthetically pleasing. He made out hundreds of small figures moving between the cells on walkways, and more aliens at work within the city itself.

Understanding came to him. What had Travers said, about a Kryte attack on St Jerome a year ago? So that had been the reason behind it – not to destroy Fort Campbell, but to create a diversion while they established a presence here... He turned his head in an attempt to see the Kryte, but the alien pre-empted his question.

It approached and crouched beside him, saying, “Correct. We needed a base–”

Abbott shook his head. “From which to attack Fort Campbell?”

The alien stared at him. At last it said, “Your human apprehension of events is so limited, my friend.”

“Then why...?” Abbott floundered, feeling chastised.

The Kryte moved from his view. Abbott turned his gaze forward. They were approaching a jetty which appeared to be formed not from plastic or metal but from some biological material, a cartilaginous outgrowth of the cellcity. As the boat eased alongside the jetty, Abbott made out elasticated spars and struts that stretched across the surface of the jetty like attenuated ligaments, and the whole was coated in some silver, sebaceous fluid not unlike saliva.

There was a reception committee awaiting them on the construct.

Abbott was lifted, and slung into a metal frame that rested on the back of a Kryte. The alien that had kidnapped him moved alongside as the procession made its way down the jetty and passed through an oleaginous, anus-like opening in the side of a cell. They hurried down a series of corridors more biological than inert, with walls that glistened like offal and followed their own meandering, intestinal logic. At one point they reached a narrower section of tunnel, and here they were gripped by what appeared to be a ring of muscle and carried along at speed in a headlong peristaltic clench. Seconds later they were evacuated into a wide chamber, and Abbott made out crowds of Kryte.

When they saw him and his entourage, the aliens stopped what they were doing and watched their passage in silence, and Abbott received the distinct impression that they had known he was coming.

Heads turned, large eyes tracking him as he was carried through the cavern. They passed through another sphinctered opening and emerged into a smaller chamber.

A dozen Kryte, garbed in silver gowns, awaited him.

More alarming still, Abbott made out what he at first thought were a legion of mechanical spiders depending from the domed ceiling, limbs dangling. The tentacles terminated in pincers and claws and what looked like razors.

And then he saw the silver table in the centre of the chamber. It seemed to hover above the floor, and as he was transported towards it he noticed that above him the silver limbs tracked his progress as if in anticipation.

He was laid upon the floating silver slab, and attached to its surface in some manner he could not make out, and four aliens approached him. They worked fast, swabbing his putrescent torso, readying his frail human flesh.

A face loomed above his, and the Kryte he recognised as his erstwhile companion leaned over him and whispered, “Do not fear, Abbott.”

And he tried to scream as a dozen silver tentacles descended upon him, and seconds later he slipped into unconsciousness.

He came awake much later and... miracle of miracles!... he was no longer in pain. His lungs no longer wheezed in agony with every breath; his skin no longer crawled with the sensation of a million biting ants.

For the first time in days it came to him that he was going to live... He was going to survive – but for what purpose?

He opened his eyes. He was incarcerated in the innards of some creature’s stomach. Veined, glaucous sheets of flesh arched above him, only a metre from his face. The light was bloody, and thick veins pulsed around him, their regular throbbing rhythm heightening his sense of confinement.

He wanted to cry out in fear, but at the same time give thanks that he was still alive.

He tried to sit up, but was prevented from doing so by some fastening that looped around his chest and abdomen.

He tried to move his right arm, but that too was restrained. Then he laughed as he remembered: his limbs were somewhere back in the hell on the surface, left behind like debris, and what he could feel now were no more than treacherous, phantom limbs. But the sensation remained: he could feel his arms and legs, feel the bite of the restraints in his flesh. He turned his head, lifted it minimally, and looked down the length of his body.

He let his head fall back and laughed like a madman.

He was whole again! But how could that be? Was he under some illusion cast by alien chemicals; but why would they taunt him so? Why would they give him the illusion of being whole again?

It was too much to hope for that he was indeed whole once more.

He peered again, and commanded his fingers to move, and he watched them move. He told his foot to turn, and it turned. He fell back, weeping.

He had been a limbless torso, thanks to his Kryte captor, and now he was as he had been... thanks to his alien captors.