CHAPTER NINE

They saw the Leviathan appear again, its many eyes afire with rage, the monstrosity shaking and working its mandibles as it thrust after them, its body forcing itself, tentacles clawing like spider legs, through the suddenly much less vacant super-tunnel.

"Alright, now, Swann."

And the payload was dropped, just as the leviathan leapt forward, frustrated at the small offense that eluded its grasp. They saw the nuke disappear down the maw, just a tiny rotating fleck that hovered in and out of scanner view until it was gone, swallowed by a darkness that could eat stars.

"Punch it."

The Hyperion shuddered and heaved as the engines kicked up, well beyond normal safety limits – but they had planned this carefully. Straight for the opening. Raynor frowned as he banked the wraith, letting the camera auto-focus, noticing something moving on the walls, that was not a part of the walls themselves.

"We're got movement on the walls, boys! Open fire!"

There were a dozen crew-members manning plasma turrets, and the response was swift. Then there was fire. A sullen sound, a stallion of entropy, but so vast and huge that if they hadn't been expecting it, they would all have been stupefied. The nuke had detonated. Inside the leviathan. Flames engulfed the tunnel. Even something as huge as this space organism couldn't ignore a nuclear detonation. When it cleared, so were the walls.

"Shit, sir. I'm reading more movement on the scanners. Massive heat signature. From the egg chamber. I think the drones are coming after us."

And they're a lot quicker in this environment.

Jim's fighter hit the deck just after his fellow pilots, knowing they didn't want to be in the open for this next part. He hit the radio, knowing Swann was waiting on him for one thing. "Alright, Swann, just like Char. Let the rest of the nukes off their pins, and we'll see if anything's left to clean up."

The drones caught up much more swiftly than he had hoped, and soon he heard a thousand rattles of alien claws landing on the outside of his ship, still struggling to maintain an even keel. The drones picked and tore at the hull, acid and talon scrabbling at the armoured shell, seeking a way in for the cloud of death.

Jim quickly made it up to the Hyperion CC. It's where he belonged right now.