The root-like limbs snapped at my face.
“Watch out, Wyatt, sir!” Dorian screamed behind me.
I jumped back and drew the 2D Blade, cutting down in a single motion. Two tendrils fell away, severed clean.
But then I noticed something off: the rest of the tendrils weren’t attacking at all. They just hung there, swaying in the wind.
Dorian came up, picked up one of the cut pieces, and examined it before handing it to me.
“Wyatt, sir… this Umbrella Worm doesn’t feel alive.”
He was right. The tendril in my hand was dry and stiff, like it had been dead for a long time.
I grabbed the remaining tendrils and yanked.
The whole Umbrella Worm corpse tore loose from the ship’s tilted hull and flopped down in front of us.
Dorian and I stared at the heap of limp green flesh, then at each other.
It must have been flying when the storm hit the day before, slammed into the wreck, and ended right there. In the darkness last night, it had clung so tightly to the hull that neither of us had noticed. Our “ambush” this morning had been a dead thing falling at the wrong time.
Once that was clear, I prepared to move out.
I released the Shadow Falcon and drove the bike out through the hole in the hull. When I finished, I realized Dorian was gone.
“Dorian,” I said over the link. “Where are you? We need to go. Daylight is for covering ground.”
“Give me a second, Wyatt, sir. I’ve got an idea.”
“Of course you do.”
“Why don’t we go over them?” he said. “From what I saw yesterday, the Umbrella Worms can’t detect targets in the air.”
“The bike can’t climb,” I said. “And the sky is full of things we can’t see—radar fields and patrol craft with better eyes than any worm. Every one of them is worse.”
“I know,” Dorian said quickly. “But we can inflate this one. I mean… we can disguise ourselves as a flying Umbrella Worm.”
I froze. “It’s dead. What are we going to inflate it with?”
“This.”
Dorian stepped out of the hull’s broken opening, dragging the metal box behind him.
The pump.
“It’s a liferaft pump,” I said. “The gas it makes isn’t buoyant.”
“But you’re,” he replied. “And we don’t have to fly high. We just have to get off the ground.”
I stared at him for a beat, then let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Dorian… you’re unbelievable.”
He puffed up with pride. “You’re good at fighting. I’m good at hiding. I’ve spent years studying how not to die.”
We got to work.
The pump was designed for manual and electric modes. I wired it to a power feed. Nothing.
Dorian cracked it open, adjusted a few ancient parts, and somehow made it hum to life.
“You fixed it,” I said. “That thing’s older than most ruins.”
He wiggled his claws modestly. “The principle isn’t complicated.”
We spread the canopy out on the sand. Dorian stripped the mechanical hardware off the stem and started pumping air into the hollow.
The canopy began to swell.
Slowly.
That’s when we found the problem: several punctures. Without hesitating, Dorian dragged over the unused inflatable raft and used its repair patches to seal the holes.
The difference was immediate. The canopy filled at a visible pace, rounding into a normal-sized green cloud.
Dorian nearly vibrated with excitement. “It worked. I can’t even tell the difference.”
I brought the bike in and secured it beneath the canopy, using the dangling tendrils to hide as much of the frame as possible.
From above, it was perfect.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Dorian climbed onto the bike and tucked himself behind a curtain of tendrils. I eased us out of the ship’s shadow and climbed.
At the bike’s three-meter altitude limit, I engaged my own flight engine and kept rising. I stabilized around fifteen meters—the height Umbrella Worms usually drifted.
I rode the wind, matching speed and direction as best I could.
From the Shadow Falcon’s higher angle, we looked exactly like a traveling Umbrella Worm.
The wind wasn’t aligned with my planned route, but we were moving several times faster than yesterday. I could live with a detour if it got us out of the worm field.
Dorian held his binoculars like a child with a new toy, scanning the world below.
“If we could fly like this all the way to our destination…” he said dreamily.
“In ancient times,” I said, “humans traveled in something similar. It was called… hot-air ballooning.”
Dorian brightened. “Right. I’ve read about that. Humans had it good. If I ever get the chance, I’m building a real hot-air balloon. With a huge telescope.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
The clouds overhead were thick. Without direct sunlight, the worms below sometimes opened their canopies even during the day, sweeping violet beams across the sand.
I was grateful for Dorian’s idea. On a day like this, trying to sneak through on the ground would have been misery.
We drifted above countless Umbrella Worms, sliding southwest. Patrol robots and fighters passed overhead now and then, but none of them gave our “cloud” a second glance.
Dorian kept the raft and pump on the bike. Every so often he topped up the canopy’s pressure, keeping it full and stable.
After night fell, the view became absurdly beautiful: countless violet beams flashing below, turning the desert into a luminous grid. But because of the angle, none of those beams could reach us.
Then, deep into the night, the pattern changed.
The Umbrella Worms became fewer.
Another hour passed.
“Wyatt, sir—look there.” Dorian pointed.
Below us lay a collapsed Umbrella Worm, dead.
Then another.
Then another.
Ahead, huge stretches of them had died in place, leaving behind rag-like carcasses. Beyond that, the desert returned to darkness.
“What happened?” Dorian asked, stunned.
“I don’t know,” I said.
I wanted a wider view, but the Shadow Falcon had been recalled an hour earlier to save its remaining charge. In the air, I was blind past the horizon.
The world was silent—nothing but our lone “Umbrella Worm” drifting through empty sky.
Then I heard it: the distant howl of engines, growing louder. Not one craft. A lot.
“Down. Now.”
I killed the bike’s engine and shut off my own flight engine, letting us drop.
We weren’t high. The bike settled quickly onto the sand.
To deflate the canopy fast, I punched several holes through it with the tip of my 2D Blade.
The canopy collapsed, draping over the bike like a corpse.
From above, it should have looked like just another dead Umbrella Worm.
We lay motionless under the green skin, listening as the engines swelled to a roar. The fighters circled overhead, dropping bright white searchlight spots that swept back and forth.
We didn’t move. Several beams passed right over us, turning the world under the canopy a pale, translucent green.
After a long time, the roar faded and finally disappeared.
“They’re gone,” Dorian whispered. “They didn’t find us.”
“Don’t speak,” I sent back over the link. “It’s not over.”
Pressed flat to the sand, I listened harder.
A faint rasping sound—soft, rhythmic, too steady to be wind—moved closer.
Footsteps.
They advanced in bursts, stopping and starting, circling as if searching.
Eventually the sound reached us. The steps walked around our canopy once… then stopped.
Dorian hugged himself and pressed against me, shaking.
I wrapped my hand around the 2D Blade’s hilt and ran through a hundred scenarios in a fraction of a second.
Silence.
Then the thing I’d been afraid of happened anyway.
With a violent shuddering tear, the canopy was yanked open.