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Ace kept her hands steady through an act of will and used the wire snips carefully and deliberately, all of her attention focused on the little circle of white light from her penlight. Cut the red one, the green one and the grey one, in sequence, and she was done: one more of the nasty little spider-legged robotic bombs disarmed, but no telling how many more were left, or how long before her time ran out.
"Done!" she called out to the anxious crowd of Terax workers who hovered over her like huge nightmare shapes in the dim blue ambient light of their subterranean hive. Their polished chitin gleamed with every movement as they rustled and chattered with anxiety. Elsewhere, Ace knew, soldiers were rushing to carry eggs and grubs out of the hive to safety and workers were frantically attempting to dig a large enough exit tunnel to allow their enormous queen to escape. Even with the Terax's laser-powered excavating tools, their chances of finishing that task in time were vanishingly small.
The bombs were nasty little things, sent scuttling into the hive to attach themselves to key support points and then detonate simultaneously, collapsing the entire structure. Ace and the Doctor had got wind of what was happening before the countdown ended, but with no idea how much time was left. Trying to remove the bombs once they'd latched on to their target surface would set them off prematurely, so each one to be dealt with in place; even worse, the mechanisms were human-made and disarming them required tools, technology and colour vision the Terax didn't possess. Which was why the Doctor, like Ace, was even now running like mad from one bomb to the next, somewhere else in the maze of tunnels.
Ace pulled the tracker from her pocket, pre-keyed to show her the location of the next-nearest active bomb, superimposed on a map of the surrounding tunnels.
"This way," Ace said, gesturing, "then left!" She started to move forward under her own power, but was instantly swept up by the workers, who carried her along in their claws at inhuman speed, their familiarity with the tunnels of their own home allowing them to take corners at breakneck speed, as fast as Ace called out directions.
It was going to be close, Ace knew, but if nothing else maybe they'd manage to defuse enough of the charges to save the queen. Even if they were too late, they might still make it out of this alive – so long as they avoided the bad luck of a bomb going off in the middle of disarming it. Ace shoved that image out of her mind. The irony of the situation didn't escape her; after all, when was the last time her life depended on disabling explosives, rather than setting them off? But she didn't have the spare breath or inclination to laugh just then.
"Right!" she called, shouting to be heard over the clatter and scrape of running workers. They turned the corner and she had a bare second to see what looked like a glittering wall of Terax limbs in front of them before two flailing masses of insect bodies collided. Workers screeched, and Ace yelled – a cry that was echoed by another humanoid voice. The workers carrying Ace dropped her. She managed to land on her feet, but staggered, off-balance, until her outstretched hand caught and held something that wasn't chitin, something yielding and fabric-covered: the Doctor's arm.
"Ace?" He reached for her shoulder, steadying her even as she returned the favor. All around, workers were clicking and chattering in confusion, but Ace tuned them out.
"Professor! There's a bomb this way . . .!"
"No, there's a bomb this way," he said, sounding every bit as harried as Ace felt, then he stopped and fumbled with his tracker. Ace, seeing his movement in the dim hive-light, understood and looked at her own tracker, searching for the "refresh" button. She found it and the screen blinked, then came up again, clear. No active bombs left anywhere in the hive.
Ace sagged with relief. "Those were the last two," she said. "We got them all." They must have finished at almost exactly the same time, fooling their trackers. She let her hand drop, and the instrument clattered on the tunnel floor as her fingers lost the strength to hold it.
"So we did," the Doctor said with a sigh, and drew her into a comforting hug. She clung to him, shaking with reaction. He raised his voice and shouted something she didn't understand at the workers, calming them, while Ace hid her face against his shoulder because she was tough, and tough girls weren't supposed to cry.
***
Later, out in the sunlight, Ace rubbed at her eyes, still embarrassed. She glad to be among non-humanoids who wouldn't understand why her face was reddened and blotchy, but nobody was paying her much attention, anyway. Terax were still bustling in and out of the hive's entrances, but now they were moving calmly and purposefully, the way people do when they're restoring order after an emergency. Grubs and eggs were being ferried back inside to climate-controlled nursery chambers, and workers were reversing their attempts to dig an escape tunnel for the Queen.
Off to one side, the Doctor was talking to a huge Terax, nearly eight feet tall, who towered over the smaller workers and soldiers. It was one of the four hive-kings, the queen's mates and chief assistants. Ace knew male bees back on Earth were useless drones, but that didn't seem to be the way things were here. From what she could overhear, the Doctor was giving instructions for contacting galactic law-enforcement authorities and dealing with the crew of humans trapped in orbit on their mostly-disabled ship until said authorities arrived.
Ace and the Doctor were responsible for the trapping and disabling, once they'd learned what the humans were up to, but the humans' robotic smart-bombs had already entered the hive and taken up their places while the nocturnal Terax were all inside, asleep.
At least they believed us when we woke them up and told them what was happening, Ace thought. Not everyone we try to help is that reasonable. She took a deep breath and surveyed the wide, wild landscape outside the hive. It was beautiful, in a sparse, hard way: a rolling, rocky savanna of purple grass, much of it burned golden by the hot summer suns, and dotted with purple trees. Purple was the second most common colour for plants after green, the Doctor had told her once; something about the way photosynthesis worked.
There was a glitter of light in Ace's peripheral vision, and she turned to find herself eye-to-eye with a Terax worker. Out in the hive's monochromatic near-darkness the alien's chitinous armour gleamed with subtle iridescence and its many-faceted eyes sparkled like cut crystal. Terax might not like bright light very much, but they sure looked good in it. The worker's rigid, insectoid face couldn't form expressions, but Ace was getting good at reading non-human body language and she thought the way its antennae were moving seemed curious.
"You are human?" it asked her, in its scratchy voice. It wouldn't have a name, Ace knew, since Terax didn't really see themselves as individuals, but they weren't a completely homogeneous hive-mind, either. There was some room for independent thought.
"Yeah," Ace said. "I'm human. He isn't, though." She waved in the Doctor's direction.
The Terax tilted its head to one side. "You look the same. To me," it added hastily, as if worried about giving offense.
Ace had to laugh. "That's okay – he really does look like a human. But he's different inside."
The Terax waved its antennae for a moment, then said, "You are human, but you do not hate us like the others. You saved us, at risk to yourself." It wasn't quite a question, more like the Terax was making sure it had its facts straight.
Ace bit her lip, trying to decide how to respond. She didn't feel like correcting the worker's assumptions. After all, what could she say? The other humans didn't hate you not really. You were just in their way. You discovered this planet first, but you only have the one hive settled here. If they wiped you out, they could pretend humans had legal first claim to the place. It was greed, not hate. In its own way, that was far uglier than simple hate.
"Not all humans are the same inside, either," she said in the end, because it was easiest.
The Terax ground its mandibles thoughtfully. Except for the way it shone in the sunlight, it looked like something straight out of the old B-movies Ace had loved to watch late at night on the telly when she was younger. If this had been one of those movies, the Terax would have been monsters and the humans would have been heroes, but in her travels with the Doctor, Ace had learned that reality was a lot more complicated than the movies. You couldn't tell who was right and who was wrong just by looking at them, most of the time.
"Thank you," the Terax said, dipping its antennae in a gesture Ace guessed was something like a bow. Whether it was referring to defusing the bombs or answering its questions, Ace wasn't sure, and the worker didn't elaborate. It just turned and rejoined the rest of its hive, taking up the task of rebuilding. She wondered how the Terax felt inside just now, and whether what she'd said might start it looking differently at surfaces and the things underneath. For all she knew, its moment of personal curiosity was already forgotten in favor of restoring the hive, but at least it had asked questions. That, as the Doctor always said, was a start.
Reminded of the Doctor, she glanced in his direction. He was finishing up his chat with the Terax king; Ace saw him raise his hat in farewell – the king responded by dropping his antennae politely – then they separated, the king leaving to report back to his queen, and the Doctor heading towards Ace. She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand one more time, trying to clear away the last of the gritty feeling, but even if she still looked like she'd been crying she knew she could trust to Doctor to pretend he didn't notice.
"Time to go, Professor?" she asked when he was within speaking distance. It hardly needed asking. If there were authorities on the way, he would want to be long gone by the time they arrived. The Doctor didn't get along at all well with authorities of any kind. Ace heartily approved.
"Yes, Ace," he said with a smile, swinging his umbrella in a cheerful arc. "I think we can consider this a job well done."
"Wicked, 'cos I'm starving," she said, realizing it was true as she said it. She hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.
"Mmm," the Doctor responded, amused. "Dinner would make an excellent follow-up adventure. What do you fancy? Chinese? I know an excellent restaurant next to the Great Wall. Italian? I haven't been visited Rome in far too long. Banderkevak? There's a café on Perseus VII . . ."
He offered Ace his arm as he spoke, and she took it as they began walking through the gold and purple grass to the TARDIS.
"Anything that doesn't try to crawl off the plate while I'm eating it," Ace said, in response to the Doctor's continuing list of possibilities.
"Ah. Well, not the Banderkevak, then," the Doctor said, with a perfectly straight face and a twinkle in his eye. Ace laughed. She didn't know if he was teasing her or not; sometimes she thought he was, only to find out he was telling the absolute truth. It wasn't always easy to tell – as human as he might look, he was alien inside, after all.
But so am I, Ace thought, and that's fine.