Read Nova War for Free Online Page A

against something soft, there was a squeak and several small, pale, winged bodies batted past him in squawking confusion. He looked up and around in the deepening gloom and spied dozens of pairs of tiny, glowing eyes winking all around them. He then turned and looked behind him to see the cave entrance was now visible only as a pale oval of light, and seemed impossibly far away.
    He fluttered his wings experimentally and the sound of them returned to him eerily from distant unseen walls. His eyes, however, were beginning to adjust, so he could now see pale, leafy growths twined around extendable metal poles ahead, reaching upwards into murky gloom. There were more poles looming further into the darkness ahead.
    They soon approached a thick, rubbery ridge that ran across the cave floor directly in front of them, immediately before the first of the line of poles. The ridge continued up the cave walls on either side of them before presumably meeting far overhead, at some point Remembrance couldn’t discern in the gloom.
    Beyond this low ridge, the walls and floor of the cave took on a smooth, organic texture, and were coloured a pale milky-grey. At this point, closer inspection revealed a series of stubby cones running in two parallel lines and continuing all the way up either side of the cave.
    It took a moment for Remembrance to register that these were teeth.
    ‘In case you were wondering,’ Honeydew commented, ‘those poles are to help prop its mouth open.’
    ‘And if the worm decided to close it?’
    ‘Then they wouldn’t make much difference, I’m afraid, as they’re there for show more than anything – a way of reassuring the clientele.’
    I am entering the gullet of a monster, Remembrance thought, then firmly suppressed the terror that had begun to grow in him the farther they got away from the light of day.
    I am Remembrance of Things Past, Queen’s Consort, and Most Favoured of the Court of Darkening Skies. Therefore I will not succumb to base panic.
    The delicious scent of rotting meat, carried on a slow exhalation of warm air, made him suddenly feel hungry despite his disquiet.
    They passed over and beyond the stubby rows of teeth and, further inside, Remembrance could see how closely the flesh of the maul-worm adhered to the interior surface wall of the cave. Light was provided by a series of glow-globes atop yet more metal poles reaching up to just under the ceiling of the maul-worm’s gullet, while others still had been placed in special recesses along the many turns and twists of the cave passage, in order to better illuminate their path. Shadows grew to massive proportions, before shrinking just as quickly, as small, unidentifiable creatures constantly darted through this artificial light.
    Remembrance glanced down at the soft, moist surface upon which he and Honey dew trod. I am walking on something’s tongue, he reflected. I am walking deeper into something’s throat, I am—
    He slammed down on this train of thought and concentrated instead on what lay ahead. Honeydew moved on blithely, apparently unaware of Remembrance’s growing agitation, though Remembrance knew that in reality the Immortal Light agent was keeping a close eye on him.
    They came eventually to a vast interior space so different from the innocuous mountainside behind them that they might as well have arrived on another world entirely. More glow-globes, positioned far overhead, cast light across the pale ridged flesh of the worm’s innards. Directly in front of the two Bandati was a low platform, on which stood a couple of dining tables with chairs, the nearest of which was unoccupied. The air was filled with music: soft, rhythmic, ambient Bandati throat-clicks that echoed throughout the cavernous space.
    ‘You know, Bourdain might have friends here, friends we don’t expect,’ Honeydew mentioned casually, glancing around. ‘Perhaps we should pull back, and wait him out. I could set some of my personal security team