In reply, Lana worked her console. The image wound back, zoomed in, and played at a low speed. Now that they knew what to look for, they could clearly make out the giant Warped body. It was the size and length of a small bus and dozens of smaller Warped were crawling all over it.

“They’re …” Lana felt her skin crawling as she saw a smaller Warped jump off the bigger one’s mouth. She rolled back the video a few seconds and increased the zoom. The small Warped moved, revealing for an instant the item it had dropped into the giant mouth before it was gulped away. It was a human arm. “They’re feeding it.”

“And it’s growing,” Bulco said sourly. “With all the food it now has, there’s no telling how much stronger it's going to get.”

Nori’s jaw clenched. “It’s already big enough to tear through the other shelter’s walls like tissue paper. If it gets even bigger …”

“We have to do something,” Lana said.

“There’s nothing we can do against that thing,” Bulco grunted.

“We can’t let it go around killing people!” The woman’s voice went up an octave. “We can use the shuttle! Drop bombs on it, or try to light it up, something!”

Bulco shook his head. “You misunderstood me, girl. I meant to say there’s nothing we can do against it now. But we still got a little time. By the looks of it, those Warped are in no hurry to leave, they’re getting cozy up in there, feeding and getting fatter. We can use the time to mobilize against them. We need to expedite our plans. Make as many cartridges as possible, arm everyone from the shelters, surround this place and blast it to bits.” His face clouded. “That won’t help the poor suckers who died down there, but at least they’ll be avenged.”

“That’s too dangerous,” the dark-haired woman objected. “What if we don’t make it on time? What if your ammo doesn’t work? What if we can’t convince the people in the shelter to help us?”

“Calm down, Lana,” Nori said. “Bulco’s right. We were fortunate to get advanced notice. Now that we know what we’re up against, we can prepare for it. Martin will help us, I’m sure. And Bulco’s ammo will work. They have to.”

“It’s still too dangerous,” Lana argued. “Even if everything works out as we planned, you still want to take hundreds of people out of the shelters and put them in the open. They’ll die out there. Why not just let Bulco come up with an explosive device we can drop from the shuttle? Turn this whole thing into a smoking crater?”