The Hive Engineers

by Emilia Zeeland

“The opening widens further in.” Dave pointed ahead. “Do you reckon they booby trapped it?”

  “Not if they trust their patrols by the wormhole.” Alec leaned in to get a better look.

  “I’m not in the mood to take chances,” Yalena said impatiently. “What can we scan for?”

  Natalia tilted her head inside the helmet, thinking. “Given the shape of the opening, I’d say we need to check for cameras and any triggers, such as lasers or signs of trapdoors.”

  Without waiting for a command, they spread out a little, studying the cave walls. To Yalena, they seemed like perfectly natural rock formations.

  “I’ll start a search for nearby devices, let’s see what pops up,” Yalena said after a minute. “They have been using human tech after all.”

  She tried her best to follow the instructions Nico had left as part of the mission prep. Since they didn’t have any drones left, she ran the command directly through her tablet. It scanned a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the surroundings. The radar light blinked, searching for any devices. Then, it beeped.

  Yalena blinked at her tablet. “We’ve got two hits, parked side by side about five hundred meters into the cave opening.”

  Natalia reached over and scrolled down Yalena’s tablet with one hand. “The heat signature scan doesn’t show anybody nearby.”

  Yalena turned to Alec. “Can we try to fly a Bluedrop to scan in there?”

  The frown on his face created lines around his eyes. “It’s too tight. We’ll barely manage with the suits on.”

  “If there are only two machines, it could be a hideout for their transport,” Dave said. “The real entrance, defenses and all, is probably further in.”

  “Are you ready to go in on a probably?” Natalia gawked at him.

  “Enough is enough,” Yalena said sharply. “I know you’ve been shaken by the raptor attack. Trust me, I was too, but we can’t do anything useful if we’re too afraid to take a step. If we doubt our every move, then failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  Natalia dealt her a murderous look. “Fine.”

  Yalena turned away from the Moonie, facing the crack between the rocks. “That’s the spirit.”

  Alec insisted on going in first. The exposure suit didn’t seem to weigh him down like it did Yalena. His steps were sure but measured. Yalena followed after him, feeling Natalia at her heels, and Dave wasn’t far behind.

  They walked in a line until the opening widened onto some sort of a platform.

  “It’s a charging station,” Alec said over his suit’s comms.

  Yalena leaned to one side behind him to see. Two sleek vehicles were parked and plugged into a side panel. She remembered the type from the Fian attack back when they’d first discovered Nova Fia.

  Next to the hoverbikes was a metallic locker.

  “Can you get that open?” Yalena asked Dave.

  He hummed while he studied the mechanism. “It’s electronic. Nico would do better here.”

  Yalena fought the instinctive sigh. “Except Nico isn’t here.”

  Dave leaned in closer, head tilted to one side as he examined the locker. “Then our best bet is to cut the side of the panel. If I try to hack it, it will probably register that and feed back to a main computer.”

  Natalia folded her arms. “And what if the locker blows up?”

  Yalena clicked her tongue in irritation. “I doubt they’d bother placing anything too powerful to guard the locker, considering one could easily unplug the hoverbikes.”

  Dave measured the locker, then pulled out a technician’s laser gun—normally used to patch up the Bluedrops in case of breach. While Dave melted a hole into the side of the locker, Yalena’s heartbeat rang in her ears, but no blaring alarm followed.

  “The downside of being the only sentient species in a solar system—getting complacent,” Alec said without amusement.

  Dave stuck his hand inside and pulled out a thin exposure suit. It was silvery white. When his hand dove in again, it came out with a matching helmet, which he handed to Yalena.

  “Spoils of victory,” he said. “There’s at least a few more in there.”

  “Take them out.” Yalena peered at the helmet’s reflective surface. It would make them unrecognizable. “We need to change.”

  “TOO BAD THESE EXO SUITS don’t have stealth tech,” Alec whispered to Yalena back at the Eagle while they changed into the “borrowed” suits. Natalia had already confirmed the new suits would feed them oxygen for hours. Dave, on the other hand, had been more interested in the wrist monitors attached to the sleeves.

  “I bet they unlock the hoverbikes,” had been his expert guess.

  And he was right.

  Once they’d equipped themselves with the new gear, they returned to the outpost charging station to find it just the way they’d left it. Alec touched the device on his wrist to the charging station. The cable detached from the hoverbike, and a panel at the front of the vehicle shone green.

  Alec climbed onto the vehicle and threw a glance over his shoulder at Yalena. “Hop on.”

  Dave and Natalia settled onto the other hoverbike. Natalia fiddled with the passenger panel, while Dave and Alec exchanged quick guesses about how to operate the vehicles.

  “Well, this is new,” Natalia exclaimed. At the poke of her finger, a thin metallic rope unraveled from the panel. It had a socket-like tether at the end.

  “It must connect to the suit.” Yalena repeated the movement on the passenger panel in front of her, and connected the tether to the belly of her suit.

  “Great,” Alec teased. “Now at least I know you won’t manage to fall off.”

  Yalena lightly smacked his shoulder in response, but Natalia interrupted their exchange. “What are we looking for, exactly?”

  “Barracks? Signs of the army?” Dave guessed.

  Alec nodded. “This seems like a small charging station. We must be far from the main site.”

  “I don’t expect the army to be difficult to find now that we’re on the trail, but remember, we only look like them as long as we keep our distance.” Yalena instinctively wanted to scratch above her eyebrow, but her fingers only felt the glossy helmet. “Our best course of action is to fly by and check out the base. If we get mixed in with other soldiers, stay together, avoid talking to anyone and never take off the helmet.”

  Natalia gave a snort of irritation. “If we ever get that close to them, we’re finished. They’ll sense we lack the vibe.”

  “That would depend on how well the others hide their own vibe,” Yalena cut her off.

  She slid her feet into the passenger slots. In that position and with the tether attached to her suit, she felt secure when the engine roared. The hoverbikes lunged ahead a little faster than she would have liked, but Alec seemed confident in the front seat.

  “This is pretty neat,” he said.

  Dave snickered on the comms. “How come we didn’t invent these?”

  Yalena’s body quickly grew tired in the stiff posture she’d adopted. The boys might be comfy in their new toys, but the faster they went, the more she had to fight the instinct to narrow her eyes, so she couldn’t see the rocks around her turn into disorienting gray smudges.

  The wild tunnel ride only lasted a few minutes, during which they’d gone further inside the rocks. Yalena had been wrong. The base wasn’t underground. The narrow tunnel they were following let them out at an enormous opening. Light entered only through a few cracks at the top of the cave, but it was reflected by the sparkling ice and snow.

  And the pyramid glass rooftops.

  Yalena’s mouth fell open. Lodged between the rocks below them, the edges of the hidden construction poked up. But before she could study it, an alarm blared from every side.

  “Intruder alert. Intruder alert,” a mechanical voice said. “Follow protocol four.”

  “If we only knew that protocol.” Dave sounded sarcastic.

  Even though she couldn’t see Natalia’s scowl, Ya
lena pictured it in her mind vividly. “It wouldn’t have helped, dummy. They know we’re the intruders.”

  They had barely poked out of the tunnel, but it was already too late to go back. Small gates opened behind them, letting out a swarm of hoverbikes. Each had a pilot and a shooter. Alec swore and then plunged the hoverbike down, making Yalena’s stomach plummet.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted on instinct against the harsh wind. It came out strangled on the comms. “We need to move away from the base.”

  Instead, the pyramid glass roofs amid the rocks grew so close she thought they’d crash into them. But Alec veered up at the last moment.

  Yalena’s jaw grew stiff. She counted three deep breaths, before casting a look back. Not down. Not sideways, to the rocks turning into a blur. Just back.

  Three hoverbikes followed them in a bird formation. Yalena pulled out her sonic gun. “I need you to let them catch up to us.”

  “Are you insane?” Alec’s Martian accent sounded in her ear.

  “She’s right,” Natalia said. “They’re out of range for the sonic blasters.”

  Yalena threw a glance to each side to check on Natalia and Dave’s position. They were to her right, but not so close as to make the four of them smear into a single target.

  “Don’t shoot,” Yalena said. “I need to read the vibe first.”

  “Sure, take your time with it.” Dave’s sarcastic voice made her grimace. “It’s not like we’re going to run out of space soon.”

  Yalena cringed during the few seconds it took her to turn around in her seat. With her back against Alec’s now, and her hand on the sonic gun’s trigger, she let out a deep breath. And with it, her vibe reached out. She probed for a minute, but the three hoverbikes on their trail switched formation, making it impossible to focus.

  Yalena stared at the black reflective helmets of the drivers. She couldn’t make out the slightest shape of a silhouette behind the visor. “I got nothing.”

  “Are you strapped in?” Alec asked.

  Yalena double-checked that the tether of the hoverbike was secured to the front of her borrowed exo suit. “Yes.”

  Alec’s voice was a throaty hum. “Then, this is going to confuse them.”

  A pull behind her navel told Yalena that Alec was building up to what had to be an extreme maneuver. Their assailants took only a second to react. A wave of laser beams rained on them. Yalena twisted into a ball to make herself small, while Alec dropped the hoverbike down a few feet to avoid the beams.

  Natalia fired back first. She and Dave were pushed closer to Alec and Yalena in what seemed like an air corridor between two rows of glass rooftops. Yalena’s sonic blast almost knocked one of the shooters off their hoverbike, but as soon as the person flew off their seat, the metallic tether pulled them back into place.

  “We sure need something a little more destructive,” Natalia remarked through heavy breaths, followed by a few blasts Yalena barely registered on her right.

  The more Alec and Dave sped up, the closer the chasing hoverbikes seemed to come.

  Yalena pulled her knees in and, despite the slight dizziness the speed left her with, she pushed up on them to stand tall and shoot from another angle. And this time she didn’t target the shooter. She fired straight at one of the drivers. The hoverbike dove down, nose first, throwing the shooter off so violently he smacked into the front of the hoverbike. The driver tried to take back control, but the vehicle spun over and over until it came crashing down, shattering a glass roof and falling through it.

  Yalena threw a quick look at Natalia, wanting to share that winning strategy, but the Moonie had already caught onto it. Instead of seeing her straddled in, Yalena spotted Natalia hanging upside down. Her knees were on the seat, keeping her anchored, while she let herself hang down, both hands on the sonic gun for aim. When she fired, she hit one of the other hoverbikes from below. A spark and a cloud of smoke came out, but in its fall, the vehicle spun, showering them with laser beams.

  Yalena frantically fiddled with the tablet settings. She activated the back shield just in time, but before Natalia could pull herself back into the seat, a beam hit the backside of their hoverbike. Dave swore on the comms.

  The clearing between the glass roofs was growing thinner.

  “Go first!” Alec shouted to Dave.

  Yalena’s back flattened against Alec with the force of the brake.

  She ducked behind the translucent shield to shoot back at the only assailants left. Their vehicle plummeted down out of sight.

  “They’re maneuvering.” Yalena flung herself to the side, trusting the tether to keep her safe. The enemy hoverbike fired at them from below. Yalena instinctively pulled back to her seat, but it wasn’t her and Alec that they’d targeted. Natalia and Dave’s hoverbike bumped up from the fire it had taken.

  “I’m losing the bike,” Dave shouted.

  Yalena turned around in her seat again and lowered herself to take aim. She fired at the last hoverbike, but it was too late. Dave and Natalia’s vehicle made a few fast loops, although Dave was probably trying to steer it away. When the machine finally sped in a straight line, it was too fast for him to react. He was thrown off and smacked into a jagged rock. The hoverbike crashed into him, bringing Natalia, pulled by the tether down on top.

  Yalena’s jaw chattered. She couldn’t bring herself to call out their names on the comms.

  She reached out the arm with the sonic gun and fired at the last hoverbike. But rage was a mistake.

  From down below, lasers fired. The shooters must have known how to hit them where the lasers would do enough damage. The back shield twitched in and out of appearance. Yalena’s blood boiled in her veins. She stretched away from her seat, only keeping her feet in position on one side of the bike, and aimed at their assailants.

  She fired at the pilot. The driver’s head bumped into the front of the bike from the sonic blast, but the shooter rained revenge down on her. The spray of laser beams burned her uniform in more than one place, but it also snapped the tether.

  Yalena made a loop in the air with a scream trapped in her lungs.

  “Lenly!” Alec shouted, but his outstretched arm was too far above.

  Yalena was falling.

  The adrenaline pumped in her veins as the pyramid glass rooftop grew closer, but she wasn’t fast enough to try and hold on to the edge. She slid down the side, feet first. Despite the burn down the side of her body, she didn’t manage to slow down enough. At the place where two glass roofs met and formed an angle, she smacked right into the glass.

  It cracked into a spiderweb, then shattered, and Yalena fell through, inside the high-ceiling building, on top of the crumbled glass.

  A sharp stab in her knee made her scream on impact. She twisted on the ground, but the mere movement brought tears of pain to her eyes. A piece of glass stuck out of her knee, making bile rise in her throat at the sight. Somewhere, as if from another universe, Alec was calling her over the comms.

  She couldn’t answer with anything but a strangled scream. Yalena tried to blink the tears away. Her helmet had cracked, but another glass sheet slid into position above her before the room had lost much air.

  And then she saw them—rows of the uniformed soldiers that had chased them in the air.

  Growling from the effort not to scream in pain, she watched them come nearer, scanning for their vibe, but the pain in her knee blotted everything away. She was about to faint.

  Hands shuffling through the shreds of broken glass, she reached for the boot pocket she kept her Berry in. The Berry had to go. And so did Alec.

  “Yalena?” he called out over the comms again.

  “Go,” she choked out a painful cough. “Go. Now.”

  She unlocked her Berry, but before she could enter the self-destruct sequence, the nearest soldier kicked the device out of her hands. On instinct, she tried to grab the Berry again, but twisting her body to the side caused a slight movement in her knee. Pain made her scream
again as black spots danced in her vision.

  Yalena pushed herself up on one elbow, but that was all she could do to fight back. She’d never walk out of here. She could never fight them. All she could do was pray she would finally understand who they were.

  Tears smeared the world in front of Yalena into a blur. Stubbornly, she stared at the reflective helmets, begging for her vibe to register anything about them. A clue was all she needed. Any clue. Were they Fian or not? Friend or foe?

  But she didn’t have to guess.

  The soldier next to her took out a white bottle and sprayed her face through the broken helmet. Yalena coughed at the strong alcohol smell. She tried to blink the substance away, but the silhouettes in front of her eyes had blurred. Her knee pulsated with the burning pain—each nerve on fire.

  Then the soldier sprayed her again.

  And Yalena’s world dissolved into darkness.

  Chapter 7. Raise the Dead

  Yalena’s eyelids weighed down, lulling her to sleep. She tried to blink herself awake. A familiar voice whispered in her ear, but it took her a while to make out the gentle soothing hum.

  Through her eyelashes, she could just about make out the silhouette of a woman in white. Veronica leaned over Yalena. Her dark hair swayed from side to side as if carried by a gentle breeze. But Yalena couldn’t hold on to the image, and it blurred into the white light.

  Veronica seemed to float above her. Was she an angel?

  “It’s all right,” Veronica said. “I’m here to help you.” Her voice was so familiar, so comforting.

  “Mom?” Yalena croaked through cracked, dry lips. But that wasn’t right. Dull pain at the top of her head distracted her, making it even harder to connect the dots.

  It wasn’t true. Veronica wasn’t Yalena’s mother.

  Trying to remember was like trying to recall a name at the tip of her tongue. She’d spent so much of last year believing Veronica was her mom. Somewhere deep down, that feeling, the imaginary conversations she’d had with Vero had remained, building a solid platform for a feeling that shouldn’t be there.