The Hive Engineers

by Emilia Zeeland

  “Virus check shows the file is secure,” the operator said.

  “Only one way to find out if it really is from Yalena,” Cooper said. “Open it.”

  Chapter 19. His Sister's Keepers

  In the darkness of the video, only Yalena’s face shone, bathed in the blue light of the camera. Her skin was ghostly pale, and deep circles under her eyes made her expression seem hollow, even if her gaze was tense and focused.

  “Eric,” she croaked. “It’s horrible. So much more horrible than we ever imagined.”

  Dread pooled in Eric’s stomach, but he only stared, unblinking, at the image of his sister.

  “We found the army...and it’s not an army of Fians.”

  Her voice cracked and at the same time she looked away from the camera, as if she couldn’t bear to continue. She exhaled deeply, then blurted out the rest.

  “They’re not Fian soldiers. They’re human—all eight thousand of them,” she said. Eric heard the words, but refused to let them sink in. That was impossible. “That’s why we can’t fight them. Remember what Sibel said? We can’t fight them without losing ourselves. She was right.”

  Heidi leaned over Eric. “Where would Felix get a human army of that size?”

  The reply came from Yalena on the screen. “It all started when Felix killed Veronica. Do you remember what he told her before he shot her? You will help me, dead or alive...”

  Tears pooled in Yalena’s eyes, but she seemed too tired, too worn out to cry. At the same time, the mention of Veronica stirred a memory in the back of Eric’s mind. The voice he’d heard, the one that sounded so familiar. It was Veronica’s.

  “Felix cloned her,” Yalena said. “He used her DNA to create copies of Veronica, over and over again. He’s been doing this for twenty years. This place...” She let her gaze stray, then brought it back to the camera with resolve. “This place is full of them. They’re in a station in the caves on the ice moon. Trained. Brainwashed to believe the Fians are their superior masters.”

  Eric watched Yalena shake in terror.

  “The clones don’t know what they’re doing. That’s why we can’t fight them, Eric. They’re innocent, but deadly and so very dedicated to the Fians. They’re fanatics and fanatics make for good soldiers.”

  Questions exploded inside Eric’s mind. If the clones were so terrifying, if Yalena had gotten close enough to know that, how was she alive? What would happen to her?

  As if guessing he’d be asking about that, Yalena continued her story.

  “When we found the clones, they attacked us, thinking our arrival was a surprise drill organized by the Fians. Dave’s dead and... I couldn’t stop them. They cloned him.”

  Next to Eric, Heidi clasped a hand over her mouth, mumbling “Oh, my stars.”

  “Natalia’s alive,” Yalena said. “I’m getting her off this planet. They...did something to her.”

  “Go on,” Natalia’s voice sounded from afar. She was probably behind the camera. “Tell them. They have to know what’s coming.”

  Yalena expelled a deep breath. “The Fians aren’t simply preparing a human army. They’re testing the Novofex injection, the same one Cara White used to change into a Fian. Dozens of clones have died from it in their trials. I think the cloning process must have made them less stable than a natural human. Or it could be that they’re missing Fian water and food to survive.

  “Regardless, there’s only one trial that succeeded.” She bit her lip with a pained expression on her face. “Natalia... She’s Fian now.” Her lips trembled. “And I need to get her to Nova Fia, otherwise...” She sniffed instead of finishing that thought. “I’ve used my abnormal hybrid status to prove to a few of Veronica’s clones that something doesn’t add up. There are three of them I’ve convinced to help us.”

  Eric shot a startled gaze at Heidi.

  “Well, if anyone can do something that bonkers, it’s Yalena,” she said.

  “They’re repairing a ship that should take us to Nova Fia. I know what you’re going to say and no, we can’t take the ship home. We’ve lost too much on this mission already, but we still can’t turn back. I need to save Natalia. The ship’s barely functional for a short trip as it is. And... I need to find my father.”

  “Is she mad?” Jea burst out, but no one replied.

  “Felix has just come to take his army on board Farsight. That means Nova Fia won’t be guarded. We can find allies there. Find a way home.”

  An odd expression crossed Yalena’s face before her eyes bore into the camera.

  “If you’re watching this, then you’ve already seen Farsight. I couldn’t warn you about that. The only thing I can say is that they’re coming for you with the clones and some sort of a plan to turn humans into Fians. Why, I don’t know. How exactly, I don’t know... After all, they couldn’t inject everyone.”

  Eric’s mind seemed to want to wander off in a thousand directions, but he stayed focused, drinking in each word Yalena said.

  Her expression darkened even more.

  “And Eric, if Alec made it back, please tell him not to blame himself. He followed orders. They would have put him through hell, cloned him or turned him into a Fian. I feel that much better knowing he escaped this place. Hopefully, he ignored my orders of where to go next and went straight through the wormhole instead.”

  Eric felt beads of cold sweat building along his hairline. Something had gone wrong. More wrong than even Yalena knew.

  Unaware of this, Yalena in the recording gave him another pleading look. “I know it’s hard to believe, hard to make sense of, but you need to trust my contacts. I call them Vero, Nicky and Ronnie.”

  In honor of Veronica. Eric nodded in realization, even though Yalena couldn’t see him.

  “Veronica Marshall isn’t dead. Not in spirit.” Yalena’s lip trembled, then she shook off the surge of emotion. “She can still be the key to bringing Felix down. Work with them. Give them credit for what they’ve already been capable of doing—acting against the only system they’ve ever known. Conceiving of a world where what’s been done to them isn’t right.”

  Eric’s chest swelled with anticipation. Yalena had just given him the best ammunition. Spies on the inside. Allies.

  “Use them to figure out how to bring Felix down from the inside, before the conflict begins, before they land.” Yalena stared at the camera as if seeing him all the way through it. “Because if they land, we will lose. One way or another. We’ll kill clones, who don’t fully understand the worlds colliding in front of them. Or we’ll lose humans as they turn into Fians. You can’t let that happen. We brought the Fians to Earth, we discovered them, and we can’t let innocent people pay the price. We’re the only shield that they’ve got. Be that shield for humanity, Eric. Please. You have to. And I know you can. I love you.”

  Eric’s nose scrunched as he fought the tears stinging in his eyes. With the screen going black in front of him, he felt he’d lost Yalena all over again. There was so much more he needed to know, to ask. Was she going to make it back?

  “Eric O’Donnell, are you still there?” Yalena’s allies were still on the line.

  Eric whirled around, scanning the others’ faces for cues of what to do. Bako had rejoined the group, looking sullen—out of concentration or concern, Eric couldn’t tell.

  “I’m here,” Eric said.

  There was another pause on the line before sound cracked back to life. “What are your orders?”

  Heartbeat thrashing through his ears, Eric focused on Cooper. “Yalena trusted them.”

  Cooper sighed. “What if it’s a trap? What if they’ve baited her?”

  “If they did, they’d have taken her prisoner, or worse...” Heidi said, giving Eric a small comfort.

  “Who says they haven’t?” Bako jumped in, his dark eyes turning stormy.

  Jea made a loud hiss of irritation. “Do you know that girl at all? She’d never leave a message like that under duress.”

  “I agree,” Hei
di said.

  Eric waited a long moment, but Cooper finally gave him a nod.

  “Who am I speaking to?” Underneath Eric’s calm exterior, a small part of him was suspicious of the clones, but he told himself he only needed to trust Yalena.

  “I go by Ronnie,” she said. “Vero and Nicky are with me.”

  “All right, Ronnie,” Eric said. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m afraid we’re going to need more help from you. Do you think you can find out how Felix plans to disperse Novofex on Earth?”

  “Do you mean the masters?” the girl on the line asked.

  Eric’s throat tightened. Felix deserved to be locked up for eternity for what he’d subjected the clones to already, but making them call him master was truly sickening.

  “You can call their leader Felix,” he said. “The rest of them are called Fians. And they are no masters over you anymore.”

  There was a quick pause on the line, which he attributed to shock.

  “Felix and the Fians are very secretive,” one of the Veronica clones said. She sounded further away from the microphone. “There’s a project room which all products are locked out of, so we don’t know what they do in there.”

  Eric had to gloss over her use of the word “product” or else he’d feel like punching someone. “Do you think you can sneak in there?”

  “No,” the three of them said at once.

  “It’s guarded by Fians,” Ronnie said, closer to the microphone. “And there’s a scanner to get in.”

  “What about a vent or a passage near it which you could use to scout out the room?” Cooper interjected.

  “We can’t exactly sneak around,” one of the others said. “We’re strictly accounted for in training, which will also make it hard for us to be in touch with you again.”

  Eric felt like he was trying to keep sand in his fist while it seeped through his fingers. The longer he kept them on the line, the greater the chance they’d get caught.

  “Stay out of trouble and keep your heads down, then,” he said.

  A noisy “huh?” from everyone else in the room made Eric stifle a groan.

  “We’ll work on a way to figure out what Felix is planning,” he said. “Keep your eyes open for signs and if you can, contact us again.”

  “We can do that in thirty-six hours,” Ronnie said. “We’ll have an alignment in our individual downtime.”

  “Until then,” Eric said, “Thanks for the warning and stay safe.”

  The call dropped.

  As much as he’d tried to prepare himself for the fallout, Eric whirled around to find the others rigid as stone.

  “What the hell was that?” Bako bellowed.

  “We need time to come up with a plan,” Eric said, as calmly as he could.

  “They were awaiting your orders, which probably means you should have given them some.” Bako eyed the others for support. “Stay put is not an order.”

  “I told you, we need time.” Eric snarled.

  “What we need is information, which they could have provided. They just needed to try...”

  “They’re our only allies,” Eric cut Bako off. “Forcing them into something they’re not prepared to handle would only get them caught. How does that help us?”

  “It doesn’t,” Jea hurried to say. “Let’s say you were right. You have thirty-six hours to prove it.”

  That seemed to get Bako to relax for a second. “Come up with a plan to find out or destroy whatever they’re planning.”

  Eric returned his fiery gaze as if to accept the challenge, even though nervous energy twisted his insides. He paced around, not wanting to go to Jen with this, to pressure her again. Bako and Jea took the opportunity to replay Yalena’s message. Since Bako had only heard the very end of it, Eric knew he couldn’t leave before Bako found out about Dave and Alec.

  When Yalena in the video left her message to Alec, Bako’s hand flew up to pause it. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  Eric’s heart hammered in his chest, part nerves, part anger. “They must have gotten split up. You know as much as I do.”

  But Bako’s eyes were so wide the white in them seemed to swell. “What am I supposed to report to Mars? How can we send troops when every Martian under your command has suffered a terrible fate? One dead. One dead and cloned. Another one missing. How do I explain all that?”

  Eric’s willingness to keep a lid on his anger thinned. “You can explain it any way you’d like. Or run back to Mars. That seems to be more your style. Let us fight the fight for humanity alone, since the life of every Martian is worth so much more to you than anybody else’s.”

  Bako’s body seemed to convulse at the outburst until he slowed his breathing and tried to sound civil. “Don’t you think I want us to work together? But I need to convince a council a lot more conservative than I am. And for that I need to know. What happened? Where the hell is Alec Rado?”

  Eric’s jaw set. He knew he’d pay for this later, but his blood was seething.

  “It’s a vast cosmos out there,” he squeezed through his teeth. “You’re welcome to look.”

  Chapter 20. Figure Eight

  Jen rubbed her bleary eyes, tired from staring at the first reports from the serum trial. She finally put the tablet aside and sunk into the fluffy couch next to Eric. The commander’s apartment was quiet, with Heidi and Cooper trying to catch an hour or two of sleep before baby Marcus would wake them up with his feeble but insistent cries.

  “I see,” Jen said, after Eric had relayed everything from Yalena’s message to her, as well as the conversation with the clones. “We need to act fast.”

  “But you just came up with the idea of the serum,” Eric said. “It’ll never be ready in time.”

  Jen licked her lips tentatively. “We just set up a massive test with over a thousand reconfigurations of the formula. It’s a very good first trial.”

  Eric gave her a look that was meant to cut her sugar coating it. “Tell me the truth, can we have a solution before they reach Earth?”

  Jen swept her hands across her face as if to shake off the exhaustion. Her usually tightly-looped ponytail was coming undone, with strands of hair falling around her face, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “It depends on how the tests go. If we have a viable solution in this trial run, we’ll know it in a few days and we’d be able to replicate a small batch before the Fians reach Earth, provided they keep to their current speed.”

  But Eric wasn’t comfortable going back to Cooper and the Trinity on a maybe. “We’ll have to be sure before I tell anything to the Trinity or the clones.”

  Jen’s pained expression was one of disagreement. “We need a plan in the next thirty hours. That’s what you promised the clones, right? You’ll have to make the call before we know if the serum can protect us from the radiation wave device.”

  Eric felt deflated. While Nico seemed confident he could get the RWD ready in a few days, betting on two maybes was a stretch. What if the Trinity never authorized such a plan? And what if they were right not to?

  Then Yalena’s plea sounded in the back of his mind. Eric knew she was right. No matter how crazy and tricky it was going to be, they had to stop Felix before Farsight landed on Earth.

  “There’s only one way to do this and succeed.” Saying it out loud made Eric feel he was going to jinx it. “We need to get on board Farsight with the RWD and the protective serum. If we make the RWD radius of effect small enough and manage to hit Felix’s control room with it, we’ll take him out without killing the clones.”

  “Or ourselves, provided we have enough working serum.” Jen paused. “But how would we get on Farsight?”

  Eric shuddered. It was the kind of wild plan only he and Yalena could dream up. “We’ll need a distraction. We could use a swarm of Bluedrops, swishing from side to side, faster than Farsight’s weapons can react, like a smokescreen to provide cover for one small Bluedrop that will enter Farsight. I’ll have to speak to Chris on h
ow to plot the maneuvers.”

  Jen gaped at him, but recovered rather quickly. “Can Veronica’s clones open a gate to receive us?”

  That, too, would have to be discussed. Eric sighed deeply. “They asked for my orders. That’s an order I can give. This will quite possibly be our only way to avoid an open conflict on Earth. The clones will have to find a way to do it.”

  “All right,” Jen said. She rocked back and forth for a second, no doubt stunned by the intricate web of maybes the plan rested on. “So, provided Nico can finish the RWD on time and I manage to confirm at least one of the blind test serums works, Chris would have to initiate a battle chaotic enough to hide a Bluedrop from boarding Farsight through a gate, which we would count on the three clones to open without being caught by Felix.”

  “If only we had a bit more time,” Eric said. “We could confirm some of our hunches.”

  Jen bolted upright and started pacing back and forth. “I don’t think it would matter. Each of these missions would be an insane strike of luck on its own. Accomplishing all four together will probably be-”

  “Don’t say it.” Eric stood and intercepted her line of pacing.

  Jen dropped her gaze, avoiding eye contact. “I’m not suggesting we give up, but Eric, this is insane. If we attempt to do this, we need to be aware that it’s not the kind of plan that goes off without a hitch.”

  Eric let his hands graze her shoulders, all the way down to her elbows, where he held her. “Jen, we’ve lost so much, but there’s more to lose still.” His thoughts drifted off to Yalena, Alec, Natalia, Cooper, Heidi and the baby. The rest of STAR Academy. The near worlds. Jen. Above all else, Jen. “We don’t have the luxury of giving up or waiting around for a better plan. The only thing we can do is bet on ourselves, on the maddest of our plans, on the off chance that it just might work.”

  Jen drew closer to him, resting her head against his chest. “I wish Yalena were here. Not that you’re not damn good at convincing people to go for your nightmarish plans all on your own.”