The Hive Engineers

by Emilia Zeeland

  “So...” Yalena tried to piece together a coherent theory. “How can we be sure the hive engineers will be there?”

  Stanley sighed. “I believe they’re terraforming multiple worlds and checking on them in a very systematic manner. Solar system by solar system. In and out.”

  “Wait a minute...” Alec bobbed his head up like he’d had a sudden realization. “You’re not saying...these hive engineers made the wormholes?”

  Yalena felt her jaw loosening in awe. That was it. “One in and one out.”

  “Exactly,” Stanley said. “It’s a tunnel of wormholes. A route to complete.” He studied Yalena’s face before continuing. “When I met your mother, I was in your solar system, searching for another wormhole to prove this theory.”

  “You never found it, right?” Alec asked.

  Stanley shook his head. “I searched for years, but there was nothing.”

  “Great,” Natalia said. “We’re the end of the alien metro line.”

  Yalena rolled her eyes at her, then turned back to her father. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Stanley was brooding in a way that reminded Yalena of Eric, despite there being no physical resemblance between the two. “It goes back to the divide between Felix’s beliefs and mine. I believe the hive engineers studied the human world from afar and decided to let it be. Not to interfere. Felix believes they left that wormhole to Earth open for next time. He thinks once they discover Earth, they’ll terraform it to their own perception of ‘terra’.”

  “He thinks they’ll release Novofex on Earth,” Yalena said.

  “That’s why Felix is out there on this insane mission of his.” Stanley looked deeply into Yalena’s eyes. “The only way to truly stop him is to find the hive engineers and have them stop him. Show him he’s been on the wrong side of things this entire time.”

  “That’s assuming you’re right.” A frown had settled on Natalia’s face, so deep she looked like she was fighting a sneeze.

  “It’s a gamble,” Stanley said. “But one way or another, we need to know what the hive engineers see when they look at Earth. If we don’t, we’ll only really know their motives when they eventually arrive there.”

  Everyone stayed quiet for a second. Yalena dreaded looking sideways at Alec, even though she felt his gaze on her, burning. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. The Sleeping Giant was supposed to be Alec’s ticket home. The way to save him. Now, even though they’d dug out the ship, she felt Alec’s safe return was being bartered for another shot in the dark.

  “This isn’t an easy choice, but we only have one ship,” Stanley said. “If we use it to go to Earth, it will save Alec, and we’ll come to help the near worlds as soon as possible, but...”

  “But then the hive engineers will come,” Blaine said. “They’ll find out that Nova Fia has been populated. The hive has captured a new swarm. Our armies gone. Our residents alone, not knowing what the aliens want.”

  Yalena was starting to feel backed into a corner. “Unless we intercept them first.”

  Stanley nodded. “Unless we figure out what they want. If I’ve been right about them, we can take them to Earth to help us fight Felix.”

  The seconds trickled by without a sound. Then, Yalena felt the gentle touch of Alec’s hand around hers. He tugged lightly, making her face him. The gentle breeze ruffled her hair, which was curlier than usual in the humidity.

  “It’s your call,” he said.

  It was a simple sentence—something Yalena usually liked hearing, but this time, it left a scorching trail in her lungs as she breathed. “And what if we can’t find them? What if we lose days searching and we can’t get you back to Earth in time?”

  Alec’s throat bobbed slightly, but his voice remained calm. “You’ve seen the crazy tech they have. When we find them, they’ll get us back quickly.”

  It was wishful thinking and, by the look they shared, Yalena could tell they both knew it. But the gravity of the conflict had reached a level Yalena wasn’t sure any of them could influence much on their own. If they had outside help, it was going to change everything. Save everyone.

  She felt her face redden and burn under everyone’s gazes. “Let’s go find the hive engineers.”

  THE REBELS SETTLED into what Stanley had called the storage compartment. Upon closer investigation, they’d found a sensor there, which released more forcefield planes when it was triggered. The Fians constructed benches and tables from them until the place glowed like an odd alien disco.

  In the pilot hull, Yalena and Natalia flanked Alec in their weird seats, while Stanley and Blaine sat behind them.

  Alec had managed to zoom into a holo model of the Fian solar system. With Stanley’s guidance, he found the two marks signifying the wormholes—lines spiraling inward until they made you dizzy.

  “Mate, are you sure you’re all right to take the Giant to space?” Blaine said, hands tightening around the glowing forcefield keeping him in place.

  “Careful Blaine, vibe or no vibe, I’d say you’re getting nervous,” Alec teased back.

  Alec’s hands strained until the veins at his wrist became well-defined. The Sleeping Giant swayed upward. Whatever energy it used to fly, the feel of it was quite different from the anti-matter engines Yalena was used to. It was more like a hovering motion than rocketing toward the skies.

  The midday sun shone into Yalena’s eyes as Alec drove the Giant upward. He must have figured out how to speed up on it. The others applauded as a familiar pull behind her navel made Yalena feel safe, albeit not perfectly comfortable.

  The red-blue surface of Nova Fia was thrown into the distance and obscured by scattered clouds.

  The rest of the trip took them about six hours, during which Natalia insisted Alec teach her how to fill in for him. She even got to pilot for a brief twenty minutes. Yalena grinned, noticing out of the corner of her eye the close attention Blaine payed to Natalia, but she said nothing.

  Traveling through the wormhole gave Yalena a powerful flashback. Last time, she’d had Eric and his crew by her side. In the mad rush of action—battling for survival on three planets, losing almost everyone on her crew, suffering enough shocks to last her a lifetime, discovering her father, Alec’s weakening condition and an alien race—she’d barely had time to think of Eric. The realization made her ache inside, but only for a moment. Eric had to be worried about them, but she knew he’d never lose faith in her. He’d know she’d be doing everything to help him win the battle for Earth. And she was doing exactly that.

  The new solar system was formed around a neutron star. Its faint blue glow was breathtaking. The wormhole had let them out between the second and third planet of five. They were busy marveling at the new surroundings when the Giant let out a sudden, loud noise, like an elephant blowing through its trunk.

  The holo screen in front of them shifted and split into two. The left-hand side showed a view of the new solar system with two dots glowing bright green. The right-hand panel was filled with lines and lines of unfamiliar symbols. Writing.

  “Well.” Alec’s jaw tightened. “I’d say they’ve found us.”

  Chapter 33. The Scout

  Yalena stayed, transfixed, in the blaring corpus. It was bathed in a pulsating purple hue, which sharpened and dimmed in sync with the alarm. Then, it died as suddenly as it had erupted.

  Yalena leaned closer to the holo screen, but the foreign symbols on it offered no explanation. “What happened?”

  Alec pointed at a tiny dot, which was now slowly moving toward their ship. “They’re coming.”

  Despite the clear understanding that this was what they’d come here for, Yalena couldn’t help but shudder. The tall, thin and scaly exposure suits popped into her mind. Whoever was meant to wear them couldn’t be so different from a human, could they? Two legs, two arms, a body and a head. A parallel evolution, coming to them from somewhere in the vast cosmos.

  Alec interrupted her though
ts with a low whistle. “They’re fast.” His eyes were fixed on the shifting position of the dot that marked the alien ship.

  “I don’t expect there to be many of them,” Stanley said. “Not with the number of worlds they’re probably monitoring.”

  After a pause, Yalena felt him reaching out to calm her through the vibe. She’d completely forgotten to keep at least a modest defense up, and all her nerves had sprayed out. “What do we do? How do we communicate with them?”

  Stanley expelled a deep breath. Although his vibe exuded confidence, a line between his eyebrows deepened. “We’ll have to be visual. Blaine, Natalia, pull images and current positions of Nova Fia and Earth.”

  Yalena’s heart swelled with a pleasant, although unexpected, feeling of familiarity. She recognized herself in Stanley, in the way he took charge. Norma had been a rebel in her way, but also a follower. Stanley was a true leader.

  Yalena tried to visualize possible ways to explain to these aliens what Felix wanted to do on Earth, but all the while, the not-so-quiet voice of doubt whispered to her. What if the aliens agreed with Felix?

  When the ship came into view, Yalena gaped. It was much smaller than she’d expected, almost like a Bluedrop.

  “It’s a lone scout,” Stanley said.

  The small ship came to a halt, positioned at their side. Then, a bright light flared through the corpus.

  “I think we’re meant to let him in.” Stanley sounded as calm as usual.

  Alec flipped through different sections of the screen until a blueprint of the ship slid into view. A panel on the side was blinking yellow. Alec looked around until he got a “go on” from Stanley, and then he clicked on it. The small ship fit snugly into that opening.

  As if on command, they all stood up and whirled around to keep the corridor in view.

  “Fians at the front,” Stanley hissed to his men, who pushed Alec and Yalena to the back. Blaine gathered Natalia with one arm, as if to hide her behind his back.

  “Hey,” she protested. “I’m Fian, remember?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” he said without the usual smirk. “But your vibe is so strong, it might actually knock someone out. Get a hold of it.”

  Natalia opened her mouth to argue back, but the sound of a sliding panel silenced the whole crew. Yalena stood on tiptoe to get a view from behind Stanley and Blaine.

  Bathed in the yellow glow of the ship appeared the silhouette of a creature as thin and bony as a bug’s exoskeleton. It stood frozen at the doorframe for a long moment, light shining from behind it, making their eyes strain. Yalena tried to wall up her vibe, but any defense crumbled with the loud thumps of her heart.

  Unstably, the alien took a step forward, like its fragile waist would break. It was wearing an exo suit like the ones Yalena had seen. Even if she’d been right about the creature having two hands and two legs, Yalena could now not imagine anything further from a human.

  Each step the alien took sounded like nails on a tin roof. The ends of the exo suit had stretched to cover what Yalena assumed were two thick toes, with curled nails at the ends, like bird feet. Its body and limbs seemed to be made of lean muscle, arms falling long at its sides. A thin neck supported its triangular head. Taller than any of them, the creature towered, looking down at them with wet black eyes—oblong and deep, like that of a praying mantis. In place of a nose, it had two small slits above a thin mouth.

  Yalena’s heart leapt as it dawned on her. It was breathing their air. Or they were breathing its air. Her hand slipped into Alec’s, and he gave her a little squeeze.

  The alien made a garbled, throaty sequence of sounds, which Yalena was too stunned to attempt to decipher. Stanley tilted his head a little to the side as if deep in thought. It made Yalena nervous not to be able to feel anything from his vibe. It was as if he and the alien were measuring each other up in a silent staring contest. Then, the creature grasped Stanley’s hand in one quick sweep, a grip fast and strong enough to break bones. Yalena sucked in a sudden breath, her heart clenched into a fist.

  Stanley let the alien pull his hand up. It seemed to give it a whiff. Scaly eyelids closed over its bottomless eyes and slowly opened again. The creature lifted its other hand, three bony claws hovering over Stanley’s palm. Achingly slow, it dragged a nail over Stanley’s skin until it drew blood. Yalena’s world was spinning, as panic dimmed all reason out of her. Felix had been right, and she’d pay for not listening to him by watching this vile creature bleed her father out.

  “No!” she screamed, pushing Blaine and one of the others apart.

  It was a stupid, stubborn gesture—the last thing Stanley would see. The scales of the exo suit shimmered in emerald green up close, as the alien turned to her. It didn’t let go of Stanley though. Instead, it brought that sickeningly sharp nail to its little mouth and tasted the blood. Yalena belched in horror.

  The long eyelids covered the alien’s eyes again in a slow blink, then it let go of Stanley’s hand. And turned on Yalena. Once its eyes, black as the abyss of space, locked in on her, the vibe punched the air out of Yalena’s lungs. Blaine’s mastery of the vibe was nothing, nothing compared to this. She felt it like a razor-sharp blade, piercing through her defenses with the force of sheer determination. As hard as she tried, Yalena couldn’t get a read on the alien’s intentions. It was as if she was back on the ice moon, captured by the clones, desperately trying to use her vibe on them. It hadn’t worked then, and it didn’t work now.

  “Don’t fight it, Yalena.” Stanley’s voice barely registered through the haze of the alien vibe.

  The black eyes left her only for a second, as if to scan the room, then they focused back on her. It knew.

  Yalena shuddered. “It knows I’m different.”

  “Stay calm,” Stanley said. “It’s trying to understand.”

  The claws rose through the air, but the alien didn’t grasp Yalena like it had Stanley. Instead, it was pointing. Yalena’s eyes traced a trajectory from the scaly three-fingered hand to Alec. She willed her vibe to transmit a message to the alien. He’s one of us. He’s one of us.

  Alec stepped out of the crowd of Fians, shoulders squared. Yalena desperately wanted to scream at him to stand back, but the pressure on her chest hardly allowed her to breathe, let alone speak.

  The alien tilted its angular head from one side to the other, much like a dog would, but not nearly as welcoming. Instead of grabbing him, like it had Stanley, the alien flipped its hand upside down, opening its palm. And it waited. For the first time since the creature had come into view, Yalena saw it as something intelligent, gentle even.

  Despite the tiny beads of sweat covering his hairline, Alec reached out and placed his open palm into the creature’s hand. “There’s got to be a more hygienic way to do this.”

  The alien hunched down, its head bobbing up and down as if to nod, but Yalena attributed that to her own mind, humanizing the super-sized bug in front of her. The sharp nail barely pierced Alec’s hand. The alien stared with something akin to fascination at the red blood, so different from the darker, purple Fian blood. But instead of placing its deformed finger into its mouth like a toddler, the alien opened a little scanner on its wrist and touched its claw there, leaving a droplet of blood behind. A glass lid lifted and closed over the little droplet of Alec’s blood. The little device shone in a bright blue and green hue, before settling into a mellow orange.

  The alien sized Alec up again, as if understanding, but Yalena doubted how much could be conveyed by a shining light alone. “I think we need to show it where we’re from.”

  Stanley walked over to the holo screen first. Hesitantly, the alien let go of Alec and, scratching the aluminum floor with its scaly feet, followed him. Stanley flipped through the model of the Fian solar system and pointed at Nova Fia.

  “That’s where we’re from,” he said, although it sounded silly to address a creature which surely had no idea what the words meant.

  Yalena might have imagined it, but s
he thought she could sense understanding through the vibe, approval even. The alien pointed a claw at Alec and another at Stanley, then brought them close together until they touched. Yalena could feel the question behind it, perhaps even more clearly than Stanley and the Fians did.

  “I think he’s asking if humans came to Nova Fia and became Fians,” she said, startling the rest, who didn’t seem to have caught that through the vibe yet.

  For the first time, she wasn’t the least bit scared in the presence of this odd creature. Sure, it was scaly and silent, and those claws were more than a little intimidating, but she could sense him—or at least she thought it was a him. The vibe let them communicate.

  She tried to channel that, sending a thought at him, hoping he could read her mind. She thought of Earth. Of evolution. Of cataclysm. Of the Migration.

  The bottomless black eyes studied her, while the foreign vibe reached out, as if searching through her memories. She felt it tickle inside her mind in a way that was quite intrusive, but not too uncomfortable to endure.

  Alec flipped through images on the screen until it showed the solar system and pointed at Earth. The alien did the same. Through the vibe, Yalena sensed a calm resignation. He wasn’t surprised.

  “They’ve known about us,” she whispered in shock. “Their race has known of us the entire time, but they never interfered. They let us be.”

  As if understanding her words, the alien stared back. That was all the confirmation Yalena needed. If this superior civilization had let humans be, through both the cataclysms that had befallen Earth and the expansion of the human race to other planets, then they weren’t to be feared.

  “We need to go there,” she said, although she had the feeling that sending the thought, focusing on the image of Earth and space travel, did more than the words ever could. When the alien didn’t react, she thought it again, visualized it as best she could, and nodded to prompt a reaction.