Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  A sign began flashing in the overhead. DISENGAGE ALL SHIPS, it ordered. The ship. Sanity returned with that responsibility. Leo fired, taking out the betas who would not obey his shouted orders, and leaned over com, punched it wide-broadcast. “Eros crew.” His voice fed from the corridors outside and throughout the station. “This is Leo. Return to the ship at once. Return to the ship at once.”

  It was necessary to hold that, above all else. Morn would expect it. “Go,” he shouted at the others with him.

  And then because it occurred to him that he dared not leave betas near controls, he killed them, every one.

  “They’re running,” the young Upcoaster said, leaning against the glass and pressed to it, staring up the outside concourse.

  “Don’t!” another cried, when he pushed the door open.

  There were no shots, only a breath of cold air of the docks.

  “Come on!” Itavvy cried at his wife, snatched Meris from her arms; and the Upcoasters sprang for the doors too, all of them starting to run, baggage left, everything left.

  The floodlights on the vast docks were flickering, red lights gashing warnings, sirens braying. Itavvy sucked a lungful of the thin cold air and pelted after the artist, cast a look over his shoulder to see that Velin followed. Tears blurred the lights when he looked round again, a flickering that spelled out Phoenix. The ramp was ahead of them, through a tangle of lines. Someone fell behind him, scrambled up again. The artist took the ramp; Itavvy did, Meris wailing in his ear, and for that, for her he did not fall, although he felt pain in his side and his chest. They ran the frozen ramp, over the plates that should have moved to help them.

  And the hatch was shut.

  “Let us in!” he screamed at it. Others caught up with him, hammered at the metal with their fists. Itavvy wept, tears streaming his face, and Velin flung her arms about them both, him and Meris.

  It was the oldest Upcoaster who found the intercom recessed in the ramp housing. He shouted into it. “Shut up!” he yelled back at them when they added their voices; and from the intercom: “Stand by.”

  The hatch hummed, parted. Azi crewmen, their faces sober and unamazed, stood waiting to help them aboard.

  They stood inside, with trembling hands proffered tickets, evidence of passage.

  The hatch sealed behind them.

  “Brace where you are,” a voice grated from the intercom overhead. “We’re disengaging and getting out of here.”

  ix

  The shrilling was louder, front walls, back walls, on all sides of them, and what had begun in the dark of night refused to go away by day, when light streamed over the garden. It should dispel the nightmare. It instead made it real, picking out the shapes of poised Warriors, the husks and bodies of the dead piled in the corner of the garden, and the cracks in the outer wall where assault had already been made and repulsed.

  Jim wiped at his face, crouching by Max’s side among the rocks. Pol was by him: they spared one young azi to keep a gun in Pol’s ribs constantly, for whatever the Kontrin was, he was a born-man and old in such manoeuvrings, able to forewarn them what the hives might do…most of all what the human mind among them might do.

  He’s there, Pol had said, when the last assault had nearly carried to them, when cracks had appeared in the wall and fire from the gate had distracted them. That’s Morn behind that. The next thing is to watch our backs.

  And that proved true.

  “He’s delayed over-long,” Pol said after a time. “I’m surprised. He should have tried by now. That means he and his allies are up to something that takes a little time.”

  Jim looked at him. The Kontrin’s accustomed manner was mockery; Pol used little of that in recent hours. His gaunt face was yet more hollowed, his eyes shadowed with the exhaustion which sat on them all. The high heat would come by mid-morning; they wore sunsuits, but neither masks nor visors in place, and the sleeves were all unfastened for comfort. Azi rested in their places, slumped against rocks or walls, seeking what sleep could be gotten, for they had had little in the night. Pol leaned his head back against the rock that sheltered them, eyes shut.

  “What would take time?” Max wondered aloud.

  “Tunnels,” Jim said, the thought leaping unwanted into his mind. He swallowed heavily and tried to reason around it. “But Warriors don’t dig and Workers don’t fight.”

  Pol lifted his head. “Azi do both,” he said, and shifted around to face forward. “Look at the cracks in that wall. They’re wider.”

  It was so. Jim bit at his lips, rose and went aside, where one of the Warriors crouched…touched its offered scent-patches.

  “Jim. Yess.”

  “Warrior, the wall’s cracking over there. Pol Hald thinks there could be digging.”

  The great head rotated, body shifted, directed toward the wall. “Human eyess…certain, Jim?”

  “I can see it, Warrior. A crack in the shape of a tree, spreading and branching. It gets wider.”

  Chelae brushed him; palps flicked over his cheek. “Good, good,” Warrior approved, and scuttled off. It sought and locked jaws with the next, and that one moved off into the house, while Warrior continued, touching jaws with each of the Warriors nearest, who spread in turn to pass the message further.

  Jim slid back into position next Max and Pol. “It’s disturbed about it,” he panted. He shivered despite the warmth, suddenly realising that he was terrified. They had fought in the night; he had never fired his gun. Now at the prospect of their shelter breached by daylight he sat trembling.

  “Easy,” Pol said, put out a thin hand and closed it on his leg until it hurt. The pain focused things. He looked at the Kontrin, suddenly aware of a vast silence, that the shrilling which had surrounded them had fallen away.

  “You’re always with Morn,” Jim said hoarsely, for it did not make sense, the tapes with the behaviour of Pol Hald. “You’re out of his house. You wouldn’t go against him.”

  “A long partnership.” The hand did not move, though it was gentler. “In the Family, such are rare.”

  Treachery, what he had learned warned him. He stared at the Kontrin, paralysed by the touch he should never have allowed.

  “Strange,” Pol said, “that at times you have even her look about you.”

  The shrilling erupted again; and a portion of the garden sank away, gaping darkness aboil with earth and majat bodies. Blues sprang, engaged; shots streaked from azi weapons.

  The wall went down, collapsed in a cloud of dust: through it came a horde of majat, azi among them.

  Jim braced the gun and sighted, tried to pull the trigger. Beside him a body collapsed, limp.

  It was Max. A shot had gone through his brain. Jim stared down at him, numb with horror.

  The azi on the other side cried warning, sprawled back unconscious. Pol had Max’s rifle and whipped it from a backward blow at his guard to aim it up, putting shots into the majat horde, dropping azi and majat with no distinction.

  Jim sighted amid them and pulled the trigger, firing into the oncoming mass, unsure what damage he did, his eyes blurred so that it was impossible to see anything clearly.

  The sound swelled in his ears, a horrid chirring that ascended out of range. Majat poured from the house behind them, more Warriors than he had known were there. Majat swarmed from the pit before them and through the breached wall; and came on them like a living wave. Pol fired indiscriminately; he did; more came to replace the fallen, as a wider portion of the wall collapsed, exposing their flank.

  “Move back!” Pol shouted at him. “Get your men back!” The Kontrin sprang up low and took a new position.

  Jim shouted a half-coherent order and scrambled after, slid in at Pol’s side and started firing again.

  Then eerie figures appeared among the majat, like majat in the mold of men, bearing each an insignia on the shoulder.

  And one was among them that was clearly a man, in Hald Colour.

  “Morn,” Pol said, and stopped firing.

&n
bsp; Jim sighted for that target, missed; and fire came back, grazed his arm. Pol seized him, pulled him over as a lacery of fire cut overhead.

  Majat voices boomed, and stone cracked. One of the portico pillars came down in the sudden rush of majat from the house, a sea of bodies; and among them ran naked majat-azi and azi in sunsuits brown with mud and blood.

  Fire cut both ways. Majat and azi fell dying and were trampled by those behind. And one there was slighter than most, with black hair flying and a gun in a chitined fist. The azi by her died, rolled sprawling.

  Jim fought to loose himself, flung himself over and saw Morn in the centre of the yard. Raen was blind to him. “Look out!” he screamed.

  “Morn!” Pol yelled, hurled himself to his feet and fired.

  Morn crumpled, the look of startlement still on his face. And startlement was on Raen’s face too, horror as she averted the gun. Pol sank to one knee, swore, and Jim seized at him, but Pol stood without his help, braced, fired a flurry of shots into the armoured invaders, who stood as if paralysed.

  Raen did the same, and majat swept past the lines of her men, who hurled accurate fire into the opposing tide, majat meeting body to body, waves that collided and broke upon each other, with shrilling and booming. Heads rolled. Bodies thrashed in convulsions. More of the wall collapsed, and again they were flanked. Jim turned fire in that direction, and saw to his horror the majat sweeping down on them.

  Pol’s accurate fire cut into them, shots pelting one after the other, precisely timed.

  A body slid in from their rear: Merry, putting shots where they counted; and Raen next, whose fire was, like Pol’s, accurate. The shrilling died away; majat rushed from their rear, narrowly missing them in their blinding rush, and they dropped, tucked for protection.

  But Pol did not go on firing. He laid his head against the rock, staring blankly before him. Raen touched him, bent, pressed a gentle touch of her lips to his brow.

  “That’s once,” Pol said faintly, and the face lost its life; a shudder went through his limbs, and ceased.

  Raen averted her face, looked instead at the wave of majat that was breaking, flooding back toward the walls.

  And with a curse she sprang up and ran; Merry followed, and other azi. Jim slipped his hand from Pol’s shoulder and snatched at his rifle to follow, past the cover of the rocks.

  A dark body hurtled into him, spurs ripping. He sprawled, went under, body upon body rushing over him, until pain stopped.

  x

  Agony… Mother existed in it, in each powerful drive of Her legs that drove Her vast weight another half-length. Drones moved, themselves unaccustomed to such exertions, their breathing harsh pipings. Workers danced back and forth, offering nourishment from their jaws, the depleted fluids of their own bodies, feeding Her and the Drones.

  Their colours grew strange, the blue mottled light and dark, with here and there a blackness. The sight disturbed Her, and She moaned as She thrust Her way along, following the new tunnel, the making of the Workers.

  Mother, the Workers sang, Mother, Mother.

  And She led them.

  I have made the way, the Warrior-mind reported, one of its units touching at Her. Enemies are retreating. Need of Workers now to move the stones.

  Well done, She said, tasting of life fluids and of victory.

  Warrior scurried away, staggering in its exhaustion and its haste. Follow this-unit, Warrior gave taste to Workers. Follow, follow me.

  xi

  “Sera?”

  Raen caught herself, caught her breath between the wall and Merry’s solid body. An azi-light swung from her wrist. She blinked clear the subway, the vacant tracks coursed by majat. One of the men offered her a flask. She drank a mouthful; it went the round among them, forlorn humans huddled at the side of the arching tunnel. They panted for breath, lost in the strange sounds, the rush of chitined bodies, of spurred feet. One of them, hurt, slumped in a knot against the wall. Raen reached and touched him, obtained a lifting of the head, an attempt to focus. Another gave him a drink.

  They were twelve, only twelve, out of all of them. She swallowed heavily and rested her hand on Merry’s shoulder, breathing in slower and slower gasps.

  “City central’s up there,” she said. “Blues have A branch. The reds are probably in E, that goes to the port. Greens… I don’t know. Golds…likely C, due south. They’ll mass in central, under ITAK headquarters”

  “Three hives against them,” Merry said faintly. “Sera, the blues can’t do it.”

  She slid her hand down, pressed his arm. “I don’t think so either, but there’s no stopping them. We’ve kept them alive this long. Merry, take the men, go back. Go back from here. I’ll not throw the rest of you away.”

  “Sera—send them back, not me.”

  Other voices protested, faces anxious in the blue glow.

  “Any of you who wants to stay back, stay,” she said, and rose up and started to walk again, slung the burden of the riflestrap to her shoulder.

  They came. Perhaps it was fear of the majat without her. She thought that it might be. She suspected something else, that she was too rational to believe. She wiped at her face, struck the tears away with no realisation of hurt or grief, only that she was very tired and her eyes watered. The tunnel smelled of majat, like musty paper; and they passed strange sights as they walked, found vehicles frozen on the tracks, wherever they had been when power failed; and terrible sights, the sweet-sour reek of death, where betas had died, some sprawled on the tracks, some in vehicles the glass of which had shattered, dead of majat bite or terror—brushed constantly now by the steady rush of Warriors.

  But now there appeared. other types amid the press…blue-hive azi, staggering with exhaustion and mindless with haste; and after them, Workers, fluting shrill, plaintive cries.

  “They’re all going,” Merry breathed beside her. “Even the queen will follow. Sera, is it wise to be here at all?”

  “No,” she said plainly, “it’s not.”

  But she did not stop walking, or hesitate. The Worker-cries became song, that filled her ears, ran through her nerves, and banished thought.

  Daylight shafted down ahead, where bodies milled, that vast terminal that was central, zero, with day falling down from skylights. Song came up from that heaving mass, and Warriors within it surged this way and that. Workers added themselves, climbing over the bodies of others.

  More, Raen thought, far more than blue-hive alone: all, ail hives, met there.

  And majat died there, of weakness and wounds, crushed down. The song numbed. Merry held his ears and cried out soundlessly in the chaos; and Raen pressed hands to her own, all of them seeking the retreat of the walls, any place aside from that flood of bodies which kept coming.

  The ground shook, the walls quivered.

  A faint far glimmering in jewels and azi-lights, Mother came, struggling forward.

  Mother drew breath, heaved forward, breathed again, dazed with pain. Her own limbs, reaching out and shifting again out of view, were mottled now, bright blue and dark. About Her moved insanity, Warriors whose colours had gone mad, whose bodies glowed blue and extremities red, whose midlimbs gold, all mottled with green.

  Queens were at hand: She heard Them, others, other-hives. Desperation possessed Her, the instinct certain now of direction. There was nothing else.

  She saw Them, in a seething mass of colours, among Warriors and Workers and Drones who had gone mad. One of the queens was red, with darker mottlings: She, fiercest; one gold, tinged with red; one green, with shadings of blue, incipient chaos.

  Red queen shifted forward, ominous, and went for green, for the tainted and nearest one, breathing out hate.

  Red was the killer, the Warrior-fragment, as green was the Worker-mind.

  Mother hesitated, trembling, and saw green die, life-fluids drunk.

  Blue, red queen breathed, and the Warriors quivered aide, pressing themselves out of the way in terror.

  A second queen wa
s dead. Raen shuddered, the hard grip of her azi about her, putting their own bodies between her and the press, a small knot of humanity, blue-lit. Other azi sheltered with them, naked creatures male and female, trembling and holding their ears against the battering sound. Lighter majat clambered over them, Drones, glittering with living jewels, perhaps adding their own screams to the thunder of the queens.

  Merry shivered against her. Raen caught his hand and held it, that crushed bone against bone in hers: likely he had no wit left to know; she had none to care.

  The battle raged in ponderous slow-motion, hazy shafts of sunlight enveloping the queens atop the living hill, reflecting jewel-colours. Strength held against strength: then came a darting move.

  The third queen died, head severed.

  The hill of bodies came undone about the survivor, sweeping over and about Her. Drones streamed through, to gather with other Drones; and Workers with Workers; and Warriors with Warriors, ringed about the living queen. The dead were hauled away. The living circles widened, spread throughout the terminal.

  The queen moved, shifted position; so did all the others. She breathed out a note that made the walls shake, and after that was quiet.

  A human wept, audible, soft sobs.

  Raen leaned against Merry a moment, then gathered herself from him, from all the azi, and rose—walked among the still shapes of majat, Warriors, Workers, with the badges of blue-hive, red-hive, green and gold comingled. The rifle was stiff slung from her shoulder. She realised it, and dropped it echoing to the pavement, for there was no way out but to kill a queen, the last Mother of a world, and that she would not do.

  She walked within reach of Her, without weapons in hand, and gazed up into the great jewelled face, the moiré eyes, heard the sough of Her breathing.

  It was a gold. The pattern was on Her, for those who could read it.

  “Mother,” she said, “I’m Raen a Sul, Meth-maren.”