“Can you move?” I ask and wonder if the young Keeper’s about to kick the bucket right here on this very roof.
He shakes his head. “I need a minute.”
“We don’t have that kinda time.”
Sneak and I move to the edge and peer over. She’s using her eyes to scan the rooftops to find the Hive leader that’s causing all the problems. But I don’t need eyes to spot him. I can feel the bastard, moving amongst his Zee soldiers. For a moment I can even see through his eyes. He’s watching as the bronze colored machine drives its fists into the ground, crushing a dozen zees in the process and that’s when I realize not only is Dhal with them, he’s driving that thing. The angle is all weird, but seeing things from the Hive leader’s perspective helps me pinpoint his location. He’s on the ground, surging forward with his men. The Zees outside the city gates are getting closer. Suicide mission or not, I know it’s now or never.
There’s another cable at my feet which leads to the corner of the next building. If I can kick off at just the right angle, I may have a chance of getting close enough to make a difference. Sneak watches my eyes trace back and forth and knows exactly what I’m thinking. She darts across the cable like a fearless acrobat and even I’m impressed with her agility. As soon as she’s on the other side, I dangle from the wire with one hand and use the Katana in my other to hack it free. It takes three full chops before it cuts loose and my feet kick off at the very last second. A blur of speed and the ground races up to meet me, then the cable grows taut and I’m sailing less than a foot above the crowd of Zees. Landing will be the tricky part and when I let go I can feel my legs cycling wildly in mid air. I probably look like a human windmill, until my boots make contact with the first Zees skull and from there I go sprawling to the ground, knocking dozens of them down as I go.
A quick glance at my hand reveals the Katana isn’t there anymore and now the Zees are starting to scramble back to their feet; I’m about to be lunch when I notice one of the poor wretches has a sword protruding from this side of his head. I lunge forward and slide the blade out, swinging it wide enough to kill another three before bringing it to my side. From there it’s a mad hack and slash toward the Hive leader, who’s sure as hell aware of my little stunt by now. The blade sweeps back and forth, cutting down several Zees at once, but there’s always more to take their place. Already I can tell he’s drawing his drones toward me, so focused on taking me out he doesn’t notice the little girl drop down behind him. A glint of sun winks off her twin blades as she goes to work. Watching her move in the chaos around me, I see she isn’t just a killer or an assassin. Sneak is an artist and watching her deliver precise, almost surgical death makes the hardened skin on my arms crawl with gooseflesh. The Hive leader barely has time to turn before a line opens across his throat and a thick stream of blood begins pumping from the wound. Sneak learned a thing or two from her encounter with the first Hive leader. Never underestimate your opponent. But more importantly, don’t leave them an opening. Her next strike goes up through the bottom of his chin and into the brain. The light in his eyes dulls and goes out before he hits the ground.
This was the gap in leadership I was hoping for. If I can splice into Zee central and pirate the Hive leader’s signal, before the Queen can tell he’s down, we might have a chance of saving Ret and the others.
Sneak fights her way to me and works to fend them off as my eyes close and I see a burst Zee code streak past my closed eyes. My feet lift off the ground and I’m hovering about a foot in the air, arms splayed out, and suddenly every Zee around us stops dead. They’re staring at me, their faces filled with unwavering adoration, their eyes glowing as brightly as the windows in Newton’s Temple. I’m watching all of this through the thousands of Zees surrounding us. Sneak, poised in case they decide to attack. Bron, Ret and the others not quite sure what’s going on. Only Dhal, locked inside his metal cocoon, high above the others, has any idea what’s afoot. Then, in unison, the Zees drop to the ground, not in death, but in admiration. They’re bowing before me. Now the others are truly in shock. I feel myself weakening and know I won’t be able to hold this for long. By now, the Queen surely knows what I’m up to and is doing her damned best to slither into my head and cut my signal off, but I can tell she’s having trouble. Her body is weakened and in terrible pain. I can feel every nerve in her body screaming as if they were my own. And then I realize why. The Queen is giving birth. And no sooner does that thought run through my brain then I feel a burst of light and everything goes black.
-23-
I open my eyes to find a crowd standing around me. I blink hard, wondering if they’re Zees, preparing to eat the Queen’s imposter. My eyes focus and I see Ret kneeling down beside me. Next to him is Dhal.
“Did you manage to close the city gates?” I ask and judging by the look on Ret’s face it’s clear they didn’t.
“We barely had enough time to scoop you up and make it into this warehouse.”
The building we’re in is filled with electronic parts, scavenged by Prospectors from each corner of the ten territories. From here they’re destined for White Rock, but something tells me this shipment won’t ever make it. I lift my head to see Sneak and Klaus standing a few feet away.
“How did he get here?” I ask, motioning to Klaus in surprise.
“He found his way onto the roof and we heard him banging to be let inside.”
A voice I know all too well pipes up from a pocket of shadow behind us. “Yeah, the little Keeper didn’t find Bron’s arms so funny this time, let me tell you.”
Bron’s talking in the third person, which is a good sign, but the strain I detect in his voice makes it clear enough he’s still not sure about having me around. No doubt Ret must have settled his nerves after I’d saved their hides.
I get to my feet and dust myself off. Bron comes into the light. His arms and chest are splattered with Zee blood. In fact, all of them are and it becomes clear just how close a call it was. Bron isn’t about to thank me for saving them and I can’t entirely blame him. It wasn’t long ago that I nearly killed them all, even Ret. But the situation’s changed and I have to let them know.
“Skuld is dead,” I say.
“What?” It’s Oleg, off to the side and sitting on a make-shift stool, probably trying to figure out what he wants on his tombstone. “Did you see him die?” he asks.
“No,” I reply. “Not exactly.”
“Then how can you be sure?”
“He entered the Queen’s chamber, that much I know. But it didn’t go down the way he expected it to.”
“She killed him.” Dhal says, with clear disappointment. Skuld murdered Master Lund, the only father the boy had ever really known, and the kid wanted nothing more than to even the score. But revenge is a nasty little cycle that feeds on itself.
The sound of Zees pounding on the warehouse doors hits me for the first time. They’ve got the place barricaded, although it’s clear by the way that sheet metal’s bulging under the pressure, that it’s not going to hold for long.
“When you took control of those Zees,” Oleg says. “I was quite sure Skuld and the Queen were both dead.”
“I wish that were so.”
“Can you do that again?” he asks.
“I doubt it. She did something at the end that knocked me out of Zee central. Some sort of burst wave.”
“Sounds like a mental EMP,” Dhal says matter of factly.
Bron spits in disgust. “A what?”
“Electro magnetic pulse,” Dhal replies.
“If only there was a way to block her signal,” Ret adds. “The way Skuld was doing to you.”
“That’s not a terrible idea.” Oleg says and turns to Dhal. “Think you can whip something together from the junk that’s lying around?”
Dhal picks up what looks to me like a metal box covered in tiny switches. “Maybe, but I’ll need some time, and even then the AOE wouldn’t be larger than about ten meters.”
D
hal sees Klaus scratching his head.
“Oh, yeah, sorry I forgot. Area of effect. It denotes the radius...”
Those Zees are still outside banging louder than ever and all I can think of is how much I wish Dhal would quite blabbing and start building. He’s worse than Oleg, if that’s even possible.
“If this thing works,” the kid says, “it’ll block anything within ten meters from sending or receiving Zee signals.”
“Effectively neutralizing the Queen’s ability to control her troops.”
“For as long as it works, they won’t be her Zees anymore,” I say. “They’ll be mine.”
“Great! Then just send them in to kill her,” Bron says.
“She can’t,” Oleg replies. “Once they enter the area of effect, as Dhal calls it, they’ll be effectively cut off from all direction and go dormant. Likewise, if the device stops working, the Zees will once again be hers.”
Ret looks about as frustrated as I feel. “Azina, can’t you send out an order for the Zees to kill themselves?”
I shake my head. “I can make them step off a rooftop, but an all-out order to commit suicide just won’t work. The sense of self-preservation must still be strong, even in Zees.”
Bron smacks his metallic fist into his palm with a clang. “Damn shitbags.”
Suddenly I’m hit with a burst of Zee code that’s chock full of bad news. “Looks like we’ve got bigger problems.”
The chatter in the room dies down and all I can hear is the sound of Zees hissing outside, trying their damnedest to break down our barricade. “The Queen,” I say. “She’s given birth.”
-24-
Perhaps against my better judgement, I spill the beans about what happened to Skuld, that the Queen turned the crusty old bastard into some kind of love slave before twisting his head off.
Dhal’s splicing a set of red and green wires with effortless skill. “That old gal doesn’t waste any time, does she?”
The sound of crashing metal rings in our ears and we look over to see the weakened barricade has given way and Zees are streaming in. Dhal looks up from his work on the jamming device with panic in his eyes. He’s probably wondering if there’s enough time to hop back into the Titan, but I can already see there isn’t. Klaus is the first one firing and the young Keeper hits three headshots in a row. All that manages to do is ignite Bron’s competitive streak. The big man plants his feet and opens up. The first Zee to eat a 20mm shell is a palace guard, recently turned. These guys are the Patriarch’s last line of defense, sworn to lay down their lives to protect him. If they’ve been infected, there’s little hope the crusty old bastard is still in one piece. Soon, everyone but Dhal is firing, although even as he tinkers feverishly on his device, he must know we can’t keep this up forever. Bron’s heavy guns have managed to push them back to the entrance and now he’s firing straight through, lobbing the occasional grenade. Bits and pieces of Zee guts fill the air in all directions. I’m about to tell Dhal to forget the jammer, that we’re hi-tailing it out of here, when we hear the sound of a battle horn. We hold our fire. Even the Zees have stopped charging in. A second later there’s a second horn blast, followed closely by a third.
“The hell is going on?” Ret asks, staring up into the darkened warehouse rafters as though trying to peer through the very walls.
“Keeper battle horns,” Oleg exclaims in a reverent hush and all of us stare, dumbfounded.
“They haven’t sounded since the Zee wars, over two hundred years ago.”
“What does it mean?” Klaus asks.
“It means the Keepers are launching a counter attack.”
-25-
The Zees aren’t trying to get into the warehouse at all anymore and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Sneak, Ret and I scale a ladder to the roof, leaving Dhal to finish his jammer and the others to watch over him. Heat from the mid-afternoon sun warms my darkened flesh. Sneak rushes to the edge. From there she can see over the wall and she waves us over in a hurry. I’m not nearly prepared for what I see when I get there. A savage battle is raging outside the capital. On one side are a veritable ocean of Zees, rushing relentlessly forward. On the other is what looks like Keepers, from every corner of the ten territories. Impressive a sight as that is, it isn’t the carnage below that shocks me. It’s the strange machines the Keepers are fighting with. Mechanical pods on two bent legs, operated by men firing heavy machine guns. Others look like metallic elephants, sweeping aside dozens of Zees at once with their massive trunks. Ret’s beside me, watching all this through a set of binoculars.
“Commander Tind,” he says, as though the name’s supposed to mean something. Doesn’t take long for him to catch the blank expressions on our faces.
He points to a figure, barking out orders, staying cool in the heat of battle. Tind motions to a machine that looks a lot like the one Dhal was using in the courtyard earlier and sends it into a pack of approaching Zees. Even from a distance, the commander’s presence is impressive, but already it’s becoming clear that none of it will make a lick of difference, since he’s outnumbered fifty to one. Machines or no machines, they won’t stand a chance.
“We’ve got to help them,” Ret cries. “Attack the Zees from behind and relieve the pressure on Tind’s center line.”
Even Sneak’s shaking her head at what a bad idea it is and she’s right.
“The only chance any of us have,” I tell him, “is if we can get close enough to the Queen to use Dhal’s jamming gizmo.”
Ret isn’t convinced. “But that’s assuming he’s able to build it in time or that it even works.”
“And if we rush out there like fools,” I shoot back. “We doom the human race to extinction.” The full weight of my statement hits me as I watch Ret’s gaze reel back to the battle below. What hits me isn’t so much the extinction part, but more about including myself as a member of the human race. I’m not human anymore. The minute I was bitten, in the bowels of that underground shopping complex, I became something distinctly unhuman. If the Zees were about building up their own society instead of tearing down the ones around them, then I’d be the first to fight for co-existence. But, the truth is, they’re an infestation and they need to be wiped off the face of the Earth.
Just then, Bron pokes his head through the hatch, showing off his discolored teeth and I know Dhal’s got something he thinks is gonna work. I don’t get a more than a single step toward him when something in the sky streaks overhead, casting a long, eerie shadow over us. A low flying bird is my first thought, but it’s far too big and the wingspan… Bron must have seen it too ‘cause he scrambles up and bolts in our direction.
“What kind of a bird was that?” His ears catch the sounds of men and monster below us, tearing each other apart, wild gunfire, and for the first time he sees what’s underway. But the strange machines, smashing handfuls of Zees at a time, hardly seem to faze him. That giant bird is back overhead and now I can see it isn’t an animal. It’s the Queen’s new son.
-26-
The realization hits us all at once and Bron’s cannons stab the air and fill it with lead. The creature folds its wings and dives directly at us and I understand I’m witnessing the birth of a new breed of Zee. As if they weren’t formidable enough already. Now there isn’t any question; the Queen must be stopped or she’ll continue to pump out these flying killing machines. He’s in my head right away, scrambling my thoughts and trying to bring me to his will. He’s a tough son of a bitch, especially given he’s been around for all of ten minutes. In a flash I see the birth. The Queen, squatting over a trench dug in the ground, a tear splitting open between her legs and a set of claws sliding through. With almost practiced ease, its fingers grip the edges of the orifice and pull the rest of itself out. Her insides are being torn apart, but she knows she’ll heal. She also knows Prior Skuld has provided her with everything she needs to fertilize thousands of flying monsters. But this is her first born and she gives it a name: Volg. To the Keepers t
hey were Volgorath. Was the choice of name a display of irony, the final threads of the Queen’s fading humanity?
The flash vision ends with just enough time to see Volg spread his wings at the last second and swing his legs out before him. Bron barely has enough time to react before Volg’s clawed feet connect with his chest, throwing him back a dozen feet. The last I see of Bron is his body flying over the edge. Ret’s right there with his shotgun and nearly gets a shot off before the flying Zee flicks it from his grasp like a child’s toy. He’s about to skewer him, right before our eyes, unless I can do something quick. The Katana is out with a flick of my wrist and cutting through the air a second later. But no sooner does the move materialize in my brain than he can see it too. The bones along the edges of his wings are hard as steel and he parries each and every one of my attacks. Ret’s got his boomstick again but can’t get a clear shot. That doesn’t stop Sneak from jumping in, head first. All I see are blurs of motion and sparks as the two of them face off. She’s small and easily underestimated, but her clearest advantage is that he can’t read her mind. That’s when I see a hand grab the edge of the rooftop. It’s Bron; in an unheard of display of quick thinking, he used his grappling hook to keep from falling to a certain death. The steel cable’s still coiling back into his arm when he charges Volg at a full run, the veins in his neck, nearly bursting with rage. The blades in his palms eject and now he’s twirling them viciously before him. Bron’s almost on top of Volg when the Zee prince parries one of Sneak’s overhand strikes and spins his body, sweeping Bron’s legs out from under him. I throw everything I’ve got against him, knowing I don’t have a chance of breaking through. But even he has his weaknesses and when he overextends, in an attempt to bring the sharpened point at the end of his wings down on Sneak’s head, she’s ready for him and slashes him across the face, opening his left eye like a ripe grape. He recoils at once and flaps his wings, hitting her with a burst of air that sends her skidding back. Two more thrusts and he’s back in the air, trying to escape to a place where he can heal up. Ret’s shotgun is bucking in his arms as he tries in vain to bring him down. I’m about to swing my repeater out when I catch sight of the grappling hook from Bron’s arm cut through the air and bury itself in the thigh muscle of Volg’s leg.
Hive III Page 8
