The Hive

by Orson Scott Card

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” said Imala. “The ship that went further into the Kuiper Belt is going the same direction we are. Once we get moving, we can close the distance and scan and identify.”

  “I’m not sure I want to close the distance,” said Owanu. “Whether it’s Khalid or Formics. I don’t want to encounter either of those ships.”

  “This facility is a dead end,” said Mangold. “If the women were here, they’re gone now. Either dead, or with Khalid on his ship.”

  “We should sweep the facility to be sure,” said Imala. “And at least now we know that there aren’t a hundred pirates waiting to ambush us inside.”

  Sergeant Lefevre and his squad found the women inside. All four of them. Unharmed. They had barricaded themselves in the kitchen when the fighting started. They never saw any Formics, but they heard the survivors from Khalid’s group screaming to each other about Formics as they hurried to the ship to escape. None of the surviving pirates had even bothered to come for the women. They simply fled. The women had been eating the supplies in the kitchen for days now, hoping against hope that someone would come. When they learned that members of their original crew were on board the Gagak and waiting for them, one of the women embraced Lefevre and sobbed in his arms.

  There were more tears when the women were brought up the docking tube and into the waiting arms of the other miners. The two women who were sisters held each other for minutes and sobbed with gratitude. Rena and Imala waited outside the airlock, giving the miners their privacy. When they emerged and boarded the ship, they all embraced Captain Mangold, both the men and women, which Mangold wasn’t particularly sure how to accept.

  Then one of the rescued women from the shipyard came over to Imala with her sister. The rescued woman spoke quickly in French through a flood of tears.

  “My sister says thank you,” the other one translated. “I told her that it was you who made the ship come for her.”

  “It was all of us,” said Imala. “We all came.”

  “Je vous remercie,” the French woman said over and over.

  “You’re welcome,” said Imala. “We’re delighted to have you on board.”

  The woman spoke another flurry of French that Imala couldn’t hope to comprehend.

  “She says you have a beautiful daughter,” translated the sister. “That such a child is fortunate to have a mother so brave and good.”

  Imala smiled. “You are kind. Thank you.”

  Lieutenant Owanu directed the women to the examination room where she would give them whatever treatment they required. Mangold returned to the helm to prepare for departure, and Lefevre and his marines hit the lockers to shed their battle gear.

  In moments, the area outside the airlock was quiet. Only Rena and Imala and Chee remained.

  “You were right,” said Rena. “About all of this, about us coming. I was against it.”

  “You were protecting us,” said Imala. “Not just your granddaughter, but me as well.”

  “There’s another depot two months away from here,” said Rena. “Out in the direction we’re heading. I’ve already discussed it with Captain Mangold. We’ll take the miners there. Then we’ll push on to the Formic ship. The miners can either wait out the war at the depot or try and secure a transport to Luna. Either way, they’re obviously not coming with us. The question now is, what about you? If we’re dropping off the miners at the depot—”

  “Maybe Chee and I should go with them?” said Imala.

  “Before you object, hear me out, Imala. I’m not advocating one way or the other. I’m only stressing that this is an option. You and Chee can get off at the depot. The rest of us will push on. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be safe there, but your chances there are much better than where we’re going. I know the Fleet has told the world that they don’t believe in the Hive Queen, but we both know that if that were true, our mission orders would have changed.”

  “I’m a marine of the Fleet,” said Imala. “If I leave my post, there are consequences.”

  “So they court-martial you for going AWOL. So what? What’s a military tribunal if it means you and Chee survive?”

  “They probably wouldn’t even court-martial me,” said Imala. “They’d be too delighted by my decision to leave. There would be singing in the halls at CentCom if I jumped ship.”

  “There you go,” said Rena. “You’d be fulfilling the wishes of all the idiots at CentCom. Everyone wins.”

  Imala smiled.

  “I’m not only thinking of you and Chee,” said Rena. “I’m also thinking of Victor. My son. I want him to have his wife and daughter after this war. I want him to experience the joy of raising children with you.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t advocating one way or the other,” said Imala.

  “Mothers-in-law can’t remain completely objective. It’s not in our DNA. I love you, Imala. I love my granddaughter. And if you choose to get off this ship, I will love you no less.”

  “I’ve already considered this, Rena. I’ve thought of nothing else since Chee was born. I want the same thing you do. I want a life with Victor. I want Chee to have siblings. I want to grow old with my husband. I want to see Chee fall in love and marry a man as good and noble and strong as her father. But if I get off this ship, I’m not fighting for any of that anymore. I forfeit my right to protect everything I want and hold dear. I’d be putting my child’s life into someone else’s hands. And when it comes to my daughter, I don’t trust anyone’s hands more than my own. I know I’m not a soldier. I’m not suggesting that I can win us this war or that we won’t win it without me. I’m saying, I think our chances are slightly better with me helping. I can’t fire a weapon or beat off a Formic, but I can help get us there. I can help prevent CentCom from mucking up this op. I can help Mangold see a perspective to decisions that he may not have considered. I can help us think strategically. I can keep Owanu company. I can keep you from strangling Mangold and getting your own court-martial.”

  Rena laughed. “Good luck with that one.”

  “If we lose, Chee dies, Rena. That is the single truth that hammers into my brain every night as I try to fall asleep. If we lose, this sweet, innocent, beautiful human being will cease to exist. The Formics will hunt her down and kill her along with every human being still alive. I have to do everything I possibly can to prevent that from happening. I have to keep fighting for my child. And in this case that means taking my child into greater danger. I recognize that that defies logic, I recognize that putting my child in danger is the most un-motherly thing any mother can do, but I don’t see another road here. And more importantly, I can’t think only of Chee. There are millions of children on Earth who are counting on me to do my job. If I get off this boat, I’m abandoning them and all the mothers who are just as desperate to protect their children as I am. So no, I can’t get off this ship. I can’t be that selfish. I can’t only think of keeping my child safe. There are children other than my own.”

  She stopped talking. It had all spilled out of her in a mad rush because it had been swimming and churning around in her head ever since she had learned that she was pregnant. How could she charge into war with a child? It had taken her this long to realize that the child was precisely the reason why she must.

  “Say something,” said Imala. “Tell me I’m not a horrible person.”

  Rena put a hand behind Imala’s head, and her words were soft and quiet because emotion made it hard to speak them. “You are not a horrible person, Imala. You are the best of us. I am stronger because of you. And so is Chee. You will not get off this boat. And I will stand beside you until we see it done. The Hive Queen has made the biggest mistake of this war. She has come between a mother and her cub. I almost feel sorry for the Formics.”

  Then she pulled Imala close and held her for a long time, with baby Chee comfortably held between them. Which is precisely what Imala needed and wanted. A mother, who would fight for her, too.

  CH
APTER 22

  Hives

  Ansible transmission from Oliver Crowe, director of ASH, to Hegemon-Elect Sharon Solomon. File #504736 Office of the Hegemony Sealed Archives, Imbrium, Luna, 2119

  * * *

  CROWE: Madam President, I congratulate you on being elected by the Hegemony Council. Considering the enormous burden now placed upon you as Hegemon, however, and the awful state of the war that now requires your full attention and direction, I also express my condolences. Your new job will not be an easy one.

  The device you are holding is called an ansible. As Hegemon, it will be the primary tool of communication between you, the Strategos, the Polemarch, and me. The messages written via ansible are shared instantaneously with other ansibles on a specific network, regardless of the distance between ansibles. This ansible also allows you to have private conversations with any other ansible in the network, as is the case with this message. No one else will see this transmission but you. The Fleet communications officer who delivered this ansible to you will hereafter assist you in its use and in keeping its existence highly secret.

  When you arrive here on Luna, the International Fleet will give you a thorough briefing on the state of the war and the immediate challenges we face. The information they share will not comfort you. You will learn that there is much about the Formics, their capabilities, and their military victories that the International Fleet and Hegemony have chosen to conceal from the free people of Earth, Luna, and the system. In addition to this briefing, I propose that you and I hold a separate intelligence briefing as soon as possible wherein we will discuss additional challenges that exist within the IF that they are unlikely to share with you.

  There is one matter, however, that cannot wait until those briefings and which we must discuss immediately. There is an asteroid named Eros, provisional designation 1898 DQ, that has recently come to our attention. It is a large object, with a mean diameter of nearly seventeen kilometers, or roughly ten miles. Currently it is only 2.0823 au from Earth. We have recently discovered Formics there, meaning the enemy is dramatically closer to Earth than any of us realized. More alarming still, based on the intelligence we’ve gathered, it is our belief that the Formics have been on Eros for several years. Maybe for as long as ten years, considering how intricate and involved the tunnel system there appears to be. In other words, their arrival on Eros predates the First Invasion. Our theory is that Formics were sent to Eros to observe Earth and to determine if it was in fact a viable colony planet for their species. Upon discovering the rich abundance of natural resources found on Earth, the Formics on Eros then sent a philotic message to the Formic scout ship to come to Earth and begin preparing the planet for Formic biota. The Formic colony fleet was not far behind. And now here we are.

  My point, Madam President, is that for the better part of a year, we have suspected that the Formics may be building a hive somewhere out beyond the Belt. We now realize to our great horror that the main hive may be much closer than we thought. Eros must be taken, and yet I fear that such a military action will come at an enormous price since that is a battle that can only be fought in the tunnels of that rock. We cannot simply blow it up. Not if we intend to take the fight to them, as I know you and Ukko Jukes have discussed.

  There are difficult decisions ahead, and I do not envy you for being the person who must make them.

  * * *

  Mazer stood atop the Formic warship, sweating profusely in his pressure suit, his legs burning, his body aching, grateful to be alive. He had delivered three warheads into the bowels of the Formic warship, throwing them into three different holes he had made in the hullmat at three different sites on the ship. It had required a lot of leaping and running and crawling and soaring across the surface of the ship for as far as his tether cable would allow. And he had not, to his enormous relief, vaporized himself in the process.

  His biggest worry during the process had been that the thrown warheads might not stay deep enough inside the ship before they detonated. On Earth, when tossing a grenade, gravity was your best friend. Wherever the grenade landed, it remained until it detonated. But here in zero G you had no such assurance. The warhead would continue to bounce around inside the ship and drift until it detonated. It might even drift right back out the hole and detonate in front of you, scattering all your molecules in a hot blistering mess. But thankfully, the first three warheads had gone into their holes and stayed there. When they detonated, Mazer had heard nothing, of course, but he had felt the explosions in the subtle vibrations of the hullmat beneath his feet and the slight shifting in the stars overhead as the ship’s flight position changed. The ship was no longer flying nose front, but instead was drifting at an angle as it pitched and yawed and spun slowly.

  What concerned Mazer now was radiation. He had no idea how much neutron energy the warheads had released. He felt confident that the hullmat had acted as a shield and kept the blast of radiation mostly contained inside the ship. But it was possible that a good of deal of radiation had shot out of the holes he had just made and exposed him to radiation poisoning.

  For a moment, Mazer wondered if he needed to deliver the fourth and final warhead. Had he already inflicted enough damage? Was the ship scuttled? He had seen the other Tik fighters zipping around the Formic warship overhead and taking out more of its guns. Perhaps the objective was achieved, and the ship was dead. Perhaps he only needed to wait for someone to extract him and Bingwen and return them to GravCamp.

  But then, out of the corner of his field of vision, twenty meters to his right, Mazer saw a piece of hullmat two meters square rise up from the surface and fold backward. A docking door. An egress of some type. A Formic in a pressure suit scurried out the door, crawling across the surface on all six limbs, its back to Mazer. It had not seen him.

  Mazer was a good distance from where he had delivered the third warhead. This was as good a place as any to deliver the last one. He bent low and pulled the paintbrush from the bucket and painted a small circle on the hullmat beneath him. The smaller the hole, the better. It minimized the chances of the warhead drifting out again and the amount of radiation that would leak from the explosion. The downside of a small hole was that air escaped slowly. Mazer couldn’t throw in the warhead until the space beyond had lost all pressure and was a vacuum. Otherwise the escaping air would carry the thrown warhead right back to the hole and out again.

  Mazer turned on the nanobots, counted to three, and turned them off. That was all the time they needed. A geyser of air shot out from the newly made hole.

  By now the Formic had spotted him and was coming in his direction.

  The breach continued to silently spew air. Mazer took his slaser, cranked up the setting, and shot the Formic as it scurried toward him. The beam went through the top of the creature’s helmet, through its body, and out the bottom of its abdomen, a line straight down its spine. It stopped moving and went limp, with four of its appendages still anchored to the ship.

  Two more Formics appeared at the docking door. Then a third.

  Mazer cut them in half with the beam of his slaser, and the top halves of their severed bodies drifted lazily away from the ship.

  He watched the geyser of air and the docking door. Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. The hole he had made in the hullmat was no wider than a soccer ball. He looked toward the docking door. It remained open, but no more Formics emerged. Mazer lowered himself and placed his hand over the hullmat breach to feel for the slight push of escaping air. He felt nothing. Beyond it was a vacuum now. He removed the final warhead and grabbed the detonator. Just before he armed the warhead, however, a thought struck him. The docking door was only twenty meters away. What if Formics had accessed where he had made the hole? Might they be waiting just inside to catch the warhead and throw it back out the hole again?

  Mazer looked down into the hole but saw only darkness.

  He turned on the tactical light on the end of his slaser and shined it into the hole. A pair of massive black
eyes inside a helmet stared back at him, less than a meter down. The Formic was not alone, either. A crowd of Formics was clustered at the hole just below the surface, waiting for him.

  Mazer turned off his NanoBoots and leaped away. As he did so, he tapped at his wrist pad and turned the nanobots on again. The hole suddenly grew as the nanobots began unzipping the hullmat around the hole in an ever-expanding ring. In seconds, the hullmat hole was two meters wide, then four. The Formics poured out of the hole, leaping upward and out into space, exploding through the dust of disintegrating hullmat. Many of them were armed with jar weapons. Some were already firing.

  Mazer was firing as well as he flew backward and away from the site, slicing through the crowd in quick, cutting motions. He had thrown the warhead and detonator aside. He wouldn’t risk the blast now. The last of the damage to the ship would be whatever the nanobots could provide. He wasn’t sure how long they would run.

  Then his tether cable went taut and his pendulum swing initiated. The few surviving Formics he had not sliced were moving farther into space and disappearing from view, well out of slaser targeting range. Mazer ignored them and tapped at his thumb. A slight burst of air expelled from his boots, and his body rotated. He was desperately trying to get his feet under him for the landing, but the hull was coming up quickly. He wasn’t going to land right. He tapped another part of his thumb and dispensed some propellant from his shoulders to slow his rotation, but it wasn’t enough. He would still land wrong. But better to break an ankle than to get a doily to the chest.

  * * *

  Strapped into his flight seat in the medical wing of the Vandalorum, Victor felt helpless throughout the entire battle. He had offered to assist the crew multiple times and had even unbuckled himself once to go and find an engineer and volunteer his services. But Lieutenant Rivera, who was buckled into the flight seat beside him, had rather forcefully ordered him to sit back and stay strapped in. “The crew trains extensively for these maneuvers, Victor. You’ll only get in their way. Let them do their jobs.”