Fleetfoot Interstellar: Fleetfoot Interstellar Series, Book 1

by P. Joseph Cherubino

  Each hexagonal chamber grew increasingly warmer as the group passed through successive descending staircases. The chamber walls turned from burnt orange to a dull red, then dark gray they progressed to the oldest hive construction. Engineered wood pulp generated by their ancient building tools cured to a substance nearly as resilient as a starship hull.

  The Princess Chambers were thousands of years old. The Queen Guardian’s Colony was the oldest known structure of her species. This hive Complex produced queens from the dawn of recorded Insectoid history, and Guardians for the past ten centuries. The Guardian found it fitting that her Colony would be the one to save their planet. She was not beyond pride.

  When they reached the inner hive core, the Queen stepped forward and placed her head into the security alcove beside the chamber door. The alcove sealed her head for a moment with an iris that clamped firmly around the shell of her short neck. Even the Queen was subject to strict security in this most sensitive chamber. A few flashes of light announced the scans that confirmed her identity.

  The Princess Chamber iris spiraled open. The Queen herself was often daunted by the cavernous chamber within. The area represented both the core and the extent of her rule. Here was the place where her rivals and successors cloistered in communion with the Hive Computer.

  The Queen Guardian dismissed her servant drones, who turned back without hesitation and scurried away. They remained on all six legs not by protocol, but from the will to leave the area as quickly as possible.

  A quivering protective membrane yielded warmly against her shell as the Guardian passed through it. The substance stretched and closed behind her, encompassing her like a drop of dew as she entered. The membrane stretched to its breaking point, and the gelatinous substance surrounding her turned to a loose fluid that flowed to the chamber floor.

  “Decontamination complete,” a soft female voice echoed in the chamber. The Hive computer then announced the Queen’s presence to the chamber. “All rise to greet the Honored Queen Mother.”

  Motion caught her attention from the ceiling. Shadows moved just behind the dim green light cast by the phosphorescent mold that marbled every surface. The Queen adjusted her vision to perceive vibration and heat, and the forms of her daughters grew clearer. Hundreds of her offspring lowered themselves from countless stalactites on invisible silk threads. Hundreds more crawled on all six legs or gracefully strode forward on hind limbs. The Queen bowed before them as they approached, lowering herself to their height.

  The eldest daughter and First Rival stopped at arm’s length and bowed with equal depth. The pale light passed through her translucent shell to reveal the pulsing organs inside. Antennas of both Mother and Daughter quivered as they sensed one another. The Queen felt the vital energy of her young daughter through her tingling antenna. They rose to their full heights simultaneously.

  “Our Queen Mother honors this chamber,” the First Rival said. Pheromones tasted by her Queen verified the truth of those words.

  “This chamber honors our Hive with its service,” the Guardian replied.

  With the ritual greeting over, hundreds of princesses relaxed their translucent bodies. Some returned to work while others climbed the maze-like chamber walls to observe. Some perched high on stalagmites while others simply crouched down nearby. Proximity was not strictly necessary, as the Hive Computer would allow them to share thoughts while inside the Princess Chamber.

  Mother and daughters stood in silence as they calmed their joined minds. While the Princesses were accustomed to a unified consciousness, it took some time for the collective to stabilize. The Queen rarely came to this chamber, and when she did, her arrival spoke of great need. Normally, communication between the Hive Core and Queen happened through computer networks as a matter of routine or drone messenger for more pressing matters. A personal visit from the Hive Mother herself spoke of grave events.

  When the Hive Mind absorbed the full extent of the Queen’s thoughts, First Rival spoke aloud, “We understand, Queen Mother.”

  “Our shared thoughts also inform me that you have anticipated these events.”

  “We live to serve, Great Mother,” First Rival replied with evident pride. The statement drew another bow from The Guardian.

  “You will forgive me that I use my voice rather than the Collective Mind to communicate. I am not accustomed to the joining.”

  “If only because it has been too long,” First Rival replied. The quickness of the response revealed a measure of resentment for which the Queen was not prepared. Breaks in protocol such as this often indicated a challenge from a Rival.

  “I can only hope for your forgiveness,” The Queen replied.

  “This I should ask of you. This was not my place to say. Surely you feel our distress.”

  “I do understand. Let us move past this.”

  First Rival bowed deeply. She rose up again and said, “On to business then, Mother.”

  “Yes. I understand you broadcast the call to Assembly of the Planetary Council.”

  “This is true.”

  “And what of the reply?” the Queen asked. A major reason she visited the chamber was the delay in the Hive Core reporting a reply.

  There was a pause of thought and motion. The Queen felt a sudden shock as the Hive Mind connection went blank. They shielded their thoughts from her. This was a very bad sign that often signaled a Princess ready to become Queen.

  “Tell me.” The Queen demanded.

  “Denied,” the reply came in a flood from thousands of voices. The Queen felt the full force of betrayal. She staggered on her feet. “The Council denies your request. Leadership has assembled to call for your censure—our censure.”

  “Censure on what grounds?”

  “Council Leadership views your unilateral visit to the Great Scholar as a threat to its prerogatives. They forbid any negotiation with the Warmbloods. They believe your vision is false.”

  “How do they know of my vision?” It appeared the betrayal ran much deeper than she first assumed. For the first time in her life, the Queen felt fear. The feeling spread out from her through the chamber like a tide of blood. Her daughters reacted to it with a combination of agitation, disappointment, and echoed fright.

  “We were betrayed,” the Queen said. The flash of fear gave way to a rising tide of anger. “It is likely that the source of betrayal is the Great Scholar himself.” Voicing a possibility of such treachery deepened her feeling of isolation.

  “No, Queen Mother. We have word that the Cathedral is under attack from Simian forces.” The Rival paused for a moment. Her sisters inched closer. “By my duty as First Rival, I am within my rights to challenge you in the wake of this failure. Tradition demands this.”

  “Of course,” the Queen replied in chilly tones as her stinger slowly pushed forward from her abdomen. She felt the heat from the venom sacks. The fight would be brief, but at least she would find relief from her this agonizing betrayal.

  Instead, the Queen was shocked when the First Rival bowed low and turned her palms to the ceiling in submission. Instead of violent motion from the chamber, a slow procession of her daughters marched forward bearing weapons and armor.

  “The Hive Core believes the true challenge resides in saving our planet for all species, even at the risk of this single Colony. Sacrifice is the higher way of our Hive.”

  The Queen slowly lowered herself to stand on the chamber floor on all six legs. It was a posture she had not assumed since she was a pupa. In the face of ultimate betrayal, her family drew closer. Her moment of doubt was brief and in its wake came a greater resolve.

  ***

  Wood pulp flakes fell from the Throne Chamber wall as the entire Cathedral trembled. The Arborist Priest could not hear the weapons fire deep within the Sacred Chamber, but he knew the violence outside must be extreme to shake his throne.

  The Simians attacked the morning after the Queen Guardian’s departure. They somehow approached without being detected by the eight
-legged species who cultivated the jungle floor.

  An arachnid guard stood to watch at the sacred chamber portal. So embarrassed were the arachnids by their failure to detect the attack, that they insisted on leaving soldiers inside the Cathedral. The Guards stood sturdy and menacing on two of their eight legs as they cradled fearsome hunting rifles in their upper limbs. The old Priest shuddered to think what would happen should the need arise to use those weapons inside the Cathedral. From his vast knowledge of history, he was certain violence like this had never come to any Arborist Cathedral. If it had, the memory was buried in the lowest layer of the heap of time.

  It appeared that the senseless warfare he feared had arrived much sooner than expected. The predictive models did not indicate violence of this nature so soon in the process of planetary collapse. As the walls of the cathedral shook, the Arborist contemplated this with cool deliberation. If the predictive models failed to predict this attack, might they also be wrong about planetary collapse? Without a functioning cathedral, it would be difficult to answer this question.

  The Arborist opened a secure thought channel to the central planetary computing core. “Great Predictor,” the Priest hailed, “a query.”

  After an unusually long pause, the core replied, “I await your Query, Great Scholar.”

  “What is the nature of anomalous attack by the Sentient Simians?”

  The reply was instant. “Interference from unknown third parties.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “The Simian forces appear to operate with knowledge otherwise unavailable to them. They possess weapons of unknown origin. The tactics displayed during this attack have no precedent in their historical behavior patterns.”

  “Theorize cause.”

  “The nearest behavioral analog for this behavior is Human or Reptilian.”

  “Is there evidence of Simian contact with either Race?”

  “Negative, although we should point out that absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.”

  “Our defenses are no longer secure, then.”

  “This is a likely conclusion.”

  An Arachnid soldier turned his large, round body toward the throne. His many black eyes fixed on the Arborist Priest. He opened a communication channel. “Sacred Priest. The outer defenses have fallen. Simians are within the perimeter. They may already be inside the cathedral.”

  A long line of monks streamed between the legs of the hulking Arachnids three times their size. The Monks surrounded the throne and pleaded with their high priest in a single voice. They urged him to abandon the Cathedral.

  The ranking Arachnid soldier concurred. “Forgive me, Great Scholar. We also insist. Your life must be preserved.”

  “No single life on this planet is more important than another, according to the Sacred Laws of Balance.”

  The Arachnid officer covered the distance between portal and throne in three bounding strides. “The Laws of Warfare dictate otherwise. You will come with me.” The Officer made a chopping gesture with a free hand.

  The Termite Priest was not given the opportunity to object. His Monks pulled him from his throne and seized him. They carried him belly-up in the most undignified manner as his legs flailed. Many hands kept him that way as they rushed to the center of the chamber where an iris spiraled open. Down the emergency hatch they went.

  More Arachnid soldiers streamed into the chamber to cover their retreat. The new arrivals confirmed. Simian fighters were inside the cathedral. A muffled chorus of the new war reverberated through halls to reach the chamber. The instruments of this new song produced nightmare sounds punctuated by animal screams. The old Priest wept when he realized the sounds of senseless death. His world fell apart before his eyes. The Cathedral had only known the Sacred Song for thousands of years. It was a place of reflection and reverence for life. Now it was a slaughterhouse.

  Their escape route was by way of the central air shaft that ran more than 1000 feet down through the center of the cathedral. The monks made his progress faster as they scurried down the vertical surface by passing him from body to body. In the rush, they nearly lost their grip on him several times. Part of him wished they would simply let him fall. That would be a welcome relief from this new horror.

  “This is too slow!” the arachnid officer shouted. Several other of his soldiers had already passed the termites. Some rappelled down the shaft on spun threads while others dove down using quickly-spun streamers attached to their abdomens. It was a flying technique they often used to control falls from sky trees. The divers would occasionally shoot out more thread to anchor themselves to the shaft walls, then aim their rifles upward to cover their retreat.

  The Arborist priest curled up in a ball of fear when he realized what the commanding Arachnid soldier had in mind. The Arachnid plucked him from the hands of his monks with two strong arms. He used one set of arms to spin the Priest in circles and another set to guide a filament of silk around his body. In several spins, the Arachnid finished the cocoon, then attached the bound Priest to his back. The old Termite was a backpack. Then the Arachnid jumped.

  The Priest was not a flyer. His adolescent wings molted off more than a century ago. Even in the prime of his fertility, he did not enjoy flying and rarely bothered to take wing, even during the mating seasons. He supposed that was why he decided to become a Monk. This flight was nothing like he remembered. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was falling, and not flying at all. He was terrified beyond speech or thought. The world was a blur of shadows and violent motion.

  Instead of the buzz of wings with which he was vaguely familiar, this trip through open air involved a wet hissing sound as the Arachnid produced thin filaments of silk that he quickly detached and fixed to the broader portion of his pointed abdomen. With each streamer attached to the arachnid body, their descent slowed, but the rate of descent still felt fatally rapid. The Priest’s vision began to blur. His limbs felt far away. He was losing consciousness.

  “Forgive me, Divine Scholar!” the soldier shouted. He must have smelled fear pheromones.

  They fell for what seemed like hours before the soldier shot out another filament that attached firmly the shaft wall. He wrapped two sets of his lower hands around the thread to slow their descent. The soldier’s body was designed by evolution to perform this operation, but the added weight and the extended fall taxed his ability. The Priest watched smoke roll from the Soldier’s fingers, and he smelled burning exoskeleton. The soldier hung on until their speed became survivable, then released his third set of hands.

  The last hundred feet to the air shaft floor was thankfully temperate. Once on the floor, the soldier immediately unstrung the Priest and gently placed him down. He produced a long knife that flashed out faster than the Priest could see. The blade hissed through thin cocoon, and the Termite was free.

  The Arachnid Commander took a knee and aimed his large rifle up the air shaft. It took a few minutes for the Termite Monks to reach the shaft floor that was already crowded with other Arachnid soldiers. Flashes of light were visible at the shaft opening far above. The bodies of dead Simians and Insectoids alike began to fall around them. Soft mammal flesh rent with sickening sounds and exoskeletons shattered like egg shells. Some of the bodies claimed victims of their own by landing on the refugees below.

  “What are you fools waiting for!” the commander screeched in vulgar words that were not high primes. “Move down the escape tunnel and secure it! I want five soldiers with me to protect the Priest!”

  The soldiers wasted no time fulfilling the command. “Priest, can you run?” the commander asked.

  “Of course. I am not that old!” the Priest noticed that the Commander had dropped the honorific title. He felt that fitting since he would soon be a High Priest without a cathedral.

  The Arachnid Commander looked down on him with his eight black eyes and his mouth pincers chattered with laughter. “Then I suggest we both do so.”

  “Lead the way!” t
he Priest urged. He didn’t know whether or not he should feel guilty that he suddenly felt decades younger. Until he that moment, he had no idea that panicked escape for one’s life could have that effect.

  “No, Scholar. You go first. I follow and protect. This is my job, after all.”

  The Old Termite ran.

  13

  The Reptilians and their hired security knew Drexler and his crew were close. A single aircraft circling the area told the escapees as much. Thanks to magnetic deposits and the stealthy survival suits, their pursuers were not certain of their exact location. Drexler figured this would be true, or they’d be captured already. The Captain aimed to keep it that way until they could figure out how to escape.

  “It looks like they set one transport down about a kilometer Southwest,” Gajrup said, pointing away from the rocky ridge that stood few hundred meters behind them. Thick jungle stood between the ridge and their current position on the jungle floor. From their flight in, they knew another expanse of jungle stretched to the horizon in the opposite direction. They could see the ridge top just below the tree line. That meant the group was hidden from view from above. “The other transport seems to be flying in circles in a five-kilometer radius.”

  “A search pattern,” Samuel said. “They probably have a search party on the ground. They will find us. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Drexler folded his arms across his chest and concentrated. The situation was dire. A potentially lethal threat approached. He grew up with life threatening situations, but this particular threat was a bit different. This danger came from other living beings. The peril he remembered from childhood involved physics and mechanical failure.

  “We are professional Astronauts,” Drexler said with a calm that surprised him. “We work the problem.”

  “This is a soldier problem, not an astronaut problem,” Gajrup replied. The ragged panic at the edges of his voice was evident. The last thing Drexler needed was a panicked crew member.