Horizon Beta

by D. W. Vogel

  “I’m sorry, boys, but we have to keep you confined for a while,” the male said. “We’ve rescued people before, and it takes a long time before whatever brainwashing those bugs do to you wears off.”

  A Feral female spoke up. “It’s some kind of pheromone thing. Earth bugs used them to communicate, and to bond members of a Hive together. I’m sure whatever it is has some kind of effect on humans.”

  So many words I didn’t recognize. Earth? Humans? I looked at Gil, who shrugged, chewing his bland meal.

  The male looked at the other Ferals that had brought us here. “Where’s Paul?”

  A shake of the head from one of our captors. “He was scouting right before the pollen storm. Watching these boys.” He glared at me and Gil. “Got too close and the ‘Mites got him.”

  I remembered his eyes as they dragged him across the beach. I remembered his face as he lay in a pool of dark water, belly covered in eggs.

  The old male’s eyes dropped, his posture sagging. “Paul was a good man. A very good man. Find your star, Paul.” He paused and ran a hand over his face. “But we all knew the risks.” He turned to me. “It will be worth it as long as we have her. It’s this one, right?”

  One of my captors nodded. “That’s what the bug said. There were three boys, but we lost one on the way.”

  The old one’s shoulders slumped even further and he looked at me and Gil. “I’m so sorry. We weren’t fast enough. What was his name?”

  “Jerome,” I answered. “His name was Jerome.”

  The old one looked up toward the ceiling. “Find your star, Jerome.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “All right. Let’s get them down to the pool.” He turned to one of the Masters. “Are we ready down there?”

  A click from the Master Digger. It rushed up behind me and grabbed my arms, lifting me up. I struggled and screamed as it carried me away from the bright chamber, down into the depths of the Hive. Scuttling noises behind me indicated that Gil had been similarly abducted.

  Even as I fought, I was aware of my surroundings. The corridors were dirty, dry and empty. Despite the obvious inhabitants above, the Hive felt dead. It smelled dead. I gave up struggling as the last of my strength left me lolling in the arms of the Master. Down and down it carried me. Footsteps of the Ferals echoed behind us.

  We passed through dry, crumbling chambers until we reached one that made my blood chill. Shallow pools were filled with water. Three of the gray water beasts lay still on the edges.

  Oh, no. Not again.

  The Master set me down and I waited for the sting, squinting my eyes against the expected pain.

  The old male Feral approached me and reached for my tunic. “I’m Mo, by the way. Mo Ciel. What’s your name, son?”

  “Noah,” I replied, backing away from him. Could I run? Where? The Masters blocked both doorways to this dank chamber.

  He nodded. “Well Noah, let’s have a look at her.” He gestured to the water beasts in the pool. “They’re ready.”

  My back reached the wall and Ferals grabbed my arms from each side.

  “Let’s get those nasty things off you . . .“ The old male’s voice trailed off as he lifted my tunic. Underneath, red welts dotted my belly in perfect circles. His eyes burned into mine. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  I sputtered.

  He reached for Gil’s tunic, lifting it to reveal the larvae on his skin.

  “Get these off and onto the seals. Hurry up before they suck them dry.”

  Ferals used their fingers as I had done, unsticking the sucking mouths of the larvae from Gil. They carried the larvae over to the still water beasts and set them on the gray skin. Each larva sucked onto one of the beasts in the water.

  I stared until all the larvae had been removed from Gil’s stomach. The Masters crowded around the water beasts, caressing the larvae with their soft feelers. They looked up and clicked a word.

  “No.”

  They approached me and Mo pulled up my tunic again. The Masters’ feelers tickled the red welts, probing all around until they settled on the largest red ring, the one in the center.

  “Here.”

  The word was clicked with great sadness, and the Ferals looked at each other.

  Mo lowered my tunic. “What have you done with her?”

  I shook my head. It was all too much for me.

  “What have you done?” he repeated. “Where are the larvae that left these wounds?”

  “I pulled them off,” I stammered. “Back at the Hive. Washed them off.” My teeth were starting to chatter.

  Gil slumped to the floor and the Ferals caught him. The old one called Mo sighed. “We’ve failed. It’s all for nothing.”

  The young female that had met us outside snorted. “It was a crazy idea. Would never have worked anyway.”

  “It could have,” Mo said. “We’ve shown we can work together.” He nodded at the Masters that still hovered around me.

  The female shook her head. “They’re outcasts. Nobodies, like us. Look, Dad, we’ll be okay. We’ll just have to find another way.” She turned toward Gil, who leaned against the males holding him up. “Right now we need to get some food in these slaves.”

  Mo turned away from me, shoulders sagging. “You’re right, Kinni. Let’s get these boys upstairs. They don’t need to see this anymore.” He swung an arm around the female’s shoulder—his offspring? “But you’re wrong about them.” He turned back toward me and Gil.

  “They’re not slaves anymore.”

  Chapter 13

  Noah

  The days of hosting larvae, the flight through the mountains, and the shocks of today were taking their toll. I followed the Ferals and Masters up the corridors back to the main hall where they all seemed to congregate. They took my wet clothing and dressed me in close-fitting garments like theirs, binding my feet in hides. They fed and watered me, and sat me next to Gil, whose eyelids were drooping.

  “I know you boys are tired,” Mo said, “but it’s important you know some things. This is your home now.” He looked around the hall. “Temporarily, anyway. We move a lot, but . . .“ He shook his head and started over. “There are things you need to know. Things you were never told. I know you won’t believe me tonight, but I swear to you that every word I’m going to tell you is the absolute truth. So just listen now, and in the morning, we’ll figure out what we’re going to do from here.”

  Everyone else, Ferals and Masters alike, settled in. Mo faced us all.

  “Let’s start off with the simplest thing of all. There’s no such thing as ‘Lowform.’ That’s not a word we use here.” He stared at me and Gil. “You’re humans, just like us. And the bugs you call your masters are an alien species that have kept you as slaves for enough generations now that you don’t even know the difference.”

  I didn’t know what “slaves” meant. Mo told the story, and I learned.

  “Our ancestors came from another star.”

  My eyes opened wide, and I glanced up toward the ceiling. It was still far too bright for stars to be visible through the little holes. But stars were just tiny lights in the sky, glowstones that kept the night awake. That’s what I’d always been told.

  I was told wrong.

  “Our home planet was doomed, just a few years from total destruction. They picked a bunch of people and sent them off looking for new planets to live on. This was two hundred years ago. My parents were on the ship when she came into orbit, and everyone left the Beta on transports that brought everything they’d need down to the surface.”

  As he told the story, my exhaustion fell away. So much about it was foreign to me. Everything I’d ever been taught warred with the tale. But it unfolded in my mind, and the betrayal I’d first felt when the Hive Queen laid her eggs on my belly roared back with a bitter taste in the back of my throat.

  They landed in the middle of a pollen storm. They circled the ships in a grassy valley between the
mountains and the sea, where clean water flowed down the hills. They couldn’t see far in the pollen, but for two days, nothing threatened them.

  The night the pollen stopped, the ‘Mites attacked.

  They swarmed out of the Hive, silent and deadly in the darkness. In a coordinated effort, they attacked the intruders, stinging the sentries and guards before an alarm could be raised. The huge bugs were everywhere. A few people managed to flee into the mountains, but most were dragged into the Hive. Those who escaped tried to return to the transports, but the insects kept watch, and when the people approached, they stung them and carried them away.

  They were a true hive mind, singular in purpose, and far from stupid. A few of the humans managed to get into one of their ships and retrieve some weapons. The bugs learned about guns and tanks. Those humans fell to the sheer numbers of the Hive, and as soon as they were dead, the bugs set about dismantling the ships and everything in them. They had learned that humans with their possessions were dangerous. Everything was destroyed and left to rot in the field. The bugs took the big vats of blue-green algae that had sustained the humans on their space voyage, and brought that food into the Hive to feed their new captives.

  The story got fuzzy from there.

  No one ever learned how the insects figured out a way to control the humans they took. They probably killed most of the adults right away. Probably ate them. I had never realized what likely happened to all the people that disappeared from the Hive in my childhood. But the Masters weren’t wasteful.

  They learned that humans could swim and dive for food. They trained the young ones to serve them. Conditioned them from birth to be obedient. Put them to work. Separated the breeding females and babies and took the children from their mothers as toddlers, so they could never learn the truth of who they really were.

  I sat there listening to the story of my people, head exploding with concepts I’d never imagined. How was it possible that everything I’d known my whole life was a lie? But as the fog lifted from my eyes, I saw it all, and the shame of ignorance bowed my head.

  “They’ve been breeding you for generations,” he said, looking sadly at Gil and me. “They do that thing where they make you compete . . . running and diving. They keep the passive ones, the slow ones, for breeding. They work the ones in the middle until they die. The smartest ones, the ones that might someday figure out the truth and rise up against them . . .“ He shrugged. “Well, you’re a lot easier to catch than the seals the Queen used to lay her eggs in. You just walk right up and lay down for it. Such an honor.”

  My face burned. He was right. We did exactly that. And we were obscenely grateful for the chance.

  I rubbed the spot on my belly where the largest ring burned. And was that so bad?

  “There’s something in the pheromones the Queen makes. She’s got some kind of gland in her head. Rubs it on all the bugs in the Hive, and it bonds them together. Humans don’t get it, but it’s really powerful. You want it. Crave it. It lets them control you.” Mo smiled at us. “That wears off after you’ve been away for a while.” He glanced at the Masters in the room. “Well, sort of. It does for us. Not for them. Once a bug is cast out, they never stop needing a Queen.”

  Kinni, the young female who was Mo’s daughter, spoke up from behind me. “That’s what we were counting on. And this idiot ruined it all.”

  “He didn’t know,” Mo said, looking at me kindly. “Nobody told him. He shouldn’t have been left alone, but what’s done is done and we’ll have to find another way.” He turned back to everyone else. “The human slaves have made that Hive much too powerful. Because of all the extra food and free labor, the Queen of that Hive was able to wage war on all the other Hives around. This one was destroyed early on.” He waved a hand at the walls around us. “Hers is the only living Hive for miles around, which would be all right, except for us. She sends her soldiers out to hunt us, and they’re good at it. For seventy years our people have been on the run. There’s no place safe on this planet. We’ve lived all over. And the truth is that we don’t have enough people to keep going. Not enough women. Not enough babies.”

  Everyone in the room nodded. I looked around. He was right. The room had a lot more men than women, and hardly any babies.

  “We need the women and children the Queen has captive if we’re going to survive. And it’s long past time for the Queen to die.”

  My stomach churned at the thought, but I wasn’t sure if it was horror or eagerness.

  “She’s lived far too long,” Mo continued. “What’s supposed to happen with these bugs is, when the Queen gets old, she lays a new Queen egg. When it hatches and grows up, the new Queen kills the old one. It’s a normal thing, keeps the Hive healthy. But this Queen won’t let that happen. Whenever she smells a new Queen larva, she kills it right away. Been doing it for years, and it’s taking a toll on the Hive. They’re getting weaker. Some of the ‘Mites there are feeling it. They know it’s time for a new Queen. So when we managed to team up with a couple of ‘Mites that were cast out of the Hive, we came up with our plan.”

  The Masters in the back clicked assent.

  Not Masters. Bugs. ‘Mites, whatever that means. Insects. That would take some unlearning.

  “We have some bugs on the inside. The ones that rescued you and got you out. They waited until they were sure that one of you had the Queen larva, and took you away before the soldiers could come and kill her. They were supposed to get you out and send you here. We had the seals all ready to receive her. We thought that if we raised her ourselves, we could have our own Queen. One that wouldn’t be hostile to us. And these ‘Mites”—he gestured to the Masters in the room—“assured us that once we had a new Queen, other outcasts from all over would start arriving. We could raise our own army. Take over the big Hive, rescue our people, and . . . live.”

  I rubbed my belly. Suddenly everything made sense. The biggest larva, the one in the middle. She was a queen. The Queen that would save us all.

  And I had thrown her away.

  ***

  I slept fitfully that night, spinning around on the pile of seal hides they gave me to sleep on. My head was hot, and the ring on my belly ached.

  Images of friends I’d lost kept ghosting through my head. Jerome, eaten alive by larva, just another disposable body to the insects that used us and threw us away. Countless Runners, sent out with Soldiers, never to return. Did the Soldiers even try to save them when danger threatened? Why would they? We were lining up, competing to take their place.

  Miguel, drowned in the darkness of the underground river. All he ever wanted to do was be a Diver, collecting food for a Hive that would have left his body to wash away in the current. And the insects hadn’t even noticed he was missing.

  Humans were nothing to them. Just a resource, like the wood they chewed to build the towering walls that kept us prisoners. And we made it so easy. We were the most eager, happy prisoners, literally dying for the chance to serve our Masters.

  I dreamed the faces of the dead, sacrificed to a Hive that had grown powerful on our willing labor.

  When I woke up, I was assailed by the smell of the place. Old and gray, the dead Hive smelled of decay and despair.

  I rubbed my hand over my belly and sniffed my fingers.

  Blue.

  The welt left by the larval Queen’s mouth smelled blue.

  I had no other words for the scent. It was vibrant like the late afternoon sky. Blue and beautiful. My Queen. My own Blue Queen.

  But she was gone. In my confusion back at the Hive, I had pulled her from my skin, severing our bond forever.

  She would have killed you. Sucked you dry.

  I knew it was true. I also knew that something inside me had changed. She was mine and I was hers, and without her I would never be whole again.

  I plodded outside in the early morning. One of the outcast Masters was there, a Digger with a huge scar on its left front leg, watching me.
This was the Master that carried me last night. Not Masters. ‘Mites. It scuttled over and nuzzled my belly with its feelers.

  “Yes,” I clicked in its language. “Queen here. Queen mine.”

  It clicked in sympathy.

  A wind from across the mountains swept down into my face. From impossibly far away, it carried the salt of the sea. It carried the scent of the grassland. It carried the rusting metal smell of the derelict, destroyed shapes in the Forbidden Zone.

  The wind brought the scent of the distant Hive, sickly and yellow.

  And for an instant, so faint I barely registered it, the wind brought the scent of blue.

  It wasn’t real. Couldn’t have been. Even if the Blue Queen larva still lived, there was no way I could possibly smell her from here, a two days walk away. But there was no denying that something inside me was different. I closed my eyes and followed the faint trail left by the Digger from when it came outside this morning ahead of me. I smelled the footsteps where Gil and I had walked in, surrounded by the other people.

  More importantly, I smelled the truth.

  Everything Mo had told me the night before was real. I had been a slave all my life, a fawning larva desperate for the approval of a species that held no more regard for me than I did for a waterbug. I was not a Lowform. The bugs were not Masters. I was a human, and my people were living a lie.

  Mo had said it. They kept the passive ones for breeding.

  Chen.

  My best friend, confined in the bowels of the sickly Yellow Hive for the rest of his life. He wasn’t slow. Far from it. But he believed the lie.

  The people here had made a plan. The Queen that would have saved us all, the glorious blue-scented Queen, should be here now, incubating on the water beast they called a seal. She should be growing and changing, and calling more soldiers to our cause. Instead she was thrown away, drowned in a vat of algae.

  But she wouldn’t drown, would she? The eggs were wet. The larvae fed in the water.

  Could she possibly be alive?

  We had been gone two nights. She would be starving.