Horizon Beta

by D. W. Vogel

  They learned.

  When the pollen storm came, most of the Hive went dormant for the two days of blindness as the pollen destroyed their sense of smell. That’s when my Hive attacked.

  It was long before I was born. I wouldn’t have known any of the Runners they used.

  Sunshine’s Hive never knew what hit them.

  My Hive . . . the Slave Hive, as Kinni called it, used the Runners as scouts. They found Sunshine’s Hive and learned the route. Soldiers from the Slave Hive, blind in the pollen storm, were led by those Runners right up to Sunshine’s Hive, invisible to any ‘Mites inside. They burst in every entrance, massacring the Soldiers in their dormant state.

  The Runners came in first. None of them survived the attack.

  Every ‘Mite in the Hive fought for their Queen, but in the end, a bunch of Diggers and Builders were no match for the Slave Hive’s Soldiers. They fell in the hundreds. Sunshine was one of the last survivors. He fell back to the tunnels surrounding his Queen. He would have died rather than leave her.

  The Soldiers poured down the tunnel. Nearly every Digger and Builder was killed. Sunshine blocked the last tunnel to his Queen, wedging his body into the gap.

  They stung him and he went limp. As he witnessed, paralyzed and helpless, the Soldiers dragged him out of the tunnel, nearly severing his left claw. They sent one single Soldier into the Queen’s chamber.

  Sunshine was paralyzed, but his senses were alert. When they killed his Queen, he was among the only members of her Hive alive to smell her terror and her death.

  The Soldiers returned to the upper chambers of the Hive to wait out the rest of the pollen storm, unable to return since their guides all died in the fighting.

  In the deepest chamber of the Hive, Sunshine’s paralysis began to wear off. The Soldiers had nearly used up their venom by the time they reached him, and he didn’t get a full dose. Only that saved his life.

  But he didn’t care. He limped into the tunnel, dragging his injured claw under his belly. Inside the Queen’s chambers, he stopped, overwhelmed with grief. She lay still, arms curled around her body in death. Her tiny King, father to every member of the Hive, lay in front of her, his limbs ripped from his body.

  Sunshine crawled over the dead King and buried his head in the dead Queen’s cold embrace. His feelers stroked her lifeless body. The last of the oil from her gland, the blessing she bestowed onto her beloved Hive, congealed on her skin. He rubbed it into his own head, grief overcoming him as he tasted the final communion with her.

  When he finally emerged from the Queen’s Chamber and stumbled through the tunnels, the enemy Soldiers were gone. A few survivors from his Hive drifted through the depths, lost without the guidance of a Queen. The stench of her dying agony filled the Hive, and by the next pollen storm, every member of his destroyed Hive had left it, wandering in the wilderness. There was no other Hive to accept them. Every ‘Mite along the coast had fallen to the Slave Hive’s Soldiers.

  A ‘Mite without a Hive wouldn’t last long. Without a Queen, there was no Hive. Sunshine didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. His need for a Queen led him aimlessly across the low mountain passes.

  Feral humans found him. A few ‘Mites from the Slave Hive, those injured or sick and cast out, had already found refuge with the unlikeliest of communities. Sunshine recognized the underlying human scent and recoiled, but these humans didn’t smell of the Slave Hive.

  They took him in. Fed him. The other ‘Mites taught him the clicking language to communicate with the humans.

  There was no Queen. It was not a real Hive. But it was enough, just barely, to give him enough purpose to go on.

  ‘Mites had no word for “revenge.” But Sunshine understood it. He longed for it. For his decimated Hive and long-dead Queen, he would live to fight for it.

  The huge Digger carried me and our larval Queen across the pass and down into the shadow of the hills. I drifted in and out of wakefulness, dreaming confused, fitful dreams. I was in a tunnel and the Soldiers were coming. I was in the water and there were no air holes. I was deep in a hole and the walls were caving in around me. Sunshine never wavered. He plodded on through the night, holding me in his damaged claw. Late the next afternoon I felt hands pulling me from the Digger’s claws, carrying me into the Hive. Down into the dank, empty tunnels we went, my eyes seeing nothing and my nose telling me we were almost there.

  Rough fingers pried under the Queen’s mouth, detaching her from my skin.

  “No!” I screamed, grabbing at her as they pulled her away from me. Blood seeped from the round wound on my belly, empty without her weight. How could they take her from me? She was mine. I was hers. I lunged with all my strength, and flopped onto the rocks. My hands reached out for her, but they took her to the emaciated seal in the pool and she latched onto it next to the rest of the larvae.

  “Please, bring her back,” I murmured, and blackness took me.

  Chapter 23

  Chen

  I had been down in the Waiting Hall for two days.

  That’s what we called it. Not the Mothers’ Chambers, although it was full of mothers. All the female Lowforms lived here, raising babies to do the work of the Hive.

  That work would one day save us all.

  I missed the daylight, the feeling of warm sun on my shoulders. I missed my friends, but they would all be split up by now, gone to their jobs all over the Hive. I missed Noah, but consoled myself thinking he had surely made Diver and was out in the sea somewhere providing for us, or deep in the tunnels of water he loved so much.

  My sisters were overjoyed to have me in their lives. It felt a bit strange to suddenly have family. Even the concept of “family” was unfamiliar to me. Lowforms were never really part of the Hive, and we boys had no idea about any shared bloodlines we might have. But my sisters knew. The women in the Waiting Hall remembered every boy that had ever been taken into the Hive. The more I learned, the happier I was to be back with them in the deep tunnels.

  The first night I got here, they sat me down and told me the truth. My sisters Glenna and Shari sat on either side of me, with everyone else clustered around. Their eyes all glazed over as Shari told the story, reveling in the history of our people.

  “We came from the stars,” Shari said.

  I glanced up to where the sunlight came through a tiny hole in the ceiling. Could they even see stars down here?

  She continued. “Our people were angels once. We flew through the night sky on long, starlit wings. The sun was our food and the moons were our playthings. We were nothing like these dirty shells that trap us now.” She rubbed her own skin and the people around shook their heads.

  I said nothing, and Shari went on.

  “But we became callous. Unkind to each other. Instead of sharing the gifts of the universe, we became jealous and vengeful. We ruined a planet full of life and hope, and flew away into the sky, laughing about our broken toy.”

  The looks on people’s faces made me squirm on the ground. None of this made a bit of sense to me, but they felt it so strongly, heads bowed in shame for some crime I couldn’t even imagine.

  Shari looked around at the group. “And so we were punished.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. I was punished, for sure. I listened more closely to her story.

  “We were cast down from the sky, our wings broken on the ground. We were crushed into these soft bodies, and left to die in our shame. The Masters found us there, weeping for our lost glory. They brought us here, to the deep underground, far from the stars that once fed us, and locked us away in darkness.”

  Tears filled the eyes of some of the people listening.

  “At first we raged against the Masters. We fought with all we had, but these bodies are nothing compared to their strength. And slowly we realized the truth.”

  I leaned forward. Truth. I needed to know the truth.

  “We were punished, and sent down from the skies. And we are punished s
till. These walls that hold us are not a prison,” she said, gesturing to the thick brown walls around us. “They are a safety. We need time to reflect. To understand our shame. The Masters have given us the chance to redeem ourselves. Here in their towering home, we must learn to serve. To throw off the arrogance that took our wings and our starlight. We must submit ourselves to learn humility. Only then will we be taken up and returned to our former glory.”

  Everyone sighed, apparently imagining themselves with wings of light, flying around the clouds.

  I nodded. “We’re Lowforms to them now, but if we serve them with strength and honor, we’ll someday get wings?”

  Shari smiled. “Exactly. And now they’ve sent you here to us. You’ll care for us and teach our babies. We’ll send them out to serve the Hive. And one day, if you serve well, they’ll come for you.”

  A banging sounded down the hall and a couple of the men jumped up. They disappeared down the corridor and returned carrying a huge vat of algae. Our circle broke up and everyone grabbed a woven bowl. Shari gave me one, and I lined up, following her lead. Everyone else seemed to know what to do, and I wanted to fit in as well as I could. We each dipped our bowls in the vat, filling them with the green slime. Once we all had our meals, we returned to the circle and sat, slurping our dinners. It was the same algae I was used to, and I hugged the bowl to my chest, needing something familiar to counter all the strangeness of my new life.

  Shari continued her tale. “This is why we do it.” She gestured around. “We’re waiting. Waiting until we’ve truly learned the lessons our ancestors forgot. Waiting and serving until we’re worthy to regain our wings. Those boys on the outside, hunting for food and keeping the Hive clean . . . they’re working for all of us. Together we will show ourselves as the people we were meant to be. And sometimes one of us is taken up straight from here, like our mother was.”

  I licked the last of the slime from my bowl. It warmed me from the inside, and I sighed, resting back into my sister’s arms.

  “I don’t remember our mother,” I said.

  “Of course you don’t,” Shari replied. “They come and take you very young. Start training you to help us all. But she was a wonderful woman. Full of love and kindness.”

  Glenna piped up from my other side. “Yes, she was a joy. We knew she’d be taken up one day.”

  “What’s ‘taken up’ mean?”

  Shari answered. “The Masters come and choose sometimes. It’s always the oldest women and men, who have given full lives of service. They take them away from here, never to return. Outside, back to the place where we fell from the sky. The Masters lead them out, and proclaim them worthy. In the starlight, they are transformed. They shed this dirty shell, and their wings of glory unfold. They fly back into the night to live forever in service to the universe.”

  I had never seen this happen. In all my years in the Hive, I never saw anyone emerge from these halls into the upper chambers of the Hive. But surely they were right. I’d always known my life was meant to serve the Masters. I just never understood why.

  Shari wrapped her arms around me from behind. “One day they will come for us all. We’ll emerge into the light above, all together when they deem us all worthy of our wings. We’ll follow each other up and up, and out under the sky. We’ll walk to the place of our falling, and we’ll receive our glorious wings. Until then, we’ll wait here, serving the Hive.”

  The food in my belly made me sleepy, and a warm happiness filled my heart. Shari took me to an empty chamber and settled me down with a soft woven blanket. All the babies quieted and the toddlers stopped screaming.

  “Good night, Chen,” she said, and kissed me on the forehead.

  I slept, and dreamed of the night sky.

  Chapter 24

  Noah

  I woke up in the bed where I had slept before. Warm furs were piled around me, and my mouth tasted like sour death. There was no way for me to tell what time of day it was. How long had I been asleep? How long had my Queen been without me?

  Mo was there with a hot bowl of something that smelled warm and meaty. “You crazy fool,” he said with a smile. “You got her. You really got her.”

  He put the bowl to my lips and I sucked at the strong broth. The flavor was nothing I’d ever had before, red and dark.

  “Easy now.” He took the bowl away. “Take your time. No good eating it if it’s going to come right back up.”

  I reached out a hand and grabbed at the bowl. He let me have some more in little sips until I’d drained it.

  “Where is she?” Her scent was everywhere and I wasn’t awake enough at that moment to track it.

  He chuckled. “She’s fine. Happily sucking the life out of that seal, cuddled up with all the rest of them.”

  My heart twisted at that. I didn’t want her on the seal. I was her chosen vessel. My body should be nourishing her. But as I pulled the furs off me, I could see that I had nothing to give her. The red, circular welt on my belly was caved in under sunken ribs. I would have died to feed her. The seal would. Did it feel what I felt? Did the bond of blood extend into the seal that now fed her? Was it filled with the glory of her presence, or terrified as its life drained away, second by second?

  “Could we get more seals?”

  Mo looked at me quizzically. “We can try to trap one. Are you still hungry?”

  I shook my head. “Not for me. We don’t eat them.”

  He looked at the empty bowl in my hands.

  Oh.

  “It’s for the Queen,” I said. “And for the other larvae. If we get more seals, they don’t have to die. We could keep moving them from one to another, and let them go before they die.”

  Mo shrugged. “Maybe in the future we’ll do that,” he agreed. “The one down there is pretty used up, though. I don’t think it would recover even if we pulled them all off right now.”

  I nodded. The Hive was bustling with the smells of newcomers, ‘Mites drawn by her intoxicating scent. I didn’t know them. And from what I knew of the people here, they wouldn’t even realize if any of them meant her harm. I swung my legs off the pile of furs. The room swayed around me as I struggled to my feet.

  Mo’s arm grabbed under my shoulders and I leaned against him. “Steady, there. You’ve got a long way to go before you’re full strength, son.”

  I stumbled forward. “Need to go see her.” I looked down and realized I had no clothes on. The clothes I had left here were in a heap on the floor, and I pulled on the pants, wincing as the fabric slid over the rough scabs on my sides. “Need more food.”

  Mo helped me get dressed. “She’s fine. I promise.” He held the shirt, which billowed around my skinny form.

  I had to rest a few moments after the exertion of dressing. Mo sat beside me.

  “It was an incredibly brave thing you did, going to get her,” he said. “Stupid, but brave.” He pulled at the hairs on his arms as he spoke. “I know you have some kind of bond with her, and that’s a good thing. But she’s not just yours. She’s the future for all of us. Every person and ‘Mite in this Hive will protect her. When she grows up, she’ll lead an army of her kind, and we’ll be part of it. All those people, your friends still stuck in that Hive? We’ll get them out once we’re strong enough. Our people will never be slaves again. She’s our Queen. All of us.”

  I nodded. Of course she would. She could do anything. My Queen would be the strongest in the world. And I would fight at her side to free my friends. We figured it would take a year before we were ready. The Queen would have to grow and molt into an adult, and our tiny band would have to grow, filled with ‘Mites that would be loyal to her. Keeping her safe for all the months before our assault would take a lot of planning and moving. But Mo was sure that every move we made would draw more ‘Mites to our cause. By the time our Queen was ready to lead us, we would have an army to fight.

  The Hive was empty as I picked my way down the tunnels, guided by the scent
of the Queen. We need to do something about that, I thought. They’re far across the mountains, but they’ll smell her sooner or later. I barely noticed the scent of ‘Mites in the corridors over her beautiful blue smell.

  When I got down to the incubation pool, it was alive with ‘Mites. There was barely room to squeeze through them.

  “How long have they been here?” I wondered.

  Mo chuckled from behind me. “As soon as you arrived, they started showing up. Been coming in droves all day and night. There’s thirty or forty now, mostly Diggers and the ones with the big jaws, but a couple of the Soldiers, too. It’s a motley crew, but our army is growing every minute she’s here.”

  They were a ragged lot. Something was wrong with each one of them . . . missing legs, broken claws. Of course. They’re outcasts from other Hives. Broken ones that are no good to their home Hive anymore. Every one of them got my sniff test as I pushed my way through them. None smelled hostile. They were all just waiting. Hopeful. No aggression.

  More would come every day. How could they not? And not a single one would get near her until I approved them.

  I shoved through the last of them clustered around the pool. Hardly anything was left of the seal. The larvae had sucked it down to just skin stretched over bones. I flopped into the water next to it and laid my hand on the Queen. To my eyes, she looked the same as all the rest, only larger. But to my nose and my touch, she looked like the brightest sunlight rippling on the ocean.

  “I’m here,” I whispered. “You’re safe now.”

  I lay there for a while, my hand on her slick flesh. When I looked back at Mo, he was shaking his head.

  “What do they do to you?” he muttered. “How do they make you slaves like that?”

  My jaw clenched. “I’m not a slave.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’re laying in the water next to a pile of maggots that are eating a half-dead seal. You’re petting the fat one and whispering love songs to her. You almost died getting her here, and you screamed and clawed at us when we pulled her off you. You would have happily laid there and died just like that seal. So tell me you’re not her slave.”