Horizon Beta

by D. W. Vogel

  I looked at the arrowhead I was working on and thought about the acid smell when I had stabbed the enemy Soldier’s tail. “Could we maybe take the poison from the dead ones?”

  Everyone stared at me and I swallowed, suddenly hot. “I mean, they’ve got, like, a bag of it in their tails, right? Could we get it out and use it? Make some kind of weapon for ourselves?”

  A murmur went around the room.

  Lexis tapped a fingernail against her teeth in thought. “Noah, ask the Soldiers if they can squeeze it out at will, or if it just happens when they sting something.”

  I clicked out the message as best I could. In response, the nearest Soldier raised its tail. In a moment, a drop of acid appeared on the tip of its stinger.

  A grin made Lexis stop tapping. “Oh, that’s good. So we milk the Soldiers we do have, and coat our arrows and spears with their neurotoxin. That could change things a lot in a straight fight.”

  “A straight fight is not remotely what we want,” Mo said, and all the humans nodded.

  “No,” Lexis said, tapping again. “But if we could get all the Soldiers out of the Hive somehow, and get our people out, then next pollen storm when they’re all inside, I could try and blow their Hive up with them inside it.”

  She’d explained about her explosive. I was still quite hesitant about the whole concept of fire, and couldn’t really imagine what she was talking about.

  “Problem is,” Carl said, “if we get all the Soldiers out, they’ll kill every one of us. Even with poison arrows, we’re nowhere near enough in a fair fight.”

  Kinni piped up from the back of the room. “You just said it, though, didn’t you?” We all swiveled to look at her. She grinned and pointed at me. “He knows how to do it. And we’re not fighting fair.”

  Chapter 33

  Noah

  At the end of the night, we all lined up for our evening ritual. Several new ‘Mites had arrived that day and awaited the Queen’s blessing. She stood up tall at the front of our main chamber, and the new ‘Mites lined up to bond with her. One by one they approached, and she favored them with her oil. The scent of it sent shivers of joy up my back, and Lexis stood back, shaking her head as the newly-anointed ‘Mites collapsed to the ground, shaking with ecstasy.

  Lexis tried again, wiping the oil from the Queen’s gland onto her hands. She sniffed it, rubbing it between her fingers. She licked it and made a gagging face.

  “Not tonight, evidently.”

  Her gaze traveled over the group.

  “Everybody needs to try it. I need to understand how this works. Like it or not, we can’t live without a Hive.”

  The humans grumbled, and I looked to the Queen to see her reaction. The oil was not Lexis’s to give. But the Queen waved her feelers in the air, and her scent was sky blue, serene and content.

  Lexis lined everyone up. I slipped in behind Kinni, always eager to get another dose for myself.

  One by one, the people approached the Queen. Most tentatively reached out one finger, dabbing it on her head. They smelled of fear and anxiety. They don’t want it to work. They’re afraid of turning into mindless slaves. But Gil and I weren’t mindless. I wished I could help them understand. I hadn’t lost myself in the Queen. I had found myself in the Queen.

  “Smell it. Everybody take a good whiff.” Lexis watched each one in turn.

  I worried that the Queen would run out of oil or patience, but her scent never changed. She loved us so much, even those of us who couldn’t sense her happy blue waves. There was no way she could possibly understand the danger she was in. But she knew that humans and ‘Mites had already died for her. She knew we would do it again.

  Kinni stood in front of her.

  “This is so gross. Do I have to do this?”

  A look from Lexis convinced her that she did. “We need to understand this. There’s got to be a reason it’s not working here.”

  Kinni took a deep breath and reached out one hand. The Queen leaned into her touch, and Kinni’s hand came away damp with oil.

  “Anything?”

  Kinni shook her head. “Nope.”

  I went next, reveling in the bond.

  “Kinni?” Behind me, Lexis’s voice was concerned.

  By the time I turned around, Mo was catching Kinni as she fell to the floor of the chamber. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and she held the oil-soaked hand to her face.

  “Kinni, are you okay?” Lexis pushed her way over to Kinni and Mo. “Kinni? Are you sick?”

  A tremor shot through Kinni’s arms and legs, and Mo held her close to his chest. He turned an angry eye to me.

  “What’s happening to her? Have you ever seen this happen?”

  I stared, breathing deep.

  Kinni. Welcome.

  In a few seconds, Kinni’s face cleared. She looked up at the Queen with wonder in her eyes.

  Her dad held her face in both of her hands. “What is it? Are you all right?”

  Kinni smiled at the Queen, pulling air in through her mouth and nose. She nodded, not yet capable of making words.

  “She’s one of us. It worked.”

  I crouched down next to her and Mo let me take Kinni’s limp hand.

  “What do you mean, ‘she’s one of us?’”

  Her scent was changing with every breath I took. Humans smelled warm and sticky, not an unpleasant odor, but not clean like a ‘Mite. Kinni still smelled human. But every time she exhaled, I got a brighter glow from her breath.

  I looked at Mo and grinned. “She’s part of the Hive now. She belongs to the Queen.”

  Kinni’s rapt expression was broken by the flaring of her nostrils. “You’re still an idiot,” she whispered. “But you’re my idiot.” She looked back to the Queen. “And I’m hers.”

  Chapter 34

  Noah

  The air was red with pollen. A million tiny plants that grew over every surface released the tiny particles every month, all at once. It gritted in my eyes and destroyed my sense of smell entirely. Unlike the ‘Mites that followed us tentatively through the hills, I had eyes to see, but the sense I had come to depend on was completely blind.

  We had left the Queen and Soldiers hunkered down in our little Hive, along with a few of our people. They were safe from attack as long as the wind blew red. Even if the old Hive realized where we were and what we had done to their initial attack, they couldn’t follow the trail until the storm stopped without a human who knew the way to guide them. We had three days to work. The remainder of the humans had returned up the mountain to scrape up all the bat poop they could for Lexis’s secret explosive recipe. She had already made a huge batch of it for this journey, and assured the ‘Mites that carried it that they were totally safe, and it would only explode when she lit the long, twisted fuses they also carried. Builders and Diggers didn’t question. They just carried on.

  This distraction had to draw the Yellow Soldiers out of the Hive long enough for all the humans inside to escape. Then next month, when the moons rose together and triggered another pollen storm, we could use more of Lexis’s explosives to collapse the Yellow Hive. Our Queen and our people would finally be safe.

  Kinni was one of those left behind as we trooped out into the storm. She was obviously torn about Mo’s decision not to bring her. Part of her was angry at being excluded, but part of her wanted nothing but to stay near the Queen.

  We left them behind at the decaying Hive, and set off on our dangerous mission. A long parade of us snaked toward the Forbidden Zone. Mo and Lexis led the way, followed by a line of ‘Mites, each touching the tail of the one in front with feelers, the only way they could follow. More humans interspersed down the line to make sure no one was left behind. I brought up the rear, marveling at the courage of our loyal ‘Mites, trekking out, utterly blind, trusting us and our Queen’s lingering scent.

  As we walked, Lexis was full of questions, realizing that of all the humans who got the Queen’
s oil, only Kinni was affected. We had no answers, and Lexis wondered if it had anything to do with her being young and female. “There aren’t any other female members of a Hive. One Queen at a time. Could our Queen have done something to the oil, to bind Kinni instead of anyone else? Maybe she thought she could be a threat if she became a Queen herself?” But there were other female humans that got the oil, including Lexis herself.

  Each human carried empty woven bags. Holding them up in the air, we quickly filled them with flying pollen, tied them closed, and added them to the packs carried by the strong Diggers around us. By the time we reached the Forbidden Zone, every Digger was weighed down by bags of the dry, red dust.

  It covered every surface. The plants that produced it grew over what I now knew were the remains of our transports and shuttles, destroyed not only by those early ‘Mites who tore them apart in the first days after our people were taken captive, but also pummeled by the asteroid belt that surrounded our planet and occasionally dumped loads of burning rock from the gray sky.

  Lexis took charge when we arrived.

  “All right. We’re going to try and lure them straight into the center.” She pointed to a bare area in the middle of the huge ring of crushed ships. “That’s where we’ll need the trenches.”

  All our Diggers set to work. Directed by their human helpers, their huge claws scored out long divots in the hard ground. Brown dust from the excavation joined the pollen in the air.

  I stood in the shadow of one of the huge transports. Its front half was caved in, enormous doors crushed and hanging open. Mo had said that in those early days, the ‘Mites would keep Soldiers stationed inside the transports during the pollen storms to make sure our people couldn’t return and collect any of the weapons they’d used in the initial ill-fated battle. All those guns and rockets had been hauled away from the site by the ‘Mites, and the first time the escapees had tried to enter the transports to see what was left, they’d found an angry, venomous death waiting inside. They had never tried again.

  This time we watched, though. From high on the hillside, our human lookouts made sure that no Soldiers were hiding in wait for us. The ‘Mites must have assumed we’d long since forgotten about them. And looking at them now, I couldn’t see what difference it would make. They were wrecked beyond hope of repair. All the doors hung open to the elements, and when I peered in, the shadows were a disaster. Dirt, pollen, and creeping vines covered everything. A thousand little animals must have made homes in the ships, insects and other creatures. Mo had described the kind of technology and equipment that the shuttles once held, and there was no way anything left behind would ever function again. Even if the holds were filled with rifles, the years of neglect would have made them useless.

  Still, I wanted to see.

  The isolation of my upbringing was a wall between me and all the other humans. I had learned so much about who and what humans really were. Travelers from a distant star. Masters of flight. Creators of magics I couldn’t possibly have imagined. I thought back to the final test in the Ranking. The ‘Mites had taken a chair from one of the derelict transport ships and brought it back to the Hive. They took it apart, and used it to see which of us were smart enough to figure out how to put it together again. The ones that were smart enough couldn’t be allowed to survive. Queen’s Service for anyone that might someday pose a threat. I had been smart enough, but compared to the things these humans knew, I was a fat gray seal playing in a river. They said I was human just like them, yet in my heart, I was still just a small, soft ‘Mite. The human things Mo and Lexis talked about had no place in my mind. But this was my heritage.

  I pushed aside the covering vines and hauled myself into the transport.

  Dirt caked all the windows, and the shadowy shapes around me lost all meaning. I climbed over piles of unrecognizable garbage. And would you recognize it even if it were whole and undisturbed? You didn’t know what a chair was until you built one in the Hive. All this stuff might look exactly like it was supposed to, and I’d never know.

  There were rows of what were probably once seats, and along one wall hung a column of horizontal metal rungs. I looked up to where it led and saw a hatchway partly open to the sky. No wonder this one was such a mess. It had been raining inside for decades.

  Boxes were smashed. Cloth stank of mildew and the small furry things that lived in this wreckage. My feet slipped on loose debris underfoot. I shuffled along, touching things that were totally alien to me. A piece of sharp metal cut my thumb and I sucked at the blood.

  This could be useful. I made a mental note to see if our Diggers’ claws could tear this sharp metal. We could make a lot more arrows if we had sharp metal points for them.

  I stopped at the back wall. It was smooth and relatively undented. I peered out the dirty window along one side, watching our people work.

  My hand lay flat on the wall, and I cocked my head. There was still a lot of transport left behind this wall. There had to be. By my reckoning, I had only walked about three quarters of the way down the length of the thing. Surely a lot more space lay behind this wall.

  I felt along its surface until my fingers found a long, straight divot. It ran vertically, from the floor extending to higher than I could reach. Another similar divot was more than an arm’s length away, and just to the right of that one was another irregularity.

  I had no idea what it was.

  Clearly all the ‘Mites that were in here before me didn’t either, because once I finally figured out to push my fingers under the hole and pull on the lever, the divots turned into a door that swung open.

  Chapter 35

  Noah

  I yelled for Lexis and Mo.

  The room behind the door was packed full of stuff. In the dimness of the hold, I couldn’t possibly determine what any of it was. Wouldn’t have recognized it even if it were bright daylight, if I was honest.

  Mo poked his head in. “What are you doing in there? It’s not safe, Noah. This thing is a disaster.”

  “You need to see this,” I said. “There’s gotta be some stuff we can use here.”

  I didn’t wait for Mo to clamber into the transport. This hold was full of things. The dust and small critters had taken a toll here as well, but there were large cubes of metal that looked intact. I ran my hands over the first one but couldn’t figure out how to open it.

  “What did you find?” Mo stood in the open doorway. “Stars. They just left all this stuff?”

  Dust swirled in the filtered light. “It was a door. I didn’t know how to open it, but I figured it out. The ‘Mites would have no idea what a door was. They would never figure out how to open one. It’s just not how they are.” Not how I was, either. But I was learning.

  Lexis appeared behind Mo and together they crept into the hold.

  “Some of these crates are still intact.” They pried at the boxes, but nothing would budge.

  “A Digger could open them,” I suggested, but a Digger could never fit through the human-size door. How would these boxes have been unloaded? There must be some other entrance to this room, but before I could find it, Lexis said, “Oh, look! Tools!”

  I didn’t know what any of the things were that she pulled off the wall, but she seemed to know what to do with them. She and Mo set to prying open the crates.

  “Seeds,” she said. “Some of these might be useful if we ever get safe ground to plant them.”

  Mo pulled out a long, heavy roll of some flat, thin material. “Solar panel. Shame there’s nothing to power anymore. No way anything that’s sat this long in these conditions would ever work. And nobody knows how to fix it even if we found stuff.”

  A large crate in the back was painted with the same strange symbols that Kinni had shown me and sneered when I couldn’t read them. As I thought about it, those same kinds of symbols were painted on the outsides of these transports. I’d seen them all my life and never known they were writing.

  “
Embryo storage,” Mo said. “Well, that’s a darned shame.”

  I had no idea what that was, and when Lexis tried to explain that it was meant to bring babies from the old planet to this one, I started to think she was probably just making things up. I knew how big babies were. Only ten or twelve would fit inside the crate, and even over the dust and pollen, I would have been able to smell if there were babies in the box.

  The next box made her whistle. “Oh, yeah. Screws. Nuts and bolts.”

  I looked to see giant boxes of the little metal tubes I had first seen when I put together the chair during the Ranking.

  I didn’t know why she was so happy, but even I could tell that the next few boxes were the jackpot.

  The material was foreign to me, like everything else in this transport. But the first thing I pulled out was a long, thin tube, as tall as I was, with three sharp points made of heavy metal on the end.

  I held it up like a spear. “Hey, look! There’s a bunch of these!”

  Mo and Lexis shuffled over.

  “Pitchforks!” Mo shouted, and shoved me gently aside. He pulled out other similar tools. “Hoes and shovels. This is all farming equipment.” He handed me a shovel. It was heavy, and although the edges weren’t sharp, it would easily break the leg of an attacking Soldier. And the pitchforks . . .

  “Imagine those spikes coated with Soldier venom,” I said, eyeing the tools.

  Lexis grinned in the thick air. “It’s not what our ancestors intended. This stuff was all supposed to help us live in peace and work the land. We were supposed to be farmers, not warriors.”

  I grabbed a long, thin blade attached to a smooth handle.

  “Be careful with that,” Mo said. “It’s a machete.”

  Waving it around felt right in my hand, and I tucked it into the waistband of my pants. “I’m taking this with me.”

  Outside, the sounds of our Diggers trenching up the ground echoed between the crumpled metal hulls.