Horizon Beta

by D. W. Vogel

  At the entrance to those forbidden tunnels, I paused. I had never been down there before. The way was unfamiliar. In the distance, the dim light of glowstones shone from rooms along the hallway, but I didn’t need eyes to show me the way. The scent of closely packed humans was a beacon.

  The two Diggers at the entrance touched me with their feelers and let me pass. They were never here to keep anyone out. Only in.

  I could smell a large, open chamber straight ahead. As I passed smaller rooms on each side, people peered from the shadows. Women and babies.

  “Come on,” I said to each little group. “We all need to be together now.”

  They followed, carrying small crying bundles on their hips. Toddlers clustered around my legs and the parade of ‘Mites swelled with people.

  At the end of the tunnel, a huge room stank of too many people too close together. It was brighter than the smaller chambers, with isolated shafts of light streaming in through air passages that led to the surface.

  “Noah?”

  I peered into the gloom. His scent was unfamiliar to me, but I knew his voice.

  “Chen!” I forgot my carriage as ambassador for my Hive. Chen was here, alive.

  He raced across the room and skidded to a halt in front of me.

  I grinned and threw my arms around him. “I’ve come to save you!”

  A look of wonder covered his features and his hand reached up to touch his chest where I had embraced him. He breathed in the faint scent of my Queen. All around me, the women and children sighed, crowding as close as they could to me.

  I’d prepared a long speech. I had planned to tell them all about our ships from the stars, about the treachery of the Masters, about the chance for freedom with our people. A good sniff told me all that was unnecessary. The scent of blue hung faintly around the bowls left over from their breakfast.

  My Queen had developed in a vat of algae. She lived there for days before I came to rescue her, imbuing it with the oils from her body. Every human in this Hive ate that algae.

  They were already hers.

  All I said was, “The Queen is outside. Come with me and join her.”

  They followed with dreamy joy on their faces.

  ***

  We emerged from the tunnel that led to the Mothers’ Chambers. On the way up toward the surface, groups of younger boys joined our many-legged walk. “Come to the new Hive,” I told them, and they trotted along with us.

  In the large chamber near the entrance, we paused, gathering into a group. I looked around and realized there were a hundred people crowded in, surrounded by Diggers and Builders. The women were blinking, pale and squinting into the bright light. They clutched each other and their babies, fear warring with hope in their eyes.

  “We’re going out, and we’re not coming back. There’s a new Queen. Young and healthy. There’s a new way to live. Fresh air and sunlight. We live with the Masters as equals, not as slaves.”

  Their blank stares told me what I must have looked like when I was rescued and told the truth.

  Chen was next to me. “They told me everything,” he said, nodding at the women. “We’re angels that fell from the stars, cast into the darkness for our wickedness. Only through service can we someday hope to return to the sky.”

  What is he talking about?

  “Um, not exactly,” I said. “We’re actually aliens from another planet, enslaved by a species that stole our history and made us believe we were inferior to them.” The original mothers would have known that. But over the years, the story must have changed. Now they looked at me as if I’d flown in on dragonfly wings to carry them straight into the sky. Kinni would have said: whatever works. I smiled at the people. “The new Queen is waiting for us.” That was good enough.

  Noise from deep in the tunnel pricked my ears. I sniffed the dank air.

  Soldiers. Time to go.

  Not many. But it wouldn’t take many. These people weren’t fighters. Unarmed, they were shellfish waiting to be plucked from the sea. I peered among them, looking for two identical faces.

  Kinni’s brothers weren’t there.

  Chen wouldn’t know what happened. He’d been locked away in the Mothers’ Chambers. I searched the room for a boy who looked about the right age. “You there. I’m looking for two boys that look exactly the same. I don’t know their names, but I know they were here when I left. Where are they?”

  The boy stared at me. “Matthew and Martin?”

  “Sure. I guess so. About your age?”

  He nodded. “They’re gone.”

  My heart sank. I’d promised.

  The boy continued. “They were messing around with stuff, started drawing with berry juice on the walls of our room. Making pictures.”

  We weren’t allowed to do anything like that. When I’d lived here, I’d thought it was because the Masters wanted everything to look the same. Now I realized they didn’t want us developing a written language.

  “When?” I demanded. “When did they take them away?” Please, please, please. I knew where they would have been sent.

  “Yesterday.”

  Hope flared in my heart. Yesterday. They would still be alive down there.

  I turned to Chen.

  “You have to lead them. Get them out of here.” I told him where to go, skirting the Forbidden Zone where the fighting would be happening right now. How long would our people keep the Hive’s Soldiers busy? How many had they killed? How many of ours had already died?

  The Diggers and Builders wouldn’t fight for us here. They would follow me out, or stay here, but without the bond to a Queen they had never met, they would never defend us. I clicked for two of them to follow me.

  I sniffed again. At least three Soldiers. Maybe four. Coming straight up the tunnel behind me.

  “Go now,” I said, giving Chen a shove. “Get them out. Run for the mountains and I’ll catch up with you. Go!”

  He opened his mouth to protest, then looked up at the bright sunlight streaming in through the doorway. “Eat well.” He dashed out the door, and the people followed him at my urging.

  I turned into the dark tunnel and drew my machete.

  Chapter 39

  Kinni

  It started out so well.

  By the time we got to the landing site where the ships of our ancestors sat ruined and crumbling, the slaver bugs knew we were coming. We could see them in the distance, boiling out of their huge Hive, and skittering through the grassland toward the empty ground between the ships.

  We barely had enough time to unload the explosives.

  Our Diggers and Builders were laden with individual bags of the powder Lexis had made. Each one had a long, woven string attached to it, which we would light on fire before throwing the bag at the trenches our bugs had dug and lightly covered with dirt.

  They trusted us so much.

  Or maybe they just trusted the little Queen. She barely talked in the clicking language we shared, but she didn’t have to. I hadn’t understood until the oil. I thought Noah was crazy, addled from living his whole life as a slave. The thought made my eyes roll back. He lived in a Hive, but was denied the oil. To be so close, to know there was a bond he didn’t share . . . No wonder he was crazy.

  And I was crazy now, too. Noah was over the top in love with the Queen. I felt it, too. Devotion to her, and from her. She adored us all just as we adored her. Separately we were nothing, but bonded together we had the strength of a mountain. There was no psychic bond. I couldn’t feel pain when another ‘Mite was hurt or anything. Another ‘Mite. Like I was just another bug. But in some ways I felt more akin to the other ‘Mites than to my people now. Marching beside my blue-scented Queen, next to my Hivemates, I felt invincible. And if Noah succeeded in his mission, my brothers might get the chance to feel the connection I had never realized I needed in my life.

  They were in there. He’d seen them.

  Sorrow for their lost ch
ildhood and rage at what the Yellow Queen took away simmered in my veins at the thought. I’d long since given up hope. But Noah knew them. They were alive. And if today went well, they’d be free tonight.

  “Wait,” Lexis cautioned.

  We were all poised and ready, cloth bag-bombs in hand. She had lit a couple of torches and stuck them in the dirt so we could light the fuses and hurl them off when the time was right. Too early, and we’d lose our chance.

  “Wait,” she said, squinting across the field.

  The first bugs were swarming into the clearing. My heart dropped as I looked behind them. From the front line all the way back to where the Hive rose in the distance, the ground was alive with them, sickly yellow. The whole valley stank with their rotten Queen’s odor.

  “So many,” I murmured. “Way more than we thought.”

  Lexis’s face was grim. My dad stood next to her, mirroring her tight lips.

  They’re scared.

  They should be.

  We’re all gonna die.

  Or worse, I thought, squeezing the bag of explosive powder in my hands. I’m a girl. They probably won’t kill me. They’ll probably drag me back into their Hive and lock me away forever. Away from my Queen. I’ll churn out baby slaves in that putrid hole for the rest of my life, and they’ll grow up thinking that’s the way it’s supposed to be. They’ll never know a real Hive.

  No. I gritted my teeth and looked out at the oncoming swarm. I’d much rather die on this hillside today.

  Our people were armed, with skins full of bug venom tied at their waists. Pitchforks and sharpened shovels with the paralytic neurotoxin against a thousand huge insects with stingers full of the stuff. Bows sat with piles of arrows.

  This was totally insane.

  “Ready . . .” Lexis said, and we all tensed.

  The first bugs were almost all the way to the edge of the trenches we’d made. We had to time this perfectly, or it was over before it began.

  “On three we light. On one we throw.”

  I raised my bomb toward the torch. Everyone else crowded around and did the same.

  “Five, four . . .” Lexis counted. “Three.”

  We stuck our fuses into the fire.

  “Two, and . . . one.”

  Every one of us threw our bombs down onto the leading edge of the trenches.

  The blast knocked me back onto my butt. I scrambled to all fours and looked out over the field.

  Over half of the trenches we’d dug had blown. We’d filled them with Lexis’s gunpowder, all the nails, screws, bits of broken metal, and shrapnel we could find, along with giant bags of dried pollen from the last storm.

  There were bug parts everywhere.

  A cheer went up from our side as we beheld the carnage. The blast had blown some bugs clean apart, while the shrapnel cut others to ribbons. A thick, red, smoky haze hung over the field where the bugs in the back that weren’t harmed were suddenly blinded in the field. The stench of the Yellow Soldiers blown to bits, and the hot, smoky smell of the gunpowder brought bile to the back of my throat.

  “Charge!”

  I barely heard my dad’s voice. We barreled down the hill, weapons raised, screaming like maniacs. I tore into the center of the bugs, chopping with my shovel, knocking them back and severing limbs. I had no idea if the venom on the edge was doing anything at all as I swung the heavy tool, a one-woman thresher in a field of rotten wheat.

  Yellow bugs were everywhere, slamming into each other and us. Red sweat ran down my arms. I was pollen-coated death. Fifteen years of rage poured out with every stroke of my shovel. For my mother. For my brothers. For every person that landed on these ships thinking they’d found a home. For the idiot back in that Hive who better be getting our people out of there. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. Only the clang of the shovel hitting another of my enemies. For my Hive. For my Queen.

  “Kinni, help me!”

  Lexis’s voice cut through my battle haze. She was calling from above me, clinging to the side of one of the crushed ships.

  I whacked a bug that staggered in my direction and dashed over to where Lexis hung.

  “Get up here, I need you!” she called.

  I didn’t want to leave my shovel, but it was too big to carry. Lexis wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t life or death. The shovel landed on the ground with a puff of pollen and I scrambled up the side of the transport to Lexis.

  “Come with me and bring these! We have to get more of the trench to explode!”

  We’d dug the trenches in hope that one blast at the front edge would cause a chain reaction and blow them all the way across the field. But the explosions had stopped in the middle, and more bugs were pouring in from the grassland.

  The ship was a wreck, and I clutched as many of the bombs as I could carry, stumbling across the top. Cratered and halfway caved-in, the transport was a twisted, overgrown obstacle course. But I grew up on the run. I overtook Lexis and rushed to the back of the transport.

  From above, the situation was grim. All our ‘Mites were spread around our side of the field, staying out of the hazy pollen cloud. When one of the enemies would stagger out blind, ours would rush in and attack.

  But we were losing. There were just too many.

  “Here!” Lexis snapped me back to the transport. “Light them up!”

  She held the torch and I lit the fuses, hurling bomb after bomb over the side toward the shallow trenches. With every explosion we ducked down under the raised edge, shielding our faces from the flying nails and screws. The smell of death was overpowering and filled me with glee.

  I peered over at the carnage, my sense of smell numbed by the smoke billowing around. Is she all right? I squinted into the distance. Standing on top of the hillside, twenty of our bugs stood guard over our Queen.

  And still the enemies came. Whether they were still being drawn by the smell of our young Queen, or whether the sounds and smells of the battle had blotted her out, they flooded into the kill zone.

  I threw the last of our bombs.

  In the far distance, a shadow moved over the hills. They were much too distant for me to pick out any individuals, but with a flare of hope, I realized what I was seeing.

  “Look! They’re free!”

  Lexis followed my pointing finger. A line of humans straggled out to the south of the battle, heading toward the lower mountain pass.

  He’d done it. He got them out. My brothers, and all the rest. Just a bit longer and they’d be safe. We could all make our escape back into the hills and wait for the next pollen storm to end this once and for all.

  And then the wind picked up.

  I watched with horror as the haze of pollen blew away from the killing field. There were still so many bugs. Some were injured, but so were some of ours. Our people were suddenly exposed as the bugs’ sense of smell returned, along with my own.

  “Retreat! Retreat!” Lexis’s voice was joined by mine, and every other human that heard the call.

  We raced back across the transport. A line of explosive had been planted all around the entrance to the pass we would use to escape once our people were safe. As soon as we were all through, we’d use one last bomb to blow it, causing a rockfall from above and destroying our trail.

  I looked up to the plateau that led to the pass.

  Enemy bugs were swarming up the hillside.

  Our Queen was surrounded.

  Our escape path was cut off.

  I was right.

  We were all going to die.

  Chapter 40

  Chen

  I led our people out into the light. At the entrance to the Hive, I paused a moment, breathing in the fresh air. Everything smelled so vibrant. I remembered the scent of the ocean from what seemed like ages ago when I last stood under the open sky. But there were so many layers to it. Dry sand, baking in the sun. Clear water on top, and deeper turmoil below. Something dead far out of sight, some sea creatu
re washed up on the shore.

  “Chen?” My sister Glenna took my arm, her baby in the other. “He said to go to the mountains. The messenger.”

  I grinned. “He’s not a messenger from the sky. He’s Noah. My best friend.” I glanced back at the Hive. The scent Noah had carried on his skin had awakened me like never before. The Hive behind was dying, wretched. Our time here was finished. “But he’s come to save us, that’s for sure.”

  We turned and filed around the Hive, leaving the ocean behind us. Noah had told me to go through the field toward the Forbidden Zone, then skirt around it toward a pass in the mountains. Someone would be there to meet us and lead us higher into the hills where we would be safe. I wasn’t certain if this was the moment all the mothers had been waiting for, but I knew I was never setting foot in that Hive again. Wherever Noah was sending us, we were going.

  The smell of battle reached me long before the sound. The glorious blue scent Noah had carried, that I’d been tasting without knowing it for weeks, drifted across the grassland. With it came the sick, yellow stench of the Soldiers I’d once thought of as my own. There was blood and death, venom and pollen, and a strange, hot smell I had never encountered before.

  I led our people across the plain and up onto the edge of the big canyon of the Forbidden Zone. The mothers went crazy when we reached the edge, pointing at the huge, hulking shapes that now swarmed with Masters and feral humans.

  “There!” Shari cried. She was supported by two of the men, heavy with her impending delivery. “It’s the place! We have to go down there to get our wings!”

  I looked down the hill. Battle raged, and the confusing sounds and sights warred in my brain. “No way. Noah said to go around.” I pointed to the mountains in the distance. “He said to go there.”

  “But this is the place from the story,” she said, panting with excitement and the long walk. “That’s where we have to go.”

  An explosion of light and heat filled the air between the giant shapes with pollen and flying bits of metal. The death smell filled the air, and the feral humans charged into the chaos.