“You’re not coming with us?” Lena could hardly believe Artem wanted them to split up already.
Artem clicked off the holostick. “The others might still be alive—”
“Then we’ll look for them together.”
“No, we won’t.”
Lena had heard that tone many times over the years. Conversation closed. “Fine.”
They grabbed essentials from the research station—water, food, meds, power modules—then trekked off in silence, twenty yards apart. Nik took point. It was slow going checking the map all the time. Shallow veins of color—the residue of excavated minerals—marked the sides, drawing the eye away from the dangers underfoot. Every passing insect unnerved Lena. Her knees, elbows, and shoulders became grazed from where they had to get down on all fours and squeeze through choked channels.
Often, Nik disappeared from view as the passages turned hard or pinched tight. At these moments, Lena would up her pace, terrified that he’d be gone by the time she turned the corner, but he was always there, a ghost of hot light in the darkness. Sometimes her mind played tricks on her and she thought she could hear a mechanized whirr. The fact they’d left Artem to fend alone gnawed at her constantly.
Ahead, she noticed Nik had stopped. “I need some chow,” he said when she caught up with him. He slung off his pack, and flopped down. Even in the thick yeasty air, she could smell his sweat. He needed a distraction.
A worker approached. Before she lost the nerve she leapt in front of the insect and tapped out a complicated pattern on the side of its head. The bristled carapace felt like coarse sandpaper against her knuckles. She’d learnt the simple stimulus-response action from some researcher’s notes she’d read on the journey out, thinking it would’ve made a nice party trick. The insect twitched, disgorged a clotted clump of regurgitate, and scuttled off. A layer of mucus clung to the food, but underneath it felt doughy in her hands. She tore off a piece, offered it.
“You’re shitting me,” he said, but he took the food, curious. He sniffed it. “Eughh. After you.”
Lena broke off another piece and wolfed it down. It tasted like rich, chewy bread; weird, but not unpleasant. “Beats the slop blocks.”
Nik nibbled a corner, devoured the rest. “Not bad.”
They ate the remainder in silence, listening to the weird clicks and taps of the nest. A faint and odorous breeze, rich with a yeasty scent, blew past.
Lena said, “I shouldn’t have left him.”
“He didn’t give you any choice.”
“It wasn’t his choice to make. It was mine. And I left him.”
Nik got to his feet. “Stop beating yourself up. He didn’t want us with him.” He slipped on his pack.
Lena hauled herself up, wondering if she’d ever see her brother again.
Ahead, the passage opened up into a low-ceilinged chamber. An explosive profusion of fungi sprouted wildly from its sides and roof. Delicate swollen saucers, tangled spaghetti-like tubules, and massed bifurcating thickets crowded every surface. A dim mist of exhaled spores charged the air, the moldy smell overwhelming. A couple of workers scurried past, jaws loaded with long shoots of needlegrass.
A fungal garden.
Nik cupped his hand over his mouth and nose, coughing. “Let’s stock up and get out.”
Lena nodded, slipping off her pack. At the sides of the chamber, where the workers had dumped the needlegrass, other smaller castes worked the organic matter. One type chewed down the grass, then added it to a growing mound of vegetative pap, while another distributed the mulch to the roots of the fungi. She watched one wind its way down a hanging tendril—
Hell.
Near the base of the tendril slumped a human. Her head was shaved, her hands and face filthy, and her body so emaciated her jumpsuit looked like a deflated balloon, but there was no doubting it was a woman.
“Ana?”
The technician lay on one side, barely alive, the rise and fall of her chest slight, her eyes closed in peace. Laser scorch marks streaked her midriff, her flesh blistered and seeping.
Nik joined Lena. “What—”
Ana’s eyes opened. She screamed, began trying to scramble away, her body flexing in ugly spasms. The insects in the chamber responded to the shrieks, spiraling around in tight circles. Workers streamed in, alert and ready.
“Ana,” Lena said, but it was to no avail, the woman’s mind reeling.
Nik crouched down, the aim of his harpoon gun shifting between the chamber’s three exits. “Calm her down!”
“Ana!” Lena grabbed the woman’s shoulders. Up close, she stank of burnt flesh and decay. “It’s me, Lena—from Pavonis Majoris, from Genotech!”
The woman still floundered, but less aggressively.
“You’re safe now,” Lena said. “No one’s going to harm you.”
“Lena?” Ana asked in an awestruck tone, as if the name were a foreign word. One side of her face was red raw where it had scraped the ground. Spittle flecked her chin.
“Yes. Lena.” She stroked the woman’s cheek with the back of her fingers, wiped off the saliva as best she could. She cradled the woman in her lap for a long while, waiting until her breathing calmed before giving her a few mouthfuls of water. “We’re going to help you get out of here,” Lena said, pulling a med kit from her pack.
She pressed a sterilizing pad against the first wound, making the woman gasp in pain. After the lacerations were cleaned and dressed, Nik tapped Lena on the arm. “Give her this,” he said, pushing a slop block into Lena’s hand. “She must be sick to death of this fungal crap.”
It was a smart move. The block would help distance her from the place. Lena offered the food. “Here. Eat.”
Ana snatched the slop block, tore open the wrapper, devoured the bar in three bites. Afterwards, she almost retched it straight back up.
Nik helped the woman to her feet, arm around her shoulder, while Lena swathed her in a creased flash blanket. “For a second there, I thought we’d run across some infected insects.”
“Infected?” Ana looked confused.
“Yeah. Infected with the phage-virus from the slicer.”
Ana tottered as she glanced around the chamber. “Who told you that?”
“Artem. We were with—”
“Where is he?”
Lena glanced at Nik, her stomach pitting. “He’s looking for the others.”
Ana wrapped the blanket around herself tighter. “The others are all dead.”
Artem had lied. There was no phage virus.
The insects were fighting, Ana explained, because Vesta contained not one, but two, insect colonies. The second had never been planned, but when the researchers had discovered that the original queen was suffering a terminal, degenerative disease—a disease that would one day stop the flow of precious ores dead in its tracks—Artem had argued in favor of a second colony with a tweaked geneline.
The team had been divided.
The second colony would have to be kept secret, since Genotech had only been given license to establish one insect colony, not two. “Semantics,” Artem had argued. “We owe it to the drilling crews who risk their lives every day.”
Eventually, the dissenters had backed down.
“Everything was working out okay,” Ana whispered, “until that thing arrived.”
Nik shifted his weight, Ana still leaning on him. “Are you saying the slicer caused the fighting between the colonies?”
“Yes.” Ana coughed, brushed away a handful of spores that floated by her head. “The slicer hacked the commsat, eavesdropped on us. It must’ve realized there were two colonies—and that making them meet would cause chaos.”
“And how did it do that?”
Ana laughed bitterly. “It used one of the abandoned drilling rigs to connect the nests.” Lena was sure Artem would’ve appreciated the irony.
Ana went on, eyes on the ground. “It was only me and Artem who weren’t torn to pieces during the first wave of attacks. We hole
d up while the insects fought. Afterwards, as we fled, it found us.” She stroked the laser wound on her side. “I couldn’t go on. I told Artem to carry on without me.” She glanced up, must’ve seen the unspoken question in Lena’s eyes. “My life was saved by my brood.”
Brood. The bond between Ana and the insects was strong, familial. The notion unsettled Lena. “My brother isn’t looking for Nikerson or Singh—or anyone else, is he?”
Ana shook her head sadly.
Lena bit her lip. “What then?”
Ana met Lena’s eyes. “He’s hunting the hunter.”
They went their separate ways from the fungal garden. Ana and Nik, arms draped over one another, headed for the space-rafts, while Lena headed deeper into the nest.
Before they parted Ana had explained that Artem would’ve made for the second colony’s queen to ambush the slicer. “He knew that thing wouldn’t be content until this place is a lifeless rock again,” she’d said. “Killing the healthy queen is the only way to be sure that no more ore leaves Vesta.”
“I didn’t think there were any weapons here.”
“There aren’t.”
She’d decided there and then that she would go back—try and find him before the slicer did, before he threw his life away. Nik had tried to argue her out of it, but a stubborn streak she was all too familiar with made her hold her ground. She’d glanced at the passages out of the gardens. “Which way—?”
“You can’t waltz in like the slicer.” Ana had leaned close, reeking of sweat and piss. “With the scent of this nest you’d be swarmed.”
“I have to—”
“There’s another way,” Ana had said. “But you must hurry. Listen.”
She moved as fast as she dared, harpoon gun in hand, keeping light on her feet. Sometimes she tripped, grazed a knee. Sometimes she stumbled, slammed a shoulder. Scrapes and bruises littered her body.
Nest activity increased as she made for the heart of the original colony, the insects dug in, guarding their dying queen. Workers carried the scars of fighting—broken antennae, missing legs, fluids seeping from cracked carapaces. The air was thick with the smell of acrid blood. Terrifying, alien shrieks echoed from afar. A party of soldiers hightailed past. Lena followed, fighting the urge to flee, the noises growing louder. Fallen insects, reeking fluids seeping from their wounds, clogged the route. Their splayed limbs crunched and cracked underfoot. Some were probably soldiers from the invading colony, but she had to be sure so she carried on.
Rounding a corner, she was nearly pitched into the front line of the fighting. Legs and jaws blurred as the two sides clashed. Gouts of blood sprayed the air, accompanied by awful, spine-chilling wails. The enemy ranks stretched away as far as the eye could see, only the narrow passage preventing the defenders from being overrun.
The original colony wouldn’t hold out much longer.
Lena ducked backwards, tripping as she avoided the lunge of an enemy soldier. Instinctively, she raised her harpoon gun to shield herself. The insect’s head surged forward. Its jaws clamped around the barrel with a terrible gnash. It drew back for a second attack. And a third.
Saliva dripped onto her cheek, hot and putrid. As she warded off more blows, she imagined Artem laughing at her. You, little sister? Save me?
She fired. The bolt ripped through the insect’s head, and the monster went limp. She scrambled back and let out a deep breath, then gasped in pain. When she brought her fingers back from her cheek they were dappled in blood, her face sliced wide.
At least she had her enemy insect. With shaking hands, she collected its glandular fluid in a small canister. One spilt drop on herself would see her ripped apart. A few paces away the two colony’s insects crashed together like the armies of old, a tremendous din reverberating around the choked tunnel. A scrambling leg knocked her arm, but she held firm. She screwed on the cap, allowed herself a small sigh of relief.
She didn’t have much time, though. At the head of the tunnel that led to the queen, a phalanx of an elite caste bristled, barring her way. They didn’t attack, but they made it clear she wasn’t to pass, raising their forelegs while they nipped at her arms. She wasn’t the enemy, but she had no place there.
Ana’s words came back to her. If the entrance to the queen’s nest is blocked, look for a tunneller.
It didn’t take long to find one, the tunneller ambling across an intersection, uncertain. It was a strange paddle-limbed beast, its head a mass of sharp grinding jaws and blunt armored acid spouts. Before she could change her mind, Lena grabbed onto one of its chitinous plates and heaved herself up onto its segmented body. If you could see me now, Artem.
The tunneler barely acknowledged her presence, carrying on its way. Bobbing up and down, legs rubbing against its prickly exterior, Lena shifted her pack about, pulled out the holostick, and flicked on the map. There was only one path into or out of the queen’s chambers—and the nurseries beyond—but some of the surrounding tunnels skirted close. Hanging tight, she waited to where she thought the walls came closest, then tapped out the quick-fire pattern that Ana had shown her on the tunneler’s head, careful to avoid its vicious jaws. The monster responded, pitching right and going to work on the rock.
Splinters of mica and basalt ricocheted from the wall-accompanied by a heavy grinding sound. Now and then, the tunneler edged backwards to shoot geysers of acid or paw away the growing mound of debris underfoot. Steam fizzed from the rock face, shone white hot through Lena’s goggles.
After it had broken through, Lena rapped out a retreat command, and the tunneler padded away. She stepped through the breach to an overpowering smell of mucus and decay. The chamber was enormous, cathedral-sized, matched by the colossal girth of the colony queen. Its spiracled abdomen bulged, while rounded billows of soft flesh undulated with machine-like churning and gurgling. A slow stream of eggs coated in a thick hormonal paste emerged from an orifice near the rear. Even from this distance Lena could tell the spawn was rotten. Workers inspected the latent, diseased offspring, before carting them off to a nearby graveyard pit. From the entry passage where her way had been barred, she heard shrieks and the clash of battle. The colony was in its death throes, a last stand being made against a new wave of invaders.
Lena hurried onto a nursery chamber off to one side. A few workers tended a depleted collection of larvae, bedding them down on discarded cocoons. Soon the larvae would be plundered by the invading army and taken to their nurseries. There they would be chemically instilled with new allegiances. There they would forget their true lineage. Nature’s means could be profoundly frightening at times.
Lena stepped to the nearest larva—a rubbery oval, half a man tall—and roughly cut a slit along its top, releasing a putrid stench. She delved her hand inside, coating herself in the nutrient goop, and sought out the rudimentary form. Finding it, she pulled it out with a puckered slurp and cast it away. She tipped the larva over and let the goop sluice out.
A mighty squeal came from the adjoining chamber. Nursery workers rushed past to defend their imperiled queen. Enemy soldiers swarmed over the matriarch’s bloated abdomen, stabbing and tearing and biting. Spouts of clotted fluid sprayed from her wounds. She made a half-hearted effort to shrug them off, tossing a few off with a flaccid crunch, but their numbers were too great.
The larva was a hollowed-out shell now. Lena stared at it, heart pounding. Artem, you sure as hell better show me some gratitude. She clambered inside, wiping the lubricant over herself as she hunched down into a fetal position. She nearly gagged from the stench, but forced herself to pull the slit closed, leaving only a small gap for air. The last thing she heard before the enemy surged into the nursery was a lurching crash and an awful, otherworldly screech.
In the darkness and decay, she waited.
Soon enough, Lena was hoisted up by an enemy worker. She dared not move, but by tilting her head she was able to catch glimpses of the world outside. Most of the view was obscured by the underside of the worker’s head�
�a thick bristled hide, tapering to its claw-like mandibles—but she also saw the enormous gasters of others ahead. With the constant patter of the insect’s legs against the rock, it felt like she was in the middle of a stampede.
Tensed up, it didn’t take long before her muscles began to ache. Then burn. Her right arm went dead. She gritted her teeth against the pain, tried to transport her mind somewhere—anywhere—else. She wondered what she’d say to Artem to make him listen. He wasn’t easily swayed once he’d made up his mind.
Her bearer slowed up.
Was she there already? The insects moved fast, but it didn’t feel like she’d traveled far enough. Maybe some kind of bottleneck?
And then she glimpsed it.
Head shaved down to fine stubble. Two whirring, mechanized eyes—hot coals in a cold inhuman face. A muscular arm with a metallic exoskeleton. The slicer. Oh yes, slicer was the right word, no simple mercenary here. This thing was an efficient blend of sinew and purpose and engineering. It was heading in the same direction, gaze roving over the passing insects. She prayed it hadn’t found Artem yet.
She ducked a little deeper into the cocoon, held her breath. The sound of the slicer’s motorized rhythms receded. The stampede settled down into a more ordered march. She was in enemy territory.
She risked a small stretch, releasing the pressure on her arm. She lost track of her bearings, their path a hodgepodge of sharp turns and inclines. Without a decent map—the second colony’s nest still largely uncharted—she was terrified that she might never find her way back. She sought landmarks wherever she could: a skein of minerals in a chamber ceiling; the shape of an arch; an unusual rock formation.
If the nest was anything like the first—a chaotic riddle of thousands of passages and hundreds of chambers—it was probably an exercise in futility. She might walk dozens of kilometers and never find her way out. She repeated a mantra to herself, mouthing the words in the darkness. Artem will know the way. Artem will know the way.
The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera Page 28