"You have no place here, you bug-eyed imp," he says. "Crawl back into that hole with the rest of them alien critters."
She clenches her fists and stands still, afraid to speak or move, afraid even to look up. Amharr is afraid along with her, dipping into a long-forgotten sense of helplessness, as he inhabits her memory.
"You have no business being here," the male nestling says.
"That's right," the others agree. "You're not one of us."
"Where's your parents, beetle-face?"
They make a cackling sound and bare their teeth at her. Her eyes sting, but she tries hard to show no reaction.
"Hey, we're talking to you." The male nestling steps closer until his face is right above hers. "Answer us, bug-face."
She swallows. "The hive..."
"What? I can't hear you."
"They're back at the hive." Her voice breaks in her throat.
"Where the alien bugs are, right?"
"Yes," she whispers.
"See?" the male says loudly, and looks around. "Told you she's a bug. Only bugs live in those hives."
"Bug-girl."
"Bug-girl."
The male nestling pushes her. "You love those bugs, don't you? You're disgusting."
"Bug-lover."
"Bug-lover."
"Bug-nut."
"Bug-nut."
She covers her face with her hands, standing among the other nestlings circling her, yelling at her.
An adult human enters, and sends all the other nestlings scattering throughout the room. Only the large male nestling hovers around her, his forehead contracted and his fists clenched at his sides. She peers at him from the corner of her eye, and decides she will never forget this.
The adult steps between them, takes a brief look at her and then grabs the male nestling by his shoulder and forcefully sits him onto the furnishing next to her.
"You be quiet now, and leave Taryn alone."
"Fine," the nestling says between clenched teeth.
"I'm serious, Jade. Stay away from her."
"I don't wanna get infected anyway," he says scornfully.
"She's not contagious," the adult says. "She's just a kid like you. Now shut up and pay attention to class. And you, young lady, you come to me if they're mean to you again, alright?"
She doesn't move a single micron, peering sideways at the male nestling, at how he stares at her and grimaces, threatening her quietly from an arm's length away.
Amharr is frustrated.
Her passivity in the face of aggression is incomprehensible. She should have responded to the challenge, and either confirmed or denied their assessment of her. At the very least she should have informed the supervising adult of the discrepancy in their judgment, and facilitated a correction. But she did nothing.
The actions of her peers, which she considered unjust and hostile—her entire memory is permeated with a sensation of injustice, Amharr realizes—weren't actively met by her at all. They were willfully ignored and tolerated. And yet, they altered her perception of reality both backward and forward in time.
What does it all mean?
Amharr rearranges himself inside his nest, exasperated. He can make no sense of it. Can make no sense of her.
He picks a new memory, connected to the one he just recounted, despite having no parameters in common. He subdues his frustration, and tries to remain as unbiased as possible.
In this new memory she is more mature and engaged physically with another human. At first, Amharr doesn't understand what's happening. As he explores a few related memories and their interpretations, he realizes what the memory holds: Taryn is engaged in a mating ritual with a male.
Although much of the finer meaning of the interaction remains obscure to him, Amharr quickly comprehends the meaning Taryn attributes to the act itself. Its purpose is not procreation, but indulgence of primal instincts and physical needs. It serves to alleviate tension and strengthen the relationship she has with that male.
But something isn't working.
Taryn is straddling the male, heaving and pressing herself onto him repeatedly, while he touches her mammary glands. She seems to be more invested in the act than him. Her speed increases, while he gradually stiffens and becomes immobile. Suddenly, he presses a hand on her stomach and stops her.
"What's wrong?" she asks, panting from the effort.
"Take that off."
"What?"
He grabs the Totorkha mandible dangling from her neck on a cord made from an animal's hide. He looks at it for a moment, then swings it around her neck so it hangs down her back.
She swings it back around and holds it pressed to her skin.
"No," she says.
"But it's hideous."
"It's a part of me."
"A hideous part." He grimaces. "I don't want to have to look at it while we—"
"Don't worry," she says, and stands up. She walks toward a furnishing, picks out some garments and begins to dress. "You won't have to anymore."
"Hey, come back here." He sits up and turns to face her. "Don't be like that."
"Like what, Zane? Like myself?"
"Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn?"
Taryn finishes dressing, and walks toward the door.
"Hey," the male yells. "I'm still talking to you. You're just gonna walk out on me over that piece of shit?"
"No." She opens the door and steps out. "I'm walking out on a piece of shit." Taryn marches down a corridor with metal walls and grated flooring—a vessel corridor perhaps?—without looking back.
Amharr opens his eyes.
The human's loyalty to the Totorkha—her affection for a species so different than hers—is strong enough to affect her entire cognition. Amharr has never encountered something so unnatural. It should repulse him. Yet he feels drawn to it, her uncanny ability to empathize with the utterly alien somehow leaking over.
Exhausted and confused, Amharr decides to take a break from puzzling out the human's memories. After all, he has the mutiny of the Kolsamal to worry about.
If only he could stop slipping back to her...
16
General Hurst never locks the entrances to his personal quarters; he doesn't need to. Aboard the R&D ship Hawkyns II-E, his quarters are almost three times the size he's accustomed to. A welcome luxury, facilitated by the ship's unusually small crew at the time of his taking command.
It's become habit to walk the width of the ship, between his lobby and his bedroom, naked and unconcerned with the possibility of being disturbed. The scientific crew isn't allowed to come up knocking on his door without ample reason, and his own staff knows better than to bother him on the rare occasions he's actually away from the command deck.
The Ares merged with the Hawkyns a light-year away from Epsilon Ophiuchi, eleven days after the loss of his swarms. It's the first time Hurst has been forced to request a merger. Without a fleet, at the mercy of not one but two alien threats looming at the outskirts of Confederacy space, he has no other option. The R&D ship's added manpower and technology will vastly improve his chances to deal with the mess he finds himself in, though.
There's been no more movement in the EO system after the massacre, and the probes and scouts deployed to inspect the situation found nothing but debris. No trace of the freak planetoid or the strange ship that came to observe. Not a single body found aboard his shredded ships either. All the retrieval drones brought back were minimal samples of the alien organisms. Those have kept the Hawkyns' laboratories occupied for a month already, with no conclusive results.
Hurst is finally running out of patience.
He strides through the procession of rooms that make up his quarters, his bare feet treading heavily on the thick carpets. The rare, handcrafted artworks are always spread out beneath his feet in a familiar trail. They span the entire procession of ships and facilities he's inhabited or commanded, like a path laid out as he advances, carpet by carpet, ship by ship, until he will have eit
her no more strength to walk or no more floors to conquer.
Hurst was born on Bessel's Eye, eleven odd light years away from Sol. The navy-blue-skied planet in the 61 Cygni system is the birthplace of most of the TMC's leadership, as well as the Confederacy's most deviant scum. He always suspected it has something to do with how adversity shapes character. Some people buckle under the strain, others triumph over it.
The lights dim automatically as he enters the bedroom. He stops in front of a large crystal mirror and inspects himself carefully. His body is not fully reformed, not to his satisfaction at least, but far enough from the decay of old age. He's a hundred-nineteen-year-old in a body less than a third that age, and has no intention of ever letting the mechanics of nature catch up with him.
Hurst lies down on his bed with a sigh, easing into a mound of soft cushions. He reaches over to his nightstand, pushes the oils and Indian silks aside, and picks up his private Nexus helmet surrogate—a counterfeit copy adjusted to satisfy his personal needs, disconnected from any military array. He carefully places it on top of his head, and closes his eyes.
The Nexus imitation offers all the grand sensations and thrills of the original, with a twist. Not quite like the real thing, but so close that once inside, not even Hurst can tell the difference, if it weren't for the perks.
Today he chooses to inhabit the body of an Afro-Caucasian in his early thirties, owner of a transport ship on its way to one of Procyon's many prison camps. The crew is few and the cargo plenty, and Hurst can already sense his virtual body become aroused in anticipation. He approaches the lower decks where the barely of-age delinquents are kept, preparing for hours of unhindered, unlimited fun. Slowly, his bedroom is filled with groans and grunts, as he greedily fondles himself.
A shrill beep pierces the room.
"General?"
He ignores the sounds coming as if from a distant universe, and keeps going.
"Sir? Are you there?"
Hurst opens his eyes, pleasure giving way to irritation. He sits up, still dizzy from the shift in reality, and wipes himself with one of the silk tissues that lies ready on the nightstand. He removes the intricate helmet from his head and cusses under his breath.
No calls allowed unless it's something urgent, so despite his annoyance he rises and grabs his uniform. Then slaps his palm against the intercom.
"What?" He starts dressing himself.
"Sir, Dr. Begum requests your presence on Level Seven."
"Ten minutes." He cuts the line and snorts as he closes the plackets of his shirt.
-
"Good evening," Dr. of Xenology Aisha Begum greets Hurst as he exits the obligatory decontamination, and enters the ship's xeno-investigation department.
Universally called Level Seven, regardless of its placement aboard the TMC's many research and development ships—and in fact occupying the entire ninth level of the Hawkyns' bow section—the xeno-investigation department is where his retrieval drones deposited their samples a month ago.
Hurst nods at Dr. Begum. Tall, sturdy, slightly eccentric, her round hazelnut eyes give her a perpetually perky expression. Her clean-shaved head and lack of makeup or beautifications serve to underscore that she's one of the few openly Islamic scientists aboard—a modern statement of her religion, that's replaced the veil in the spaceborn population for practical reasons. Hurst couldn't care less, as long as she fulfills her assignments.
"What have you got, Dr.?" He starts down Level Seven's busy central corridor, Begum falling in and keeping pace with him.
"We haven't concluded the experiments yet, but we've registered an interesting development in one of the test subjects," Begum says, her voice crisp and loud. "The recently retrieved alien organisms—we've taken to calling them Cyans because of their reaction under halogen lighting: they exhibit a turquoise-green fluorescence alike to cyanobacteria—"
"What about that test subject?"
"The Cyans have so far affected all our test subjects in a roughly similar manner, be they invertebrates, reptiles, or mammals—both of Terran and alien nature."
Begum opens one high-security door after another, leading him down the brightly lit corridor. They pass various laboratories and quarantine enclosures, tended to by an entire beehive of scientists, physicians and lab assistants.
"No matter where we inject the microorganisms," Begum says, "they travel through the host's body and nest in the brain, or the central nervous system in the case of invertebrates. They take over the host within minutes by controlling practically all major nerves in the body."
"To what purpose?"
"They paralyze the host by interrupting the brain's control of the limbs, and after a period of time proportional to the host's rough number of neurons—I determined that relation myself by using a combination of—"
"And?" Hurst interrupts, impatient.
"They proceed to disassemble the host's nervous system into the three basic neuron types, while the host is still alive," Begum says enthusiastically. "Then they reassemble the resulting components, together with various other cells they retrieve from the host, and create identical replicas of themselves." She gives him a wide, full-toothed grin. "They decompose the host from inside out to multiply. Isn't that fascinating?"
Hurst's boredom turns to wary curiosity, and he gives her his full attention. "How long does the process take?"
"Well, if one takes into account the number of neurons and the number of injected microorganisms," she starts, gesticulating loosely with one hand.
"—Rough estimation, doctor."
"Anything between fifty to sixty standard hours and a week. But that's just with third-rate intelligence species. We started experiments on Dorylinae just this morning at oh-five-hundred hours and we already have a remarkable distinction from all previous results."
They stop in front of a reinforced door as broad as the corridor. Begum keys them through the triple security system.
"Like I said, the experiment started just this morning, but since you've advised us to inform you of any aberration as soon as we're certain there is one, I had to call you down here to see this for yourself."
She leads him into a room staffed by four other doctors, almost a dozen assistants, and armed TMC officers at the ready.
Against the back wall a series of cages with steel grilles and graphene lattices, encased by armored opaque plexiglass plates and surrounded by force fields, hosts a full set of Dorylinae—a 'family,' as the scientists have dubbed the grouped individuals.
The room quiets as Hurst enters in Begum's wake, glancing quickly over the staff.
"First cage has a Protector," Begum says. "This one has a Worker, the third a Tender. The fourth has a Breeder, but it's in pupation so we can't really experiment on it yet. The Protector and Tender don't show any promise, but we've got some really astounding results with the Worker, as it's somewhat more 'evolved.'"
Begum dismisses the cage's staff and renders the plexiglass transparent, reassuring Hurst that it's a one-way mirror and fully secured. He approaches the cage and inspects the creature inside.
Hurst oversaw dozens of Klacker interrogations and clinical inspections during his command of Tau Ceti. He's ordered the raiding of the hives himself, and coordinated some of the hoarding and hunting missions as a way to spur on the troops. He's even read some of the dissection reports and experiment charts. But facing one of the eight-legged, chitin-plated beasts head on for the first time, Hurst finds himself surprisingly intimidated.
The Klacker stands in the middle of the cage on its four hindlegs, and runs its four barbed front-legs continuously over its large head. Its front-most pair, which it uses like arms, has an additional joint that branches out and ramifies into dozens of spindly chitin filaments and proboscises. They wriggle and contract as the creature strokes its meter-long antennae.
The second pair of front legs lacks the dexterous rootage. They end in flat, leaf-shaped palms covered with fine hairs. This second pair of 'hands' runs
down the creature's large, taupe eyes and spreads a glistening substance over its long, steel-black mandibles. Much tougher than human bone, and the Klackers' greatest weapons, they are also the first thing that gets amputated in captivity.
"Why does it still have mandibles?" Hurst asks Begum.
She gives him an impatient look. "We need our test subjects intact, otherwise our results are useless. Dorylinae can alter their body chemistry when injured. A defensive mechanism. We can't just amputate appendages without corrupting our test results."
Hurst grunts dismissively.
But Begum won't let it go. "Dorylinae with severe injuries release an acidic neurotoxin from the glands in the junction of their chitin plates and around their eyes. The toxin's highly corrosive and lethal. If a human limb comes in contact with it—and trust me, the Dorylinae will try to bring you in contact with it—the flesh will become necrotic within seconds, and the nervous system suffers a collapse in just under two minutes."
"Can it corrode the cage and escape?" Hurst stares at the monstrous beast behind the armored one-way mirror.
"This Worker's last escape attempt was just two days before you hailed the Hawkyns to rendezvous with your Command Carrier. She attacked the cleaning droid that does cage maintenance, ripped it open and disassembled it within a minute, using three pairs of legs at the same time." Begum's eyes gleam with fascination. "Then she used a piece of it as a makeshift drill and got into an electric node through the back wall. We have no idea how she knew where to drill. Quite an amazing thing. She secreted sulfuric acid into the hole and took down half of the lab's security systems by the time the alarm went off. Which it did only because of the fumes. Otherwise she—"
"I assume you repaired the damage and made sure it can't escape again."
"Yes, thanks to the resources you put at our disposal after the merging. We've tripled the security in all xenology labs, and set up an additional layer of—"
"How much does this cost me?" Hurst scans the row of expensive high security cages.
"A trifling matter—"
"Your labs cost me credits I can't afford to spend right now, so you'd better be delivering something worthy of my investment."
The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) Page 12