by Morgan Rice
Luna could see he didn’t want to, but she could also guess what he was thinking: that it was his job as the leader, and that there weren’t many alternatives. Luna could think of at least one though.
“Have a couple of people take him away blindfolded,” Luna said. “He’s no danger like this, and if he can’t see to find the way back, we’re safe.”
“Are you safe?” Leon asked, coming up to join them. “What just happened?”
“Trey just turned back,” Cub answered.
“What do you mean ‘turned back’?”
Luna knew that she needed to talk quickly. “Ignatius has a way to change people who are controlled back into humans. It also works as a vaccine for those who haven’t ever been controlled. The trouble is, for the people who were controlled, it’s only temporary.”
Leon looked at her, then at Trey. “And how many of you…”
“All of us,” Luna said. She sighed. “It’s why I wasn’t with Kevin and Chloe. It’s why I’m not on that world ship of theirs. They changed me, and Ignatius turned me back.”
“So at any moment you could turn into one of those things?” Leon said. He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have come here, Luna. I have to think about my people. I can’t let you in.”
“Ignatius can make your people immune,” Luna said. She got that Leon was all about protecting the people who looked up to him, but she wasn’t about to let him turn them away now. They needed all the help they could get. “And I know you’ve heard rumors of a cure elsewhere. I thought between that and how clever Barnaby is, maybe we’d be able to find a way to make the cure permanent.”
“And if you change into one of them?” Leon asked.
“Then you’ve already seen that there’s a way to stop me,” Luna said. She decided that it was a good moment to play her other card. “And who knows? Maybe we can work out why the virus that Barnaby assured us would work didn’t.”
“That’s not fair,” Leon said. “It’s not his fault. He’s clever, but he’s just one kid.”
“With us, and with Ignatius, you have a lot more than one kid,” Luna said. “This is your best chance, Leon. All of our best chances.”
Leon paused, looking around as if trying to gauge what kind of damage it would do if it went wrong. Luna already knew the answer to that: it could kill all of them.
Eventually though, Leon nodded.
“All right. But you get that out of here.” He pointed to Trey. “And if any of you start to change and there isn’t some special sedative around…”
“I know,” Luna said. “You kill us.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kevin considered the world that hung below them with the cool detachment of any member of the Hive. From where he stood, the screens let him see the settlements below, and the flares of movement down there. Once, the sight of it would have filled him with awe, or hope, or wonder. Now, it was merely a problem to be considered.
Once, the results of solving that problem might have made him feel guilty. Now, he just looked for ways to solve it faster.
“Will they try to strike at us?” Kevin asked Purest Lux.
The alien considered it for a few moments. “It is possible. They are unlikely to succeed.”
Ships flew up from the surface, a cloud of them that seemed like a swarm of hornets closing in on the world ship. Like that, there seemed to be so many of them, yet as the Hive unleashed its own ships, it was clear that there weren’t anywhere near enough. They attacked anyway, throwing themselves at the Hive, bursts of energy coming from their ships to smash into some of the Hive’s ships. Kevin saw one and then another of the Hive’s vessels burst apart like dandelions blown on by an angry storm.
There were more, though. The Hive could always build more. The Hive’s vessels struck back, their attacks ripping into the ships that came at them, sending some to spin away, others to flare up in bursts of light that consumed them.
“Why do they keep attacking when they know they can’t win?” Kevin asked Purest Lux, not understanding.
“Why do you think, Kevin?” Purest Lux asked. “Think back to your life before you joined us. Think about the ways people act when they have the curse of emotions.”
Kevin tried to think. It was surprisingly difficult to do; the time before he had become a part of the Hive seemed like another life entirely. He’d had emotions then, but it still took an effort for him to understand them now, and what they might mean. It felt as though they were there behind a kind of curtain imposed by his membership of the Hive. He was grateful for it. It meant that he no longer had the weakness of emotions.
“Perhaps they want to feel like they tried everything,” Kevin suggested. “Perhaps they feel as though fighting is better than just giving in.” Another possibility occurred to him. “Perhaps they’re buying time for people to escape.”
“A good thought,” Purest Lux said. “We will watch for ships seeking to flee under cover of the battle, and destroy them.”
Kevin watched with the Purest, but surprisingly few ships seemed to come up from the surface in this phase of the attack.
“Why aren’t more running?” Kevin asked. It made no sense to him. Why would they stay there when they were about to die?
“Perhaps they think they can fight us off,” Purest Lux suggested. “They believe themselves to be entirely safe behind their shields. They would even be correct, if it were not for you. Study them, Kevin. Learn the things that the Hive has gathered, so that you will know the enemy we are about to destroy.”
Kevin delved into the collective knowledge of the Hive, seeking information on the world that their ship now orbited. The information flowed into him, not like something he was learning for the first time, but more like something he’d always known and was only now remembering.
The creatures on the world below were called Ilari. They were slightly smaller than humans, with blue-gray skin and nodules that dotted them at spaced intervals, links to twinned AIs that, bizarrely, didn’t seem to join into the kind of collective mind that the Hive possessed. Kevin couldn’t understand that. Here was a species with the resources to create its own kind of Hive, and yet it chose not to.
Even so, they were not to be underestimated. They were clever, resourceful, inventive… and possessed of some of the most advanced technology the Hive had seen. The shield they had put around the world below was just one example.
And, strangely, the Hive was… concerned about them. Not scared, because fear was as alien to it as any other emotion, but aware of the threat that such advanced foes could pose to even their continued existence.
Their conventional weapons were dangerous enough: they had skills in the manipulation of energy that gave them powerful shields and beam weapons now that they had realized the danger that being without defenses presented.
The bigger danger, though, came from the understanding they had of the Hive. The same AIs that didn’t connect to one another in their society could potentially be used to disrupt the Hive’s connection. With enough knowledge, they might be able to disrupt the nanobots at the heart of the Hive’s controlling vapor. They could disrupt all that the Hive was, potentially threatening its very existence.
Kevin considered the knowledge that he had just gained. It was the kind of knowledge that had the potential to destroy the Hive. With it, a foe with the right materials would be able to tune a signal that would be a weapon, not just against individual ships, but against all of them. It required a substance called miridium that Kevin had never heard of, but that the Hive’s records suggested could be found on Earth.
It explained why the Hive had been so eager to take Earth, where the minerals that such a signal could be focused through could be found, and why these foes were so high on their list of enemies to destroy.
“And I will destroy them,” Kevin said.
“We will destroy them,” Purest Lux corrected him. “You will provide the way, though, Kevin. Do you feel any remorse at that?”
&nbs
p; For a moment, Kevin wondered if Purest Lux might be making some kind of joke, but he suspected that wasn’t something that the Purest did. No, he realized, it was a test to make sure that he remained as he should be: connected to the heart of the Hive, without the weaknesses that came from being beyond it.
“I feel only the honor of being chosen, Purest Lux,” Kevin said. “And I am grateful to the Hive for all that it has done for me.”
The Hive had saved him. His connection to it had put him beyond the threat posed by his former illness, and beyond so many other human concerns. He would not age as humans aged, would not be touched by disease or weakness. He would never achieve the perfection that the Purest had, but in time, Kevin had no doubt that they would change him to make him better and stronger.
“I will do all that I can for the good of the Hive.”
“Yes,” Purest Lux assured him, “you will. We will begin with communications. Convince them, Kevin. Persuade them to open the way.”
Kevin nodded, and stood in a clear section of the floor. A light shone down on him, and an image shimmered in the air, a holographic representation serving as a kind of screen. On it, Kevin saw blue-skinned figures, young and old, tall and short, looking as varied as any crowd on Earth might have done. In their way, they looked far more varied than the inhabitants of the Hive. Oh, that had dozens of different species and variations within it, but they were not the Purest, and the Purest had a strange kind of similarity to one another, barely seeming to vary.
One of the Ilari, an older-looking female, stood toward the front. She spoke before Kevin could.
“I am General s’Lara,” she said, and as with the Hive, Kevin’s mind translated the words automatically. “Who are you, and why are you aboard one of the Hive’s world ships?”
Kevin thought quickly, trying to come up with a lie that would convince the creatures below. He realized that being the emotionless drone of the Hive wouldn’t work. He needed to at least pretend to be who he had been.
“My name’s Kevin McKenzie,” he said. “You sent me messages. You warned my world. I was the one who heard.”
“You? Are you a leader amongst your people?”
Kevin shook his head. “I’m just a kid. I’m just…” He tried to think quickly. “I’m no one really.”
“Then what are you doing on the Hive’s ship?” the general asked.
“Your message helped,” Kevin said. “It gave us the advice we needed. My friends and I managed to find a virus buried deep in a tar pit. We raced all the way to Sedona to use it on them. We had to fight our way through the people that they controlled. We did it though. We infected them with the virus, and… it worked.”
“It worked?” General s’Lara said.
“We beat them,” Kevin said. “We took their world ship, we broke some of them free of their Hive.”
“Then why are you here?” General s’Lara demanded. “Why are you attacking us?”
“You attacked us,” Kevin said, grateful for that detail. “I’m sorry. We overreacted. We’ll pull our people back.”
He looked over to Purest Lux, who nodded. On the screens around Kevin, he saw the attack ships pulling back to surround the world ship.
“You still haven’t said why you’re here,” the general said.
“We need your help,” Kevin said. “We’ve managed to take down this world ship, but we barely managed to get it here. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Even the former members of the Hive have lost so much knowledge. If we’re going to take on the rest, then we all need to work together.”
It was the best lie he could think of, the kind of impassioned plea that he might have made if he had really been disconnected from the Hive. In a way, it was like living out some alternative life, where his pitiful efforts to destroy the Hive with Chloe and Luna had succeeded.
Kevin could see other members of the Ilari paying attention now, looking as if they weren’t sure whether to dare to believe what he was saying or not.
“What do you need from us?” General s’Lara asked.
“We’ve come a long way, and some of our people need your help,” Kevin said. “Can we come down to the surface? Will you lower your shields for us?”
General s’Lara stared at him, then shook her head. “We can bring help and supplies up to you if you need them. For the moment, I’m not sure that it would be a good idea for us to lower the shields.”
“Please,” Kevin said. “You have to, we need to be able to come down to the surface.”
He saw the general’s expression harden, then shift to something approaching pity.
“Our warning didn’t come in time, did it?” she asked.
Kevin might have kept trying, but Purest Lux stepped up next to him then, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“Tell them the truth,” the Purest said. “Tell them that nothing can stop the Hive, and that they have a choice now. They can submit and be transformed, or they can be destroyed. Tell them.”
Kevin relayed the words, his mind translating them automatically for him.
“I’m sorry,” General s’Lara said. “We thought that we could save people before they suffered the way we did. Tell your Hive friends that they will not get through our shields, and that our energy weapons are online. We might not be able to kill all of their kind, but we have enough power to destroy a great many of them before their end, including their precious Purest.”
Kevin didn’t relay the message, because he knew what the Hive’s answer would be. “You should surrender,” he said. “Being a part of the Hive is wonderful. Why wouldn’t you want it? Why would you want to be destroyed when you could be a fragment of something amazing?”
“Because we aren’t just fragments,” General s’Lara said. “If you attack us, we will fight.”
“You’ll lose,” Kevin promised.
The connection cut. Kevin turned to Purest Lux.
“Forgive me, Purest, I have failed the Hive.”
“Not yet,” Purest Lux replied. “It was always unlikely that a species that has fallen to us on other worlds would let us in on this one. You still have a role to play in bringing down their shields.”
“Yes, Purest Lux.”
Kevin saw ships start to detach from the world ship: small, rapid hunter craft that were like the scavenger ships that had gone to the surface of his world, only better armed; and much larger city ships, which floated like great manta rays down toward the atmosphere of the world.
The first of the hunter craft slammed into the Ilarians’ shield bursting apart on impact in a ripple of force that lit it up and showed the shimmering blue of its outline. Kevin stared at it, trying to understand it.
An energy beam spiked up from the surface, bright and pure, and for an instant, there was a hole in the shields for it to punch through. It slammed into the side of one of the city ships, tearing off a chunk and sending it listing to one side.
“Do you see the way the shield parts for their weapon?” Purest Lux asked, apparently ignoring the way so many of their forces had been damaged in the first few moments of conflict.
“Purest Lux,” Kevin said, “they have damaged a city ship. Isn’t that a bad thing?”
“There are no Purest aboard,” Purest Lux said, by way of an answer, as another blast of energy came up from the surface, lancing into space as it missed its target. “Focus, Kevin.”
“Yes, Purest Lux. How does the shield part?”
“There is a signal,” Purest Lux said. “These creatures trust their machines to time everything, and the machines focus on a signal. Our scanners can pick up every signal from the surface, and once they do…”
“I should be able to understand it,” Kevin said.
“You will understand it,” Purest Lux insisted. “You will pick out the correct signal and work out what to send. This is why we took you into the Hive. The signal will be sent through here for you.”
Kevin stood there waiting, hoping that he would be able to
do all that Purest Lux asked of him. The Hive was depending on him, and he would not let it down. He listened while the world ship’s systems sent up every signal they could find. Kevin listened to them all, straining his ears for every hint of something that might be relevant. He heard encrypted military communications, heartfelt messages from families frightened for one another, pleas for help, and…
There.
He latched onto the signal while another energy blast came, this one making the world ship shake as it hit. His brain worked feverishly to translate it, and numbers spilled from his mouth almost in a dream. He could feel the Hive taking them and sending them out in their own signal, using them to target the shield.
Below, the hunter ships continued to plunge toward the shield, but now they didn’t break against it. Now, they plunged lower, and lower still. Kevin saw the shield ripple and die, fading to nothingness in the face of the Hive’s fleet.
“I’ve done it,” he said. “The shield is down.”
“Very good, Kevin,” Purest Lux said. “Now, let us show them what a true weapon can do. Get ready to destroy this world.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Around her, Luna heard the beating of hammers and the quiet hiss of welding torches as the Survivors and the bikers worked together to create everything they might need in the face of the alien threat.
That, it turned out, was a lot of stuff.
Leon and Cub had set up a kind of production lines for weapons, with anything that could hold an edge or shoot an improvised arrow pressed into service. Luna wasn’t sure if she liked that. She wanted the aliens gone, but killing people who were just under their control wouldn’t do any good.
“We could end up killing a lot of innocent people,” Luna said to Bobby, who wandered along at her side as they made their way through the Survivors’ cave complex. She suspected that the others wouldn’t listen to her if she said it to them, though.
Maybe she was just very aware that soon, she might be one of those people again. Luna found herself watching every movement she made, and every thought she had, trying to make sure that they were her own, not something else’s. She could feel herself becoming more worried with every hour that passed, every hint of tiredness feeling as though it might turn into losing herself completely.