Queen of Jarilo

Its shell looked remarkably similar in color to the figeater beetle, a common garden pest, and so that would be its name. Fig.

The newly christened Fig reached past him, picking out one of the components and presenting it to him, something that looked as if it might be a lithium battery of some kind. Walker grumbled under his breath, removing the mess of wires from the resin box and taking the cylindrical device from Fig's chitinous claws, placing it inside. That seemed to please Fig, and the creature then pointed to the next piece, a copper coil that must have some magnetic purpose. Walker picked it up and placed it inside the box.

Fig loosed a frustrated scent, reaching inside to correct its placement. Walker could not have been less invested. He recoiled as its long tongue snaked out of the orifice on its face, hardly worthy of being called a mouth, the insect licking its finger and smearing the viscous fluid on the component. After a moment it hardened, Walker nudging the copper coil and finding that it was stuck fast. It was like super glue, how could they produce such a substance without it gumming up their innards and killing them?

Fig emitted an expectant scent, now you try.

"I think you're going to be sorely disappointed by the quality of my saliva," Walker muttered. He licked his finger, the Bug watching his short, pink tongue with intense curiosity. He smeared it on the battery, Fig waiting expectantly before reaching down to nudge the component with its claw-like finger, secreting an annoyed pheromone when it moved.

"Yeah, I can't produce glue, go figure. I've got another organ that we could try, but you'll have to buy me dinner first."

Fig turned towards him, taking his head in its upper hands, alarmingly strong as it prevented him from pulling away. Its lower pair of hands probed his face as if testing the elasticity of his flesh, before parting his lips with its fingers and pushing into his mouth. Walker loosed a muffled complaint at the impromptu invasion of his personal space, feeling the hard shell on his tongue, and he bit down. There was some give, but its carapace was far too tough for his teeth to damage, and it continued its explorations undeterred. He felt it pinch his tongue between its digits, trying to draw it out, but Walker finally succeeded in breaking away.

He rubbed his jaw, watching as Fig pressed his saliva between its finger and thumb, as if testing its viscosity. As strange as it was for a creature's saliva to harden on contact with the air, so too did Fig seem to find the lack of such a property perplexing.

It took Walker by the arm, leading him away from the table, a cloud of frustrated pheromones trailing behind it. If he couldn't make glue, then he couldn't assemble...whatever those devices had been. Time for a new job.

***

"Tell us what happened," Colonel Fischer said, leaning over Kaz's bed as she blinked away the lingering anesthetic. She was in the field hospital at Charlie, hooked up to a drip in order to replenish the fluid that she had lost, her collapsed lung now repaired by one of the base's surgeons. Everything was white, the floor and ceiling, the bed sheets and the gown that they had put her in. The room smelled of antiseptic. It was all so unfamiliar to her. Humans went in and out of hospitals every time they got a damned splinter, but if something could injure a Borealan, then it was usually enough to kill it outright.

"We were...in the forest," she replied, still woozy as she tried to collect her thoughts. "Looking for Bug holes as ordered. We followed the tracks away from the base, left by the force that had fled the siege at Charlie, but the footprints vanished perhaps a mile into the woods. I think the Bugs went up into the trees. So I followed a pheromone trail from the winged Drone that had tailed me and Sergeant Walker, but I lost the scent. We couldn't find any trace of Bugs. We were exactly where the seismic sensors had been triggered and yet there was nothing."

"What happened next?" the Colonel asked, "even small details might be important."

"We searched for a while but couldn't find anything, we got frustrated. We took a break and tried to call in, to see if any of the other teams had reported anything. We thought that maybe we were in the wrong place or something. But the radio didn't work, Walker said it was being jammed."

"Jammed? Yes, that's why everyone went out of contact. We thought maybe that an ion storm was interfering with the signal, we've not been able to reach the Thermopylae or any of the other outposts for hours. That was the conclusion that we came to as well."

"Just then I smelled Bugs, like they had appeared out of thin air, surrounding us. They didn't have their plasma weapons, and they didn't attack, they just stood there and...stared at us. One of them shot Sergeant Walker with something, some kind of dart gun, and he passed out. They did the same to me, but whatever toxin they were using doesn't work on Borealans. I fought through it and killed them. By the time I was done, I was too late to save the Sergeant, they had carried him away."

"You didn't see where they took him? Which direction?"

"I was injured, dying I think. I didn't even see them take him. I figured that I could either die in the forest or try to make it back to base and bring help. I didn't abandon him, sir, I'd never do that. But I couldn't help him, I couldn't-"

"Easy there Kazka, nobody is accusing you of that. Seeing the state that you were in when you showed up, it's a miracle that we're even talking right now. We already have search teams out in the bush, and we have our dropship doing low passes. We're going to find the teams that didn't make it back yet."

"There are others?" Kaz asked, attempting to sit up in her bed but wincing at the sharp pain in her side. She relaxed back onto the mattress, frustrated by her body's inability to keep pace.

"Whatever is jamming our comms is affecting the entire valley. Two of our scout teams made it back, they headed home as soon as they lost their line to Fleetcom. We've not heard from the others yet. Kazka, are you sure that they took Walker?"

"I'm sure," she said, nodding adamantly. "They wanted him alive, and they tried to take me too."

He clasped his hands behind his back, beginning to pace slowly back and forth beside her bed, his brow furrowed.

"In all my years I've never seen a Betelgeusian take a prisoner, and I've never seen anyone turn up who had been declared MIA. The Bugs kill, that's all they seem to be interested in. It's not only a tactic, a policy, but it seems to be a reflex as natural to their kind as breathing is to ours."

"Walker is not dead," Kaz snapped, immediately regretting the outburst and reigning herself in.

"As you are well aware, Lance Corporal, the UNN makes many allowances for Borealans. Insubordination is not one of them."

"I'm sorry Colonel, I just...I know what I saw. It was strange, unlike anything I've ever seen before. If they had wanted to kill him then his guts would have been all over the forest, I would have smelled it. I know that he's still alive, I can feel it."

"Listen, Kazka," Fischer said as he leaned on the edge of her bed. "I know that you Borealans have a special bond with your squadmates. You're like a pack of wolves, more of a family than a military unit. While that's beneficial in many cases, it's also a hindrance when it comes to coping with loss."

She bristled, but he raised a hand to cut her off.

"You had lost a lot of blood, you were badly injured, on death's door when you arrived. We immediately put you under, and the medics found traces of a chemical compound in your body that they can't identify, likely some new Bug bioweapon. I believe that you're sincere, but you've been through a lot. That kind of stress and hurt can make it hard to recall specific details. You said yourself that you never actually saw them carry him away, you're making an assumption."

Kaz opened her mouth to protest, but again he cut her off with a wave of his finger. Was he doubting her mental state? While he was correct in that she had been practically delirious when she had made it back to the base, and that the Bugs had shot her full of some unknown compound, there was no doubt in her mind about the events that had transpired. It made her angry, but she recalled her integration training, trying to calm herself lest she make a regrettable mistake. Fischer was their Alpha after all, and his word was law.

"Until we can ascertain exactly what happened, and until one of the other teams corroborates your story, I'm afraid that we can't commit our limited manpower to tracking down one MIA soldier."

"We can't abandon him," Kaz pleaded, "what if he's still alive?"

"Even if what you say is true and they took him prisoner, it's been forty-eight hours. We're going to find those lost scout teams, and I'll order the dropship to do some passes over the area where you were attacked, but I'm not authorizing any more operations until I know exactly what's going on in this accursed valley."

"But sir, I-"

"That's my final word," he said, rising from her bed. "Now try to get some rest. I have a feeling that we're going to need every last man in the coming days."

CHAPTER 9: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

"I'm not good at this either," Walker complained, Fig releasing another frustrated scent as he struggled to fit a piece of armor onto an increasingly irritated Drone. They had run him through seemingly every job in the factory, as if they were struggling to find a place for him in the hive. Walker still didn't understand what the point of all this was. They couldn't possibly need the manpower, why go to such lengths to integrate him? Was this how the Borealans felt when they first arrived on the Pinwheel?

One of the other Workers finally took the shoulder pad from him, Fig leading him away by the arm. Were it human, it would no doubt have been hanging its head in shame. Instead, its mandibles moved restlessly, clicking loudly.

Suddenly all activity in the factory dome seemed to halt, the Workers leaving their tables and moving towards one of the many exit tunnels. They dropped their tools and ceased their work, forming a large group, tightly packed but never bumping shoulders or jostling for space. It was as if someone had tripped a fire alarm. They all knew where to go and what to do at exactly the same time, and yet Walker had heard no sound and had smelled no unusual pheromones on the air.

Fig led him along, he was apparently expected to follow them. There were a handful of Drones too, and the tall Pilot that he had seen exit the Warrior's husk. It was downright spooky, they were all being drawn to one place, marching like zombies. Walker was head and shoulders above the smaller Workers, and so he could see over them, watching the column of Bugs snake down the twisting tunnels as if they were one organism. Fig kept a tight hold on his arm, Walker watching as more columns of Bugs joined them from branching side tunnels. They were so colorful, a thousand different iridescent shells sparkling in the dim light, the sound of their marching feet like thunder in the enclosed space.

Walker closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He wouldn't get anywhere if he kept relying on sight and sound to navigate this world. He tried to block out the noise, using his nose, making an effort to pick out any scent that might indicate where they were going. Every passage had its own pheromone trail, this one was obviously important, and so it must have one too.

There, layered below the myriad scents of the Bugs, a pheromone that smelled like sweet honey. He could almost taste it on his tongue. It was appetizing, his stomach starting to rumble as the aroma filled his nose. Were they heading towards food? Perhaps whatever passed for a mess hall in this hive? Was the honeyed smell making him hungry, or was the pheromone itself inducing hunger? It was sometimes so hard to tell the difference between a genuine impulse and one that had been provoked by some pheromone. He would have to be careful and stay aware lest he be strung along like a puppet.

The tunnel had a distinct downward slant, they were going deeper into the hive, further underground.

They eventually emerged into another chamber, this one of roughly the same size as the factory, lit by that same glow from a large cluster off luminescent moss that was clinging to the apex of the dome. His eyes widened as he surveyed the room. Far from being full of tables and kilns, this one was packed with...creatures.

They were huge, as tall as a Pilot. But where the Pilots were thin and lanky, these were bloated and swollen. They were physiologically similar to the rest of the Bugs, sharing the features that were common to all castes. They had a decorative horn, a shining exoskeleton in varied hues, along with the same configuration of limbs and organs as the others. What set them apart, however, were the clear sacks on their bellies and chests. The skin was translucent and filled with amber fluid.

The larger of the sacks was located on the lower abdomen, where the belly would have been on a mammal, the protective plates that commonly lined the torsos of the other castes were widely separated by the stretched skin beneath. It gave the impression that someone had drawn on a balloon before inflating it, and Walker wondered if the plates would return to their normal positions once the sack of fluid was drained. Their hips were flared, no doubt in order to carry the substantial weight, giving them an oddly feminine figure. What really turned his head were the two sacks on the chest. They looked remarkably like breasts in their shape and placement, but that was impossible, insects did not produce milk. They were like a pair of damned space hoppers, filled with that same golden fluid, the weight of it giving the sacks a distinct heft. There were maybe fifty of them leaning against the walls as they sat cross-legged on the ground, forming a ring around the room, their bodies so distended that it looked as if they couldn't move from their seats.

"Honeypot ants," Walker muttered. He had seen this before in a species of ant back on Earth. Many social insects collected and stored food in one way or another. Bees made honey and ants often grew their own food in specialized chambers in their colonies. Honeypot ants were unique in that they stored liquid food within the bodies of a specialized caste called repletes, their abdomens swelling to gigantic proportions, functioning as living reservoirs from which their hive mates extracted nourishment.

A Worker needed only to stroke the antennae of one such Replete if it wanted to feed, which would cause it to regurgitate the contents of its swollen body. The Betelgeusians were nomadic, traveling between the stars in their hive ships, it was a logical way for them to store and transport the food that they would need on their long journeys.

He watched as the crowd of Bugs separated like a shoal of fish, heading towards the lounging Repletes in pairs, Fig pulling him along as it made for one of the bloated giants. They were obviously going to feed. The pheromone trail that smelled of honey had brought them here, a map to the pantry. But how would they feed? Would these Repletes regurgitate the contents of their transparent stomachs into the waiting mouths of the Workers and Drones as if they were baby birds? Repulsive! Would he be expected to participate?

As they neared one of the Repletes, it opened its four arms to them in invitation, scents of sweet honey washing over him. The upper pair were long and slim, with a small blade that protruded from the wrist, its purpose unknown. The lower pair were thick and strong, with heavy, reinforced joints. Hunger tore at his stomach, a desire to feed scratching at the inside of his skull, the alien signals interfering with his brain. He found himself fighting them, rising above the almost instinctual urges that the pheromones instilled in him. This was not a form of mind control, they were not psychics. If he kept his wits about him, then he would not fall prey to their suggestive power.

Fig climbed into the Repletes lap, supported in two of its arms, the size of a child in comparison to the larger Bug. It leaned on the Replete's belly, like a beanbag chair filled with fluid. Walker watched in disbelief as Fig reached up and took one of the heavy breasts in its forelimbs, pulling it down to its face, its mandibles opening like grasping fingers as it sucked something that looked uncomfortably close to a teat into its mouth. It began to suckle, drinking down the amber fluid. The bizarre scene went some way to explaining why their mouth openings were so small.

The Replete held out its remaining arms to Walker, and he backed up, shaking his head.

"Oh no, it'll be a cold day in hell."

He looked around the room, seeing that the Bugs were all feeding, Workers and Drones alike. Even the Pilot was doing the same, sitting on the dirt floor and leaning close to the Replete as it drank. They waited patiently for their turns, forming orderly lines in front of the Repletes, the scent of confusion reaching Walker's nose as the Bugs that were queuing behind him stared. Fig released the Replete's breast, the bloated alien cocking its head in confusion. Once again, Walker's mere presence was disrupting the day to day operations of the hive.

Fig rose from the Replete's lap and took him by the hand, trying to lead him closer, but Walker refused. The Bug released a puff of concerned pheromones, not understanding why he was refusing food. Walker had no way of conveying how disgusting he found the whole situation. It smelled good, he could almost taste the sweet nectar on his tongue, but his human sensibilities would never allow him to feed in the way that they wanted. Especially when he had perfectly good MREs waiting for him back at his cell.

Fig tried to pull him, but he dug his heels into the earth, making it very clear that he wasn't going to cooperate. He smelled concern, expectation, urgency that bordered on anger. Fig finally gave in, returning to the engorged Replete, which took the Worker gently in its arms and cradled it as it ate.

The sight made Walker's skin crawl, but he had to keep reminding himself that these were not mammals. Convergent evolution might have arrived at a similar method for sharing nutrients, but these were not their children as far as he knew. Any maternal overtones were the product of his own human hangups. He was starting to get tired of this whole affair. He was trying to keep an open mind, but if his mind got any more open, then his brain might fall out of his skull.

Where did this honey come from? It must be rendered from something else, what was there to eat on Jarilo? His blood ran cold as he remembered Kaz's remarks about the animals, how she had said that the forest seemed to have been drained of fauna, as if the native species were fleeing the valley. This might be where they had all gone, eaten by the Bugs and rendered into nutrient goo to feed their army. It was only conjecture, but it seemed likely. The UNN was not too concerned about their ecological impact on the planets that they colonized, they were fighting for survival after all, but the idea of stripping an entire valley of life to fuel the war machine seemed monstrous to Walker.

He stood aside, letting the other Bugs pass him, a short Worker waddling past and climbing into the welcoming arms of the Replete. As more and more were fed, he could see the Replete's sacks visibly draining, shrinking as the fluid within them was consumed. Rather than leaving flaps of stretched skin, the material was remarkably flexible, retaining its shape as it shrank back down to its original size.