Queen of Jarilo

What did their code look like and how did they write it? They must have some equivalent if they were using digital systems. It would be possible to produce this kind of system with existing technology, but creating it from scratch would introduce problems.

The Warrior stopped a few feet away, and Tangerine walked over to it, looking back at Walker as if to imply that he should join her. He had never gotten so close to one before, at least one that hadn't been shredded with heavy weapons fire beforehand. It was so large, there was so much mass to the thing. He felt as if it was going to fall over and crush him.

It barely looked alive. It had those same eyes that the Drone helmets had, glassy and expressionless. There was no space for a horn, because the shell overhung the small head like a protective cap, but it had two short antennae protruding from its forehead just above the compound eyes. The Bugs did not have antennae, at least not that he could see. Perhaps these served as a kind of sensor package, like scanners on a spaceship, in order to enhance the pilot's situational awareness.

The claws alone were almost as long as he was tall. Huge, armored pincers that could tear through metal like a can opener and that made short work of even Borealans and Krell if allowed to close in. Walker felt naked without a gun in his hands, but he had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't in danger. It made no sense for the Bugs to kill him, not right now.

Tangerine seemed to be waiting for something, and Walker got frustrated, shrugging his shoulders at her.

"I don't know what you want from me."

She waved her mandibles in irritation, one of the few gestures that they seemed to make.

"What do you want me to do with this?"

She released a pheromone that he didn't recognize, it kind of smelled like burning wood, and suddenly there was a great shudder from the Warrior. Walker's instincts kicked in, and he leapt backwards, his hand darting to his hip reflexively but finding no sidearm to draw. It wasn't moving to attack him, however, it was splitting open. As if some invisible knife had run from its head to its groin, its entire body came undone, splaying wide with a grotesque cracking sound. Strands of fluid linked the two halves as they opened like a clamshell, sagging and breaking to fall to the dirt floor. It was almost enough to turn Walker's stomach, it looked like some kind of horrific injury had befallen the thing. He could see exposed flesh and organs inside the body cavity, wet and wriggling, surrounding an empty hole that would have been just large enough for a Pilot to squeeze inside.

He inched closer cautiously, craning his neck to get a better look into the gaping cavity. Its insides were coated in a sheen of glistening moisture, the nondescript bunches of muscle and what were probably organs were flexing and pulsing as if they were alive. It was an organic suit, so it must be alive, but how could it open up like this without dying? What about infections?

It was apparently capable of limited movement on its own, as there was no Pilot inside. Was this Tangerine's personal...suit? Vehicle? What was the purpose of showing him this?

She stepped forward, Walker taking a moment to get a look at the exposed flesh on her back, along with the plug-like holes that ran down it. It resembled brain matter, pink in color and detailed with small channels and lobes. He watched with a disgusted expression as she turned her back to the Warrior, then climbed inside of it. She used her four long arms to support herself, bracing them against the fleshy interior as she swung one leg up, and then the second. The Warrior's legs were hollow on the inside it seemed, and she slotted right into it, her arms vanishing into puckered orifices that no doubt led to the suit's limbs. He could hear the wet sounds coming from within as she shifted and wriggled to get deeper inside it, her chitinous body pressing into the thing's moist innards.

There was sudden movement from inside the Warrior's open carapace. Walker resisted the urge to jump back and get out of range of it, watching in alarm as a dozen dripping tendrils emerged from its glistening flesh. They were like tentacles, all in irregular sizes, slowly growing from the wall of meat behind Tangerine like fingers poking through latex as they snaked between her limbs and began to curl around her body. It looked horrifying to Walker, like an octopus that was about to devour its prey, but the Pilot seemed perfectly calm.

The muscular tubes wrapped around her neck and waist, winding around her upper arms and securing her thighs like thick ropes. He could see them tensing as they tightened. For a moment he feared that it would crush her, but the winding protrusions never got so tight as to be painful.

Tangerine was now completely locked inside the Warrior, like some kind of organic safety harness. She was engulfed by the strange protrusions to the point that half of her body was completely covered by them, her orange shell glinting between the off-yellow meat of the husk's prehensile appendages.

"That is...repulsive," Walker muttered, knowing that she couldn't understand him but finding catharsis in expressing himself all the same. Tangerine twitched, her segmented body bucking as if something behind her was causing her discomfort. Of course, the suit was hooking into her nervous system, he just couldn't see it. It must be pushing the fleshy cables into her spine, the same ones that he had seen being disconnected from the Pilots the first time that he had come across them.

She finally stopped squirming, Walker unsure of whether what she had just experienced had been at all painful, and she stared down at him expectantly.

When he had first arrived in the hive, he had gotten the impression that they were trying to find a place for him, trying to figure out what he was capable of. It was almost as if they had snatched him at random without having any real idea of who he was or what he did. Now it felt more like they were giving him a tour, showing him their technology and their capabilities. Why on Earth would an enemy do that? Who would invite a spy into their midst and then reveal all of their secrets to him?

It frustrated him, he had been living in the colony for days and yet he still had no real idea of why they had kidnapped him or what they wanted from him. Some scout he was turning out to be...

Perhaps if he focused on learning their language, he might just be able to ask. While he had made great strides in understanding their alien communication, he was still unable to say so much as a word. He could emit pheromones that seemed to be triggered by emotional cues, but he couldn't formulate speech in the way that they could. Was it something that he could learn to do with practice, or was it a limitation of his physiology? Maybe he just didn't have the right wiring for speaking Bug.

<LEARN.>

Tangerine was staring at him, the pheromones that she emitted edging towards the red end of the spectrum which indicated anger or frustration. Walker had no idea what he was supposed to be learning, and so he couldn't be of much help.

<COME.>

That was an easy enough command to understand, and so he shuffled a little closer to the inert Warrior. Her hard carapace was pressing right up again the slimy flesh of the suit's innards, it almost looked padded for comfort, but there couldn't be anything remotely comfortable about being enclosed in a prison of meat and organs.

When he got close enough, one of the mucous-covered appendages reached out, gripping his wrist and tugging him closer. It was strong, pulling him off his feet, and he had to reach out with his free hand to break his fall. It landed in wet meat with an audible splat, and Walker felt his fingers sink into the slippery flesh. It was like a wet sponge, warm and slimy, and he swore that he could feel a pulse beneath his palm. He tried to pull back instinctively, but the errant tentacle was wrapped around his arm with a grip like iron, his upper body mostly inside the Warrior's open torso. The smell was strong, surprisingly not unpleasant, and he found himself wondering if it would have smelled this way to his unmodified nose. The cavity was warmed by its body heat, and there didn't seem to be any blood, just slimy fluid that coated its exposed guts in a sheen. Perhaps it had antiseptic functions, that would make sense.

"Okay, I'm looking. What the hell is that you want from me, you crazy Bug?"

<LEARN. THIS CAN BE OF USE TO YOU.>

He was pretty sure his translation was right, it wasn't like she was talking gibberish, but she wasn't making any sense. He paused to examine the thing more closely. His hand was already covered in slime, and so he ran it over the interior of the Warrior. It felt like wet guts, as if somebody had opened up a horse or a cow and had thrust his hand inside it before it had gone cold.

He moved aside as Tangerine stepped out of the Warrior one leg at a time, the puckered orifices releasing her limbs, ringed with muscle that would seal her securely inside it seemed. The tentacles uncoiled from her, slowly receding into the cushioned wall of exposed flesh, and now he got a better look at the plugs that were attached to her back. There were four of them hooked into her spine in a row, trailing behind her like tethers. She walked a few paces away from the Warrior's husk, standing with her four arms outstretched as strings of its goo dripped from her, as if waiting for something.

Walker watched in fascination as half a dozen of the Workers turned their heads in her direction, abandoning their tasks and scurrying over to her. Some of them began carefully removing the organic cables from her back, it seemed that she couldn't reach them on her own, while the rest crowded around her. Their mandibles opened, the long tongues that Walker had become so intimately familiar with shooting out towards Tangerine. They licked her clean of the residue from inside the Warrior's body cavity, their winding tongues pushing between the joints of her carapace and leaving not an inch of her colorful shell untouched. The tethers sprang back inside the Warrior's open carapace as if they were made of elastic, sucking back into its inner wall like strands of spaghetti into a hungry mouth.

It happened so quickly, and then the Workers were gone, returning to their usual business. Tangerine turned back to him, now shining clean and free of the tethers. She advanced towards him with her four arms outstretched, grabbing Walker by the wrists and hips as he struggled. Her grip was like steel, he couldn't break free. She manhandled him, spinning him around in her spider-like arms so that he had his back to her, and he shivered as he felt her hard fingers slide beneath his clothing. She ran them up his spine, tracing his vertebrae with her spindly digits, moving from the small of his back all the way up to his skull. He twitched, he was ticklish, and he wasn't sure how to respond. Yet again the Bugs demonstrated their complete disregard for personal space.

"You won't find any plugs if that's what you're looking for. Just what the hell do you think I am, anyway?"

She spun him again so that he was facing her, looking down at him in confusion with her large eyes. She tugged at his jacket, yet again the use of clothing seemed to perplex them, and he batted her hand away as she clicked her mouthparts at him in irritation.

"Alright, get off me, I get the picture. I'm not going to have you guys tearing off my clothes again. I've only got one outfit."

He pulled off his jacket and his pants, keeping his shorts on as she cocked her head, her mandibles flexing. It must look strange to her, like he was removing a layer of his skin.

"There, happy?"

Indeed she was, and she knelt to run her hands over his body. She seemed to be looking for something, probably searching for plugs. He wasn't a Worker, he wasn't a Replete, perhaps they thought that he might be a Pilot? Their entire world was built around the caste system, was it completely beyond their comprehension that an individual might perform more than one task? A human could be a Warrior, a Pilot or a Worker. They weren't limited by castes, they could perform a thousand different duties. They might not be as highly specialized as the Betelgeusians, but human pilots could shoot down Bug fighters, and human soldiers could hold their own against Drones.

Her hand roamed down towards his butt, her fingers slipping below the waistband of his shorts, and he knocked her arm away again.

"That's not a plug, you'll just have to take my word for it."

She tried to slip her hands into his underwear again, and this time he shoved her away. She stumbled, putting out one of her lower arms to steady herself, then rose to her feet to loom over him. A few of the nearby Workers had turned their heads, ceasing their activities as they sensed the angry pheromone that was leaking from Walker's pores.

Something about this Bug's attitude pissed him off. The Workers had been innocent and almost child-like in their clumsy explorations, while the Repletes had been doting and careful. This pilot was confrontational, rough, and it was getting under his skin.

"Back off," he commanded. The Workers nearby seemed afraid and confused, reminding him of the time that he had disrupted their excavation work in the tunnel. They chittered unhappily, glancing at each other nervously as Walker and Tangerine stared one another down.

Tangerine backed off, walking over towards the console, standing before it and releasing a complex series of scents and pheromones. Walker strained to understand, able to pick out only a few off the less nuanced words and emotions.

She was frustrated, complaining about him to what sounded like some kind of higher authority. There was an emotion there, a pheromone that had no real equivalent in human experience, his brain couldn't parse it. The closest he could get was reverence, maybe respect or deference. Whoever Tangerine was talking to was her superior, she was asking for instructions on what to do with Walker. Perhaps they had not been expecting him to be uncooperative after so many days living in the hive without incident.

Tangerine seemed done, the gelatinous blobs that were glued to the misshapen console ceasing their pulsating. As she walked back towards him, he noticed her glance at something to her right. He followed her gaze, narrowing his eyes as he tried to make out what she was looking at. It was higher than her, her head was tilted slightly upwards.

Movement caught his attention above the scuttling Workers, on the nearest wall of the circular room, about nine feet off the dirt floor. There was another camera peering at him. The black dot in the center of the mass of slime was pointed in their direction, it was watching them. Just like the camera in the tunnel...

Just who was on the other end of those cameras? Was it the same person that Tangerine had been talking to? It seemed likely based on the way that she was looking at it, almost as if she was afraid of it. Could this be the elusive Queen that Walker had posited to exist?

Tangerine looked determined, coming to a stop in front of him as he stood there in his underwear, his arms crossed defiantly.

<GO INSIDE.>

She meant the Warrior of course, but he wasn't about to let those fleshy tentacles grab him, and he didn't want the tethers to drill into his spine. She released a red pheromone, it smelled acidic, stinging his nose and throat. Anger.

What was she going to do, fight him? He doubted that whoever was in charge would allow that. They had gone to great lengths to take him alive, they had brought him to the hive for a purpose.

"I'm not getting in that thing."

<GO INSIDE.>

"Go to hell."

The Workers were becoming agitated again, disturbed by the confrontational pheromones that were floating on the air. Walker almost felt sorry for them, they were so easily upset. Tangerine stepped forward as if to confront him, but as Walker raised his fists, there was a sudden commotion from across the room that distracted the both of them.

Walker could not only smell pheromones, but his sense of smell had been dramatically enhanced both in range and intensity. He felt like a damned shark sometimes, able to pick out tiny particulates in the air. Now he smelled blood coming down the tunnel, the copper flavor of it pricking his tongue.

From one of the many adjoining tunnels lumbered a Warrior, emerging into the hangar as the Workers scurried towards it, scents of distress and anxiety filling the air. He watched as it stumbled forward, one of its four massive claws was missing and a second was hanging limply by its side. Its thick shell was scarred with plasma burns and pockmarked with railgun fire, the thing was Swiss cheese. There was a very large hole in its abdomen and Walker recognized it as an entry wound from an anti-material railgun, the massive rifles that had been introduced for the sole purpose of killing Warriors and destroying the engine blocks of armored vehicles. It had taken a hit in the gut, it was a miracle that the thing was still walking. Off-green ichor leaked from the hole, more like mucous than blood. Its smell was strong, unpleasant, and it made the Workers nervous.

There were three Drones following behind it, wearing their signature armor and helmets, their iridescent exoskeletons reflecting the light from the domed ceiling. Two of them were intact, but one was badly injured, her chest had been cracked open like an eggshell and organs that Walker could not identify were open to the air.

The wounded Bugs were met by Workers, the shorter aliens lying the injured Drone on the floor and crowding around her. Walker craned his neck to see what they were doing. The Workers were medics too, apparently, they served as doctors as well as engineers. He remembered that it had been a Worker that had operated on him when he had first been brought to the colony. There might not be a difference to Betelgeusians after all, so much of their tech was wetware, combinations of organic and technological systems.

They were licking their hands and smearing their saliva all over the Drone's open chest wound, and Walker knew enough about Workers to know that it would create a resin seal. It was a kind of improvised bandage, no doubt keeping the soldier's guts in her body and protecting them from infection. The Drone lay there on the floor, pretty calm considering that she was on death's door, barely reacting to the small hands of the Workers as they spread their saliva on her wounds.

Meanwhile, the Warrior was in far worse shape. The suit stood motionless, bodily fluids pooling in the dirt beneath it as the Workers surrounded it, frantically trying to pry it open. It seemed that either the Pilot was dead, or the mechanism that caused the torso to split open had been damaged in some way. It was a little macabre. Walker didn't want to get near the things when they were intact, never mind facing the prospect of being trapped inside a damaged one.

A dozen of the little Workers were pushing the pointed fingers on their shovel-like upper hands into the subtle break where the Warrior was supposed to splay open, trying to pull the two halves apart through sheer force. They looked like engineers trying to pry open the door of a broken elevator. There was a tangible urgency to it, the pheromones that the Workers secreted were anxious. Perhaps the Pilot was still alive?

They finally succeeded, the Warrior splitting open from head to groin like a clamshell. A flood of bodily fluids spilled out of it, splashing on the floor, the smell of gore almost enough to turn Walker's stomach. He had been on many a battlefield, he had walked amongst the dead and dying more times than he cared to remember, but his sense of smell was enhanced now. It was like being inside a damned slaughterhouse.