Queen of Jarilo

The Workers clambered up into the Warrior's open body cavity, Walker able to make out the figure of its Pilot past their colorful shells. She was tangled in tentacles, their purpose had no doubt been to secure her safely inside the suit, but now they weren't functioning properly. The frantic Workers tugged at them, trying to pull them loose, but they were coiled around her limbs and torso like the roots of a tree. She wasn't moving, and Walker was sure that the railgun slug must have hit her, but there was so much gore and viscera that he couldn't tell what belonged to her and what was coming from the Warrior.

They began to bite at the tendrils with their sharp mandibles, chewing through the flexible meat. They finally succeeded in pulling away some of the thicker tentacles, the smaller ones releasing their hold on the Pilot as they pulled her limp body from the suit. They lay her on the floor, and she convulsed, vomiting up some kind of yellow goo. She was still alive against all the odds. The Workers crowded around her and began to wash her with their tongues, cleaning away all of the fluids until finally, Walker could see her wound.

The anti-material railguns were not intended for use against personnel. Sure, you could shoot an enemy combatant with them, but that was not what they had been designed for. The energies at work would turn a human into a fine red powder. It seemed that the Warrior's thick armor had at least slowed the slug as it had passed through, absorbing most of the kinetic energy. Being inside that suit when it got hit would have been like putting a cooking pot on your head and then having someone strike it with a sledgehammer, it was a miracle that she hadn't been mulched.

There was a hole the size of a fist just below her chest, right where the solar plexus would have been on a human. The carapace around it was cracked, like someone had thrown a softball through a pane of glass. Walker was no Bug physician, but it didn't look good. Fluid coming out of the mouth was a bad sign, if you had two arms or four.

The injured Drone was being ferried away by a group of Workers, probably towards an operating theater of some kind, but the Pilot was in far worse shape. Walker couldn't see much of what was happening behind the group of little Bugs, but before long their panic seemed to fade. They stepped away from the Pilot as she lay motionless, clearly dead. They had failed to save her life.

Walker didn't really know what to feel. These were his enemies and killing them was his profession, but despite that fact, he never found joy in death. His work was clinical and detached, he wasn't out to punish the evil aliens or to take revenge, merely to neutralize the threat. Some of the younger Marines saw things that way, rookies fresh off the station, but that attitude never survived more than one or two engagements. War wasn't cool, it wasn't fun. It was shitty, dirty work, but someone had to do it.

The Workers scarcely spared a second for their dead comrade, leaving her lying on the ground in a pool of her own ichor as they turned their attention towards the Warrior's inert husk. Walker knew that the organic suits could walk under their own power, but the Workers set about toppling it over instead. They worked together to push it to the floor, scurrying back as the massive shell impacted the dirt, heavy enough to shake the ground beneath Walker's feet. They operated as one organism, sharing the weight between them as they hooked their hands beneath its carapace, lifting it off the ground and carting it off towards one of the recesses in the wall. With great effort they stood it up straight, securing it behind a fleshy mesh, intending to get to work repairing it no doubt. Would that process involve fixing its damaged machinery, healing its wounds, or some combination of both?

Something occurred to Walker. Why had the injured Bugs come here, rather than going straight to whatever passed for a hospital in the colony? The only logical explanation was that this was the nearest Warrior hangar to the surface. There was no way that an injured Pilot would take any detours. In that case, Walker was not somewhere deep inside the hive but relatively close to the surface. With his new nose, would he be able to smell fresh air, perhaps the scent of the pine trees? Could he find his way out of these tunnels on his own?

It was also safe to assume that whatever fight the Warrior and its Drone cohorts had been in, they had been soundly defeated. Was it possible that the Betelgeusians were losing their ground war against the UNN? What if there had been a fight nearby, could there be UNN troops walking around only a few meters above his head? The injured Bugs couldn't have made it very far in the condition that they were in.

Walker was moving before he was even conscious of having made a decision. Tangerine was temporarily too shocked to do anything about it, and by the time she had set off in pursuit, he was already entering the tunnel that the Warrior had emerged from. He could smell the blood that it had dripped on the ground, it was like a trail of breadcrumbs. As adrenaline surged through his veins, he realized that it would lead him directly to the exit.

He had never run this fast in his life. The wind was blowing in his ears, his heart pounding in his chest as he shot off down the dirt passage. Like all of the tunnels in this dark, humid maze, this one branched off in a dozen different directions. He knew exactly where to go, however, the trail of blood and fluids might as well have been a fluorescent arrow painted on the ground.

There was no dissent amongst the Bugs, no disruption to the routine. When something unexpected happened, they didn't seem to know how to deal with it. A prisoner of the UNN would have been held under armed guard at all times, and yet the Bugs had just expected him to be cooperative, as if the idea that he might take initiative and try to escape had simply never crossed their minds.

His feet pounded on the dirt, and he realized that he had left his clothes behind. What a sight he would be, emerging from a hole in the ground wearing nothing but his shorts, waving his arms and shouting frantically. He'd never live that down, they'd be telling jokes about it at Charlie for weeks. He turned a corner, his lungs burning, his body leveraging every scrap of energy that it had gleaned from the Replete's honey to drive him onward. He would run until he collapsed if necessary, that's what humans were best at, endurance running. The damned Bugs would have been better served by keeping him hungry and compliant, but he felt as strong as a horse.

He took a fork in the tunnel, every breath that he took refreshing his mental map of the blood trail. Besides the injured party that had made its way down to the hangar, no Bugs had been here recently, and he didn't smell the presence of any guards. The Betelgeusians were good at concealing the entrances to their colony, it probably wasn't necessary to post guards on them.

He noticed an upward slant to the passage, and he felt a breeze on his face, the air carrying the scent of pine needles. He had been right, this part of the colony wasn't more than a few meters below the surface of Jarilo. He was so close to freedom that he could literally taste it.

As he rounded a corner, he saw sunlight for the first time in days. There was a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel, and he powered through his mounting exhaustion as he sprinted towards it.

Movement drew his attention. What had looked like a featureless section of wall was now sliding back, opening to reveal a cavity in the wall of the passage. It was a hidden door, built to conceal a room that was joined to the main tunnel. A trio of Drones flooded out to block his way, silhouetted against the bright sunlight behind them, their armor shimmering in hues of blue and green.

Walker skidded to a stop, swallowing hard as he panted, his eyes fixed on the light beyond. He was so close, so damned close to escaping. He'd never get another chance like this. The Drones were lined up with plasma pistols in hand and shield projectors on their wrists. He couldn't get past them, and he couldn't take out three Bugs unarmed.

He turned to flee in the opposite direction, hoping to maybe find an alternate escape route, but the way back was blocked too. Another secret door had opened behind him, and there were half a dozen Drones boxing him in. Now that he was paying more attention, he saw that there were many such doors built into the length of this tunnel. There was a blob of green slime beside each sliding panel, about where a keypad would have been if the door was of human design, a kind of chemical lock no doubt. There were many others spaced out along the tunnel at intervals. They might be barracks for the Drones, perhaps storerooms so that troops on the surface could resupply quickly without having to venture too deep into the hive.

No wonder they didn't post guards on the tunnels. If a UNN scout party ever made their way inside, they would be swarmed from all sides as the Bugs came flooding out of the hidden rooms.

The Drones began to close in, their weapons pointed at Walker, and he spun his head from left to right as he tried to figure out a way to escape. There was none, of course. He was trapped, and his short rush for freedom had come to an abrupt end. He exhaled a sigh, raising his hands in surrender, and then noticed a jellycam on the wall to his right. Its black lens was pointed at him, peering through the layer of gelatinous goo. He flipped it the bird.

CHAPTER 13: IN CONTROL

The Drones carted Walker down a dingy passage, gripping him by the arms so that there was no chance of him escaping again. They were walking him deeper into the tunnels, far away from the scents that he recognized, as if they were trying to scramble his mental map of the hive. He assumed that they were returning him to his cell to spend the rest of his stay locked behind bars, but after a long walk that must have seen them descend hundreds of meters below the planet's surface, they came to a stop in front of what looked like a featureless wall.

No, there was one of the blob-like buttons, there must be a hidden door here somewhere. His suspicions were confirmed when one of his captors released a complex pheromone, the biological keypad seeming to wobble and flex in response. It opened the door, a dirt-covered panel that perfectly conformed to the curvature of the tunnel wall sliding to one side to reveal a hidden chamber.

It was domed, as were most of the rooms in the hive, but this one was fairly small. There was maybe twenty feet of floor space, and the ceiling was probably fifteen feet at its highest point. It was lit by the usual glowing moss, the air thick and humid.

The Bugs pushed him through the door, Walker noting that it was larger and wider than seemed necessary, and they had closed the panel securely behind him before he could pick himself up.

Well shit, he was in a cell again. Back to square one. At least it wasn't cold, they had never given him his fatigues back. He brushed himself off and walked over to where the door had been a moment before, now a flat wall. The construction methods of the Bugs seemed so archaic, hollowing out cavities in the soil and sealing them with saliva, and yet there was some remarkable craftsmanship involved. He ran his fingers over the dirt where he knew the door to be, but he couldn't detect so much as an indent beneath his fingertips, nor could he see anything that might have given away the panel.

There was a keypad in here, identical to the one outside, and he reached out a finger to prod it experimentally. It shifted as if trying to pull away from him, its slimy surface wobbling. It was like some kind of limpet or barnacle without a shell, clearly alive in some capacity. It must sniff out pheromones in the air and respond to commands, not unlike a digital lock. The difference was that rather than scanning the fingerprint of the user, or opening for a numerical code, it waited for the correct scent to be emitted.

Walker could not yet produce scents, at least not intentionally. He had no way of opening the door. Frustrated, he hammered his fist on the panel, hearing a metallic ring. Well, that was one way to detect the doors at least.

He wondered what the Bugs must be thinking of him now. He had cooperated until an opportunity for escape had presented itself, did that make him insane in their eyes? He was a deviant, a non-conformist, someone who did not blindly obey their orders like a mindless Drone. Unpredictability was his strength, he had to play on their biases. He might yet get another chance to escape.

Although Walker had expected to be left to stew for a while, he felt vibrations beneath his feet. Something was coming down the tunnel outside the cell, something big. He stepped away from the door as the dirt-covered panel slid open, his heart leaping into his throat as he saw the unmistakable pincers of a Warrior. Its bulk blocked the doorway, which was just barely large enough to let it pass, the panel snapping shut behind it before Walker could make a move to slip past.

He backed up against the far wall as it took a few lumbering steps towards him, his hands shaking. Was this it, then? Were they going to eviscerate him for his transgression? Was he standing in an execution chamber?

He relaxed somewhat as the Warrior split open, revealing a glint of orange carapace buried beneath a mass of tentacles. It was Tangerine. The slimy protrusions released her from the biological vehicle, and she stepped out, her shell coated in goo. There were no Workers present to lick her clean.

She looked as angry as the Bug's nearly expressionless faces could look. Her blue eyes were narrowed, and her mandibles were waving erratically. Clearly, he was making whatever job had been assigned to her a whole lot harder than it needed to be.

<CHAMBER IS SEALED, YOU CANNOT ESCAPE.>

She reached down and gripped him by the wrist, tugging him forward as he dug his heels into the soil. She pumped out red scents, frustrated with his odd behavior, finally getting sick of his disobedience and lifting him off the ground by the underarms. He kicked and fought, but her arms were longer than the reach of his legs. She turned around and began to walk towards the Warrior's open husk, Walker straining to turn his head to get a look at the thing, as it was behind him now.

As she neared the lobster-like torso, half a dozen of its slimy tendrils reached out towards him, grasping at the air like the appendages of some mindless sea anemone. He redoubled his efforts, trying to break free of her iron grip, but he couldn't get any leverage while she had him suspended in the air.

One of the tapered tentacles brushed the bare skin of his back, and he shivered, feeling the trail of sticky slime that it left in its wake. He felt like he was being fed to some horrible deep sea creature, its gaping maw swarming with feelers that would drag him down to his doom. Tangerine released him into the custody of the tendrils, and they wrapped around his body like sinuous ropes as they pulled him inside the Warrior, tightening around his limbs and his torso with their powerful muscles.

They were wet, coated in slippery mucous, and so their grip came from their tightness rather than their texture. Perhaps that method worked better for securing a Pilot's smooth carapace, but it felt disgusting against his skin, like they were giant slugs or tongues. At least they were warm, clearly alive as the tubes of muscle pulled him snug against the inner wall of the Warrior.

Its spongy flesh pressed against him from behind, soaking his underwear with slime, its exposed innards shifting and pulsating. He yelped as he felt one of the tethers press against the small of his back, probing for a plug with what felt like a tiny mouth, as if it was a lamprey trying to find a spot to latch onto. Three more followed suit, running up and down his spine as they searched for a way to connect. It tickled, and he squirmed, but the tentacles tightened their grip to keep him still in response. They seemed to be able to detect his spine, attracted to the neurological activity perhaps, or maybe the electricity produced by his nerves. They could find no way to hook in, however, and they eventually gave up their fruitless probing.

Tangerine seemed annoyed, and she stepped closer, leaning into the Warrior's open abdomen and sliding her long fingers behind his back. She traced his vertebrae, her touch made slick by the presence of the mucous, then loosed a cloud of irritated pheromones.

"I'm not a pilot," he grumbled, one of the tentacles tightening around his neck. "And could you tell this thing that mammals need lungs to breathe? It's getting a little tight in he-"

His complaint was choked off as the slimy muscle that had curled around his throat flexed, and he shut his mouth, concentrating on breathing instead.

The size of the Warrior put Tangerine at about head height to him, her face an inch from his as she lingered there. Now that she was closer to him and they were away from the myriad scents that had clouded the air in the hanger, she could smell him more easily. Something had piqued her interest, that much was clear as her blue eyes played over his bound body and her hard mandibles clicked curiously. Was she perhaps smelling the residue of his night with the Repletes? There had been no Workers to clean him up after the fact and so he likely still smelled of their honey and...other fluids.

He was wrapped in a cocoon of tentacles, nothing but his head open to the air as his limbs and torso were buried in slimy flesh. She seemed to have pheromonal control over her Warrior, not dissimilar to voice commands, but with scent instead of speech. She gave a command that Walker was not yet experienced enough to interpret and a few of the tendrils pulled away to exposed his chest and belly. There was a thick one still curled around his waist to hold him in place, and another wrapped around his neck to keep him from squirming loose. His limbs were held tight, too short to really fit into the holes that led to the arms and legs of the biomechanical vehicle, and so the Warrior had him firmly shackled with its appendages instead.

She ran her long fingers from his chest to his belly, testing the firmness of his muscles, fascinated by his alien physiology. Where the Bugs had hard exoskeletons, he had smooth skin and a layer of soft fat, with firm muscle beneath. Tangerine liked the texture, and his scent was changing the hue of her emotions from an angry and frustrated red towards a more covetous pink.

<WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING? THERE IS HONEY ON YOUR...BODY...>

She pressed closer than Walker would have liked, her mandibles brushing his cheek as she examined his scent, a tongue as long and as flexible as those of the other castes leaving her mouth to taste his skin. Her demeanor had changed, and suddenly he felt more vulnerable than he had before.

She moved down, following a scent, and planted a hand on his stomach. His muscles flexed beneath her palm in response, flinching away from her touch, and she dragged her smooth tongue across his chest. The salt from the sweat that caked his body after his mad dash for freedom, the residue of the Replete's honey from the night before, there was so much that might tempt the inquisitive Pilot.

"You're...going a little off-course there," he said as her slippery tongue crept down towards his navel. "I thought you were all business?"

She didn't respond, of course, likely didn't even have ears. If she could sense anything at all, it would only register as vibrations to her. Her warm tongue lashed across his belly, skirting the waistband of his shorts, and he felt a pleasant tremor flow through his body. He wanted to push her away but his arms were bound, his vulnerable position making him hypersensitive to her touch.