Queen of Jarilo

<YOU ARE KNOWLEDGEABLE IN THESE MATTERS?>

"More than most."

<THEN TELL ME, ALIEN. WHAT ARE YOU?>

"What do you mean?" Walker shot back, confused. "You know what I am. I'm a human, of the UNN. Our species are at war, this can't be news to you."

<YOU MISUNDERSTAND. TELL ME WHAT YOU ARE.>

What was she asking? Did she want his rank and serial number?

"My name is Walker, my rank is Sergeant. I'm a scout sniper of the Marine Corps, currently serving under Captain Stavros of the Thermopylae."

<SCOUT SNIPER? ELABORATE.>

"I serve a similar function to your winged Drones. My job is to locate the enemy and report on their positions and numbers, collect intelligence. Sometimes my job involves fighting too."

<I WENT TO SOME LENGTHS TO DETERMINE YOUR CASTE, SCOUT SNIPER. YOU ARE NOT A WORKER, YOU ARE NOT A REPLETE, YOU ARE NOT A PILOT. I WOULD NOT HAVE ANTICIPATED THAT YOU WERE A MALE, BUT I EVENTUALLY DEDUCED AS MUCH.>

Male? She must mean the winged Drones. Males seemed exceedingly rare in the hive, he had not encountered any thus far, only those that had been sent out into the field where they were similarly scarce in comparison to the larger numbers of females.

"Why does that surprise you?"

<MALES ARE PRECIOUS, THEY CARRY THE SEED. IS THIS UNKNOWN TO YOU?>

"My species reproduces quite differently to yours. Males have no more value than females."

The Queen released a pheromone, compelling a Drone to leave its post and walk before her. Walker recognized the shell on its back that protected its wings, this was a male. Were all of her guards male? It would make sense, they could both defend her from incursions into the hive, and they would always be on hand to provide her with fresh sperm.

<YOU SPEAK OF RANK. I HAVE SEEN THIS MENTIONED IN YOUR COMMUNICATIONS, AN HONORIFIC. WHAT IS YOUR PLACE IN THIS HIERARCHY?>

"Fairly high. High enough to parlay, if that's what you're after."

<WHAT IS PARLEY?>

"I can negotiate, make deals. I assume that's the only reason that I'm still alive?"

<THEN...YOU DO NOT KNOW WHY YOU WERE BROUGHT HERE?>

She seemed unpleasantly surprised, as if there was something important that he had missed.

"I don't know why you kidnapped me, no. Your kind has never taken captives before. You only kill," he spat, making no effort to disguise his contempt.

<YOU HAVE TOURED MY HIVE, DOES IT PLEASE YOU? WILL IT BE OF USE?>

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he complained, becoming frustrated. "What do you mean, will it be of use?"

<I AM TROUBLED, SCOUT SNIPER. DOES YOUR HIVE NOT ACCEPT OUR SURRENDER?>

Walker's eyes widened, his heart seeming to stop in his chest.

"S-Surrender? You're surrendering? I don't understand."

If it was true, it could mean the end of the war on Jarilo, but no hive had ever surrendered before. The Bugs were practically mindless, fighting to the death in all cases regardless of the odds. That was one of the reasons that capturing live specimens for study had proven to be so difficult. The insects were selfless and driven, dying for their cause without any hesitation. Why would they surrender now, when they had seemingly pushed the UNN forces on Jarilo into a corner? Had the war on the surface been going far worse since Walker's imprisonment? It didn't seem likely.

<WHEN ONE HIVE DEFEATS ANOTHER, THE VICTOR ABSORBS THE LOSER. DOES THIS NOT RESULT IN A STRENGTHENING OF BOTH COLONIES?>

"Wait, wait," Walker said as he tried to get his head around these new revelations. "You're implying that Bugs fight other Bugs? Why?"

<THERE IS CONFLICT BETWEEN ALL HIVES.>

Walker wanted to protest, to demand to know the reason behind such insanity, but then he remembered the early history of humanity. There had been countless wars between countries and factions, even wars between colonies in the early days of the expansion into space. It was not until they had encountered a common enemy that the human race had unified under one flag. Even today, some of those alliances were shaky. It was but a few months ago that he had fought to recapture a rebel colony on Hades.

"Why is there conflict? Are you not united as a species?"

<TERRITORY IS FINITE, SCOUT SNIPER. YOU KNOW THIS AS WELL AS I, OR YOUR HIVE SHIPS WOULD NOT BE IN ORBIT OVER MY DOMAIN. WHEN A QUEEN IS BIRTHED, SHE MUST LEAVE TO START A NEW COLONY. SHE MUST TAKE HER FIRST BROOD OF WORKERS, BUILD A HIVE SHIP, AND THEN LEAVE FOR A NEW PLANET. TWO HIVES CANNOT SHARE A WORLD.>

Like many ant species on Earth, the new Queens had to leave the hive of their birth and found their own colony, a nuptial flight. As a spacefaring species, that took the form of leaving the planet itself and crossing the interstellar void in search of a new home.

No wonder the Coalition and the Betelgeusians were at odds, their very method of reproduction created intense competition for fertile worlds. The Admirals had been laboring under the misapprehension that the Bugs were a unified threat, a ruthless empire that was encroaching on Coalition space. Instead, they were fighting each other for living space as much as they were fighting the rest of the Galaxy. It was an endless civil war that spanned across dozens, perhaps hundreds of star systems. This information could turn the tide of the war in the UNN's favor.

"And why are you surrendering? What does surrender entail?"

<YOU DESTROYED MY HIVE SHIPS, WITHOUT THEM OUR NUMBERS AND SUPPLIES ARE DWINDLING. WE LACK THE NECESSARY RESOURCES TO MAINTAIN OUR COLONY. I CANNOT PRODUCE SOLDIERS FAST ENOUGH, MY REPLETES CANNOT HARVEST ENOUGH BIOMASS TO FEED THE HIVE, AND EACH ATTACK DIMINISHES MY ARMY WHETHER IT IS SUCCESSFUL OR IT IS REPELLED.>

Jesus, if this was a Bug hive at a fraction of its potential strength, it was no wonder that the war had been dragging on for so long. He steeled himself, trying not to sound as if this was a revelation to him. The last thing he wanted was to make the Queen think that her position was less precarious than she thought it to be.

"You can't sustain your numbers, can't hold your position on Jarilo? So what exactly are you offering?"

<WHEN ONE HIVE FINDS ITSELF ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION, ITS QUEEN MAY PROPOSE A MERGER. IF YOUR QUEEN DEEMS THAT WE HAVE FOUGHT WELL, AND THAT OUR GENETIC MATERIAL WILL BE OF VALUE TO HER BROOD, THEN WE WILL SUBMIT, AND MY CHILDREN WILL FOLLOW HER. THIS IS SELDOM DONE, MORE OFTEN THAN NOT THE VICTOR DEEMS THE VANQUISHED HIVE UNWORTHY AND EXTERMINATES THEIR BLOODLINE. YOU ARE UNUSUAL HOWEVER, ALIEN. I HAVE HOPE THAT MY PEOPLE MIGHT SURVIVE.>

Walker couldn't believe his ears, or rather his nose. To him, it sounded as if the Queen was making a bid to join the Coalition. She hadn't used those words exactly, and some of the meaning had no doubt been lost in translation, but that was essentially what she was asking of him.

<AND SO I REPEAT MY INQUIRY. WILL MY HIVE BE OF USE TO YOU?>

"I am certain that my superiors will accept your surrender."

She loosed a relieved pheromone, as if she was exhaling a satisfied sigh.

<THIS CONSOLES ME, SCOUT SNIPER. YOUR HIVE IS STRANGE, AND I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW A MALE CAN SPEAK ON BEHALF OF HIS QUEEN, BUT I AM PLEASED. WHAT'S MORE, YOU ARE ALREADY HERE, AND WE CAN BEGIN THE PROCESS IMMEDIATELY.>

"Process?" Walked asked, confused. "What process?"

<YOU ARE A MALE OF YOUR HIVE, YOU CARRY THE SEED. MATE WITH ME, AND OUR OFFSPRING WILL CARRY YOUR GENETIC MARKER. MY BROOD WILL BECOME YOUR BROOD, WE WILL BE KIN.>

"Wait, wait. Mate with you? As in reproduce?" Walker protested, waving his arms dismissively. "You're not going to create like...half-human, half-insect hybrids are you?"

He wasn't even sure if such a thing was possible, but their genetic engineering technology was far more advanced than anything in Coalition space. For all he knew, if he gave her his seed she could start popping out malformed monsters.

<THAT WOULD BE...INEFFICIENT. THE CASTES HAVE BEEN TAILORED BOTH THROUGH EVOLUTION AND GENETIC ENGINEERING IN ORDER TO PRODUCE THE OPTIMAL FORM FOR THEIR ASSIGNED ROLE. TO MODIFY THEM WOULD REDUCE THEIR EFFECTIVENESS.>

"So what will be gained by our...mating?"

<I WILL MAKE A MINOR EDIT TO THE GENETIC CODE OF MY FUTURE OFFSPRING. THEY WILL CARRY A GENETIC MARKER, CHOSEN FROM YOUR GENOME, THAT WILL IDENTIFY THEM AS KIN.>

"And how do I..?"

<I HAVE WATCHED YOU THROUGH MY MANY EYES. I HAVE SEEN YOU CONSORT WITH MY BROOD. I MIGHT HAVE TAKEN YOU FOR A USURPER, HAD YOUR SCENT NOT BETRAYED THAT YOU WERE GENETICALLY INCOMPATIBLE. YOU HAVE ALREADY ENGAGED IN FRUITLESS MATING, SCOUT SNIPER. OUR JOINING WILL BEAR FRUIT.>

His face reddened a little, she had been watching him the whole time? He thought about defending himself, protesting that his behavior was mostly a result of the organ that they had grafted to him, but he held his tongue. These were aliens, who knew what moral standards they might uphold, if any?

He didn't see any consoles in the Queen's chamber, so how did she use those gelatinous spy cameras? He glanced up at the massive, armored cable that suspended her from the ceiling and wondered if her nervous system spanned throughout the hive. Was that the secret to their technology? Was the Queen herself the supercomputer at the center of this subterranean world?

Her words also shed more light on why the Bugs in the hive were so damned promiscuous. The Queen seemed to keep all of the males confined to this area of the colony, no doubt to supply her with sperm as necessary. At least when they weren't out scouting, which seemed to be more a tactic of desperation than one that would be employed under normal circumstances, as the UNN had never encountered them prior to the war on Jarilo. It seemed that all of the castes were capable of reproduction if it became necessary for the survival of the colony. Why had that not happened on Jarilo? Perhaps because, as the Queen had stated, they were not able to harvest enough food to feed everyone. Solving one problem would only have exacerbated the other.

"Okay," he said, steeling himself. "I'll do it."

He'd better get a damned medal for this...

***

"You ever fired one of those things?" Kaz asked, Korza kneeling beside her with his new toy braced against one of the computer consoles. The morning was nearing, and there was a chill in the air. It was a far cry from their native desert climate, and they had edged closer together for warmth.

"No. But I've always wanted to," he replied, keeping his yellow eyes fixed on the dark forest beyond the walls of the compound.

"I saw one kill a Warrior back at Charlie, that was one hell of a battle."

"You'll have to tell me about it over a drink when we get back to the station," Korza replied.

They were talking as equals, both were Alphas of their own squads, and there was no need to fight for dominance right now. Leave two Borealans alone, and it would happen eventually, but right now they had more pressing concerns. It was oddly refreshing, in some ways it reminded her of talking with Walker.

Kaz was quite taken with the Elysian, he was large and strong, of high rank. He was of good stock and an accomplished Warrior. Fischer had spoken of him by name, he must have fought in many campaigns. Perhaps she would start a tussle with him when they got back to civilization, she wouldn't mind bearing his kittens. The gestation period for Equatorials was short, and due to the nature of their reproduction, the offspring were often cared for communally. The only real exception was when the noble houses of Borealan society were grooming their heirs and successors.

There was only one thing that Borealans liked as much as fighting, and that was fucking. Courtship usually involved a little of both.

"I got movement," Gorza muttered, one eye closed as he looked through the scope of his rifle. "Two o'clock, over by the treeline."

Kaz and Korza turned their attention to the forest, the light of dawn beginning to creep over the horizon, illuminating the sky in shades of red and orange. Kaz noticed it too, a green shimmer that lurked between two massive trees, watching them. A Bug scout no doubt.

"Where there's one, there are always more," Korza grumbled. "The roaches have probably worked out why their scouting parties weren't coming back. Looks like we're going to have a fight on our hands."

The scout didn't know that it was being watched, and it emerged from the trees, scurrying low to the ground as it closed the distance and crouched out of view behind the perimeter wall. It appeared again as it poked its head through the empty frame where the metal doors had once been, sneaking inside the compound and slipping between two prefabs.

"It doesn't know we're here," Gorza muttered, keeping his railgun trained on it.

"This one is behaving differently," Korza added, "the rest came in small groups and wandered about the base. This one is alone, and he's being far more cautious."

"When they die, they release stress pheromones," Kaz said as she kept her head low so as not to be seen. "It will be drawn to the bodies, and when we kill it, the rest will be alerted."

The Colonel shuffled closer, crouching behind one of the consoles nearby to stay out of sight.

"You have permission to fire whenever you deem it necessary," he said. "We can't avoid a fight here. The extraction is going to be hotter than hell if your scouts ever make it back to Charlie and call in a bird, Lance Corporal."

"They'll make it sir, I have faith in them. We just need to hold out until evac arrives."

"There's a flyer to our ten o'clock, on the ruins of one of the guard towers," one of the shock troopers announced. Kaz aimed her rifle in that direction, seeing the blue-shelled creature clinging to the slagged supports like some kind of multi-limbed monkey. Its gossamer wings twitched as its head snapped this way and that, with all the grace and fluidity of a clockwork toy. Another one of them appeared on top of the far wall, a plasma rifle clutched in its claw-like fingers as it scanned the compound for movement.

"This situation isn't going to get any better if we try to wait them out," Korza grumbled. "They'll just keep coming. If you get a clean shot, take it. We might as well get this party started."

"My scouts will be arriving at Charlie soon, the sun is rising," Kaz said as she braced her rifle against her shoulder. "We have to hope that the Thermopylae has a dropship fueled and ready to go, a couple of Penguins wouldn't hurt either."

Gorza was the first to fire, the electromagnetic crack of his rifle echoing in the control room, and the Bug that had been climbing on the melted guard tower supports exploded into a cloud of shattered shell fragments. Its limp body fell to the metal grates below, and scarcely a moment after its corpse had hit the ground, two more shots rang out. The remaining Betelgeusian scouts dropped, trails of smoke rising from the holes in their chests as they slumped over, like puppets whose strings had just been cut.

"Clean shots," Korza muttered, "that'll get their attention."

Almost before he had finished his sentence, there was a burst of gunfire from the forest, bolts of glowing plasma shooting from the branches of the trees and splashing against the control tower. Everyone ducked in unison, the heat of the ionized gas singing their hair. A couple of shots made it through the shattered windows, the stench of ozone filling the control room as they impacted the back wall.

"Buggers are in the trees again," one of the scouts snapped, rising for a scant moment to pump a couple of slugs into the tree branches. He was followed by a chorus of gunfire, shock troopers and scouts alike hammering the fir trees with railgun fire. The hypersonic projectiles shattered wood and felled branches, a few of the more unlucky Bugs dropping to the ground as their fellows returned fire.

"They know where we are now," Korza snarled over the din, "there's only one way into the compound if they want to get to us! Focus your fire on the main doors, kill anything that dares show itself. The bottleneck and our elevated firing position gives us an advantage. Call out if you run low on ammo, we raided the armory before the cavalry arrived and there's plenty to go around."

The shock trooper to Kaz's left called out as he slotted a new magazine into his XMR.

"Here they come!"

The forest seemed to spring to life, a hundred Betelgeusians flooding out from between the trunks of the giant trees in a swarm of technicolor carapaces, the rising sun to their backs as its light reflected on their iridescent armor. They were throwing caution to the wind, charging across open ground in an attempt to reach the foot of the wall, where they would be shielded from incoming rounds.

The winged Drones that were hiding in the canopy peppered the tower with plasma bolts in an attempt to cover their comrades, trying to pin the Borealans with suppressing fire. Their shots were random, inaccurate, the green plasma flashing as it struck the tower harmlessly.

The Borealans took their chances, bracing their long rifles on the metal frames of the smashed windows, broken glass crunching underfoot as they rose from cover to take pot shots. Half a dozen Drones stumbled and fell, trampled underfoot by their brethren, but it was merely a drop in a very angry ocean of charging Bugs.

Their railgun fire almost sounded like music, percussive and rhythmic as they unloaded their weapons at the enemy, the magnetic rings that lined their barrels glowing with heat. Every so often someone would duck behind cover, leaning with their back to the wall or hiding behind a console as they reloaded.

The Krell favored rapid-fire weapons, light machine guns that would mow down dozens of enemies with horribly inaccurate and wasteful fire. Humans seemed to like a mix of assault rifles and longer range weapons, while the Borealans universally favored their single-shot rifles. They configured their XMRs to approximate the traditional powder weapons that were used in hunting and warfare back on the homeworld, making them large and heavy, their extreme length allowing for the inclusion of more magnetic coils for higher velocity and harder hitting shots. They were less useful in scenarios like this, but what they lacked in rate of fire they made up for in accuracy. Many of the Borealans had been training with such weapons from the moment that they had grown strong enough to lift one.

One of the shock troopers was not armed with an XMR however, and Kaz glanced to her right to watch him take careful aim with a short, stubby weapon. It was small, too small to be comfortable for a Borealan. It must have been made for human use. There was a dull thud as it fired, a large, round cylinder rotating like a revolver as it slotted a new round into place.

There was an explosion near the wall, a burst of orange flame spouting from the ground before it kicked up a cloud of dirt and debris, sending Bugs scattering like bowling pins.

"Where'd you get a forty-millimeter grenade launcher?" Kaz asked, Korza grinning widely.

"Told you we raided the armory."

There was another thud as the shock trooper fired his grenade launcher, the projectile landing dead center in the doorway to the compound, kicking up a cloud of debris and knocking back the Bugs who had been attempting to breach.

"Keep the pressure on them!" Kaz shouted, "hold the line!"

Lopez crawled over to one of the windows, keeping his head low, then drew a sidearm from a leather holster on his belt. It was an XMH, a modular handgun of a similar design philosophy to the larger XMR rifles. They had only recently been introduced, and they had yet to make it into the hands of most of the UNN forces.