Worlds Apart Pt. 02

Jamie could indeed see the mechanical aspects of the thing now that they had been pointed out to him. Those eyes were indeed visors, and the glow of electronics was visible in places, melded with the organic flesh and carapace.

"The Jarilans have adapted their Warriors to suit their new lifestyle," Sousa continued. "We call these ones Cultivators. I've also seen them used as forklifts and as excavators, basically any role that heavy machinery would usually fill. It sure beats having to land backhoes down here, I'll tell you that."

"What's it doing?" Liz asked, watching the thing warily.

"Planting potato seedlings," Sousa replied. "As it turns out, the Jarries are pretty good at farming."

He led them on, Jamie and Liz staring at the odd sight until the creature was out of view behind the trees. They soon arrived at another plot of land that had been cleared and leveled out, this one surrounded by a sturdy wire fence. Inside were several small structures, Jamie quickly realizing that they were chicken coops. There were at least a couple of hundred of the birds milling about inside, scratching at the dirt with their claws, the nearest ones raising their heads to peer at the newcomers.

"It's a chicken farm," Liz said, leaning over the fence. It was at about chest-height to her, large as far as chicken fences went.

"They're a great source of meat and eggs," Sousa explained. "They don't need grass, either, we can feed them grains. That's been an issue for livestock. We're not sure how we're going to approach that situation yet. Cows and sheep need a lot of space, they need to graze, and we can't introduce grass to Jarilo without decimating the local ecosystem."

"How have you been clearing away the trees?" Liz wondered, glancing up at the towering trunks that surrounded them. "Some of these have to weigh tens of thousands of pounds."

"The Jarilans take care of it," Sousa replied. "We were doing it with railguns at first, having the carrier fire on the forest from orbit, but it was a little...disruptive to the local wildlife. The Jarilans come in, fell the trees, and level out the ground so we can use it. I'm not sure what they're doing with all the timber. They break up the logs and take them away."

"They break them up?" Liz repeated in disbelief. "How the hell do you break up a tree that large?"

"Imagine a swarm of ants cutting up a hotdog and carrying the pieces back to their nest," Sousa replied. "It's something like that. When that's done, they bring in their Workers. Those guys are really showing us up. They can dig in a ditch in the time it would take a team of workmen to hand out the shovels."

"There's...something in that tree," Liz added, pointing with a clawed finger.

Jamie followed her gaze, spying a strange glint in the branches a good hundred feet above. It was another Drone, just like the ones he had seen on the station in orbit. It was crouched in the canopy, some kind of long rifle clutched in its four arms. The weapon looked like it was molded from orange putty, uneven and organic in appearance, exposed metal catching the sunlight in places. A green glow emanated from some kind of canister just behind the barrel, and it had two forward grips, adapted for use by its four-armed wielder.

The branches swayed as the Drone moved, the leaves rustling, the Bug dropping from its perch. Two pairs of gossamer wings unfurled from protective sheaths on its back, buzzing to life, slowing the thing's fall. Like a fairy from a children's story, it landed gracefully on the forest floor outside the fence, its wings retracting as it started to make its way towards them.

This was the first one that Jamie had seen up-close, his eyes playing across its shimmering, blue carapace. He could see now that it had three-fingered hands and two toes on each foot. Its legs were digitigrade, not unlike Liz's. It was far smaller than the Borealan, however, barely scraping five feet if one didn't include the ornate horn that rose from its forehead. Its limbs were comparatively thin, exposed flesh with a yellow-green hue visible between the joints in its colorful carapace, but there was a spring to its step that suggested it might be far stronger than it appeared.

Its iridescent shell made it look like it was wearing a suit of armor, but it was hard to tell if that was just its natural exoskeleton. The way that its body shone as it moved was oddly beautiful, picking out hues of green in the sapphire blue.

Around its neck was a soft ruff of fluffy, white fur, like what might be found on a moth. It extended a short way down the chest and shoulders, making it look a little like the creature was wearing a fur collar. Much like its carapace, this fine fur sparkled in the sunlight, as though it were made up of thousands of tiny strands of optical cable. The same fluff was present in other places, too, breaking up the rigid chitin. There was some around its wrists and ankles, as though protecting the joints. As it neared, Jamie noted that its wings weren't entirely stowed, protruding from their sheaths a little, kind of like tailcoats. They were patterned with shining veins that made them look like shattered glass.

Its face was perhaps the strangest element of its appearance. Gone were the compound visors and the insect mandibles that Jamie was familiar with. In their place were large, expressive eyes that were surprisingly mammalian, the sclera the same greenish hue as its flesh. Its mouthparts were arranged to resemble lips, though Jamie could see the joins in the carapace where they would open up. It was just like the ambassador that he had seen on the newscast, a facsimile, like a china doll.

Liz bristled at the sight of the weapon, her ears flattening against her head, her claws flexing as she stepped between it and Jamie. The alien wasn't pointing it in their direction, however. The rifle was held in its lower pair of hands, aimed at the ground, while it raised one of its upper hands in a friendly greeting.

"Davi," it said in a surprisingly human voice, distinctly male to Jamie's ear. Its mouth moved as it spoke, but not quite enough to keep up, the effect a little uncanny. "I see we have some new visitors. Do I need to be worried about the big one?"

"It's alright," Sousa said, gesturing for calm. "That gun isn't for us, it's for the Knife-Tooths that have been bothering our chickens. This is Bluejay, he's been guarding the coops."

"The settlers mostly just call me Jay," the Bug replied, the interlocking plates that made up his face contorting into a rather convincing smile. "We keep telling Walker that he's going to have to start numbering us when he runs out of names, but he doesn't listen."

Jamie and Liz didn't know how to respond, but the Bug was in good humor. This likely wasn't the first time he had gotten such a reaction.

"They just arrived this morning," Sousa explained. "I'm giving them the tour."

"Then I doubt I'm the weirdest thing you'll see today," the Bug chuckled, Jamie still blown away by how human his mannerisms were.

"As you can see," Sousa continued, gesturing to Bluejay. "It's not only the Warriors that are being adapted to settlement life. The Jarilans are modifying their own DNA, their own behavior, to better integrate themselves into the society that we're building here."

"I'm a rehabilitated Bug," Bluejay joked.

"You can speak," Jamie began, not sure whether he should be addressing Bluejay or Sousa. "Just like the ambassador we saw on the newscast."

Liz couldn't take her eyes off the creature, her brow furrowing as she examined him.

"Why?" she asked. "What makes the Jarilans so different from the Betelgeusians?"

"The UNN and the hive fleet arrived on Jarilo within a very short time span of one another," Sousa began, Bluejay crossing his upper pair of arms as he listened. "The Navy was able to deny the Betelgeusian troops on the surface the resources that they would usually have leveraged to found their colony by destroying two of their three hive ships in orbit, essentially crippling them before the war had begun in earnest."

"The hive found itself stranded on the surface, low on supplies," Bluejay added.

"They were still able to overrun one of the forward bases that the UNN had set up to contain them inside the valley," Sousa continued. "Even considering their situation, the hive was a serious threat. The Betelgeusians had always fought to the bitter end up until that point, regardless of the odds, but putting them into such a unique situation provoked a change in their behavior. As it turned out, when two competing hives vie for dominance over a planet, the loser may allow itself to be subsumed by the victor if defeat is inevitable. In doing so, their genetic information lives on, assuming that they prove valuable."

"Then, they were inducted?" Liz asked, her ears pricking up. "Like Borealans into a pack?"

"The concept is not dissimilar," Sousa replied with a nod. "As far as we can ascertain, the hive gives itself over to the victor completely. They share their genetic blueprints, and the Queen will start to produce new offspring based on the desires of her conquering counterpart, if she is allowed to survive at all."

"Kinda glad it was the Coalition that beat us," Bluejay added. "We're Jarilans now, we don't see ourselves as being separate from the humans. Even before we became official members, you were already a part of us. Walker saw to that."

"Who is this Walker you keep mentioning?" Jamie asked.

"He's the reason we're here," Bluejay explained. "Calling him our father isn't exactly accurate, but there's no other word for it in your spoken language. The Queen brought him into our hive during the war in an attempt to find a way to communicate her desire to surrender. In the end, he provided her with his genetic material, uniting our two peoples. From that day, we were one, even if it took the humans a little longer to warm up to the idea."

"Genetic material?" Liz asked, glancing between Sousa and the Bug. "Then, this isn't just a form of mimicry? The mammalian features, the human mannerisms, the human pheromones that are woven into your scent. You're...you're a hybrid."

"I suppose that's an apt way to put it," Bluejay replied. "The Queen examined Walker's genome, and she selected traits that she thought would better allow us to integrate into our new hive. That being the Coalition," he added, nodding to Jamie. "We're no longer bred for war, but for cooperation. If we're going to survive, we have to prove our worth, and we have a lot of bad rep to make up for."

"Then, it really is possible," Liz whispered. Bluejay cocked his head at her, watching in alarm as she turned to Jamie, lifting him into the air like a doll. "We were right!" she exclaimed, squeezing the breath out of her surprised partner with a tight hug. "I knew it! I knew there was a way!"

"What's with these two?" Bluejay asked, glancing over at Sousa. The scientist was grinning ear to ear.

"They came here to have a baby," he explained, the Bug's eyes widening. "You just gave them the best news they've had in months."

"Looks like you came to the right place, then," Bluejay added as he watched them celebrate.

"This doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to work," Sousa added, "just that we can try."

"A chance is the best we had hoped for," Liz replied, setting Jamie back down. "This is incredible. As soon as I saw the ambassador on that newscast, I knew that something was up. How extensive is the hybridization?" she asked, her tone becoming more serious again. "Can we talk percentages?"

"We're still determining that," Sousa replied. "We can't have the Jarilans just tell us because we don't properly understand their methodology yet. Their grasp of genetics is so far ahead of our own, and their techniques are...well...alien. The Queen seems to perform all of the modifications herself through some natural, internal mechanism. Or at least, as natural as a product of genetic engineering can be. We have no idea whether the Queen is a product of extremely high selective pressure, potentially millions of years of evolution, or if she is herself the result of untold eons of genetic tinkering."

"Don't they know their own history?" Jamie asked.

"We don't know where we came from," Bluejay replied, shrugging with his upper pair of arms. "The species from which we originated reproduces through a kind of interstellar nuptial flight. A new Queen is born, who then builds a fleet of her own, and leaves to find a new planet to colonize. They have no connection to their ancestors, no cultural link, no means of communicating with other hives. Depending on how long this process has been going on, the original homeworld could be clear across the Galaxy."

"If we could identify common genetic markers between hives, perhaps we could trace the Betelgeusians back to their source," Sousa added. "I doubt such a thing would be possible in our lifetimes, however. Not when there are potentially hundreds of thousands of hives, all of whom would prefer to eat us rather than have a conversation about genealogy."

"How does the process work?" Liz asked, so full of enthusiasm now that her tail was waving behind her. "How could the Queen be conscious of a process that's happening at a molecular level?"

"Let's walk and talk," Sousa said, starting to lead them back towards the path. "There's a lot left to show you. You'll have a much clearer picture of our situation by the end of the day, I promise."

"I'll tag along," Bluejay said, passing his rifle to his upper pair of arms. "I was going to patrol the perimeter soon anyway. There's a Knife-Tooth that's been sniffing around the last couple of days, testing the water, seeing if he can find a break in the fence. You have to watch out for those things, they haven't learned to fear the scent of humans yet."

They made their way back into the dense trees, following the muddy path as it weaved between the wide trunks. Sousa was guiding them down a gentle slope, likely deeper into the valley, where he had mentioned the hive was located. Jamie wondered if they would actually get to see it, if they would be allowed inside the underground tunnels.

"Taking biopsies of the Queen is a bad idea," Sousa said, resuming their previous conversation. "For the moment, we can only make observations and speculate about how she's able to edit genes with such finesse. Their equivalent of our helicase enzymes, the molecular machines responsible for replicating DNA, seem able to communicate with her nervous system through some chemical means. The Queen is aware of the nucleotides on the DNA strand that she's examining, almost as though she can taste them, and she has the mental fortitude to map them out. Imagine being able to memorize a password comprised of a hundred million characters, and you may have some idea of how much information she can process. Queens are quite incredible," he added, Bluejay nodding along in approval. "Did you know that they even perform superlight calculations in their heads prior to a jump?"

"She'd better be smart," Bluejay added, his eyes scanning the shadows between the towering trunks as he strode along beside them. "Her brain probably weighs about as much as you do."

"So, we just have to provide DNA samples to the Queen?" Liz asked.

"Not exactly," Sousa replied. "The UAS wants to be more involved in this process. We want to be able to observe so that we can learn more about Jarilan gene-editing, and we need more refined control over the genetic makeup of the baby. The Queen doesn't exactly have a strong grasp of our social and cultural needs, and we'd have a hell of a time trying to explain to her why a trait that she deems to be beneficial would actually be detrimental. There are also legal concerns, as genetic augmentation that isn't medically necessary is prohibited by the Yellow Sea treaty."

"Wasn't that treaty penned to prevent militaries from turning their soldiers into science experiments?" Liz scoffed. "I don't see how that would apply to a baby."

"Well," Sousa continued, pausing to clamber over a large root that protruded from the undergrowth. "Things could get pretty crazy if we started combining alien genomes to create hybrids. Suppose we ended up with a human who had Borealan muscle mass and bone density. What if someone spliced a Krell and a Borealan to create an armored killing machine? These things can't be taken lightly, not if we want to avoid having UN inspectors crawling all over the place."

"If we don't have access to the Queen, then what's the next best thing?" Liz asked. "You said that your people don't have a very detailed understanding of the Betel...sorry, the Jarilans' methods yet."

"Fortunately, we've had four months to plan for your arrival," the scientist replied. "We had already been discussing the possibility of creating a dedicated medical caste with the Queen. The Worker caste, as well as being adept laborers, are surprisingly skilled surgeons. They perform a maintenance role in the hive, repairing both damaged vehicles and injured soldiers. We posited that with some tweaks, they could be modified to serve as doctors, leveraging the innate skill and knowledge of the species. The Queen must remain on Jarilo if the hive is to survive, but they could bring their genetic expertise with them wherever it's needed. We could have one in every hospital."

"And...they're ready?" Jamie asked skeptically. "In only a few months?"

"The Jarilans mature very quickly," Sousa explained.

"That's so weird," Jamie muttered. "Are they just...born to do specific jobs? What if they decide they want to do something else?"

"We like our jobs," Bluejay replied cheerfully. "We're probably designed to," he added with a chuckle. "I can't imagine the uncertainty of not knowing why you were hatched, what your purpose is."

"But what if you discover something you like doing more than guarding chickens?" Jamie insisted, glancing over his shoulder as the insect strode gracefully through the bed of ferns.

"Chicken guard isn't exactly my job description," he replied. "I'm a Winged Drone, my natural role is scouting for danger, protecting the hive. That hive now includes the human settlements. It's an important job, one that I find a great deal of satisfaction in."

"Guess I can't argue with that," Jamie conceded.

"Sorry," Liz said, "I just can't get over how human you are. It's uncanny. I keep expecting to look back and see a little ape."

"Going from communicating exclusively through pheromones to interpreting speech and gestures required a lot of physical changes," Sousa explained. "Vocal cords, a speech center for the brain, that's not enough. Things like recognizing faces, interpreting body language, these aren't things that can just be taught. They all require their own wetware, genes sourced from the human donor and woven into the tapestry that is the Jarilan genome."

As they rounded a stout tree trunk, they came upon a procession of Bugs heading in the opposite direction along the trail. There were maybe twelve of them all walking along in a line, each one a different color from the rest, the shapes of their branching horns just as varied. They were squat compared to Bluejay, maybe four feet tall, their broad shoulders setting them apart from the lithe Drone. Their upper arms were proportionally thicker than Bluejay's, almost long enough to drag along the ground, their fingers widened into shovel-like appendages. Their lower pair were downright dainty in comparison, tucked against their torsos as they walked. They had the same silvery fur around their necks, puffed up in a ruff.

Each of them was carrying a crate in their upper arms, and they looked surprisingly heavy considering the size of the little creatures.