Louis’s hands were a blur, one moment at his sides, and the next they’d taken the royal by its thick jaw. With a superhuman pull, the royal’s head was pulled into the ground. Its elongated body had been stretched to its limit to impose its will on the tiny morsel, and now its size and awkward body shape worked against it. Louis yanked the bug’s head 180˚, nearly breaking its neck as its massive form desperately tried to roll in time. But it was not pinned. They had been bred for tunnel warfare. Being on the ground with a bug was the most dangerous place to be.
The right jab to its face broke teeth and crushed its armored skull. Disoriented and in pain, its body began to whip and twist. A knee on its long neck kept it in place and Louis placed the flechette cannon over its face, pressing down hard with the barrel. “Tell the queen this stops when I get an audience.” Fluid squirted messily up his arms and the royal croaked incoherently. “Until then.” Louis squeezed the trigger and the bang was muffled as the cannon went off inside its head. Hardened armor prevented the flechettes from exiting, forcing them to ricochet through its neck before finding a weak point to exit. A halo of snotty red and tan marked the grave of the royal.
The ten bugs sagged in shock, their link to the hive temporarily disrupted by the death of the royal. Louis snapped the flechette cannon up, firing wave after wave of metal as he spun around. The shots were so tightly packed that each bug shared a shot between them. Some fell off the walls, peppered to bits while others found themselves nailed into the rock. Only two died before the link reestablished and they charged. That was fast. There must be another royal or a minder nearby. Louis killed three more before they were on him. He cracked the skull of the sixth with the weapon and blasted the seventh before leaping backward. They were almost as fast as him as they slithered across the floor. The eighth tried to bite him and got the barrel instead, its insides spraying the remaining three. The ninth took a right backhand hard enough to break its carapace and the tenth received a kick in the gut.
It was a mistake. He’d meant to launch the creature away, but kicking a bug is like trying to kick rubber. Last time he’d done this he’d stunned the creature first. This time it was ready for him. Something broke but its many limbs intertwined with his leg, claws trying to dig into his armor. Louis dropped them to the ground and pinned its head before it could bite him. Those teeth would really hurt and were guaranteed to take a couple pounds of meat if they latched on. It took a few hits against the rock before its body gave up and released him. That just left number six, which was having trouble standing. It hissed, but every time it snapped its teeth, it cringed and shook its head, which led to more cringing and head shaking. He’d broken something vital with that hit to the head. Not eager to get closer, Louis reclaimed the cannon and blasted the bug across the room.
Knowing what was coming next, Louis dropped the spent magazine and reloaded the cannon before stepping in front of the tunnel the royal had emerged from. The walls were shaking, hammered by hundreds of legs converging on a single location. The smart thing to do here would be to throw grenades down the tunnel, killing them by the score and trying to collapse the tunnel. But Louis needed to go forward. He listened to the pebbles scatter as if even they were afraid. He raised the flechette cannon and waited as the dust fell.
The first bugs filled the tunnel, taking to every surface to come at him faster. Their queen was smart. She didn’t allow the full swarm into the tunnel, forcing him to use the cannon on only a few. Louis obliged, breaking them against the walls until the weapon ran dry. He reloaded as only a man can after reloading a weapon a thousand times before, firing again before the bugs gained an extra meter of ground. His shots were expertly grouped to maximize damage, but they were finite. The cannon ran dry the second time and instead of reloading, Louis whipped the heavy barrel into the first bug. The remaining two received equally humiliating deaths, killed by the unarmed human.
Their advance had just been the initial tremors. Now the full earthquake arrived as enough bugs to fill the tunnel advanced. They crawled across every surface and even each other. A moving wall of teeth and claws. They didn’t even hinder each other in their unescapable urge to devour him, but propelled each other forward. In the dim light, they could’ve been mistaken for a single enormous creature.
Louis cracked his hands into fists before raising them. Thin levers extended from inside his coat as twin barrels placed themselves opposite his thumbs. The barrels were tiny, not even a centimeter in length. Louis squeezed the triggers and tiny balls of steel erupted as high velocity rounds. With the bugs so tightly packed, he couldn’t miss. Hundreds of bugs crammed into the tunnel and thousands of beads tore through them. The surging worm faltered, some bodies pushing forward as others were pulled back and crushed beneath. Louis kept the pressure on, the wrist mounted weapons whining as their autoloaders fed more and more in.
Then the surge stopped. The bugs retreated under the cover of their dead. The wall to wall bugs sank, pulled out by the fleeing and the dead pushing forward as resistance faded. They still filled most of the tunnel. Louis would have to stoop to walk over their corpses. The smell was the worst damage they’d inflicted. He’d be smelling bug for the next month. Maybe he could spend a day recovering next to a smelter or maybe a reactor to clear his sinuses. Picking up the flechette cannon, he waded in.
His collar chirped and without waiting for confirmation, a female voice began to speak. “Hey, boss?”
“Yes, Maia?”
“I’ll admit I wasn’t paying attention. You spent a couple thousand rounds and now I’m tracking you in the local hive. What did I miss?”
“People here contracted me to extract some of their people after a hive breach.” Louis stepped up the wall of dead, watching carefully where his feet went.
“Uh-huh. Why do we care about the reservation?”
“Maybe I’m feeling altruistic today.”
“That’s as likely as me cooking you steak and tucking you in at night.”
“I really could do with more of that in my life.” Louis paused. He fired in a few different places, making sure the twitching he saw actually meant they were dead.
“Is that the reason? Some voluptuous young thing caught your eye?”
“She’s probably sixty and in a wheelchair.”
“You dirty cradle robber,” laughed Maia.
Louis hit a soft spot and cursed as his leg sank into gore. In order not to get a face full he had to commit his other leg. An unidentified organ deflated like a poorly tied water balloon under his boot, running warm liquid up his leg. “I am not having a good day, Maia.”
“I bet you smell amazing. Just drop yourself in an incinerator on your way back.”
“It’s a little too cold out for streaking.” Louis slogged forward. “Though I might consider it after this.”
A claw hooked his boot and pulled him under. An unknown number of bugs were playing opossum down there. He was less mad about them trying to eat his legs than he was that they’d just slammed his head down into the viscera. The wrist cannons fired indiscriminately into where the bugs must be hiding, shredding them and a dozen dead. When everything was still, Maia continued.
“Everything alright?”
“I am fantastic.”
Louis sat up, something sticky clinging to his hair. It was a miracle there was nothing in his mouth. Out of the tunnel, Louis checked the next cavern. There were three tunnels from here so he chose the most level. The bugs didn’t need their eyes for much because it was almost pitch black in their tunnels. The only light came from a bioluminescent blue moss that grew on the walls. It was enough for eyes, bathing the tunnels in a faded aqua.
“I see that. Why is your hair dark?” She must’ve used one of the many microscopic cameras in his outfit to spy on him.
“Helps the locals.”
“Well, it’s weird. Can you shed it? I doubt bugs are intimidated by blondes.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. Focusing his body to regenerate had abilities beyond closing wounds. The hair on his head began to die and come free. He wiped a hand on a relatively dry spot of his coat and wiped his hair free, taking most of the snot off with it. A fresh head of blonde hair was growing in on fresh pale skin. Louis’s face became puffy as his skin swelled. A few seconds later he wiped his face on his shoulder, removing a few layers of dead skin and all the gore. Under the organic blue light, his skin had the appearance of white marble.
“Much better. Activate sonar, side screen.” A small screen was projected off to his right. The signal wasn’t strong enough to give him a proper map, but it might show him movement. The map it tried to create looked like he was a blue dot in the middle of Swiss cheese. Unknown yellow dots blinked pretty much everywhere. “Maia, is there an estimated population for this local hive?”
“Right because they keep track of that.” Louis shut down the map and kept walking. There wasn’t any sign of secretion or nesting holes, so he was far from the hive center.
“Extrapolate? How much territory do they cover? When was the last time the hive was deployed? How much food do they have access to?”
“Do I look like I did my doctoral thesis on raknath?”
“Well if you’re going to use proper names, give me the subspecies.” Maia snorted. “I know you’re good with numbers and statistics.” He paused, listening. Lots of movement, but quieter. “Please?”
“Ha!” Maia laughed so suddenly it came out as a shriek. “They’re Raknath Terra.”
“Seriously?”
“Earth bugs, subterranean dwellers. Bred for hostile worlds where most species can’t live on the surface. This hive hasn’t been mobilized in decades. Pretty good living space with high probability they’re burrowing into unknown areas. But unless they’re finding a lot of alternative food sources, the hive shouldn’t be bigger than three to five thousand.”
“That makes me feel comfortable.” The sound again. Smaller feet.
“At least half of the population is going to be drones. One queen, probably a royal for every two to four hundred, so estimate fifteen of those? Probably three times as many minders. So let’s say two thousand soldiers and fourteen royals left to go.” There was a short pause. “I suspect you’ll run out of ammunition in another five hundred.”
“That’s assuming they don’t mobilize the drones.”
Louis turned. Speaking of little feet, there were the drones. He jogged back down the passageway to where he’d entered. Much smaller bugs had come out of a higher passageway and were pulling at the soldiers. They had almost no armor, just thin carapaces to protect them from dragging against rock. They crawled on all eights, only using their smaller and more dexterous hands to grab the dead. They carried parts of flesh away, sometimes in teams of two or three to move the much heavier bodies. Drones were efficient little guys who ran almost purely on instinct. The hive needed food and the dead had no use save for flesh. Once the bodies were gone, he wouldn’t be surprised if the drones were lapping up the floor like a dog. Every calorie counted.
They paid Louis no mind as he followed them up the tunnel. He was a predator and they did not engage with predators. They gave him a small berth, but as long as he didn’t attack them, they wouldn’t change course. He’d follow them back into the hive proper.
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“Wait,” said Maia in his ear. She at least understood not to speak out loud when the bugs were around. “Up ahead on the left wall.” He scanned it and shook his head when he didn’t see anything. A few of the drones slowed and looked at him before resuming their tasks. “That’s not rock.” One of the projectors in his coat put a small blue dot on the wall. Louis stepped closer, crossing the drones. She was right.
Fast as he could, he drove his fist into the fake wall. Carapace broke and innards leaked out the side as a bug screeched and threw itself out. He’d never seen one like this before. It was about the size of a fat drone with a long, wide back that blended with the rock. Its head was massive for its body, equaling its torso, with tiny legs. It was an impressive cockroach.
“The hell is this?”
“It’s a minder.”
“Are you sure?” Projections came up in answer to his question. Three pictures of known minders and their subtypes. They all had gigantic heads and smaller legs. “Close enough I guess.”
“And that means the queen knows exactly where you are.” Louis sighed. Bigger feet coming. “Before you get eaten and I have to find a new best friend, why are you really down here? They can’t have that much money and I know you don’t care about the reservation.”
“They know where Ravi is.”
Maia went silent. Louis looked up and down the wide tunnel, wondering if they’d come from a single direction or both. Probably both. He considered the drones scuttling around him. They were brainless things that would never pose a challenge to him, even if they were driven to violence. He couldn’t even hate them. They were too simple to hate. Raising the flechette cannon, he fired ten shots into the drones in front of him. Turning as he reloaded, he sprayed another ten shots down the way he’d come. The drones died in droves, and turned into speedbumps against their brethren. Their lives would mean a few extra seconds for him.
“I thought Ravi was dead,” said Maia finally.
“Me too. Eighty years ago, over Tannis.”
“What makes you think he’s still alive? Do they have proof?”
“Just an old woman who heard the name and knew the mark.”
“That’s it?” demanded Maia. “Are you really risking being torn apart on a rumor?”
The soldiers were testing him again. They came fast and in small groups from both directions, ensuring he couldn’t bring his heavy firepower on them in mass. He happily proved them wrong; putting targeted shots into the few they sent. The queen must’ve decided it was time for him to die because she sent in enough bodies to drown him. Louis pulled two discs from under his coat and sent them hurtling into the swarms. The grenades exploded in the mass of bodies. There wasn’t even room for a proper explosion and their bodies protected the cave walls. But the force had to go somewhere, compressing the bugs deep into each other. Knowing the bugs wouldn’t stop, he repeated the trick. The swarm temporarily stopped as the dead filled so much of the tunnels that no more could come through.
Somewhere in the falling wall of flesh came a royal. It had used its soldiers as a shield, their torn bodies slouching off it as it emerged. Louis recognized it too late. It took him off his feet and dashed him into the rock before driving its teeth toward his head. He drove his arms up in time to break its grip and dodged the teeth by a hair. He headbutted it to the side which barely nudged the gigantic bug before trappings its claws with his hands and wrapping his legs around its long neck. This was not a position he wanted to be in. This wasn’t grabbing the tiger by the tail; this was hooking it by the nose.
The royal dragged them across the wall, trying to dislodge him or at least break his grip on its claws. Its set of legs that could pass for hands had him by the back and were trying to pry him loose. His superior strength was limited by the number of limbs he had to contend with. With a push he released the clawed hands and did a curl up to the royal’s face, clapping his hands hard enough to break its jaws. Claws pierced his sides just as he stuck a cannon in its mouth and loosed a burst. Its head disintegrated and it dropped him painfully onto the rock.
Louis was barely down before a soldier had his leg and was dragging him away. He kicked it free and two more took the offending leg. A few more shots from his cannons sent them flying but his legs were bleeding freely. One leapt directly onto his chest and drove the air from him. He rolled it off and elbowed it so hard the rock cracked beneath. Another quick sweep of his cannons sent the next wave off. Rolling backward, Louis flipped back to his feet just in time for another two bugs to collide with him. He took both bodies and bearhugged them together until enough things snapped that they stopped attempting to bite him. A bug almost took his wrist off as he started firing again. This time he made it back to his feet. A minute more of whistling fire cleared the tunnel and he ran forward. He couldn’t let them pin him again.
A cavern opening ahead of him darkened as bodies began to fill it. Another royal dropped into view. Louis pulled two disc shaped grenades and hurled them forward. They exploded with simultaneous whumps and the bugs scattered. Louis emerged with both cannons out but the room was emptying of bodies. The royal was struggling to stand, its body filled with shrapnel. Armor doesn’t help against concussive forces in small rooms.
“Are you ready to talk?” Louis asked the shaky royal. “Can you see me okay?”
It could. Its little eyes were focused on the dangerous, but bleeding foe. Louis ripped his tattered pant legs aside in favor of torn shorts. Both legs had serious wounds where the bugs had bitten down. His shirt and coat were both stained red from the claw wounds from the previous royal. The coat’s arms were barely hanging on with much of the fabric and armor shredded. Any normal human would’ve been unconscious by now; delirious at a minimum. Yet the morsel only looked annoyed and tired.
“I came here for eight hands of humans.” Louis held up a hand to make sure the royal got the message. “How many of yours have you lost? You are the third royal to come before me.”
That made it think. The queen was able to see and control through the royals and minders, but the royals were her ambassadors. They were important, symbols of power, and a means of controlling the hive. These coordinated assaults weren’t possible without them. Losing two royals in the past hour was a painful thing for any queen. Louis approached the royal. It was in a fugue state, but not from its injuries. The queen was talking.
“Hey.” Louis swept the shaky royal to the floor. He walked and raised a foot over its head. “Send a more polite ambassador and let’s talk.” He stomped its skull flat.
“You are such a charmer,” said Maia.
“Bugs only understand expansion and threats to their existence.”
A queen was a smart, calculating thing. She wanted her hive to grow, but this was a war colony. Her alien overlords allowed her to exist and breed so they could mobilize for battle. The minute she lost her usefulness, they would burn her hive out and collapse it. If she killed Louis but lost a substantial part of her army, she would be vulnerable.
It was ten minutes until the swarm returned. This time though they waited in four tunnel entrances including one directly above Louis. It was another minute before the newest royal approached like the first. Its hands were clasped together and it moved slowly.
“The queen agrees to your request. The captured humans may go.” It clicked its claws almost nervously. “Not all who were taken are still alive.” Louis nodded, having expected that. The queen herself likely had taken some of the living people to feast on.
“Please show me to where they are. I will walk them out.” The royal’s teeth chattered.
“They are far. We will bring them to you.”
“No. You will show me to them and I will lead them out.”
“This cannot happen. We will bring them to you.”
“Maia.” On Louis’s command, remote bombs he’d thrown into the tunnels began to blink red and beep. The royal looked over in alarm as it realized it was standing next to one. Louis held a thumb up over his imaginary trigger, ready to motion for them to detonate. “Would you like me to continue this discussion with the next royal?”
The royal tapped its claws apprehensively. They had come out in force to negotiate and Louis was about to make them pay for it. The bug let out an audible sigh, which was a weird sight. Its whole body rose and sank in a wave.
“Human.” It paused. “Sir. The humans are in a sensitive area. We do not let humans go there.” The message was clear. They didn’t let anything that wasn’t a bug there, not unless they were going to die. This probably meant they were being held near spawning grounds or the queen herself. Both would be highly guarded secrets for the hive’s survival.
“I understand. I am an off worlder with no connection to mercenaries, government, or other forces that would influence the hive. I was hired to retrieve the people in exchange for information that will take me back off world. Your secrets are safe with me, because they have no meaning to me.” He let the royal process that. “If I don’t lead them out, the humans might accuse me of abandoning humans here. Then I will have to come back.” The royal understood what that meant. Louis would be getting more weapons and explosives if there was a next time.
“Are you human?” it asked suddenly.
“No.”
“What are you?” That was a bad question. Bugs have a habit of trying to dissect and adapt to more powerful foes. Louis shifted the regeneration inside him and his eyes shined gold for a moment.
“Something you want off world as soon as possible.” The royal returned to its contemplation. Louis waved his hand to the bombs, not wanting to give the bugs time to think. “Do we have a deal? If not, I can ask the next few royals.”
“You do not harm the hive. You do not speak of our secrets. You take the humans and go.” Louis waved his hand down and the bombs stopped their incessant beeping. He approached the royal and held out his hand.
“I promise on eradication.” His collar chirped in confirmation.
“Promise on eradication,” answered Maia smoothly.
The royal hesitated. If a bug could show fear, it was for this. Not when they realized they were surrounded by bombs. Not when Louis was killing them. Even the royal he stomped to death hadn’t been afraid like that. That was combat and even a royal could die in combat. It was what they were bred for. A promise on eradication meant if the queen betrayed him, Louis or someone on his behalf would kill the entire hive. This could be done with sophisticated weapons or worse, from high orbit where the bugs could do nothing.
“Promise on eradication,” agreed the royal solemnly. The other side of that promise meant if Louis turned on the hive, they would hunt him to their last. Nothing he could ever say or do would halt their aggression again.
“Good. Would you mind if they collected the bombs and returned them? I don’t want to leave them behind.” The royal turned to go, waving for him to follow. The soldiers collected all the small discs and returned them in a pile. Louis slid them back into his coat and off they went.
They moved with a purpose, the royal ready to get rid of him. Even then it took another twenty minutes to arrive. The bugs had not carved out a main central area as the humans had. They lived in kilometers of endless tunnels and caverns, with minor tunnels chewed out as they needed room. The further they progressed; the rock became grayer, almost translucent with a fine layer of secretion. The bugs excreted a type of mucous to keep their worm like bodies healthy and the closer you got to the hive, the thicker it became. Discarded scales, outgrown armor, and worn claws littered the floors, crushed into patches of fine powder. The smell was just as fantastic as Louis hoped it would be.
They passed a spawning pit and Louis barely turned, keeping his eyes forward as the bugs followed him. Eggs the size of soccer balls had been carefully laid in pits of regurgitated food. This meant the eggs would be hatching soon, the larva having a plentiful food source upon birth. The larvae would be vicious, hungry little monsters. They’d eat everything in the pit, including the egg sacks that birthed them. If there wasn’t enough food, they’d turn on each other or their unhatched brethren. From what he’d seen, all the eggs had been of the same size. They would either be drones or soldiers. Soon bigger eggs would be laid for new royals.
“They are just ahead.” Louis nodded. He heard no voices, but there was the sound of sniffling and sobbing in the background.
“How many survivors?” He should’ve asked this sooner, but he had been slightly distracted.
“Twenty-seven.”
“I was told there were over forty taken.”
“Forty-four,” agreed the royal. Seventeen people had already been eaten. No wonder Grandma Snibbs wanted him down here so fast. By tomorrow likely none would have been left.
Something caught Louis’s attention and he stopped. There was light coming from a cavern that wasn’t the moss. It wasn’t just a different color; it was the unnatural light of electronics. He deviated from their chosen path and toward the noise. The royal looked ready to test that promise of theirs, but held back.
A long room had been carved into the rock and its far wall was lined with machinery. Giant clear vats filled with fluid were stored on the opposite wall. Various, motionless shapes were suspended in the tanks. Nothing was actively running anymore, but something was generating power.
“You’re a Singularity Hive?” He didn’t need to ask. The royal didn’t answer. They both knew the answer. Sentient machines owned this hive.
Maia had said the hive hadn’t been deployed in decades. Maybe this was why. They didn’t want the bugs going to war; they wanted to experiment on them. With the Singularity it was hard to guess what they were up to. They might be breeding a deadlier strain of bug. They might have been working to pacify them. Maybe they were just bored and playing eugenics with a highly mutable species. Louis wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. Where the machines went, nothing good followed.
There were bodies on the floor; fresh, human bodies. Some were half eaten, but the disturbing part was some were dissected. A man’s skin had been cut off and his neighbor was stripped to the bone. It was like something had carefully flensed them with surgical precision, something bugs weren’t known for. Arms and legs were flayed, spread into different sections like a damned anatomy lesson. The most concerning were a number of women cemented to the floor by some kind of secretion. Their abdomens had been eaten away. Judging by the horror frozen on their faces, they had been alive when it had happened.
Louis turned to the royal who regarded him carefully. It spoke softly for such a terrifying creature. “You do not harm the hive. You do not reveal our secrets.” On promise of eradication, it continued silently. Yeah, Louis knew what he’d agreed to. He’d seen a lot more terrible things in his long life, and there was nothing he could do for the dead. He would keep his promise.
“Come, they are ahead.”
Louis’s eyes lingered on one of the women. Her dead eyes were scared, scared of something she couldn’t understand. He knew that look. Sadie had the same scared eyes as her mother.