The Swarm (63 page)

“Yes, sir.”

Bingwen switched off his helmet lights, muted his radio, and headed back down the thoroughfare the way he had come, his nanoshield bubbles surrounding him, his wrist lights giving him just enough light to see.

He passed the spot where he had entered the tunnel and then went another one hundred meters until he reached a second cavern. The space was wide, but the ceiling was only two meters above him. Bingwen swept the room with his lights and found trails of glistening mucus all along the floor and ceiling. The mucous trails weren't random, however. They all seemed to point in the same direction: toward a passageway on the far side of the room.

Bingwen's light found a single grub on the wall, inching toward the passageway ahead, like a latecomer to a party.

Bingwen killed his lights and cautiously advanced, the crossbow up to his shoulder, moving toward the passageway. He reached the hole just after the grub did and found that it wasn't the entrance to a passage but rather the entrance to a third cavern.

The Formics were all there. Maybe sixty of them, all surrounding an elevated platform in the center of the chamber. Flat bioluminescent creatures that Bingwen recognized as doilies lay around the edges of the platform, shining a dull light on the stone altar that stood in the center of the platform. And there atop the altar, held in place with thin filaments, was a pod about the size of a small pumpkin.

No. Not a pod, Bingwen realized. A cocoon.

The Formics were fixated on it, worshipping it, oblivious to Bingwen.

A throne room, Bingwen realized. A queen.

The cocoon on the altar twitched. Only slightly, but the movement sent a ripple of silent excitement through the Formics.

The cocoon twitched again.

Then the filaments that surrounded the cocoon—like the strands of a spider web—began to stretch, as if something were trying to push its way out. Then another push from inside. And another. Then Bingwen heard a soft ripping sound as the filaments of the cocoon broke. And then slowly, purposefully, majestically, she rose up out of her cocoon. Her wings spread, their damp thin membranes glistening in the light from the doilies, shimmering with a dozen different colors. She stood erect upon the altar, her head held high, presenting herself, baring her glory and splendor.

And then she saw Bingwen.

Her head snapped in his direction. And a heartbeat later, every Formic in the room turned to him as well, their eyes now as fixed on him as they had been on the Hive Queen. The mass of them attacked at once, rushing toward him, arms out, maws open. They did not stumble over each other as any pack of humans so tightly compressed together would have. But they moved like a single organism, fluidly, precisely, coming at him like a wave.

Bingwen ignored them. He was going to die anyway.

He steadied the crossbow and squeezed the trigger. The recoil was much harder than he had expected, but his feet were anchored well.

The bolt buried itself in the queen's eye, and her head snapped back, skewered through.

The organized wave of Formics broke, like puppets whose strings had been suddenly cut. Rather than fall upon Bingwen with the feral ferocity they had possessed moments ago, they crashed into him and his nanobots like dead weight, limp and lifeless.

Bingwen was thrown backward into the cavern, arms flailing. He slammed into the far wall, sinking a little into the mucous there. For a brief moment, he allowed himself to believe that he would live. Killing the queen killed her workers.

But no. As he watched, the inactive Formics regained their faculties. They rose, collected themselves, and charged again. But this time they were not as organized, not as unified. They were not one organism now, Bingwen realized. There was some order, yes, but there was also autonomy. Fewer strings to hold them now.

It didn't matter. The crossbow was no longer in his hands. He quickly scanned the room, but he didn't see it. His back was stuck to the mucous, but only tenuously. He pushed off the wall easily. Not to flee, because they would be on him in seconds, and he could never outrun them in the tunnels. He merely wanted to steady himself and free his hands.

“Wall. Front.”

The nanoshield around him formed a wall in front of him, and the first wave of Formics hit it, pushing it inward. The wall could not hold them off, Bingwen knew. It would struggle and persist but it would break at any second. There were too many Formics filled with too much rage. Their faces didn't express emotion, but the ferocity with which they came at him was all the evidence he needed. They would pound at him with stones, break open his suit, rip him from it piece by piece.

He only needed another second though. The igniter was already pulled from his pouch and in his hand. He hoped Mazer wouldn't be disappointed.

Then he dropped his nanoshield and made a spark.

 

CHAPTER 30

Children

To: mazer.rackham%[email protected]

From: imala.bootstamp%[email protected]/fleetcom/gagak

Subject: Deliver a message

Dear Mazer,

I am writing in the hope that you can relay a message to Victor for me. He is heading toward a ship of the Fleet above the ecliptic called the Vandalorum. I do not have the ability or permission to contact that ship directly. Victor is in a zipship and therefore unreachable. My hope is that Victor will find my message waiting for him when he arrives.

I cannot tell you where I am, but I can say that I am on a ship whose course is set and whose intentions are secret. We are accelerating. I spend my days strapped in an elaborate harness. I feel like I'm being squeezed like a lemon. It is more G-force than I have ever experienced. Nothing about it is pleasant.

At first I thought my sickness was from the flight, but my urine is constantly analyzed, and the ship has confirmed that I am pregnant. I don't know what effect the acceleration will have on the baby, but I fear the worst. Please let Victor know that I am going to try to figure out a way to minimize the threat to our child. I don't know how exactly. But I can't just sit here and do nothing. There may be ramifications if I alter the ship's acceleration schedule, but a mother must do what is necessary.

Tell Victor this: If our child lives, she will be at least three or four years old when she meets her father. I will teach her who you are and give her every reason to love you and look forward to the day you can hold her in your own arms. It might be a boy, of course. But when I sleep I dream of a girl who has your eyes. Come back to me when you can, space born. Your space-born child and I will be waiting.

Love,

Imala

“It was not the Hive Queen,” said Mazer. “We're certain of that.”

He was standing in Rear Admiral Zembassi's office, where images from Bingwen's helmet cam hovered above the holotable.

“How can we be sure?” said Zembassi.

“Several reasons,” said Mazer. “First there is the matter of her just being born. She could not have been controlling the Formic army for all these years from a cocoon. Her growth was recent. Perhaps she was laid by the real Hive Queen some time ago and placed in the miniship and brought to Castalia to mature. Our belief is that she was to be placed inside the ship and given charge of some of the Formic army.”

“So we didn't kill the president, but maybe we killed a general?”

“A baby general,” said Mazer. “A daughter of the Hive Queen. We sent the vid to CentCom and several xenobiologists studied it and pointed out that this creature has not yet fully developed.” Mazer zoomed in on one of the images and circled parts with his stylus. “You can see here that the base of the wings is thick and well pronounced, more so than you might expect for wings as small as these, suggesting that she has a lot of growing to do. There is also the fact that her wings are not yet large enough to carry her body weight. Plus there's the issue of her enlarged feet, which suggest that they are built for a creature of a much taller stature.”

“Maybe,” said Zembassi, “but she's the first one we've seen of her kind. How do we know that's not exactly how they're supposed to look as adults?”

“We don't,” said Mazer. “Not definitively. But the height of the ceiling in the hatchery is another clue. It's a very tall room, and the Formics are not ones to waste space. The belief is that the daughter would mature there until ready to enter into her ship, at which point she would crawl forward down the long tunnel on her stomach and climb into her vessel. We had originally thought that the tunnel was wide to accommodate multiple Formics moving abreast through the tunnel, but now we suspect that it was designed specifically to accommodate a large adult Hive Queen.”

“And there was nothing recoverable at the scene?”

“No,” said Mazer. “The blast incinerated everything.”

“What about the Formics?” asked Zembassi. “They went from well organized to dead to alive again to stupid.”

“The behavior of the Formics is perhaps the best evidence we have that the creature killed by Bingwen was not the Hive Queen we have come to fear. If you watch the vid enough, you see that the Formics react when she does. She sees Bingwen, and his presence is communicated to every Formic there. Then they fight as one, clearly under her direction, a suspicion that's made incontrovertible once Bingwen kills her. When the headshot occurs, the Formics lose all sense of awareness. They go stupid, as you say. Lifeless. They are reanimated a moment later when the
real
Hive Queen steps in and takes control of them. But what's interesting is the difference in the Formics' behavior. They were slower and less organized when they were under the real Hive Queen's spell. But when they were under her daughter's control, they were tightly controlled and fast. This leads us to believe that the Hive Queen's proximity to her subjects directly affects the degree of her control over them. Or perhaps it's not a matter of proximity, but a matter of number. This Hive Queen daughter was likely only directing these sixty or so Formics. And with that few, her control was absolute. But the real Hive Queen has tens of thousands under her control. Maybe hundreds of thousands. And therefore, her command of them is weaker because it's spread among so many organisms.”

“So what does this tell us about the war?” asked Zembassi.

“It tells us that the Hive Queen is very smart indeed. She can control her entire army, which we have always known. But she can also make her soldiers better organized and faster to respond if she places groups of them under the control of her daughters. And by relinquishing control of some of her soldiers, the Hive Queen will also have greater control and influence over the smaller number of soldiers she now directly controls. In essence it is a way to turn her highly effective soldiers into super soldiers. Their individual abilities may be only marginally improved, but collectively, they can be far more effective and lethal.”

“So now we have multiple Hive Queens that we have to kill?”

“I wouldn't call these daughters Hive Queens,” said Mazer. “They have not yet matured to adulthood. They are more likely Hive Queens in training. But there is good news from this. We know now that by killing a daughter, we render her workers momentarily stupid. That might prove critical in the fight ahead. If we can kill the Hive Queen, the Formics might weaken and destabilize, giving us the perfect opportunity to strike hard and inflict massive casualties.”

“And what about the ship?” asked Zembassi. “The one they built. Any news there?”

“The ship broke free of the asteroid as a result of the explosion, as you know,” said Mazer. “But it's just drifting out there. It appears to be unmanned. All of the Formics had gathered for the birth of the Hive Queen's daughter. The ship appears complete, but we can't get inside it. It's sealed shut, and we don't have any of Lem Jukes's special hulmat-destroying nanobots to penetrate it. CentCom is considering putting a hulmat weapon on a zipship and sending it to us so we can get inside the ship and explore its interior.”

“What about the Fleet heading for the warships above and below the ecliptic? I think we should ask CentCom to return some of those ships. We need to destroy as many of these asteroids as we can before the entire Formic fleet is hatched.”

“I agree, sir,” said Mazer. “The more immediate threat is here.”

Zembassi waved his hand through the holo and made the images disappear. “There is more bad news you should be made aware of, and I wanted to tell you in person. Vaganov has been promoted to vice admiral. He will be my commanding officer.”

“I am sorry, sir.”

“He wasted no time taking credit for our victory,” said Zembassi. “To hear him tell it, he shot the Hive Queen daughter himself. Our lives are about to become a living hell.”

They commiserated a moment longer and then Mazer went to find Bingwen. The boy's survival had been a miracle. His suit had saved him, but the force of the blast had knocked him unconscious. Mazer had rushed in through the hole the blast had made above the Formic warship. And then he had flown down the wide tunnel to reach the hatchery, not sure what he would find when he got there. The blast had destroyed Bingwen's helmet cams, but the exosuit was still intact and operative.

Mazer had found Bingwen's body limp and nonresponsive, but the suit was still delivering oxygen. The temperature inside was normal. Mazer had frantically tapped at the cracked readout screen beneath a flap on the suit until it had indicated that yes, there was still a heartbeat. Yes, there was life.

Kaufman and Rimas had arrived then, and the three of them had rushed Bingwen back to the ship.

Now Mazer stood anchored to the floor of the observation deck of the Battle Room, watching as several of the Battle Room teams presented Bingwen with one of their ridiculous homemade trophies. Mazer couldn't see what it was exactly at this distance, but it looked like a statuette of the Hive Queen's daughter made of bolts and scrap metal and wire. Bingwen held it up, and the marines pumped their fists.