There was no time to bask in my triumph. The farther the last enemy Soldier got from the fumes here, the faster it would run toward our helpless Queen.
Blood soaked through my pants from each of the stinger holes. My left leg was still dead weight, but I hauled myself up, climbing on the body of the Soldier. I crawled over and retrieved my spear, clambering over the dead ‘Mites blocking the tunnel. On the other side, I leaned against the left wall and swung my dead leg forward. Using my spear to support my weight, I limped forward, down toward the sound and smell of battle.
In the Queen’s chamber, Mo and two Diggers were backed up into the pool where the larvae had incubated. Three other Diggers lay unmoving in the water; dead or paralyzed, I couldn’t tell.
The Diggers waved their huge claws, snapping at the Soldier.
With a flash of the tail, the enemy stung one of the Diggers. It collapsed into a heap.
The other jumped onto the Soldier and plunged its claw right into the venomous tail. The Soldier flung itself to the side, and the Digger flew off and crashed into the wall. Its claw remained embedded in the Soldier’s tail and the air filled with the acid smell of venom.
That’s it. We’ve won.
Mo leaped at the Soldier. It crouched down and took the force of the unarmed man onto its hard shell. The tail whipped around and punctured Mo before swishing him off into the pool. Without the venom, the sting wouldn’t be fatal, but Mo was old. He reached up from the water as the Soldier skittered past, but couldn’t rise to follow.
The Soldier raced for the cocoons. The Queen’s was in the back, protected by the others that had woven their shells all around her.
Soldiers didn’t have huge, strong claws on their forearms like Diggers, but they had plenty of strength in the small, sharp pincers. It ripped at the first of the cocoons, pulling it open and spilling the liquid contents onto the hard floor.
The smell electrified me. But I was so far away. And with my dead leg, I couldn’t run.
Another cocoon crashed to the floor.
I raised my arm and cocked it back.
The spear flew from my hand and buried itself into the Soldier’s back.
It grabbed at one last cocoon as it fell, pulling the shell down to the ground.
I dropped to the floor and crawled as fast as I could, clutching the sharp mandible in my hand. Mo reached out for me as I slithered past, but I did not stop.
Through a puddle of leaking venom I crawled, and dragged myself up onto the body of the dying Soldier.
My mandible made short work of it, and as its head popped from its body, I looked up to the ceiling where my Queen’s cocoon hung, white and unharmed.
“We did it. We saved you.”
I collapsed on top of the dead enemy and the room went black.
***
When the battle was over, we had lost two-thirds of our ‘Mites. One of the men, a quiet, olive-skinned guy named Sean, was dead. Mo was bruised and torn, but would recover. My puncture wounds oozed blood, but in a matter of hours a painful tingling in my left foot told me the venom was wearing off. I would walk again. Mo wondered if my previous stings back in the Hive had given me some immunity to the venom. If so, it probably saved my life.
Our army was a disaster. The ‘Mites that remained were even more battered than before. More missing limbs. More scars. Sunshine survived the battle intact, and clicked sadly over the bodies of the dead.
But we had done it. We had defended her.
Those of us that remained gathered in the main chamber near the entrance. The surviving Diggers were dragging out bodies, but the stench still permeated the hall.
Mo and I sat together, with the other three men and all the ‘Mites around us. Gil sat in the corner, guarded by two Builders. His right eye was already turning blue and swollen mostly shut.
I shook my head, looking at him. “Why would he do that? Go back when he knew they’d kill him?”
He muttered from the corner, “They weren’t. I was gonna be a hero.”
My leg screamed as I jumped to my feet and limped over to him. “A hero? You really are an idiot. They were never going to let you live out this day. They came to kill our Queen, and then you’d be worthless.”
His voice was nasal, probably from the swelling. Good. “They were gonna make me head of all the Lowforms.”
I snorted. “Humans. Slave humans. Not Lowforms. Don’t ever call our people that. And if you believed them, you’re stupider than I thought.” I turned back to Mo. “Kinni said you had tried to rescue some of us before, and they always went running back. Who were they? What were their names?”
He thought for a moment. “Micah was the last one. I think . . . Cody before that.”
I remembered both of them. Runners, a few years older than me. They both disappeared, like Runners so often did.
“Micah and Cody,” I said, crouching next to Gil. He flinched back away from me. Good. “Both of them brought here. Both of them ran back to our Hive. You ever see either one of them again?”
Gil shook his head, wincing.
“Of course not. As soon as the Soldiers saw them, they had to kill them. Couldn’t let them bring the truth back to a Hive full of slaves.” I sighed. “They’d have killed you right here, and you know it.”
He didn’t answer, just glared at me with his one good eye.
I turned back to the room. “We have to get reinforcements,” I said. “They’ll be back.”
Carl, one of the other men, grinned, wrapping a bandage around a long cut on his arm. “Those ones won’t.”
“No,” Mo said, “Noah’s right. When this patrol doesn’t come back, they’ll send another. They’ll follow the scent trail these soldiers left. More of them, most likely.”
I nodded. “Who knows how many? And it won’t be long.”
We looked around the room. Fourteen injured ‘Mites, and five humans, including me. That was all our defense.
“That was pretty smart, using that jawbone as a weapon,” Mo said to me with a smile. He turned to the other men. “You guys should have seen it. He was a madman. Just flung himself on that bug and cut its head clean off.”
Warmth spread over my face. “Didn’t have much choice.” I turned to the Builder nearest me and switched from the human language to the clicking ‘Mite language. I didn’t have words for what I wanted to say, so I clicked, “Head. Smell. Gone,” and pantomimed a head exploding.
It clicked assent. “Yes. Save Queen.”
The other guys were looking quizzically at us and I explained. “We were fighting in the hallway and one of the Builders just hunkered down and blew its own head off. Just . . . made it explode somehow. The stench was unbelievable. Even you guys would have been sick.” They all knew that my sense of smell had been changed, heightened to ‘Mite level, or nearly so. No one seemed to know how contact with the Queen larva had done it, but it hardly mattered.
“So,” Mo said. “What do we have now?” He looked around the room and sighed. “We have to hold on here until the Queen hatches. Once she does, we can clear out of here and find somewhere safer until she grows up.”
I shook my head. “They’ll smell her for miles. We’ll get more outcasts, for sure, but the Hive will send everything they have now that they know she’s here.” I shot a glare at Gil. “How long does it take for a Queen to become adult?”
Clicking from the ‘Mites indicated six months.
“No way.” I rubbed at my leg, still tingly from the venom. “We have to get far from here. Miles and miles. Farther than anyone has ever traveled.”
Mo shrugged. “And who’s to say we won’t run into another Hive that wants to kill her? We can’t take her up to the mountains. It’s too cold. She’d never survive.”
Carl tied off the bandage on his arm. “So . . . what then? We just wait here until they send more bugs to kill us all?” He spit on the ground. “Doesn’t matter anyway, really. Without the rest of the people they got in that Hive, there’s not enough of us to last another generation. Might as well die here.”
Mo opened his mouth to retort, but I silenced them all with a wave of my hand, my eyes closed in sudden rapture.
The sweetest scent billowed up from below. Ice blue, like the shallows of the sea on a calm day.
“She’s emerged. Our Queen is here.”