The air was red with pollen. A million tiny plants that grew over every surface released the tiny particles every month, all at once. It gritted in my eyes and destroyed my sense of smell entirely. Unlike the ‘Mites that followed us tentatively through the hills, I had eyes to see, but the sense I had come to depend on was completely blind.
We had left the Queen and Soldiers hunkered down in our little Hive, along with a few of our people. They were safe from attack as long as the wind blew red. Even if the old Hive realized where we were and what we had done to their initial attack, they couldn’t follow the trail until the storm stopped without a human who knew the way to guide them. We had three days to work. The remainder of the humans had returned up the mountain to scrape up all the bat poop they could for Lexis’s secret explosive recipe. She had already made a huge batch of it for this journey, and assured the ‘Mites that carried it that they were totally safe, and it would only explode when she lit the long, twisted fuses they also carried. Builders and Diggers didn’t question. They just carried on.
This distraction had to draw the Yellow Soldiers out of the Hive long enough for all the humans inside to escape. Then next month, when the moons rose together and triggered another pollen storm, we could use more of Lexis’s explosives to collapse the Yellow Hive. Our Queen and our people would finally be safe.
Kinni was one of those left behind as we trooped out into the storm. She was obviously torn about Mo’s decision not to bring her. Part of her was angry at being excluded, but part of her wanted nothing but to stay near the Queen.
We left them behind at the decaying Hive, and set off on our dangerous mission. A long parade of us snaked toward the Forbidden Zone. Mo and Lexis led the way, followed by a line of ‘Mites, each touching the tail of the one in front with feelers, the only way they could follow. More humans interspersed down the line to make sure no one was left behind. I brought up the rear, marveling at the courage of our loyal ‘Mites, trekking out, utterly blind, trusting us and our Queen’s lingering scent.
As we walked, Lexis was full of questions, realizing that of all the humans who got the Queen’s oil, only Kinni was affected. We had no answers, and Lexis wondered if it had anything to do with her being young and female. “There aren’t any other female members of a Hive. One Queen at a time. Could our Queen have done something to the oil, to bind Kinni instead of anyone else? Maybe she thought she could be a threat if she became a Queen herself?” But there were other female humans that got the oil, including Lexis herself.
Each human carried empty woven bags. Holding them up in the air, we quickly filled them with flying pollen, tied them closed, and added them to the packs carried by the strong Diggers around us. By the time we reached the Forbidden Zone, every Digger was weighed down by bags of the dry, red dust.
It covered every surface. The plants that produced it grew over what I now knew were the remains of our transports and shuttles, destroyed not only by those early ‘Mites who tore them apart in the first days after our people were taken captive, but also pummeled by the asteroid belt that surrounded our planet and occasionally dumped loads of burning rock from the gray sky.
Lexis took charge when we arrived.
“All right. We’re going to try and lure them straight into the center.” She pointed to a bare area in the middle of the huge ring of crushed ships. “That’s where we’ll need the trenches.”
All our Diggers set to work. Directed by their human helpers, their huge claws scored out long divots in the hard ground. Brown dust from the excavation joined the pollen in the air.
I stood in the shadow of one of the huge transports. Its front half was caved in, enormous doors crushed and hanging open. Mo had said that in those early days, the ‘Mites would keep Soldiers stationed inside the transports during the pollen storms to make sure our people couldn’t return and collect any of the weapons they’d used in the initial ill-fated battle. All those guns and rockets had been hauled away from the site by the ‘Mites, and the first time the escapees had tried to enter the transports to see what was left, they’d found an angry, venomous death waiting inside. They had never tried again.
This time we watched, though. From high on the hillside, our human lookouts made sure that no Soldiers were hiding in wait for us. The ‘Mites must have assumed we’d long since forgotten about them. And looking at them now, I couldn’t see what difference it would make. They were wrecked beyond hope of repair. All the doors hung open to the elements, and when I peered in, the shadows were a disaster. Dirt, pollen, and creeping vines covered everything. A thousand little animals must have made homes in the ships, insects and other creatures. Mo had described the kind of technology and equipment that the shuttles once held, and there was no way anything left behind would ever function again. Even if the holds were filled with rifles, the years of neglect would have made them useless.
Still, I wanted to see.
The isolation of my upbringing was a wall between me and all the other humans. I had learned so much about who and what humans really were. Travelers from a distant star. Masters of flight. Creators of magics I couldn’t possibly have imagined. I thought back to the final test in the Ranking. The ‘Mites had taken a chair from one of the derelict transport ships and brought it back to the Hive. They took it apart, and used it to see which of us were smart enough to figure out how to put it together again. The ones that were smart enough couldn’t be allowed to survive. Queen’s Service for anyone that might someday pose a threat. I had been smart enough, but compared to the things these humans knew, I was a fat gray seal playing in a river. They said I was human just like them, yet in my heart, I was still just a small, soft ‘Mite. The human things Mo and Lexis talked about had no place in my mind. But this was my heritage.
I pushed aside the covering vines and hauled myself into the transport.
Dirt caked all the windows, and the shadowy shapes around me lost all meaning. I climbed over piles of unrecognizable garbage. And would you recognize it even if it were whole and undisturbed? You didn’t know what a chair was until you built one in the Hive. All this stuff might look exactly like it was supposed to, and I’d never know.
There were rows of what were probably once seats, and along one wall hung a column of horizontal metal rungs. I looked up to where it led and saw a hatchway partly open to the sky. No wonder this one was such a mess. It had been raining inside for decades.
Boxes were smashed. Cloth stank of mildew and the small furry things that lived in this wreckage. My feet slipped on loose debris underfoot. I shuffled along, touching things that were totally alien to me. A piece of sharp metal cut my thumb and I sucked at the blood.
This could be useful. I made a mental note to see if our Diggers’ claws could tear this sharp metal. We could make a lot more arrows if we had sharp metal points for them.
I stopped at the back wall. It was smooth and relatively undented. I peered out the dirty window along one side, watching our people work.
My hand lay flat on the wall, and I cocked my head. There was still a lot of transport left behind this wall. There had to be. By my reckoning, I had only walked about three quarters of the way down the length of the thing. Surely a lot more space lay behind this wall.
I felt along its surface until my fingers found a long, straight divot. It ran vertically, from the floor extending to higher than I could reach. Another similar divot was more than an arm’s length away, and just to the right of that one was another irregularity.
I had no idea what it was.
Clearly all the ‘Mites that were in here before me didn’t either, because once I finally figured out to push my fingers under the hole and pull on the lever, the divots turned into a door that swung open.