Chapter 22
- Nora -
The Queen's head lowers.
Movement spreads through the immense bulk of her body.
Coils of flesh slide across the platform.
Nutrient tubes sway overhead. Servants scramble out of the way as entire sections of her enormous form adjust around the simple act of turning toward me.
Somewhere beneath the platform, something wet splashes.
The Kast flower at my ear translates a single command. "Approach."
For a moment I hesitate. The chamber has become so still that I can hear the pulse of the Nest moving through the walls. Then I become aware that every eye in the room is fixed on me.
I glance up at Krix'vorr. His expression doesn't change, though one antenna gives the smallest movement. I have a strong feeling that if I stay where I am, the silence will only grow more uncomfortable.
So I walk towards the Queen. The distance isn't great, but it feels much longer than it should.
With every step, the smell grows stronger.
I'd noticed it when we entered the chamber, though now there's no ignoring it.
Something sour hangs beneath the scents of living tissue, nutrient fluid, and strange chemicals.
It reminds me of a hospital ward that hasn't been cleaned properly. Beneath that lingers another odor, older and heavier, something that makes me think of stagnant water and decay. I try to keep from reacting.
From across the chamber the Queen seemed enormous. Up close, she feels closer to a landscape than a living creature. I’m sure entire buildings on Earth could disappear beneath the coils piled around her platform.
Servants of various species move constantly across her body. Some clean cracked armor plates. Others tend nutrient lines. A few carry big containers I decide I don't want to think about too carefully.
The Queen herself is worse. One side of her face hangs lower than the other.
Her organic armor is cracked and patched.
Pale growths cling around old wounds. One eye looks cloudy.
The other follows me with unsettling precision.
The contrast between those two eyes somehow makes the whole thing more disturbing.
For the first time since arriving in the Nest, I understand why Krix'vorr seemed uneasy. I imagined a locust basically similar to him, more like a human queen. But this is an ancient biological machine that has survived for centuries and accumulated power beyond anything I can properly comprehend.
I’m starting to wonder if I maybe would have preferred to die in that minefield.
I stop one pace from where the platform begins. The Queen studies me with her small eyes. I study her right back. I may be in trouble here, deep in the heart of the Space Locust swarm. But I’m still a Space Force officer.
The silence stretches long enough for discomfort to creep in. Nobody appears eager to rescue me from it. The locust courtiers remain motionless. An important-looking locust stands beside the platform like a carved statue. Even Krix'vorr doesn't move.
Then the Queen's voice rolls through the chamber, creaky and muddled. "What are you called?"
The Kast flower translates the words instantly.
"My name is Nora,” I reply slowly. A many-stalked creature by the Queen’s head translates to their language.
The Queen remains motionless for several heartbeats. "Nora." She says my name slowly, as though examining it from different angles. "Your species?"
"Human."
Another pause follows. I can feel the room listening. "Your world?"
"We call it Earth." That is about the most I’m willing to tell her about it. Whatever happens, I can’t tell these people exactly where Earth is. They know it’s on the other side of the minefield, but so is most of the galaxy.
One of the Queen's eyes narrows. The movement is small, though somehow it carries more weight than a shouted order. A strange feeling settles into my stomach. The Queen is gathering information for her swarm to plunder Earth and strip it of everything.
"You are fully mature?" the Queen asks.
The question catches me off guard. For a moment I wonder whether the translation flower has made a mistake. "Yes."
The Queen remains silent. Her gaze moves over me from head to toe. "You appear physically fragile."
The impulse arrives before I can stop it. Instead I glance behind me, towards Krix'vorr. "Compared to him, most species probably do."
Several antennae twitch throughout the chamber. The Queen gives no visible response, though I get the impression I've become more interesting than I was a few seconds ago.
Then she asks her next question. "How many of you are there?"
Okay. I have two options here: refuse to say anything or make up some lie that makes Earth seem as unattractive as possible to a space locust. Staying silent will almost certainly be taken as a sign of defiance, and I can’t imagine that will go down well with these guys.
But if I lie, I have to think fast and commit to it.
“There are very few left,” I state. “A few thousand on all of Earth, we think. There may be as many as a hundred thousand in all. The number keeps going down.”
“Why so few?” the Queen asks. “In this Royal section of my Nest, we are at least a hundred thousand. In the whole Nest, infinitely more.”
“There was a war,” I make up on the spot. “The weapons were terrible. Nearly everyone died. The land… the planet was ruined. Nothing can grow there now. We’re dying.”
An alien murmur goes through the room.
“Your kind destroyed themselves?” the Queen creaks. “In a war? The whole planet?”
“The war…” I try to remember what I’ve heard about what could happen if there was a nuclear war on Earth. “The weapons created so much dust. Everything went dark. The sunlight didn’t reach the surface. It got so cold! Everything froze. Those we weren’t dead already starved.”
“They starved,” the Queen echoes, sounding almost thoughtful. “I see. And yet, here you are.”
“Not everyone was on the planet,” I say, still thinking fast and deciding where I’m going with this. “Some of us were in space, on stations in orbit or on missions to other planets nearby. But the other planets are barren and we can’t survive without our home world.”
Well, that’s it. If they don’t go for this, I don’t have a backup story. One major risk is if Sophia is found and her story doesn’t match mine.
“But you went into space,” the Queen says. “You had the resources for that, at least. And you reached that cursed minefield. Despite coming from a dying world, as you claim.”
I’m not sure how she knows that, but of course the crew of the Beast would know and they’ve probably been talking.
I guess I’ll have to extend the bluff. “Scouts were sent out into space. We were sent to find other worlds and plead for help. We were so few that even female scouts had to be sent. Nearly all our males died in the war.”
The chamber goes quiet again.
That should help convince them. While the locusts are ruled by a queen, my guess is that most of the leaders and soldiers are male. I haven’t really seen any females apart from the queen, as far as I know.
In the old days on Earth, nations could be totally sexist although ruled by queens. I think the same is going on here.
But now, my story is becoming so elaborate that Sophia’s certainly won’t match it unless I coach her somehow. That means I have to find her first, before the locusts.
The queen looks away from me and focuses on Krix’vorr. “Chief Harrower Krix’vorr. Is this true, what the alien female is telling us?”
Damn. Krix’vorr has seen the wreckage of my ship, and the wreckage of Sophia’s. He knows they were made by a sophisticated civilization. And this is the first he’s ever heard about a war and starvation and me being sent out to get help.
All eyes are on him, except mine. I keep looking at the queen.
The chamber is silent for too long before he speaks.
“I have not seen her world, Your Majesty. But I have also seen nothing to contradict what she says.”
A wave of coldness goes through me. He just lied to his queen. Maybe. I’m not even sure, but he got really close to it. And everyone in the chamber seems to understand something I don’t.
“Nothing to contradict,” the Queen finally echoes. “Hardly persuasive, Chief Harrower. You seemed quite attached to this alien. Indeed you were seen holding hands with her. Have you found yourself in the center of small thunderstorms recently?”
I frown. Small thunderstorms?
“Your Majesty,” Krix’vorr begins, “I was holding hands with the alien because I was worried she might faint or lose her bearings or worse when suddenly confronted with Your magnificent Royal Nest. Surely she has never seen anything like it. Indeed I found her walking off and putting herself in lethal danger aboard my ship. I wanted no such near-disaster in this holy place.”
I decide to stay quiet until asked about something. And I suppose that’s as good an explanation as possible.
“I brought this alien to Your Majesty,” he goes on, his deep voice resonant in the chamber, “to show her as evidence of a possible target for Harvest. I discovered her on a patrol, and when Your Majesty commanded me to your Royal Presence, I decided to not keep her locked up in my ship, but to display her in Your chamber. If her tale is true, and her planet is indeed ravaged by war, then at the very least she is an amusing curiosity. See how defenseless she is! Shield-less and soft all over. I had to encase her in that protective tape to help her stay in one piece.”
Everyone stares at me like a zoo exhibit, and two of the locusts lean their heads together and whisper.
I tug at the lower side of my tape, worried that I’m showing too much skin. But there’s not much I can do now.
“But we all know,” Krix’vorr continues, “that when a new sentient alien is captured, it often misrepresents its world so as to make it sound less attractive for our Harvest. I suppose the same could be the case here, although sending a female scout into space would seem an act of desperation that tends to lend credibility to her tale.”