Sheldon Wends the Warpzone

Hivecity Muon

Circa 3000 BCE

Vilbiz Aranon awoke with a start, mandibles chittering.

As she released her toehold on the perch and dropped nimbly to the floor of her chamber, echoes of the dream still loomed in her mind. Exactly the same as last night and the night before. The sky, filled with red and gold fire. The ground, awash in black blood of the Izibiz. Crunching of exoskeletons. Chemical alarms wafting in the air. And screams, innumerable screams.

Involuntarily her senses cast about a few moments longer, looking for the threat that wasn’t there. Just to be safe, she opened the door to the grubbing hall and peeked in on the seething pile of several dozen slumbering children. Their whiskers rattled with the breeze of their collective exhalations, but otherwise, all was still. All was normal. She sighed.

A few hours of fitful rest later, Vilbiz threw aside the curtains and unfolded her gossamer wings to freshen in the sun. It was time to feed the kids and inspect their growth. And then, she’d decided, as soon as enrichment viddys had started for the day, she would sub in an idle worker, punch out, and go straight to Queen Zallai for counsel.

She came home that afternoon gibbering, dumbstruck. She’d had audience with Her Majesty before, always gracious, always cordial and listening carefully. But today it had all gone to cattleshit.

Doomsayer, ill-wisher, malcontent, these were among the milder of the things the royal advisors had called her. And when she shoved her way past and begged for the Queen’s intercession? Zallai had all but flung her bodily out of the throne room, ordering her to cease the unwelcome and seditious talk. How could she do that to a loyal subject? To her own progeny? What crime was it to question their blind conviction that mere treaties would protect the Izibiz against the ravages of war?

Not wanting to make a scene in front of the kids, she stopped to sit on a tree stump outside, and buried her face in two pairs of hands.

She must have done something to make them reject her pleas so coldly. Maybe she truly was paranoid, defective, maybe she’d lost her whiskers entirely. If only she could go down to the tombs at the base of the hive, and lie down—there to wait until next spring’s brood would consume her flesh and recycle it into a form useful to the Hive…

No.

Vilbiz shook herself physically, leant over and let her sensors touch fresh grass. Contact with nature was instantly reassuring. The planet’s vibrations spoke clear and unfettered truth to her senses. The planet was always ready to embrace her, support and nourish her; and it would reclaim her in its own due time.

For now, there was a brood to nurture and raise to perfection.

***

It came again a few nights later, the sky red and gold with fire, the ground watered with the black blood of Izibi-kind, the alarms, the crunching, the screams. Only this time, when she dropped to the ground, she could not still her two tiny hearts. She could not still her twitching whiskers. Not even when she stood outside and touched grass—for the planet had no comfort to offer. The planet now echoed her fears.

Were it not for her charges, she might have taken the risk and gone directly to Signaling. They, too, might hear it in the soil. But they might just as soon lock her up for insubordination. Instead, she threw the manual switch and turned on the lights in the grubbing hall. After two minutes, when all had warmed to wakefulness, she made a whistle with her forelegs. The children fell into line immediately.

“Attention, kids. This is an emergency drill. You will follow me to exit the city in an orderly, silent manner. We go to the caves at Old Muon. If anyone is waylaid you are to help them. Otherwise, do not look back, do not stop for anyone. Treat this as a real emergency.”

Izibian children were, if they were anything, capable of obedience. The procession moved quickly out of the brooding neighborhood, past the empty markets and the empty hoverport. Outside of the Signaling corps outposts, no one had any reason to be up at this hour. Nor any reason to suspect anyone would be up. So they arrived unmolested at the front gate, and squeezed single-file through the sallyport. Still in silence, they descended into the Muon valley and made a beeline toward the old city.

They were halfway across when the tremors and explosions began.

She swore under her breath. Aloud, she said, “Nearly there, children! If everyone follows my instructions to the letter, you’ll all get a treat once we’re in the caves.”

“Mistress Aranon?” said one of the grubs.

“I’ll answer your questions when we get there, my dears. Shall we sing a marching song?”

They’d made it through one and a half verses of This Hive is Our Hive when they reached the caves. At last, dreading what she would see, Vilbiz Aranon turned to count her charges one last time.

They were all there, but she couldn’t complete the count. Instead the horror before her eyes shoved all else to the margins.

Muon was afire. Tremendous gouts of flame shot out of the apertures of the central hive sporadically. The ground trembled. Hundreds of Izibians, winged and otherwise, leapt from the heights to escape the conflagration. A few moments later, upper sections of the city began to implode.

Vilbiz wept softly as she watched the hive—the heart of Muon, home to royal apartments, the council, civil defense, neonatal facilities, bureaucracy, and nearly all the fertile men—buckle and fold up, floor by floor, like a children’s gameboard, the lower levels bursting to release air trapped in the corridors, showering the valley and plains with paper and metal and glass. Brilliant bolts of energy leapt from unseen weapons and knocked many of the fleeing citizens from the sky. And amid the devastation…

No. She clapped her forelimbs over her jaws in dismay.

Even now, her soul refused to believe such monstrosities could exist.