Hive III (6 page)

Azina

It feels like we’ve been following this old road forever. Highways, the Dusters called them, and, like long spindly fingers, they once stretched into every nook of the country. At least that was what Oleg told us, during one of his particularly boring historical sermons. More amazing were the mechanical boxes on inflatable wheels that used to clog the streets of million-man cities. That sort of transportation certainly would have served us well on our long trek from Sotercity. Back when Oleg first spoke of the old world highways, Bron’s initial impulse had been to doubt what the old man was saying, although even he couldn’t explain the not infrequent rusted hulk, rotting away on the side of every major thoroughfare. That the Keeper elite had outlawed any form of motorized locomotion was grounds enough for a rebellion in my view. Not that people knew what they were missing. Technology was the Keeper’s currency and the carrot and stick they used to exert control. Only they could issue the necessary licences for engineers to work bits of metal into cogs, springs and gears. Master Lund was a member of an exceptionally tiny group. A group that a snotty nosed Dhal was likely excluded from, given he didn’t have a license of his own. But the truth was, those Keeper sonsabitches were sitting on more than one technology that could revolutionize the world. I’d seen it with my own eyes and I’m not just talking about Bron’s arms. Course those were a marvel and Bron’s father had to pull the kind of strings only the very wealthy can afford to grasp to get them. Machines like Goliath seemed to be the next stage, kept underground and hidden away from the masses. Control the technology and you control the people. That was how Oleg had explained the Keepers’ position. What use would a horseless wagon be to a Grinder anyway; they didn’t have the time or the means to go off sightseeing or traipsing off on long trips. Besides, there wasn’t much to see, not in the empty, mostly desolate space between cities. Didn’t matter if you were a Grinder, Prospector, Trader or a Merc. In the Keepers’ eyes, you were little more than a brainless child.

Klaus is beside me
, still staring on with those bright, bulging eyes like he’s never set foot outside of Sotercity his entire life. Though that may not be too far off. Bron said it perfectly before: Sotercity was a trash heap. Even as a Keeper, if you were unlucky enough to be born there, you could kiss your chances of advancement goodbye. Yet another reason I became a Merc. I don’t take orders so well. A commander expecting a salute is just as likely to get a pair of brass knuckles in the face.

I hate to admit it, but I can almost sympathize with Prior Skuld’s frustration. He’d been locked on the lowest rung of the totem pole and now he was gonna burn
to ashes the very apparatus that imprisoned him. The logic itself melded perfectly with those Grinders you sometimes read about, who kill their co-workers with a socket wrench because their supervisor passed them up for a promotion. Men like Oleg used fancy Duster terms like sociopathic, although I’m more partial to what the old timers used to call people willing to sacrifice the life of thousands: bat-shit crazy.

“
This’ll be my first time in the capital,” Klaus says. “Do you think we’ll get to meet the Patriarch?”

Oh, boy, this one’s worse than a newborn. “
We’re not on vacation, in case you haven’t noticed.” There’s a distinct note of disgust in my voice and Klaus looks almost wounded by the comment, but I don’t have time to bother with hurt feelings. It’s questions like that that are making me more certain he won’t be able to handle seeing the ocean of Zees I’m sure are surging before the capital’s walls.

We veer off the highway and onto a well worn footpath which leads to
Attica’s main gates. The path that’s cut through the forest is wide enough for an entire battalion of Wardens to travel ten abreast with ease. Still, beyond that, the damp ground beneath the trees on either side has been trampled by what Sneak and I can only guess was a swarm of Zees. Hundreds of years ago, swaths similar to this were cut through the countryside by massive herds of what Dusters called Buffalo. The Keepers taught us how settlers moving west would peg them off from smoke belching trains and nearly drove the species to extinction. Now we’re the ones on the verge of extinction.

Sneak’s on point
, up ahead, and raises her hand in the air, curling it into a fist. I stop and crouch and need to tug at Klaus’ Keeper robe before he does the same.

Sneak’s sig
ning back. “You should see this.”

Except I don’t need to
, ‘cause I know exactly what’s there. In spite of Skuld’s attempts to block my abilities to tap into Hive central and gain control of the horde he’s assembled, tiny bits of code are always bleeding through, like a slow leak on a sealed jar. Klaus and I inch ahead anyway, although I’m growing more and more certain of what I’m about to see. The terror on his face when he witnesses the shocking mass of Zee flesh in the valley below, rushing through the city gates like a single dark organism, makes one thing perfectly clear. We’re too late. They’re already inside.

Klaus’ whimpers draw my attention away from the trails of smoke
rising from Attica and the unbelievable carnage surely taking place there, to the young Keeper. I might not be able to reach Klaus’ mind the way I can with a Zee, but I can sure as hell see he wishes he’d never left the bowels of that Keeper archive in the first place. Burying your head in the sand is what the Dusters used to say, and that’s just what Klaus wishes he could do. Although, somewhere in there, he must know it’s far too late for any of that. The fingers of his hand are cupped over his lips, holding in a scream. Even his eyes begin watering, like he’s about to cry, and I slap him across the face.

“Man up.”

The shock he’s in dulls the pain, but he looks over at me all the same and to a passerby, the sight would almost be comical. A Keeper being slapped in the face by a Zee.

A burst of Zee code hits me with sudden force. A group of them are nearby, feeding. Tearing flesh from a recent kill is the closest thing they know to joy
and they’re beaming with it. But I’m starting to realize that the hunger they feel never goes away; no matter how much they eat, the stabbing pain of starvation is always tearing at their insides.

I reach out to meld with their minds and feel an invisible barrier keeping me at bay. I can’t get through to them, not with Skuld and the Queen so close. I’m still not s
trong enough to overpower them and I can hear Oleg’s words running through my head in a loop.

What remains to be seen is how she will fare when she enters Skuld’s effective zone of control. Who are
the Zees likely to follow?

And it makes sense. I mean, if the broadcast from every Hive leader was competing with that of the Queen
, the Zees would be left in a mass of confusion.

Sneaks throws a rock at my feet to get my attention. There’s a slope
to our right, where the ground begins to roll down into a slight depression. Sneak’s at the edge of it, pointing. We head to her and see the Zees I was feeling a moment before. It isn’t a large group. Ten, maybe twelve of them, but they’re munching on a corpse dressed in a short purple tunic and tights. “The Patriarch’s personal messenger,” Sneak signs and neither of us need to get any closer to see that she’s right. Behind the body, recessed into a large rock, is a door that’s slightly ajar.

“Looks like the poor bastard took an underground passage,” I say, “and got nailed as soon as he popped out.”

“It’s like they were waiting for him,” Klaus says in a conspiratorial whisper.

“More like shit luck,” I reply. “Whatever message he was supposed to send is as dead as he is.”

A fate I’m growing more and more certain awaits us all. Most people don’t need a reason to live, just a reason not to die. For a while now, my team’s been that reason for me and now, with them gone, that reason is Sneak. I haven’t a clue how she’ll manage when I’m not around anymore. The thought of her tied to another Trader’s cart makes the blood in my veins boil with rage. And then there’s Ret. I’ve tried so hard not to think about him and the others. What I wouldn’t give to reach out with my mind, the way I can with these Zees, if for no other reason than to make sure he’s okay.

Sneak is in the middle of asking what I think we should do
and suddenly stops. The Zees have stopped ripping the poor messenger apart and they’re now looking in our direction, eyes glowing, bits of flesh dripping from their blood soaked mouths. The Zee closest to us hisses and springs to his feet, stumbling into a full run. The others aren’t far behind and they’re heading straight for us.

Sneak’s confused
‘cause we haven’t made a sound, but it isn’t sound that’s drawing them. The thought of Ret and the others pulled my focus away from staying off Zee central. I couldn’t have let it slip for more than a fraction of a second, but it was enough for them to detect my presence. Skuld’s standing instructions are no doubt to kill us all on sight. I turn and see Klaus. The horror on his face makes it clear he’s about to tear off but I grab his arm.

“If you run, you’re dead,” I say and I can tell he isn’t sure whether I mean he’ll get it from the Zees or from me and I’m happy to keep it that way. 

The Zees are on us in matter of seconds. We opt for blades. Sneak’s crouched low, a dagger ready in each hand, when they scramble over the rise, hissing. She spins and slices through the brain cavity of the first two. The light in their eyes flickers before they collapse to the ground.

Klaus has his standard issue Keeper rifle and he’s riddling their bodies with bullets
, but nothing’s happening.

“In the head,” I shout over the chaos, just as three Zees lung
e at me. I bring the Katana straight down and feel only the slightest resistance as the blade glides through the creature’s skull and upper torso. The second one gets a push kick to the chest while I finish the third with a thrust through the eye socket. The second regains its footing, but by then it’s too late and his head rolls off his body before he knows what hit him. Klaus is now firing three round bursts and manages to drop two of them.

Sneak and I finish the last of them and I can’t help but wonder how easily this woulda gone down if I’d been able to control them with thoughts instead of steel. There must be a way around it. A way to use at least some of Skuld’s Zees against him.

Glancing over at Klaus, the young Keeper looks like he’s just dropped a load in his shorts. His chest rises and falls with short, spastic breaths.

Sneak
wipes the gore off her blades and sheaths them. 

“You’ve never killed before, have you?” I ask him.

He shakes his head, his eyes scanning the bodies piled around us like fish at an open market. “No.”

Sneak smiles and pats one of his quivering hands.
‘Good job’ is what that pat means and Klaus lets out a dry laugh that sounds more like a raspy cough.

I can’t help but laugh myself. She has a weak spot for the dopey ones.

We’re heading toward the underground passage to Attica and the desiccated body of the messenger lying before it when I catch hold of the faint glimmer of Zee code.

“We need to hurry,” I say.

“What is it?” Klaus asks with alarm.

I point through a screen
of foliage that overlooks the valley below. The two of them rush at once to look and all I hear is: “Newton save us!”

It’s Klaus
, of course, and if he hadn’t crapped his pants before, he’s surely doing it now. I should have realized before, but with that pocket of Zees charging at us I was more than a little distracted. We weren’t able to kill them quick enough, not before they could send out a signal to the others that we were here. And the sight that Sneak and Klaus are marvelling at? It’s a huge mass of Zees, reeling away from the city walls like an undulating flock of birds, heading straight for us. Worse than that, the fastest ones are almost here.

Ret

A series of rolling hills surround Attica on all sides. We approach from the south and no sooner crest the smallest peak than we catch sight of a city being overrun. An ocean of Zees swarm the walls, pouring through the capital’s main gate. Skuld must have ordered his fastest Zees to rush in before there was time to swing shut the massive doors. Even from up here, the sounds of chaos and death are clear. Smoke begins to rise from a dozen or so places. The tiny pop of automatic weapons fire in the distance is the most striking sound. Surely Keepers stationed on the walls are pouring fire into the black mass below them, knowing all the while that their families are being slaughtered or turned into monsters and there isn’t a thing they can do about it. Beside me, Oleg, has that skeptical look on his face again, like he’s just realized going down there is suicide. But not everyone’s feeling the same way. There’s a fire in Bron’s eyes, and it’s clear enough that he can’t wait to get into the thick of things. The sound of squealing metal draws my attention to Dhal, seated in the hollowed out head of the Titan, clutching the controls of the massive robot with glee. Along the way, the kid told us that removing the pilot from the machine’s cockpit was a major innovation which allowed Goliath to autonomously follow a set of simple instructions. The Titan was, in many ways, just as leathal, except it required a human pushing pedals and yanking levers. Even the metal sheeting around the head rolls back over the driver on a set of hinges to keep him secure. But it’s hot as hell in there, Dhal tells us. To which Bron replies: “I can just see us opening that hatch and finding nothing but a bunch of soaking rags.”

It’s the belching black smoke that makes subtlety and breathing difficult
, though the Titan more than makes up for any of those deficiencies. Sure it isn’t packing any weaponry. What it lacks in firepower, it more than makes up for in brute force. I’m sure it’ll cut through Zees like a hot stone on a sheet of ice.

“
The Patriarch has a secret passageway somewhere around here,” Oleg says.

Azina used to get mighty frustrated with the old guy when he’d start up like this. Oleg’s always looking for a way around the tough jobs
, although the swarming mass down there is making me wonder if he might just have a point.

“Assaulting the city
head on with that many Zees around is just plain stupid,” I say and I can tell right away that Bron disagrees. The main reason’s ‘cause he’s itching to use his new toys, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to put the rest of us into needless peril.

Dhal’s still perched in the driver’s seat of that bronze behemoth
when he leans over. “I’m not sure what this secret passage looks like, but if it sure as heck better have a high ceiling or I ain’t getting through the door.”

He’s got a point and whatever light of hope that’d started glowing in Oleg’s eyes,
is quickly doused.

I turn to the old man. “If Skuld reaches the
Queen first, what happens then?”

Oleg clears his throat. “
He kills her, presumably. In a worst case scenario, he manages to absorb her powers. If that occurs, I suggest we head north and find a cave where we can shelter and pray to all the gods he won’t send his minions to find us.”

Bron’s
checking the spring loaded grappling hook on his arm when he lets out an ominous laugh. “I’d sooner let those things tear me apart than live in some cave like a frightened animal.”

Dhal agrees.
“So what do we do, Ret?”

Now e
veryone’s looking at me, but giving the order that effectively hands them a death sentence isn’t nearly as easy as it looks. The truth, however, is that there aren’t many options open to us, except to go forward. We all know it, even if stopping Skuld is a long shot. Grow a pair, Azina liked to say, and truer words have never been spoken.

I’m about to speak when we see something astonishing. A
colossal chunk of the Zees surrounding the city peel away and begin charging up a nearby hill. Looks like they’re after something, or someone. But it must be someone important. Someone worth killing at all costs.

Azina?

“What do you make of it?” Oleg says and he’d be happy to stand around for the next week, analysing the crap out of the situation, but I know exactly what this means.

“
It’s our lucky day. Everyone gear up.”

Oleg looks down at the pistol in his hand
like I’m talking to him. I finish loading the last few shells into the drum magazine of my automatic shotgun, click it into place and pull the slide. Bron’s making some final adjustments to the sights on his 20mm guns.

I glance down at a city in its death thro
es and can’t help wishing Azina and Sneak were here with us.

•••

Skuld

Azina’s heading into the city. The Zees I have pursuing her through the Patriarch’s underground passage tell me so, their Zee code running back and forth behind my eyes. But she’ll never reach us in time. Already my army is ransacking the city as the rest of us make our way toward Newton’s Grand Temple and ever closer to the Queen, locked beneath that holy place in a stupefied slumber. Activating all the Hives began the process of stirring her awake. It didn’t take long for that to become apparent, although her powers, even in her weakened state, made it all the more necessary to dispatch her as soon as possible.

A third horde is
currently after the Patriarch, who’s surely hold up inside the main keep. Every city has one and it’s considered a final line of defence, once the walls are breached. He’s a silly, predictable man and I’ll enjoy tearing his eyeballs from his face, but not before I relish in the horror and surprise when he sees what I’ve become. Not that he’ll understand my true magnificence, nor the irony that I’m the pinnacle of what our Keeper ancestors attempted to create, two centuries ago. Surely they never imagined we would look like monsters. Surely they never recognized our full potential.

Plak and the other councillors from Sotercity are by my side as we enter
Newton’s Temple. It’s cool and spacious, with incredibly high ceilings, decorated with images of planets and stars. Behind the altar, a shaft of natural light illuminates a solitary apple tree.

A detachment of Wardens spill out from the cloisters and begin firing right away. I wave the Zees forward, watching through each of their eyes at once. And I can’t help but think of
Newton again, since this is the closest to a god any man has ever been, and the feeling is pure intoxication. On they charge, scrambling over pews and up the aisles. The Wardens fill the air with lead, but these men have never fought Zees before and their bullets riddle their bodies, ignoring the heads. The first Zee to reach their lines is a woman, dressed in a baker’s apron, and the mere act of shifting my awareness toward her lets me see her entire history laid out before me. Two bright children and a husband she loved dearly. All of them working hard in the family bread shop in Sotercity. One step up from a Grinder, with dreams of a bright future. She was the first to turn, when that sorry excuse for a city was invaded, and at once she attacked her husband. And when he was dead, she finished off the children. But she had traded one family for another. A much larger family. One which would never disappoint or try to hurt her.

She leaps through the air and la
nds on a terrified Warden who’s scrambling to reload. She tears a mouthful of flesh from his face and keeps gnashing with insatiable hunger. The man beside them shouts and brings the butt of his rifle down on her head and opens her skull. She stops moving at once, but right behind her are hundreds more, just like her.

Bodies pile up around them and a young Warden lieutenant sounds the retreat, except it’s too late for that now and the wave of Zees are on them
before they can turn their backs to flee.

Directly benea
th the temple are the catacombs, which contain the bodies of the first Keepers. But it’s what lies under those dried and porous bones that really interests me. As powerful as I’ve become, I can feel the Queen’s mind, pulling at my own, delicate fingers snaking through my thoughts like the electrified wires in one of engineer Lund’s creations. The feeling is strange and somehow euphoric, and there isn’t any doubt that when I tear her limb from limb, that feeling will fade and be gone forever.

But I must strike soon, before she’s able to emerge completely from her sleep. Otherwise, all these Zees
, held so tightly within my grasp, will shift their allegiance at once and visit upon me everything I’d planned for the Queen and more.

Off the South Transept is a gate over a set of stone steps. A handful of
infected Wardens rise and join us, their flesh now brown, their eyes glowing faintly. I approach the gate, grab the bars and rip them from the wall with as much ease as tearing a page from a child’s book. Down we descend, through the catacombs, past bones cloaked in dusty red robes, staring back from nooks carved into the hard stone wall.

Some of the corpses
get snagged in the flood of rushing Zees and tumble to the ground. At one time, I might have seen this as a desecration. Today, it’s nothing more than poetic justice. Our ancestors’ eternal rest is being undone by the very creatures they created. The very creatures that will help them do away with the old world and rebuild a new one in their own image.

At last we arrive before a dirt wall with a steel door, dull
now with the passage of time. The sight reminds me of when the scholars from the old world discovered the tombs of the ancient pharaohs. Those too were set in limestone. It’s only the metal door that kills the otherwise perfect illusion. The ancient Keeper records from the archive made it clear enough that the Queen’s resting place would be sealed and impenetrable. It was a door built without a key because the ancestors couldn’t imagine ever needing to open it and, even now, standing before it, I can feel the Queen’s influence growing stronger. I draw my eyes closed and concentrate on sending out a proper signal. The Zees around me are standing perfectly still, some are turning back and forth as though two competing signals are wrestling for their attention. The doubt is what is causing the problem. The door looks so impenetrable I can’t imagine how to get past it and in that gap of leadership, the Zees turn to the next best thing. But then everything becomes clear. Why go through it when you can go around? With my brainwave, the Zees begin digging, scraping their nails along the walls like a pack of moles, burrowing a new home. Soon the flesh on their digits strips away, revealing bone, and now we’re really making progress. The Zees who can’t dig ferry the rock dust back and out of the way. Some, with arms reduced to little more than radial bones, make way for their undamaged brethren. This same routine continues for close to an hour before the wall around the thick steel door is completely excavated. With a moan it begins to teeter and then, in a single motion, comes crashing to the ground, flattening a dozen unsuspecting Zees and filling the passageway with thick, choking clouds of dust. 

I wave Plak forward. “Are you ready to make history?”