The Red Queen (3 page)

At their accelerated work rate, they finished everything from the exosuits’ armor compositions to their HUD computer systems within six weeks. They even ran a few digital simulations to demonstrate that the exosuits’ capabilities would fit the proposed budget.

As Zubren was leaving the mess hall one night, he spotted a familiar figure in the corridor.

“Lieutenant Maxforth?” he called.

The man froze and slowly turned around. He looked pale as the walls and he must’ve lost fifteen pounds since they’d last spoken.

“Sir, they said you weren’t arriving here until next week.”

Maxforth walked towards him, the signs of wear slowly becoming more apparent on his face. Blemishes, bloodshot eyes, mussed hair. “I thought I might run into you. I’ve been reading the daily progress reports. Not bad at all.”

“We’ll have more to show you by Tuesday’s meeting, of course.”

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Maxforth said, waving a hand. Zubren noticed his slurring.

“Is everything all right, sir?”

Maxforth shifted his weight from foot to foot and cocked his head towards the mess hall door. “You’ve heard the rumors, I take it?”

Zubren swallowed. “They say farmers in the Western Plains are digging up Crawlers. But they’re only rumors.”

Maxforth nodded. “We ran a seismic scan a few days ago. There are at least four nest sites two miles beneath the ground.”

Zubren felt his cheeks go cold.

Maxforth clapped him on the shoulder rigidly. “Keep working on those suits and we’ll be fine. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a meeting to attend.”

Doubtless concerning the new Crawler infestation of the Western Plains.

“There is one last thing,” Zubren added.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to take Elaine and Asher to the Roswez Flats on my vacation leave,” he lied. “I know the Union had to send field operators to deal with those refugee uprisings last month and I thought maybe we could use a GSP to get through all of that safely.”

“That’s fine. I'll make sure you get one before you go,” he said, then turned and walked away.

Zubren watched him hurry down the hall. He'd intended to gauge his reaction more, but Maxforth was so quick about it. Maybe he was just being nice. Except that GSPs—general security passes—cost a lot in processing fees. For Maxforth to give the green light meant he didn’t care what Zubren did with it. Or maybe he didn’t want Zubren to think he cared.

* * *

As the shuttle descended through the valley, bare as a bone, the remains of Sector 20 came into view. Yellow bulldozers plowed paths through rows of eroded pod-like structures and crumbling piles of debris. Two cranes pulled out rubble from massive pits. Among the ruins, hard-hatted men walked around in bright green jumpsuits. For a moment, Zubren imagined they were Crawlers and felt queasy.

The shuttle touched down on the landing pad with minor turbulence. As Zubren stepped onto the concrete, he noticed the burn marks littering it. A light breeze shuffled the scorched remains of scaled papyrus-like Cretal plants. The scientists had genetically engineered them here with the intention of oxygenating the atmosphere enough to one day clear out the Crawler spore clouds.

Zubren followed three men from the shuttle to the check-in station, a green military tent emblazoned with the Fleet Services insignia, a black rifle framed by red and blue stars.

Field operators stood outside, and the flap opened to reveal a woman seated behind a light metal table.

The men greeted the receptionist by the name Margaret and flashed their wrist-tags under a scanning-device on the edge of the table. He figured they were all part of the reconstruction crew.

Zubren stepped up to the receptionist known as Margaret, slipping his hands into his pockets then slipping them out.

“Hi, my lieutenant assigned me to make an inspection of this station. To check for any faults in the rebuilding process. Nothing big. I should be finished in a couple of hours.”

He’d rehearsed this a few times, but it sounded much better in his head than it did aloud.

“We just had an inspection last week,” she groaned. “They must really think we don’t know what we’re doing here.” Margaret drew a clipboard out from beneath the table.

“Please fill this out and I’ll—”

Zubren whipped out his general security pass card. Surprise etched across the woman’s face and she reached for it tentatively. As she ran it under the scanner, a green light blinked, indicating the security pass had worked. Zubren felt his body loosen.

Now so long as she didn’t contact Maxforth regarding this, he would be fine.

He watched her open a plastic container and draw out a metallic seal and wire. She plugged the wire into the seal then into her computer.

“You’re clear. I’m assigning you a temporary badge. Lasts three hours. It’ll ring when you have an hour left. If you’re still here when it expires, you’ll be escorted out.” She typed something up on the keyboard. “There’s a dispensary straight ahead. Get yourself a green suit.”

Zubren nodded and took the seal.

A few minutes later, he’d donned the bright green clothes and attached his seal via its built-in magnets. As he trekked through Sector 20, the bordering piles of broken cement and metal frame husks of old pods reminded him of the stock footage he’d watched in Basic. The Crawlers had a long history of attacking their military installations in an extremely thorough fashion. Especially the bases devoted to scientific research.

As he passed by one damaged station, he caught sight of two men lifting a sheet of charred plaster, while a third man propped a black body out with a shovel. A sickening stench reached him and he darted to the other side of the paved road, his gut racing. This must’ve been where the fuel depot exploded.

Intent on leaving as little evidence of himself as possible, he refrained from asking anyone where the Crawlers had focused their attack. Instead he spent a good half hour snooping around Sector 20’s ground level stations before he recognized a set of eerie tracks in the dirt beside the road. He bent down and ran his hand across them. They snaked on so continuously they could’ve been from car tires. But the segmented lines were a dead giveaway. They belonged to centipede-strain Crawlers, no bigger than a dog, but sometimes as long as a bus. The Crawlers often used them to infiltrate deep into bases, traveling through the ventilation systems or other tight spaces and into secure areas. But he doubted they’d relied on centipede-strains to destroy Sector 20. Centipede-strains were too small to excel at any serious forms of sabotage.

Ahead, the tracks disappeared into a crevice beneath a building marked RB-14. It was too small for a man to fit inside, so he raced around to the yellow plastic sheet that hung over an exposed opening. Checking that no guards were watching, he pressed his eyes up against the plastic. The bright yellow obscured his view inside.

White tape sealed the plastic all across the opening’s frame. Zubren dug his nails in, but barely made a mark. The tape seemed to contain a special type of glue. Instinctively, he rummaged into his back pocket for his knife, but felt only emptiness.

Zubren narrowed his eyes and scanned the area. The rusted metal frame of the building across the road might serve his purposes. But at his touch ten strides later, a thin piece of the dark orange metal flaked off to the ground.

Gritting his teeth, Zubren pressed his finger hard against the frame. A hundred tiny chips of the rusted metal showered off.

In the distance, the mechanical groans and whirs of the cranes told him the lower levels of the base would be both highly guarded and highly blocked off due to internal structural damage. RB-14 might hold the answers as to what weapons the Crawlers had used on this attack, but he couldn’t just tear the plastic off. Only a thin, easily concealable slit in the sheet would suffice.

He backtracked for a few minutes until he found a piece of sharp fiber mesh in a debris pile. Its malleability made it difficult to hold firmly, but when he slid the edge of it against the white tape, it tore easily, if not cleanly.

As he slipped inside the plastic, he heard a woman shouting to him. His pulse quickening, he threw caution to the wind and jumped in. He landed hard on the base of a stairwell seven feet down. Pain screwed into his ankle at each step, but his eyes adjusted to the dimness and he spotted the crevice where the centipede entered from. Enough light spilled in from that and an opening above to reveal strange corroding patches marking the walls. He limped up the stairs to the closest one.

A rectangular niche the size of a bedroom window greeted him. Sliding his hand over it, his fingers cut across grooves. Uneven and curved at the edges. The imprints of a Crawler leg segment. Cold aches spread from his gut. He stepped back and discerned the overall depression of the head, thorax, and abdomen.

Pinching the bridge of his nose in concentration, he reviewed his mental inventory of Crawler subspecies. It wasn’t a warrior, an exploder, a burrower, or a builder strain, which ruled out the most common of the Crawlers. And no normal terrestrial insects grew this big. Given his experience in Fleet Services, he should’ve recognized it. Something tugged in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t pin it down.

As he chewed his lip, a light flashed out of the corner of his eye.

“Sir, what are you doing down here?” demanded a woman, no more than a silhouette unfurling the plastic opening. “Don’t you know this area is restricted?”

Zubren chose his words carefully. “I’m sorry. I just got here.”

Her tone hardened. “You need to step out now.”

He looked at her, then back at the niche. “Can I ask you something about this?”

“Sir, this area isn’t safe. The flooring might collapse at any time.” She lowered a hand to him.

Grunting, he relented.

“I apologize again. I didn’t think anyone would mind,” he said once they were back on ground level.

She raised an eyebrow. “Right. I guess the plastic cover isn’t obvious enough.”

Clearing his throat, he flashed his military ID. “My name’s Zubren. Today I’m inspecting, but I’m usually a pilot, so I’m audacious.”

She eyed his temporary badge with unease. “They didn’t tell me we were scheduled for an inspection.”

“If you can answer a few of my questions, I won’t bother sticking around,” he said.

The stern look of reproach on her face suggested his offer offended her. So she wasn’t the negotiating type.

“Again, I’ll ask what you’re doing here.”

Zubren sighed and folded his arms. He studied her face. She’d report him if he didn’t give an answer. But every inspector knew yellow plastic meant stay out. Flicking his thumb at the opening made by the centipede, he figured he’d have to fall back on the truth. “I noticed those tracks and figured this could be something vital to my investigation.”

“Your investigation?”

He stepped closer to her. “The Crawlers are returning, you know. Farmers are digging up larvae in the Western Plains.”

A numb look slackened her face. “Oh, that’s what this is about. What can I tell you then?”

Her unease seemed to be wearing off, so he dove straight into it. “Those niches have jagged edges, the way a Crawler’s wings might. Personally, I think a Crawler spread its wings there and melted the wall away with a corroding substance. Am I right?”

“It was to house a spore colony,” she said.

“But normally the Crawlers would use exploders, wouldn’t they?”

The woman shrugged. “This was probably a new strain. A mutation.”

Zubren grimaced. He’d figured the same. Except that he’d seen it once before.

* * *

Zubren widened his gait over growing puddles as the rain danced above, making his way to the magnificent marble brick palace that occupied a full city block. A collision of polished pillars and elegantly framed windows defined the structure looming ahead. Rain seeped down the marble, but it was so large the drops seemed to disappear on their way to the ground.

As a child, this had frightened Zubren. Even the most mundane oddities of the Maester Citadel had bothered him. A still image of a haggard woman complete with shriveled white hair, a crooked nose, and crow’s feet materialized hauntingly in his mind. Almost every day, his grandmother had brought him here, trying to fill his head with their religious gobbledygook. Telling him it was their duty to plead to the gods to release them from the Crawler War. As if they’d started the War. He still couldn’t shake off that foreboding feeling whenever he saw this place.

A massive wooden slab of a door lay open to guests. His shoes padded across the dull stone floor, stopping at the first row of benches. The interior made him feel like an ant. The ceilings must’ve stood at least a hundred feet high, decorated by gleaming mosaics of the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies. Words in an ancient language were etched in black in concentric circles. A vast set of organ pipes took up the stage at the opposite end of the Citadel, Maesters tending to the holy mechanisms all throughout.

Zubren inched his way down the aisle.

“My son, what brings you here?” asked a Maester from the seat beside him. A gleaming gold suit clung tightly to his every bit.

Zubren let his angst get the better of him. “The rain and questions, what else?”

“The rain brought you, but you also bring the rain. My son, there is no need for sarcasm. Understand?”

Zubren shifted his jaw and grunted. The Maesters still clung to that poetic way of speaking. He sat.

“What questions do you have?” the Maester asked gently. Though he looked to only be in his forties, he spoke slowly with a certain wisdom that made him seem much older. His grandmother told him that there was no physical sign given to denote Elite Maesters from the rest. There was just a way you knew. Something about them. Could this aura of knowledge be it?

“First, everything we speak of is confidential, right?”

“So long as it does not mean harm to anyone.”

Zubren reached into his pocket and pulled out the insect mold from his fireplace mantle.

“My wife found this in a dig site. I saw this same insect at Sector 20 yesterday, only larger. And it was a Crawler. One had corroded a cast of itself against a wall.” He shook the imprint. “Meaning this is not a terrestrial insect mold. It's a Crawler strain. The same one. I’ll ask you point blank, do you know why this might be?”