So here she was. Sitting freezing while the black-hooded bugs surged and chittered, while Cap raged at the chief bug, "You had to do it, didn't you!? You had to fire on an ambulance plane. Defenseless. Broadcasting its identity loud and clear. Covered in red crosses. Bloody harmless. But oh, no. You had to try and blow it out of the sky. So Compcontrol shot us down even though we were broadcasting the correct recognition codes."
"SSsssilence," snapped the bug commander. "You tttold us it would be ssssafe to apppproach, as long as we broadcast thattttt ssssignal. You did nottt mention exsssepshshshions. Now getttt us in the gatttte . . . or we killll you."
"We'll have to walk," said Cap, sullenly.
Another Morkth with the bright chelicerae of rank came bustling up. He chittered and hissed out a message. His sides heaved and spiracles hissed with what seemed to be agitation. He was putting out a heavy, musky odor.
The commander chittered back, his own sides beginning to heave. The musky odor grew thicker. He turned and left abruptly.
Leyla was still cool. "What happened there?"
Cap said distractedly, "Another Morkth landing craft is approaching. It can only be the Alpha."
"Great. So now we'll be sitting ducks in the middle of a war."
"No. The Alpha claim they have a queen larva aboard . . . about to emerge."
"So? The queen is the one that breeds, isn't it? Surely the bugs can't breed fast enough to make any difference?"
"You know very little about the structure of Morkth society. The queen is the source of everything. Workers. Soldiers. Identity. Wisdom . . . inherited knowledge stretching back to the primal hive. And command. Decision will rest with her. Do they go on into Compcontrol? Do they kill us and attempt to destroy the core sections? Do they continue with the Beta-Morkth planet cobalt-bomb project? The Beta are nearly finished, you know. That's why I started this bloody core-section chase. They were getting ready to shatter this planet as if it were a rotten apple hitting a brick wall."
The Alpha ship advanced under the protection of the recognition signals Cap had provided for the Beta's and settled in the corrie next to the wrecked ship. They found themselves herded across, to the waiting airlock, and inside to the heavy humidity of an intact Morkth craft. The air was full of the musky scent, overriding the badger and lavender smell that Shael had almost grown used to. Speech was impossible. The hive craft was full of the buzzing sounds coming from every one of the assembled Morkth. And the assembled thousands' attention was focused on the gigantic off-white twitching grub shape on the podium, constantly fussed about by various attendants. The humming drone reached ear-threatening proportions, getting higher and higher all the time, as the grub shuddered violently . . . and grew.
There was a deafening crack. Terrible in its suddenness. And the Morkth were silenced. The larva case had split and now it . . . she . . . was emerging. The grub shape had been big. The creature emerging from the husk was gargantuan. Stretching. Extending. Then fluttering small vestigial wings. Stretching that long, deadly body some more. This was a predator, born of a long line of things that attacked, shredded and rended. Her origins were plainly written in the lines of her body and her vast jaws. The chitinous armor was already changing, darkening, hardening. Around her, franticly scurrying Morkth attendants placed great troughs of food, nectar. And the hive drone rose again to a crescendo.
She would speak. Soon. Soon.
Recognize her hive.
She opened her gigantic scimitar jaws, designed to slice and rip, jagged and razor-edged. The vast maw behind opened. Silence fell like a curtain across the suddenly immobile insectoid crowd.
It was terrible. Frantic. Compelling beyond reason. A feeling that transcended species to the extent that Shael bit her gag savagely.
!!!HUNGER!!!
The queen shucked her larval husk. Now, she was desperately thin and stretched. And empty. She needed food. Prey. Not the dead slush she kicked aside. No!
Live prey!
With mindless ferocity she stepped forward and began to feed. Panicked stridulations came from all sides. But still the Morkth made no attempt to run.
She was mad.
Completely mindless.
But she was a Queen.
With a sudden flick Cap slashed the belt of the hypnotized Beta-Morkth commander. Taking the core-section bag as it fell, he hustled them towards the airlock they'd come in through. None of the Morkth even appeared to notice. The three humans could have been killed a thousand times over. But no Morkth paid any attention to anything except their new Queen.
The escapees stepped out into the snow.
Walked away from the black craft and down to the valley, toward the vast steel doors, with the cold biting through their foot gear.