📗Larval Haze | 6: Five Red Queens
Following the events of Strange Harvest, the honey must flow as life grinds on beneath the jungle's alien canopy...
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📗 Part VI: Five Red Queens
“They really are everywhere,” Barkland said with a disgusted shiver. I watched from his helmet camera as he gazed down at the swamp from his perch on top of a tangle of thick steeloak boughs. “Where’d they all come from?”
“It’s seasonal,” Gaultmann answered, then added, “Though I’ve never seen this many spawning all at once. Over the course of months, perhaps, but this…”
After climbing around to gather enough nectar-laden flowers, he’d found a spot wide enough to crouch and make sure the tough hard-case pack was secure. I watched him clumsily fiddling with the straps, clearly still getting used to the predictive movements of the mechanized nullsuit.
The slowly dipping sun splashed the scenery with an orange and pink glow, its light sparkling on the water and gleaming on the wet, pulsing skin of the countless newborn octopiders bobbing at the surface. They crawled, swam, climbed, and leaped all over the place seemingly at random, wrestling and fighting, chasing and eating anything that moved—including each other.
Gaultmann said, “I’m sending data for your map, Barkland. Just accept the import and you should be able to see where most of ‘em are. I’ve marked a route back.”
Off in the distance, I could see a shimmering pillar of concentrated green light capped by an inverted triangle hovering in the air over the treetops. That waypoint marked the grow lab. Between that and Barkland, a sinister red glow engulfed major areas of the swamp, including the lower trunks of most trees.
“Right, red’s the bad bits obviously,” Gaultmann explained. “And here’s your safe path out.”
A bright green path of light snaked through the upper canopy from tree to tree, all the way from the grow lab’s waypoint to where Barkland crouched at the top of the steeloak tree, leaning out slightly to look down the trunk.
“Ah shit,” he swore. The grassy area far below at the gargantuan tree’s base had been overrun by a horde of octopiders, big ones, moving at alarming speed up the trunk. Some had started climbing even higher. “How the fuck are there so many?”
They were drawn to his scent—maybe Leguro’s blood on his armor. Or… the little ones he’d already been dealing with. Or maybe this was just their territory.
I asked, “You didn’t kill any of them, did you?”
Barkland cleared his throat. “One or two, probably. I mean, look how many there are. They were all over me, and their little beaks or teeth or whatever are sharp, I’ve got scratches on the suit where they were chewing on me.”
What had been just a few wanderers turned into a concerted flurry of tentacles and hairy segmented limbs driven into a frenzy. Barkland zoomed our view in close. I could see their bulbous, slick bluish heads inflating in threat displays and even their many black eyes bulged outward.
The octopiders climbed over one another until the fastest and strongest among them began leaping upward using their powerful set of four spider limbs, grabbing branches with tentacles, skirting around to the other side of the trunk.
These were adults, and they were hunting.
“They’re on you,” I said. “You need to jump. Toward the waypoint, in the treetops—there, the big one with the split trunks, two o’clock. You can guide yourself in with the grav nodes in your palms when you get close enough.”
When the tag command wouldn’t show on the display lenses, I realized I didn’t have full access to issue pings into Barkland’s suit. “Gaultmann, I can’t ping. Tag that big double split tree—”
“I see it,” Barkland cut in. “Not a fuckin’ moron, I see it. Don’t mess me up. Got enough room for a couple of steps here.”
The view from the helmet camera, at such great heights, made me a little dizzy as he turned his head from side to side to check his footing. But I couldn’t look away, so I breathed steadily and ignored it.
Two thick, smooth branches had intertwined and nearly fused over the years as the tree grew, creating a clear path several feet wide. Beyond that, empty air.
For a suit of armor, the nullsuit weighed very little—but it still had exposed parts with mass to keep it grounded. With a small running start like that, a controlled leap in the powered armor could launch him all the way across to the next tree. Probably.
I heard Barkland take a deep breath on the comms. “Here goes.”
He bent his knees, tensed up, waited a few beats, and then leaned forward as he took one step, two, and fully committed, springing off with his right leg. The nullsuit’s reduced weight created a strange, floaty effect where Barkland moved faster and farther than he should have given his size.
I had to give him credit—he’d nailed the jump. It looked like he’d sail right across the considerable distance between the gigantic elder tree they’d been on top of and the nearby twin-trunked steeloak I’d been trying to ping.
Then he started flailing his limbs too much and tumbled off-kilter. “Shit, I’m falling—spinning—”
“Steady,” I said. “Reach out like that tree’s a rope to grab hold of.”
When the ground and sky began to switch places, I almost minimized the feed. My stomach turned in knots and I gritted my teeth. Hot saliva flooded my mouth and I swallowed hard.
Barkland took my advice, though, and reached out with both hands in desperation. Both palm nodes activated with a faint green glow and pulled him toward the split tree while his momentum carried him forward. He swung his legs underneath himself, arcing upward. Some smaller limbs were drawn by the pull, bending toward him, along with a loose scattering of leaves.
As he crowed with excitement, I saw a large, dark shape in the corner of the camera feed, approaching from behind him. “Behind you!”
Startled, he glanced backward for a look and sucked in a sharp breath when he saw a full-grown octopider in midair, its four tentacles splayed out wide so the flaps of webbed skin in between caught the air like a parachute. It had flung itself from the tree and was gliding across the gap to pursue Barkland.
His momentary distraction caused him to surge the power and then shut off the gravity nodes. This made him suddenly slingshot up and to the left of the great double split tree and sent him skimming along the treetops uncontrollably until he slammed into a protruding trunk. The air knocked from his lungs, Barkland wheezed, “Ohhh, fucking hell.”
I downsized the display window with Barkland’s video feed. I’d been clenching my fists the whole time, digging my nails into my palms painfully. They left weird, mottled blue impressions on my aggressively veiny and vampirically pale skin.
With a disappointed resignation, I came back to myself fully. I’d forgotten my situation. How long would I be like this? Watching through Barkland’s eyes, even in these circumstances, had been an escape from myself.
I still could feel her lurking inside me. Even now, stirring her memory brought a wave of intense emotion. Like silt disturbed, when I thought of the lotus wasp queen, the urgency behind her vision seemed to reactivate itself and cloud everything. Woozy and flushed, I swallowed nothing. My paper-dry tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Queens.
The word became a thousand thoughts, feelings, and experiences concentrated into a single imperative kernel of instruction.
Queens.
Killers, all of them. Strength is survival. Strength is death.
Hive of wonders. Protect the young.
Queens.
Seek others. Seek allies. Take allies.
Seek. Find. Change. Take.
Queens.
Tend the lotus, fear the rot.
Tend the lotus, fear the rot.
Fear the rot.
Fear the rot.
Queens.
***
“Charana, what’s happened to him?”
“Dying, seems like. Alien venom and human blood, Rachana.”
“Serves him right. Scum nearly killed us.”
“This one didn’t fight. Stung by the bug, the poor lamb, to fatten the new grubs. And now he’s come to stay with us. Our little foster lamb.”
“Hm.”
“He’s going to help us, Rachana. The honey will be spilling from our cups.”
“Yes. You’ve seen it.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“Then he’ll live.”
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