Chapter 12: A Taste of Freedom

Walker slowly opened his eyes, disturbed by movement around him. He blinked as his vision adjusted to the light of the strange moss that clustered on the roof. The Repletes in his vicinity were stirring, their day was about to begin. He was reluctant to rise from the nest of soft, fluid-filled pouches that he had been sleeping on. It was the first time since he had left Charlie that he had gotten a decent night’s rest. He had eaten well too, and despite his lingering drowsiness, he felt invigorated.

Cherry took him by the hand, lifting him to his feet and tugging him along as she began to lumber towards one of the many exits. Walker was getting into the rhythm of life in the hive, the cycle seemed to be roughly twelve hours on and twelve hours off during a given day, or at least however many hours the days lasted on Jarilo.

He had spent some time with the Repletes, and now he was going to be passed along to another caste, at least that was what he assumed. What was left? The Drones? Pilots? The other castes were all new to him, and they seemed innocent enough, but he had seen first hand what the combat castes could do to people. He could scarcely look at a Drone without wanting to put a .45 through its helmet.

As Cherry led him around a corner and broke away from the larger group, he noticed something on the wall that made him turn his head to stare at it as they passed. It looked like a blob of green slime, as if someone had hocked a giant lump of snot at the wall. There was a dark spot in the center of the gelatinous mass that seemed to be moving. It was about the size of a marble, and though the goo wasn’t quite transparent, he could make out what looked like a bundle of wires or maybe blood vessels that vanished beneath the soil. It was tracking him. He narrowed his eyes, watching the dark spot follow him as he walked down the dirt passage until it was out of view.

Had that been a camera of some kind? All of their technology seemed to be organic in nature, perhaps it was hooked up to some kind of surveillance system. Now that he thought about, whatever it was, it was small and unobtrusive. He had only noticed it because its movement had caught his eye. For all he knew, there could be hundreds, even thousands of them strewn throughout the hive. Who might be watching? That was the real question that was on his mind as he followed behind the lumbering Replete.

They traversed the winding maze of identical dirt tunnels that he was becoming so accustomed to. Walker hardly even saw the featureless walls of packed soil anymore, he navigated with his nose, seeing where was going and where others had been in his mind’s eye. It was a multicolor map of smells and tastes, and he was growing more proficient at reading it. He could tell which direction would take him to food, he could smell traces of foliage and meat from the Replete feeding chamber, he could even determine which castes had been where. At least the ones whose smells he was familiar with.

He didn’t know where Cherry was leading him, however, only where she wasn’t. They weren’t going towards the feeding room, and they weren’t following the other Repletes, where might she be headed?

After what must have been at least half a mile of walking, they emerged into a domed room, this one identical to all the others at first glance. Walker bristled, Cherry’s head turning to look at him as she smelled his fear. The room was lined with recesses dug into the walls, most of them occupied by Warriors. They were hanging from fleshy webs and organic cables, holding them upright as they stood limply, their bodies split down the middle to reveal their glistening innards. Tall Pilots were striding around, some of them examining or working on their organic suits, and numerous Workers scurried about beneath them at waist height in comparison to their larger counterparts.

This was some kind of garage, had to be. Were these Workers surgeons, or mechanics? Was there much of a difference in Betelgeusian society? There was ... stuff all over the walls. It almost looked like someone had strung up entrails like Christmas decorations, but upon closer inspection, Walker realized that it was some kind of organic cabling. They ran between the recesses in the walls where the suits were housed and disappeared into holes in the dirt at intervals. There were also the usual light fixtures made from luminescent moss and other gelatinous objects of indeterminable purpose that clung to the walls like ugly growths.

The Workers connected and disconnected fleshy cables to the Warrior’s carapaces, leaning inside the open cavities of the large, lobster-like suits and working on them with unidentifiable tools. They removed damaged sections of shell from the limbs, pockmarked with railgun fire or plasma burns, carrying them off to be replaced or repaired. It looked like battle damage, and Walker got a sinking feeling in his stomach. Had there been fighting since he had been captured? Were his comrades dying on Jarilo’s surface while he was stuck down here, unable to help? Should he be doing more to sabotage the operations of the hive?

If this had been a hangar in a UNN base, then there would have been status readouts on computer consoles beside the berths, fueling lines running to the ships, and other loading machinery. There was none of that here, at least nothing that he could immediately recognize. There were work surfaces spread about the circular floor of the room, and large, blocky devices that seemed to be made from both organic and mechanical components. They looked like filing cabinets coated with slime to him, he had no way of knowing what any of it was for.

Did the Bugs even use computers? How would a species that only communicated through pheromones and had no written language to speak of write code, or input data? It was impossible for him to imagine a world without the microprocessor, without touch screens and integrated smart computers in everything from wristwatches to toilets. They must have math, you couldn’t achieve space travel without the complex calculations required for things like orbital burns and superlight jumps, but how did they apply it?

His instinctual fear at the sight of the Warriors subsided slowly, they were all deactivated, or maybe asleep? He wasn’t sure yet to what extent they were organic.

One of the tall Pilots noticed them, making her way over as the smaller Workers scurried out of her path, coming to a stop in front of Cherry as the two communicated. Walker concentrated hard, intent on understanding the exchange. It might reveal some clues as to what his purpose was here.

<HONEY CARRIER HAS BROUGHT ALIEN?>

<I GIVE AS INSTRUCTED, CARE FOR IT.>

Cherry turned to leave, lumbering back the way that she had come in her four-legged gait as her heavy, fluid-laden pouches swayed beneath her body. Apparently, Walker was now in the charge of this Pilot. He looked her up and down, sizing her up.

She was about seven feet tall, lanky, with long and thin limbs. Her two sets of arms were comparably sized, ending in long, spindly digits. Her torso was elongated in proportion to the rest of her body, and Walker remembered the first time that he had seen them and how their spines almost seemed to be open to the air. Presumably in order to facilitate their connection with the Warriors and the other Bug vehicles. This individual had the usual ornate, distinct horn, and a carapace that was an iridescent yellow-orange in color. Tangerine would be a fitting name for her.

She seemed to be examining him too, her wide, blue eyes panning over him. He felt a little self-conscious, he must smell of honey and sex. The most thorough shower in the world wouldn’t have fooled their sensitive noses, or whatever it was that they used to smell.

<YOU ARE TO FOLLOW AND LEARN.>

Her pheromone conveyed a commanding tone, which made sense, as the Drones and Pilots made up the military branch of the hive. Maybe he would get along with these guys better than he had thought.

Where Fig and Cherry had led Walker around by the hand like a lost child, Tangerine expected him to follow on his own, and so he did. He understood enough of their language now to take instruction, more or less. He wasn’t sure whether she somehow knew that fact or if she was just indifferent. He noticed that while the Pilots were turning to stare in his direction, the Workers were not. They went about their business as if he wasn’t even there, which Walker found unusual. In the factory room, they had been fascinated by him. Was it possible that these were the same Workers from two days prior, and if so, did that mean that the colony was in fact much smaller than he had initially believed? An alternative explanation was that the hive was separated into smaller sections, each with its own population of Workers, Repletes, and soldiers. That was essentially what the UNN did, perhaps he was currently inside the Betelgeusian equivalent of a city district or a military base.

Tangerine had said that he was supposed to learn, but about what? Were they going to put him inside a Warrior suit and see if he could drive it around? If Walker had an enemy combatant that he was holding captive, the last thing he would do would be to give them a guided tour of his hangar bays and teach them to use his weapons.

She walked up to one of the slimy filing cabinets, and Walker edged close enough to get a better look at it. It wasn’t perfectly square, it almost looked like a termite mound. If you somehow contracted an ant colony to build you a four-foot tall tower, this is what it would have looked like. It was irregular and misshapen, made from some kind of hard resin.

In a lot of ways, humans had unnatural tastes when it came to design and decoration. They wanted everything to be smooth and clean, angular and with straight edges. They built all of their technology into precise shapes as if the entire species was afflicted with some mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Bugs shared no such concerns, valuing function over form.

Its vaguely rectangular surface was covered in pustules, not unlike the camera that he had seen watching him in the tunnel. The mucous-green, gelatinous blobs were affixed to the tower seemingly at random, some of them wobbling and shifting as if they were alive. As he watched, Tangerine began to interact with them, her hands hanging at her sides as she released a series of complex pheromones. Many of them were too subtle and too finely layered for Walker to parse, at least not yet, and some of the pustules writhed and wobbled in response. She was communicating with them through smell, and they were answering her. What the hell were they? Were they alive? Was this some new caste of Betelgeusian that was dramatically different from the rest, or was it just some form of Bug technology?

She turned her attention towards one of the tunnels and Walker bristled as he watched a Warrior lumber into the room. It was tall and wide enough to completely fill the passage with its armored shell, its crab-like claws hanging below its segmented belly as its compound eyes reflected the light from the ceiling, seeming to glisten as it moved. It came directly towards them, Walker standing his ground despite his fear.

There was no reason for them to harm him at this stage, he was expected to learn something from the Bugs, passing him between the different castes served some purpose that he wasn’t aware of yet.

Had Tangerine called this Warrior to them using the pustules on the resin tower? Of course, those gelatinous blobs had responded to her pheromones, they must serve as keys or buttons. It was like a kind of voice-activated console, but rather than detecting the speech of the user via a microphone, it somehow sensed the smells that the user emitted and translated them into some kind of signal. Was that how their computers worked, and how they were able to store and access data without writing?

If that was true, it was remarkable. If they had managed to build and operate even rudimentary computers with no written language and no tactile interface, that would mean that they had skipped many of the steps that had led humans towards modern computing. It was like some kind of Smell-O-Vision.

It spoke to the psychology of the Bugs. He had noticed that they didn’t make many gestures in the way that humans and other races did, they had very little body language to speak of. They also seemed to favor pheromone communication over more tactile interactions. There was no reason not to write, no reason not to develop a keyboard and buttons that could be pressed, unless the idea was simply foreign to them. It had probably never even crossed their minds, no more than smell-activated computers would have seemed obvious to humans.

What did their code look like and how did they write it? They must have some equivalent if they were using digital systems. It would be possible to produce this kind of system with existing technology, but creating it from scratch would introduce problems.

The Warrior stopped a few feet away, and Tangerine walked over to it, looking back at Walker as if to imply that he should join her. He had never gotten so close to one before, at least one that hadn’t been shredded with heavy weapons fire beforehand. It was so large, there was so much mass to the thing. He felt as if it was going to fall over and crush him.

It barely looked alive. It had those same eyes that the Drone helmets had, glassy and expressionless. There was no space for a horn, because the shell overhung the small head like a protective cap, but it had two short antennae protruding from its forehead just above the compound eyes. The Bugs did not have antennae, at least not that he could see. Perhaps these served as a kind of sensor package, like scanners on a spaceship, in order to enhance the pilot’s situational awareness.

The claws alone were almost as long as he was tall. Huge, armored pincers that could tear through metal like a can opener and that made short work of even Borealans and Krell if allowed to close in. Walker felt naked without a gun in his hands, but he had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t in danger. It made no sense for the Bugs to kill him, not right now.

Tangerine seemed to be waiting for something, and Walker got frustrated, shrugging his shoulders at her.

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

She waved her mandibles in irritation, one of the few gestures that they seemed to make.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

She released a pheromone that he didn’t recognize, it kind of smelled like burning wood, and suddenly there was a great shudder from the Warrior. Walker’s instincts kicked in, and he leapt backwards, his hand darting to his hip reflexively but finding no sidearm to draw. It wasn’t moving to attack him, however, it was splitting open. As if some invisible knife had run from its head to its groin, its entire body came undone, splaying wide with a grotesque cracking sound. Strands of fluid linked the two halves as they opened like a clamshell, sagging and breaking to fall to the dirt floor. It was almost enough to turn Walker’s stomach, it looked like some kind of horrific injury had befallen the thing. He could see exposed flesh and organs inside the body cavity, wet and wriggling, surrounding an empty hole that would have been just large enough for a Pilot to squeeze inside.

He inched closer cautiously, craning his neck to get a better look into the gaping cavity. Its insides were coated in a sheen of glistening moisture, the nondescript bunches of muscle and what were probably organs were flexing and pulsing as if they were alive. It was an organic suit, so it must be alive, but how could it open up like this without dying? What about infections?

It was apparently capable of limited movement on its own, as there was no Pilot inside. Was this Tangerine’s personal ... suit? Vehicle? What was the purpose of showing him this?

She stepped forward, Walker taking a moment to get a look at the exposed flesh on her back, along with the plug-like holes that ran down it. It resembled brain matter, pink in color and detailed with small channels and lobes. He watched with a disgusted expression as she turned her back to the Warrior, then climbed inside of it. She used her four long arms to support herself, bracing them against the fleshy interior as she swung one leg up, and then the second. The Warrior’s legs were hollow on the inside it seemed, and she slotted right into it, her arms vanishing into puckered orifices that no doubt led to the suit’s limbs. He could hear the wet sounds coming from within as she shifted and wriggled to get deeper inside it, her chitinous body pressing into the thing’s moist innards.

There was sudden movement from inside the Warrior’s open carapace. Walker resisted the urge to jump back and get out of range of it, watching in alarm as a dozen dripping tendrils emerged from its glistening flesh. They were like tentacles, all in irregular sizes, slowly growing from the wall of meat behind Tangerine like fingers poking through latex as they snaked between her limbs and began to curl around her body. It looked horrifying to Walker, like an octopus that was about to devour its prey, but the Pilot seemed perfectly calm.

The muscular tubes wrapped around her neck and waist, winding around her upper arms and securing her thighs like thick ropes. He could see them tensing as they tightened. For a moment he feared that it would crush her, but the winding protrusions never got so tight as to be painful.

Tangerine was now completely locked inside the Warrior, like some kind of organic safety harness. She was engulfed by the strange protrusions to the point that half of her body was completely covered by them, her orange shell glinting between the off-yellow meat of the husk’s prehensile appendages.

“That is ... repulsive,” Walker muttered, knowing that she couldn’t understand him but finding catharsis in expressing himself all the same. Tangerine twitched, her segmented body bucking as if something behind her was causing her discomfort. Of course, the suit was hooking into her nervous system, he just couldn’t see it. It must be pushing the fleshy cables into her spine, the same ones that he had seen being disconnected from the Pilots the first time that he had come across them.

She finally stopped squirming, Walker unsure of whether what she had just experienced had been at all painful, and she stared down at him expectantly.

When he had first arrived in the hive, he had gotten the impression that they were trying to find a place for him, trying to figure out what he was capable of. It was almost as if they had snatched him at random without having any real idea of who he was or what he did. Now it felt more like they were giving him a tour, showing him their technology and their capabilities. Why on Earth would an enemy do that? Who would invite a spy into their midst and then reveal all of their secrets to him?

It frustrated him, he had been living in the colony for days and yet he still had no real idea of why they had kidnapped him or what they wanted from him. Some scout he was turning out to be...

Perhaps if he focused on learning their language, he might just be able to ask. While he had made great strides in understanding their alien communication, he was still unable to say so much as a word. He could emit pheromones that seemed to be triggered by emotional cues, but he couldn’t formulate speech in the way that they could. Was it something that he could learn to do with practice, or was it a limitation of his physiology? Maybe he just didn’t have the right wiring for speaking Bug.

<LEARN.>

Tangerine was staring at him, the pheromones that she emitted edging towards the red end of the spectrum which indicated anger or frustration. Walker had no idea what he was supposed to be learning, and so he couldn’t be of much help.

<COME.>

That was an easy enough command to understand, and so he shuffled a little closer to the inert Warrior. Her hard carapace was pressing right up again the slimy flesh of the suit’s innards, it almost looked padded for comfort, but there couldn’t be anything remotely comfortable about being enclosed in a prison of meat and organs.

When he got close enough, one of the mucous-covered appendages reached out, gripping his wrist and tugging him closer. It was strong, pulling him off his feet, and he had to reach out with his free hand to break his fall. It landed in wet meat with an audible splat, and Walker felt his fingers sink into the slippery flesh. It was like a wet sponge, warm and slimy, and he swore that he could feel a pulse beneath his palm. He tried to pull back instinctively, but the errant tentacle was wrapped around his arm with a grip like iron, his upper body mostly inside the Warrior’s open torso. The smell was strong, surprisingly not unpleasant, and he found himself wondering if it would have smelled this way to his unmodified nose. The cavity was warmed by its body heat, and there didn’t seem to be any blood, just slimy fluid that coated its exposed guts in a sheen. Perhaps it had antiseptic functions, that would make sense.