Chapter 9: Strange Bedfellows

“I’m not good at this either,” Walker complained, Fig releasing another frustrated scent as he struggled to fit a piece of armor onto an increasingly irritated Drone. They had run him through seemingly every job in the factory, as if they were struggling to find a place for him in the hive. Walker still didn’t understand what the point of all this was. They couldn’t possibly need the manpower, why go to such lengths to integrate him? Was this how the Borealans felt when they first arrived on the Pinwheel?

One of the other Workers finally took the shoulder pad from him, Fig leading him away by the arm. Were it human, it would no doubt have been hanging its head in shame. Instead, its mandibles moved restlessly, clicking loudly.

Suddenly all activity in the factory dome seemed to halt, the Workers leaving their tables and moving towards one of the many exit tunnels. They dropped their tools and ceased their work, forming a large group, tightly packed but never bumping shoulders or jostling for space. It was as if someone had tripped a fire alarm. They all knew where to go and what to do at exactly the same time, and yet Walker had heard no sound and had smelled no unusual pheromones on the air.

Fig led him along, he was apparently expected to follow them. There were a handful of Drones too, and the tall Pilot that he had seen exit the Warrior’s husk. It was downright spooky, they were all being drawn to one place, marching like zombies. Walker was head and shoulders above the smaller Workers, and so he could see over them, watching the column of Bugs snake down the twisting tunnels as if they were one organism. Fig kept a tight hold on his arm, Walker watching as more columns of Bugs joined them from branching side tunnels. They were so colorful, a thousand different iridescent shells sparkling in the dim light, the sound of their marching feet like thunder in the enclosed space.

Walker closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He wouldn’t get anywhere if he kept relying on sight and sound to navigate this world. He tried to block out the noise, using his nose, making an effort to pick out any scent that might indicate where they were going. Every passage had its own pheromone trail, this one was obviously important, and so it must have one too.

There, layered below the myriad scents of the Bugs, a pheromone that smelled like sweet honey. He could almost taste it on his tongue. It was appetizing, his stomach starting to rumble as the aroma filled his nose. Were they heading towards food? Perhaps whatever passed for a mess hall in this hive? Was the honeyed smell making him hungry, or was the pheromone itself inducing hunger? It was sometimes so hard to tell the difference between a genuine impulse and one that had been provoked by some pheromone. He would have to be careful and stay aware lest he be strung along like a puppet.

The tunnel had a distinct downward slant, they were going deeper into the hive, further underground.

They eventually emerged into another chamber, this one of roughly the same size as the factory, lit by that same glow from a large cluster off luminescent moss that was clinging to the apex of the dome. His eyes widened as he surveyed the room. Far from being full of tables and kilns, this one was packed with ... creatures.

They were huge, as tall as a Pilot. But where the Pilots were thin and lanky, these were bloated and swollen. They were physiologically similar to the rest of the Bugs, sharing the features that were common to all castes. They had a decorative horn, a shining exoskeleton in varied hues, along with the same configuration of limbs and organs as the others. What set them apart, however, were the clear sacks on their bellies and chests. The skin was translucent and filled with amber fluid.

The larger of the sacks was located on the lower abdomen, where the belly would have been on a mammal, the protective plates that commonly lined the torsos of the other castes were widely separated by the stretched skin beneath. It gave the impression that someone had drawn on a balloon before inflating it, and Walker wondered if the plates would return to their normal positions once the sack of fluid was drained. Their hips were flared, no doubt in order to carry the substantial weight, giving them an oddly feminine figure. What really turned his head were the two sacks on the chest. They looked remarkably like breasts in their shape and placement, but that was impossible, insects did not produce milk. They were like a pair of damned space hoppers, filled with that same golden fluid, the weight of it giving the sacks a distinct heft. There were maybe fifty of them leaning against the walls as they sat cross-legged on the ground, forming a ring around the room, their bodies so distended that it looked as if they couldn’t move from their seats.

“Honeypot ants,” Walker muttered. He had seen this before in a species of ant back on Earth. Many social insects collected and stored food in one way or another. Bees made honey and ants often grew their own food in specialized chambers in their colonies. Honeypot ants were unique in that they stored liquid food within the bodies of a specialized caste called repletes, their abdomens swelling to gigantic proportions, functioning as living reservoirs from which their hive mates extracted nourishment.

A Worker needed only to stroke the antennae of one such Replete if it wanted to feed, which would cause it to regurgitate the contents of its swollen body. The Betelgeusians were nomadic, traveling between the stars in their hive ships, it was a logical way for them to store and transport the food that they would need on their long journeys.

He watched as the crowd of Bugs separated like a shoal of fish, heading towards the lounging Repletes in pairs, Fig pulling him along as it made for one of the bloated giants. They were obviously going to feed. The pheromone trail that smelled of honey had brought them here, a map to the pantry. But how would they feed? Would these Repletes regurgitate the contents of their transparent stomachs into the waiting mouths of the Workers and Drones as if they were baby birds? Repulsive! Would he be expected to participate?

As they neared one of the Repletes, it opened its four arms to them in invitation, scents of sweet honey washing over him. The upper pair were long and slim, with a small blade that protruded from the wrist, its purpose unknown. The lower pair were thick and strong, with heavy, reinforced joints. Hunger tore at his stomach, a desire to feed scratching at the inside of his skull, the alien signals interfering with his brain. He found himself fighting them, rising above the almost instinctual urges that the pheromones instilled in him. This was not a form of mind control, they were not psychics. If he kept his wits about him, then he would not fall prey to their suggestive power.

Fig climbed into the Repletes lap, supported in two of its arms, the size of a child in comparison to the larger Bug. It leaned on the Replete’s belly, like a beanbag chair filled with fluid. Walker watched in disbelief as Fig reached up and took one of the heavy breasts in its forelimbs, pulling it down to its face, its mandibles opening like grasping fingers as it sucked something that looked uncomfortably close to a teat into its mouth. It began to suckle, drinking down the amber fluid. The bizarre scene went some way to explaining why their mouth openings were so small.

The Replete held out its remaining arms to Walker, and he backed up, shaking his head.

“Oh no, it’ll be a cold day in hell.”

He looked around the room, seeing that the Bugs were all feeding, Workers and Drones alike. Even the Pilot was doing the same, sitting on the dirt floor and leaning close to the Replete as it drank. They waited patiently for their turns, forming orderly lines in front of the Repletes, the scent of confusion reaching Walker’s nose as the Bugs that were queuing behind him stared. Fig released the Replete’s breast, the bloated alien cocking its head in confusion. Once again, Walker’s mere presence was disrupting the day to day operations of the hive.

Fig rose from the Replete’s lap and took him by the hand, trying to lead him closer, but Walker refused. The Bug released a puff of concerned pheromones, not understanding why he was refusing food. Walker had no way of conveying how disgusting he found the whole situation. It smelled good, he could almost taste the sweet nectar on his tongue, but his human sensibilities would never allow him to feed in the way that they wanted. Especially when he had perfectly good MREs waiting for him back at his cell.

Fig tried to pull him, but he dug his heels into the earth, making it very clear that he wasn’t going to cooperate. He smelled concern, expectation, urgency that bordered on anger. Fig finally gave in, returning to the engorged Replete, which took the Worker gently in its arms and cradled it as it ate.

The sight made Walker’s skin crawl, but he had to keep reminding himself that these were not mammals. Convergent evolution might have arrived at a similar method for sharing nutrients, but these were not their children as far as he knew. Any maternal overtones were the product of his own human hangups. He was starting to get tired of this whole affair. He was trying to keep an open mind, but if his mind got any more open, then his brain might fall out of his skull.

Where did this honey come from? It must be rendered from something else, what was there to eat on Jarilo? His blood ran cold as he remembered Kaz’s remarks about the animals, how she had said that the forest seemed to have been drained of fauna, as if the native species were fleeing the valley. This might be where they had all gone, eaten by the Bugs and rendered into nutrient goo to feed their army. It was only conjecture, but it seemed likely. The UNN was not too concerned about their ecological impact on the planets that they colonized, they were fighting for survival after all, but the idea of stripping an entire valley of life to fuel the war machine seemed monstrous to Walker.

He stood aside, letting the other Bugs pass him, a short Worker waddling past and climbing into the welcoming arms of the Replete. As more and more were fed, he could see the Replete’s sacks visibly draining, shrinking as the fluid within them was consumed. Rather than leaving flaps of stretched skin, the material was remarkably flexible, retaining its shape as it shrank back down to its original size.

As efficient as the Bugs were, it still took a while for the whole group to feed. While the room was packed with individuals from every caste that he had seen so far, this could not be the whole hive, there must be many rooms such as this spread throughout the tunnel network. Just how big was this place? How many Bugs lived here?

Hive ships were smaller than jump carriers, and it had always been assumed that only a few hundred Bugs would have been able to live on one for any length of time, but that assumption relied on human standards of living. Perhaps they had been packed like sardines, making use of every inch of available space in a way that humans just wouldn’t have been able to tolerate, or was it possible that they just reproduced at a rate that far exceeded anyone’s expectations? In either case, the ground war did not look like it was leaning in the UNN’s favor.

Feeding time seemed to be over, the Bugs had eaten their fill, and they were starting to file out of the room. The Repletes were mostly empty, their huge bellies and hanging breasts had shrunk back down as if they were made of elastic, leaving them with flat chests and abdomens that resembled those of their fellows. Not all of the food had been eaten however, a handful of the Repletes were still bloated with the amber fluid, reminding Walker of pregnant women as they held their heavy bellies and walked with a cautious determination. He was surprised to see some of the heavier ones drop down onto all fours, using their lower pair of legs to walk, their swaying bellies hanging beneath them. That was why their lower limbs were so heavily reinforced, to let them move about while at full capacity. They might be moving to another room to feed a different group of Bugs, or perhaps their stock of honey would be consumed the following day.

Now the different castes were breaking off into groups, the Drones going down one tunnel, the Workers and Pilots heading towards their own respective exits. There was an aura of fatigue about them, their relaxed pheromones instilling a desire to yawn in Walker as Fig took his wrist in its hand, leading him towards the group of Workers that was filing out of the room. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was in these dirt tunnels, lit only by the luminescent moss that clung to the ceiling, but he got the distinct impression that it was the end of their day.

Contrary to popular belief, ants did sleep. The Queens could slumber for anywhere up to nine hours, while the Workers took a series of short naps throughout the day, ensuring that the maximum possible number were awake at any one time. The Betelgeusians were sentient, far smarter than earth ants, and so it stood to reason that they would require more sleep. The Krell and the Borealans slept, the UNN had not encountered any species thus far that didn’t. Although science understood little about the process or its purpose, it seemed to become increasingly necessary as the complexity of the animal in question grew.

It was intoxicating. Walker found his eyelids growing heavy as the sleepy pheromones washed over him, his body responding to the signals. He was ready to turn in, the day had been long and trying, but he had expected Fig to lead him back to his cell when they had finished with their alien job hunt. This was a different tunnel, however, Walker was becoming adept at identifying the different scents. If they weren’t going back to his cell, that might pose a problem, his MREs and his water were back there. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since Fig had come to collect him, it had been at least twelve hours or more. Fig had obviously expected him to feed with the rest of the hive, the concept that Walker might have done otherwise would not have crossed its mind. They lived regimented lives, and his divergent behavior seemed to be a source of perpetual surprise and frustration to the Bugs around him.

Could Walker make his way back to the cell under his own power if it became necessary for his survival? Yes, he was pretty confident that he could follow his nose. The more time he spent in this hive, the more the different scents and pheromones jumped out at him. He found that he was making a mental map of the tunnels that he traveled in much the same way that he would take note of landmarks and points of interest in the field so that he might orient himself in hostile territory. He was surprised by how quickly his new senses were merging with his old ones, his brain adapting to this new environment remarkably quickly.

As they marched down the tunnel the column of Workers narrowed, shifting towards one side of the dirt passage. Walker was a head taller than the Bugs, and so he could see over them, watching as a second column of Workers passed them to the right. These were alert, energetic, a few of them turning their heads to watch him as they walked by. Efficiency was the name of the game in this self-contained society, and Walker was certain that these Workers had just woken up. They would be resuming their tasks with a minimal delay as the different groups cycled through.

They continued down the winding passages, and Walker wondered how the Bugs planned them. It seemed random to him, chaotic, the tunnels rising and falling as they branched off in directions that didn’t make any sense. What might a map of this place look like? He would have liked to make one, had they not confiscated his wrist-mounted computer.

They emerged into a new chamber made of packed dirt, smaller than the large domes that contained the factories, about the size of an average subway station. There was less luminescent moss clinging to the ceiling than in other parts of the colony, and while it wasn’t completely dark, the glow barely served to light the room. It was even warmer and more humid here, bordering on unpleasant, but the Bugs seemed to like it. They spread out into the space, jostling as they found places to sit and lie down, personal space was apparently not in their vocabulary.

It was clear that they were going to sleep, and Fig led him over to one of the clusters of Bugs, shuffling into a pile of maybe five or six and trying to pull Walker in. This did not look like an environment where he’d be getting his regulation eight, and so he struggled, trying to pull away. Fig’s grip was like iron, and the Workers around his handler reached out to grab him, two dozen pairs of hands gripping his fatigues as he fell forward into their midst.

Once again he resigned himself, sitting on the dirt floor as the Workers around him shifted and moved about, the ground surprisingly soft now that he thought about it. The resin that they usually used to seal in the soil was not present on the floor, it was fresh and a little damp from the humidity. He had slept in far more uncomfortable places in his time.

He wasn’t sure what the Workers were doing, but whatever it was, they weren’t sleeping. They began to fawn over each other, their many hands seeming to stroke their immediate neighbor’s shells, brushing off dirt and rapping on each other’s carapaces. It reminded him of the way that the Drones had calmed the upset Workers earlier in the day, petting them. Perhaps the Bugs found the percussive sensation somehow soothing. They were grooming one another like monkeys, fingers probing into the breaks between their chitinous plates, picking put any flecks of soil that might have become lodged in there during the day. Most of them were diggers who spent their time covered in dirt, it made sense for them to groom one another at the end of the day.

This must be how they bathed, and it might be a form of bonding too. Ants cleaned their antennae meticulously, and many species of insect were remarkably clean, like the cockroaches who so notoriously hurried away to wash themselves when touched by a human.

He felt hands grasping at his clothing, several of the Bugs exploring, seemingly confused by his fatigues. The Betelgeusians did not seem to wear clothes, but the Drones wore armor, perhaps they would be able to draw a parallel?

His suspicion was confirmed as they began to tug at his jacket, figuring out that it was some kind of artificial material and that his true body lay beneath it. He tried to fight them off, he wasn’t being restrained in any way, but the sheer number of Bugs that were boxing him in and tugging at his garments made escape impossible.

He did not fear them, he knew that they meant him no harm. The Workers seemed to have no concept of violence, and their pheromones were reassuringly calm and curious. This was another line that he did not intend to cross, however. He had to make his displeasure known to them at some point.

Their claw-like fingers found their way beneath his clothes. They were dull, and the Bug’s exoskeletons were somewhat flexible, reminding him of softer plastics. He shivered as he felt their hands pull open his jacket and roam across his skin, their expressive eyes wide and curious as they leaned in closer to examine his alien physiology. There were two dozen hands roaming across his chest and belly, more on his back, and he flinched as he felt one of them run its fingers down his spine. They would never have been this close to a vertebrate before, nor a mammal, a warm body with an endoskeleton must be a novel thing indeed.

They were gentle in their explorations, tracing the lines of his ribs, pausing at his nipples and his navel to examine them. His muscles were a curiosity to them, and they tested their firmness, prodding softly and letting his flesh spring back. More Bugs were joining the group now, leaning in to place a hand on his body, those that were too far away to reach him rubbernecking instead.

He twitched in surprise as he felt something warm and wet on the back of his neck, snapping his head back to see one of the Bug licking him, its tongue long and sinuous like a worm in its own right. It left a smear of that sticky saliva, Walker reaching an arm behind his head to wipe it away, and it clung to his fingers with the consistency of jelly.

Had the Worker just wanted to taste him? No, the other Bugs were doing the same, polishing each other’s smooth shells with their winding tongues. It was like they were buffing a car, the strokes of their muscular organs cleaning away any dirt and giving their carapaces a bright sheen. These were such deeply social creatures, innocent in a way, and he had to admit that he found their care and nurturing nature somewhat endearing.

During the opening years of his military service, he had hated the Betelgeusians with a fiery passion. He had referred to them as roaches, buggers, reveling in his spite along with his fellow soldiers. The Bugs had deserved their hatred, they were needlessly aggressive, incapable of diplomacy and cruelly callous towards their enemies. They employed painful and unethical weapons against civilian population as well as against enemy combatants, respecting no rules of engagement and seeming to desire only the extermination of any foreign species that occupied their chosen planets.

Over time Walker had grown tired of hatred. As he had gained experience, so too had he started to see the war in a different light. You could not hold an animal in contempt, you could not expect civil or rational behavior from creatures so alien, and thus his malice had subsided. It had been replaced with a sense of duty. The Bugs needed to be removed for the safety of UNN and Coalition worlds, they were a threat to civilized life, and so he took on the role of an exterminator. His kills were clinical, methodical. When he shot a Bug he did not feel pride or enmity, it merely put him one step closer to solving a larger problem.

He was reminded of a famous quote from old Earth. A reporter had asked a sniper, embroiled in one of the many conflicts of the era, what he felt when he shot an enemy. The sniper had shrugged his shoulders and replied, recoil.

This new, more sympathetic side of the Bugs was making him reconsider his position. They were not mindless machines whose only desires were to kill and feed, and although he wasn’t about to start regretting his military career, he would have to reevaluate his position. They were still the enemy, these new revelations did not diminish their abhorrent actions during the war in any way, but there was something deeper going on here. He would have to get to the bottom of it.

He was roused from his thoughts by an alien hand sneaking below his belt line, making him jump, and he batted the questing limb away. It was soon replaced by more, they had removed his jacket, and now they would remove his pants. He fought against them, but to no avail. Even if he was to punch one squarely in the face, it would do little against their hard exoskeletons. He didn’t want to get violent with them either, he knew that they were just curious, trying to involve him in their daily routine as best they could manage despite his alien physiology.

He felt a tongue lash at his neck again, warm and wet with their special brand of viscous saliva, tickling his skin as it writhed. One of the Bugs was attempting to wash him, and though he had no shell, the insect was not deterred. Perhaps it enjoyed his taste, his skin was covered in salt due to the exertion during his brief stint as a tunnel digger.

They were fascinated by his hair, too. One of them ran its dexterous lower hands across his head, stroking him in a way that might have been quite pleasant under different circumstances.

Fortunately for Walker, his belt was an enigma to the aliens, an exotic locking device that they could not comprehend. Several of them crowded around, leaning Walker back against the Bugs behind him as they fumbled with the clasp, confused pheromones filling the air that only served to attract more Workers. They were curious creatures indeed, fixated on the problem at hand, Walker forgetting his discomfort as he watched them.

It spoke to their social nature. When the Workers encountered a problem, they released scents into the air that alerted any individuals nearby, two heads being better than one. Working together, they finally succeeded in unfastening the clasp, Walker protesting as they pulled his trousers down around his ankles. They had neglected to remove his boots, however, and again they crowded around as they attempted to solve the enigma of his laces.

They overcame the problem remarkably quickly, they were smarter than he gave them credit for, pulling off his boots and his pants along with them. He felt more hands on his legs, so unlike the jointed limbs of the insects. They seemed fascinated by the hair on his shins. He wondered what they could feel through that shell, how sensitive their fingers were. Did they approximate the human sense of touch or was it like feeling something through a thick glove?

He felt more tongues now, a Worker with a deep purple shell and a horn like an elk leaning down to drag the damp organ across his belly. The tip snaked into his navel, making him shudder, leaving snail trails of goo. Another was washing his inner thigh, its slimy tongue grazing his erogenous zones.

This was all becoming a bit much for him. There was a bulge in his underwear, Walker could never have been aroused by these alien insects, but his body was responding to them regardless of his feelings on the matter. One of them seemed to smell the dirt that still remained on his fingers, the tips stained black from when he had been digging earlier in the day, and he felt its tongue take hold. It guided his hand towards its mouth, its oral opening scarcely large enough to pass both his digit and its tongue, drawing his index finger inside. The Workers did not seem to eat solids, only the honey from the Repletes, their mouthparts looked ill-suited to much else.

It was warm inside, Walker grimacing as he felt fleshy walls close around his digit, the material similar in texture to the inner cheeks of a human. The alien’s drool made it slippery and wet, and there was a powerful suction as the Worker cleaned off the dirt, again lending credence to his theory that all they ate was honey.

More of them crowded around, sucking his fingers, their long tongues glancing across his skin as they washed him.

It was so hot in this chamber, he couldn’t think straight. The muggy air was making sweat pour from his body, and the aliens were licking it off him like he was a damned ice cream cone. They might be treating him as a living mineral lick. Many animals visited mineral deposits to lick away the nutrients and biometals in order to supplement their diets, it was common for farmers and hunters to leave out blocks of salt for their animals. Human sweat contained sodium and chloride, bicarbonate and calcium, along with other electrolytes and minerals. The Bugs might well be attracted to it, perhaps gleaning some nutrition from him that they could not obtain from their diet of honey alone.

He leaned back against the Bug who was sat behind him, its four arms supporting his weight effortlessly despite its smaller stature, its tongue roaming across his shoulders and neck. All around him were more Workers, curious hands probing, eager tongues tasting every inch of his skin.

Sparks were flying in his brain, his beleaguered body twitching and shivering at every touch, the sensation was overwhelming. His erection was beating like a heart now, straining against the fabric of his shorts, a purely physiological reaction. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. More of them were coming over to see what all the fuss was about, as if Walker was the center of the room, every Bug clamoring to get a taste of him.

There was something else in the air too, something that was tickling at his new sensory organ. It was musky, thick, a scent like strawberries that came through pink and syrupy. It was so hard to describe, his brain fumbling as it passed the information through familiar filters, like a kind of synesthesia. With a start he realized that it was coming from him, seeping through his pores, pheromones that were piggybacking on his sweat. The Bugs seemed especially interested in it, tasting it on his skin as they licked, nipping at him with their hard mandibles and chittering. They became excited, the air in the chamber filling with their own scents, a reciprocity of pink pheromones. There were other emotions mixed in, expectation, urgency. What was happening?

Could it be possible that this new organ not only allowed him to sense pheromones, but to produce them too? Would it be possible to communicate with them directly as they did with one another?

He felt chitinous fingers tug at the elastic of his waistband, dragging down his underwear, his member bouncing free. The pheromones were clouding his mind, his breath becoming ragged, a heat rising in his cheeks. He had never been so aroused. His heart was hammering in his chest, his mind fogging as their scents washed over him.