Chapter 18

Mark My Words

~ Haden ~

Haden pointed the blaster at his beautiful queen. Even knowing that he had added extra filters and triple checked his calibration, he felt terror spiking through his body as he squeezed the trigger on the massive weapon.

The wave blew right through her small body, pushing her back slightly and blowing through her short spikey hair. Donella was standing nearby with a handheld device. “The device is functioning within normal parameters.”

Haden recalibrated the device. “Where are the queens?”

“They have resurrected the throne room.”

Hearing the fear in his insectoid brother’s voice sent a spasm of what hot fury through Haden’s gut. “Have you contacted the other drones?”

“All except Raec, Arec and Drale. Their queens keep them close.”

“I’ll bet they do. Come, let’s do this thing.”

Haden’s queen sounded off. “I’m ready to help.”

Drawing her closer, he ran one hand over the side of her face. Looking into her eyes, he could tell she was frightened, but trying to be strong and do her share. He’d prefer to leave her out of it, but forbidding her to help her kinswomen was not his call to make. “You know what to do. Stay behind the drones until the last minute. Trust in them to protect you.”

“I promise to be careful. You promise the same.”

“My word is all I have to offer right now, my queen.”

“Your word is always good enough for me. I love you.”

Kissing her on the forehead, he murmured, “You are my world.”

Moments later their small group was converging on the throne room.

The queens seemed to be waiting for them with a throng of drones milling about. Steeling himself, Haden strolled into the room, weapon in hand, praying to the goddess that he still had a trick or two they didn’t know about.

“We have been expecting you, Haden. Come, show us this new weapon you have been fabricating. We’ve been watching you on the holographic imager. You’ve been hard at work.”

Though it wasn’t possible to interfere with the security feed without tipping them off, they’d been able to mute the sound from the area they were working in. Clearly they thought the weapon was something to blast them to oblivion.

“Greetings, Kabelda.”

“You will use my title.”

“You are no longer my queen.”

“Haden, I bend you to my will as easily as I do the weak human who normally inhabits this body. Much like you, she screams out for me to stop.”

“You sit there inhabiting her body only because I was able to resist long enough for warriors to come to her rescue. I would not consider that a win.”

“It matters not, for I have now spawned through many queens. You think that I would be foolish enough to allow you to walk in with your weapon and shoot me?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are more foolish than I took you for.”

Looking at the queens closing rank around her, he pulled the weapon up and took aim.

She growled, “Subdue him, you fools.”

The youngest, Queen Penny, fell to her knees. Somehow she’d momentarily wrestled control back from her symbiont. Her eyes were wide with terror. “Shoot, you fool.”

Haden wasted no time in pulling the trigger. A loud high pitched squeal sounded off, bringing most people to their knees.

Venice stepped around a small cluster of drones and pulled out a tiny blaster and pulled the trigger over and over again, taking aim at each queen in turn. When she finished with the last one, Haden eased back on the noise making device.

Tara was the first to open her eyes. She looked around to find Arac hanging in chains. Rushing to him, she wrapped herself around him in a protective pose. She held him so close that Haden couldn’t tell what she was whispering in his ear.

Raec kneeled beside Helena and Drale picked up Alexia and held her in his lap. Penny stood, “What in the actual hell was that? Did we have transponders or something?”

Haden wrapped an arm around Venice. “We believe stray pieces of Kabelda’s symbiont made its way into your system. We cobbled together a device to combat the effects with radiation. It is unclear if we killed off the parasite entirely or if we temporarily stunned it.”

“Get us back down to the planet immediately. I want restraints on every single one of us until we figure out if we’re still infected and how in the hell it happened.”

“Calm yourself, Queen Penny.”

“I won’t be calming myself. What in the hell is wrong with you fools? You could have easily overpowered us and taken us to the damn hospital.”

“We don’t overpower queens.”

Helena stood up with help by Raec. “Perhaps we need to reevaluate how we handle analogous situations like this. Penny is right. Put us in stasis and take us to the medical unit. Vraden can link with the Shardon clones if he requires assistance unraveling this mystery.”

Raec objected weakly. “You seem fine now.”

Penny turned on him. “We might seem fine but I had a hard time wrestling control back from mine the last time and I never want to go through that again. If you can’t remove the symbiont, then kill me. Don’t make me wake up to being a prisoner in my own body again.”

The other queens sounded off their agreement. Haden watched as each of their spouses was put safely into a stasis pod. They kissed and whispered tender goodbyes to each other as if they might be their last. Arac was particularly emotional. Haden didn’t think he’d fully recovered from his experience of being Kabelda’s breeder.

Loading them onto a shuttle, they escorted them down to the planet. Talon tore into the shuttle almost before they could get the door open and raced to Queen Penny. Armon’s huge claw came out in front of Talon, barring him from peering into her stasis pod. Whatever they were growling at each other about, Haden never knew. His attention was pulled to the healers pouring onto the shuttle to retrieve the pods.

Sending Venice with the healers for a more thorough examination, Haden gathered Raec, Arec and Drale. “I was still healing when Kabelda was killed. We must track down the remains of her body and try to piece together how this could have happened.”

Raec pulled himself together. “You are correct. If we don’t figure this out, our queens will still be at risk of being re-infected.”

Haden sighed. “I have been thinking on this and the symbionts seem like something that might spawn in the water. We know at least the piece that infected Helena was Kabelda. Perhaps she found water and spawned.”

Arac shook his head. “After they killed Kabelda, I was so overwhelmed that I left.”

Drale spoke pensively. “The night is blurry in my mind. There were so many drones, Golugua and human queens running around all the images run together.”

Raec added, “I remember one of the Golugua removing her head and they kicked and gnawed at it for sport. Several dragged her body off and we eventually brought it to our place and burned and buried it.”

“Let us begin at the burial site and try to figure out what might have happened.”

A hundred microns later they were staring at the freshly dug hole in the ground. Kabelda was in an advanced state of decomposition and her lashes looked strange. Haden bent down to have a better look. “They’re hallow, like something shriveled up and disintegrated.”

Raec spoke. “Or something crawled out and got away.”

Kicking through the dirt with his boot, Arac asked, “What this?”

Finally Haden pulled out his hand scanner. “It’s biological and the same matter as the lashes on her back.”

Arac took a step back. “Maybe the symbiont can detach and regenerate.”

Haden sighed. “That sounds unlikely, but we won’t know until we sample some.” He scooped several pieces into a clear canister, he locked the lid and slid it into the storage compartment on his hover bike. “Are there any water sources around here?”

“There are hot springs just down over the embankment. We’ve swum there before.”

Haden’s voice turned heavy with dread. “You mean down this slight sloping embankment where rain could easily wash something undesirable into the water source?”

“Yes, that’s fucking exactly what I said.” Raec along with everyone else was beginning to see just how something like this might occur.

Walking down the embankment they stopped at the edge of the hot spring. It was steaming slightly and seemed quite inviting. Scanned the water, Haden turned the back of the scanner around to reveal multiple biological entities that matched the symbiont’s signature.

Clearing his throat, Haden stated the obvious. “I guess we need to make sure no one comes near this site and try to figure out how to destroy them once and for all.”

Drale pondered out loud, “I wonder why none of us were infected?”

Arac asked cynically, “What symbiont would want to attach itself to a drone?”

“Perhaps they are not biologically compatible with us?”

Haden weighed in. “I agree with Raec. Drones have never been fitted with symbionts. Our physiology is slightly different. We need to meet with your father and determine if our device eradicated the organism and if not get his suggestions on what might kill such a resilient creature.”

Raec sighed. “He’s going to want Kabelda’s lashes.”

Haden pulled out his gloves and the knife at his hip. “I’ll get one. We need to study it in order to understand how it replicated.”