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  There were other features, many of which could be seen through the viewscreen. A globular traffic control center floated at the harbor’s epicenter, wrecked assault boats drifted like flotsam on a bay, and space-armored bodies pinwheeled through open space while an enormous reader board flashed the same unintentional epitaph over and over. “Remember . . . security first.”

  Thanks to the A-12’s high-priority VIP status, the assault boat’s pilot was able to put his vessel alongside the “upper” landing stage without entering the long queue. Booly felt a distinct bump, followed by a second bump, and heard the pilot make his announcement. “All right, folks, most of the docking area has been secured, but watch for snipers. There’s a severe shortage of gravity out there, so be sure to ‘look and hook.’ The harbormaster and her team have enough to do without chasing floaters all day.”

  Booly released his harness, felt his suit start to rise, and grabbed a handhold. Then, turning toward the stern, he followed his bodyguards back toward the port hatch. Because the marines wore space armor, and had an ongoing need to deass their transportation as quickly as possible, the assault craft were not equipped with locks. That made it easy for the general and his staff to push-pull themselves through the open doors.

  Though not as comfortable in space, Booly’s Naa bodyguards were naturally athletic and managed to look reasonably competent as they swam out through the hatch and found ways to anchor their feet and themselves in place.

  Like them, Booly had been raised on Algeron, a planet with mountains so high that they would dwarf Mt. Everest. But, the fact that Algeron’s equator was 27 percent larger than Earth’s, combined with the fact that the planet’s polar diameter was 32 percent smaller than Terra’s, meant the equator was nearly twice the diameter of the poles. The massive Towers of Algeron weighed only half what they would on Earth.

  Facts Booly learned during a childhood when nearly all of his Naa playmates could run faster, jump higher, and generally outperform him in every way. So, given their warlike natures, and his respect for them, who better to include in his bodyguard?

  The thought caused Booly to smile, an expression the officer waiting to greet him thought unusual given the circumstances, and would tell his friends about later on. “There we were, still taking the occasional round from snipers, when the general blows himself off his boat, grabs a monkey bar, and asks how the kids are. The guy’s smiling! Can you beat that?”

  Booly listened to the major’s reply, slapped him on a well-armored shoulder, and said, “Glad to hear it! I don’t have any children of my own, but the wife wants some. Just a matter of time I suppose . . . So, it appears that the Ibutho and the Guerrero both got away. How’s it going otherwise?”

  The marine major, an officer named Koski, delivered a concise sitrep. Initial resistance had decreased rather dramatically as the Syndicate’s officer corps piled into ships and took off. Now, with hundreds of prisoners in the bag, the marines were dealing with a mere handful of holdouts. Within an hour, maybe less, the opposition would be neutralized. It was great news, fabulous news, except that the real objectives were still on the loose.

  Booly nodded. “Thanks, Major. You and your troops did one helluva job. I’ll tell the admiral that when I return. In the meantime, knowing how generals tend to get in the way, I promise to maintain a low profile. I would like to take a look at their control center, however—assuming that’s convenient.”

  Koski nodded. “No problem, sir. Gunnery Sergeant Benton! Take the general topside, show him the control center, and tell our people not to shoot him.”

  Benton grinned through his visor. “Sir, yes sir! Follow me, General and I’ll take you up.”

  The noncom used steering jets to guide his suit away from the harbor and in toward a long bank of lift tubes. As Booly followed he noticed the scorch mark on the marine’s left shoulder. Not the sort of burn that a hand weapon would cause, but a deep gash indicative of something heavier, like a crew-operated weapon. A clear indication that some of the bad guys had come damned close to bagging a jarhead.

  If Benton knew how close he had come to death, there was no sign of it in his cheerful demeanor. “The argrav generators are out of service, along with lift grips, but the tubes are clear. Just dive inside, aim for the top, and fire your jets.”

  The marine led the way. As Booly entered the vertical passageway he noticed that there were handholds, or “lift grips,” all linked to a continuous chain. Now, motionless as a result of battle damage, they functioned like markers.

  The officer, closely followed by four bodyguards, propelled himself upward, fired his retros at what he judged to be the right moment, felt the suit slow, brought his boots up over his head, and used his feet to bounce himself off a wall. Then, gliding free of the tube, he gave thanks for the miraculously clean exit.

  Benton yelled, “Attention on deck!” and half a dozen marines, all anchored via foot rails, came to attention.

  Booly nodded, said, “As you were,” and followed Benton into a passageway. The visitors used suit jets to propel themselves down the hall, through a blown lock, and into the C&C. The screens were on, the facility’s computer continued to deliver information that no one cared to listen to, and all manner of debris drifted through the room. A hat nodded agreeably, coffee droplets orbited around their mug, and a stylus turned cartwheels in front of an air vent.

  The place was deserted, or that’s the way it seemed, until Booly rounded the command platform and caught sight of the station’s duty officer. For some inexplicable reason the mutineer wore no space armor, and the sudden loss of pressurization had practically ripped him apart. He was smiling though, as if in response to a private joke, and wore a tag which read FRANK MOY.

  Booly winced, wondered what was so funny, and continued his tour.

  PLANET HIVE, THE CONFEDERACY OF SENTIENT BEINGS

  During his travels throughout the Confederacy, Senator Alway Orno had seen many planets but none more beautiful than Hive. Now, as the pilot prepared to dock with one of twenty-four heavily armed space stations that orbited the Ramanthian home world, Orno took a moment to gaze out through the viewport.

  Thanks to the special contact lenses, which the representative routinely wore off-planet, the multiple images produced by his compound eyes came together into a single picture. The planet, for which Orno had sacrificed so much, seemed to hang in space. The north pole, the only one that was visible, was so white it seemed to glow. Lower down, below the cold, inhospitable, subarctic regions, the land appeared to be brown. That was deceptive however since the diplomat had walked those gently rolling plains, had gazed on seemingly endless fields of grain, and listened to the rhythmic grunting sound that the herds of domesticated animals made.

  South of there, spanning the planet like a thick green belt, lay the equatorial jungle. An important source of oxygen and the place from which his people had risen to sentience and still regarded with reverence. Yes, he concluded, here is a treasure worth defending.

  The view changed suddenly as the ship skimmed along the station’s sunward flank. Built to defend the Ramanthian home world against the possibility of Hudathan attack, the massive platform bristled with energy projectors, missile launchers, heat deflectors, landing platforms, antenna arrays, and all the other paraphernalia required to defend the planet below. The look of the structure, the psychological heft of it, was sufficient to make the diplomat feel proud.

  The ship slowed, banked to the right, and entered one of the cross-station passageways reserved for passenger traffic. Orno felt a bump as the ship touched down, a second bump as the lock-to-lock contact was established, and a subtle change as the space station’s argrav generators overrode those on board the spaceship. A tone signaled the fact that it was safe to stand and move around.

  The diplomat touched a control, waited for the saddle-style seat to lower itself out of the way, and turned to depart. Confident that his luggage would be dealt with and that someone would be there to meet him, t
he senator left through the lock. A low-ranking functionary bowed, escorted Orno into the deceptively titled Detox Center, and promptly disappeared. Though far from pleasant, no one was allowed to bypass the ensuing process, no matter how senior they might be.

  As with most of the Confederacy’s many races, the Ramanthians wanted to make sure that no alien microbes or other organisms made it to the surface of their home world. But the detox centers on the four stations to which off-worlders had access were intended to protect against much more than that.

  First it was necessary to ensure that Orno was who he said he was rather than a cleverly engineered cyborg, a surgically altered traitor, or a nano-generated construct.

  Then there was the need to cleanse the diplomat of artificial contaminants, including robots smaller than the dot on an “i,” bioengineered spores that could be tracked given the right equipment, and tiny biometric devices that might have been introduced into his food or drink.

  Not a pleasant process, but necessary if the race hoped to not only maintain the sanctity of their most important world, but protect the secrets hidden there. All 5 billion of them, since that was the number of eggs scheduled to hatch during the next year—forcing the Ramanthians to make massive preparations lest Hive be overrun by the very race it had nurtured.

  That’s why Orno dropped his robes and allowed himself to be herded past three banks of highly sophisticated sensors, marched into then out of two chemical baths, and swabbed for DNA. After that his retinas were scanned, his voice was sampled, and the whorls on his chitin were compared to those already on file.

  Then, certain that the diplomat was who he claimed to be, and amazed by the total number of intelligence-gathering mechanisms they had either destroyed or removed from his person, the technicians allowed the senator to dress and enter the station proper. Unlike the so-called commercial platforms, on which off-worlders were allowed to buy and sell goods, Orbital Station-12 was “race restricted,” meaning that no one but a Ramanthian could board or conduct business on it.

  That being the case, Orno was not only spared the often objectionable sights, sounds, and smells associated with alien races, but took advantage of the opportunity to exercise his priority status and claim a seat on the next shuttle.

  The crowd included a significant number of commercial functionaries, but there were warriors, too, off duty or on their way to another assignment. The very sight of them, and his home through the viewport beyond, was sufficient to trigger feelings of sorrow.

  Like all Ramanthians, the diplomat was part of a three-person unit which was chemically bonded prior to birth. Each grouping included a functionary such as he, a warrior, and a female who required both males to fertilize her eggs.

  More than that, the adults needed each other in order to achieve vis, or balance, lest they become emotionally unstable. But now, ever since the War Orno’s death on the surface of Arballa, there could be no vis, a fact that ate at him like the drops of acid used to recondition criminals.

  Making the situation even worse was the knowledge that it was his scheming, his manipulations, that led to the duel in which the War Orno was killed. But given the fact that there was no way to bring the War Orno back, the diplomat tried to suppress such thoughts in the hope that time would heal what nothing else could.

  The shuttle departed on time, bucked its way down through the upper layers of Hive’s atmosphere, and leveled out over the gently rolling plains. Here, clearly visible through the side ports, was the beauty Orno had only imagined up in space.

  Thanks to the common vision embraced by three successive queens, not to mention the aesthetic natural to the Ramanthian race, a great deal of thought had gone into the way the surface appeared.

  Unlike worlds like Earth, where undisciplined humans had allowed scabrous cities to spread across much of the planet’s surface, Hive was a place of perfection. In fact, were it not for rivers that looked like canals, fruit trees that stood in uniform ranks, and crops that grew in perfect circles, Hive looked largely untouched.

  That was because the cities in which Ramanthians lived, the power plants upon which they relied, and the factories that produced their goods were all underground.

  First, because underground living came naturally to the insectoid race, second because it allowed them to optimize the use of their arable land, and third because an underground culture is less vulnerable to attack than one that dwells on the surface. An important consideration in an age of faster-than-light (FTL) travel.

  So, while the beauty visible through the viewport might have been by way of an unintended consequence, it was a source of considerable pride, and still another reason for living below Hive’s surface.

  The shuttle swept in over what appeared to be a gently rounded hill, dropped into a well-manicured park, and was immediately lowered into the ground.

  In spite of the quick rate of descent the trip still lasted for the better part of ten standard minutes. Finally, after a gentle bump signaled the end of the ride, Orno rose and made his way outside. The combination train-air terminal was crowded but not oppressively so. Because there was no need for windows or doors, public structures were open on all sides. Fractal art graced what few walls there were, green plants grew in lavishly decorated pots, and the air was warm and balmy.

  The diplomat followed a group of warriors across the tiled floor and out into the sunlight which Ramanthian engineers had funneled down from the surface. Galleries rose to all sides and were generally accessed via ramps, although the younger members of the race still had the ability to fly, and could flap from one building to the next.

  The city was called The Place Where The Queen Dwells, and as such ranked as one of the most important habitats on the planet. Orno was not only proud to live there, but to occupy quarters adjacent to the eggery, from which the Queen mother continued to rule.

  Now, before he could go home for a much-delayed reunion with the Egg Orno, the diplomat had to make the requisite courtesy call, especially in light of the fact that the Queen had almost certainly been informed of his arrival and would take offense were he to go elsewhere first.

  There were no private vehicles within Ramanthian cities, a policy that not only served to conserve the space that would otherwise be dedicated to driving, repairing, and storing them, but reduced air pollution. Something that holds special interest for any race that lives below ground.

  As befitted Orno’s rank, a government ground car waited at the curb. The politician approached the rear of the vehicle, waited for the hatch to hiss up out of the way, and slid onto one of two saddle-style seats.

  The driver waited for Orno to settle in, turned the handlebar-mounted throttle, and merged with traffic. There was no need for the politician to provide a destination since the driver already knew where he was going.

  The car swept along busy arterials, through an open-air market, and under a heavily reinforced arch. Orno knew that above the arch, ready to fall, was a thick blastproof door. The Queen, not to mention the billions of eggs stored in the climate-controlled vaults located directly below her, lived within a containment so strong that it could withstand a direct hit from a subsurface torpedo.

  The vehicle was forced to stop on two different occasions so that guards could scan the driver, the passenger, and the ground car before it was allowed to proceed through the royal gardens, along a gently curving ramp, and up to the eggery itself.

  The carvings that decorated the facade were said to be more than three thousand Hive years old. When viewed from right to left, and without benefit of contact lenses, the panels told the story of the first egg, the first hatching, and the glory to come. A future that Orno would not live long enough to see but for the fulfillment of which he bore a great deal of responsibility.

  The car eased to a stop, an entire squad of heavily armed warriors crashed to attention, and Orno backed out of his seat. Then, his heart pounding, the diplomat entered the royal residence.

  The Queen, her huge, gr
ossly distended body supported by the same birthing cradle that her mother’s mother had used during the last tricentennial birthing, waited for her visitor to appear.

  Her feelings toward Orno were decidedly mixed. Though fallible, and overly given to scheming, the diplomatic functionary was dedicated to betterment of his race. A quality the Queen valued so highly that she had seen fit to ignore the manner in which some of his most recent schemes had failed.

  Now, as Orno returned from time spent with the Confederacy’s Senate, what sort of news did he bear? The fact that she was trapped, unable to move, was a constant source of frustration. No more than a year in the past, she’d been blessed with a normal body and lived a normal life. Well, not exactly normal, since members of royalty do have certain privileges, but relatively free. Freedom she made use of to travel off-planet, experience everything that she could, and prepare for the obligation ahead.

  Now it was upon her, and the Queen’s body, which everyone treated like some sort of factory, had become her prison. Yes, there were times, more and more of late, when the Queen wished she could have been a common everyday female with only three eggs to produce and a lifetime in which to enjoy the results.

  But for reasons that only the gods of evolution could explain, her race had been gifted with a second means of reproduction, a birthing so huge that earlier hatchings sometimes led to war and famine. Meaningless where nature was concerned, so long as the race survived, but cruel and degrading for those who suffered through it.

  That’s why Orno’s work was so important and why his plans had to succeed. Because to fail, to bring 5 billion Ramanthians into the world without having the means to house, feed, and educate them would be nothing less than a disaster.