Who Murdered The Humans?

The drone was marinating in warm, nourishing oils when a worker interrupted with a food pellet containing an official communique. Soaking was necessary to keep one's integument from getting scuffed and creaky, but it was also pleasurable, and the drone bristled with annoyance.

The tiny worker proffered the message and tensed to flee. It was less common these days to nip the heads off messengers, but she’d heard these drones were a careless lot.

Only neuters of the Office of the Queen still communicated in the traditional chemical mode. It could not be urgent, so the drone almost tossed the pellet aside to taste later.

Yet some shrewd instinct told one otherwise, the drone would recall long after, when as a favourite of the Queen this tale would rivet listeners at Court. A murder! With a plea for his help! It was, as they say, a mandible-stretching moment.

This improved history came much later.

There was barely time for a polish. The drone hurried on all six legs to the Office of the Queen, trailing the pheromone cloud for priority business, though all that bustling got no further than the Chancellery door, where the drone was made to wait, buzzing his tiny wings with impatience.

Neuters dabbed with the scent of the Chancellor came and went on obscure errands. But there had been a murder! And he had been summoned! How could they keep him waiting?

"Have you sent in my name?" he repeated.

Regrettably, even the drone's full ancestry took only a few minutes to recite. To fellow drones and competitors for the Queen's ova, he was watery sperm , a nickname not easy to explain. Amongst the hiveship's human passengers, his visits had earned him the name Polonius, a title even more difficult to translate.

******

"Yes, murder," repeated the Chancellor, dragging its attention away from the untasted messages accumulating at the door.

"But the only deaths were humans," puzzled the drone. He used the term for the demise of an unscented worker. Loutish behaviour at most.

"It is now officially murder. Instructions from the Queen. Their entire contingent is dead."

"But why do we care if they slaughter one another?"

The Chancellor called up a virtual display, excellent in resolution and olfactory detail. Scattered bits of human, snipped and otherwise severed, lay everywhere.

"You think they did this to themselves?"

The reek of iron-based circulation fluid filled the air.

The drone was put out. "Well, I still don’t see what it has to do with me."

"You vaunt the value of your gene line, your empathy with lesser races and so forth – and they don’t come lesser than these – well, here is your chance. Sort this business out."

The drone was the sole representative of his lineage aboard the vast hiveship, and daily felt his gonads swell with failure.

"Many species share the dirty zone," he ventured. "Perhaps humans quarrelled with one of those and it has nothing to do with us."

This was a notion beyond most of his kind.

Another thought struck him. "How many humans were on board, and how many body parts were collected? More specifically, heads."

"I don't—"

"How do we know all the humans were killed?" He was beginning to get the hang of this. "There might be survivors. There might be witnesses!"

The Chancellor was silent for a moment. "None came forward."

"Because the pulpy fear us."

"As they should."

"Unhelpful in this instance though. The workers who disposed of the bodies should be traced and questioned."

The Chancellor considered this. "Very well, I shall have instructions issued."

More slow, time-honoured olfactory messages; more records to be filed away; more important, busy work. But as a neuter sibling of the Queen, all the Chancellor's eggs were in one basket. The only way copies of its genes could prosper was to be unquestioningly loyal.

"What will you do first?" asked the Chancellor.

"Visit the crime scene I suppose."

Outside the Chancellery, the drone flinched as a Guard-Captain loomed over him. Evolution had selected the soldier caste for close-quarter combat with armoured opponents. She was a nightmare of spikes, pincers and serrated blades.

"I am to provide you with surveillance data," grated the old soldier. "Though conditions in the dirty zone degrade our sensors."

She waved the stump of a palp. "This recording is all we have."

The picture was murky. Like many pulpy species, the humans shunned UV and lived in darkness.

"Note how they herd together yet post no guards. An easy target."

"Communal feeding time," explained the drone. He had once been present at such an occasion.

"Then this happens." A shadowy figure darted amongst them, slicing and chopping. "No natural defences you see."

"So it was one of us . And too big for a worker."

"And too small for a soldier."

"The right size for a drone," admitted the drone.

The dark shape halted amongst the dismembered bodies, as if considering what it had done, or savouring the moment perhaps. It struck at a still writhing human, then was gone.

"Easy as killing grubs," judged the soldier. "Even for your sort."

"The Queen wants this sorted quickly," she added. "But be warned. Accuse the wrong one and you risk making powerful enemies. Fail, and the Queen will be displeased."

The Guard-Captain paused. "But at least you will be judged impartial, since nobody likes you.”

******

Isolation field sparkling, the drone left the bright, sterile safety of the hiveship proper for the dirty zone with its infestation of passengers.

He bustled importantly down deserted passageways before pattering to an uncertain halt. Each species had its own space, but they were all sealed from within. He turned his UV light at a noise. Reptiles swarmed in the doorway of their habitat, baring their teeth and waving weapons fashioned from whatever they could.

"Keep away," they shouted, shading their eyes. "We will defend our eggs."

It occurred to the drone that they were afraid.

"I am here on the personal orders of the Queen," he announced. "To investigate the culling... that is, the recent murder of the humans."

"If attacked, we will fight!" The foremost reptile held a metal blade fastened to a stick. Many thought the tough hides of these creatures made them the least repulsive passengers.

"No, no, the Queen sent me to find out who did it. I require your help."

"The kirkle say it was one of you," the reptile said craftily. The kirkle were large, soft-bodied caterpillars, harmless, herbivorous and philosophical. "They say we all have reason to be afraid."

"Nonsense. Only humans were involved."

"Then it does not concern us."

The drone chattered his mouthparts in frustration.

The reptile sidled as near as it dared without provoking the isolation field.

"The humans," it hissed, tongue flickering in and out. "We would be willing to dispose of their bodies for you."

The deserted human habitat was cluttered with objects of uncertain purpose. The drone had learned these four-legged contraptions were for sitting, a curious folding-up trick humans did which had made him queasy to watch. He poked about, shining a UV light into dark corners.

The killings took place around these tables. Keeping food off the floor seemed important to humans. There was a great deal of dried circulatory fluid.

"It is Polonius," he called out. "I’ve visited here before. I had no part in... with what happened here. The Queen has ordered me to investigate."

He’d uttered this phrase a lot, proudly at first, judging the pulpy races would be impressed, but it had not helped before, and it was no help now. He turned to go.

There stood a human, possibly a female. Their sexes were so similar it was hard to tell.

"I can't hide anymore!" cried the woman. It least that is what the drone’s translator said.

Water leaked from her eyes. Perhaps she was diseased. She edged around the room, always keeping tables between them.

"I remember you," she said. "The same colour as a pair of leather boots I have. You've got those jewels down your side."

"You called me Polonius. Do you know who attacked you?"

She shook her head, one of the few human gestures the drone understood. "I was late."

"Yes, but—"

"I was late for dinner. And by the time I arrived…"

More water leaked from her eyes.

Suddenly the doors burst open, and the human was yanked into clashing mouthparts.

The Chancellor let the dripping pieces fall one by one.

"You’re not as stupid as I thought. But stupid enough to tell me what you planned to do."

The Chancellor stepped closer. "You reminded me I was careless about witnesses before."

Perhaps the Chancellor wasn’t just referring to humans. Isolation fields were difficult to penetrate, but there were weapons that could do the job.

"A gun like this," said the Chancellor, hefting the device. "They will look for a soldier."

"Wait, wait. I don't understand. You slaughtered the humans. But why?"

It raised the gun. "You don't deserve to mate with the Queen."

There was a flare of plasma and the Chancellor convulsed into fragments.

"Can't have soldiers being blamed," growled the Guard-Captain, lowering her own weapon.

******

"A dust of sensors left in my chamber!" announced the Queen the next day. "Can you imagine?"

The drone casually fluttered his wings in what he hoped was a seductive throb. His integument glowed like a chestnut, and new and expensive gemstones gleamed along his thorax.

But the Queen seemed more interested in talking. "The Chancellor spied on my meetings with the humans and decided its caste was under threat. As indeed it was."

Her great abdomen filled the brood chamber, pulsing with life, bulging with eggs yet to be fertilised. The drone wrenched his gaze away.

"Fascinating."

"I thought you’d want an explanation."

"Oh, I do."

Heady scent filled the chamber, a pheromonal cocktail of power, sex and genetic triumph. The drone imagined leaping on that mass of royal flesh and—

"In return for leaving their planet unharmed, the humans will provide us with mercenaries."

The drone managed a feeble wave of his antennae. "But surely, soldiers that were not genetically loyal—"

"No, no, mercenaries to replace the neuters. Queens come and go, but the humans would be loyal to the task instead. They call them civil servants."

The drone was almost shocked out of his aroused state. Of course, no Queen lived forever, but to hint otherwise was unheard of, bad taste and possibly treason.

"But wouldn’t that be... well, dangerous?"

"Or more flexible. To see an advantage beyond the genes."

"Your Majesty—"

"We can always get more humans, but I need new gene lines to manage them. I’ve not mated for days. I’m holding back those eggs for you."

"Oh, your Majesty!"

"Just get on with it."

THE END

E-mail: David Barber

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