Hellstrom's Hive

Old Harvey led his troop from a concealed perimeter exit at the northern edge of the Hive. Sod rolled back, a stump with a mucilage-sealed earth plug folded outward on a silent hinge, and the troop emerged into the night. They were lightly clad in dark gray and the night was cold, but they ignored the chill. Each carried a stunwand and wore a night-vision mask with a powerful infrared emitter (of Hive manufacture) around its rim. They looked like a troop of skin divers and the wands were like strange double-ended spears.

The stump-plug was seated securely before they left it, all sign of their passage removed.

They fanned out over the field and moved northward.

Old Harvey had chosen twenty-three of the key workers, mostly aggressive males, and he had seen to it that the females received hormones to hype them before he’d issued his careful instructions.

They wanted this Outsider female alive. Nils needed the information she carried. She was probably down among the cows. The cows could be frightened off with a low stun, but none were to be killed. This was not a sweep; it was a search. Only the Outsider female would go eventually into the vats from this venture, but that would come after she had given up the necessary information.

It had been a long time since Old Harvey had participated in a hunt and he felt the excitement of it pumping in his veins. There was life in this old worker yet!

He signaled for Saldo to take the left flank and moved out to the right himself. The night air tasted of many scents in his nostrils. There were the cattle, the dust in the tall grass, the raw earth, and the subtle esters of insects, a touch of tree resin. It was all there in his sensitive nostrils, but he could not separate out an odor that said the Outsider female was ahead of him. If she were there, the nightsight would reveal her.

Saldo had moved immediately to his assigned position and Old Harvey relaxed on that score. The young man was green, but his potential was enormous. The regular reports to Hellstrom pleased them both mightily. Saldo was among the twenty or so who might someday step into Hellstrom’s sandals. He was one of the smaller, energy-saving new breed, dark and slim, filled with a nervous energy and willingness to please, but with his own mind showing more strongly each day. He would be a power in the Hive someday, or he might even take a swarm of his own out to start a new hive.

The searchers had spread into a wide fan, walking openly down into the pastureland. Old Harvey noted that it was a good night for this search. Clouds were beginning to cover the sky, obscuring the late-rising waning moon. The cattle could be seen easily in the nightsight reflection. He kept his eyes on the scattered clumps of trees, however, ignoring the cattle for the moment. They passed one small herd with minimal disturbance of the animals, although the warm smell of the cows excited the hunter drive in the entire troop. Saldo and two others searched through the herd, making sure the animals screened no Outsider.

Hunt excitement could not be denied, though. It was evidenced by an increasing nervousness in the troop and an outflow of external hormones that began to spook the cattle. More and more, individual cows and then whole groups of them snorted and ran off with a panicked thumping.

Old Harvey began to regret that he had not included a selective hormone suppressant in his preparations. The subtle chemical signals that one animal could send to another had their uses at times, but they introduced complexities now. He kept his attention on the trees, however, leaving the cattle for Saldo and the others to scan. Nightsight gave his surroundings a faint silver cast, as though the light came from within every object he saw.

She will hear us coming and she will try to hide in a tree, he told himself. It’s her style.

He couldn’t say why or how he knew this from just one afternoon’s observation, but he felt certain of it. She would hide in a tree.

Old Harvey heard a night bird call from far off to his right and felt his heartbeat quicken. He was not too old for the sweeps. Perhaps it would be a good thing to go out occasionally with the workers.