Chapter Eight
Vector walked briskly back to the spaceport, keeping his head low and his face hidden from curious onlookers. He kept the cloak wrapped firmly about his body because most of the buttons of his shirt were gone, one sleeve was ripped and the closure of his pants no longer functioned.
Before he boarded the ship, he called to Lokin through the open door to check to be sure the door to his room was securely closed. He would not risk sullying Rey'elle's scent with what he had done and he did not enter the ship until he got an affirmative response from the doctor.
He swept the cloak off and threw it over 2V's head as he passed, ordering the droid to put it in the cleaning unit and run it through at least ten cycles.
He almost sprinted to the cargo bay to pick up a small satchel from the corner and then proceeded to the crew's quarters where he stripped down, stuffed his clothes into the bag and stepped into the sonic. He stayed through two complete cycles, until he could no longer smell the sex or Anora on his body.
His skin felt raw when he exited, and he stooped to pick up the bag gingerly by the handles.
He almost collided with Lokin who merely cocked his head at the sight of Vector's nakedness. "The human bite is notorious for breeding infection. I would suggest a kolto patch as soon as you can arrange it."
Vector practically threw the satchel at Lokin. "Remove this from the ship, doctor. Please, get it as far away as you can."
Lokin looked at the bag and back at Vector's distressed face. "I will do as you ask, but why?"
Vector hung his head. "It smells of shame."
He opened the door to his room, where Rey'elle's scent seemed to slap him in the face. He headed to the shower to make absolutely sure all trace was gone and wished he could wash his mind of the images of the previous night.
His betrayal of Rey'elle burned like flames of judgement, accusing him with unrelenting pangs of guilt. Never once had he thought of another woman in that way since he had fallen in love with her. Never once had he been tempted and he cursed his humanity for this weakness it had inflicted on him.
He had betrayed her trust, her memory, to know she still lived and do such a thing…..
He was just leaving the shower when the door to his room slid open, Lokin was in the doorway.
"Do not enter here," Vector hissed through his teeth.
"Then come with me to the med bay. Now! Don't make me get my friend to make a point, and you know I will."
Vector gave Lokin a murderous look, but slipped into a pair of underwear and followed the doctor to the med bay.
Lokin motioned for Vector to sit on one of the stools and went about collecting kolto salve and bandages.
As he began to daub the kolto onto the bite and scratches, Lokin began his speech. "I have watched you carry the weight of everything on your shoulders since that day when Rey'elle disappeared. And now, I suspect, you are thumping yourself soundly for your little outing last night.
"Don't deny it, the signs are quite plain, and I am not speaking of the scratches. You feel guilty, you feel like you have betrayed her, yes?"
"What we did was unforgivable," Vector murmured.
"Holy hell, man, what you did was human! You were on the verge of either imploding or exploding and I was hard pressed to know which it would be. You bottled everything up inside, didn't share your feelings with anyone, what did you think would be the outcome? Take what happened as a gift and move on."
"A gift?" Vector cried. "It is more like a curse. It was like we had lost all our senses. There was no thought, just mindless hunger. And to make matters worse, it was Anora, someone we loved years ago. She had lost a husband and a child, her pain and ours was a force that would not be denied, a secret that only we could share.
"What have we done? Rey'elle deserves better than this, she deserves more from us."
"And what of Rey'elle's indiscretions? Do you think she would not understand or forgive?"
"Do not dare disparage her name. We know full well what Rey'elle is capable of and we love her regardless."
"Ah, so that's the crux of it. You get to take the high ground, stand above it all like some paragon of virtue. The stalwart protector too high and mighty to fall. Dammit man, there was a crack in your armor, it makes you no less than what you have always been."
Vector dropped his eyes to stare at the floor. "We did not look for this, we did not seek this, and once presented we could not stop. We might have been better served had we started a fight in the local cantina, it would have provided a release and left no traces of this guilt that swallows us."
"And you would now be in jail or likely dead. The Thul's have no love of killiks or joiners and it was Rey'elle who kept their hatred for you at bay when last you were here."
"It is not just the betrayal, doctor. We have never been that rough, not even with Rey'elle when she was in one of those moods. We left marks, many of them."
"Did you strike her?"
"No! Never!"
"Did she beg you to stop? Cry out in pain?"
"No, but…"
"Then I would say she needed what happened as much as you did, and from the look of your back and shoulder, I'd say she didn't hold back. Perhaps you gave her a gift also, ever think of that? There are other people who have suffered as much, or more, than you have. The galaxy can be a lonely place and, we fear, your journey back to Rey'elle will be long and painful. Sometimes you have to take what comfort you can get. You can trust this old man's word on that account."
"Rey'elle said much the same to us when we first came aboard the ship, but it is cold comfort at best as there was no warmth in what we did. We will ensure this does not repeat in the future, we must look on Rey'elle with a clean heart when we find her."
Lokin sighed and shook his head in resignation. "It may be years, Vector, do not set expectations for yourself you may not be able to live up to. If you do not stay in touch with your human self, it may disappear before you are even aware that it is happening. Rey'elle is no longer here to keep you grounded, so have a care, my boy, that your path back to her does not become so narrow that you no longer recognize what you feel when she fills your arms again."
Vector stood to leave. "This conversation moves in circles and my guilt will not be assuaged by words alone. We will consider what you have said, doctor, but now we must get ready to meet with the hive again. Perhaps it will do us good to put our mind to other matters."
Vector donned his armor and retrieved the cloak from 2V, it smelled of cleaning solutions and he was grateful that not even the slightest hint of Anora was present. He grabbed his staff and left the ship to rent a speeder and make his way back to the cave.
He was led again to the center chamber where the queen awaited his arrival and extended her forearm in greeting, which he reciprocated.
Vector noted she was alone. "We have returned as requested, may we inquire about the other queens?"
"All are in the egg chamber, they replenish the hive and it will be our time again soon," she said as she rubbed her burgeoning abdomen with two of her four arms.
"Do you have the information for us regarding the summit? We would like to depart as soon as possible."
"Yes. The colony has agreed to the meeting, but it will be very far from here. It is on a planet in what the humans call unknown space, open your mind to us so that we may share with you."
Vector's mind was flooded with charts and coordinates that the other hives had shared. The destination world, called Finas Eth, was located just inside the border of unknown space and he would have to traverse parts of wild space to get there. The trip would take weeks and would require many refueling stops along the way, but Vector also saw this as an opportunity to, perhaps, get word of Rey'elle or the invaders.
Vector had a slight headache after the queen was finished transferring the required data, the electrical impulses could be brutal before they settled into memory, it reminded him of his first days as a joiner and he had fewer pheromones now to aid the process.
"Do you know what other hives will be in attendance?" asked Vector.
"We believe you misunderstand, all hives live there. The colony is the combined consciousness of all and all hives maintain a constant presence. This is not a meeting but a reunion and only Oroboro has been absent for years uncounted, a condition we seek to remedy."
"We do not understand. Why has Oroboro been absent for so long?" asked Vector.
"Likely because we had been in hibernation for hundreds of cycles. And when we woke the scattering had already occurred and the humans had already invaded this world.
"As to who you will encounter. Unu, of course, Manam, Horoh and Aebea, to be sure, Iesei perhaps. Jooj, Kolosolok, and Saras also and likely others from the scattering that occurred after the Great Migration. We are ill placed to know all of the names.
"The killiks began here on this planet millennia ago, it is the mother world and they would see the survival of Oroboro at all costs. We are the mother hive that they wish to preserve, we hold the original genetic markers. Come, Dawn Herald, walk with us."
A male joiner appeared at Vector's side and he followed him for what seemed like hours ever deeper into the catacombs. The hive was always busy for as long as he could recall, but something seemed more frenzied now as if they worked toward some bigger, more important goal than just survival.
Vector glanced into the egg chamber as he passed. Drones moved among the queens with single purpose as it took many drones to fertilize one female. Workers were already moving the eggs to the hatching chamber where they kept the temperature steady by opening and closing vents from the surface and the natural hot spring directly beneath the floor.
The joiner led him deeper and deeper to where the path started to incline steeply and opened up in a cavern that was so huge it almost took his breath away. He had never seen this place before, the whole of the Thul estate would fit within its walls. On the floor of this cavern four enormous spitcrete vessels slept, two looked to be complete and the remaining two were in various stages of construction.
"So, you do intend to migrate again," said Vector.
"That is our plan and has been for some time, you will understand when you meet the leaders of the Colony. We will entrust you with seeking out a new world where we can thrive."
"How will you get the ships from this place?" asked Vector.
"The workers are crisscrossing the ceiling above you with layer upon layer of honeycombed passages. It will require little force to break through once we decide to leave."
"And propulsion?"
"Hyperspace travel is lost to us, but not sublight. What will take you days or weeks may take us a year or more. The means of fueling the drives is more complex, but with the help of some of the more advanced nests, we have developed a way to use methane, something that we produce naturally. We have been storing it for a very long time."
"Surely you have not forgotten the enemy fleet that hovers over this planet. What assurances do you have that any of our ships will even get through?"
"We have no assurances, and that is why you will take three queens and as many fertilized eggs and workers as possible to the new world on your ship. The nest must survive, Dawn Herald and it is your duty to ensure this."
"So you intend to abandon this place entirely then?"
"The ships we build are not of the same size as the great nest ships used in the Migration, therefore, some will be left behind as well as eggs to produce virgin queens and drones to repopulate this place. What we leave behind will be only a shadow of what we once were, but it will provide a beginning should we fail on our new world.
"The nest remembers all that has gone before, nothing of Oroboro will be lost in the new beginnings. Come back now and share membrosia with us, spend the night and join us in the Twilight Song."
Vector and the joiner began the long hike back to the meeting chamber and Vector kept his mind occupied with the sounds of the hive. It was never still as each group went about their chores and all the voices combined into a cacophony of sound, thrumming with its own beat and traveling along the tunnels.
As they reached the chamber the queen motioned for Vector to sit at her feet on the mound she used as a dais. Joiners brought raw membrosia contained in bowls of hardened wax and he took the offering, waiting for the queen to take the first sips before drinking himself.
The song began, chittering vibrations at first, building into a steady throb of drumming then joined by a high chorus of joiner and killik voices while the nest sent magnetic vibrations through the caves causing stalactites to chime like temple bells. The ringing tones echoed back and forth between the caverns and down every corridor creating a melody of splendor. It was harmonic and haunting and Vector pitied anyone who had never known such beauty.
Rey'elle had experienced something close when Daizanna had invited them to walk the Synapse Comb of the Iesai nest and his heart wrenched at the memory. Her face had been beautiful as she sat enthralled by the song, swaying slightly to the rhythm, sharing a part of his life that he had shown to no other.
She had wept at the sound and leaned against his shoulder as the song carried her to realms she never thought existed. She had told him later that it was one of the most profound moments she had ever known. Part of it was the membrosia and part the pheromones but for that brief moment of time, they walked in each other's souls and became one being, shining and pure.
"Is that love?" the queen asked.
"It is sorrow," he murmured.
Vector drained the wax bowl and could feel the queen in his mind, feel his eyelids growing heavy.
"Your memory is a painful place to tread, Dawn Herald. Sleep now, rest in the song, you are safe, you are home."