When the first Hive slumped to the ground, the second, alerted by some odd connection between them, stopped his climb to look down at me.
The leader halted as well and they looked at one another before the leader nodded his head, as if giving a command—or permission—and the closer Hive jumped to the ground to confront me.
Another oddity. The Hive did not follow orders in such a manner and none of them were ever in command. Their orders came from their centralized intelligence and decision-making centers, and those were never risked on the battlefield.
He landed before me, light on his feet, and stood. “Leave us, Warlord.”
What the fuck was going on here? The Hive’s voice sounded…normal. Like any other man’s I knew. No stilted language. No odd cadence nor computerized monotone. He sounded…unique. Individual.
And that was not Hive.
My beast didn’t give a fuck what this blue man in his silver armor was or was not as the leader moved once more, drawing nearer and nearer to the cave’s entrance, and the female he’d decided was his. The beast wanted to rip this man to shreds and get on with it.
But the man within me was still in charge, barely, and I recognized that this was something extremely rare, and strange. Commander Karter would need to know what was happening here, what these things were.
“What are you?” My beast’s voice was barely more than a growl, but the Hive understood.
“We are Nexus 9.”
What the fuck was a Nexus? And why had he answered? My question had been rhetorical because they had no need to respond. They expected domination and then integration. Or, he replied because he didn’t expect me to survive long enough to do something with the answer.
An ion blast sounded from above, from inside the cave, and the beast’s patience snapped.
I moved in a blur, grabbing the strange Hive and twisting his neck until he went limp in my grasp, but not before his weapon fired. I dropped the dead weight to the rocks, already forgotten. The blast of his ionic weapon must have hit my armor. Heat from the shot burned my body once more, from my hip this time, but the pain was nothing more than a small sting.
Rarely did I use my beast’s full strength, but as I crouched low for my leap, power flowed through me, the power of the beast unleashed, and for once I was glad for it. We leapt to the mouth of the cave in one mighty thrust off the ground ready to defend her.
Chapter Four
Megan
The Nexus Unit leader took three steps into the cave before he realized his mistake.
I stood near the entrance, hidden from view by an outcropping of magnetite that blocked the Hive’s sensors, and all of his communication with the outside world—or, in his case—the universe. His home world. The Hive central mind.
The entire cave was lined with magnetically charged metals, this canyon an extreme anomaly that our unit had been assigned to use to lure this bastard right to us.
Now all I had to do was kill him, and steal the technology that linked his spinal cord to the helmet, and the helmet to Hive command on their home world.
This blue-skinned bastard was rare, his existence nothing more than a rumor among the intelligence gathering units of the Coalition Fleet…until now.
Outside, I heard an Atlan Beast, who had obviously followed me, roar. Seconds later, the Hive Nexus before me twitched and lost his footing as if racked by the pain of having a limb torn from his body—or another mind.
His two friends must be close enough to still be connected to him.
These fuckers were all connect
ed to each other. We—those of us in the Core intelligence program—knew that already, what we didn’t understand was how. Not that it would matter for long. I had no doubt that soon the beast outside would take care of this Nexus leader’s two friends. The Atlans weren’t the most civilized of fighters, but neither were the Hive. Especially this one coming after me. This trio.
The Atlan beast would easily behead the two that remained below. I had no doubt of that. And then it would just be the blue bastard inside this cave…and me.
This creature was the key to solving the puzzle of the Hive central mind, to figuring out how to break their mental hold on their Scouts and Soldiers, and eliminating the threat to the veterans who still carried their technology in their bodies. These soldiers lived out their lives on the Colony for fear of being a danger to their home worlds should they dare return.
The Nexus stumbled forward, deeper into the cave and I knew I would have mere seconds before that great, hulking beast would show up and ruin everything.
I fired the neural disruptor weapon that Doctor Helion, the leader of the Core intelligence program, had given me and sighed with relief when the huge Nexus creature dropped to his knees. He raised his hands to his head instinctively out of something like pain—whatever it was these things felt—as I stepped out from my hiding place and approached, keeping the weapon aimed and my finger on the trigger.
He—no it—took off its helmet and turned its head toward me, despite the fact that I was sure I’d made no sound.