Chitinous

Death is like a need in us. It is the breath we exhale into each world we touch. But Cetra could be different. There could, just this once, be mercy.

CHITINOUS

a Susurrant Horror story

The sky almost seems cracked. It is lit by ferocious purple clouds, forked here and there by lightning: spilling into the world like blood.

Blood. That’s all we’re good for, isn’t it?

I can see from the arms of my mucous hazard-suit, glittering only palely with a light, burnished yellow, that I still have time. And yet once the storm reaches me, bringing with it its electrostatic surges of oblivion, they will become a harsher, visceral red.

I am told that I need to be away by that time.

But it is not just the sky that is, in its way, interesting. The ground here speaks to me – the very earth itself. As though I can hear it whispering. I’ve often been accused of pandering to my own fantasies, but what else is there? The view from my apartment orbstal is just one slice of the roaring truth that is Cetra, and idle daydreams are all that I have had for so long, since awakening into Colony life. Now that I can finally explore Cetra, bury myself in it – well, what of a little storm? What of a little story, for my own benefit, of whispering soil?

My navstal device slices the rarified air with an obnoxious sound. I would throw it away if it wouldn’t mean certain death – and if it weren’t linked to my hazard suit and tricky to unloop and remove. Instead, I read the flashing message.

“Biotic research update awaited.”

It is almost instinctive, how my gelled fingers move to respond. A form of indoctrination, I think. We are told that obedience in the Colony means survival. And what else is there but survival? And yet…

I resist.

I would look strange to any observer, but there is nobody else out here except for myself, and my electric whoosher, forlorn and abandoned nearby, but I stoop to the ground and try to listen.

Really listen.

I wonder if it is possible for them to still be there. Surely not? The storms were never certain death to them, but humanity…well. Humanity brings death with every footfall, does it not?

There is a whisper. I know there is.

Like the gushing of a stream from a far-off forest. Or a chittering.

Vitality.

Rationally, I know that it could just be the storm. Interference between my navstal and the Colony’s array. Or the simple journey of silica about this obliviated place. But my mind foments. My mind rushes, just like that far-off stream. What if it isn’t?

The navstal slices obnoxiously once more, and the insistence is underscored by a deep, crimson light. Biotic researcher to update. Positive or negative.

They don’t even know my name.

I expect I am the last to report back. I wonder if the others have found anything. There were only seven of us, of course – biotic expertise is limited these days – but I cannot imagine there has been a positive sighting, or any evidence at all.

After what we did to them…

I ignore the message once more, and begin to wander. Childishly anthropomorphising, I know, but I imagine my whoosher forlornly whining in fear of abandonment like a young darg.

And yet still I walk, under rippling purple sky.

The desolation of this world is like a wound that deepens, gushes and spurts, with each footfall into its landscape. There are craters upon craters. That is the legacy of humanity. Such desperation for death that we have bombed the places we have bombed. I wonder sardonically if it is because we are so desperate for death that we can’t even suffer ghosts to remain. Death is like a need in us. It is the breath we exhale into each world we touch.

I bend my ear to the ground once more, and touch it. The hazard-suit allows some semblance of sensation, and it feels so cool, like frosted shale. But also cool like…a dying breath.

Yes. I know for sure. They are here still.

I sit upon the ground, and my hazard-suit briefly roils with colours as it attempts to assess the newfound dangers, before settling to a harsh orange. I am likely sitting on some remnant of poison, scattered over the obliterated corpses of the ghosts we already killed.

I whisper back to the ground. “Are you there?” I stroke the dead soil, nigh-affectionately.

No, it is affectionate. I know myself, and I know the strangeness of this. But those whispers…I cannot deny a connection. I have found them.

“Are you still there? You don’t have to worry. I’m not like the others. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Time passes, and there are more bursts from my navstal, but I ignore them and they go away. The Colony will have my answer when I deign to give it. That is, when I decide what answer they shall have.

Time passes, and yet it does not feel like it does. The whispers are enough to keep me present. They resound even over the thunder rumbling in the distance, because they are for me.

“Will you come out?” I croon.

The earth begins to shift. Slowly, at first: oh, so slowly.

Something dark and hard emerges, and splits into many. Small creatures, at first like shadows and then like a marvel, surge toward me and then around me. Not many, but enough.

Life.

They are many-legged, but they move so quickly that I cannot determine how many legs they bear. There are no eyes or other details that I can gather, but perhaps it is because I am wrapped up in so much gratitude. They are like little hands, reaching out from a being that wishes to be a friend. That sees me.

“You understand me,” I whisper, contentedly.

They do. I know they do.

They scuttle away and embed themselves within the ground again, but before I can register any disappointment, silica begins to shift, from something else ascending, dark and hard and brittle and…

A great carapace. Just the touches of it, the promise of it. There are recesses, crenulations where in any other creature there may be eyes, and yet those sockets sit level with me.

“Are you the mother? You are quite beautiful.”

She is silent, having emerged enough to assess me.

She is so beautiful.

Life. Can you imagine? Even after what we did? After the volleys, and the poison. The Colony had so much vitriol for them it did not even bother to name them. They were simply ‘Native Biotics’. And that meant execution, so that we could begin to create farms for our teated cowars, and plant rows of banal elmern trees, so that we might sup our soup and satiate the old familiar desire to pretend we were not nomads, but living upon long-lost Eruth.

But what right?! What right did we have? We came, adrift, to this place – this great Cetra. These creatures were born here, fashioned within the bowels of this land into something beautiful. Over how many eons, I do not know. Perhaps they are older than humanity, even! Older than Eruth – is that not possible? It has been thousands of years since we lost our way, since the fingers of the memory of our ancient homeworld began to loosen, but what right do we have to try to summon its ghost here?

No. These creatures – this beautiful Queen – has a right to exist.

The navstal burns with urgency. Immediate research update required. Absent report, bombardment will begin without restraint.

My fingers come alive. The Queen watches me tap my response. She knows. I know that she does. She watches and understands, and she will see mercy.

Apol for delay. Navstal issue. No native evidence. Coming home.

And so the message is sent. It is a great and merciful lie. They – she – will live.

Those eyeless sockets are wet and shiny. It is so beautiful, that even over unfathomable distances, creatures from such vastly different worlds can become kin. Can become bound by simple kindness.

The navstal responds, somehow with less impatience. Understood. All reports negative. Colony shields to be dropped. Operation of wider civilian settlement to begin.

Yes. That’s fine, isn’t it? We can live together in harmony. I don’t know what exactly will come next, but this has to be a first step into something better.

I smile, and my face is wet. “We can build something better. Not all this terror and death.”

Something else emerges from the soil – another part of her. Another part of the life that surges and whispers below. It is a tail, or perhaps a chitinous horn – sleek and black and softly coated with the scattered purple light all around.

She offers it to me. A hand offered in friendship.

Without touching, it explores me. I wonder if it can sense my life-signs – perhaps electrochemical reading. Once we strike up a true partnership, they will be a wonder to begin to understand.

The long, slick thing reaches the navstal and caresses it.

I smile.

Somehow, the device is unlooped from my suit. Idly, it falls to the ground – though these things are sturdy and built for the rigours of Cetra and other exotic worlds.

The tail-thing moves back toward me, probingly. It gently, ever so gently, pushes at the skin of my stomach.

And then more firmly.

My smile falls, as the purple sky shimmers and the lightning dances.

Breath is pushed out of me and an immediate sweat bursts at my forehead.

“No, don’t…” I mouth, but it is swallowed by the tempest, and by my breathless lungs.

But it is too late. She is inside me.

It is so strange…those eyeless sockets now seem something else. Slick with cold. With derision. Did they even change…?

The thing remains level, and still, even as I thrash against it. And there is a sensation within: a bubbling. A churning. I feel full and terrified and destroyed, and so tired…

My fingers, trembling, reach for the navstal, which is dormant.

Of course it is. Because I had told the Colony that all is well.

I need to tell them…I need to tell them what is happening…

I grunt, and there is splashing.

The navstal is too far. Too far, out of reach of my tremulous fingers. Rivulets of blood run down to the tips of those same fingers, and splash upon the earth.

“Help…” I screech at it, hoarsely. But it is too late.

I can hear a whispering now. But it is not from the earth. It is from within me.

Life.