Wrong

Ryold shoulders his way to the wreckage; Wagner, the Squirrel Commander, meets him halfway.  “Do we have her?” Ryold asks.

Wagner stops him.  “She wasn’t there.  Just drones in the Royal Chamber.”

“But-”  Ryold shakes his head.  “No wonder they scattered when the Hive fell.”

Briawn is above him and then beside him, her bird adjusting its feathers.  “Ry.”  She’s breathless  “I’ve been checking the bodies of the wasps.  The carapace markings are wrong.  They’re from all over.  This wasn’t her Swarm.”

Silence descends.  The same thought rips through them all, and he’s running, calling for his bird.

The Nest.

A Flower’s Petal

Ryold dreams of the day he got his lance, his instructor’s smile, the hum of his bird’s wings.

He comes to with a jolt, on his back on a flower’s petal, feet from the ground.  His bird, unridered by the swarm, is nowhere to be seen.  Above him the battle rages, his fighters stabbing at an ever-thickening cloud of wasps.  They’re going to lose.  Below him, the broken bodies of bird and bug and man litter the ground.

His flower sways, and he scrambles for a hold.  He looks for the disturbance; his heart swells.

The Squirrel Rangers have arrived.

Hum

They drop out of the sky like bombs and weave between the high stalks, pollen falling around them like bright summer snow.  Ryold shrugs his lance higher.  His hummingbird’s wings churn the air into blur.

They fall into formation for the approach.  Briawn, his second, shouts at him through a leaf-cone.  “What’s the twenty on Gold Squadron?” she bellows.

“They should be coming in a few seconds before us.  Eyes open.”

There is a calm, the canopy of flowers beautiful in the sun.

Then the fray, into the clearing, and the air thickens with buzzing.  Above, the Hive looms.