The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The wind blew warm from the valley, ruffling the grass and tossing the blond hair of the woman standing by the house as the aircar descended towards her.

It came from the southwest. That way lay Abilene City, the only settlement of any size on New Tejas. Perhaps half of New Tejas’ population of seventeen million lived in Abilene City and its suburbs. As many people lived on the planet today as ever had; New Tejas had only been at stage two terraforming when the wars began.

A thousand years ago.

So stage two it had remained—mostly an inhospitable sauna, stifling under its too-thick atmosphere. Only in the highlands, on the shoulders of the mountains, and on the great Crockett Plateau that hosted Abilene City, could Earth-origin plants grow, plants like the golden yellow grass which whipped crazily beneath the aircar as it put down.

It was an open-top aircar, and from where she stood under the eaves Tetha could see the dark hair of the driver fluttering around her face. Tetha squinted as the sun suddenly spiked at her from the windshield.

The aircar touched the grass, and the driver killed the motor. Before it had even spun down, she was vaulting over the side, hurrying towards the house. Her dark blue uniform was neatly pressed. As she saw Tetha standing under the shelter of the porch, she slowed to a walk.

She looked different, a little. And a lot the same.

The woman stopped a few feet away. Her hair was longer, almost reaching her shoulders, but still the rich black that Tetha remembered. Her face was pale, much lighter than Tetha’s beechnut tan, and glistened slightly with sunblock. She was wearing black wraparound sunglasses.

“Captain,” Tetha said.

Then the woman took a quick doublestep forward, wrapped Tetha in her arms, and kissed her.

They sat in Tetha’s gathering room. Tetha had brought out two glasses with ice and a cold bottle of lemonberry juice spiked with grain alcohol, aka New Tejas Cola.

They looked at each other, drinking with their eyes.

Finally, her guest sighed, and looked at her glass. She swirled it around, clinking the ice, and looked back up.

“Tetha. I’m... I’m so happy to see you.”

“I’m glad to see you, Ellibree,” Tetha replied. “It’s been so long.”

“Twenty years,” Ellibree replied. Spoken, the number hung in the air, heavy and accusing. Ellibree shook her head.

“A very... long time indeed,” she began again. The words felt false, brittle. Flimsy boards over a tempestuous cavern, unable to hold for long. “How have... you’re out of the Service?”

Tetha nodded. “A month ago. Retired as a Colonel.”

Ellibree smiled. “Higher than me.”

Tetha’s answering smile didn’t touch her eyes. “Rank doesn’t mean so much, what I’ve been doing.”

Ellibree nodded, suddenly sober. “Can you... are you allowed to talk about it?”

Ice glittered in her glass as Tetha turned it, seeking something inside. “No. But I’m going to.”

They burned to hold each other, to touch.

Tetha, to her own surprise, wasn’t the one crying. She had done enough of that, burned herself out. Cried out her anger, her helplessness, her betrayal, back in the student barracks, back home.

They stood at the gate, facing each other in matching uniforms.

Ellibree was crying. Her posture was Navy-perfect but her tears rolled down her cheeks and spattered onto the blue breast of her uniform.

“I’ll call,” she promised, her voice hoarse. “Whenever I can. When I figure out how. I’ll write.”

Tetha nodded, curtly. Too much motion and she might lose the sliver of self-control she somehow managed to cling to.

The gate agent told Ellibree that she had to board.

The moment hung; there was no air to breathe. Only time, pulling them apart.

If they touched, Tetha would have collapsed. So she just said goodbye, empty, as Ellibree finally turned and walked away, looking over her shoulder until the wall of the boarding ramp was between them.

Tetha had sunk to her knees, then. Stayed there a long while.

It was cool in the house. Land on the Crockett Plateau was valuable as farming land, but here on the slopes of the more distant mountains it was almost free. Anything grown here had to be flown to Abilene City; on the Plateau itself one could use hovertrucks. Tetha owned miles of this mountain, extending above and below the band of breather-free air; insulated pipes summoned cool down from the peaks above the house, brought heat from the valley’s baking depths. It was a large tract, even by New Tejas standards.

People in her line of work retired with a lot of money. Those that ever managed to retire.

Ellibree had stood up to look out the window, but was doing so without really seeing anything. She turned. “Leaving you was... it was like death.”

Tetha nodded.

“While I was at the Academy it was... hard. My heart burned. But you work so hard there, night and day...”

“You did the right thing, Elli. We couldn’t... we couldn’t.”

“I know that. In my head. But I’ll never believe it.”

Tetha put her glass down and went to her. Gently, she touched, stroking Elli’s cheek with her hand. Those eyes, those beautiful, soulful eyes... they kissed again, meaningfully, gently, reconnecting.

“Twenty years...” Ellibree whispered.

“A lot of life,” Tetha replied quietly.

“I still love you,” Ellibree blurted.

Tetha kissed her fiercely. Her eyes were fire when she replied. “I never stopped.”

“Never,” Ellibree echoed.

They kissed again, and again, holding each other, feeding a hunger so long denied that the body had forgotten it, put it aside as a pain that was just part of being and something for which there existed no remedy. And suddenly that remedy was here touchable and real, and the hunger had a mouth that could be fed.

Intimacy could come later. For now it was bliss just to be.

The kissing slowed, became touches, looks. After so long in the desert, the heart needed sips, not draughts.

“I missed you so much,” Tetha breathed. “How desperately I have missed you.”

“And I you, my Tetha, my only. It... Prophet, I feel as though I am back at school, with you, as though that were yesterday, and not...”

“It was a long time ago.”

“It was.”

Despite their identical uniforms, the two girls were almost complete opposites.

Tetha was tall, broad-shouldered, big chested. Skin that tanned to a hickory brown the instant it hit sun. Big dark eyes, which always seemed two degrees too serious for the situation. A temperment to match, with a sharp wit that did not suffer fools gladly.

Ellibree was slim, pale, brunette to Tetha’s blonde. She should have been the serious one, the studious one, but she was always laughing, blowing off setbacks and making grand plans.

They had entered the Navy for their mandatory service the same year and met at Camp Jakarta. They became friends almost immediately.

They became lovers soon thereafter.

Deemed too good for enlisted service, they had been sent to officer training school. They spent two years there, scoring in the top of their class. The commandant had been encouraged them to apply to the Union Academy for their further work. They had applied together, written their essays together, amidst long nights of stimdrinks and sex. The morning five mile runs had been hard.

Commandant de Loa called them in on a Thursday.

They entered his office in their dress best, and snapped to attention.

“At ease,” he said.

“Close the door.”

De Loa was the school Commandant; he sorted through the students, trained them, assessed their strengths and weaknesses. Guided them towards the positions where the could contribute the most to the Union. He was not a kind man, but he was exceedingly fair. Tetha had never seen him sigh.

He sighed now.

“I have good news,” he said, “and bad. Please sit.”

They did so.

“The good news is you have both been accepted to the Academy.” He gestured at large envelopes on his desks. “This should not surprise you.”

Tetha wanted to shout, but the look on de Loa’s face kept it in. From the corner of her eye she saw Ellibree’s helpless grin.

“The bad news is,” he said, “that whereas Trainee Nyskar has been accepted for immediate Academy posting, Trainee DeKraal has been accepted for entrance to the class of thirty seven fourteen.”

Tetha blinked in confusion. “But that class doesn’t start for four... years...”

“That’s right,” de Loa replied. “You will not be attending the Academy together.”

“What?!” Ellibree demanded. “Why not? That’s stupid!”

“No,” de Loa said in a quiet, commanding voice. “That’s the law.”

It felt like Tetha’s heart suddenly vanished from her chest. Like the spotlight had turned on and frozen her with the cashbags in hand and the vault door open behind.

“I am going to be blunt,” de Loa said. “You two are lovers, and that is unacceptable. The Navy doesn’t care if you fuck each other. You keep it quiet and it can be overlooked. But there’s more to you two. You... love. Each other. If it were legal, you’d live together. You want to attend the Academy together.” “The Union cannot and will not allow that,” de Loa went on, stabbing a thick finger at them. “We are at war. And to fight this war, we need families who will have children. Families with men. You want to fuck each other? Fine. But you may not and you will not be allowed to fall in love. To forgo your duty for the sake of personal gratification. You will serve the Union and when you marry you will marry men. That is the law and I will not overlook it.”

The space where Tetha’s heart had been filled with ice.

“You are finished here, Trainee Nyskar. You will report to the transport at seven hundred tomorrow morning for conveyance to the Academy. While you are at the Academy you are not to see Trainee DeKraal. At all. Period. You are not allowed to contact her other than by written communication. And once you are assigned to a duty station you will not have the opportunity to see each other. This romance of yours is hereby ended.”

“I wish you well in your career at the Academy, Trainee Nyskar. Do you have any questions?” he asked.

Slowly, as though her head were on a rusted hinge, Tetha turned to look at Ellibree.

She had fainted.

“We don’t get many from the Navy,” the man behind the desk said.

Tetha just nodded.

“You sure you want to do this? I mean, we’ll be glad to have you, no mistake. But with your record and your scores, you would be better off staying in the Navy. You have to understand, Miss DeKraal, that nothing you do in the Service will ever be made public. You can’t tell your family, your friends, anyone. Your record will not help you in civilian life if you ever leave.”

“I understand that.”

He sighed, leaning back in his chair. “And it’s dangerous, Miss DeKraal. The Clandestine Service means infiltration. Commando missions. The type of stuff you see in vids, where only the hero survives. Only in real life, the hero generally doesn’t.”

“I understand.”

The recruiter pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m going to make one last attempt to dissuade you, Miss DeKraal, and I want you to listen to me knowing that my job is to get you to sign up. You should stay in the Navy. The Union needs you there and you will do better personally if you stay. Do not join the Service.”

“I want to join the Service,” Tetha repeated.

He closed his eyes a moment, frowning. Then he put on a fake smile.

“Very well then!” He slid a clipboard with papers on it at her. “Here you go. We’ll arrange your transfer, take care of everything. The form’s all filled out—just sign at the bottom.”

Tetha signed.

“I never forgave myself for that,” Ellibree said.

“For what?”

They were seated, facing each other across the low glass-topped table. A book on New Tejas woven art held down one corner.

“For driving you into the Service. If I had left the Navy, then maybe—”

“You didn’t drive me into the Service,” Tetha said. “The Union did. And as civilians it would have been worse. If you had left the Navy and not gotten married they would have assigned you a spouse. And you’ve seen assigned spouses.”

Ellibree sighed. “Yeah.”

“It was my choice. I couldn’t stand to be in the Navy after what they had done to us, and the only way out of my obligation was the Service.”

She sighed again. “I know, but... I never got to know what you were doing. Your letters were so... I would wake up at night knowing, just knowing, that you had been killed on some distant world and I would never know about it. Your letters would just stop and I’d be alone...”

Tetha stood up; she rounded the coffee table and sat down next to Ellibree, and ran her fingers through her hair.

“You’re right, it wasn’t fair. I got to follow you,” Tetha said, leaning close. “I collected every bit of information I could. I have discs full of newsvids, timelines of where you were, what you were doing.”

“Oh?”

“Of course. Your whole career.”

Ellibree chuckled. “If it were anyone else... and you were in the Service. You probably know more about what I’ve done than I do.”

“Not so much. The Navy doesn’t like us poking into their business. It’s mostly public information, and your letters.” Tetha twirled a finger in Ellibree’s hair. “I still have every letter you sent. When you graduated cum laude I was so proud. And what you did at Charybdis—”

Ellibree interrupted. “I have yours, too. I’ve read them all a thousand times, made copies so that I could just have the originals, because you’d written them. I just wish you could have told me what you were... I wish I’d known.”

“I’m going to tell you. But for now why don’t you shut up so I can talk about you.”

Ellibree laughed. “Oh, Tetha. It’s like I’ve been dead for twenty years. I should retire, too, and come live out here with you.”

Tetha raised an eyebrow. “You’re not too old for an assigned spouse, Elli. Anyway, give up your command? Surely you’re due for another promotion soon.”

“Yes,” Ellibree admitted.

“And, of course, we’re at war. There’s no way the Navy would let any officer retire, and there’s double no way they would let you.”

“Screw the Navy.” Ellibree sniffled. “If I could, I’d leave them today. They could put me on fixed pension and assign me fixed employment and assign me a tub of lard for a spouse, if only I could come here just once a year and be with you...”

Tetha said nothing, but blinked a lot.

After a long moment, she inhaled. “So—” she cleared her throat. “So how goes the war, anyway?”

“Which one?”

“What, we’ve got another?”

Ellibree shrugged. “Well, we’re still fighting the Exarchate, of course, but for once the public news is more or less accurate. It’s winding down. But I’ve been seeing a lot of war plans for Commonwealth worlds, and...”

She chuckled. “You’re a Colonel in the Service. I can tell you this, right?”

Tetha waved a hand. “You can tell me whatever. I have clearances even I don’t know about, and this house is as free from surveillance as the planet’s core.”

“Well, we’re gearing up to take the Origen Cluster.”

Tetha nodded at her in silence. She laced her fingers, and looked out a window.

“Open war with the Commonwealth,” Tetha said quietly. “Finally.”

“They’ve been having lots of trouble with the Ants, and the Leadership feels that it’s a good time.”

Tetha had stood up, and walked to the window. She was looking at her own reflection.

“...yeah,” she replied. “A good time.”

Something in her eyes was ancient when she turned around.

“I made it that way.”

The training had been hard, but Tetha excelled, impressing even the most rigorous of her instructors.

None of them knew that, for Tetha, not being busy, having time to think, was harder.

Languages, self-defense, technology, acting, flight and spaceflight, wilderness survival, social customs... the last was what told Tetha she was slated for infiltration of the Commonwealth. None of the hyper-religious mannerisms of the Exarchate, but detailed review of the customs and practices of the freewheeling Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth and...

Being a spy didn’t frighten her. Death didn’t frighten her.

It was only when she was assigned to a biology class that Tetha felt a tingle of fear.

“Ants”, humans called them. They were more properly known as Jacobsen’s Slavers, for the first biologist to describe them, or Irrithians for the world they were first found on. What they called themselves no one knew.

Their victims called them “us”.

What they were was a collective; a world-spanning colony. Ant sporeships would attack an organic world, landing on it and releasing their occupants to assimilate or consume the entire planet. Fast forward a decade, and the new Ant world would send out sporeships of its own.

What the original Ant biology was, no one knew; they assimilated all manner of organic life. Humans were as easy for them to assimilate as anything else, a fact made frighteningly clear when the Ants first landed on human border worlds.

Within weeks all the humans on those world were Ants.

But the Ants were not invincible. The sporeships were no better than a Union battle fleet; the border worlds that had been lost to them a hundred years ago were as far as they had gotten. Subsequent invasions of the Union had been repulsed with little difficulty. If you knew they were coming, they were easy enough to beat in space.

Retaking the lost worlds might have been feasible, but there were no longer humans on them to save, Ant worlds were hard nuts to crack, and the Union always seemed to be at war elsewhere, for more valuable prizes. So they had remained Ant worlds, for almost a century now.

These days, within the Union, Ants were a subject of folklore, monsters to frighten children that adults nonetheless spoke of in their councils of war.

Pickets monitored the near Ant worlds constantly. Any launch of a sporeship fleet could be reported and prepared for; but the Ants had not attacked the Union in thirty years.

Lately they had been invading a different victim.

The Commonwealth.

“We reached Kove on a commercial transport,” Tetha said.

They were in the kitchen. It was well stocked, with off-world exotics like vanilla and real saffron, and Ellibree watched Tetha shave a lemon as though she had been a chef rather than a spy.

“Cover was no problem; none of us had been to the Commonwealth before, so they were not looking for us, and our infiltration infrastructure provided us all with laserproof identities. Database technicians, from Coralis, coming to Kove to check up on some commercial installations of our product.”

Tetha brushed the lemon shavings into the batter, and gave Ellibree a look. “Did you know that the Commonwealth economy is almost eighty percent private?”

“Private?”

“Yeah, businesses that are independent from the government.”

Ellibree raised her eyebrows.

“Guess they don’t teach you that at the Academy,” Tetha teased. “At any rate, we landed on Kove about a week before the sporeships hit.”

Tetha began to slice a yam. “We didn’t tell anyone they were coming, of course. We’d destroyed the Commonwealth picket ships at Shuo Nu; prelude to an invasion, we told the Commonwealth government. Retaking an Ant world. Back off.”

The knife cut more aggressively. “Then we told the Ants this was their chance.”

Tetha paused, tossed the slices into the soup. “So. A week passed; normal life on a Commonwealth world. They’re remarkably... carefree. I almost felt bad for what was going to happen to them, Elli, but we warned no one. Not our contacts, not our landlord, not the lady who sold fruit across the street, not her little daughter.”

She rinsed the knife off in the sink. “After all, the Commonwealth was our enemy. We knew that. We’d been programmed that way.”

Tetha lay in the chair, and stared at the lights.

“Agent DeKraal, do you understand what we are going to do?” the voice asked.

“I think so,” Tetha replied.

“You ‘think so’. Please explain what you think is going to happen.”

She sighed. No use telling them to just get on with it. “You’re going to hypnotize me,” she said. “Make sure that the Union has my undivided loyalty.”

“That is correct,” the voice replied. “In several ways. We are going to probe your mind for anti-Union feeling. We are going to explore and remove any such feeling we find. And we are going to install behavioral barriers that will assist you in resisting future anti-Union feeling.”

“Yeah,” Tetha replied. “That.”

“Do you, Tetha DeKraal, consent to this procedure?”

“Sure do.”

“Please reply with ‘I consent’.”

“I consent,” Tetha said.

“Very good. Please focus on the screen...”

Tetha’s artistry in the kitchen was not just for show.

The rissole was based around Lathan rice, one of the few xeno plants to have proven edible. It was a staple crop on New Tejas, as were the citrus fruits that provided much of the meal’s piquant notes.

Lemon bread, mixed root soup, rissole and fried lake trout. Homemade berry ice cream.

“You’re trying to seduce me,” Ellibree said, as she lowered her spoon to her empty bowl.

Tetha smiled. “Trying to.”

“The food is spectacular. What happened to the Tetha I once knew, the girl who could burn a salad?”

Tetha twirled her fork. “I went to school. I was a chef for almost a year. Deep cover.” She let the fork rest against the side of the bowl. “The guy I was supposed to kill died in a plane crash.”

“Convenient.”

“I guess.” Tetha pushed back from the table. “You want some scotch?”

Ellibree looked surprised. “Real scotch? Of course.”

Tetha walked to the pantry and the freezer, returning with two tumblers full of ice and a slightly dusty bottle. She handed the bottle to Ellibree.

Ellibree’s eyebrows raised as she read the label. “From Earth.”

“From Earth. The Syndicate may not like us much, but our money’s as good as anyone’s.”

“And the embargo?”

“Made this expensive bottle even more expensive.”

Tetha took it back, and broke the seal. Ellibree almost felt wasteful, drinking it.

It was truly excellent scotch.

“You ever see a sporeship land?” Tetha asked her, later, in the den. The room was large and low-ceilinged, almost separate from the rest of the house. It was down a short flight of stairs and had windows which looked out in three directions, a large ‘U’ offering a spectacular view of the mountains stretching away to either side, and the baking mist-shrouded plains below.

In the distance, Tetha identified a twinkle of light as Abilene City.

“No,” Ellibree replied. “I’ve seen them in space once. All Navy officers are taken to an observation point, to see them. They’re enormous.”

“That they are.” Tetha sat down in a large chair, and hoisted her feet onto the ottoman in front of it. She rested her glass on the chair’s squared arm.

“I watched one land on Kove. That’s why we were there. To learn how the Ants took over. How they assimilated a world.”

Tetha took a belt of scotch. Ellibree watched her quietly.

The sky was falling.

The sporeship, huge as a mountain, blotting out the sun. The awful roar as it plunged into the atmosphere, so huge it appeared to be falling at a snail’s pace, an empty black beehive drifting down to the ground.

The earthquake as it impacted.

Sporeships did not hit like meteors; an object of that size would have scoured all life from the planet. Somehow, they slowed themselves, hit the world well moving at well under the speed of sound.

It still toppled half of the buildings in Hastings.

The team had been ready, of course. Sixteen of them, all Servicemen and—women, here to record the conquest of a world. They were well armed, thanks to local contacts, and wore special Service environmental suits which could stop a bullet as easily as a toxic gas. They had not just one but two escape vessels, hidden nearby. The building they were in was well-built and reinforced.

They were as ready as they could be.

There were other, smaller quakes, as other sporeships landed around the planet, near other large cities. Tetha knew that forty eight sporeships had left Shuo Nu; it was possible the Kove system defenses had destroyed or damaged some.

But it was unlikely.

Normally, there would have been a garrison stationed here, above this world of forty million; a dozen Commonwealth Space ships in continuous orbit. Today, there had only been one.

The others had been called to Hideki, to fight a surprise attack there.

An attack by the Union.

Tetha watched the vidscreen; the long-range camera mounted on top of their building was focused in on the sporeship. The building was only three stories, but it had remained standing. The six story building which would have blocked the camera’s view was now one and a half stories of rubble. They had a clear line of sight on the massive black hive.

Long strings were tumbling from the sporeship; they looked like mooring ropes as their ends fell to the ground and burrowed in, anchoring themselves. The ends then flared open to discharge invaders; they were tubes, boarding ramps, crossing the scorched wasteland the sporeship’s landing had made. The invaders fanned out, eliminating resistance, and snatching up the first of the Kovians to be assimilated.

The infiltration team watched them come.

“You never fought the Commonwealth,” Tetha injected suddenly.

It caught Ellibree off guard. “No,” she replied. “The Exarchate, mostly. The Syndicate a few times. The New Ussenians.”

“And you never fought the Ants.”

Ellibree shook her head.

Tetha laughed, a little bitterly. “They really kept us apart, didn’t they? Even after they weren’t trying any more. That’s all I ever saw. The Commonwealth, and the Ants. Lots and lots of Ants.”

“Why? I mean, why this focus on the Ants? We know how to beat them.”

Tetha stood up, and sat down on the low table in front of Ellibree. “Because we wanted to use them,” she said. “Because we are using them. Just like we did on Kove, and on Jin’do, and on King and Extremadura Nuevo.”

“We...?”

“Yeah. There wasn’t an Ant attack in the last twenty years we weren’t part of.”

The sun was well set, now. The lights of Abilene City were clear, a faint flicker, in the southwest. The vast valley between them and the Crockett Plateau was dark, mists and landscape an equal charcoal grey. The tips of the mountains north and south were only just limned with orange and purple light.

The sky was filling with stars. To Ellibree, they were a map; giving her a clear location in the firmament. She was well within Union space. The Exarchate was there, the Syndicate there; the great radiation plume over there.

The Commonwealth was behind the world.

“Why?”

Tetha shrugged. “Because they’re a good weapon. They’re going to destroy the Commonwealth, you know. Assimilate it, the parts that we or the Syndicate don’t get. Thirty years and there won’t be a Commonwealth left at all.”

“I... I don’t actually know what to say.”

Tetha chuckled without humor. “Of course not. The Ants aren’t even human, and what they do to people... but of course every world they let us take from the Commonwealth is another glory for the Union. And we don’t fear the Ants.”

“Thirty years?”

“Tops. And that’s if we don’t launch an all-out war of conquest, which it sounds like we’ll be doing.”

“Yeah,” Ellibree said quietly. “Yes, we will.”

The shock troops had been pure Ant; ten feet tall, with six arms and four powerful legs, armored and heavily armed. If anything fired at them, if it even seemed like it might, they returned fire with explosive rounds until nothing was left but a crater.

Behind them came the assimilation squads.

Tetha had been worried at first; although she wasn’t all that fond of her life, she didn’t have a death wish, and the infiltration team was well equipped with small arms. If any of the first wave of Ants saw them... But the shock troops passed by, uninterested in people who chose to lay low.

The assimilation squads were more varied; strange, wispy creatures who moved on snake-like tails, long-limbed quadrupeds... and people.

It stood to reason that the Ants who were sent in to fetch out humans hiding in their homes would be human; but it was unnerving nonetheless to watch people dragged, kicking and screaming or quietly terrified, by other people, impassive and implacable. Human only on the outside; on the inside, they were pure Ant.

Tetha wondered only briefly why the Kovians didn’t run, didn’t head for the hills. Many of them did; short-wave radio crackled with survivors trying to coordinate. Those with private spacecraft were generally successful in getting off-planet; those who fled for the hinterlands met no opposition. The Ants spent little effort trying to stop them.

Most of the populace, confused and scared, with little in the way of options, simply hunkered down.

And were swept up.

And transformed.

When assimilation squads reached the area where the team was holed up, the Agents abducted the abductors. The firefight was brief; the assimilation squads were not expecting real resistance. The infiltration team killed a dozen and captured six.

Two of the team were doctors; quick autopsies showed that the human Ants were, in fact, far from human. New glands, new nerves, new nodules in the brain, on the spine. New chemistry. New eyes.

And they came in different types; some were almost human, easily passing on the surface. Most were different only slightly, waxy skin, discolored eyes. Smooth lobes of skin hiding new, alien organs.

A few were very different creatures entirely.

The infiltration team examined them carefully, and recorded everything. That was why they were there.

On the eighth day after the sporeship came down, disaster struck. Their building had been identified as untaken; Ants, once-human and otherwise, attacked them without warning, in large numbers.

When the fight was over, Tetha was startled to find that she recognized one of them.

Eight days. Probably seven, since the woman across the street who sold fruit had disappeared.

Now she was lying on the floor of their hideout, shot to death. A converted human, already serving the Ants.

Seven days.

The attack had been unsuccessful; the Ants had not known how much firepower they were up against. They would not make that mistake twice. The surviving thirteen packed up their gear, including the all-important recordings, and fled the city.

“But I’ve been talking too much,” Tetha said.

It was full dark; the stars were all out, but surprisingly muted. Even at this altitude, the New Tejas atmosphere was murky.

“I like hearing you talk,” Ellibree replied.

Tetha smiled. “Do I sound different, twenty years later?”

Ellibree shook her head. “No. You sound like you. It’s a sound I’ve missed. Missed for so long I’d almost forgotten how much I loved it.”

Tetha smiled. “You’re sweet, but with all the talking I’ve been doing you’re getting more of my scotch than I am. So let’s talk about you. Tell me about... tell me about Charybdis.”

Ellibree laughed, and rolled her eyes. “Charybdis. Ye gods, have I ever had to talk about Charybdis. The battle that made and unmade my career.”

“More made than un, I think.”

“Yeah. It was my bonehead for politics that unmade it.”

“Only until Admiral Nehi died.”

Ellibree swiveled on the sofa; Tetha sat down next to her. She folded her legs up underneath themselves, held out her glass. Tetha filled it up.

“Well. What about Charybdis do you want to hear?”

“I want to hear how it made you feel,” Tetha said, her eyes two shades too serious.

Ellibree let her smile fade. “Scared, mostly. We’d taken a direct bridge hit. Suddenly, I was in charge of the ship; I was alive only because I was abaft counting munitions.” She snorted. “Which tells you how important I was before the battle. But suddenly I was in charge. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know who to call or how many bad guys we were facing, didn’t really know anything at all.”

“And you managed to single-handedly destroy four Exarchate heavy cruisers and win the battle. While Old Man Nehi turned tail and didn’t even know we had won for three days.”

Ellibree had opened her mouth, but let it hang there a moment. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Pretty much.”

“And then you had to go and tell people that’s what he did.”

The twist in the answering smile was all the answer necessary.

“Tell me,” Tetha said. “I want... I want to hear you talk for a while. You’re aft, you’re scared, and someone tells you that the ship is yours. Tell me.”

Ellibree did.

Tetha drank.

It was like listening to two people; there was Ensign Nyskar, the eager and brilliant young officer, giving her story to Versa Militaire magazine. Heroism and valor, tactics so unorthodox that only genius made them work. And there was Ellibree, Tetha’s girlfriend, confessing her guesswork and her fear and her dazzling good fortune.

“You know the funny thing?” Ellibree asked, after the fourth Exarchate cruiser had met its fiery end.

“What’s that?”

“They promoted me and immediately moved me to a non-combat post. For my excellence in combat.”

Tetha chuckled. “You made them look bad.”

Ellibree put her glass down on the tabletop, and stood up. “It took me four years to get back to a combat post. Four years, and a lot of ass kissing. Wow. That’s gorgeous.”

Tetha rose as well. The mists of New Tejas were luminescent when exposed to electricity, and there was a storm over the valley, far to the south. Bright flashes were followed by long orange glows, swirling and lingering in the darkness. She came to stand behind Ellibree at the window.

“It can be hotter than Satan’s ringpiece after a Jalfrezi, and it’s the absolute middle of nowhere, but there are some nice things about living here,” Tetha confessed.

“Hold me,” Ellibree said.

Tetha put her arms around her; Ellibree leaned back. She smelled like jasmine, and soap, and like an emotion Tetha hadn’t touched for twenty years.

Ellibree turned within the embrace, her sapphire eyes almost black in the dimly lit room, and sought Tetha’s mouth with her own.

They kissed, soft and then hard, Tetha’s embrace becoming a frantic hold, trying to press Ellibree into herself so hard that the impression of her would never fade.

Somehow in their clinch they tore off each other’s clothes.

The sex was different.

They had been young, and fumbling, and desperately in love. There was no skill, just eagerness, just passion. Over three years they had come to know each other’s bodies, the differences between women that only sex reveals.

Tetha was the quiet one, rumbling, and even in orgasm her moans were quiet as she thrashed uncontrollably.

Ellibree was vocal, panting, mewing, and where Tetha’s orgasm was an explosion, a sudden peak, Ellibree’s was a fire, burning hotter and hotter until at some point it passed into orgasm, she was coming without knowing the threshold, without having crossed a threshold at all.

That was twenty years ago.

There had been other lovers; fingers had new talents, new targets. Lips and tongues moved in more practiced rhythms, drawing from fuller arsenals of pleasure.

But the bodies, and the passion, were the same.

They made love in the den, on the sofa, as the storm pulsed its flashes and long orange glows. There had been enough words; fingers found their way of old memory, worked new magic. They curled into a sixty-nine, eager to give and receive at once.

Later, they moved to Tetha’s bedroom.

Skin pressed against skin. The orgasms were the high notes, the crescendos, but it was the touch that was the rhythm of the symphony, the simple pleasure of contact, of skin pressed against skin. Of being together, in the most total of ways.

Tetha offered up her breasts and Ellibree suckled on them, her mouth not so large as the nipples, her hand overrun by titflesh, where Tetha could cover Ellibree’s breast with a palm. They laced fingers as Ellibree knelt over Tetha’s face, moaning and shivering as Tetha’s tongue caressed her secret places, slithered up into her sex and flickered there.

They made love until the sun was painting the horizon.

Ellibree awoke gently, from a dream of being in Tetha’s bed on a planet without worry. She rolled over to find Tetha lying next to her, watching her, her dark eyes as warm and mysterious as they had ever been.

Tetha reached out to touch Ellibree, ran her fingers through Ellibree’s hair which lay like an inkfall on the pillow. Ran her other hand lower, down Ellibree’s body which stretched out glistening, pale breasts capped with smooth pink nipples, her pubic hair a dark close-shaven rectangle above her slit.

“Good morning,” Tetha said.

“Good morning.” Ellibree sighed happily through her smile.

“You trimmed,” Tetha said with a small smile of her own, arching an eyebrow. “Navy regulation?”

“Not that I’ve seen. And so did you.”

“I knew you were coming,” Tetha replied.

Ellibree smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

Tetha laughed a little, then rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed. Ellibree reached out to stroke her lower back, received a small smile, and lay back.

“Kopek for your thoughts,” Ellibree said.

“Oh, just debating whether I should get up and get things done.”

“Or?”

“Or fuck you again.”

“Mmm. I vote B.”

Tetha swiveled, drawing her legs up to sit facing Ellibree. “You do, do you? What about breakfast?”

“Screw breakfast. No, forget breakfast. Screw me.”

Tetha smiled, and leaned forward, crawling across the bed like a tiger. “As the captain commands,” she said.

They hadn’t counted on the eyes in the sky.

There were flying Ants; birds and lizards and bats and other things, their evolution co-opted and their minds now directed by the hive intelligence. Flying things that saw the team as they made their way to the concealed escape craft.

It had been hidden several miles away; they kept their vehicles to the back roads, hoping that disorganized refugees would be common enough to escape detection. It had only been eight days since the sporeships touched down.

The assimilation team that hit them the second time was well-prepared.

As they passed by the burned-out fuel station, the sonic stunners took them completely by surprise.

Tetha had her hood on; she’d already become the butt of humor in the team for her neurotic caution. “For someone with a death wish,” Tod Lonkwo had said, “you’re sure uptight.”

The hovertruck’s safeties kicked in as Tod passed out at the wheel; the car slowed to a safe stop. Tetha could barely move, much less push him aside and take control. For a moment she had the irrational fear that her teeth would shatter.

Then it stopped, and the Ants rushed in.

She didn’t fire at them, she didn’t try to leap for the wheel and drive away. The Ants were armed, and the infiltration team was outnumbered ten to one.

No, a hundred to one. She was the only one conscious. To draw attention would have been a death sentence.

She let them carry her away like the others. They lifted her together, a dozen pairs of hands, and carried her aloft to a waiting hovertruck. They threw her in atop other bodies and a slimy, sticky goop.

The truck drove off.

It was hard to see, dark, and Tetha discovered that she couldn’t move her hands. Something was holding them; she twisted until it was painful, and saw that the sticky substance was a mass of gelatinous red vines, and they had grabbed her arms and legs.

She popped open the knife in the palm of her gloves.

The vines were fibrous and bled sticky sap, and as soon as she cut one away another slithered in to take its place. The swaying and jolting of the truck didn’t help, either. But she was making progress. With luck, she could cut herself free before they reached their destination.

She didn’t know the mechanics of what would happen there, but she knew the outcome.

Then her left arm was free. She yanked it away from another questing vine, and pulled the much larger blade from her thigh holster.

A moment later, she was crouched, waiting for the truck to slow enough to jump away. Scanning the bodies amongst the vines, she saw no one she knew. They were all unconscious, anyway.

“Help me,” someone whispered.

Tetha closed her eyes and prepared to jump. But she didn’t.

“Please.”

Angry at herself and at whoever was even now risking her mind and freedom, Tetha turned around. It was black inside the truck, but she could make out the other bodies, bound by the vines.

One of them jerked.

“Help,” it said.

Tetha took a crouched step inward, and her leg was immediately entwined with vines. She could see now that one of the other captives was awake; a woman her own age, Asian. Busy cutting at the vines with a butter knife.

“Here,” Tetha whispered, flip-reversing her blade and offering it to the woman. The woman took it, almost dropped it as the truck hit a bump, and then began to work at the vines entangling her other arm with renewed vigor.

Tetha cut away at the vines around her own leg with her palm-knife.

With the big knife, the woman made quick work of the vines on her arm; but around her legs were larger, thicker vines, and more of them. Tetha realized she’d wasted escape time for nothing. Free again, she stepped back to the tailgate, calculated their speed.

“Will you catch me?” the woman asked.

Tetha turned—the woman had slithered out of her pants. She was crouched on them, on the loose hem, wearing bikini underwear and socks with little pink balls on the heels. The vines were questing towards her ankles.

“Jump,” Tetha said, extending her arms.

The woman jumped and Tetha caught her, pushed her against the tailgate. The vines slowly wadded the abandoned pants up into a ball.

At the next corner, they jumped out together.

They lay in bed together; Ellibree’s arm was flung across Tetha’s chest, and Tetha stroked it absently.

“Tetha?” Ellibree asked.

“Yeah?”

“I want to know something. Why did they trust you? I mean, during your Service conditioning, they must have found out what the Navy did to us. How you felt. Why did they take you anyway, or why didn’t they erase that?”

Tetha stared at the ceiling. “It took me a long time to figure that out, Elli. Years. The Service has... very powerful techniques. I’ve seen them reprogram Commonwealth citizens into rabid Union zealots. I’ve seen them turn... men and women into obedient slaves. Human rewards for a particular collaborator.”

She rolled to her side, not releasing Ellibree’s arm, just shifting it. “So why do I still love you? I... I hate the Union, Elli. I hate them for what they did to us. And yet I’ve been their weapon for twenty years.”

She ran a finger along Ellibree’s bicep, drew a circle on her shoulder. “Brainwashing... damages, Elli. Look at the slaves in the Syndicate. Breaking someone’s mind... well, it breaks it. It’s never quite the same. If they had erased my love for you, turned it into love for them, I wouldn’t have been as effective. Wouldn’t have survived when I did.”

Tetha sighed. “And... they didn’t have to.”

She stopped her hand. “Twenty years and I never defected, never disobeyed, did the most dangerous jobs for a government I hated. Do you know why?”

Ellibree suddenly understood; her eyes widened.

“Because I loved you, Elli. Because if I ran away I’d never see you again. They didn’t need to brainwash me because they already had the only thing I cared about.”

Ellibree stared to cry, but Tetha rolled on top of her, her breasts squashing down onto Ellibree’s chest, and kissed her fiercely.

“No,” she said. “You don’t have to cry. It’s not your fault.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ellibree whispered. “But I... I love you too. I always have. There have been other... but none like you. Never.”

“Never,” Tetha echoed, and kissed her again.

Together, they made their way towards the escape ship.

Her name was Lyn. She was from Coralis, had come to Kove for school. Was studying to be an accountant.

Paid for school by teaching kung fu.

Two of them, on foot without supplies, made their way through the countryside without incident. Kove belonged to the Ants now; any humans who slipped through the cracks would eventually be enslaved as those cracks grew smaller and smaller, until they sealed shut.

There were other roving groups, but Lyn and Tetha avoided them entirely. They had watched through Tetha’s binoculars as a family, obviously on the run, had dined with a young couple; after the meal, the family used stunners to subdue the couple and summoned a hovertruck to take them away.

Lyn knew nothing about avoiding pursuit, but she did whatever Tetha said. When they found a dog-like pack of Antbeasts pursuing them, they took to the water. When possible, they stayed under the cover of trees. And they always watched the skies.

Kove had been a garden world, fully terraformed, a paradise.

The Ants were terraforming it again.

The towns were abandoned, now; aside from the roving assimilation teams, the converted human populace was now at the giant sporeship, converting it into a permanent hive. Only farmers were at work in their fields; teams of Antslaves disassembled factory equipment and moved it to the hive.

Books, games, films, restaurants, sports, and other forms of entertainment were forgotten.

Even as it dwindled behind them, Tetha could see a green haze rising from the sporeship’s peak.

On the nineteenth day after the sporeships landed, Tetha and Lyn found the escape craft. It had been destroyed; burned to a shell.

Lyn bore it well. For a moment, Tetha considered abandoning her; she was slowing Tetha down, and Tetha had said nothing about the second escape vessel.

But she did now.

It was another week and a half away, in a remote nature preserve. If it was there. But then, they had no other choices.

Outside of civilized areas, away from all roads, they could almost pretend that Kove hadn’t even been invaded. It was full summer and the trees were green, the forest full of birdsong and the noises of life.

Then it began to rain eggs.

Tiny, marble-sized eggs. It rained for twenty minutes one afternoon, then again later that day. Every clearing was coated with hundreds of them.

They hatched that night, into little sluglike creatures. Squashing them killed them, but they were everywhere.

Tetha was thankful they had scavenged some high boots for Lyn; even so, she was constantly plucking the things from her legs. Tetha’s own survival suit, although badly in need of washing, was almost impenetrable.

The slugs fed, grew, coalesced, cocooned. The sky began to have a greenish tint. It rained eggs again, and again. They moved as fast as they could; but there were patrols on the roads, and moving across forested hills was slow.

Four days from the second ship—for that was how they counted now—they came across a deer, lying in a meadow. It was twitching, shivering.

Tetha drew her weapon, approached just close enough to see.

There was a large blob of mucous on the deer’s head. Green slime with a glistening black core.

The deer stopped moving, and stood up.

It looked at them with unblinking eyes.

They kept moving. The larger slugs were everywhere, now, clinging to trees and rocks, lying in meadows. Emerging from cocoons.

Seated atop the braincases of animals, all of which were no longer afraid of broad daylight, or of interloping humans.

They slept only a little, in shifts. Lyn was silent most of the time; Tetha had nothing to say beyond instructions.

The last night, they slept in a cave.

Tetha dreamed, green dreams that were horrible and erotic. When something touched her face, she started and scrabbled violently backwards.

Then relaxed, when she saw it was Lyn.

With a slug in her hand.

Lyn’s eyes were wide, staring, and there was a slight smile on her face.

“Tetha,” she said.

“Take off your hood.”

She had been trying to remove Tetha’s hood while she slept. Tetha stood up and saw it now, glistening atop Lyn’s black hair.

“Please, Tetha,” she said, in the same calm voice she had used in the truck. “Take off your hood.”

Tetha stunned her, and ran.

Ellibree woke tangled in the sheets, one leg atop, one beneath. She stretched; the sunlight told her it was morning, although not early. Tetha was absent.

She rose, and found the shower. The water was hard, compared to ship water, but it was hot and felt good. Tetha had shown her her towel the night before. It was white and fluffy.

Towel wrapped around herself, Ellibree walked down the hall to “her” bedroom. She doubted she’d be spending much time there. Her suitcase sat on the neatly made bed, just where Tetha had put it the day she’d arrived. As Ellibree dressed, she wondered if the Service made as much a deal of neat sheets as the Navy.

There was orange juice in the refrigerator. After pouring herself a glass—after finding the cupboard with the glasses—Ellibree went in search of her hostess.

The noise gave her away. Behind the house was a large orchard and garden, on the slope of the hill; metallic sounds came from a large shed or perhaps small barn in the middle of it.

The air was warm, although there was still dew in the shadows. The weeds tickled Ellibree’s bare feet.

She leaned against the open doorway.

“What’cha doin?” she asked coquettishly.

Tetha, kneeling next to a man-sized machine, looked up at her. She had a smudge of grease along the right side of her jaw, and a spanner in her hand.

“Fixing this robot. What, you thought this place ran itself?”

Ellibree leaned away from the door and walked gingerly into the shed. “A mechanic, too?”

“I have many talents.”

“You certainly do.” Ellibree leaned over to kiss her; it lasted for a long time. Tetha smelled of dry grass and fresh sweat. She tasted good.

All kisses were finite. Tetha sank back onto her haunches, and squinted up at Ellibree. “So, Elli. How long were you planning to stay?”

Ellibree shrugged, and stepped to the side so the light was no longer behind her. “I’ve got six weeks of leave. I want to spend it all with you.”

“I want that, too.” With a small grunt, Tetha put a hand on the robot and pushed herself up. “Come on, let me show you around the garden before it gets hot.”

Tetha hadn’t told Lyn where the ship was, and unless assimilation into the hive mind gave one extensive tracking experience, Tetha was confident that the was-girl now-slave wouldn’t be able to find her.

Not that she was likely to even be trying. The whole world was becoming Ant. Tetha avoided the deer and the larger animals, but even the sparrows now wore slugs and stared at her as she passed.

The squirrels seemed to mostly have cocooned themselves.

The sky was a sickly green; Tetha didn’t trust the water any longer, and her canteen was almost empty.

But the ship was less than a day away.

There were fireworks that night. She woke from a fitful, paranoid slumber, high in a sugar pine, to find slugs probing at her suit and lights flashing in the sky.

A battle. The Commonwealth had returned.

She picked off the slugs, and watched the fight. There were clouds in the sky, blocking most of her view, so it was little more than a symphony of flashing lights. The deep bass pulses of skyscraper-sized lascannon, the arpeggio trills of missile hits, flashing across the firmament, all in silence.

For the inhabitants of Kove, of course, it wouldn’t make much difference who won. Not by now.

Before first light she moved on. The debris of the battle would make good cover for a small ship to escape.

It was the thirty-first day since the sporeships had landed. Tetha found the escape ship.

No one else had. It had some slugs crawling around on it, and a few of the large worms that she’d been seeing recently, but no human or once-human hands had marked it.

She pressed her palm to the lock. The door slid open.

The inside of the ship was desperately, painfully normal. A human machine from a human world. She closed the door, and leaned on the wall to catch her breath.

“Hello, Tetha.”

She was too tired to startle. Slowly, Tetha turned her head.

Dr. Yoon. Dr. Shae Yoon. Third in command of the infiltration team.

Almost certainly an Ant.

She sat in the pilot’s chair, swiveled around to face Tetha. A stunner lay idly across her lap.

“It’s good to see you,” Dr. Yoon said.

Tetha nodded. “You, too.”

“You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

“You got away.”

Tetha nodded. “Did you?”

Dr. Yoon laughed. “Did I? Why Tetha, you’re paranoid. Do I look like an Ant?”

“Yes,” Tetha said with a shrug.

“Then so do you,” Dr. Yoon replied.

“Doctor,” Tetha said tiredly, “if you weren’t an Ant, you would have left already.”

Slowly, Shae Yoon nodded. “True enough.” Her gun was still on her lap, but now it was pointed firmly at Tetha. “Get out of the suit, Tetha.”

Tetha’s stunner was at her hip; her knives in their sheaths. Her hands would come near them as she unzipped. Tetha looked at Dr. Yoon.

She looked perfectly human. Her eyes were sharp and glittering.

“Go on,” she said. “I can kill you now, or you can take off your suit. Your choice. Any sudden moves and I’ll assume you chose the former.”

Her suit was stun-resistant. Of course, at its highest setting the stunner would just fry Tetha’s brain, suit or no suit.

Die, or take off the suit, get stunned, and become an Ant.

Tetha’s hands rose to the zipper.

“So,” she asked, as she pulled down slowly. “You going to give me to those things outside?”

“That depends on you,” Yoon said. She didn’t blink, not once. “If you don’t cause me too much trouble, I’ll take you back to the hive, and we can transform you into an advanced drone like me. Get on my bad side and I’ll toss you out naked right here; the brainlets will take you and you’ll become a labor drone. One of them will inject itself into your head and consume most of your original brain; it will then slide in and become you, and what’s left of your mind will obey almost thoughtlessly.” Yoon licked her lips—though she still didn’t blink—and added: “You’d love it, of course, but somehow I think you’ll enjoy your new life better if you just relax and do what I tell you.”

The zipper was down to her navel. “You look good for an infected woman,” Tetha said.

“I’d heard you were a pervert.” Yoon’s mouth smiled. “But don’t worry, once you’re a drone it won’t matter at all. when we’re not busy obeying, I might even sleep with you. The old me never would have done that.”

“I’m glad you’ve changed your mind.” The her hands were passing by her belt, by her stunner.

“It’s cliche, Tetha, but you really will love being a drone. You can’t help it. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’ve had a pretty damn good life.”

Her hands were at her crotch; the zipper was down. Slowly, Tetha raised them again. Just as slowly, she pulled off one sleeve.

“Good girl,” Dr. Yoon observed. “I’m going to tell you a little secret. The amount of your mind the transformation leaves depends on how much you resist. If you fight, if you try to keep the Queen out, you’ll wind up an obedient idiot. They dissolve your resistance, you see. Literally.”

“Sounds unappealing,” Tetha said, pulling off the other sleeve. She was conscious of her own stink, weeks of sweat and fear.

“If, on the other hand, you embrace your new life, then you get to be like me. I’m perfectly obedient,” Yoon said, “but I’m also still smart. Still me. I’m just... better. I have direction.”

“How nice for you.”

“It is nice,” Yoon said. Tetha was stripped to her waist, bare but for her sports bra. Dr. Yoon stood up; the stunner remained level. For a moment Tetha thought she had miscalculated, that Yoon would stun her and coolly give her to the slugs.

But Yoon didn’t pull the trigger. “Step out of that,” she said, approaching.

Closer, her skin was waxy, unnatural. There were faint greenish traceries beneath.

Tetha slowly pushed the suit down her legs. Lifted the right foot, undid the boot clasps, let the boot drop to the floor. Lifted her left foot. Undid the clasps.

“So tell me,” she said, holding the suit down as she stepped out of it. “What’s the queen like?”

Yoon didn’t blink, but her nostrils flared.

Tetha threw the suit at her.

It blocked the stunner, draped over Yoon’s arm; she fired but she’d turned the intensity down to stun and it did nothing through the suit as Tetha leapt at her.

They had not trained together, but their training was the same. Dr. Yoon blocked the chops at her face, fell back, rolled. Tetha’s focus on knocking the stunner free gave Yoon an opening and she knocked Tetha back, her head ringing.

But the stunner was gone, broken on the floor.

They faced each other, hands out.

Dr. Yoon smiled.

She reached a hand behind herself and opened the ship door.

“You don’t mind if I invite a few friends?” she asked.

Tetha launched herself again, not aiming to strike but to grapple; they fell out of the ship, rolling, stabbing with knees and elbows.

They were even matched; terribly so, because they both knew the same joint locks and nerve blows to end the fight quickly, and both knew how to prevent them. So they hammered at each other, battering and gouging.

Yoon was bigger but not stronger; Tetha was more tired but just a trifle faster.

Finally, Tetha missed a jab and the momentum flung her to the ground. She was too tired even to brace for Yoon’s kick; but it didn’t come.

One eye was swollen shut. She looked up with the other eye, saw a slug coming from a foot away.

“Give up,” Yoon gasped, somewhere above her. “I’d rather have you a thinking drone than a zombie. You will serve the queen better with your mind intact.”

Tetha spat blood. “Yeah,” she coughed. “Okay. I give.” She winced and rolled over.

Yoon held out a hand. Tetha took it, pulled-

-and whipped the rock in her other hand against the side of Yoon’s head.

She crumpled. Tetha fell back to the ground, gasping.

The touch of the slug on her bare shoulder moved her to crawl. Slowly, she crept over to the ship. She couldn’t stand—but there were adrenaline shots in the ship, and medicine.

Tetha left bloody smears on the floor as she crawled to the locker which held them.

The morphine kicked in quickly; ignoring her swelling joints, Tetha stood up and shuffled to the door. She kicked out a few slugs that had made their way inside, and looked at the prone form of Dr. Yoon. She was still breathing.

Tetha hesitated, then limped outside and dragged Dr. Yoon into the shuttle, securing her to the co-pilots chair with binding tape.

There were no other problems reaching the rendezvous.

“And then I was flown home,” Tetha said.

They were walking down rows and rows of fuzzy-looking green bushes. Soybeans, Tetha had said.

The entire hillside behind the house was crops. Ellibree had recognized tomatoes, corn... but there were dozens of other plants, too, stretching up and down the slope behind the orchard. It wasn’t just a garden, it was a farm.

“Prophet, Tetha, you could feed an army with this stuff. Did you plant it all yourself?”

Tetha laughed. “Hardly. I have the robots, and I get help from the farming collective a few miles down the ridge, and when it’s harvest I hire people from Abilene City.”

“So you’re a farmer now?”

“Pretty much. I’ve done so much killing, it seemed good to try and propagate life for a while. And it was a shame to have all this land and not use it for anything.”

They walked a little further. The sun was fully risen, and glints of sweat were showing at Tetha’s temples. If they stayed out much longer, Ellibree would need to put on sunblock.

She hadn’t yet because it tasted bad, and...

“Here,” Tetha said, stopping at some long trellises of climbing vines. “Help me pick some beans; I’ll make a salad for lunch.”

They picked beans. Ellibree expected Tetha to continue her story, but she didn’t, and after a while asked Ellibree about the defense of the Adams ring. So Ellibree talked about that, and her role in the battle, and before long they had several hundred beans and were both getting sweaty.

“Okay, let’s head back. I’ll grab a head of lettuce as we pass by.”

They walked back up and along the sloping ground, Ellibree holding the basket with the beans. The lettuce were close to the orchard and the house. Ellibree watched as Tetha examined a few, then took a knife from a pocket and cut one off at the ground.

“Some oil and vinegar, a little pepper, maybe some shaved carrots,” Tetha observed, holding the lettuce for Ellibree to see. “Steam the beans for just a few minutes.”

“So what happened after Kove?” Ellibree asked.

“They dissected Dr. Yoon. They debriefed me. It took a few months.” Tetha looked away. “I slept with Lyn.”

Ellibree blinked. “Who?”

“Lyn. The girl on Kove. The one I rescued. I slept with her.”

“She escaped?”

Tetha snorted. “Oh, sorry. No, no she didn’t. I slept with her on the planet. I... can’t remember doing it. I can’t remember it at all. That’s one of the things they erased, during my debriefing. Thought it would impair my judgment.” Tetha had a distant look as they passed beneath the shade of the fruit trees. “Later—a lot later—I got to see some of my records. See what they had erased. Sex with Lyn was one of those things.”

“Oh.”

“We talked for hours, and I can’t remember it at all. I can’t remember anything about h—”

Ellibree dropped the beans and kissed her.

They both needed showers, after that.

Tetha’s shower was built for two—actually, it was big enough for four, or maybe six, but it only had two showerheads—so they used it together. Of course, that led to more sex; Tetha had no sooner rinsed herself down than Ellibree was on her, sliding their bellies together, kneading her ass as she sucked on her mouth.

They both spent time with their back against the wall, legs spread and fingers entwined in waist-high wet hair.

It was more than an hour before they went back to collect the beans.

“And after Kove?” Ellibree asked, stooping to lift the long green pods from the dirt. She was beginning to feel bad for asking about Tetha’s past, for forcing the memories to the surface, but Tetha seemed almost driven to talk about it.

Tetha brushed off a bean and tossed it into the basket. “After Kove?” She chuckled. “Well, after the mindscrape and a month’s vacation, they sent me back.”

“To Kove?” Ellibree asked incredulously.

“To Kove.”

“Had the Commonwealth recaptured it or something?”

“Oh no, it was still Ant. Fully Ant, at that point. Another six months and they’d start building sporeships.”

“So why?”

“A new team, the same mission—to collect samples. In and out, less than a day. The Commonwealth kept bombing the place, and the Service thought we could sneak in and out without much trouble.”

“No. Why you?”

Tetha gave her a look. “Because I’d been there. Because I knew what it was like. And because, somehow I’d survived.”

“And you did again.”

“I think we have all the beans,” Tetha said.

It went bad before they even hit atmosphere. One of the stealth shuttle’s engines died in orbit; the other failed below the cloud layer.

They came in hard, and about as stealthily as a runaway Ferris wheel.

All six of them survived the impact; they got out of the craft, made some distance. The emergency transponder still worked; the Service had other missions running on Kove. They would get rescued.

They were caught before nightfall.

The theory had been to blend in, pretend to be drones. Tetha knew it was a stupid theory, but refusal was not an option.

The Antslaves surrounded them before the team even knew they were there. They didn’t ask for surrender, just aimed their stunners and kept them on until all six of the insertion team were helpless on the ground.

They were bound more conventionally for the ride to the hive. All six of them, tied with tape in the back of a hover truck.

Thissa worked a hand free with a knife she’d hidden subdermally. There was no way she could cut through the bonds securing her to the vehicle chair, but that wasn’t her aim.

She brought the knife to her neck.

Only then did she start to cry.

“Why can’t I?” she whispered, knife point hovering over her throat. “Why can’t I?”

Tetha knew, but said nothing.

They were carried into the assimilation facility by alien drones; four arms and tremendously strong. Inside, other aliens and once-human slaves were building organic structures, lacing and feeding and spraying.

The assimilation pods looked like a beehive.

Thissa was the first to be put into a cell; her twitches and spasms were all the struggle the stunners had left in her body. Tetha watched a human drone, nude and waxy, standing by with an egg as a small xeno began to seal the top of the narrow chamber.

Then the Ant holding Tetha lowered her into the next cell over.

She didn’t fight. What would be the point?

The human drone appeared above her head, and watched as the five-legged alien sealed the cell. Then she put the glossy white egg atop Tetha’s head.

Then the Antbeast sealed it up.

Tetha was a little worried about lying there for a long time, until madness or panic set in, but within minutes the cell walls began to exude a greasy-smelling musk, and the scent relaxed her until she was floating, barely conscious. She heard a gasp from a cell next to hers, and then fell asleep.

When she awoke, she was a drone.