Prologue

Excerpts from the expedition journal of naturalist Stacey Wilkshire:

Day 43,
Set out at sunrise in dense fogg to continue north along the clifts. Leary colected in Phials 12 specimens of ants exibiting a curious affliction. Though disceased no fewer than several days, all 12 were found affixed by ther mandibles to the undersides of leeves approx. 1 span over the ground. Jaws locked. 8 of the 12 demonstrate fungal growths protruding from the reer of the head varying in length.

Day 76,
From our study we observe a moste brutal cycle. This fungus appeers to propegate by means of forcing its insect host to carry it over the path of its fellows, wereupon the host clamps its jaws in a death grip on the vein of the leef. As the host expires, the fungus ruptures from the reer of the head into a fruiting stawk. Spores filter down onto the unwitting ants, and the infection begins anew…

“This is it,” Drorg muttered, looking up from the address on his communicator to survey the alley opening. A dead opterran had been reported in this alley by a concerned passerby. A dead opterran was always a tragedy, but that this one had no andalier pilot was even more disheartening. And in such an odd place, too. Well, this was just the sort of situation Drorg was called in for.

As a scavenger, Drorg was one of the lowest castes of andaliers in the hive. Most shifts, he tended to routine pest control and corpse collection on the outer fringes of the Gamma precinct. But, every now and then, he had the honor of putting an opterran to proper rest.

He clucked to his own opterran companion as he swung himself down out of the Scavenger Wagon. The biomechanical insectoid, easily twice his size, chirruped and scuttled out of the wagon after him. He gave her a reassuring scratch under the mandibles before leading her on into the alley.

“Said about halfway down,” Drorg mused, sweeping the narrow beam of his flasher over the dark corridor. The light bounced back here and there on the carapaces of lesser vermin as they skittered away, and Drorg made a mental note to himself to revisit later and give the alley a proper infestation treatment. Andaliers and their mounts from the upper precincts wouldn’t come anywhere near an alley this dank, but Gamma residents couldn’t afford that kind of snobbery. Vermin or not, the alley looked to be well-treaded—certainly not the place for an opterran to take its final repose.

But where was it?

Drorg paused as his beam caught a swirl of motes in the air, drifting lazily toward the ground. He traced their path, slowly raising the swath of light until it landed on the ghastly sight of an opterran husk, suspended from the underside of a support beam. He grimaced, both in sympathy for the creature, and a dawning horror at its state. Long dead, yet its jaws clamped furiously to the metal beam. A long, pale stalk protruded from the back of its head.

His opterran whirred and shied. He caught her reins before she could bolt, cooing plaintively.

“I know, but we just can’t leave the poor thing there—come on, girl, we’ve got to—”

Drorg’s words disappeared in a gasp as the opterran husk above abruptly jerked and a jolt of head sickness struck behind his eyes. Through the stars in his vision, he could just make out black oily fluid slithering from the base of the stalk, erratically jumping from the opterran husk to the support beam, then down the wall. It swelled and shimmered grotesquely with each motion, until it hit the floor of the alley with a wet slap, and the fully-formed gliar lunged.