Minutes later, the War Ubatha left the terminal, entered a government vehicle, and was whisked away. The funeral was scheduled for the next morning. That left just enough time to get some sleep and, if the gods were willing, a few hours of peace. Because even if the animals were millions of light-years away, he still fought them in his dreams.

THE PLAIN OF PAIN

The sky was clear, the sun was beating down, and the deep boom, boom, boom of the heart drums could be heard. The War Ubatha and the Egg Ubatha were seated toward the front of the seats reserved for members of the royal family, senior government officials, and members of the priesthood. Airborne cameras hovered here and there, beaming video to the citizens of Hive and the rest of the empire as well. It was a sad day. Having buried the great mother within the past year, the Ramanthian people were now forced to confront the death of her successor, the so-called Warrior Queen. She’d been a young, and some said reckless, royal who had been wounded on Earth and brought back to Hive. Unfortunately, the empire’s finest doctors hadn’t been able to save her. Or so the government claimed.

As her funeral cortege made its way up out of the Royal Reliquary, where the embossed casket had been on display for the requisite three days, a deafening clatter was heard as five hundred thousand citizens began to click their pincers. They were seated in a bowl-shaped amphitheater at the center of the Plain of Pain, where the pretenders had been slaughtered almost a thousand years earlier and all of the nest clans had been brought together under a single queen. Ancient weapons and chunks of fossilized chitin were still being found as scouring winds removed layers of sand and soil.

It was a moving sight as members of the funeral procession, all clad in imperial livery, shuffled up out of the underground complex and made their way toward the conical hill at the center of the dry lake bed.