“You want me to ride that?” Derrick asked unenthusiastically. “That's an interesting offer. Doesn't really play to my strengths though. I'm more of a... hands on type of problem solver. ”

He'd been a network engineer, one whose parents died in an automobile accident. It was safe to say that he'd never been tempted to own a motorcycle before. Hell he'd never owned a car before the Scourges solved rush hour.

He had gotten his license though. Mostly to avoid being a social pariah in high school.

“Oh, no,” Meg said and shook her head in denial. “It's yours to keep. A gift, for helping us out with this mission. Or if you want, feel free to take a hunk out of what we're paying you to repair our stuff. I won't pretend to know what you did but you probably saved a lot of lives by coming with us today and you didn't have to do that. Me and the boys all agreed we'd be honored to have you ride out beside us.”

“Well, it would be hard to say no to that,” Derrick admitted as he eyed the two wheeled death machine that was being offered to him. He had to admit, red and silver were flattering colors on the sleek yet solid vehicle. There were a few deep scratches running down the side that let him know he wasn't its first owner.

For some strange reason, he liked the look of those flaws. Maybe because he had so many of his own? For a second he imagined himself chasing down fleeing Grey Legion soldiery, a pistol in hand.

He almost asked what had happened to the previous owner, but that was fairly obvious, his enhanced vision let him see that not all the red was paint. Some of it was just good old fashioned blood stains. If the previous owner was just wounded, they probably wouldn't be giving his ride away.

While he was wondering if it belonged to anyone he knew, the Hunter realized that he had been lured into a trap. Dammit. He thought he could trust Meg. The stocky raven haired woman had seemed down to earth and trustworthy. The most dependable of all his allies.

This was clearly an attempt to undermine him however. The leader of Breakneck had to know that he had never ridden a motorcycle in his life. He was going to make a complete jackass of himself. With his luck, it would be televised too and turned into some kind of inspirational video for all of humanity.

“Stick to your Roles humans!” his patron, ITRS, would say as his cartoon avatar smirked around a flickering tongue.

Blake clearly realized these facts as well, judging by the grin on his traitorous face. The blond user was enjoying Derrick's obvious awkwardness, no doubt revenge for forcing him to ride in the Abomination. The Derrick the Red swore the last laugh would be his.

He tried to wheedle his way out of it, even volunteering to ride bitch. But apparently, that wasn't dignified enough for the heroic champion of humanity he had become. No, both Meg and Blake wouldn't let him get out of it. He was now the proud owner of manna powered motorcycle.

“I know what your thinking about doing with Dewport,” Blake said with a raised eyebrow. “Imagine how helpful this could be. How important Breakneck's support will be.”

Dammit. He accepted the damn bike and Meg went to round up her boys. Time was not on their side.

Derrick hurried to prepare for departure. He had a couple of the downed scavengers chopped up and sent back to West Hills with the wounded. In their own separate Tempest of course, putting zausite next to injured people would have been stupid and cruel.

Derrick was sure that Teslaforce would be interested in whatever junk he sent back. Hopefully, they could reverse engineer some goodies and come up with some countermeasures to the Scourge they had just fought.

The Rebel Instruments bothered him and not just because of the obvious similarities to the Hollow Majesties.

First, they annoyed him personally, because he was almost useless against them. Without the Abomination's manna use detection ability and the Tempests' mortar strike, that fight could easily have gone the other way.

His people, Red Works, would need something to counter an auril proof enemy that could pierce manna shields and System made armor easily. It was easy to imagine entire squads getting wiped out by lightning attacks by roving bands of Rebel Instrument constructs. At least the Scourge seemed rare and using Grey Legion carapace seemed to help protect against them a little.

Next, he didn't like the possibility of System Station's being corrupted without the System even knowing. Were there physical signs of the corruption that Users could see? Or would infected Stations just start pumping out scavengers and other monsters when no one was looking?

It would be great if they could eventually find a way to detect infection from a distance. If the System couldn't do that though he wasn't going to hold his breath. The supportive AI loved to keep secrets and put conditions and limits on everything, but he doubted that extended to threats to itself, which the Rebel Instruments seemed to be.

Lastly, this was another stroke to the very dark picture of the universe that recent events were painting. Infections like these Rebel Instruments didn't heal, they just grew worse. Where did that leave humanity?

The founder of Red Works had no answers to any of these questions. All he could do was accept the System's mission to check nearby Stations for corruption. Deal with each crisis one at a time.

“I think we're ready to head out now,” he said after taking a deep breathe. He had his new ride put in the large trailer the Abomination was towing, taking the place of supplies they had used to make repairs and ammunition they had reloaded their weapons with.

They had allowed the Rebel Instruments to slow them down enough. It was time to concentrate on saving lives that depended on them. On working towards the preservation of the human race and the defeat of the monsters that had invaded the Earth, humanity's home.

“Hey, didn't we take a prisoner? Where did she go?” Blake asked.

Well... crap.

At first they thought the captured eighteen year had old run away during the fight, which was a poor decision to make. Where would she go on foot? Anything could be out there just waiting for one stupid User to run by.

Thanks to the wonders of auril though, they soon found their prisoner locked in the Aberration's washroom, where she'd run after the Rebel Instruments had started tearing through the walls.

Derrick wasn't sure this was any smarter than trying to flee from the super agile and speedy rebel Instruments on foot. The tiny washroom offered no extra protection from the piercing limbs of the Rebel Instruments and a lot less room to dodge.

Plus, it was a tiny cramped washroom. Little more than a toilet and sink. Pretty much the last place he would want to die.

The pair of Users managed to to talk her out easy enough. All Users were not made equal it seemed. Derrick had to wonder why anyone would bring her on any kind of sensitive and dangerous mission.

“Why do we even have one of those?” Blake wondered aloud. “A private washroom? It seems like an unnecessary luxury. Which I approve of, don't get me wrong but why did Teslaforce add one though?”

“Security and time saving,” Mathew answered from his position by the door, the older User had joined the pair inside the Abomination when his Tempest left with wounded. “This vehicle is for surveillance and planning. You don't want your technicians and leaders exiting the vehicle to use the washroom constantly. Every trip outside could put them at risk of sniping or some kind of infection. Not to mention someone just running inside and killing people when the door opened.”

“Makes sense,” Blake admitted. “Did you do a stint in the military or something?

“My brother was, I was just a reservist for awhile,” Mathew admitted. “Way back when. Not that I remember any of what I learned. It was mostly just shooting and running. Oh, and getting yelled at. ”

“Modern Survival 101,” Derrick said. “I'm sure it came in handy. The System is kind of like a Sargeant. Strange orders from a faceless boss that never explains anything.”

He was about to add more when he saw the other man's head turn to the front compartment.

Derrick didn't have Mathew's incredible hearing, but he did hear the faint squawk of radio from the front of the Abomination.

Immediately, he also felt the Abomination slow. They had just started their trip to the first Station, barely gotten up to full speed.

“Something on radar?” he asked when Stacy joined them.

“No,” she replied with a shake of her head. “Meg called a stop, apparently they hit something.”

“Like a deer?” Mathew asked.

“Like a person?” queried Blake.

“Neither, I think. She's asking for your opinion on it.”

Huh, that was interesting. Derrick strode to the vehicle's side door and opened it, blasting his eyes with the sun's light. It looked like was almost noon now, so he threw on his mask to protect his vision. Meg and the rest were just outside, blocking his sight of what they had collided with.

“This is testing my patience. Does anyone here know what the hell this is supposed to be or mean?” Meg snarled. She spotted Derrick and gave him a annoyed look. “One of my boys almost got knocked right off their bike by this freak of nature. It survived the hit with his thick skull, and this one over here,” she pointed to another biker dressed in black, “put a bullet into it before it could fly off.

Derrick walked around the rider that was blocking his view and saw what the fuss was about.

It was a familiar sight, one he hadn't ever wanted to encounter in the wild. A living nightmare to most people. He let out a burst of auril, just making sure there were no more lurking around. He didn't find any, so he focused on the roadkill.

It was a bee the size of his fist. A fuzzy body with segmented eyes and vicious looking mandibles. A horrible nightmare inducing monster that was basically just a normal bee but larger.

“It's a big bee,” Derrick offered, enjoying her discomfort. “An insect of the Apoidea family that feeds on flower nectar.”

After he'd found a few of these giant insects in a Grey Legion outpost, he'd taken the time to google them after delivering the specimens to Deleterious. Thankfully, while the System refused to share the secrets of the universe with its human Users, it had done a weirdly good job of preserving the ultimate repository of (mostly useless) human knowledge that was the internet.

All he got in return for his info dump was a glare.

“Is it dangerous?” Meg asked.

“Try not to ride around with your mouths open,” Blake answered. “It's always annoying when bugs fly into your mouth.”

“Red Works found some of these out west.” Derrick explained further. “I wouldn't worry about it. It's probably just some kind of weird mutation. Some side effect of some Scourge fucking around. We already have have a mission, so this falls under 'someone else's problem'. ”

The System did not have his back. As soon as he was done talking it threw a notification his way.

United Support System

New Mission:

1) Investigate source of altered wildlife (Apoidea)

2) Set up Sensor Hub in local area

Mission Requirements: Group contains Role: Hunter and Item: Sensor Hub

“Dammit.” Derrick removed his mask and pressed his fingers into his eyes.

“You just got mission to hunt down the source of the giant bees, didn't you.” he heard from a grinning Blake.

“Yes,” Derrick admitted. “This is getting a bit silly. That's three missions at once now?”

Investigate Flint Creek, investigate the giant bees and investigate the Rebel Instruments. They were still just halfway to their goal in Flint Creek too.

A sigh from Meg.

“We're the only serious group of Users to head this way since the Scourges arrived,” she noted calmly. “Anyone else was too busy surviving to do anything important. It makes sense that there's work to be done out here. The question is, which mission is most important? Which do we do first?”

“I vote for the mission that has nothing to do with giant bees,” Blake said.

What did Blake have against bees? Did he get stung by a whole swarm as a child, because the other option seemed to be giant mechanical racing spiders with built in harpoon guns.

“We could split up,” Stacy added, having joined their little pow wow. “Red Works hunts for the source of the bees and Breakneck checks the possibly corrupted Station nearby. We meet up afterwords.”

Derrick was reassured to see most of the surrounding Users grimace at that suggestion. Everyone here had enough experience to know how 'splitting up' usually worked out.

After a second of grimacing, Meg nodded though.

“If you fellows don't mind risking it. Splitting up does make sense.” She said. “It's just some bees right? We leave you Hunters here to poke around and the boys and I check out the first Station. Stealth is your whole thing, so any remaining Rebel Instruments shouldn't find you, and if we need your help, we just come back and pick you up.”

Huh, this plan would keep him off the bike. On the other hand, he would be left behind without much backup as other Users did the more important work. He was surprisingly OK with that.

He had faith in his ability to avoid trouble while part of a small group of experts. It would be almost reassuring compared to blazing down the road and into the unknown as part of a heavily armed convoy.

Worst case scenario was him getting abandoned. He would have to stash a pair of bikes nearby. He might even be able to get some secret practice on his new vehicle.

Also the bees, while creepy, were cute compared to the Rebel Instrument’s killer robots.

“Mathew?” he asked. Seeking the advice of the other Hunter. Stacy would be needed with the Abomination, so it would him Derrick brought. He didn't want to take anyone dependent on manna anyway. If they could track manna use, he was sure any manna using Scourge could.

The older User gave an affirmative grunt.

He would need to grab another User, if only to carry the gear. He was tempted to make it Blake but the sword User was completely dependent on manna to fight.

“Alright then. An hour to the Station and an hour back,” Meg said. “Good luck you two. I wish you luck.”

“Shouldn't need it,” Derrick said. “Before we get ahead of ourselves, I want to make a call. I said we have samples and I want to talk to Red Work's research department.”

There was catchy ringtone playing as his phone used the Abomination's communication abilities to connect him with Red Work headquarters. Specifically, with Deleterious.

Ring a ding ding. Over and over. It was taking the alien immigrant a long time to pick up, considering he never left his lab. He was basically never more than a hundred feet from the phone Derrick had installed.

Derrick was currently standing a couple dozen feet down the road from the rest of the Users for privacy. Only Mathew could possibly hear him from this far and he didn't need to keep many secrets from his fellow Hunter. As long as Deleterious wasn't revealed as a Velorie outcast everything was fine.

“These things are so delightfully anachronistic,” Deleterious said as he picked up the phone.”Are your people not aware they have a device in their head that can easily be upgraded to receive these communications much more securely?”

“We prefer not to think about that. It's not like we volunteered for these implants, so upgrading them feels like surrender. Besides, I'm not sure how System notification appear to the Velorie, but for us pure humans they are pretty annoying. We want to receive as few as possible,” Derrick said.

“Yes, you're a sight focused species and that sense works poorly with the System's notifications. Very distracting. You'll get used to it I imagine. I doubt you called about that though. How can this one help his glorious employer?”

“Remember the recent samples from the Grey Legion outpost to the West?”

“Oh, course.” Deleterious responded. “Delightful stuff, offering real insights into the Grey Legion's conversion process. Nothing even remotely marketable yet but definitely interesting.”

“What I wanted to talk about with you was delivered with those. The winged insects.”

“Giant honey bees, I do remember them.”

“What did you learn about them?” Derrick asked. “Threats, behaviour and weaknesses first please.”

“Well, I must admit I did some basic scans and moved on to more interesting avenues of research.” Deleterious began. “They are exactly what they look like, giant honey bees.”

“It can't be that simple,” Derrick said. “Insects don't have lungs and can't absorb oxygen fast enough to support a body that size. You can't just upscale them.”

“Just so! Well reasoned. They have been modified, but only to the minimum required to make the design work. They seem to have been altered for increased robustness and flight range. Other than the respiratory system, the immune and digestive systems have also been significantly altered.”

“Design?” Derrick asked.

“Yes, the Inoculation is obviously behind this. It's subtle, but there is genetic sequences of non-terrestrial origin added to the insects' makeup. It is especially noticeable when examining the brain and immune system. The respiratory system is also enhanced but the immune system is a whole different beast altogether.”

“Enhanced weapons? Increased intelligence? Improved senses?” Derrick asked. These were the most important points. A giant but otherwise normal bee was too stupid, blind and toothless to hurt a User in armor. Even a swarm would be more annoying than dangerous.

“They are living Inoculation injectors,” Deleterious answered. “With their carapace and stingers approximately the strength of steel, they can inject their targets with enough venom to kill an elephant. More dangerously, they are, unsurprisingly, carriers of the Inoculation itself. Anything they attack will be infected with that dangerous disease. It can be found both in their mouths and venom.”

“A steel needle won't pierce the nomad armor without a lot of force to back it up.” Derrick said. It would also need to target a weak spot and hit just the right angle, he mused. “Would Red Works drugs also offer resistance to the Inoculation?”

“In mild amounts,” Deleterious said. “Though, even a fraction of what a sting would inject should still be lethal to most Users. Even you would be in serious danger, the Inoculation is not to be trifled with. Whoever made it was a mad genius. A shame they have been no doubt dead for millennia now.”

Coming from Deleterious, calling someone a mad genius meant something.

So, don't get stung. That was what it came down to. That should be doable. Beekeepers did that sort of thing all the time, right? Maybe he should make a smoke grenade.

“No sign of auril or manna at all? Nothing even weirder, like zausite?” Derrick asked.

“None. Other than its ability to spread the Inoculation, it is a normal, if somewhat tougher and larger honey bee. The changes to its brain are slight and shouldn't increase intelligence noticeably. I admit to not being an expert on insect brains though. I would guess they dealt with its sense of taste and smell.”

Derrick was about to ask if they could be designed to target people but stopped himself. There was no evidence of that. The opposite in fact. The System didn't know much about them after all and they were clearly active across hundreds of kilometres. If anything, they had been made to avoid people and had been doing a damn good job until one had gotten unlucky and collided with a motorcycle.

Now, wasn't that an interesting thought.

“The Inoculation is an old weapon against the Spore Tyrants.” Derrick stated. “It alters primitive life to give them resistance against that Scourge.”

“With the side effect of wiping out all the more complex life it encounters. Which do not survive the adaptations forced onto them. Yes, that is the common understanding of the Inoculation. It is most commonly used these days by System Races as a way to illegally sterilize troubling worlds, making them much less valuable to Scourges that would conquer them and use their resources to spread further. ”

“Bees are pretty complex.” Derrick said. “Much more than the plants and trees that I've heard of surviving the Inoculation. That would make their survival unlikely?”

“Orders of magnitude more difficult for the Inoculation to alter I would imagine. I'd heard of it, of course, but I've never had access to a sample of the galaxies most famous bio-weapon before you gave me one.”

Huh. This was painting an interesting picture. The only flaw in his theory was how little the bees seemed to be doing. They weren’t spreading the Inoculation and they weren’t attacking people. So, what were they for?

“So,” Derrick said. “Someone is helping the Inoculation adapt to complex Earth species. And doing it subtly enough the System hadn't caught on to it yet. Despite the shared anthropod theme, I doubt the Rebel Instruments are responsible for this. Considering we're investigating local tampering with System infrastructure, what does this suggest?”

“There's a Hollow Majesty Homunculi in Flint Creek,” Deleterious answered.