Maâthek and his squad wondered, when they first saw the human residence, why it had not been destroyed like many of its neighbors. The rural areas of this world were proving somewhatâŚdifficultâŚto pacify, but this area had been more or less swept clean.Â
However, there was one area that was still marked blank on their maps. A captured hu-man, when asked about the place, had just said âOh, well, thatâs the Phillips place. Nice people, buy honey from her now and thenâÂ
Heâd then cackled. âYou think youâre goinâ there? Boy, if you thought the farm was badâŚâ
Heâd refused to say anything else. Maâthek had consulted with Investigations and discovered that âhoneyâ was a sweet sugary food product somehow distilled from flowers, though the process was vague. Heâd learned by now not to underestimate this planet, but apparently this food product was not made from toxic plants. He agreed to take a squad in.Â
The human home, when they found it, seemed ordinary. Isolated, with much land around it. Oddly, the land was dotted with dozens of painted wooden boxes. In among the boxes a female hu-man was working at something.Â
The boxes seemed to contain insect colonies. Maâthek was instantly suspicious. However, some extended observation of the female reassured them. She was not wearing any sort of protective clothing, and the insects were swarming around her without any apparent harm.Â
They advanced. The hu-man female looked up. She seemed neither surprised nor intimidated by their pretense.Â
âI thought you lot learned your lesson the first three times.â She said. Maâthek was poor at deciphering the more subtle inflections of hu-man speech, but she was smiling. That was usually a sign of welcome, wasnât it? Oddly contrasting to her wordsâŚ
âWe have come to take you into custody.â He chirred, and revealed his trap-gun.
âYeah. Figured.â The hu-man calmly turned back to the box and the swarming insects. âSorry, girls. You know I hate doing this.âÂ
She seemed to be addressing the insect colony. Odd..
And then, in one smooth motion, the female lifted a box off of the stack she was working on and hurled it at Maâthek. He quickly shifted back from the poor attack, clicking in amusement.Â
And then his pheromone receptors caught a hint ofâŚsomething.Â
Insects boiled out of the box. Angry insects. As the hint of pheromones grew stronger, insects began swarming from the nearby colonies too.Â
And then they began stinging.Â
The following few minutes were pandemonium. Maâthek and his team fled, shrieking, but the insects chased them. Every sting injected more venom, and they began choking and stumbling one by one, unable to breathe.Â
One of the last things Maâthek saw before he asphixiated was the human female ambling over. The small insects were swarming around her, but she seemed only mildly irritated. She leaned over and picked up his trap-gun.
âSooner or later.â She said. âYou lot are going to learn to stay away from me and my girls.â
âHowâŚâ He managed to croak.
She grinned again, and Maâthek belatedly remembered that showing teeth was a display of dominance and aggression in primates as well as a greeting. âBeekeeper. Iâm immune any more. Now if youâll excuse me, I have to go put that hive back together. Thanks for the gunâÂ