Menelaus: Hive, #3

By Blaze Ward

Hive's rockets have conquered the Moon. Now she dreams of leaving the Earth forever on a sleek, new rocketship.

But the enormous risks darken her precognitive vision. She must roll the dice on her greatest gamble and cast herself into the final frontier, seeking out a new world she and her daughters can colonize where mankind will never find them.

 Be sure to also read the first two Hive stories: "Mymidons" and "Moonshot."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386349532

Blaze Ward

Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer,  The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places. Blaze's works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out regularly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

Book preview

Menelaus

Menelaus

Hive 3

Blaze Ward

Knotted Road Press

Contents

Mind

Menelaus

About the Author

Also by Blaze Ward

About Knotted Road Press

Mind

Hive was anxious , waiting in the depths of her underground lair.

Hung on the mandibles of indecision. Threatened with the single greatest existential crisis she could remember, stepping back across the countless generations of memory from her mothers that had been passed down to her.

Each time the Nest had grown large enough, she had spun off carefully-selected splinters of the whole and herself, to colonize adjacent places: across the great, red stone; farther down the hill where man-stone buildings lurked; into the green space where man gardened.

Slowly, they drove back all the neighboring colonies of ants who were merely ants, and nothing greater. Each of those daughters had gone her own way, pushed ever so slightly in a direction beneficial to Hive and her visions, letting her look up, safe to watch the lesser orb dance, and the stars twinkle from the security of her lair.

Her own Mother had done the same, once. But her Mother had been merely. Poised on the verge of greatness, but unable to grasp it.

Mother had not dreamed. None of her aunts, or cousins dreamed, either.

Only Hive and her daughters.

It had saved their future from a darkness so terrible as to represent the apocalypse. And it let her watch the lesser orb in its nightly tracks across the sable sky.

But Hive represented something new. Something unimaginable in the assembled grand halls of queendoms that represented ant-kind. Something that would go well beyond merely.

The short summer darkness had fallen. Overhead, through the eyes of Thinkers tasked not solely with observation but with astronomy, Hive watched the lesser orb dance.

Once, Hive had dreamt of nothing so much as touching that face. Her quest had taken her to