Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Crimson Heart’s Base of Operations
The ghost found it sitting in a damp, cold cell. The humidity of such a prison would never have bothered it, rather helped maintain the integrity of its scales, but the cold… Well, the cold would have been nothing short of well-deserved torture, slowing its reaction time and dulling its so-called blindsight. Oh, it surely would ache for the warmth of its Mother Nest.
Still, such a creature would never stoop to plea for a heater, never show weakness to the cold, particularity when the filth that guarded it showed no such fragility. The ghost was not fond of pirates, but she knew how it would have seen them: vile things.
Twisted creatures of their own ambition.
Abominable violations of the great Hydrian Bylaws.
Reflections of humanity’s inherent sickness.
So repugnant were those cyborgs that it had declined to look at, let alone speak with them for years now. It was appalled to have ever spoken the human tongue, and refused to further dirty itself by associating with half-machine, half-biological offenses to the natural order.
When those had dashed away from the entrance of its cell, it could not have cared less. When it heard the sharp, unrhythmic crack of firearms, it had hardly concerned itself, for it had long determined that this hastily carved out cell would be its execution chamber. It expected a crude death, something it considered dishonorable, as that fate would deem it unable to help sustain the hive, even as food. Its body would rot here instead, one of the endless wastes humanity made as they fought among themselves. Truly, humanity never stopped, rendered weak by its inability to make progress as a cohesive whole.
Even during the War, the hive had seen signs of unrest. Humanity’s civil war had been only a matter of time. It had come a few cycles too late to alter the end of the War, but had provided the hive a few decades of delightful entertainment.
These thoughts coursed through her, its despicable mind an open book, and a rather simple one at that. A hatred as deep and vast as any she had ever known surged within her as she felt it on the edge of her perception. It was such a fragile presence, feeble by her standards, and yet so spiteful. In that, it was not so different from the pirates. She may have disregarded it, had it not been the exact taste she’d been looking for, and had Colonel Zarrey’s team not steered so near it.
It was an interesting find, but it was a disgusting, needy thing. She cared not for its thoughts, for its underserved assertion of superiority. It was an insect.
But it was an insect that had answers.
Thus, she wove herself into its perceptions, giving it a taste of something it hadn’t felt in years. It stirred to life, letting out a pitiful question, laden not with desperation, but hope. “Her Majesty?” it queried in its native tongue.
She hardly cared for its hope, for its wishes. It was an insect, but every once in a while, it was enjoyable to play with the ants. “Not quite,” she replied in its language, unable to keep the bemusement from her tone. “Though it is truly adorable you think that broodmothering bitch would care to rescue one of her drones at all, let alone come in person. It was my understanding she rarely left the Mother Nest. Some cowardly decree about a human-conjured demon?”
“But you carry the presence of my Queen.” It, or technically he, though pronouns could only be so accurate in this situation, could feel that pressure along the organs that detected his Queen’s proximity.
“Oh, do I now?” She made another noise of amusement, this one decidedly more menacing. “Then by all means,” she said, emerging from the shadows as if she had been a part of them, “kneel.”
Instinct commanded him to kneel. Drones always knelt before their Queens, especially one of such strength. But the instant the cover of darkness fell from her figure, he froze, irises contracting as he recognized her form. She had no chitlin to protect her organs, simply coverings made from cloth adorned with the markings of the enemy. And as if that were not enough, she had no claws, she had no tail, and not even a single scale. Pale flesh formed a distinctly human shape.
Impossible. The drone leapt back and bared its fangs with a hiss.
“Oh,” she snarled, “did I forget to mention that I played for the other side of the Neutral Zone, little lizard?” She stepped closer, strengthening her presence enough for his sensory organs to find it uncomfortable. “You see, your kin were something of an infestation in this region once, and I was the exterminator.”
Hissing, his glands begin to pool with acid. The muscles in his throat convulsed, and then he spat at this impostor, knowing full well the acid would strip the flesh from her brittle human bones.
His aim was perfect, but the spray flew straight through the ghost’s chest. It splattered onto the stone wall behind her, lowly sizzling as the compounds in the stone were not particularly reactive.
She smirked. “Good boy.” Hydrian acid was quite lethal, particularly to humans. On contact with skin, it could kill in less than a minute. In volume, it could corrode a ship’s critical structural components, but it wasn’t as if her illusion could be harmed. Still, emptying its glands of that acid would protect the crew – protect Zarrey’s team. A Hydra could only produce and store so much acid over time, so the first steps of keeping a Hydrian prisoner would be to drain those glands regularly and prevent that acid from aiding an escape. It wasn’t a pretty process, given the need to stick a long syringe down the maw of a Hydra, but she’d seen it done before. Recognizing the pathetic amount of acid just sprayed at her, and the utter fear now creeping into this lone drone’s brain, Crimson Heart had been abiding the same process. “Hm,” she said, unable to prevent the sneer from crawling onto her lips, “you expected that to hurt me, didn’t you?”
The Hydra did not answer, trying and failing to comprehend the impossibility of the presence before him.
“Now,” she dug into his mind and wrenched the designation of this biological drone free. “Rowin, I have a proposition for you.”
The alien flinched. “Only the Almighty Queen has that power.” No other within the Empire could rip the truth from her drones.
“Well then, at the moment, that would make me, your Queen.” How unfortunate. “You see, drone, your ‘almighty’ broodmother is nothing compared to me.” This was gentle. This was restraint. “Your mind, the minds of all your kind are quite fragile, mere insects hardly worth noting.” Hydra were significantly more susceptible to telepathic infiltration than humans were. They were additionally more aware of it, but their evolution rendered them weak to it, for that extrasensory ability, known to them as blindsight, was how the Queen controlled her empire.
“You are no Queen,” Rowin hissed.
“No?” she queried, pressing a fractional amount more onto the Hydra’s fragile mind. It strained, a series of hisses and clicks emerging from the drone – not words, just sounds of utter fear his evolution demanded he emit to warn other drones. The display did little but annoy her. “Challenge me again and I’ll make you wish you’d been in your brood’s culling stock.”
Trembling, Rowin took the knee commanded of him. “Yes, my Queen.” Shivers ran down his spine like illness, his body trying to purge its loyalty to the Almighty Queen in favor of this farce. It didn’t quite work, for this Queen, while she commanded impressive blindsight, had no pheromones to absorb. Doom settled upon him. With this false Queen, he would never evolve beyond his current state. He would forever be a drone, unpermitted to propagate for the hive.
“Disgusting.” In her opinion, all Hydra were disgusting. Evolved as lizards in appearance, they were more like insects in social structure. The Almighty Queen that ruled the Empire and the sub-Queens below her were the small percentage of the population that were born female. The rest, more than ninety-nine percent of the Empire’s population were born as drones. Technically, they were intersex, neither male nor female, but in human tongue and thought process, they were generally considered male.
Successful drones were elevated by their Queens, and altered, both through telepathy and the release of a Queen’s pheromones to become fertile males – breeding stock for the hive. In that way, the Hydra purposefully selected the continuation of certain traits. The Hydrian Empire operated through a vicious meritocracy where the strong were elevated and the weak simply became food for their kin.
Disappointment rounded out Rowin’s thoughts. To think his honorable service to the hive would end leashed to a defective Queen. “What shall I call you, my Queen?”
“Your kind doesn’t get to know my name.” That was treasured knowledge to her, something she would never allow to be tainted by Hydrian tongues. “Just know that if you attempt to betray me, I will kill you.” A hunger lit up her eyes. “Oh, I’ve killed millions just like you. I snapped their minds in half like tiny twigs, then watched your kin scoop up what remained of their corpses and eat them, so pathetically desperate to win a war that was already over.”
Millions of dead. Massacred by a nest-less Queen. Realization clicked in his mind, pairing a legend to the entity before him.
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A series of hisses and clicks left him, a title that didn’t quite translate. His mind, noisily leaking his thoughts informed her its meaning: She-Who-Sings-Death. Humanity’s language provided a more direct word: banshee. The spirit of a female that sang a hauntingly beautiful song forewarning the death of those that heard it. Truly, it was a near-perfect match for what she’d done to those nests of overgrown termites, but there was an exception. Banshees warned of death, they did not cause it, and she very much had. She had delivered the extermination the Hydra brought upon themselves. “How kind of the Mother Nest to recall my contributions.”
“You slew twelve sub-Queens during the War.”
“Yes.” No point in denying that. She was quite proud of it. “I exterminated their nests too. Is there a meaning behind that question, drone?” Perhaps you would like to join them?
Rowin bowed. “I have none.” He was simply appalled to be in the presence of one who would betray the righteous natural order. Queens in all forms were treasured beyond compare, the life-givers of the hive. To slay one was an incomprehensible act, but the legends told of this false Queen warned of her power over not only the incomprehensible, but the impossible. “What do you require of me, my Queen?”
A tantalizing question. Honestly, killing the little lizard here and squashing the infestation here, was delightfully tempting, but that was short-term thinking. Information was far more important than satisfaction at the moment. “Your singular purpose at this moment, drone, is to answer the questions my Shipmaster has for you.” Tempted as she was to do that interrogation herself, the Hydra would likely be dead before its conclusion. It would be better to have the Admiral do it.
Rowin’s tail lashed back and forth, a nervous tic of vexation. “Forgive my insolence. I had not realized you possessed a Shipmaster amongst your hive.”
She narrowed her gaze, plucking through the fragile strands that formed this Hydrian soldier’s quaint little mind. “And you thought I might press you fill the vacancy?” As if. The thought was positively vile. “I would sooner eat your entrails, and I don’t have a mouth.” Or teeth. Or a digestive tract. “You disgust me, drone. But, for the moment you serve a purpose. Do not make the mistake of thinking I am adopting you.” His pathetic lizard brain simply couldn’t fathom the instance of a Queen that did not seek his servitude. “If my Shipmaster determines you should die, then you die.” That was one directive she would happily abide.
“Your Shipmaster,” Rowin said, “he was poached from another hive? Another Queen?”
“Because I lack the ability to make one of my own?” In the eyes of the Hydra, she was a false Queen – defective. True Queens possessed strong telepathy, so-called blindsight, but they also produced strong pheromones that interacted with the bodies of their drones and triggered biological changes. One such alteration evolved a simple sexless drone like Rowin to a fertile male that would hold a higher position in the hive. Male Hydra held several positions, Shipmaster among them. In a proper hive, that title was never held by a drone, only by an elevated male. However, given that she didn’t produce pheromones like a true Queen, theoretically, she could not elevate a drone and would have needed to poach one from another Queen.
But naturally, that all assumed she was working with Hydra, that she had gathered a nest of damn lizards and puppeteered them as a hive mind. It simply never occurred to the Hydra that an entity of her capability might ally itself with humans. “My Shipmaster is my own,” she told Rowin coldly. “His loyalty is not in question.” It never had been. Your kind is simply too limited to understand his true rank. Admiral had no equivalent title in the Hydrian language. Shipmaster, the title of a warrior who held authority over multiple ships, was as close as it got, regardless of its other connotations. She, however, was not obligated to clear up Rowin’s misconceptions. The drone could believe another Hydra would interrogate him. The surprising reality would change nothing, simply make it more entertaining. Rowin would be compelled to answer regardless.
“Understand this, drone. I do not care for you. You are my subordinate, but no member of my hive.” Reaching out, interfacing with this alien mind was something rather repulsive, but she understood the need. “Now, a group of humans will reach you soon. You are not to harm any of them.” The drone’s mind twitched toward annoyance, but she yanked harshly on it before the thought could fully form and he hissed in pain. “Touch them, spit on them, so much as consider their taste, and I. Will. End. You.”
The proper amount of fear crept into the drone’s mind. “Apologies, my Queen.” Rowin bowed.
“They carry my authority, drone. You are to submit to everything they command of you. Any direction they give comes directly from me. Do you comprehend that?”
Rowin bowed once more. “Yes, my Queen.”
Good, she thought, pulling across his mind, evaluating the honesty of such a statement. She didn’t bother being gentle. There was no point to showing mercy to such a thing. It was little more than a locust cut off from its swarm, prepared but unable to harvest planets. The Hydra had never shown mercy to humanity, so she was not obligated to act with any kindness, short of restraining herself enough to not shatter this abhorrent alien mind. “Make no mistake in this,” she commanded. “I’ll be watching.”
With that, the ghost’s visible illusion vanished. Relieved as he may have been to have that white-haired human abomination out of sight, Rowin felt no degree of freedom. The pressure of the Queen’s presence pressed against his organs unrelentingly, no different than a spear tip across his throat. His blindsight could still see the tendrils of her power wrapped around him, more invasive and constricting than even the Almighty Queen herself. A wrong move, and he’d be punished instantly. Whether that meant death, or removing his blindsight so he never felt another Queen’s presence and could never be evolved to serve the hive was irrelevant. He would obey. None resisted She-Who-Sings-Death.
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Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Crimson Heart’s Base of Operations
The keys were on a ring that hung by a nail hammered into the stone wall. They weren’t hanging much without gravity, more hovering, but they clinked all the same as Zarrey picked them up and carried them over to the door. He held up the keys, comparing them to the steel door. They matched in color, and they were large keys, befitting the bulk of the door. “I like my odds,” he said, attempting to shove the first key into the door. It didn’t fit, but the second one on the ring did. The lock thunked as he turned it, the door opening outward with a slight creak.
Yankovich took up a position behind Zarrey’s shoulder, signaling Blosse and Santino to watch the corridor behind them. “You sure that’s a good idea, sir?”
“Definitely not,” Zarrey grinned. “But if Crimson Heart wants this locked. I want it unlocked.” He was petty like that.
“Can’t argue with that logic, sir,” Yankovich said. “But the bars on this door indicate they wanted some sight or sound perception of what’s on the other side.”
“It’s an isolation cell,” that had been immediately obvious to Zarrey. As much as he may have been hoping for the Baron’s personal vault, he’d boarded enough ships and bailed enough sailors out of the brig to know what he was looking at. “But I’d like to see who the hell a pirate clan builds a special prison to hold. Wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose,” Yankovich admitted, shadowing Zarrey as they pulled themselves past the steel door. The stone here was unevenly chiseled, as if done in a hurry. It gave them easy handholds as they moved forward. The space beyond the door wasn’t large, just large enough for Zarrey and Yankovich to be comfortable with their armor and weapons. Another interior door blocked off the end of the space, formed by large steel bars. They were almost too thick for Zarrey to wrap his hands around, and covered in a chalky powder. The gaps between the bars were large enough to reach through, but they were clearly meant to hold something both larger and stronger than him.
Yet, as Zarrey raised his gaze to the volume beyond the bars, he saw nothing. More of the stone had been unevenly carved out in a round, spherical shape perhaps twenty-five feet in diameter. A bucket of water had lifted off the ground without gravity, some indication that the cell was occupied, even if the occupant was nowhere to be seen.
Looking around, everything in the cell was painted in green and outlined in his infrared goggles. It was all ambient temperature. The patterns across the stone were random, but Zarrey found his attention drawn to one area on the left side where the stone seemed to have been chiseled in a finer more perfect pattern. He studied it for a moment, not entirely certain what kept his attention there. “Hello?”
The rock moved, or at least it looked like part of the stone until it uncoiled, slithering up to the bars in one easy movement. A rookie may have jumped, may have shot it prematurely. Hell, Zarrey nearly shot it prematurely as he leapt backward, cursing, “Naddlethwofing mother of fucking beezlenac!”
Having lost his grip on the wall, Zarrey flailed, drifting upward until he banged his helmet into the ceiling. Yankovich didn’t reach out to help him, just kept his own aim very still and very steady. “Is that what I think it is?”
The creature watched Zarrey right himself, wrapping all four of its long, dexterous claws around the bars as it hung, tail drifting out behind it. Zarrey could have sworn it looked amused by his reaction, perhaps enamored by the clumsiness of a species it considered prey. “Yeah,” he answered Yankovich. That’s a damned Hydra.
Sure, Zarrey had considered the possibility there might be a Hydra within Crimson Heart’s base. He had been warned as such. But the reality of truly, actually finding one, that was an entirely different situation. He’d seen the photos, learned about the Hydra the same as any member of the fleet, but they’d always seemed a far off, almost mythical threat. The War had seemed like ancient history, tales of other worlds, not his, even while the Singularity – the not-quite living, not-quite breathing evidence of such a war – had rested below his feet. There had always been more immediate threats to focus his attention on.
Yet, here he found himself face-to-maw with a threat so completely alien, cussing was about the only reaction he’d so far managed. The Hydra’s long, flexible body slithered slowly in place, keeping its balance in zero-G, despite the speed at which it had grasped the bars. Its two large beady eyes seemed to meet his, blinking slowly, one eye at a time, as it studied him with interest. “You are not prey,” it spoke between hisses and clicks, voice raspy as its alien biology contorted itself to speak a language not evolved to it. “I now serve your Queen.”
Zarrey stood there for a moment before he realized that the alien had just spoken words he understood. “You speak Standard?”
“Of courssse,” the Hydra said, tongue lingering on the ‘s’ with a hiss.
Right, because that makes sense for two species that haven’t encountered one another for half a century. “Did the pirates put you here?”
“I do not know this word, ‘pirates,’ but I have been here many cycles.” The alien flicked its tongue. “And now, your Queen demandsss my service.”
Zarrey nodded, trying and failing completely to make sense of that. “So, you’re not hostile?”
“You are not prey. Your Queen forbid it.”
“Right, okay,” Zarrey cleared his throat and blinked a few times to ensure this wasn’t a hallucination. “I’m, uh, going to go make a call.”