//Writing Soundtrack: FTL OST

I immediately turned around and made my way to the door opposite of the one I heard the sound from. On my way there I noticed a peculiar smell in the air that didn’t fit the rest of the decaying scents I smelled in the room. It was fresh and new and spoke of a new life.

I glanced into the direction of the smell and almost fell over in surprise. What I saw were the remains of an egg that were just big enough for me to fit into. There was still some gooey substance all around it, although most of it seemed to have dried out, which told me that it had to have been there for quite some time. Although how long I didn’t know, nor did I know how long I had been stuck in the fugue.

Was this my egg? Did I hatch from that thing? The size would fit, but keeping an egg at a place like where it was, out in the open and not protected at all!

Weirdly I was more angry at my parents for leaving an egg out like that, rather than being terrified or weirded out by the probability of hatching from that thing.

A loud boom rang through the room as whatever was behind the door was trying to get in, leaving a dent in the metal which formed a giant imprint of a fist easily the size of my entire torso. Only now did I realise just how gigantic the doors actually were, compared to the furniture around me.

I snapped back into action, making my way quickly towards the door I had been aiming for, trying to find a way to open it. It seemed locked with a small panel next to it that probably would have been some kind of terminal to open it but, of course, it was dead.

I inspected it closely, then touched it.

Immediately something popped into my vision.

Alert: Door Module has lost all power. Reactivate the power grid to reinstate normal door functionality.

Alert: Subject [Hexclaw Hatchling] NULL possesses [ERROR].

Alert: Use [ERROR] to override?

Y / N

What?

“What?”

I was so stunned that I spoke the question out loud, noticing that my voice was definitely female and a mixture between sugar sweet and terrifying. It was high pitched and had a definite warm and friendly tone to it, but it was also slightly buzzing and reverberating.

While a part of me ran off with the analysis of my voice to keep myself from having a complete mental breakdown, another part of myself was currently questioning reality.

I was seeing an Interface!

Another boom from behind me ripped me out of my shock, quickly mentally assenting to the question of the Interface, delegating all the questions I was having to later when I wasn’t afraid something very big would come and eat me. Those had to wait for the moment. It wouldn’t be worth having a mental breakdown or complete break from reality if I wasn’t able to survive and enjoy the experience, now would it?

When I accepted the Interfaces proposal I felt something clicking in my mind, like some mechanism worked its way through whatever it was working through. Suddenly the door cracked open, then slowly, slowly, opened. Once it was big enough for my small form to fit through I slipped inside, finding myself in a small hallway. The entire left half of it had collapsed, showing that whatever structure I was in was not on the surface, or if it was, it was covered with lots of steel and other metal for some reason.

Behind me I heard the door I slipped through closing the moment the last part of my tail passed the threshold. I walked slowly and carefully, keeping my eyes out for any surprises.

Every few dozen metres there was a door on the right side, many of them open or smashed, revealing old and ravaged rooms behind. Most seemed to be some kind of storage or living area, although any details have long since been lost to time and the scavengers.

Eventually I came to the end of the hallway, where it split two ways, once left, and once right, but again, the left side was blocked. So I went the right way.

I came upon a left turn and then another door. The left side of the door was in the closed position, but the right side had been ripped out. Behind it was a massive room. Like truly massive. And it wasn’t empty.

The room easily was over a kilometre long and a good five to six hundred metres wide, with the ceiling being about the same. The entrance was set up similar to an airport waiting area, although with clear signs of battle. Not the military shootout kind, more the feral massive beasts with fangs and claws kind.

Further in was a truly massive structure that I belatedly realised was an actual starship. Although it wouldn’t fly anywhere in its current state of disrepair and damage, I was stunned when I saw it. The starship also explained the damage to the hallway, as part of it was wedged deep into the wall the entrance was in, on just the right height and width to be the culprit for the heavy damage. In front of the starship was a clear area, about two hundred metres into the room, with a rather big corpse.

The corpse was roughly feline but with chitin plates like my own, three absolutely massively long tails, one of which clearly cut off at about half length, and six sets of the weird claw-arms on its back, all in various states of being wounded.

On its belly I could see another two pairs of small manipulator arms like I had, although they looked unused and regressed. Its head was vaguely catlike with chitin plating, and six trios of eyes in a similar constellation of my own, three on each side.

Its fangs were the only thing without any clear signs of decay, still perfectly silver.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

I stood there, shocked, for a few minutes, as it slowly dawned on me that this being must be similar to me, even if it was wildly different. Maybe it was even my parent, if wildly different mutations were possible? It seemed likely in the back of my mind, but why that was I could not have told you.

Eventually I slowly walked towards it, realising just how massive it was. It would barely fit through the door I had just come through, easily a few times as high as I was if fully upright. Its total length must have been at least thirty to forty metres.

Stopping next to its head which was just about as high as I was, with its teeth being just about as big as my head, I looked at it, a little torn. A part of me was sad to see this creature dead, even though every single reasonable human would have run screaming from it.

Its deep dark chitin plating was a stark contrast to my pale white ones and I stretched out an arm to touch it. As soon as I did, the Interface popped up once more.

Progenitor Hexclaw

Tier: 8

Species: Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence

Evolution Path: Progenitor Hexclaw

Cybernetic Enhancements: Unknown

I nearly jumped as the Interface popped up, still not used to all of this. It took me a moment to work through the revelations. This thing, this Progenitor Hexclaw… It was like me. And didn’t the Interface say something about Hexclaws when I activated the door? I was pretty sure it did.

That probably meant I was a Hexclaw, although I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant for me. Especially since this one was listed as species Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence. Did that mean I was part of a swarm?

Those questions were important but I had no way of knowing a definitive answer for any of them. With that thought I moved away from the corpse and onto the Starship.

I got all of three steps in before I slapped myself. If I had an Interface to identify other stuff, I probably had one to identify myself. Stuff like that was common enough in the novels I had read and now I found myself in a world of horrors as some kind of alien girl with a holographic or mental interface, so the chances for there to be a status page was pretty high, if not guaranteed.

“Status.”

I had just spoken the word when something popped into my vision once more.

NULL

Tier: 0

Species: Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence

Evolution Path: Hexclaw Hatchling [99+ options available]

Cybernetic Enhancements: [ERROR], Unknown

NULL diagnosis:

Level: 1

Physical Adaptation: 14.7%

Mental Adaptation: 7.2%

Cybernetic Adaptation: 57.4%

Skills: ???

Alert: Finish the adaptation process to finalise Skill formation.

Alert: Insufficient information on [ERROR]. Use at your own risk!

Wait, what? Level? Adaptation? Skills? And what the hell is up with this [ERROR] that’s being mentioned constantly? It was nice to know that my earlier assumption turned out to be true, but that only left me with more and more questions.

If I was some kind of Swarm intelligence now, how would that affect me? In the books I read those types of creatures often went out of their way to clean off all the life of an entire planet if not stopped, and I didn’t want to be that kind of monster, especially if humans were around. Or other humanoid beings.

While I made my way to the Starship’s entrance, if I identified it correctly, I looked through the options for my Evolution Path. A lot of it was just a wide variety of races or types of animals, like the Progenitor Hexclaw had been a feline Evolution Path.

But there were a few weird ones that stood out to me, like Voidclaw, which had its own little description which did not bode well.

Voidclaw

Touched by the endless void and the nothingness between the stars, this evolution line gets powerful anti-spell Skills. But be aware, for the Void always hungers for more.

I really didn’t like the sound of that.

Other Evolution Path’s were just… weird. Like Hexclaw of Lust, which probably would end up with some really weird sexual thing. While I was perhaps a little more intrigued by different sexual options, I was not going to take something so utterly ridiculous.

There were in total only four Evolution Path’s I was considering for a spur of the moment decision.

Hexclaw Soldier

The basic fighting evolution of the Hexclaw. Further evolutions become more physically robust and capable of fighting.

Hexclaw Minder

The basic spell oriented evolution of the Hexclaw. Further evolutions become more mentally robust and obtain Skills to cast spells.

Hexclaw Worker

The basic evolution of the Hexclaw. Not outstanding in any field, but has the potential to become a Jack of all Trades, Master of None.

Hexclaw Splicer [UNLOCKED]

Due to your knowledge of technology and programming, you have unlocked the Path of the Hexclaw Splicer. This evolution path is physically weak, but comes bundled with a lot of utility and technology oriented spells and Skills.

WARNING: Selecting Hexclaw Splicer locks out any future evolution Path other than Hexclaw Hacker, Hexclaw Engineer, Hexclaw Warlock, Hexclaw Hive Princess, Hexclaw Broodmother.

What I found rather interesting was the fact that a lot of the Evolution Path’s I had available were not something I would have considered fitting for an insectoid Swarm Intelligence, and more ordinary human Jobs or animal adaptations. Like Hexclaw Lion, or Hexclaw Raptor.

If that was a universal thing or not I wasn’t sure, but if I had to guess I would say it wasn’t. I seemed to be pretty different from the norm, considering the [UNLOCKED] description on the Hexclaw Splicer.

I had still not decided what Evolution Path to choose, before I’d do that I would take some time to sit down and think. Especially since my lack of any visceral or strong emotional reaction still irked me. I had never been one to explode over anything, but this was pretty vulcan even for me. I was pretty sure I was not in the right headspace to make important decisions like that, so for now I had to find shelter, food, and water. If I even still needed those.

Eventually I arrived at the ship, misidentifying the entrance only slightly, and looked up to the entrance. It was about twenty metres off the ground but this was just the perfect opportunity to try out my new claw-arms.

Although, considering that I took the better part of 5 minutes to even get them in front of me, this might take a while.