“Stop them.”

The words pulsed through the Endless Flesh, just like they had for millions of years. The words guiding them, investing them with more and more power as they failed endlessly in their task. The surface of their home planet writhed and wriggled, every inch of it covered in layers of moving spawn of themselves. Deep underneath the surface the captured Immortals of millions of years sat, their bodies slowly working to increase the thickness of the thick matts of biomass covering every available surface of the planet. The mountains were covered, the seas were filled in… There was only a planet sized ball of the Endless Flesh, slowly incrementally growing bigger the longer they waited. Waiting until all of that biomass could be used to accomplish their goal.

“Stop them.”

The words pulsed again like the beating of an ancient heart. In and out, a desperate plea alternating with silence.

“Stop them, please.”

The hiveminds of the Endless Flesh had learned to let the words fade into the back of their minds. Ever pulsing, ever driving them… But not all consuming as it was to their less refined spawn. Their intelligent minds were too few. Each one was valuable and couldn’t dare risk itself unless it was the last resort.

“I hate you. I wish that you would all just DIE!”

The Endless Flesh all paused as something caught in their minds. The Linked One… what was this? It had dozens of years of extra experiences compressed and added to it in a single instant. At this distance the flow was too distant, too vague to retain a single discrete thought from the link. But something had changed. Something had happened to the Linked One.

The minds of the Endless Flesh chittered and discussed what to do. They had always been cautious, all too aware of their own natural impatience and distraction once the beating heart of their guide pulsed and drove them to act.

“You have to protect them. Somebody has to save them!”

The minds of the Endless Flesh did not decide quickly, but neither did they delay. This abnormality must be investigated. So, for the first time in millions of years, the Endless Flesh’s minds acted and actively directed the flesh covering their home planet. As a collective, the minds of the hive moved the amount of Immortals needed to fuel the expedition and encased them in the central carrier ship.

The gathered Immortals rose to the surface in their new prison, until like a bubble rising from the froth the main ship emerged from the planet. It rose into orbit and moved to the edge of the solar system. Once it was in its place, it pulsed once, its flesh rippling for a few moments before in a flash it was gone, traveling through hyperspace.

Traveling to the Linked One. The Endless Flesh must know what strange event had happened to the Linked One. Only proximity would give them more information on what exactly had occurred.

“No, no. Please. Save them!”

Behind the first ship, the intelligent minds of the Endless Flesh gathered the greater fleet behind themselves. For the first time in millions of years they would leave this planet and travel out into the wider universe, only leaving a few behind as a failsafe and guard in case things went wrong.

The lead ship arrived in the star system of the Linked One and was attacked. The flow of information increased once the ship left hyperspace and was able to transmit the situation through the use of hyperspace vibrations. One of the few techniques and technologies that the Endless Flesh that had developed the humans had not.

It seemed that the Endless Flesh’s biological technology was predisposed to this development than the humans metal and stiffened machines were. By half activating the hyperdrive and vibrating the whole contraption in place and modulating the signal, the vibrations could travel through hyperspace far faster than the speed of light.

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It was a noisy signal, and difficult to interpret in many cases. But just outside the home star system of the Linked One the other ships with powerful sensors waited and observed. In deep space and far from the range where a human ship or sensors would ever be able to find them.

The main ship vibrated its hyperspace engine and kept transmitting its signals communicating the events occurring as it was damaged by the humans’ defenses.

One of the ships would leave the clusters of sensors in deep space and travel through hyperspace for a few minutes back to the intelligent minds of the Endless Flesh and share their experiences for analysis by the minds. The great defensive fleet of the Endless Flesh hung there in deep space far from any star system, hanging close to the system of the Linked One so they could know what was occurring and give orders to the attacking ship if needed.

The human’s attack on the ship the minds of the Endless Flesh had sent forward wasn’t enough. The ship approached the planet of the Linked One, despite the damage and near destruction of the ship.

The Endless Flesh weighed the ship hovered above the planet. They still weren’t close enough. The experiences the ship was sending to them were still too vague, too hard to interpret. The minds of the Endless FLesh began a ground invasion like they had for so many other worlds before.

“Stop them!”

Little bits and pieces came through as the tiniest fragments of the Endless Flesh attacked the shielded places of the planet. The Endless Flesh did not know which one contained the Linked One. None of the fragments traveling across the link made any sense to them still. But there was ever more nonsense streaming to them through the link as the biomass of the Endless Flesh on the planet below increased. The minds of the Endless Flesh chittered and discussed all of the experiences and sensations being sent to them from the network of sensors just outside the Linked One’s star system, but still none of them could make anything of the scattered and strange images presented to them.

Yet the flow continued, and with enough information some of what had occurred began to become clear. The Shadow had done this. The Linked One had been brought back in time by the Shadow so she may witness the beginning of her life once more.

The main ship was defeated by the weapon that the Linked One had repaired. A planet destroyer.

As the main hives kept on their assaults on the defended places of the planet, others continued on their more unusual task.

The last of the main hives fighting the Linked One and her allies were defeated. All motion on the surface of the planet went still. Yet the Endless Flesh was still there, buried deep beneath the surface and moving incrementally slowly and tunneling through the stone so that their movements wouldn’t be detected by seismic scanners on the surface above hunting for them. All of them contained their own hyperspace engines that they vibrated to transmit their experiences to the larger fleet.

Most hyperspace signals were disrupted and distorted by a gravitational field. Traveling through a planet or object through hyperspace was nearly impossible and would usually cause enough distortion that the ship would exit hyperspace in stages and be ripped into a scattered cloud of particles. Jumping into hyperspace even within the space of a star system was too much and could have the same result of annihilating a vessel.

“Why are you doing this? Just stop this…”

But even with all of that considered… The buried living transmitters of the Endless Flesh worked together, and the hyperspace vibrations were just barely detectable to the deep space sensors. The transmitters didn’t truly have to jump into hyperspace. All they had to do was disrupt it enough to send its signals.

The communication with the larger hive continued as a stream of images and sensations entered the transmitting and motionless mountains of flesh below the surface. All of it streaming in from their relatively close physical proximity Linked One. And like the Endless Flesh had always tried to be, they sat there cautiously. Slowly shifting and tunneling, moving no more than a centimeter in distance or less in a single year.

Yet the transmitters still moved and spread out, using the Immortals sitting in their centers to keep themselves slowly growing and able to transmit a ever clearer signal to the eager intelligent minds of the Endless Flesh in deep space. There the minds would wait and receive the scraps of information they could receive through the dirt and stone above them from the Linked One.

The minds of the Endless Flesh continued their analysis and debate on what the images meant, especially when it happened again and the Linked One gained centuries of memories out of seemingly nowhere again. The Linked One had gone back in time again.

The Endless Flesh must analyze this occurrence, to investigate this thing that might come between them and their goal…

“Stop them. Please! Somebody… Anybody… Help them.”

The words kept pulsing through the Endless Flesh.

Perhaps this newest information from the Linked One would provide a means to their final victory. The one they’d been trying to find a way to accomplish for so long.

“Save them!”

“Why did they have to die…

“They’re all I have left…”