Insectoid cruiser

En route to the secondary builder world, 2174 A.D.

The queen had spent considerable time thinking about how she would communicate with the animals during her journey to the builder world to take her new Hive ship. Her new sister, the commander drone, had already arrived in another cruiser outside the animal patrol range and was awaiting her arrival in the void between systems. The queen had thought of and discarded numerous ideas on how to speak to the animals, and she resented the lack of attempts to understand the animals by her genetic ancestors. She wished the animals had the ability to share thoughts like her race did; it would make things so much easier to come to an understanding and end the great conflict her race had started.

The animal thought and sound processes were so alien that it had taken almost twenty solar cycles for the queens to just understand the limited concept of give and leave when demanding the animals concede and abandon the solar systems they wanted, and they never pursued further understanding past that point. She had the entire memory of all the animal speech they had recorded from the animal hostages that were captured after the first battle between their species many cycles ago, and she wondered again how they conveyed thought with sounds as she listened to the harsh noises issuing from the same holes they ate with. The ancient Hive mother within her could offer no help and retreated into the background to let her work in peace after counseling patience.

She replayed the memories of her genetic ancestor, who had shared the thoughts of the victorious queen and elicited speech from the animal hostages by causing pain. The victorious queen had worker drones break their fragile bones and remove body parts as she listened to the sounds that emanated from them, and she withheld water from them for increasing lengths of time. Not knowing what they ate, she had the weaker, injured animals who had died first ground up into mince and mixed with their own excrement, and she had her workers offer it to them as food. She was offended by their rejection of her merciful efforts to feed them, and she never offered them food again for the short time they were alive.

The queen was repulsed by the memories that she was replaying, and a deep wave of shame came over her at the treatment of the animals by the victorious queen. She was just about to expunge the memories from herself forever when she realized that she had seen something strange before and went back looking for it. There! In the background, there was an adult tree animal with a smaller tree animal, and it had been extremely protective of the small one, trying to hide it and giving what meager water it could get its hands on to it. The queen had everything else around these two animals fade away in her mind, and she focused on their interaction as she had the memory progress.

The larger tree animal was making shapes with its tarsal claws, and the smaller one was doing the same thing in response. Only then did she notice that they never used their holes to make noises. They must be using their claws to convey thoughts to each other, she realized as she replayed the memory and started from the beginning again, from when they were captured to when they finally died a few days later from lack of water. She committed every movement to memory, and she thought she could understand the concepts of some of them as she connected certain tarsal movements to actions that followed. Her mind worked furiously at deciphering more meaning, and she tapped into the nearby drones and incorporated their minds into her task, knowing that they would burn out from the intensity she was using them at.

After a few hours and burning up over sixty worker drone minds, she finally had to stop as she threatened to irrevocably damage her own mind from the extraordinary effort. She was hit with a wave of exhaustion, and she retreated to her queen chambers to rest before her arrival at the builder world. As she walked through the tunnel that connected the command chamber to the queen chambers, she practiced all the tarsal claw movements she had committed to memory, getting used to the strangeness of their movements. She arrived at her chambers and settled herself into the soft nest of webbing and plant fibers that she had made for herself when she had first arrived on the cruiser, and she forced herself to sleep, dreaming of tarsal claw movements turning into animal sounds.

Sometime later, she was jolted out of her rest period by powerful thoughts from the Hive mother calling to all her queen daughters to tell them of the capture of intruding animals by her queen sister in the very builder world she was heading towards. The Hive mother was praising the queen that had captured them, and the queen joined in, hiding the dismay she was feeling as she sent false thoughts of happiness and pride towards her sister. The Hive mother entered her mind, and her thoughts came to the queen.

She felt the Hive mother leave her mind, and she hurried out to the command chamber. When she arrived, she ordered the commander drone to increase to maximum speed and lounged on the command chair on the dais, trying to suppress her fear and nervousness at the sudden change of events. She felt the ancient Hive mother within stirring, and she opened her mind to her thoughts. ~ You must help the animals; they may be the only chance you have to communicate with an animal in proximity. It is likely that you will fail on a Hive ship; they will attack you outright and destroy you. ~

The queen acknowledged the wisdom of her words and thanked the ancient one within for her thoughts as she receded. The increase in speed would accelerate her arrival in the builder world system to just under two solar hours, and she entered into a deep thought, planning for the rescue of the animals from her sister’s grasp.

Two solar hours later, the Insectoid cruiser flashed out of null space into the system and accelerated to maximum sub-light speed on a direct course to the builder world. The queen had come up with a tentative plan to rescue the animals, and she impatiently waited for the cruiser to make the journey and get down to the planet. She went down to the depths of the ship and assembled one hundred and twenty worker drones as her entourage. She walked down the ranks and communed with each one individually, enslaving them fully with her thoughts and feelings and by releasing a secret blend of pheromones that the ancient Hive mother within shared with her.

These one hundred and twenty drones, already utterly obedient to begin with, were now enslaved to her alone and incapable of accepting commands from any other queen, not even the powerful Hive mother. The blend of pheromones that the ancient one had shared with her was from a bygone era and known only to certain Hive mothers during a time when a large segment of the worker drone population still had some semblance of autonomy and individuality before it was finally bred out of them. Another side effect of the pheromone blend was an increased aggression potential that would turn the worker drones viciously lethal at her command, an unexpected capability that is not normally possible in docile worker drones.

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She waited down there with them until the ship landed on the builder world on the outskirts of the primary Hive, and she marched off the cruiser with her entourage of worker drones surrounding her. Outside the main entry to the Hive, she ordered forty drones to stay and await her commands; she sent another forty to ready her new Hive ship, and she entered the Hive with the remaining forty. Taking more drones than that with her would insult her sister and arouse suspicion, and she needed to tread carefully from here on out. She headed directly for the nexus of the Hive to join her sister and see the animal hostages.

Her sister sent thoughts to her mind, and she accepted them.

The queen noted the malicious pride evident in her sister’s thoughts as she continued deeper into the Hive.

The queen suppressed the horror she felt at her sister’s comment about eating the unfortunate animal.

It was time for the second part of her plan, and she found it easier to lie the more she did it.

She felt an outpouring of pride coming from her sister, and she knew the lie had worked.

The queen reached the tunnel before the nexus entryway that led to the soldier drone chambers and went into it, emerging in a large, dim cavern that was filled with over a hundred soldier drones in various states of activity. They all stopped what they were doing at her entrance and silently assembled into a formation. The queen stopped in front of the first one, ready to flee if her attempt to enslave it failed.

She communed with it and released a slightly different blend of pheromones from the one she released to the worker drones. She entered the soldier drone’s mind, and she saw the change that put it unequivocally under her command. She repeated the process as quickly as she could, and after they had all undergone the change, she left and entered the main nexus, where her sister awaited her. Now it was time for the third part of her plan.

She saw her sister in the middle of the nexus on a raised dais, and she walked over and stopped before her, bowing to show her respect to the queen of the Hive she was in.

The queen did not respond and continued to follow her sister, waiting for her chance to execute the third part of the plan. They entered a chamber that was brightly lit with biofluorescent bacteria that was painted onto the rough rock of the walls when it was carved out. The queen counted eight animals that were splayed out and tied down to small, narrow tables.

She walked over to them and saw that six of them had hard black exoskeletons that were whole, while the other two had blue exoskeletons that seemed more fragile to her in a way. One of the blue animals was seriously injured, with a missing leg, signs of damage on its exoskeleton, and dried ichor evident all over it. The other animal had its blue exoskeleton opened, and she looked at the animal within. It was pale and soft, with long black growth that came from the top of its head and splayed out on the table underneath her. There were no obvious signs of damage, and she didn’t see any obvious eyes—just two folds of skin closed over two bumps in round sockets.

She continued inspecting the animal and noted that there were two fleshy mounds on its trunk, and she gingerly poked at them with a tarsal claw, curious as to their nature. She continued moving her claw down and had reached towards the bottom of the trunk when she detected something in that area. She stared at the area and focused all her senses and antennae on it. She gazed within and saw a small collection of cells that had attached themselves to the wall of a fleshy cavity within the trunk of the animal. As she watched, it was rapidly replicating, and she extrapolated the rate of cell division and the outcome. What she saw shocked her, and she removed her tarsal claw from the animal’s trunk. It was a queen mother.

The queen was so engrossed by her discovery that she didn’t notice what her sister was doing until she was standing next to her, holding a cutting instrument in her tarsal claws. Her sister activated the instrument, startling her, and was just about to stick it into the animal queen when the ancient one within her took control of her body and seized the cutting instrument from her sister, plunging it into the top of her head and piercing her brain, killing her instantly as the reciprocating instrument tore up the brain pan.

The queen reasserted control of her body, and the instrument dropped from her claws, vibrating loudly against the stone floor as she stared at the lifeless body of her sister lying on the floor in shock.

~ I had to do it; you were too engrossed in the animal to save it in time. Hurry, call in the drones you enslaved and get these animals out of here and onto your ship before the Hive notices their mother is dead. ~

The queen took control of her emotions and assessed her situation. She sent thought commands to the enslaved soldier drones and called them to the chamber she was in as she thought about how to get the animals out. The drones arrived a few moments later, and she had to reinforce her control over them as they reacted to the sight of the dead queen and almost went into a murderous frenzy to attack the animals. She reasserted control and ordered the soldier drones to wrap the animals in sacks and carry them back to her hive ship, following them out of the chamber.

They had gotten out of the Hive successfully, and she led the soldiers carrying the animals towards the nearby shipyard as her worker drones encircled them in a formation, clearing a path. They were almost at her new Hive ship when she detected activity behind her and turned around. A massive swarm of worker and soldier drones were pouring out of the Hive, and they spotted her group and surged towards them at full speed.

The queen ordered the workers to take the sacks from the soldier drones and run to the Hive ship, and then she ordered the soldier drones to defend her ship. She turned and ran, following the workers as they went up the ramp and into the massive Hive ship, carrying the sacks with the animals in them. The ramp started closing behind them, and she turned and watched as her enslaved soldiers charged at the approaching swarm, following her last order and defending their queen to the death. The ramp finally closed, and the queen hurried to the command chamber to input the final commands to activate the atmospheric drives and flee the planet.

She arrived in the command chamber and went about entering the final commands when an alert came on the screens. In near orbit, there were dozens of exit flashes, and animal ships dropped out of null space, firing on any nearby Insectoid ships. There were dozens more exit flashes on the other side of the planet, and massive animal carriers and battleships appeared, releasing the deadly small animal ships they carried while the battleships surged towards the Hive ships and cruisers that were in orbit near them.

The queen felt an overwhelming sense of failure as she realized that her Hive ship would never make it to orbit before being destroyed. She accepted her fate with quiet dignity and waited for the animal ships to bombard her when the ancient Hive mother within urged her to activate the null space drive.

I can’t; the explosion will kill billions of innocent drones and destroy thousands of ships.

~ Do it, or trillions of drones will die and our genetic lines will perish. ~

The queen entered coordinates that were far outside of Insectoid space and activated the null drive.