<”Colonel.”> Past the standing Sentinels, still mired in the exaltations of humanites and calls of her colony, Skthveraachk saw the Solovyova outside the tent. Slanted. Stooped. Joints, first crooked, stiffening as Hathan called out to her; paired eyes which had been fixated upon the flask she carried snapping up as antenna-like graspers ceased their consideration of its lid.

<”Devries.”> Single note. The humanite still ensuring her focus was kept on the other of her kind, with only the occasional drift taking it past the Queen or her supporting entourage. <”Bug looks ‘bout ready to topple.”>

<”Says she’ll be alright, relaxants and sedatives will be good for bars still. Can’t argue with the Herald’s orders.”>

<”We could.”> Unsung thoughts flashed and danced above the Colonel’s head. Skthveraachk tried to ensure her own focus, though found gazing through the eyes of those children carrying her far easier than using her own. Like her body was floating, bouncing along an ocean only she could feel or touch. The silence was stark in its comparison to the noise beyond, and the Hathan’s shifting of gaze with Solovyova’s downward look spurred Skthveraachk to the beginnings of song.

“Your assistance was invaluable. Your information, your scans, the critical beat by which my colony-“

<”Don’t thank me, Bug-Queen.”> An arpeggio which tumbled off the cliff at its peak. Solovyova sliced the response as an unsheathed scythe, the cruel tone rescinding only at the sight of Skthveraachk’s visible recoil. <”Didn’t mean to say it like that. Svera-Queen. Tovarisch. Not like his dog-of-the-lap says.”> Hathan furrowed the folds of flesh above his eyes, but said nothing as the female continued. <”Did job. Worked. Maybe that’s enough for you. Maybe some day I’ll be good with that, too. Not today, though. Not for me. So, please, don’t thank me.”> Menders quizzically tried to send searching touches to her, finding only a wall of solid hardstone and mental brick their welcome. The Queen retained the connection to the thinkers, and sung back with emotions she disallowed herself to feel.

“I receive, Solovyova-LieutenantColonel.” The flags and banners around the encampment seemed brighter, the cup upon them radiating its golden glow on background of crimson and void. The false-light projectors enhanced, perhaps, to blinding degrees. “Should we enter?”

<”I don’t intend to stop you.”> Some decision reached, gloved feelers finally latched and spun at the cap of the flask. An action which, almost as soon as it was begun, cut itself short with trembling finality. Solovyova was no longer looking upon them, but down the gradual slope. To where cheering had become hisses, guttural ‘ooo’ing from puckered lip-meat, and a darker shade of celebration. Uniforms of the Palamedes’ crew, led by the Lieutenant Miroslava, surrounding as four the central Coalition soldier. Officer. General. Still in his own colors of yellow and blue, still walking tall as though he were among his own kind yet. The troops of the Sovereignty were disciplined enough to keep their distance from the captured foe. Not quite so disciplined as to be stopped from throwing gestures, and vitriolic looks the color of a dying sister towards the male. Miroslava saluted as the group reached the ambers, were permitted through. Hathan was midway through returning it when Solovyova shoved her container of calming fluids away within the folds of her shell, and with a straightness of formality Skthveraachk could not recall ever seeing from the female before, saluted in return. Not to the ambers. Not to the Lieutenant. Prescott had kept his gaze fixed ahead, but at the sight of the scarred woman’s regard, hands bound together by band and hardstone rose to gently smiling face, and returned the gesture. Miroslava was turning red again.

<”Him, Colonel? Not for the Herald, not for the Commander, but you’ll act like a soldier for him?”> General’s hand lowered, and the Colonel did not reply until both had completed their exchange of formality. Then, the reply came as the ice on shattered lake’s surface.

<”Iffin’ I acted a soldier for others, would have you struck up on insubordination for a comment like that, Lieutenant Miroslava.”>

<”The man’s record notwithstanding, Colonel, he’s still a traitor to the Sovereignty and Empire.”> Devries sounded as drained as the Queen felt. Not tired, not disinterested, but like a breath that had been held for bars, and only now was able to be released. <”You can appreciate my men’s, your men’s, anger.”>

<”He was a Magistrate before he was a separatist, and a Brigadier-General after. I was trained to salute the rank, not the man behind it, Devries, and last I checked, both those titles stand above mine. Or yours.”>

<”The Commander was out actually apprehending this traitor while you dithered safely back at-“>

<”I’m back at ops, you’re safe in your trucks, Queen did all the heavy lifting as always. Gets her both the blame, and the credit. Thanked her yet, Navy?”> And now it was the Queen to feel as drained as Devries sounded as the Colonel and Lieutenant dissented. Distrusted. The smaller female sputtering while the larger loomed. Prescott said not a word, looking between each with a sense of familiarity, she felt. Like he had seen this scene a thousand times before. And it bit at Skthveraachk, to think of their frenzied foe, defeated or not, to see the Sovereignty descend to his level.

“Thanks is not required. Service is expected. It is delivered.” She did not need gratitude. As much as Solovyova, she did not want it at this moment. All her battered body wanted, despite the floaty weightlessness experienced as she lay atop the drones, was to be done with it, and rest. The Hathan, Composer praise his purpose, saw beneath the shell of her song immediately.

<”Have you finished the scans on the Brigadier-General?”> Unmusical. A hard crash from rubato into measured tempo once more. The Lieutenant wished to continue the discord. Her obligation to the Commander, as always, outweighed the desire.

<”Yes. Sir. All preliminary and basic scans. No concealed weapons, no unknown implants.”>

<”Medical? Deep register? We didn’t have time during the flight over, we were using the equipment on Svera. Expected you to handle that after touchdown, you know policy.”>

<”We’ve…confirmed it is him.”> Prescott made not a sound as his eyes followed the lines of the music between them; the Hathan’s mild slouch, and the Lieutenant’s rigid propriety. <”Base vitals all match to his profile before defection. I can begin the more thorough examination now, if you want, sir? I didn’t think it was a priority-“>

<”It’s alright, Mira.”> Was it? Or had the Hathan peered through the goldboughs to notice how Solovyova was already preparing to belittle the Lieutenant’s decision once more? Skthveraachk did not know the Commander to be a male who ignored the memories, the ‘rules’, of his colony. <”Go tell the Herald we’re here, just be sure to inform him we’ve not finished deeper checks. He’ll need to wait a bit longer, or let his own team handle it while we speak.”>

<”Sir.”> Miroslava cracked her salute, spared a look for the Colonel, and departed. Had the guards been Ambers, her lifting attendants may have begun to grow disquiet. To her mild, hazy surprise, they acknowledged the presence of the guarded Coalition soldier as the Lieutenant disappeared within the tent, but reacted as if it were their own colony surrounding him. The Palamedes’ soldiers, only faintly bearing scent traces of their pap, treated still as though they were extensions of Skthveraachk herself. And so, it was another surprise as to how they curled their claws and more fully sheathed themselves when Hathan, too, offered the humanite’s formal salute to the Prescott. Once the Lieutenant was out of view. This one, despite bound grasper-hands, was returned.

<”Two times more respect than I was expecting to receive here today. You have my thanks for that, Commander. And you, Colonel is it, now?”> Solovyova tried to keep her gaze steady as their former enemy spoke. Her mouth, set. Perhaps it succeeded, under a humanite’s inspection. Perhaps not, under the way the Prescott looked upon her. More focused and quizzical than he had been even when staring upon an alien life.

<”Kill some people. Stay alive. People figure you know what you’re doing, make you in charge of more. Stay alive longer, kill fewer people, but you must have been promoted for a reason before, so. Up the great chain you go.”>

<”You got old, Solovyova.”>

<”It’s only been four cycles.”> She tried for a smile, the Queen felt. It came out wrong, and the smile the Prescott returned bore a thinness. A weight. The lines, scars humanites called them, where their sealant and flesh had melded improperly, contorted as meat around the outline of the Solovyova’s bones. <”Look in a mirror sometime, Sir.”>

<”See too many *^&* there for my liking. Old friends. Family.”> His hardstone cuffs clinked together. <”You were better than what they’ve done to you, Solovyova. What they’ve made you do. You should have come with me.”>

<”Almost did.”> The admission of near-frenzy sent a shiver down Skthveraachk’s numb legs, vanishing before it reached her claws. Hathan raised a hand towards her, but dropped it behind him before it reached her shell. <”Would’ve followed you almost anywhere. Followed your path after the Academy. Followed your command when you came to this planet. During the riots. Even through those back-room meetings, the talks with *^&* and General *^&**^&*.”>

<”But then you left. After the war broke out, and before I remembered myself.”> Both smiled, and both smiles were lies. Worn as unnaturally as the synthetic shells their species clad themselves in. <”Approved your transfer to the 11th myself, only a few measures before Dracan declared its independence. I never asked how you knew what was coming; never got a chance to ask why you decided to leave instead of staying here, fighting, if you truly believed in what the Sovereignty stood for.”>

<”Because I did know what was coming. And I knew where it would end. And standing where I’m standing here, now, was the last place in the galaxy/sky I wanted to be.”> Her breath came out in a slight fog. <”Part of the op that finally took down General Pressure. They’ll probably slap a medal on me. For a time.”>

<”Commander.”> Hathan turned. The attendants naturally flowed around him, away from his step, so as not to obstruct his view of the Lieutenant poking from the tent. <”The Herald will have his team conduct scans while we talk. He doesn’t want to wait.”>

<”That’s expected.”> Though Solovyova seemed to wish to say more, Prescott was as quick as the Hathan to turn from her. To meet one another’s gazes, as equal as situation would allow. <”General Prescott, you will be presented to Herald Aadarsh Jyoshi. You are expected to answer all questions, and I’ll do you the professional courtesy despite our circumstances of warning you that the man is not fond of mockery, or the Coalition as a whole.”>

<”From what your chit tells me,”> Rather than point with finger, the humanite pointed with the bottom tip of his skull. <”None of you here are fond of us, on a whole. Rather prefer us in a hole.”> Hathan’s hairy ridges condensed, but Skthveraachk again clicked and tapped her jaws at both the accusation and misnomer.

“The Herald places gravest and grandest importance on your life. Your survival is assured. Your cooperation, suggested. You are the price I pay for the safety of a world’s inhabitants. The Hathan-Commander wishes only to assure you act in a manner which will not lead to physical harm.”

<”I’m better aware than most where things are leading. Where I’m bound for. Told you before, I’ve been in your boots more times than I can recall.”>

“I do not wear the shells of your species, is this meant to be comparative?”

<”Commander-“>

<”Yes, Lieutenant, I know.”> Extending a hand in indication, the Hathan’s posture went taut even before entering, guiding the soldiers first along with the Prescott. One gave an unpleasant shove to the male’s shoulder, but the frenzied humanite barely seemed to register it. <”Once we’re done here, you’ll be taken back to holding until we can get a transfer for you to orbit.”>

<”That is procedure, Commander. That is what’s expected to happen, yes.”> Shaking his head out, pulling higher, he prepared to follow. And paused, only to flash a final, small smile to the former Major. <”That’s really what they decided to call me? ‘General Pressure’? Hell’s bells.”> Solovyova opened her mouth to speak again, but the Brigadier-General had already disappeared within. Skthveraachk caught a final look of the female hurriedly pulling out, drinking from, the hidden flask after the Prescott’s entry. Returning it within her layered shell by the time she, as the Queen and meager ten-some attendants crawled through the seal. Into the tent spaced wide around central false-light table, on which she had first seen the face of her foe. The representative of hostile colony, she had thought then. Among the more senior blues, equally spaced ambers, thinkers and queens of their forces and of course the Herald himself, she perhaps expected to see the General shrink, alone amidst the conquering enemy. But as he took a place at the end of the table, bound and defeated as he was, he could have passed for the Commander himself with how firmly he carried his form. How he met, without hesitation, the song which flowed from the Aadarsh’s lips as the Queen’s entourage was prompted by her tender and soft-drooping hairs into standstill, back from the proper gathering.

<”Lieutenant. Colonel Solovyova, Commander.”> Golden eyes flickered into a wider grin, that still ensured bones remain covered. <“Skthveraachk Queen; you may stand proud and receive the Emperor’s own gratitude for the success you have achieved here. I saw the state of your lift platform as it was brought into camp, and by the reports from my *^&*/menders, you significantly understated the danger you were placing yourself in for this operation.”>

“It was deemed an acceptable level of risk for the projected outcome.”

<”And what an outcome it is! We’ll see about repairing that throne of yours, finding you protection to substitute in the meantime, and my most humble respect for asking you here now. I thought it only right we all share in this moment. I expect you back at rest as soon as we’re done.”>

<”Rest will be good for her, Herald.”> White shell, elongated, like the Pod would wear on the Palamedes. The female who had spoke did so from behind the Herald, her tap-pad out while a face obscured by wrapping black glass turned up from the work. <”We did what we could, but their biology is still not a fully understood thing. Central nervous system, circulatory system, proliferating stem-*^&* tissue/flesh; rest is about the only thing I can safely recommend.”>

<”Doctor *^&* *^&**^&*.”> Answer came before she had a chance to speak. <”She handled your recovery, and will be at your disposal until…how is it said, until your voice is once more untarnished by pain?”>

“You sing with rightness. Your mender has my thanks, which shall be made with doubled intensity if she is available for questions when such is permissible. I am curious of these treatments I have been given. It is an…unusual, sensation.” An understandable platitude, the Herald had given. Generic, but it colored her core a vibrant green even to hear such recognizable tones. The Doctor, the ‘Mahleekha’, tipped her head, and though it made pain shoot up the Queen’s first joint, she returned the motion.

<”And you shouldn’t make any promise about that vehicle, honored Herald. There’s nothing like it in our records, I checked when we were cutting it open to get the corpse out; slipshod construction, aesthetically, but an absolutely genius level of internal sophistication. Using only colonial tech/nology, as well. Would love to meet the creator.”>

<”Jennifer Dulac.”> An interjection was given from the Commander, his Lieutenant, formerly whispering to the Doctor, now moving to better take place at his side. <”One of our best engineers on the Palamedes. She stayed behind with the Societal Initiative, but I’ll let her know of your interest.”>

<”Yes, good.”> The female shifted her attention to the Herald. <”I’ll get the equipment going, start the scans. With your permission?”>

<”Go on.”> Across the room, to the Prescott. The Prescott who, though silent, watched the Herald with eyes made thin as a tightened laying tube. Neither moving, nor deviating his look, even when their mender, Doctor, pointedly ruptured the flesh beneath his neck with a slender tube. Crimson flowing through to the ampule. <”I was mildly surprised to hear the former Magistrate was taken alone. With just one Wyvern, or whatever they call them in the Coalition. I did not expect his men to abandon him in their entirety.”> ‘Should she be more guarded? Less? Numbness was beginning to shift into a soreness, and she sucked a breath of the thinner air. Feeling the pangs of emotion trying once more to break through the shield of thinkers’ data Skthveraachk had prioritized.

“A condition was made for his peaceful surrender. It included allowing the remainder of his soldiers free departure.” More guarded. An attendant beneath her, regulating its breathing, shifted abruptly as the Hathan moved a hand towards it. Her. Subtly shaking it back and forth, in warning. “Such soldiers were deemed unnecessary and irrelevant to the task. I accepted the terms.” The Herald’s eyes…clicked? Made a whirring sort of noise, the blackness in their centers widening by hundreds of a length before focusing back in. When his hand came up, it swatted the air as though to dislodge pest.

<”Perhaps not the wisest decision, but it isn’t as though there is anywhere they could hope to run, save back to Tarasque. Where they will be apprehended with the rest, following our reclamation of the city. A few extra measures of borrowed time, nothing more. You should have bargained for something more meaningful, Mister Prescott.”> Hathan’s cautioning limb lowered as the Herald turned his interest to the true prize. The General, Magistrate, Frenzied, roles upon roles, meeting the golden look while Doctor slotted his blood into her larger pad. <”But then again, you have spent all your former life a loyal member of the Sovereignty. Of the Empire. This fascination with deals, exchanges, mercantile heresies, such is the preoccupation of the young and misled generation.”> Aadarsh smirked. Prescott stared. And though there were no acoustics to speak of in the tent of metallic fabric amidst churning machine displays and rocks of power, the voice which returned was as aged and firm as the canyons of the Queen’s mountainous home.

<”You don’t remember me, do you, Jyoshi?”> Nearest amber tensed, waited for a command to punish the lack of proper title. The Herald, though, was far too absorbed in consideration of what had just been said. Skthveraachk kept the eyes of the Queen upon the pair, but slowly guided those beneath her in a search of the ten and ten more within the tent. There was no recognition, from any. <”Earth. The Academy, in eighty-eight. You were still a Harbinger then, putting in your last few years of service.”>

<”Ah-ha.”> It was a laugh, and an acknowledgement both. <”You’ll have to forgive me, blame age and a lifetime of service, but there were so many classes and graduations back then.”>

<”A lifetime for someone like me. More like a third of a lifetime for you.”> Odd statement. She might have overlooked it, if not for the current priority listings. Thinkers filed it away for later. <”When the chit used your name out there on the barrens, took me a moment to remember, but it came. Was a series of lectures, ‘Applied Force and the Theory of Present Sacrifice for Future Gain.’”>

<”Formite.”> Next to her, more respectable a distance than Hathan’s, her children saw the Lieutenant’s brows raise as the herald made the correction. <”I presume ‘chit’ is your name for our new allies, and will insist you refrain from it.”>

<”Don’t do that.”> This time, the Prescott did smile. An unpleasant sort of twisted meat. <”Don’t use me to prop yourself up, make it look like you’re defending them. They’re as much allies as a *^&*/pet is, and you don’t care what they’re called.”> The Herald did not dignify the accusation with response. Did not rebuff it? No, suspicion was unwarranted. Brigadier-General had been a valiant enemy to survive as long as he had, but he was the enemy. The Aadarsh had never been proven to lie before. <”Tell you the truth, if it had been anyone else, I probably would’ve just taken my chances with your creatures.”>

<”A man as smart as you, I would be surprised. You know you would not have survived.”>

<”And I’ve got much better chances here? Executions, Herald?”> Her heart pulsed, her stomachs clenched within her core as gaster dripped. She should not have told him. <”Letting these things tear my boys up? You call us monsters for being forced into using kinetics just to keep the field level, and this is how you treat surrendered prisoners of war?”>

<”What war, Mister Prescott?”> Twice now. She did not know this designation, this title, the Herald used, but it was not of military. Not of regard. And it was deliberate. <”There is no war. There are no prisoners, and if there were, they would have no rights. You are rebels, separatists, who fight against the one and true governing body of this galaxy. Do you know how you are recorded, in the files? Disgraced Magistrate, former military, away without leave for over four cycles now. The laws of this great Empire apply to you, all of you, now as they did then. You know what the law says for those who hold with false idols and seditious old world beliefs. What of you, Mister Prescott? In these past cycles of rebellion, was it a new religion which seduced you?”>

<”I’ve never held with belief in the Emperor’s divinity before, and I got no reason to attribute it to anything else I’ve seen in the stars so far, Jyoshi.”> The fearlessness of the frenzied. Queen had counted upon the male’s desire for self-preservation in her plan, relied upon it, but everything he did not? He knew the risks, yet acted without care for them. <”Wasn’t God I found with the Coalition, just a way to get back to myself. And maybe, before you sweep me away with the rest, I can remind you of your own self, before it’s too late.”>

<”Mind yourself, Prescott; I have no intention of causing you lasting harm here, but there are limits even to former Magistrates, no matter the depth of their past accom-“>

<”My tap-pad.”> Bindings clattered as both arms raised, pressed to the side of the shell the General wore. He threw a look to the Doctor, to the terminal at which the female worked with her pad. Aadarsh did not follow the eyes, focusing instead upon the Commander, who cleared his throat.

<”We cleared him of anything dangerous, of course, Herald. No harmful devices, explosives, weapons.”>

<”You got somewhere more important to be?”> His words came quicker, for some reason, his eyes back to the Herald. <”You want to talk? I have recordings, here, of our last engagements with you. With your chits. Formites, whatever you want them called. You think they’re a tool. That you’ve got them under control.”> Ambers stepped nearer, but Aadarsh-Who-Had-Been-Blessed gestured them away with black-gloved hand. The General withdrawing the closed pad from his clothing. <”Theory of Present Sacrifice for Future Gain. Cautioning against the easy short-term for the lethal implications of the long. You don’t have control. And these things will kill you, if you don’t stop them.”> Old mass drooled from her feeding tube as her stomachs flattened to nothing, the Queen’s heartbeat like the pounding of a hundred thousand claws outside. This was not expected. This was not the plan. The Aadarsh laughed, but all Skthveraachk could see was the dark silhouette of the humanites.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

<”I clearly was not a very good instructor back then. A quote I am rather fond of, from the old world? ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is in the process of making a mistake.’ Why this sudden urging to protect your enemies, former Magistrate?”>

<”You said yourself, Jyoshi. We aren’t enemies. I’m just a wayward *^&*, strayed from the flock. Human. These aliens, they aren’t a threat to the Coalition, to the Sovereignty. What you’re doing is a threat to all of us.”>

“Violence against humanites would be insanity.” Her song was colder than the nights of the frozen season on this dead world. “I ensured your safety, your survival. You would repay this with hostility, claims of secret insincerity? Of lies? You are frenzied!” Her scythes began to slip from her legs. “Skthveraachk-Colony fights for Kaayhaitch, for the Sovereignty. You fight against the Sovereignty! You are the bringers of disharmony and contention; you will not sing such wrongness in my presence!” It flung from her, the indignation. Thinkers shouted against the cadence, walled off the descent into feeling and fault. Skthveraachk was forcefully collected, before the Aadarsh had chance to respond. Prescott never even looked at her.

<”Be at ease, Skthveraachk Queen, I have no doubts as to this. But if the former Magistrate wishes to extend his hand, why, I see no reason to stop him. I must take my own advice, after all. Section off the projector from the network, just in case.”> A soldier, a blue, nodded. Ambers, nearer the General now, brought him closer the table, hooked the closed stick-like tube into the side by thread of black cord. It took not but a beat for the room to fill with the false-light. The images, familiar, as seen from on high as her children flooded the Caldera. Breached defensive line, surrounded, and slaughtered in what was now their home and nest.

<”Almost six *^&* ago. Visuals came to me along with word of the defeat. ‘Alien bugs’, is what they kept saying. I laughed.”> The male paused. <”I actually remember, laughing at the idea. Didn’t last long, though. Not after I saw this. Saw what you had brought to my planet. I watched this recording a thousand times during the winter/cold season. When it was over, I thought I was ready. What do you see, Herald?”>

<”Unless this is attempt at trick question, I see an effective encircling maneuver. Shock tactics, unrelenting forward momentum.”> The image flickered, briefly. She could make out Skthveraachk soldier, ascending the cliffs as they gave chase to elevated outpost. <”Beautiful, frankly, in its singular focus.”>

<”Of course you would. Brutal, straight-forward. Individuals that don’t care for their survival, programmed only to attack at any cost. Something the Sovereignty has been trying to turn its own soldiers into for hundreds of cycles. That’s what I saw, too. An unthinking mass. Deadly, but predictable. The use of relay-drones, like this,”> He pointed, with both hands, to a scentcrafter surrounded by soldiers. Within the Caldera, in the trenches before Guir, images cycling through conflict after conflict. <”To control the swarm. They picked up a few new tricks, the reports said, but it was their speed, their disregard for suppression or fear-tactics or death. That’s what made them strong. And when you all came marching, I thought all it would take was taking out a few of them, the Queen herself, and that would be that. No more control. No more swarm.”> The image faded. Replaced, by the road to Tarasque. The Queen, shining, armored, floating amidst the glory of her host. Prescott tapped again.

<”Had live feed this time, could watch in the moment. We took out sixteen, seventeen priority targets, got maybe twenty breaths in the encounter. And then this happened.”> Shot. Death. Shot. Death. It was a horror, watching the lobotomization of her colony once again as beams lanced from rocks and crevices and hiding-places containing the cloaked and hidden Coalition foe. Until it at last, was stopped. Until the bivouacs formed, hiding, obfuscating, disguising true targets with fake and milling them together. <”That, Herald. That, right then. That is when I knew fear. When I realized what, exactly, you had done.”>

<”This is your information? That you realized you were facing an opponent that had managed to outsmart you, defeat one of your tactics? You think we, in the Empire, do not have our own recordings of these conflicts? That we do not pour/run over them in equal detail?”> She knew now. The Prescott tightened his mouth, gave another look to the Doctor and her console, spoke with ever more rushed and racing pace.

<”Nature is predictable. Things which don’t care about their survival, species which don’t know what it means to self-preserve, die before they can ever leave the jungle. Things which are intelligent enough to plan, to consider, to reason? They care whether they live or die. They have to. It’s a biological imperative, to spread and reproduce and exist. Do you understand, truly know, what you’re looking at here?”> Another angle. A repeated showing. The humanites watched, some murmured, but it was only the Prescott who held such an expression of hurt. Of fear. Of hate. <”They’d never encountered an enemy which’d selectively targeted valuable hive-members before, or they’d never behave as they had so openly. For the first time, they realized the possibility of precise *^&**^&*, strikes against their collective. And in under twenty breaths, they adapted.”> Bivouacs were colored, made to stand out. Not just on the road, but the battles which followed. The fights. The failures. <”They eliminated, in a fade/instantly, any signs of rank or status. Those relay-drones became disguised, those skinny medic types they had traveled under cover. They dressed up others as fakes, only pretending to work if you really watched them.”>

<”They are intelligent beings, Prescott. They are not animals.”>

<”We’re animals, Jyoshi. We’re intelligent beings. They are worse. And, better.”> Better. Better? A tremble ran through the colony outside, listening through the rock as the music turned strange. Hostile. Fearful. Not as Coalition against Sovereignty. As a humanite, against her kind. <”Nature is either self-preserving, or it is not intelligent. You can’t have both, you don’t get both. The chits are both.”>

<”I can assure you that there is a significant care for their survival, as the Queen herself has insisted and presented. These are not unknowable beings, as much as your defeats may make you believe. They fear, same as you or I. They care, they hurt, they love and they lose.”>

<”They care for the survival of their collective. Hive, maybe species, don’t know which. Individually, though? It takes a soldier cycles, cycles upon cycles, to train themselves to be put willingly in harm’s way. These things do it on instinct. As naturally as breathing. They throw themselves into death if it means protecting a more important piece of the whole. And if that were it, if they were just a swarm of bugs with a single brain, a single mind, then maybe, maybe we would still have a weakness to exploit. Except for this.”> Gone again. Light once more on a dark field of rock, on a glowing sky beneath twin moons, on twenty and more images of her soldiers. And of the menial-warriors, arranged and displayed. Fighting with jaw and claw and spear and shield. <”When they took FOB *^&* on the Peninsula, none of them had a weapon. Not a single one. Then, on the road? One in six-hundred.”> Another image. The frail drones, arranged in a line, shield to shield, guarding as a mender secured the oozing of a fallen soldier. <”During our hit on the second bend, one in five-hundred and fifty. At the hill? Best estimate says one in four-hundred. By our computers, it’ll be less than a cycle until they’ve universally adopted it.”>

<”This is growing tiresome, Prescott. I have indulged, but all I hear is reasoning which we have weighed far before arriving at this battlefield. When it was seen what the formites could do to our weakened, smaller groups of unprepared soldiers, of course this concern was raised. Of course some have argued against their usage, as though sticks and rocks pose a threat on their own to our species. Were they not supported by our own troops, the death toll for each encounter would be catastrophic. They would not last a cycle.”>

<”Are you blind, or intentionally stupid, Herald?!”> There was no hesitation, or waiting for a signal this time. The blow which came was solid, sure, striking the back of the General’s legs. A small gratitude, a rightness, was felt within the Queen’s core. Until, even as the man sagged down, he turned and beat the plate of his skull into the helm of the amber which had struck, knocking the soldier back. Weapons were brought up, but the Herald this time was quicker to wave them off. His smile, gone. <”Look, there, what is that! Do you know what that is!?”> A picture was brought to the forefront. And even Skthveraachk, for a beat, did not comprehend. The drone within held a spear, certainly, and had reared onto four legs in preparation to throw, taken only measures ago at the battle for the hills. But rather than grip the weapon by the palmidia-hardened haft, the drone clutched in its grasper a bone. A humanite bone, one of the elongated leg ones, hollowed out in its center to form a groove. It was different. New. Strange. She sent a request for information, and by the time the drone in the picture was located, the Prescott had already continued. <”It’s called an atlatl. Uses leverage, momentum, to increase both distance and accuracy in the throw. Old *^&* used it, then the *^&**^&*, and the row-mens.”>

<”Ancient technology, nearly pre-historic-“>

<”Which one of their kind, out of a hundred thousand, simply decided to try. Maybe because its Queen here told it to test the theory, maybe one of those special bugs they always work so hard to protect figured it out?”> Yes. A thinker had been ruminating. ‘Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world’. It wished to try the principle on a spear, and recruited five, six drones to test the design in combat. <”Maybe because it individually thought of the notion? It doesn’t matter, don’t you see that? It works. We know it works. They know it works, now. I’ll bet you, in a matter of measures, every single one of their spear-throwers will be using them. Your bugs will be throwing rocks and sticks at speeds of 140 *^&* per halfbar. Kinetics of their own.”> The amused exchanges did not cease. The rock of computation, bleeping, as the Doctor leant in, oblivious to the world. But the Herald watched. The Herald listened. And the Prescott pressed ever forward. <”You brought them here with claws. They’ve got spear-walls now. Shield formations. They’re executing military maneuvers, using tools it took us generations to make common. In six *^&*, they’ve gone from the stone age to the cusp of the brawnz. We took two thousand cycles. You look me in the eyes, and tell me that doesn’t scare the shit out from in you.”> The Herald looked on, met with those impossible gold portals the faded eyes of the frenzied male. The frenzied male who spoke of the unreasonable, the impossible. Spoke of it like he feared it could truly occur. <”No? Even now? Alright. Alright, Jyoshi. You could *^&* them from orbit, you’re right. Could burn their entire planet down. Threatened to do it already, I’m sure. You’re in control, even now, because sticks and stones aren’t going to bring down the Empire.”>

<”Sir, Herald, there’s-“> The Doctor attempted to intercede, but the Herald was focused. The Prescott, in the throes of his soliloquy. The aria of purported damnation.

<”I was at the hilltops, when you overran them. When you had your troops pull back from a sure victory to protect you from a bunch of drones and a couple drakes.”> The Aadarsh’s face darkened in the recesses of its fleshy contortion, but already the smirk was returning. Crueller, now. <”We couldn’t save this one. The one the Queen herself was at. My men, they saw her, were calling in reports of her presence.”> The final in the series of images, static, and animated. Soundless, but each noise was etched into the silk records of the colony’s minds forever regardless. <”They thought they had it. It turned, ran, and my damn eager men followed. Until the swarm turned. Came back around. Cut them off, surrounded them, and took them apart.”>

<”Honored Herald!”>

<”Allow him to finish, Doctor, he is making a point I am loathe to interupt.”> The Herald did not see the pale shell. Did not see the whiteness of her previously browned face, the way she had latched to the console while turning to regard the General.

<”Chits don’t feel fear. Not like we do. They don’t run from fights, they just withdraw. They don’t break when they take losses. But they know that humans do.”> And finally, he was looking at her again. A look like she had received only a few times before, behind the thass of her holding cell. Perhaps, more primally, upon the faces of the Coalition as she delighted in their removal. Curiosity. Fear. And hate. Hate for what she was. <”They know we care for ourselves. They know our emotions, our wants, our fears. A false-retreat to lure out attackers, encircling them; you have to know your enemy for that to work. You’re right in that they aren’t animals, Herald. They plan. They wait. They can deceive, they can adapt, and they can use our own minds against us. Six *^&*. They’ve learned how to do it, all of it, in just six fucking *^&*.”>

<”Forgive me, Herald, please, but you must listen.”> Interruptions were costly, sometimes lethal. The Doctor risked it, knowingly, and the Herald realized as the Queen too the depth of the importance for such a thing to occur. Prescott’s lips twitched, his emotions drained, his music, spent. He looked to the pale shell’s console, as did the Herald, and the exhale he released contained the weight of a lifetime.

<”You aren’t in control, Jyoshi. You’re selling the future for the sake of the present. Using them now, figuring you’ll deal with them later. I won’t be here for it. I hope to God you stop them. But I hope they eat you alive before you do.”>

<”Speak, Doctor.”>

<”Deep scan just finished. Markings of *^&**^&* tampering, all through his bloodstream. Would need to do a full examination of his *^&* organs to be sure, but I’m almost certain he’s had at least three genetic treatments. Maybe more.”> If the air had been cold before, it became so thick with emotion now that Skthveraachk feared she would drown in them. The Herald froze. Turned himself, fully, towards the General. Now, it was the Prescott who smirked. Tired, aged, emptied. And somehow, triumphant.

<”Four. Had to be sure it was a complete re-write.”> An explosion could have been set off where the humanite stood, and it would not have provoked a stronger response. His guards stepped back, as though they feared his very touch, and put an entire lance’s length between themselves and him as the weapons raised. Even the Miroslava, even the Hathan, even the Solovyova; all took a step back, uncaring that several bumped against the very chitin of her attendant’s bodies.

<”Oh, you stupid old *^&**^&*…”> Solovyova spoke beneath her song, words meant for the self more than the air. The Aadarsh was far less gentle. Many within the tent marked themselves as the black-suited body contorted, lurched forward, clenched graspers to solid balls.

<”What have you done.”> Unclenched, only to clutch and pull a device from the inside of the worn shell. A lance, for certain, but small enough for a single hand. Hand which leveled the thing unflinchingly, though not untremblingly, for the Prescott’s wearily smiling head. <”What did you do!?”>

<”Figured I was too old to be having children regardless, but also knew what would be waiting if I ever did end up back here. In this…forsaken place.”> There was no fear in the frenzied male’s tone. Almost a lightness to the way he looked up, around. Gazed as though fresh at the tent’s interior. <”Paraded out in front of my city. Used as a trophy, a triumph for the Empire. Sent off to some re-education facility, maybe stay sane long enough to be wheeled out now and then as reminder of what happens when you defy the Emperor before passing away in some quiet room in some underground facility. Though, of course, not before leaving a full confession of my crimes. Failures. How proud I was to have seen his light one last time before I died. Naw.”> His head shook in time to the Herald’s grip. Some of the occupants were marking themselves with the sign of the Sovereignty, as though it could ward of the presence.

<”They would have let you live, years still, you stupid, fucking old *^&**^&*!”>

<”Shut up!”> The pitch was wrong for the Blessed humanite. The sound, screeching, like claws on briny rock. <”Shut up, Solovyova! Prescott, you will answer! You must answer! What did you do, what did you let them do to you!?>

<”No, no. I decided I wouldn’t give you that, Herald. Coalition still has reservations about genetic tampering, not even separation could fully change that, but without the Sovereignty around, finding a Doctor willing to do the treatments is much easier.”> Beams charged. The Herald, throwing himself forward, advanced until the end of his weapon was against the frenzied male’s head. Skthveraachk did not understand. Skthveraachk could not understand. All Skthveraachk understood, all she felt as the cracks in the wall of her shielding began to spread and the frantic screaming of the colony threatened to overwhelm, was that the Prescott was in danger. And that any who sought to aid him would face the same. And so, when Solovyova began to step forward again, her eyes red around the sockets and beginning to seep fluids, fear of damage was weighed against fear of death and found wanting. Still heavy and numb, the Queen curled her claws until they were sore, and held firm a grasper to each of the Colonel’s shoulders. Drawing her back, and away, even as she shook and gave tugs in wordless protest. <”I doubt I’ll ever have children. But if I do? They’ll be the smartest on this world. The most beautiful. Perfect, in every single way.”>

<”Abomination!”> She saw the weapon charge. Saw the heat from within it grow. <”Human!? You call yourself a human!? You’re not a human!”> The herald yelled. Solovyova was yelling. But it was the Queen’s own voice that filled the space.

“Herald! Aadarsh-Who-Has-Been-Blessed! I have fulfilled my promise, I have delivered the humanite! You must remember your pledge, you must-“

<”Do what you want with my body, Jyoshi.”> Something sizzled. Tendrils rose from the flesh upon the humanite’s head. And his smile was of bone, and of flesh, and of surety. <”I’ve finally got my soul back.”> A rushing hiss. A wet popping, like a squashed phidite. Heated interior at odds with the cold outside as the beam burnt clear through bone, brain, meat, metal, and out the side of the tent. The Prescott fell without further sound, save a squelching as the folds of muscle and fat condensed what had once been a man into a ball of unprocessed mass on the floor. And then, the Aadarsh put another six beams into the body. Again, and again, and again. None within the tent dared be the first to speak. Even Solovyova could do little more than shudder, make quiet, animal-like noises. Then, the Herald was upon them. Focused, unnaturally, in his advance for the Commander.

<”Why were deep scans not performed in transit?”> Miroslava paled. Straightened, as she tried to walk forward to meet the male.

<”Honored Herald, I informed you th-“>

<”I deemed it unnecessary.”> Cut off. Cut short. Lieutenant pushed aside as Commander advanced with hands clasped and head raised. <”Svera’s life was in danger, the equipment was needed to stabilize and assure her safety. My first directive is the formite Queen.”>

<”You let this…thing, into my presence. Let it share my air, let it speak to me like…like…”> Quaking, now, instead of shaking. Miroslava looked between the Commander, the Herald. To the Queen herself, without hint of remorse or disgust. A look that pleaded and begged louder than any cry.

<”Yes, Herald.”> Incorrect. Lie. The Lieutenant had erred, and the Commander had informed of the failing. Why did the Herald lash? Why did he condemn? <”I am sorry. I did not think-“>

<”You let it near me!”> For a moment, there was an inability to register. She saw how the Hathan turned aside, how the crimson vitae spattered across the already soaked floor as blood flowed freely from half-cauterized wounds the corpse bore. Saw the split in his lip and sign of impact. Only when she saw the blood too upon the weapon clutched in the frantic Blessed’s fingers did it parse. Did comprehension come. Did the cracks flake and split within. <”You let this fucking thing speak to me, Commander Devries!”> She heard the weapon charging again. Saw, through own eyes and attendants’, the heat grow and the Hathan stand just as the Prescott had stood. <”That is not sedition, that is not heresy, it is TREASON!”> Commander in danger. Commander in danger. Commander was of the colony. Colony in danger. The walls broke. Rationality replaced by instinct. She saw the Hathan’s eyes close. Saw the beam reach critical. And heard, through jaws and lungs and vents, a hiss.

A small thing. A bad thing. A response any would have should threat be leveled upon the colony. Her attendants beneath, those soldiers nearest the tent’s exterior, and the Queen’s own body. Hairs rose, rattled in their display, and the hiss of air they all exhaled threatened those which threatened them. Threatened the Hathan-Commander. Threatened the Herald. No more than ten breaths worth, but for those ten breaths, the Herald was not Blessed. Not a representative of the Emperor. He was a humanite, and the Queen towering above him felt her head lower as curved jaws chittered and clacked together, clicking a warning. It took the fullness of the ten breaths for her walls to be rebuilt, for the thinkers to stream their information through the links, to grip and tear the song back to reason. Ten seconds for her to realize how the Aadarsh had stepped back. How the Hathan looked more fearful now than he had facing his own death. And how every lance present in the room, perhaps even behind those fabric walls, was now pointed, squarely, upon her.