Celebrations and comradery were quieted, somewhat, when Skthveraachk Queen passed visually through their proximity. Across the Palamedes, messages were being recorded for homes and children, the code and decree of silence chaining the occupants laxed if not shattered. Even as she made her way to the fore of the ship, a chain of bodies followed along behind her, hugging walls or even spreading up to nearly cling to ceilings of the myriad passageways. Wrath was the colony’s bass. Humiliation, its beat. As the sonnet had grown, its octave drew the scythe of betrayal, lanced into heart. When sestet came, assurances of retribution, of rectification, were sung throughout the colony. But until such were enacted, the lyrics merely repeated, and the Queen dared not disconnect herself in any fashion from the frothing colony. Directing them to taskings, jobs, anything to keep their minds, her mind, occupied. The aliens knew of her anger, saw it radiate from her perhaps as she passed by the rooms where drinks and foodstuffs were being passed. They sought to be respectful, nodding or looking away as she marched. She could see, all the same, the celebrations resume in the eyes of the drones merely twelve links down the line after her body had moved on. Her questions had been simple. Straightforward. And the answers, as they always did, varied from humanite to humanite. Isolated self-colonies all.

<”No, I didn’t know anything about this.”> Malika-mender had been the nearest. And had answered, simply, without reservation. <”I’ve been attached to Herald Jyoshi since leaving my mender training/*^&*. When we left Kayyhaitch, there was only a single landed outpost outside the nest you were retrieved from.”>

“Ckhehnvraahll-Colony.” Malika saw the jitter of her mandibles. Answered before the question was even asked.

<”With her consent. You’ve seen messages from her since, I know.”>

“I have. It was she who named the Aadarsh ‘blessed’. She who made his promises her own, vouched true for the quality of his actions and music.”

<”Whatever you told her before your departure shook her. Made her fear us. The Herald showed her there was another path, same one you are taking now. Same one you urged her to follow. Cooperation. The surrender of autonomy for the safety of the collective. Ideas which are, apparently, rooted quite deeply in your history and faith.”> Too deeply, the Queen felt herself think with bite. <“She took your song into her heart, worked tirelessly to partner with our researchers and provide them anything they needed. I’m surprised, more than anything, they didn’t use her for that speech. She would’ve done so, eagerly.”> She would have. But scraping, begging, showing her neck and underside, that was something her bonded Queen would never do. And they had needed that, that debasement. Why?

<”Middle of a war already. Eh, I mean, reclama-…fuck it.”> None had been listening, and the huddle of formite bodies around the Solovyova was as a room unto itself. Or, perhaps her lack of care in Sovereingty tact had something to do with the audible near emptiness of the opened flask hardily gripped in the Colonel’s bits. <”Your kind enjoy fighting a second war when you’ve already been stuck in one for cycles?”>

“It is an inadvisable position, but if necessary, done. There would be no register of opinion from drones,” The revelation was mere steps for the thinkers. They had parsed the reasoning with uncanny speed. “But this is not the same for your species. Orders are insufficient. Your kind must be both directed, and then convinced. Finding new life, inferior life, only to immediately mobilize forces against it, could cause questions and upset.”

<”Not as much as you’re probably thinking, and probably not what the Emperor was worried about. Thinking more, the logistics. Even telling people there’s a single modified carrier like the Palamedes being taken from the front, when everyone is taking ration-cuts and increased work shifts, would definitely get people muttering. A grand new discovery, followed by a plea for help, though? I don’t think they’d call it destiny manifesting anymore, but if it walks, talks and shits.”> Emotional imperative, but also logic? The people of the Sovereignty refusing to suffer for the sake of an outer race, but willing to do so if it meant bringing the Emperor’s morality to that race. Trying to clutch at the strands of reasoning in the unreasonable, it was the perfect time for the Solovyova to further spin the world’s view atop the Queen. <”I never actually thanked you, did I. On Dracan.”>

“For what would you need to express apprec-?”

<”Don’t be a mating-slit. I didn’t.”> There was a hunch to the female. Usually taller, usually more, the Solovyova had not shriveled, but had shrunk since leaving the cargo-cavern. Noting looks from skull edges sent their way by passing crew, attendants and drones were instructed to link themselves tighter. A small shield of bodies erecting to guard the Colonel from view. Skthveraachk found distaste in allowing others to form memories of the female like this. <”Was supposed to die there. Had already made peace with that. Before or after the war, lance or the Sovereignty quietly shivving me, whichever, but that planet was the last stop for me.”>

“The trials of our lives are transcribed by the Composer long before our birth, but their resolution is ours to sing. You were the first beyond the Hathan to truly assist me, freely. Who did not fear or resent my presence.”

<”So I don’t owe you.”> Tone sought to bite. Verbal teeth slid harmlessly off her plates and crest. <”No favors, no expectation of me turning eyes dark to anything, wondering when you’ll ask me to repay it.”>

“I was told of your species’ view on gifts. If it aids comprehension, you may consider my request to relieve you from that cold planet equalization of warmth you have already shown me.” While the Colonel fumbled to screw the cap of her flask, the Queen crinkled and cracked the cartilage around her antennae in reassuring vibration.

<”Cause if I’m out, means I got another chance here. Can do something on your world to tip the scales/weight back into my favor. You can’t do that me, give me that kind of out, if you’re planning to rip it away later by asking me to throw it all out the thass/window for your benefit. Ain’t got it in me at my age to bear that kind of shit a second time-“>

“Solovyova-Lieutenant and Colonel. With forelegs crossed and the breath of my lungs in your view, know that I will not ask that the loyalties to your Queen be forgotten.” It would have been nonsensical, to broil in resentment for a colony yet find sympathy with a drone from that same collective. Solovyova was of the Sovereignty. But she was not the Sovereignty. Skthveraachk felt the anger of her children once more at the choices of their masters, and simultaneous, the peace of understanding with this representative of them. “Your conversation, welcomed. Your presence, appreciated. The cooperation of our colonies-” Insufficient wording. Adjustments were made, and though it would have made another colony chuff with mocking laughter, a formation of notes was constructed and offered. “…I, appreciate…’you’?” Solovyova, herself, emitted the guttural and wet noises of stomach-laughter some humanites carried. The Queen wondered, briefly, if it had been the wrong sounds. Until a hand was extended. Opened.

<”Thank you, bug. From my boys. And from me.”> It would have been safer to let one of the drones enact the ritual salute. Skthveraachk, instead, had taken the alien’s slender bones in her own grasper. Letting the other female clasp, lead the shake, and finally release. Yes. This is what the Sovereignty needed. Wanted. Emotion, built by trial and hardship and struggle. Solovyova’s fatigued smiling, mirrored across billions. Ckhehnvraahll would not haven given them that, for it had not been earned. And if unearned, it could only be constructed.

<”Unconscionable, and insulting to even ask.”> Solovyova-Colonel had, wisely, departed as soon as she had realized where Skthveraachk’s questions would next take her. Where, and to whom. Miroslava-Lieutenant had not stopped to speak, and forced the Queen to lumber in steady claw and step behind her through the tubular tunnels. <”You think the Holy Emperor would stoop so low as to broadcast a lie across the entirety of known space?”>

“You believe your Queen, capable of falsehoods, would not stoop to such if it meant the preservation of unity? Would not draw upon every tool and talent available in the pursuit of victory? One of my people could not have sung those ideas, could not have formulated such feebleness and yet remained unconquered by other queens and colonies. You have methods. False-light. Manipulation of song and voice.”

<”Let me just, list down the reasons that’s impossible for you, Queen.”> She, respectfully, had not tried to speak and ruin fullness of unpronounceable name. She, insultingly, still attached ire to a title meant to hold only respect. <”One, there’s no technology in existence that’s perfect. Our laser sighting and the turrets on the Palamedes still operate within margins of error due to jitter. Our lance-batteries still have thresholds of heat-dispersal we can’t exceed. The Emperor is perfect. Recordings and machines, aren’t. There’d be ways to tell if someone had just constructed the image of a fake alien and fed it into false-light.”>

<”Two,”> Perhaps the Miroslava had expected Skthveraachk to not follow her into the cargo elevator, how it would inherently sever the link to her colony. When the Queen had realized the intent of the Lieutenant’s direction, however, she had already commanded spare workers to rush the stairways up across the ship. No matter which deck they departed, the link would be waiting. Crammed into the space, doors opened only for the humanites waiting to note the packed Queen and crushed drones behind scowling Lieutenant and quickly wave hands, assuring they could wait. <”That broadcast isn’t just going to be saved for all time, kept in the records. Isn’t just going to have Sovereignty scholars viewing it for the next thousand cycles. Coalition will pour over it, trying to prove it’s a fake, or just some scare-tactic. If a single *^&*/dot of light is out of place, if there’s even the suggestion it isn’t completely in the right, technicians/crafters will tear it apart until they figure out the problem.”>

“How much of this insistence is predicated upon presumption of perfection, that the Emperor is right because he is the Emperor because he is right because he is the Emperor because-“

<”Three! Three!”> Slashing the air with palm, there was a fire in the female’s face and visage, the lift ringing out arrival as they spilled all from the capsule. The Lieutenant’s speed increased, in both step and word. <”What do you think would happen if it were discovered the alien life revealed to the Sovereignty was a fake? Can you even comprehend the damage that would do to the Emperor’s image, to the faith of the people? Something so stupid, so easily proven with enough time as false-light forgery, used to manufacture sympathy and support? It’d be, just. No, Queen. No.”> Taking a breath, the female came to a stop so sudden that Skthveraachk had felt impacts into her gaster from where drone after drone impacted as the line of bodies abruptly halted. When the Miroslava turned, looked upward, the fire had died down. But not the redness in face. <”I get you’re only asking because you want to understand. I get that. It’s taken me a long time to realize you aren’t trying to be malicious, are just ignorant of the way things are.”>

“An ignorance your species has ensured to nurture, rather than combat.”

<”Which is why the Captain has reminded me, time over, I need to be more patient with you. And I’m trying. The answer is, ‘no’. No, the Admiralty, the First, Second and Third Houses, the Ministry; none, read me, none of them would allow the Emperor to stand before his people in front of a lie. Whatever your issue with that queen’s wording, or how she positioned herself or whatever else? That was all real.”> Doubt. A new notion, an alien notion, and one which filled Skthveraachk now. The Miroslava was more fervent than a captured soldier who had imbibed a hundred measures of jelly, and her logic was tied intrinsically to the orders of her queens. Did that make her a liar? Fanaticism was not falsehood. The logic, unsavory in its implications, still made sense. She could doubt the Miroslava, but the colony was forced to accept the reasoning. Skthveraachk had bowed her head, mandibles kept closed.

“I sing apologies for upset which may have been caused by my inquiries. The time you have given to my illumination is thanked, and appreciated, Miroslava-Lieutenant. More will not be asked of you before this fade.”

<”Yeah. Now, I’ve got to finish the logistical sleeping terror that is readying for our jump to K-H. I’ll let you get back to your people in cargo.”>

“I will not be returning immediately. The Hathan-Captain has requested my presence.” Why had she sung that? It was truth, yes, but where the male was concerned, the Miroslava’s reactions were always uncertain. Here, it stopped her. Put her task on hold.

<”Really.”>

“You are surprised? After such a display from your people, he has much to clarify and answer. Answers from you, and others, have alleviated his burden slightly, but we will share music and reach consensus. Be it one way, or another.”

<”No, that, doesn’t surprise me.”> The denial made the question sound more an accusation. <”I just didn’t receive any communication to clear the observation deck. It’s where you usually speak together, is full of crew celebrating the announcement.”>

“He has asked I meet him in his personal resting space. The queen’s chambers aboard this ship.”

There had been no further discussion, no further words. The Miroslava’s expression had gone odd. Incomprehensible. Initially, after many thinkers had given the situation a few bars’ consideration, Skthveraachk could only reach conclusion that the humanite despised the Queen. Hundred and more measures had been required to refine the belief down, like the new forges of brownstone back on Dracan. To file away the edges and roughness, until clearer truth was presented. The Lieutenant despised only the time the Queen spent with the Captain, when such time from the male was denied to the Lieutenant herself. A distracting, understandably alien view for Skthveraachk to ponder over as her wrath, indignation and consuming shame began to muddle and quiet on the journey to the Hathan’s habitat. For the humanite female, so consumed with authority and the words of the higher castes, to resent the time given by her queen-Captain to a formite instead, was a pleasantly understandable emotion in the alien world of emotional illogicality and insanity.

She had never been this way before. Knew, certainly, every cranny and passage of the Palamedes which her colony had been permitted to walk. Could, even if eyes were struck from her head, travel in beats between secondary cargo hold to primary hangers, even if both elevator and stairwell were somehow denied to her. This, though, was the upper deck. The habitation deck, for both officers and common soldierly. A divide of only a single layer was the split between communal echelon-like barracks and individualized caverns, and from the resonance of her claws on the metal beneath soft carpeting, she could identify how the rooms by which she passed now were more akin to those on Dracan, be it Guir or Tarasque. Larger than an individual perhaps needed, but granted to those of station and elevated role. Hathan-Captain had given her the number of his doorway before excusing himself from the bay, but she had enough experience with the alien’s construction now to know, immediately, she need only look for the entrance at the furthest end of the tunnel. A thing done for security, in her kind. Prestige, in theirs. She had expected to be raging still by the time she arrived to his sanctuary. Scratching upon the sealed entrance, under the eyes of stilled images lining the hall, she found there was, more than anything, but a deep fatigue left. Albeit it, one which turned to shock as the door slid back, and wide yellow irises stared up at her.

<”Svera! I didn’t expect you to head straight here, sorry, could you give me just-“>

“A song of alarm and confusion, Hathan-Captain! The caerulean depths are contaminated by gold, the spirit of the Arbiter and Herald infecting you!” He snapped his mouth shut, lax state of his uniform shell and head devoid of cap all secondary concerns under the blistering, peeling gaze.

<”The Herald? You know he’s on Dracan. Arbiter, which Arbiter, Huan? From the hearing?”> His face was twisted to confusion. It was a fleshy mirror of Skthveraachk’s inner song.

“Your face! The blue! Your EYES!” Gone was the vivid azure of the sky. The calmed expanse of sea. Replaced, overwritten, contaminated. So that as recognition came to the alien, eyes now a bright and luminescent yellow widened and shone all the brighter.

<”Oh. Oh, my eyes-! Hell, I was just putting…second/breath, I’ll fix it.”> Door was emptied. Body, lacking the usual overshell and instead bearing lighter and thinner jacket of Sovereignty make, showed its back and withdrew within the room. The shock kept the Queen, and the entourage forming a chain of bodies all the way back down the hall, frozen. But the sight within called to her, beckoned her forward. For even as she saw the humanite dig at his eyes, hunched towards a mirror set in the recess of a wall, she saw clouds of white and grey. Smelled the grass and dew. Heard the cries of the things they had called birds in their vidgrams. The entrance was too small for her, but she was already halfway within by the time Hathan had turned about. <”There, back to normal. Was just trying on some lenses, the promotion; me being Captain, it opens doors, opportunities, I didn’t have before. Been considering…whether…”>

His notes dwindled off. Knowing they fell on unhearing carapace. The wall behind, and to her left; doorway, bedding, shelves and slots and panels for purposes obvious and unknown. But ahead and to the right, where there should have been nothing but more ship, where even now the Hathan’s sounds echoed to indicate a barrier, it went on. On, and on and on. Grey walls opened to limitless sky, rolling hills on which trees swayed. There was no ceiling there, the roof of the room cut abruptly and curving up. The alien followed her gaze. Was about to speak, more, when a crashing from behind brought him rushing about instead to catch some object her squeezing, wiggling passage into his room had knocked from a ledge. She couldn’t rear to four legs, there was simply no space. And she knew, already, that it was false. Must be false. Still, the Queen pushed nearer. Further. Hearing the whisper of the wind as the fronds so similar yet so different to her home rippled and swayed under great unseen scythe. Thirty thousand voices were, for the briefest moment, stilled as they watch through her. Her claw extended. Reached over where fence marked the edge of forever beyond. Felt the thunking finality, where wall could be heard even if unseen. She curled the grasper, letting go of the breath she hadn’t even known she was holding.

<”It’s just a projection-“>

“I know.”

<”You seemed a bit…”> She made sure not to interrupt again, that the space was an invitation for her voice to interject.

“It does not always come with smells. Sensations. This is the most vivid I have experienced.”

<”Officers get the latest models. Most of the crew areas have them, to some degree. You’ve seen in the mess/dining hall, observation deck. The barracks usually replace the ceiling with them, or one of the walls. My species doesn’t do so well with prolonged time away from planets, or in small spaces, so we adjust.”>

“Pretend it is otherwise.” How much pressure could the wall take? Her claw traced down the image of a distant tree, the top green while body seemed hard and lumpy and deformed. No scratch was left. “If the space feels confined, false-light to make it seem grander. If the people weep at war, call it reclamation so they cheer. If the truth is unsuitable, lie until it is tolerable. I know.” Thinkers were trying to muster anger, but scentcrafters and menders had been laboring tirelessly. She could not bring herself to the rage she wished for, and seeing how the Captain’s smile slipped away, she made to turn from the wall. Feeling her gaster rub along the ‘fence’ blocking access to the images beyond. “I know. This is who you are. This is what you are. Not the Sovereignty, merely, humanites as a whole.” Before continuing, she pointed a sheathed scythe to her neck, and the Band. A silent question, a concern. The shake of the male’s skull was enough. Privacy, or safety. Whether it meant his deletion of the recordings, or their safe-keeping, it did not matter. Skthveraachk trusted him.

<”I can never tell, when you start to sound like this, whether you’re praising or insulting.”>

“Neither. Both. Hoping, perhaps, that your species learns to be as tolerable of our traits you find anathema as we must learn to be of yours. Did I break that?” Cradled in an arm, a fractured rectangle of glass and picture. The Captain shook his head, and waved the notion off as he set it back on the shelf. Or, tried to, over the body of the still pair of drones. Holding first the Queen’s legs, then eachother’s, the chain of contact maintained all the way back to cargo.

<”Are they needing to stay hooked up like this?”>

“Yes. The Emperor’s broadcast has unsettled us. I am needed to remain with them, even now, even here.”

<”Would there be a way to have them block the door somewhat, then? It’s a procedure issue, formality, that Officers of th-“>

“Add two drones to Queen’s scouting probe.” Non-vocally, directives were given.

“Received.”

“Increase bunching at eighty-eighth and eighty-ninth linkage. Seal entrance.”

“Received. Designate area defensive?”

“No. Unmarked. Queen remains in contact. Will alert if in danger.”

“Pending concerns remain on standby. Two injuries, crushing. Three cases, early frenzy signs.”

“Received. Addressing.” It meant a distraction from the Hathan’s words, but ensured no further distraction was necessary. Her attentions came back in fullness after the myriad issues within the colony were solved, the doorway now packed with the bodies of two menials and the Hathan-Captain’s own solo not yet concluded.

<”-vereignty shouldn’t be letting anyone walking the corridor access to their room.”>

“I understand, Hathan-Captain.” Missing syllables were simple enough to request from nearby drones, and the humanite would not register the pause required to do so. “And your eyes, they have been mended?”

<”Was just a covering. A coating. *^&*, cahntacks, we call them.”> Other aliens may have been perturbed, seen the entangled bodies forming a door and pair of drones still flattened in the room as obstructions. He walked deftly around them, treating them as they were. Extensions of her. <”It’s not the color. When I was assigned my new rank, it means I’ll have access to better privileges. I was seeing how my new eyes were going to look.”>

“A reward for your advancement is the removal of your eyes?” A touch of alarm entered Skthveraachk’s song, one the alien was quick to diffuse in a recitative of his odd laughter and closed smile.

<”Replacement. You’ve seen how a lot of the upper crust have that yellow color to their eyes, like you said, with the Herald. And arbiter, most likely, though I’ll admit I can’t remember. They aren’t real eyes. Machines.”> It should have shocked her. It instead only shocked her how easily she accepted the possibility. <”Does what those visors or eyepieces do, interfacing us with our computers, our ships or command, just better. And faster, and without the clunky headwear.”>

“I sing congratulations for this valued and prized reward, though my vents tilt with reticent sadness.”

<”You don’t approve?”>

“I.” She did not. It was truth. Realizing she would need to explain why, only after the question had been posed, was what caused a small tremble in her lungs. An effort to keep her posture formal, rising up onto rear legs now that the center of the room had been entered. It still flattened her head to the roof where clouds continued to drift, caused her antennae to drift like humanite hair down to her sides, but it felt better to be above the alien as she clarified. “Merely feel sorry for the loss of your current parts. Their particular hue is considered a prized thing, depending on the geography of the colony.” For a beat, he was silent. Flesh coverings of the irises in question, squelched closed, then open once more. The tug at his lips was an emotion he sought to keep controlled as well, and in his reply, the Queen rubbed her hairs together in embarrassment.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

<”You prefer them the color they are now, is what you’re saying.”>

“Blue is a highly infrequent natural color. Far more common is it to locate greens, then browns and blacks, then reds and oranges and more vivid extremes. Blue is of sky, sea, rare hardstones, and some highly prized decorative floras. It is appealing in its rarity. To many of my species.” There was no need to clarify the last of her statements. Unless it were important to distinguish between personal and species appeal. Which it was not. Unless there was issue with a personal appreciation for a color, regardless of where it originated. And there should not be.

<”Well. Something I’ll have to consider, then. Color isn’t the point, as I said, gold is just. As you said yourself.”> He made guttural noises within his neck, as though to remove a blockage. <”A preference. Symbol of status. Only legitimate way to achieve it is with augmentation, and it’s easy for my people to spot a fake. Could just as easily request it in green, or black or, blue. As the individual prefers.”> Questions came briefly from the colony, but were dismissed. The silence overtook the pair, and where the Queen may have let it linger until the Captain deemed fit, every beat of quiet to give the male consideration was a beat which left her in further awkwardness.

“The ritual of talking smallness is concluded. You requested I attend to this location. I am present.”

<”I wasn’t going to let you wallow. I saw immediately how unsettled that broadcast left you. I wanted to make myself available, right away. To give context to whatever you needed.”>

“I have no such need.”

<”As soon as we arrive in Kayyhaitch’s system, we’ll be added to the access ladder of the operation, under the Articles. I, we, will be able to go through the logs, see what’s been done with the planet, what the plan is going forward.”>

“What has been done is as simple as it is irrevocable. Your colleagues I spoke to en route to this location did but clarify for me the questions I thought I would need to ask of you.” A blue sky. Two of Skthveraachk’s eyes could not help but stay transfixed, imagining herself once again out in the fields, her own body. Listening to the herds of phidites as workers drummed their sides, the smell of the sugary pap filling the air. “It has changed. Even as I have been here, fighting to keep it as it was. Fighting for a memory, no longer a truth. I did not wish to believe a Queen would stand before your species and seek to ruin a cycle’s worth of my labor. Of striving to have us seen as, if not equals, then valued members of your Empire. I did not wish to consider the implication, that whereas I would kill and die to preserve my species, others would wage their own war, in their own ways.”

<”Whatever has changed, it’s still your home, Svera. Just because they’ve found a Queen from one of your colonies, made her out to be some kind of leader she isn’t, that doesn’t lessen what you’ve done. They wouldn’t be sending us back there if you weren’t needed. You are still the first true success, a colony who can both fight and speak, take orders but also improve on them. You are everything they want from your race.”>

“But not all they will want. You watched the same imagery as I. Your people desire warriors, yes. And they will desire servants.” Angling her head lower, ensuring her neck covered, labium of her mouth opened and sealed, wetting the internal tube. “They will desire laborers. They will desire resources, entertainment, value, everything my world has to offer will be lusted after. It must be given.”

<”I don’t believe they’ll act that way. We aren’t *^&*/insects, not anymore. We can’t afford to be, stripping worlds bare just to move on.”> There was an old pain there. Not of the self, but of the collective. A memory from before the male’s first note. <”You can trust me on that. We won’t, can’t, just take everything from you.”>

“Your assurances are of the physical, and I believe you, without reservation. And I believe in your belief in these words. It is you who mistakes my meaning.” She felt the fear begin to rise once more, the thinkers tasked with the philosophy of their future shuddering and oozing goo from their vents. “Your kind brings an end to my world, Hathan-Captain. An ending to our ways, our songs, our history. What we are, what we will become, what I must convince my people to become with your aid, is a part of a new world. A world in which we give all that which you require. All that which you desire. It must be given, for if we resist, we will perish. This is the truth of our lives, now. To fight it would be impossibility, a thing of waking dreams.” She hated each note. Loathed each admittance. She was Skthveraachk-Colony. She was War Queen. To wage war was to know when to attack, when to regroup, when to seek peace, and even when to surrender to the unavoidable. She had died in the wastes of black fire left by the Jacobson, back on her world. Died then in the belief her sacrifice would have meaning. Would die, again, if the Composer called for it. To die in defiance of the inevitable was, to humanites, perhaps noble. But it was not war. “All that can be achieved is to see us give these thigs you wish of us without losing ourselves in the process. To preserve that which can be preserved. Dignity. Nobility. Determination of the collective. These are the things for which I fight.”

<”The exact things you just watched one of your own surrendering in front of my people.”> The sliding of her scythes from their coverings and the snap of her mandibles was his answer. Yet, even as the grip of her menials and attendants tightened around her legs, it was the humanite’s hand which once more was laid across her thorax. Thankfully avoiding the lip of her vents again, this time. <”There’ll be answers, when we reach the system. And you’ll do what you’ve done so far.”>

“Put both my scythes through the betrayer’s core, lift this mewling queen above my head and scream triumph as the blood of her sundered skull flows down my tube. Pulsing in time to the wailing beat of her insignificant colony.”

<”And I will do what I’ve done so far in making sure you don’t inadvertently get yourself, me, my ship or my crew killed in a moment of emotional disturbance.”> Her jaws chittered amusement, both at the image she had concocted and at the perceived sarcasm the Hathan had offered in return. It astonished her to see how far his smile had fallen. How disturbed the words had left him. Her indictment was instigated before it could be stopped.

“You have altered yourself, recently.”

<”How do you mean?”>

“You no longer see me as equal as you once did. Yet you see me as more an equal. It is a contradiction without explanation.”

<”I don’t think that’s exactly fair.”> Curious. He genuinely did not believe her, or perhaps, misunderstood her words. The dourness was abandoned, and already he seemed lighter. She refused to be dissuaded.

“It has been since the siege of Tarasque. The gifts, first, in excess. Your breaking of the Herald’s silence for me, thanked and in keeping with your mentality, but then you physically leapt to attack the disagreeable amber, the Dulac, after his usage of the incorporeal pain against me.”

<”He was beyond/outside of the line. I’ve,”> His own pause. The thin meat and muscle behind his bones unwinding to taste of his lips. <”Protested, them keeping the implant in you. Wanted to tell you, but decided that since it was never to be used again, it would just be upsetting without purpose.”>

“I accept this reasoning, as I do not hold you accountable for actions beyond your control.” Confusion returned to him. And so, she pressed further. “You have altered yourself in your relationship to me, as an individual. Whereas once you accepted the risks I took, the danger I placed myself in, you now show excessive protection. You place yourself between me and harm to a greater degree, go further and more fervent into a desire that I remain happy, yes, but as though you believe me incapable of balancing my own emotions. You,” His face was shifting in color. The final note of her aria made an implacable wall around which was no escape. “Coddle. And I wish to understand, as is your role to assist, why.” He set his hands clasped, behind his back. Trying, perhaps, to mask the way they clenched and writhed, only realizing after moments that such would be seen by the drones nearer the door, and thus, the Queen too. He desired to hold back the answer. It made it the more appreciated, then, how the alien kept true to promise, and spoke against his desire to the contrary.

<”You said this is your eleventh cycle. In Tarasque.”>

“I did.”

<”I told you about my daughter/child.”>

“You did.”

<”Eleven cycles is about how old she’d be right now. Wherever she is.”>

“I am unsure of the relevance.”

<”In my species, we don’t assign a job, a role if you want to look at it that way, until someone is at least sixteen cycles of age.”> Eighty-nine drones linked the Queen back to the cargo bay, into which the last thousands of her colony were arriving. Several passing crew of the Palamedes-Colony stumbled back as each of the eighty-nine pairs of antennae shot straight upward in unexpecting alarm.

“How does your kind FUNCTION.” It could not be a true question. There was no true answer the Queen could anticipate which would have satisfied it, if it were. Despite all, the uniformed male let out another short laugh.

<”I told you before, as well, that we have to be trained for our roles, that we don’t have the luxury of information being passed directly to us from our predecessors the way you do.”>

“I presumed it was a matter of hundred measures, cycles even, yes. But not sixteen full molts! Not sixteen entire growths, during which they consume and reproduce and contribute nothing!”

<”At least sixteen. On average, most take at least two cycles after the schooling period to trial with different occupations/roles, figuring out which suits them best. And there’s no reproducing until-…it’s not important. I’m saying that, for us, we can’t even walk for a cycle.”> Horrifying. <”We can’t usually speak for at least that and a bit.”> Songless for an entire cycle!? They should all be as empty as spitters! Through her dread, the colony could not help but to process through the implication. If such was their life, it was better compared to the gestation of an egg. Protection. Nutrient intake. Oversight and observation would be required, units dedicated to the guardianship. Take the formite reproductive cycle, elongate from tenmeasures to ten and five cycles, and all it contained. Realization struck hard. Mortification struck harder. The blow of her leg against the alien, blunted by softened hairs yet enough to cause the alien to stumble and strike the wall with force enough to cause the image upon it to briefly frazzle, was struck somewhere between the two.

“You are treating me like a -pupae-!”

<”Not intentionally, not…I don’t think I really am, I am just realizing now your tendency to see putting yourself in harm’s way as a first resort, not a last.”> The Hathan rubbed where her arm had connected, but she had been careful. Retribution was demanded, but only in proportion to his diminutive dimensions. <”Realizing it was perhaps due to your age was just an added incentive to, I’m not sure, work a bit harder to-“>

“Hathan-Captain, I interrupt in a flurry of both humiliation and admiration!” She wanted to laugh. Hundreds in cargo were raucous with laughter in her stead, but many more waved their antennae and wailed sonorous at the idea. “That this individual with whom you converse, that I, Skthveraachk Queen, have only initiated my eleventh cycle as of measures ago, is a fact of such utter unimportance that it was only spoken of due to your asking.” The audacity! Ignorance, not malice, that is how Miroslava had termed Skthveraachk’s offensiveness. The Queen worked, now, to view the Hathan the same, even as her middle legs twitched and antennae began the occasional swing in his direction. “I am but a linking of the arms which make up over three hundred bonds since the birth of our collective. Your impulse to protect me as an individual reflects your desire to protect me as a colony, and is most honored, but I will not tolerate such…such…” To be seen by another Queen as but a spawnling, little better than an egg. She could tear the male to shreds with but two legs, the cad! “You shall return to your previous mindset, without delay, or I shall be forced to demonstrate the capabilities of my form and role! Even were you of fifty cycles, Skthveraachk-Colony knew the shape of the stars tens of lifetimes before you were ever born!”

<”Just, thirty-two, thank you.”> Peel her, but was this to be a measure of nothing but being caught as the tad fed? It was an automatic response, in the presence of such venerable age. The way she quickly softened her voice, fanned her antennae, and lowered head until the eyes were at level with the aged male’s own. But, for emphasis, she added an enhanced degree of formality.

“My apologies, elder one.”

<”Oh please, don’t.”>

“Then I will not. I ask only that your accumulated wisdom be shared whenever possible, and if permitted, you accept the mating with some of my youngest. That such experience and individual resilience be inherited by the next generation.”

<”I promise I won’t bring it up again, Svera. You’re right.”> He was smiling again. Her antennae, clapping, returned it. But there was still color in his flesh. Still an odd spasming in her vents. <”It’s just, different. A hard thing to unwind your skull around. It was never meant to be insulting. Motivation aside, you know it’s my job to keep you safe.”>

“And it is my role to safekeep the entirety of my species, so you have by your tongue, willingly shouldered a burden even greater than my own. I ask only you remember why it is I fight to begin with. To see me as infantile, as helpless, cracks the very foundation of my desire to enter into this alliance as more than just primitive tools.” Skthveraachk knew that would feed his thoughts. Remind him, of his purpose. The grass whistled around them, the breeze which was not there bringing around rush of scents from beyond the hill which did not exist. There were other smells, too, of the true room. Of the Captain himself, amongst the sheets and within dedicated space for, she identified, cleaning. A cramped, unkempt space, far too cluttered by her species’ standards. The Queen memorized a few details, for something to add to her own chambers when they landed.

<”You’re leaving?”>

“I am. I am?” She had intended to. Begun to waddle and turn, trying not to damage anything further. The conversation concluded, the exchange summarized, the questions answered. To linger would be imposition, by both cultures. “Am I not?”

<”Well I promised to answer any questions, and you didn’t have many. Your species’, or maybe just your, ability to process and accept things is intimidating, truthfully. We have entire roles dedicated to emotional stability, to helping people work through trauma or upset.”> As did the formite, but to think of entire queens, entire colonies, to be dedicated to such was fascinating. <”You torment over things, like we do. I’ve seen you at your worst/most unstable, saw how much that broadcast hurt, but a bar later and you walk in here almost entirely at peace.”>

“It is not peace, as your kind would call it. I assure you, my scentcrafters have flooded my mind and my colony with calming fluids, and there are yet many troubles raging within me. I told the Herald, once, of how my thinkers process information. He told me, in turn, that it is much the same in humanites. Even now, in the bay, there is a formite who screams in terror and hate and loathing.” The Hathan sought to speak. She quieted the attempt with a raise of a claw. “It considers all the colony has done. When I must think on what we did at Dracan, when I must draw upon it for application in the future, all I hear are its screams. But when I do not need to think on such, when the memories are not necessary, then that thinker screams only to the air. My torment, as you call it, does not change. I but decide when to embrace it, and when to ignore it.” Perhaps she should have left sooner. Perhaps, despite what the Herald had sung, it was not the same to them. The Captain did not appear to enjoy the sensations which passed his face, did not wish their presence. Raising glove, a sign was made with his fingers, and orbs of light appeared from the nothing. Letters, she saw, but in reverse as if viewing them through a mirror. Their purpose was unclear only until the walls and ceiling shimmered, and where once lush vegetation spread unceasing, there was only the grey flatness of metal and constructed coating. Presuming herself unwelcome, again, the Queen sought to depart. The Hathan’s song, baritone and sure and soft, stopped her.

<”We said chronological, I believe?”> The twist of light which followed was no more than a twitch of the alien’s joint. A move which could just as easily evaporate cities, she knew, as bid a door to open. This motion, though? The floor fell away. The ceiling, vanished. Briefly overcome with a vertigo of movement, the Queen hastily and needlessly sought to catch her footing, but as before it was but falsity. False blackness. False specks of light across the Composer’s scroll. The edge of the Palamedes, visible behind the, and the slow rotation of Dracan amidst the myriad black and red vessels of the Sovereignty as they held position before the heavenly Gate. No smells here, no movement but for the world far below and the crawl of ships in the nothingness. There should have been no sound, either. But there was. There was such sound.

Plinking of strings, high and low. The reverberations on cords down entire octaves and lines. A tempo that was first quick, then crawling in its deliberation. Next to the anthem and sounds of the Sovereignty, it was nothing. It was comically simple. The ground shook, slightly, as the Queen dropped to her underside. Feeling through the floor the sounds which filled the room of strings and sighs. Half-seeing the Hathan unfurling a seat of his own from the floor, settling alongside her.

<”We only have fragments from this period, I’m afraid. We didn’t keep the best records for the first ten thousand cycles or so. We called these people ‘Mee-so, potayn-eean.’”> Nearly as old as some of the first descendants of the Founders, if stories were to be believed. There came drums, next, like the shells of her kind. The music deeper, harsher, and yet somehow just as elegant. <”Some bits from a place called ‘Kemet’. I’ve got the details here, this is nearer two or three thousand cycles.”>

“Hathan-Captain?” He looked upward. The Queen only saw from the eyes of the drones behind her. Her own features, eyes and antennae all, angled up into the blazing star which hung just a tenth obscured behind the red planet. “It is alright. Let us but listen.” Thinkers protested with haughty anger, but were quickly drowned out by the collective sigh of joy which came from every caste, every role. Catalogues and lists could be drawn later. Now was the time of experience. Together, they listened. To the sounds from places of sand. Of great bodies of water and wooden ships. Of cities of stone in all the colors known to her kind, and some unknown. There were no sights to accompany, but she could hear them, out there across the black. And then, at last, a female’s voice. Filling the cabin and setting her hairs alight. Soloist called out from across not just distance, but time itself, and though the Band translated none of the language Skthveraachk had neither tasted nor felt from any alien, it drifted above and around her. Repeating, the same lines again and again, heralding her with unseen arms. Of alien hands, outstretched. The Hathan placed a palm on her leg. So his words, lenient and lax, did not interrupt the call.

<”This is the first completed piece we know of in our history. A *^&**^&*.”>

“The word does not translate.”

<”An epitaph. A song for the deceased, a way of remembering them.”>

“The language is one as you said. A language no longer spoken. A message no longer understood.”

<”No longer spoken, yes. We got much, much better at keeping records by this point, though. And just because a language is no longer spoken, doesn’t mean its meaning is lost. Not anymore.”> A single gesture, a wave of fingers. Thousands of cycles, brushed away, and the adjustment of the singer to the Sovereignty’s language brought the lines repeating again, their joy and sorrow melding to one unlabeled sensation.

‘While you live, shine.

Have no grief at all.

Life exists only for a short while,

And Time demands his toll.’

There was nothing profound of the message. A truth accepted from birth, taught as much as the duty of one’s role and embraced by the very nature of existence. What brought the rubbing of her antennae, and the curling of her claws into tightened rolls, was that even amongst the aliens. Even across distances insurmountable, a history unimaginable and an Empire unassailable. Once. Once, there had existed a being that had sat, gazed upward as she had, and sung about the pleasure of living. The sadness of death. And all the ephemeral beauty in between. Not even two thousand cycles and two million, billion, trillion lengths of distance were enough to change that. The singer had changed, the score and lyrics moving to the next selection, and Hathan had not removed his touch from her. There was a small jerk of surprise, when her antennae lowered to rest against his skull, and a questioning look sent her way. She rubbed words he would not be able to register against his bared head, felt the strange tickling of the wispy and unmoving hairs atop the flesh. He patted ‘right jump right-orange’ on her foreleg. Skthveraachk sighed a laugh that was nearly as much a sob, yet was entirely happiness all the same.

“I think we are more different than we are similar, Hathan-Captain.”

<”After everything you’ve seen, that’s your conclusion?”

“It is. And,” The sun was rising, not setting. It burned. It warmed. It existed, and all that could be done was to learn how to live around its unassailable light. “I think, where it matters, we are similar enough to reach comprehension. If we both truly seek it.” He did not say more about it. Did not need to. Strings, drums, winded pipes and deep metallic horns. The ship provided its own bass, of celebrating aliens, slumbering aliens, conversing formites, sleeping formites. She could have listened for tenmeasures, in stillness and silence. It was the Hathan who broke first, and amidst his meaningless taps of soft skin upon her carapace, the bones of his mouth emerged for but a breath.

<”We’d be skipping ahead a good few centuries/hundredcycles, but there is one I think you’d enjoy.”>

“What would give such indication?”

<”It’s about you. Or, something like you, would be the best explanation.”>

“If there was some manner of prophet amongst your species capable of seeing our encounter, I would be remiss to not learn from his message.”

<”I’ll make the library available to your pad. There’ll be a few thousand restricted, so you’ll have to be satisfied with the few hundred thousand which aren’t. I’ll put it on.”> The sensation was abrupt. Realizing, as the alien adjusted the rings and buttons, how often the Queen had found herself here. Looking out at the void, seated or stood, the Hathan guiding her attentions with surety. The music stirred itself up, the voice with truly odd patterns and a cadence which seemed as malleable as the lyrics. She tried to follow the story, to seek the message. It was a truly hopeless endeavor. About to explain the same to the male, formite found the humanite nodding in time, and his empty tapping of fingers upon her leg synchronized to the beat. He had listened with polite formality to the music previous. Sat alongside, remaining ever as unintelligible as he was familiar, the male engaged in that which only had one worded explanation. Seated yet mobile, shifting and swaying, foot raising and falling, the Hathan, as much as could be done in his limited body, was dancing. Unable to spoil the moment, the Queen eased back, and let the music wash around her. Ignoring the thinkers tasked with the future. Ignoring the soldiers tasked with the next rise. Ignoring the menders tasked with her care in the next bar.

“A message of the future. Of those waiting within the sky, Hathan-Captain?”

<”You like it?”> His eyes were glistening with hope. She was glad she did not need to lie.

“It is unique. Tell me, are these ‘men-of-the-stars’ meant to be you, or us?” They laughed. Skthveraachk, her antennae clapping together while resting atop the male’s crestless skull. Hathan, his mouth opened and red, pushing air from the paired lungs within. Let the battles of the rising come in the rise. Let the wars of the next cycles be solved in the next cycle. They would seek to break her, as they had before. She would bend and change until they were overcome, as she had ever done. For now, Skthveraachk was alive. For now, Skthveraachk was safe. For now, Skthveraachk was happy.

She’d earned that much, at least.

END OF BOOK TWO