The three measures had passed in a whirling dervish of informational intake. Amidst the rolling treads and crunch of wheels on once more red and barren landscape, the Queen marched almost without thought. Impulse, automatic, trudging on with all but the few hundred left to guard the site of the cycle’s birth in accompaniment. Even here, measures after on the road, rise to fade almost all of Skthveraachk’s energy was being focused upon processing and dissecting and internalizing and rationalizing. She knew now what the fruits of Earth tasted like, which caused euphoria and which caused such wracking pains that the drones which had indulged still, now, needed be carried as they headed for the Caldera. She knew now the look of a planet housing nine billion humanites from space, brilliant scrawling lights enveloping dark continents. She knew the faces of those who had first ridden fire and sound into the stars, the faces of those who had unified under those stars on the surface of a ravaged and polluted world, and the faces of those now ever expanding from that world at the center of the sky. And, as she heard the Hathan rap finger’s bones on the side of the more private transport he rode alongside her, it was good that she knew now too the difference between a lie, and fiction.
<”Are they still upset?”>
“Several thinkers worked themselves to exhaustion committing the stories of the theatres to thread and silk. The realization that not a single one was truth has thoroughly depressed some, enraged others.”
<”When they requested to watch some of our ‘grams, I’m sure the Herald had his people scrambling to pick shows which would be neither too educational, or too offensive to your people’s sensibilities. In all that, I’m sorry no one thought to remind you of the obvious fact that they’re all just that; stories.”>
“Obvious to a humanite.” Skthveraachk felt the creeping ire from the thinkers reach her vents and creep up to her crest, a subtle bite coming to her words. “Our tales, our legends, are woven from events so unique and critical in the history of our world that entire temples are erected to preserve a single memory. The past guides us to the future; that another species would dilute their memories with a thousand, thousand fictions was not even considered. The reasoning, incomprehensible.”
<”Is it?”> Leant on the side of his vehicle, arm crooked at angles which made her own legs sore to see, the new winged sigil shone in the early rise’s light amidst the dust of the stretched convoy. <”Maybe. Humans aren’t blessed with a memory which stretches back generations. We don’t grow like you do, where each Queen is just an iteration of the last. Every child needs to suffer the same hurts as they grow, learn the lesson all over again. It’s hard, to do that. Hard as a parent, as a species, to take something innocent and force it to look at the ugly reality that is life.”>
“Life is not ugly. Life is challenge, it is sacrifice, and it is endurance. Beauty is not found in falsehood, but in the overcoming of those trials life and the Composer sets before us.”
<”Yet you’re out here, fighting, to ensure colonies back on K-H need not suffer as you have. How is that any different?”> A cramping pain came to her leg, and briefly, Queen looked back on the pale shell a few transports back. The Herald’s Doctor Malika, ever lurking at the periphery now, ensuring the Queen’s health despite the wounds already having healed.
“It is different in that I struggle with opponents so that the weaker may grow greater. When I return to my home, I will not weave threads bearing false scents of the dangers your species presents. I will not soften the strength in the threat my world entire now faces. Sparing them from this is not sparing them from its knowledge.” So sang she, while her messages to Ckhehnvraahll bore the emptiness of omitted details and half-truths. Skthveraachk gnashed her mandibles three times together, urging the menders to soothe her flaring temper brought on by thinkers and exhaustion. The Hathan did not mock. But neither did he relent.
<”My people say that artists, storytellers, use lies to tell the truth. Fictions, yes, but created to teach lessons and pose questions too hurtful, or too dangerous, to offer up without a mask. I don’t see it as lying when I tell my men that if they die, they die nobly, for an honorable cause, and that their fellows will see justice brought to their killers. Even if nobility, honor and justice are things my species created out of nothing more than faith, and belief in how the world ought to be.”>
“The notion of ‘frenzy’ may not exist outside my species, or amongst the stars, but I know enough to identify its marks.” Three measures within Tarasque, eating and singing and drowning in a sea of sensations and experiences. Twice and more, spent on the road returning to the nest. Full transport was out of the question, and the humanites had already made it clear the nest was to remain even as Queen departed. A new queen would need to be selected, her child’s progress determined in her absence, thinkers and specialist castes cut from their collective to be left here on this alien soil. It was victory. It was triumph. It was supposed to be celebration. “Your culture is of deception. Your wars, your conflicts, your speech. I have learned this deception. I have adopted it. I had thought…” Skthveraachk struggled to find the notes. “It would feel different.”
<”Different how?”>
“Different.” Her grasper strayed to the belt, not of humanite skin, but crafted by the aliens of their own prized materials to fit amongst the silver plates of her thinner armored garb. To the rolled and deactivated tap-pad, now carried upon her, always. “I have read the stratagems thirty-six, I have committed to memory their music note-for-note. I have applied them to your conversations, to your battles. The Prescott was a deadly foe. I deceived. I defeated. But the harm done to myself, to my colony, to those people of Rugoro-Auslander-“
<”Don’t. Forgive my interruption, I sing-…Svera, I don’t know how formites process things, but to humans? Dwelling, revisiting, replaying things over and over in our heads isn’t healthy.”>
“I do not dwell, nor do I forget. It occurred. Were I given the same choices with the same knowledge, I would make the same decisions every time. I used the Prescott’s weakness against him, I beat him, and I, with you, delivered Tarasque to the Emperor. I should feel more.” Thinkers receded. Menders replaced. Irritation was submerged, and a hollowness took its place. “I should feel different.”
<”We, both of us, did what we had to do. Doesn’t mean we should celebrate it. God knows I don’t.”> Scouts called from the front of the convoy, the very tops of the Caldera’s cliffs in view on the horizon. Like an unseen claw, it stroked from the front of the columns to the rear, tens of thousands all breathing collective thrum of content as their destination neared. <”I’ve never known a battle which left me satisfied, Svera. Happy to be alive? Relieved? Yes. If there’s one thing in that book you should learn above all others, though, it’s that using the enemy’s tactics, strength and power against them, winning every single battle you go into, still doesn’t make you a perfect general. When you figure out how to beat your enemy without ever firing a shot? That’s what Gods and Emperors are made of.”> Supreme excellence, the tome called it. Fanciful thinking, Skthveraachk had deemed it. Subterfuge, plotting and deception to make the humanite’s themselves tremble could perhaps ensure a victory when combat was at last joined, planning and preparation could decimate the foe before they knew what was to occur, but to move with such precision, forethought and experience to convince a foe they had lost without ever engaging? The Queen chittered, and let the thought sit more in amusement than serious consideration. Letting it evaporate under the heated sun as her Band went active, right as the Hathan’s own head tipped forward to listen at his own comm.
<”Captain Devries; Sir *^&**^&*, Nest 01 Overseer. You are needed at the caldera, immediately. Bring the Queen.”>
<”We’re still twenty beats till arrival, we should be on your displays.”>
<”Move ahead of the convoy if you have to, there’s going to be an incident unless this is calmed down. I’m keeping my men calm, but the bugs-…the formites, are barely being controlled. We’re evacuating all science teams from the nest up onto the mesa.”> Alarm. Attention. The Hathan turned a look upon her, and she met it with furious rubbing of hairs across her eyes.
“Sir Dhaantayys, may your shell be never marred by the scythes of your enemies. What has transpired? Skthveraachk-Colony is of harmony with the Sovereignty, and no harm would ever befall its members at our claws.”
<”We’ve had multiple incidents and accidents while you were away, Queen, but there’s a twelve of your kind dead here and multiple injuries to the research group.”> Her legs strode faster, the pain and fatigue ignored as Hathan slapped the side of his transport to prompt the driver’s increase in speed to match. <”Get here, soon as you can. We’ve found a body in the nest. A human body.”>
Thirty measures? Forty, if that? When she had left the Caldera, it had been a place where marvels would be born, a testament to progress and learning. Now, those marvels had already grown, taken root, borne fruit and sprouted. They entered through the tunnel at opposite from the canyon run, yet it took the Queen a moment to realize the shade into which she strode was artificially made when they emerged together under the great hanging sheets of woven silk. Caps of fungi, old shells and carapaces, bound into the mesh until the strands rising from caldera walls met at central erected spire. One of the black monoliths, LS shield emitters, around which a growing tower of bricks and clay had transformed the lowest half into a series of oversight platforms and stands. Under the shade which shielded from the sun, stacks which belched black smoke protruded from the claypits and domed bivouacs of rock, and grooves cut to streets allowed for an endless stream of carts, wheelbarrows and wagons to be steered in loading, unloading, lifting and transporting. Thick lines, supporting hanging bodies and platforms, had been bound between caldera walls and tower, and all above them swayed and creaked lifts laden, appearing from hewn passages into the outer perimeter of the nest down into its very heart. The work continued. The menials and drones, labored. But on every voice and tongue and hair, the frantic terror and confusion and desire to protect made the majesty of the Caldera something more like a waking terror. Link to the convoy had yet to form. The Queen had no intention of waiting.
“I am Skthveraachk Queen!” It was for her people, not the humanites, those shapes rushing in clustered groups guarded by ambers for the floating and grinding elevators set to walls, hauling them away from the hive of activity. “I am Skthveraachk Queen, War Queen, Queen of Formite and Sovereignty! One voice, beneath mine!”
“One voice, beneath yours! One voice! I am Skthveraachk queen! Mother!”
“Sing! Speak!” They were rushing to her, covering her, basking in her scent and smearing their own both across her body and the vehicle from which the Hathan struggled to emerge so surrounded it was. Ensuring her own pap marked the Captain and the few soldiers riding with him as though they were queens themselves, the sea of black bodies parted and milled around them as Skthveraachk surged for the nearest entrance. “Such progress, such advancement, but the humanites fear and flee. Where is your control? Why is the chorus tainted with maledictions of disharmony?”
“I do not have the music for them, for this travesty! My role is control, my role is protection, and I have failed in my role!” The queen’s inexperience and wild emotions were infecting those nearest, who spread the notes out and further. It fed back on itself, an echoed lament only building in each return.
“All experience failure, all experience fault. To let it destroy you is ill befitting a queen, it is ill befitting a thinker, it is ill befitting even a humanite. Why have the thinkers not overruled your song?”
<”We’re here, Sentinel; where do you need us?”>
<”Floor seven, one of their nests. Egg-chambers, whatever you want to call them.”>
“Thinkers have been directed to-“
“Empty all birthing chamber on layer seven!” Peel them all, of course the colony was raging at interference near the eggs! Skthveraachk did not apologize for the interruption, forcing the juvenile to shudder in shame as commands she should have given fell from the Queen’s limbs instead. “Displace attendants and tenders to layers six and eight. Avoid humanites, touch nothing else.”
“Thinkers have been directed to remain on current tasking, Skthveraachk Queen. They are being ordered not to provide assistance.”
“You are queen! You are the nexus and conductor of our symphony of life! Who has ordered this? Why have you allowed this?”
“I deferred to those with knowledge surpassing!” Down through the layers, the queen already commanded to appear and be present at the site of the contention while Queen and Hathan rushed; Skthveraachk unbothered by the dark, and Hathan’s emittance of light guiding him. “You guided, informed that he was not to be questioned, not to join the link in fullness. Knowledge of the humanites, of their kind, of their people, is the greatest in only one!” Only one. Only one. The corridors emptied, the tunnels drained, eggs were hauled and carried to recesses and crevices, and when Skthveraachk reached the birthing chambers, it was her. Her. The Hathan. A tenning of attendants, the daughter queen, the amber’s encirclement, the corpses coating the floor. And him. Skthveraachk thinker, his single arm raised and fanning while his body scraped and scurried about the remnants of bone, and meat, and frocked shell of muddied white.
“Skthveraachk Queen arrives! Sentinel Dantes, there is no cause for this continued hostility. All has been explained, all has been set right.”
<”I’ve a dead scientist, thinker, and a story I’m struggling to believe. Captain Devries?”>
<”Sir.”> It was the Hathan who offered salute first, the Amber returning it as a nod while his hands remained latched onto the lance. All near ten of the Sentinels had their weapons out; mercifully pointed downward, but out all the same. Skthveraachk queen shook like the barren trees, and the Queen strode behind and around the humanites without consideration for how several now turned their weapons in her direction, cupping and stroking along her daughter’s frame. The nest was stilling, the queen, settling. Endless demands, welcomes, desires to be allowed near denied so as not to flood the chamber with more formite threats as perceived by the aliens. <”If I’m to be useful here, I’ll need to be brought up to equal speed. The Queen, as well. Who…?”> The Hathan stuttered to a stop. His light, amongst the others, turned on the dismembered and half desiccated. Fluids had drained from it, acid shriveling and melting the fabric and flesh and bone into puddles of half-formulated shape. A pair of spitters lay silent, their stomachs and gasters emptied, contents soaking into the muck made orange by blood. Dropping low, the pain on the male’s face came in the knitting of brow. The clenching of eyes as in squat, the Captain pressed fisted hands near his head. <”Damnit. God damnit.”>
<”Formites have said it’s Doctor Dulac, but we’re going to need a genetic reading to be sure. The state of the corpse-“>
<”It’s her.”> Information had been poured into the Queen the moment her limbs reached her daughter. The green of those eyes as they had entered, wide and confused, into the chamber. The shock. The terror. The raising of arms amidst freed and soft hair as spitters leapt on collapsing body. <”That’s Jennifer. Still has the grail she was always wearing, there.”> A vague motion of light following hand was gestured to one of the puddles, a glistening sigil of metal slid from where neck would have been had teeth and jaw not been turned to jelly. Emotion was denied. Data first. Skthveraachk refused to let herself feel. Not yet.
“It is the Jennifer-Pod. Menials witnessed her enter the chamber early this rise.”
“Near one and three-tenth bars passed. Earlier than most humanites would arrive or even wake.” The thinker sung his truth, adding upon the understanding. “I had called her to this location.”
<”You knew she was coming?”> Lesser queen chirped agreement, but the thinker needed no other to sing for him.
“I asked she come, specifically. It was not uncommon.” Hathan grieved, in silence, his back to the group. Skthveraachk let the music of the events run through her, receiving, building the images within her mind. “The Jennifer had become closest asset to the nest since the Queen’s departure. The most gifted in our interactions, the least likely to provoke anger or accidental ire from even our most sensitive areas. I had sent through the band a strong need for her presence.”
<”For what reason?”>
“A hatching.” A note skipped. “One of our newest stingers was about to be birthed, the first of the generation.” A beat, out of tune. “She had desired strongly to see this, to be present, and I bid her come to the birthing chambers immediately.”
‘Jennifer-Pod, an emergency!’ The words of the thinker had carried through the nest, the Queen’s touch on the link remembering his notes in perfect clarity. ‘With our matter previously discussed. Attention required, all haste, my location! Birthing chambers!’
‘Oh God. Should I bring…do I need?’
‘Take usual precautions, you must hurry!’ The music was strange. A new stinger had indeed about to have been birthed. The Pod, indeed, the one to call on if such were to occur. But it was not the wholeness of what had been sung.
<”Queen?”> The Sentinel looked to her. The thinker, his hairs soft, scrubbed and pulled at his antennae with excitable clacks of his mandible. Nervousness, had it come from a humanite. Excitement, in a formite. Excitement?
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“You seek confirmation? Formites are not humanite. We do not lie. We do not sing untruths.” Misleading, deceptive at times, but there were no lies. “The thinker recounts tale as it occurred; the Pod was called, the Pod arrived.”
“Yes, the Pod arrived.” Her shell, lopsided, her hair, a mess. Roused, dazed, confused, but moving with a speed and certainty of trouble awaiting. “Frazzled, is the humanite term; so rushed and eager in her movements. I was focused upon my task, the nest and colony to it’s own; she had not managed more than two words when it was noticed.”
‘Thinker, wha-‘ The room had been dark. The shapes, either side of the entrance, hidden from view. ‘I am sorry, Jennifer. It will be quick.’ Interruption? Apology? Skthveraachk was as confused as the Pod had appeared. The thinker had not moved to aid, not made single note in protest, as the spitters had leapt. Falling upon her, the one choked scream she had managed cut short when head was the first to be separated from body. Only when they had begun to slash and spit on the corpse, the smell of alien blood exploding as fiery bolt, did the thinker call alarm and fear. Soldiers, drones, swarming into the melee. Confused cuts, bites, trying to save and to harm and to silence.
“I sing of regret, and of blame already admitted. The Pod had grown so close with our kind, so accepted, that she believed herself above the precautions others take. To those in the nest, that she was unmarked by our scent was ignored. But upon entering our birthing chambers, the guards were driven into instinctive lashing. They detected an intruder.” Yes. Truth. But why were spitters stationed? They were songless, difficult to control at the best of times. “They acted on impulse.” Who had ordered spitters to be present? Thinker Skthveraachk, the response came rapidly. Pair of spitters previously selected for reprocessing, re-tasked the fade prior to this specific chamber. “It is great humiliation and humility that by the time they were silenced…there was nothing any could have done.” Truth. Withheld. Details, overlooked. The thinker bowed, scraped his mandibles into the muck. And though the humanites saw only the submission…his hairs were perfectly soft.
‘The Pod knows.’
Skthveraachk felt a deathly stillness enter her, crawl up her legs and burrow under her shell. ‘The situation is untenable, but I am able to maintain security’. Those had been his notes. That had been his message. The Pod had known. The Pod was now dead. Security, maintained. Truths, half-offered. What had not been given was what would change the story. The fiction. The…the…
“What have you done.” Her song came through her claws, unsung in voice so the Band would not translate. Thinker’s gaster wiggled, his own Band staying silent.
“I handled the situation I was presented.”
“What have you done?”
“If you reveal what has truly occurred, they will kill me, they will kill the queen, and more harm unknown will befall the colony.”
“What have you DONE!?”
<”Out of my way! Get out! Dantes!”> Was the world spinning faster? Did the sun rise from the fade and fade crawl from the rise? She knew this music. She had felt this hate before. The disagreeable amber. The Pod’s amber. Pushing his way through the entrance, warnings of his approach utterly lost to Skthveraachk’s attention until he was in the room itself. Hathan was on his feet, ambers backing away from the site to reach and clutch at the man. <”Is that her!?”>
<”Sir Dulac, you were ordered to quarters.”>
<”Is that her!?”>
<”You don’t want to see this. I will command you, as your superior, not to see this if necessary.”>
<”To hell with you, Dantes!”> Hathan did not lay touch on the male. Strange, the things she was noticing as her nest and life collapsed around her. How had it been done? Why? The link was missing data, she had ensured it would be so by her own command. Queen needed to connect with the thinker, to understand. <”They did this! Him, that fucking big-brained bug and his *^&* queen!”>
<”Sir Dulac, look at me. We’ve had our differences,”> Devries stood firm. <”We’ve had our quarrels, Emperor knows. But the formites don’t kill our people. They aren’t capable of betrayal, of lying.”>
<”And fuck you with an active lance, Devries! They’ve taken people’s arms off, you know that!?”>
“Like the unfortunate Jennifer, these were not deliberate attacks. The juvenile, the songless, they struggle always with their instincts, and when safety measures are not observed, as your own queens sing, accidents are unavoidable.” Skthveraachk Queen broke away from her daughter, tossed away the connecting drones, and cut herself from the link entirely as the blasphemy escaped the thinker. As the darkness of the room sought to swallow all. Confusion was screamed on the bodies of all her children nearest, from the entire colony, as they defaulted to their last given tasks. It was needed. It was necessary. ‘Assign three youngest drones to Caldera perimeter.’ The thinker had been specific. ‘Fadewards route.’ Where he had known the foolish pale shell would be traveling, that rise, as every rise. ‘Adjust routes of nearest experienced soldiers. Avoid specified perimeter.’ Planned. Calculated. Not unavoidable. Not accidental. Deliberate attack. To observe reaction. To gather data. The thinker knew. The thinker sung.
The thinker lied.
<”I’m getting nothing on the morning communications.”> One of the ambers. The thinker was lying.
<”No calls made?”>
<”No, there was definitely a call received, but there’s no recording present in the Doctor’s computers. She must have deleted the transcripts.”>
<”Why would she do that?! She’d never do that!”> If the thinker was lying, the thinker was frenzied. She knew. The colony did not. The colony lacked the pieces, scattered. Her role to construct them. The thinker had to die. The thinker could not die here. The aliens would question. They could not question.
“As I have sung and sing again, the Pod acted erratic and frazzled. I do not know why she would overlook known security of our scent.” Lie. “I do not know why she would engage with your technologies in this way.” Lies.
<”You lying bastard!”> Truth. Truth. Truth. The Pod’s Amber fought, shoved, tried and failed to break free as the Dantes scowled beneath his helm, looking to the formite only briefly before fixing upon the male.
<”You knew nothing of this?”>
<”Of course I didn’t, it’s feces of *^&*! They did this, HE did this-!”>
<”Entered her quarters and went through transcript logs, deleting them, before returning to the nest? I’m not just trying to spare you the sight, *^&**^&*, I’m trying to keep you uninvolved as well. There’s something wrong with all this, and it’s already clear your partner/*^&* was engaging in some strange activities. We’ll check her room, see how many packets of scentmarker she has left, and-“>
<”Svera, can you make anything of this?”> Frozen. <”She was your friend too-“>
<”Like hell she was!”>
<”And nobody has done more, did more, when we first found you, to try and reach out to your species.”> Truth. The Pod was disagreeable, she was foolish, she was unsavory in her company and a crafter who wished to be a thinker who wished to be a queen. She had caused harm, anger, but this? An eye drifted by in puddle of red, and the Queen trembled. <”I’d only known her on this deployment, but…anything, Svera?”> Only truths between them. Only truths to the First Liar. Protect the Colony. Protect the species. Sing only truth. The frenzied, peelable, accursed thinker continued to wiggle like a parasite in her flesh, and it was on that thing her eyes focused as her voice wavered in its delivery.
“The Pod had not been marked. Many noticed in her descent, but none questioned. Often, she would use only small amounts, so sings the memories.” No lies. No lies. Never, never lie. “Spitters are the most sensitive to scents and markers. Without, they cannot differentiate. Even our juveniles struggle with the distinction. It is tragedy. It is sadness. It is mourned.” He believed her. Believed her? Yes, for she had not lied. His eyes sank, his shoulders sagged, the ambers around muttered and clenched weapons, but as their leader spoke again into his comms and relayed tales, the threat in the room diminished. Her amber, too, had stopped his struggles. Stared upon the Queen with such eyes, with such empty eyes that she had scarce seen before. When he yanked himself backwards, instead of ahead, his fellows released him. So there were none to stop him when his arm was raised. When a press was made upon device. When, as it had many times before, a whiteness and lightning so stabbing that her heart felt as though it would burst, turned sore legs to mush and sent Skthveraachk thrashing to her back.
<”FEEL THAT, BUG!?”>
<”DULAC, STOP!”>
<”REMEMBER THAT!”> They were upon him. Devries, foremost of all, striking with fist for other male’s skull as attendants and queen surrounded her spasming body. No air for her lungs, no release for her stomach. Vomit spewed from her mouth, and fluids expelled from her gaster. <”You’re nothing! You’ll always be their pet! Their slave! That’s all you fucking are! A bug on a leash!”> There was no pain rock, but the pain came all the same. Until her eyes felt as though they would rupture. Until the shrieks of confusion and rage from her children, who yet dared not touch her as she had ordained, circled and scurried in a defensive screen against attacker incorporeal. When the amber was finally driven to the ground, the thing pried from his grip, the heaving breaths Skthveraachk at last took were rich in the smell of blood and spit and hate, Sentinels hauling the male from the cavern as she weakly assured, placated, bid the colony continue its music without her. Just a bit longer.
<”-eport this to the Herald if I have to, that man should never have been given a trigger!”>
<”-ave all my men out of the nest as soon as the site is documented, not a moment sooner, Captain.”>
<”The last time someone did that, the colony nearly tore us apart, thank the fucking Emperor Svera kept them under control!”> She struggled to remember a time the Devries had used such songs, such sounds, as flexing lungs and wobbly legs brought her muddied body back upright. <”Svera, are you alright? Should I get Doctor-“>
“I must go.” Had she thought the pain was gone forever, just because she was off the Palamedes? That they would not ensure a way to subjugate her no matter her location? Pain, but no damage. Humiliation, but no physical trauma. She knew the signs. The symptoms. She was unharmed in body. It was not the body which needed tending to. “I must ensure safety of my colony.”
<”I’ll stay with you.”>
“You will not. I wish no humanites here at this moment.” Unjust cruelty. Unnecessary anger. But he had to have known. Could have warned her. Would she rage upon him for omitting information she had never asked after, never thought to question, and here of all places in this room of half-truths? He stepped back. She did not seek to console him, keeping herself clear of the link’s flaring noises. The thinker followed, walked at her rear, and it was only the knowledge that his frail body could no more harm her than a drone which allowed her tolerance of his presence. Down and away from the pool of the Pod’s flesh. Down and away from the light and sound. To a passage which did not exist. A cavern, which had not been built. A humanite who had been killed half a cycle ago-…oh, Composer, no.
Once Ckhehnvraahll mender, Skthveraachk mender could be heard out in the tunnels, cheering and weeping both, as the smell from the staring, scraggly mass of skin in the room was sucked sweetly through the Queen’s vents. Not a marking of pap, but of something worse. Coating the tins of emptied food, dripping still on the lips and bubbling up from the alien’s skin. So much jelly to be smelled within the room that the Queen felt as though she would collapse again. Instead, the cavern shook as her forelegs seized the writhing and shrieking body of the thinker. Slamming him up, up over her mandibles, that the walls sunk and his carapace cracked under the force of her legs. Had she been connected to the link, a hundred thousand voices would have cried out in betrayal and wrath. Instead, the Queen’s voice alone would carry the hatred those hundred thousand would have sung with.
“You! Are! FRENZIED!”
“I am frenzied!” Abject fear. A glee bathed in madness. Their music clashed in the space between them, and with the voice of daughters sacrificed and reservations hunted to extinction, the accusation thrust from her.
“You lie to the humanites! You kill those we are allied to! You utilize the jelly, make slaves of our enemy! You are monster! You are…abomination!” Was this how it had felt to the Herald? Her notes like scythes struck, but with a countenance wild in its regard, the thinker’s voice sought to match hers. To challenge, as vocal scythes melted and gurgled as they impacted his shell.
“You lie to the humanites! You lie to Ckhehnvraahll! I hear your songs, Skthveraachk Queen, for formite may lie to alien, but we cannot lie to one another! Sing with me!” His foreleg, his other limbs, brushed and stroked at her while she held him suspended, and when his requests for knowledge came, she had no choice but to respond. Like a feeding tube between them, their truths poured into the other, and each revelation was a thunderous clap to put the Sovereignty’s beating drums to shame. “You slaughtered a thousand Queens, made silent a thousand fledgling voices!”
“Necessary for victory! Required, to save tens of thousands more!” The pounding was thrust beneath stilled waters, drowned beneath her music, while the humanite silent and trembling as the room shook in their exchange. “You deceived your queen, manipulated her assistance to further your own goals! To bring harm to a humanite; scientist, thinker, male upon the surface!”
“Single casualty, harmed but not even killed, to protect the colony!” Waters evaporated. Writhing body spat and belched notes which fell upon her as acid. “Learned that even dismemberment would not kill some humanites, then, that acid or fire or fury would need to be employed! I followed directive, the tasking given to me, to learn how the Pod could be silenced without drawing alien suspicion. Purpose, and gain! There was no gain in Queen’s deceiving of vassal-Queen, in pretending to be of peace when turmoil raged!”
“Protection of that which is loved, that which is treasured; the only imperative, protection of the colony, of the species, of the world! I let fall notes which would have harmed without purpose, bore the weight of danger, alone amidst the stars! You have become infected with falsehoods and failures, let writhe within you the ugliness of the aliens!”
“I embrace what makes them alien, I become what has killed and conquered and ruled us! I know myself, as I know my enemy, as I have metamorphized into the most lethal of our foes so that I may better combat them!” Each took the lead as the other provided harmony, the accusations building, dismantling, and playing upon one another as their song swirled and shook the very foundations of the nest. The frenzied were to be killed. The frenzied could not be rationalized. Their song grew and shaped, and no frenzied could defend with such fervor their actions.
“By betraying the very lessons of the mothers, and their mothers, and the mothers of their mothers until the birthing of the Song! Skthveraachk-Colony does not take slaves!” She saw orange ooze from around his neck, her forcing of the thinker’s body into the wall burying the drone tenthlength by tenthlength. “Harmony is not forced! Consensus is not found or demanded, but constructed! The weakest, the most frightened, the masses of our world seek to be Again as was Once through the jelly, but not Skthveraachk! Skthveraachk will never take slaves!”
“Skthveraachk IS a slave!” They screamed together, and no longer two voices, their duet was synchronized and swaying to a shared tempo. “The humanites call us equals, label us partners, but will always be the masters of our kind! If they will not share their knowledge, we will take it from them! If they do not share their power, we will earn it ourselves! Any method must be accepted, any sacrifice made, any tool utilized! This humanite is not of our kind, and the jelly does not make a slave of him. Softens the mind, softens the song, opens the way to learning previously denied us. I deceive! I am frenzied! But Queen deceives!” Crack. Snap. Aged body, bending and twisting while crescendo fell upon them both. “So what, then, is Queen!?” She did not lie! She had not lied! They explored new worlds, tasted new mass, breathed new air and sung new songs, but they were formite! They were still formite! Queen was formite, and thinker! Thinker! Thinker!
The humanite dove to a wall as the tattered body of the thinker was hurled in a pile, kicking and knocking away strange devices and tools cluttering the room. Unable, unwilling, to rise as the music at last faded into consensus. The final notes, the stomping and stamping of clawed and scythe-extended legs as Queen crawled from that pit which did not exist.
“Thinker remains. Formite, remains here with humanite. Do not rejoin link. Never rejoin link. Remain. Mender will be provided.”
“Received, War Queen.” The smell of smoke. The shudder of wheels and pulleys above. The soft touch of hairs as drones, awaiting, fell against and around her as two voices became one, and one again was joined with thousands.
“Fear! Concern! Queen is safe? Queen is healthy?”
“No fear. No concern. We are formite. Queen is formite. All is well.” Half a truth. Not a lie. “All is well.”