Skthveraachk Queen was the last to enter her own cavern. Space which had once been a feeding hall for upper castes, now a monumental tribute to excess. A regal grotto of waste, of luxuries which showed one thing and yet reeked and stunk of another; an intent to impress with walls covered in humanite fabrics and mechanical displays, of the flags and symbols their masters enjoyed so dearly. The power to waste energy on such, or just the confirmation that what had once been the greatest nest for thousands of lengths around was now just another possession of the star-sent. Skthveraachk Queen was the last to enter. Skthveraachk mender had been one of the first. Four bars, she had been waiting. For the Queen of Hhehnstaachlk, who readily sent her attendants into the basin at room’s center to feed on the readied phidite milk while he waited. For the Queen of Shlthvelhneekch, who waited stoically with as many soldiers as attendants, refusing to allow his colony eat anything before watching Hhehnstaachlk drones ingest it first. Her mother, Ckhehnvraahll Queen, took over that role when she too arrived. Prostrating self shamelessly so as not to challenge the autonomy of the other colonies, and herself sharing in the pooling fluids filling a half length of the basin’s center. Suspicious tasting of the false-light decorations and sniffing of offered mass had nearly abated when Kthcvahlaatch Queen entered. It was utterly forgotten upon the realization of who, what, accompanied the Queen which now reeked of submission and capitulation.
“What ARE they?”
“Humans. No? Yes. Humanites. Varying labels.” The Shlthvelhneekch thinker did not sing by direct touch, but Skthveraachk mender moved herself nearer, willingly. Two of her mother’s drones had spotted her at the edge of the curved room, and burbled joy with beckoning to join them in song. She recoiled further into the foreign colony instead, even as her core and heart pounded and begged to join them. “Bipedal. Binocular vision. Endoskeleton. Roughly four-fifths of a length in height.”
“Recieved, but question unanswered.” The blue female, the Miroslava, was struggling to stand comfortably in the sloped room. Already speaking welcomes and humble greetings that could just as easily be lies as truth. The mender had not the interest in hearing it, and so she did not, letting a pair of Shlthvelhneekch soldiers check her hairs and scythes with brutish prodding as she drew nearer the thinker. “They are star-sent. But they are not star-sent. Not of the forms of chelicerites.”
“Star-sent. Ha.” Single smack of her antennae interrupted the efforts of Ckhehnvraahll and the humanites, trying to get a Band onto some of Hhehnstaachlk’s drones, but the mender continued without pause. “Yes. They are star-sent, because they come from another star. Another world. Our world? Not singular. Not special. One of many. We go to one of their world nests, we become star-sent? Ha. Ha.”
“Overwhelming. Grant moment. Tasking additional thinkers.”
“Received.” Again, her sisters called for her. It wasn’t easy to pretend she did not hear the now confused signalling, the desire to share in touch. But it was simple. She was broken, after all, and so was she beyond a need to obey instincts she’d held all her life. The soldiers, satisfied, allowed her to crawl beneath them and join her legs to the thinker in his huddle of bodies. Even without an abundance of scentcrafters, the physical touch allowed for clearer intent. “Humanites are sent from stars. Humanites star-sent? Unclear. Yes? Yes. Uncertain.”
“You share knowledge freely. You are linked in priority to thinkers?”
“Knowledge is personal. Am tasked to sing it.”
“Curious.”
“Elaborate.”
“I am Shlthvelhneekch thinker. Shlthvelhneekch Queen believes in only two kinds of colonies. Colonies led by thinkers, and colonies led by menders.”
“Queens who believe in only two possibilities are colonies keeping menders eighty layers down.” Now it was the thinker who clicked humor. He was an older drone, from the faded color of his shell that had seen many moltings and the slight rigidity in both legs and antennae. When both tapped out across her paler thorax, it was a clumsy sort of delicateness, a softness of intent the body was not quite capable of delivering.
“You taste of Ckhehnvraahll but smell of Skthveraachk. Ckhehnvraahll is a colony of menders. We have occasionally traded with this colony. Peacemakers. Not soft, but careful and caring. Skthveraachk-Colony has always kept distance, always preoccupied with fighting alto against the raiders and lowland colonies rather than coming sopra. Now they change. Now they come with star-sent. Menders or thinkers? Emotion, or reason?”
“Why Skthveraachk Queen obeys humanites? Yes? Then, yes. Thinkers.” Inside of her, fury churned her sacs and stomachs filled with processing sealant. “Blame thinkers for what she is now.” It was good that Skthveraachk Queen chose then to enter, the billowing air from her arrival oddly sour with an irritation her attendants were hurriedly trying to clean from her armored form. The Miroslava stopped her speech about the ‘impetus of humanity’, and the myriad drones and menials stopped trying to chew on their bands as all Queens aligned their gaze. The thinker naturally sought to break their personal link, expecting her to return to her own colony. Skthveraachk mender tightened her grip. She was broken, but she had a role. The role was all. The words of her Queen came to her as if from across a chasm, heard on her body and through the foreign colony’s shells.
“I am Skthveraachk Queen Magistrate of Skthveraachk-Colony. This place is mine, but your kindness in accepting such unusual summons is of value immense. Biomass offered was payment for my delay. There is jelsaah and kakstrip to drink, flensed cuts of scolopendrite from the coast, even dynastite from the plains far beyond the reach of the Triumvirate, where it sky and sea meet in dancing colors.”
“May your breath once again warm the tunnels between our colonies, Skthveraachk Queen!” Menials in a quartet of buzzing lines began to enter with Sovereignty seal-stamped crates, but Hhehnstaachlk Queen had eyes only for the metal encapsulated magistrate. “Your death was mourned, twice over when the usurper Ktcvahnaah used your daughters to wage war on my children. Mass is accepted, but only in measured amounts. You have been gone long. The encounters with these star-sent have reduced foraging across the valley. We suffer a mild famine. The value of your offers is too high.”
“You cannot know of value. Cannot appreciate worth of your agreement. The exchange is fair.”
<”The research staff here on K-H didn’t mean to disrupt the ecology of the area so greatly. They were gathering samples. Samples, like uh, trophies?”>
“Trophies? Yes? No. Humanite struggles.” It was not a message for the entirety of the room. The thinker, feeding knowledge and suggestions to his Queen, paused to receive the mender’s undirected soliloquy. “They are curious. They consume not flesh, but knowledge. They learn a thing, then they know a thing, then they reshape a thing to whatever they want.”
<”Harm was not meant to your colony, Queen. But if harm was done, consider this all a way of repaying you for that damage.”>
“Received. And, accepted. Offerings of the star-sent.” They had seen humanites from afar. Closer, when they had been brought to Hollowcore. It was almost as shocking to the mender how quickly they adjusted as it was that the Lieutenant creature had seemed to learn more intricacies of their ways. Whatever had happened out on the reserve, even Kthcvahlaatch seemed to regard them with only low wariness. They had a name. They had a scent, and a sound. They existed. The Queens adapted to the new truth.
“There is more. Much more. To eat, share.” Ckhehnvraahll had sat all but silently, only now raising her own voice to encourage the others on. Each crate which slid open, amidst the surprised and hissing pokes of nearby drones as they tried to fathom the mechanisms, brought new fragrances and wants forward. Piles were created in the center of the curved room, devoured by attendants low and carried up to be vomited into waiting stomachs of higher castes. Even her Queen partook, if only primarily of water and thicker meats. “The aliens, the star-sent, have a delicacy called Composercake. My bonded Queen and colony shares with me you will have tasted nothing quite like it-“
“May your song be not undone by obsequiousness.” Clicks came from all around, the tips of scythes extending to scrape the rock floor at Shlthvelhneekch Queen’s interruption, how the heavy voice from layered core came in almost an even groan. Skthveraachk mender did not realize her own had emerged until the rattling of soldiers’ hairs around her forced all her eyes down, and her muscles into pulling the thin blades back inside her. “I rumble rudeness only to prevent deeper shame. Your reach has become expansive since your return. The things in this cavern, beyond comprehension. My thinkers try and fail to explain these lights,” A claw grasped slow the air towards one of the banners. “Or these… not-stone squares, these unlife creatures. You wish to demonstrate strength? It is demonstrated. Shlthvelhneekch-Colony did not come here to be shown our smallness.”
“Skthveraachk-Colony did not ask, invite, welcome you here to humiliate or make lesser.”
“Is Skthveraachk-Colony aware of what is happening in the valleys? Even through the mountains into the fields of the Triumvirate beyond? Has your bonded not sung to you?” The lack of a response was always a response itself, but the mender felt her body shiver at the unsung reply. Familiarity, just for a breath. Familiarity in the way the Queen moved a tenthlength further away from Ckhehnvraahll’s instinctive reach. Mender had been ordered not to join voice with her mother, but surely the Queen herself was able to…?
“My vassal has warned of fear amongst the colonies. Whispered dirges and subtle sonnets to conflict.”
“Here? Yes. My own vassal colony across the mountain sings worse. Triple the rate of raids from Vhersckaahlhn, complete cessation of hostility in some lands while others descend into unfettered war. Rumors of reserves being completely surrounded by colonies to protect their biomass. You show us the star-sent, these humanites and their creations? We know already they are here. All know that something new has come, something unsingable. We do not need memories that they are here.” Miroslava, silent, remained as steady as their kind could on the sloped ground. Firm under the heaving turn of the second largest Queen’s regard. “Why are they here? What is it they want? And when do they intend to leave?”
“There is only change, Shlthvelhneekch Queen.” The mender heard the hard clacking of mandibles, a sound not of anger, but of certainty. “We change our world, and it changes us. We grow the green, and are grown by it. The world is not ending. It is only changing.”
“The coming of the star-sent is always a period of death, of a silence in the music. They come, we change, they go.”
“The humanites do not intend to leave.”
“As the light dances in the goldboughs, what do they want from us?”
<”Obedience.”> The alien’s pair of odd, wet eyes set themselves into the lower pair of Shlthvelhneekch’s own. <”Not your lives, and we don’t want you to be slaves or prisoners or anything similar. I don’t know if this is how diplomacy is supposed to work, but the Magistrate here thinks what you need to hear is the truth, so there it is.”>
“Obedience? A tool, not a destination. Method, not goal.”
<”We want to make you better than you are. Happier. The way you live, your species lives, is the best you can do. It’s not the best we can do. You think it’s impressive to grow a forest? We can turn an entire planet without heat into a paradise. You measure your life in cycles? We can double it. We’ve spent nearly thirteen thousand cycles perfecting our society, improving it, making mistakes and struggling through. If you follow us, if you let us teach you, we can show you how we did it. We can help you be more like us.”>
“More of this.” Shlthvelhneekch might have been perched, processing each syllable and note, but Kthcvahlaatch had no need to listen. It was in the Queen’s movements and voice, the deference to colony superior. They sung as Skthveraachk sung, now, did as Skthveraachk directed. And now, spurred by memory, was gorging with all attendants on the circular yellow mush which came from sealed humanite packages. “Cake. Cake? Composercake. More of this, immediately, will exchange hunting rights every eighty measures to three reserves for more of this, immediately.”
“Exceptional taste, but relative low biomass weight and value. Would request something of plainer but greater substance.” Hhehnstaachlk had become sagged by the weight of his gaster and stomachs, and unlike Shlthvelhneekch, the colony’s attentiveness did not dull its appetite. “Cuts of phidite. Or lumbrite! Is there no lumbrite mass?”
“NO.” Even more fervent than her notes on the coming of the aliens, the mender’s own bellow was an echo of every Skthveraachk formite present. The Queen herself scratching her claws along the ground in the stunned silence and dying reverberations of the shout. “No. We…do not eat lumbrites here.”
“Received?” Hhehnstaachlk Queen had let dribble green slurry of fluid from her mouth at the outburst, attendants slurping up the puddle once the response had been given. “Shlthvelhneekch Queen, you are too guarded. If these star-sent were as the oldest enemy, there would be no songs. No touches of leg and hair. They admit accident, offer aid. Witness how much has been clearly improved for Skthveraachk-Colony; I fear too such change, but if their soldiers act only against those that resist, then defense is simply to be unresisting.”
“You would join voice beneath theirs, without knowledge of purpose or want that they have?” The Shlthvelhneekch thinker had been scrabbling frantically as messages were relayed, the mender catching only fragments.
<”I told you. I, restate: the Imperial Sovereignty has no interest in taking your voices away. All that’d be asked of you, most of you, is what I’m told you’re already doing. Farming, cultivating, building, digging. We’d give you ways to be more productive in it, and in exchange, expect portions of your yields to be given back to us.”>
“Easy offers to make. These improvements, these notrocks and notcreatures and dead things that can be used by the living.” Shlthvelhneekch did not quite rear, but his front two legs rubbed and crossed together just off the ground. “You will show us. You will demonstrate. Value will be assessed.”
“Such request was anticipated. Such is accepted willingly. Queens will remain here and feed, drones will guide eyes into my nest freely. There is no danger or malice here for those seeking submission to the star-sent.” Half-truths. Half-lies. Was the Queen, was the mender, even capable of distinguishing any longer? She had not planned on leaving, but the thinker in her claws was already moving, pulling her along with him. Other Skthveraachk drones were joining chains, tying the foreign bodies into a protected knot of activity as the guided them from the room and into the tunnels. The Queen had not ordered the mender back. Not ordered her go. There was no command, no guidance. Broken thing. Half-true and half-right. Her claws tightened their squeeze on the unbroken thinker, who signalled confusion but acceptance of the touch.
“Skthveraachk mender should schedule more time with other menders. Song is discolored.”
“Shlthvelhneekch Queen wished to know why star-sent are here.”
“Skthveraachk Queen and Skthveraachk mender answered. The star-sent are change.”
“Answer was incomplete.”
“Uncertain. Answer was incorrect?”
“Answer was true. Answer was unfinished.”
“How can a thing be correct but incorrect? You suggest frenzy?”
“Suggest nothing. State clearly now. Queen will show much, sing much, spin much to bind colonies together. Yes? Yes. If Shlthvelhneekch Queen values thinkers, thinker should advise him. Disregard sights. Disregard smells. Identify core truth.”
“What is truth?”
“That the star-sent are here, and there are only two choices.” Would her Queen wish her to sing this? Uncertain. Her mother, would. “Fight them, and die as formites. Or live, and allow them change you into something else.”
“This is redundancy. If choice is between life, and death, then there is obvious answer.”
“Obvious answer, yes. Only one imperative. Colony must live. Colony must endure.” Freshly hewn triangular additions to formerly circular tunnels. Gears and cogs, symbols of scent replaced with letters of the aliens to help their guidance in select layers of the nest. “Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps different choice. Perhaps choice not just survival. Perhaps sometimes, it is preferable to breathe your final note…while you still recognize self. Perhaps better to die as yourself, than live to be something…else.” Muddled was the right word for her music. A mess and wash of colors she no longer identified. If the workers and menials of Skthveraachk around them had heard her notes, they did not react. It was not their role. There’s was to obey, without question, without the concept of question. It was the first time the mender, in all her cycles, found notes of jealousy. Jealousy, in the role of another.
“You are of Jchlehaalhn-Colony!” The delver-…no, no. Truth began with the self, must begin with inner perception as it translated without. Delver-crafter. He was Skthveraachk delver-crafter, and always had been. His bonded thinker brushed her more delicate hairs through the layers of dirt caked to his own, tickling the sensitive bases in the way she knew he enjoyed. Swatting at her with his rear legs, the surprised call from the visiting menials as they entered the shimmering cave cut short his oversight of three different projects. Inefficiency. Excitement. The Queen would approve double shifts for measures out of guilt if he complained. He would complain thoroughly.
“Formerly. Am Skthveraachk now. Delver-crafter. My voice is one.” Which colonies were these? Unimportant. Four breaths to ask and receive an answer, four breaths not spent with his craft. Tens of menials now, pouring into his working space, with more than a few folding their scythes and trying to offer their heads for his touch. His thinker guided one of his antennae into gracing their shells with contact, so he would not need spend the excess energy. “Once, and Again. The Founders know us all. Yes, alright.” They flinched, repeatedly. Not just from his touch, but as each heavy clang deafened them at precise one-breath intervals. “Crafters amongst you? Delvers? …Higher castes, any? Sing!”
“I am Shlthvelhneekch thinker. My Queen sees through me. Was not aware one who had seen the Silent City existed here, so near his nests.” Was that a mender beside that one? Familiar scent. Irrelevant.
“Not here to sing of such. Work must continue. You seek observation? You will watch. Brace first!” Lungs were just starting to burn when the buckets arrived, as always. Lines of menial haulers hoisting and throwing the deep containers of murky water over all present. Dousing them in the cold fluid, letting it flow into their vents and crevices. “Temperature necessary. Necessary!”
“For what purpose!” One of the swarm questioned. The delver-crafter did not identify which. Could not, if he was being pure in vocabulary, but his thinker assured him he was facing the correct direction. “Why such heat!? The cave melts!”
“Melts, yes!” Strike. Clang. Strike. Clamor. He felt each impact behind him, from the lines of furnaces as worker after worker tossed baskets of stone within. “Hardstone, you see? Not suitable as rock, insufficient for purpose. Must be heated! Must pull the best hardstone out.” His first few steps were stumbling. They always were these rises. But his bonded was there. She was always there, guiding him forward.
“Caution. Your eagerness will injure you.”
“Refused!” Her jaws nipped his shell, and the delver-crafter winced. “Mistake. Accepted. Restating. First, the hardstone, heated. Then, the hardstone, poured.” Rivers of glowing hot metal. What was solid could be made other with heat, and with cold, turned back again. Hundreds of workers tipped and spun the ropes and stone urns, filling casts with the precious material. “Then, when it is cooled, we strike! STRIKE!” A clang every breath. Not with scythe, but with blunted rods of rock or brownstone. For the most delicate works, even small tools made of metal themselves. The flat rectangles shaped into points. Into links, or into curved segments that were then joined to larger pieces. A scream sounded from somewhere deeper in the forge, and shrieks were made to halt the process before it was tainted by the menial that had slipped and boiled within the furnace. A delay of bars to clean the thing out, now. Frustrating.
“This process.” The thinker’s voice, the foreign one. “Any may replicate it? Why just brownstone, I see only brown. Why not greystone or gold?”
“Issues of heat. Our furnaces, incapable of melting greystone. Better forges? Better fuel? Many questions. Not enough answers.”
“Clear tunnel!”
“Granting passage!” Two menials took priority as their group moved up onto the wall. He heard the trundle of the wheels and clamber of spearpoints, the cart full of hafted weapons hurrying from the forging cavern to one of the many garrisons for distribution. “Methods will be shared. Queen demands. Colonies serving Sovereignty, outnumbered heavily. Weapons turn menial into soldier. Turn soldier into deadlier soldier. Pickaxe, wheelbarrow, turn worker into four workers. No extra biomass expenditure. Humanite term. ‘Force multiplier’. You seek more observation? You follow next shipment. Construction underway outside Hollowcore.”
“Wait requested! More time needed!” His bonded rapidly tapped at his abdomen, drawing out how half the visiting swarm had surrounded one of the stone flats. They could have picked any, for the thirty in a row were identical. The crafters on four legs before them did not look up, their bodies covered by chitin aprons taken from less fortunate menials. Thin, but thick enough to cover from fragments of metal. As one, forelegs rose. As one, the grip on their hammers tightened. As one, they came down to strike another edge into their casting. Clang, clang, clang. Precision. Repetition. A living machine of output and construction. Another dousing of water from the procession of secondary menials. A breathing sound of a nest growing. He appreciated their appreciation for the beauty. Until one of the damned interlopers tried to reach and feel for the texture of the metal. Praised be Composer that a drone yanked the other’s leg back before it could be crushed in the press.
“Interference! Unacceptable! Allotment of beats, concluded! Go witness elsewhere.”
“Dispatching haulers to guide designation visitors to next location.” Excellent. Let his bonded handle it. He did not wait to be told the swarm had departed, for already his hairs were being pulled. His direct attentions needed. For a moment, the delver-crafter forgot again. Released his claws from his thinker, began to crawl in the direction of the call. He felt his body ram into something, someone? Spears toppled over, segmented sections of cuirass armor developed for frontline combat collapsed in crashing heaps. Something heavy struck his thorax, but he didn’t feel a crack. Only the alarmed and rapid touches of several workers hurrying to help him back to his claws. “Bonded!”
“Peace! Ease! Uninjured!”
“Remain still!”
“Am as the tad feeds, small accident-“ He felt her antennae. Intertwining with his, feeling over his skull. It was one of the few things she knew could stop him in place. Now he truly did hope the foreign drones had departed as Skthveraachk’s own helped the male into an unobstructed corner. For it was impossible to feel her touches this way and not see himself, as the thinker saw him. Feel how she traced the outline of the melted chitin along his face, the grooves where his eyes had once been. Checking the uneven mask of bronze that had replaced the entirety of his skeleton beneath his antennae and above his mandibles. Even after measures. Even now. Just for those moments, he revulsed as she drew the sight of him onto his own shell, the crippling cost of experimentation and a single, stupid misstep made in the forges. His bonded had no revulsion to treat him with. Her tongue ran across his shell, gently cleaning whatever dirt had built up in the cracks of the metal mask now forever sealed to his body. “Unnecessary.”
“Regain grip on me.”
“Received.” His forelegs wrapped around her trunk, his rear ones carrying his weight so as not to stress the superior casted female. “They have departed?”
“They are gone.”
“Am needed in workshop six.”
“Then we go to workshop six.” There was no arguing with her. A menial could have served the same function. Not that they should have. Any other would have been recycled by now. Any crafter, no matter how skilled, should have been tolerated in such a crippled state. It was wrong to be cared for so. And though all parts of him knew it, the heartbeat he felt beating in his bonded’s core as she helped him in the pitch black from world of heat to one of noise. Grinding and sawing, hammering and cutting. “You are allowing emotions color you violet again. Your worth to colony, unhampered by body.”
“Thinker should not act as hauler.”
“A thinker is the one that caught you when we both fell off that caldera on Dracan, bonded. Were you complaining then?”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Yes.” He heard her mandibles opening, and quickly clarified. “Thought you had crushed my leg then.”
“Your creations shape future of Skthveraachk-Colony. Your eyes, gone? I will be your eyes. If your legs fail, we will find menials to be legs for you.”
“Perhaps I should build new eyes.”
“And new legs?” Her laughter eased him. The sensitive underside of his skull rested just where her skull and neck met, and he knew those strokes of her antennae along his chitin weren’t entirely accidental. It helped. The delver-crafter knew they had arrived by smell alone, and by sound alone knew even before the nearby crafters began to recite which of their experiments was demanding his attention.
“Release mechanism continuing to catch?”
“Confirmed. Tension, too great. Silk, too heavy when threaded. Rope, too rigid.”
“Then rope must be softened. Lubricated. Softer, bends, more flexible. Let me hear it again.” Turning wheels, groaning of wooden arms. Tension, building, the same principle as the atlatls that had become standard amongst their soldiers and menial-warriors. But instead of muscle and leg, rope and wood. When the snap came at last, the whizzing of the loaded projectile vanished nearly as fast as it came, and its thunk of impact was lost in the cracking of the arms of the weapon. His bonded began to explain, to describe, but she had been right. He did not need eyes to know what had occurred. Already, patterns and designs began to fill the darkness of Skthveraachk delver-crafter’s mind. “Received. Yes. Lubrication. Think we can get accurate range to hundred-twenty lengths, thinker?”
“With or without breaking the weapon, bonded?” They laughed together once more. The sound lost in the pits beneath the nest, echoing out of the great chimneys struck through the living stone, and falling out with the black pillars of smoke rising from all around the face of the mountain.
<”I think it’s a universal constant. A conspiracy, at least.”>
<”You think everything designed to make you do work is a conspiracy, Bram.”>
“Friend Vish, you should hear out Bram’s worries before labeling them crazy. Calling others crazy is nearly guaranteed to reduce the likelihood of them coming to save you in a firefight.” His eyes stung looking up at the smoke, the sun in just the right position to make the act painfully blinding, but he could have swore he had heard laughter for a moment. Over, or under, the roaring machines and rapid, stomping feet. Shiv, like most of the other unoccupied humanites nearby, were over with the mass of mixed-Queen drones. Like there was something special about seeing formites that were brown instead of black, with smooth crests instead of ridged or curved. Or maybe they just wanted to listen as one of Skthveraachk’s thinkers went on, and on, and on about how wonderful flat ground was.
“Tunnels are expensive in effort. Difficult to build. Useful, in nests, but not for transport. Pathways always utilized above ground, but never to full effectiveness.” The swinging of pickaxes shattering stones, the scattering of pebbles that were then crushed beneath the great rollers of the alien vehicles or claw-held ones of formite workers, mercifully threatened to drown out the sound. At least for a beat. “-call them ‘roads’, and already they are being made all across Skthveraachk-Colony territory. Joining nests, decreasing travel length and difficulty. Humanites pledge to construct between all nests joining Sovereignty, all nests on Kayyhaitch! Unity in body, then in song, until discord is silenced!”
<”Thank you, bugger! Alien planet. Alien life. Got to fight off fauna that looks like a *^&**^&* fucked a horse and grew a stinger for good measure, got to do patrols through underbrush full of toxic mushroom-trees, always the possibility you forget to wear your perfume and your own bugs try to eat you-“>
“I personally debate eating you on a bi-measurely basis when you start complaining like this, scent-markers or no.” The flash of a glare from the smaller male made the scout’s antennae click. “We can’t lie, sorry.”
<”-And at the first sign of a flat stretch of road, someone safely behind a desk decides we certainly haven’t been getting enough exercise after all.”>
<”And you’re saying what, Bram,”> Like the scout’s own weapon, Vish’s lay disassembled in the grass at the side of the white powdery roadway. The shade of a still-standing patch of shroomed trees dipping over them as formite and humanite both ran small tools through their parts. Though the scout admitted, he couldn’t imagine how it mattered, despite the good fun it was learning how. <”That the non-coms and anything over an O-3 is what, genetically predisposed to making us simple grunts march?”>
<”I’m I don’t know how many hundred light-cycles from Earth, on a planet full of aliens, and I’m up at 0700 next rise rucking fifteen kilometers.”> Bram’s lance clicked emptily without its source of light, the scope aimed rather conspicuously at one of the helmeted soldiers walking alongside a formation of at least a hundred aliens walking synchronously past them. <”Somebody hates me.”>
“I don’t hate you.”
<”Thank you, bugger.”>
“I don’t hate the way you taste either.”
<”I don’t want this becoming a thing.”>
“I think I got some of your blood in my mouth when I dragged you out of that crater on Dracan.” The scout made a showing of waggling his tongue, letting the fronds dangle from between his mandibles. “I’ve got a taste for humanite now.”
<”I see you leering over MY sleeping roll, bug, I’m shooting first and questioning later. You’re still not out of the *^&*house for dragging me out here in the first place.”> Vish was not smiling, not like Bram was in his goofy, lopsided way. <”And shouldn’t you be over there, helping convince these other tribes or, whatever they are, to sign up with us?”>
“Not my role. Unless there is specific call for my knowledge, the thinker can handle it. Besides, what would I tell them? ‘Join the Sovereignty, your colonies will risk your life against enemies with superior weapons on worlds you can’t imagine for reasons even I don’t understand’?”
<”Sounds almost exactly like what my recruiter told me, actually. Except he said it was for the honor of reunifying the empire.”>
“If that is what convinced you, it is added evidence formites are clearly more intelligent than individual humanites.” The calls were going up from the marching aliens, again. Skthveraachk adjusted the speed of his head’s bobbing, quickly falling into the time they had established. It was a strange tempo, but one the humanites tended to prefer. Too slow to be considered beautiful, but there was a strange, otherworldly appeal to their sounds, especially when many managed to harmonize their usual disparate voices into near unity.
“You are Skthveraachk?”
“Webs above!” Reeling back, the scout’s flail caught his body before it fell fully to his back, the approach of the menial unregistered until the speckled brown and red drone was nearly upon him. It smelled almost like them. “Ease! Yes, I’m Skthveraachk. Scout, Skthveraachk scout, of-…you know what colony I’m part of.” Awkward. The sounds were correct, but the other formite looked at him as if he had just spoken English. “What is required?”
“Those sounds they make.” Had it gotten lost from the group? No, the swarm of visitor drones had merely spread itself wide. Cataloguing, memorizing, passing information back to their Queens. This one, it seemed, was focused on the ranks of aliens tromping past, a column four thick and tens deep. “What are they?”
“Singing. That’s how they sing.”
“Out of those holes in their tops?”
“Almost always. Sometimes they sing out of a hole just above their legs, but it isn’t as pleasant to hear.”
“What memory are they singing?”
“Drone-“ It hadn’t introduced itself. The awkwardness felt like tree boughs wrapping around the scout’s core. “Unknown sibling. Star-sent songs are not sensible like ours. They don’t sing of memories, or history, they sing of…anything they want, really.” Vish was trying not to smirk. Bram wasn’t even trying. Rather than try to converse with both, Skthveraachk swapped to vibrations the Band would not register. “Shouldn’t heed overly. Some songs are things that never even happened.”
“What is this song?” It was persistent. And the scout had known enough thinkers and higher castes to know when one was using a drone as a relay, and that they wouldn’t stop until they got at least some kind of satisfaction. It was a battle not worth fighting. His capitulation was brief.
“They are singing about their feelings of their role.”
“What is their role?”
“Soldiers. Well, specifically these belong to a type of soldier caste called ‘Ess-em-see’. They go around in giant, flying nests protecting the workers inside and jumping down onto planets when they’re needed-“
“Sing this song for me!” Perhaps Bram was smarter than the scout had realized. The next opportunity, they would move further from any others before resuming their rest and conversation. If it was not the Composer, then certainly someone seemed to truly be able to locate and make miserable any who was seeking to remain unbothered. The thinker was still occupying the majority of the mass. Checking again that his Band was not translating out his notes, vents fluttered in his exhale, and the translation came to the beat of the humanite feet.
“They are saying…’What’s that smoke that I can see? Arm-cav driving into a tree. What’s that VTOL doing on the deck? Navy boy got a splinter, said he needs EVAC. What’s that shovel being handed to me? I’m not here to dig holes, that’s the Army. What’s that-‘” He’d hoped after three or four exchanges, the drone would have grown tired. Somewhere, it seemed, a thinker was instead recording the entirety of the first star-sent music their colony had ever heard. And unfortunately for the scout, as he sat translating as the rows and rows of lightly-dressed jogging humanites passed, the Sovereignty had very, very many kinds of soldiers. Of which, and on which every one, the Sovereignty Marines had an opinion.
“Repeat protest.”
“Queen acknowledges. Disregards.”
“What is point in designating me leader of this exercise if my experience is ignored?”
“Purpose is leadership. Inform visiting colonies. Answer queries. Nothing further required.”
“Colonies have not confirmed allegiance. Demonstration of weapons inadvisable to potential enemies.”
“Received.”
“Orders?”
“Inform visiting colonies. Answer queries.” The former Vhersckaahlhn slammed a spur into the dirt so forcefully that earth in a chunk came up attached to his leg with his claw withdrew. These were not his soldiers. These were not even menial-warriors. These were humanites. Standing by as their Hathan-Captain had ordered, scant rows of infantry, of spitters, of their longer ranged hurlers and more. Skthveraachk-Colony had bled for this information. Skthveraachk Queen had fought aboard Palamedes for scraps of this knowledge, had collected the rest from corpses of their shared children, hers and his. Even now she refused another brood with him. Sent him instead to one of her daughters. Their eggs had been of the Composer itself, the strongest warriors Kayyhaitch had ever seen. But now, they did not need the strongest warriors. Skthveraachk Queen did not want them. Their value was emergency, last-resort. Now it was waves of smaller, weaker, lesser warriors. But armed with atlatls, with spears and hooked shields. Less biomass investment, equal capability for destruction. His children were perfect. They were divine. They were too perfect to use. Skthveraachk soldier’s claws raked the ground, and his maw slavered in opened displeasure.
<”We’re planning to start with the shortest ranged options, and work our way up from there-“>
“Order irrelevant.” It sounded wrong. His music, deep and hard, changed to a floating lightness as the female riding atop his crest used her band to translate for him. The menial-warrior adjusted herself, her holster of spears rattling along his carapace, but the soldier could barely register the difference in weight. He watched the thinkers, scentcrafters, menials, some scouts, even a pale mender, all work their way down the road to the cliffside rise. “Commence firing as soon as possible.”
<”I’ll get permission from Captain Devries, then. You might want to warn them about the noise.”> Twice insulted, never bothered. The faceless, scentless alien made the comments sound a snub, but the purple-hued soldier needed do little more than flick a leg to sever the creature in half. Beneath notice. Thirty skulls of its kind already hung from the belts made of their skin he wore. That alone was enough to bring the smell of fear from the mixed colonies. His color, his size. What he had been, what he still represented. That was just excess.
“The Skthveraachk Queen demands your attention. You will give it.”
“Attention is given.”
“Arranged are soldiers. Humanite soldiers. Humanite soldiers vary in strength depending on weapon. Many weapons present. Weapons used against enemies of the Skthveraachk Queen. You will observe.”
<”Clear down range! Clear down range! Open fire!”> He did not wait for their questions. He did not wait for the understanding. There was opportunity for neither in combat. They experienced as the colony had first experienced, the sudden crackling as white lightning from the ends of twenty lances tore across the field below. Soldiers, knelt in the grass, sending line after line of light into dead targets of refuse. Exploding piles. Melted piles. Fear markers and surprise came almost immediately. The former Vhersckaahlhn crawled around the perimeter of the drones, using his size to force them nearer the edge of the platform.
“Smallest weapon. Weakest weapon. Humanite lance. Weaker charge, faster fire, shorter range. Charge to full? Slow. Powerful. Single beam at two hundred lengths boils you alive from inside skeleton. Spills you. Explodes you outward, rains you on your siblings.”
<”Ready one! Ready one! Clear front! Clear front! Firing!”> The stilled, rounded AG-tanks unleashed five shots, one after the other down the line. There were no targets for these. It was the distant mountainside of another peak that erupted into fire and light. He doubted many of the menials possessed the eyes to even see so far. But they could feel the air. Feel the heat, even from here.
“Humanite vehicles. Move, and fire. Sixty of your children, silenced. Gone. Maybe two or three sing back to you, try to explain what happened. Won’t be able to help. Distance too far to identify. Melting from heat. Will report they have died. Then they will die.”
<”Firing solution locked. Load one, load one! Locked! Ready one, fire one!”> Only one of the humanite artillery pieces had been moved here. And one was sufficient. They were aiming for the field, and the light which blossomed as the green flaming boulder impacted into a cloud of debris whipped dust clear into the onlookers, even as fragments fell harmless many lengths earlier. There were puddles beneath the drones now. The platform slick with juices and warning signals.
“Will be no report of death from this weapon. No warning signals. Ground boils. Scents, erased. Calmest death. No pain. No shout. You are. Then you are not. Will never know you have failed colony.”
“Weapons.” One of the Queens, speaking directly through its link. The hulking purple form shook, briefly, at the excitement of it. Of the subtle desire to match self against whatever was looking from behind those miniscule eyes. “How many. How many do the star-sent possess? These are their only?”
“They are without number. They are without end. These, only? These, meaningless.” The soldier let his humor seep sickly from him. “Destroy these, a hundred more. A thousand more. A million more. Destroy all the humanites here, five times that many just on Kayyhaitch. Kill them all, ten times more on Dracan. Kill them, ten more planets with ten times more. They are deific. They kill by the millions. No need of remorse. No need for biomass. Admiration of their purity. Individually weak, but impossibly strong. I have never fought better enemy.” He knew these tactics. Offerings of pretty things, of tasty things. He knew what the Queen thought she was doing, giving them kindness. He was Skthveraachk soldier. He had no need of such things. He showed them truth. Kindness was for allies. There was only slaughter for enemies of Skthveraachk-Colony. Let the smell of the rising smoke be burned into their memories, lest they smell the burning of their children instead. That was his kindness. From the way the visiting swarm retreated and dispersed as soon as the artillery cannon began its reload, he expected their appreciation for it was endless.
Shlthvelhneekch had gone quiet. The others, too, but they at least filled the silence with the chewing of their drones, the soft horking of mass from one stomach to another. Skthveraachk Queen had accepted a single quarter-stomach drink of jelsaah, feeling lethargic even from that. It didn’t taste quite right, having been stored in a Sovereignty jar rather than transported naturally in a stomach pouch, but the taste was still unmistakable. Without the masses of drones, the feeding chamber felt empty. Five oversized bodies amidst mere tens of smaller children. They did not know what to sing. Skthveraachk did not blame them.
“The first time I fought them, I almost won.” Miroslava was not sitting, but had adopted a sort of lean. It went bolt-upright at the Queen’s music. Almost as upright as Shlthvelhneekch himself.
“You have fought the star-sent?”
“Yes. Here, first. Elsewhere. It is difficult, to explain. What it is to travel to the sky, and return. To walk in places never seen by a formite before. To breathe air not of this world.”
“You have fought them. You are alive. They can be beaten.”
“They can be killed.” Avoiding Ckhehnvraahll’s gaze, Skthveraachk passed her eyes over the other three Queens. “I killed many of them at my birthing nest. They were as unprepared as I. They made mistakes. I was lucky. I almost won. And when they saw it, they opened the sky.” Buried alive. Fifteen layers down, screaming in panic. She fought down the memories, refused to let the weakness show in front of the others. Thinkers offered to hold the excess ideas, but she clasped them close to her voice. “They burned my nest down to the twentieth layer. They silenced thousands in a breath. It was calculated. It was measured. I survived it. I have seen them do worse.”
“This is a song of despair, not of hope!” Hhehnstaachlk snapped forward, the concern in his voice bringing his hairs to a stalked rigidity upon his back. “You sing of your allies as if they were monsters!”
“No, no they are not monsters.” Dry in vent, two of her attendants began to pour water against the outside of her lungs. Giving her a precious moment to hide the shaking breaths she needed to take. “They are capable of monstrous things. They will act as monsters, if provoked. They are not like us, and that is why you must sing with them and understand them. Because our people cannot, must not, can never learn what it is to provoke them. To do what is natural to us, and test the strength of the foe. They do not enter battle with their strongest soldiers, or weapons. They hide them, wait until their use is necessary.”
“Illogical. Confirm this truth, humanite.” Shlthvelhneekch rounded on the Miroslava once more, and though her jaw was set, her voice came quiet and sure.
<”We call it ‘proportional response’. You never play a queen when a seven will do.”> It sounded of analogy, and when it was clear none present understood, a short sigh brought second try. <”We use only the minimum amount of force needed to achieve victory. Only as much damage as we need to do.”>
“Then you are right to fear attack and confusion by other colonies. They fear the unknown, yes, but they are watching. Determining. Sizing whether it is possible to combat you, even now. You should use your strongest warriors, your most powerful of ‘weapons’, at least once. Once, if only to show our people the threat.” Miroslava had begun to shake her head even before the other Queen had finished. A morose sort of smile the other formites would not understand forming on her face.
<”Couldn’t do that.”>
“It would show us you could not be opposed!”
<”It wouldn’t show you anything. I don’t mean to insult you, Queen, but you think like a cave-humanite. In terms of big sticks and big bodies. Firing our strongest weapon at you wouldn’t teach you anything, because when it impacted and bored into the core of your planet, there’d be about a bar before it’d explode.”>
“Explode? Rupture? Your weapon?” Skthveraachk had assumed. Shlthvelhneekch, now, still wrestled with the music, the impossibility of it. There was pity in the way the other fought, clawed, sought to grab any small possible escape. She had been there herself, once, not so long ago. And just as she had been shown, she remained silent, letting the Miroslava blink once in confusion before clarifying.
<”No, Queen. The planet. You’d have about a bar before the planet, and everyone on it, died.”> The silence returned with a furious calm. Nestled around their bodies like a bivouac’s warmth, but hollow and dry. The many drones were on their way to see some of the humanite structures, but even they walked with a shiver on the outside of Hollowcore’s face. <”This got really heavy, the Magistrate is right. You shouldn’t worry about something like that, because it’d never happen. You don’t need to be frightened of us; we’re here to help, like I said. To make things, to make you, better.”>
“Received. Of course.” These Queens still had no sense of falsehood. No comprehension of lies. The humanite spoke, and they believed. “Any with such power must be magnanimous, to refrain from using it. We will remain here some measures. To listen. You will sing with us?”
<”That’s my role, yes. We’ve already started with the basic tenets of the empire, but what I really want to talk to you about is someone called the Emperor. And why he wants us to help you in the first place. Now I’ve heard you have many songs about something called the ‘Composer’…” The humanite spoke. They believed. None protested, or nearly noticed, when Skthveraachk rose and sung apologies, excusing herself from the room. The Miroslava was efficacious. She saw the beauty in the Sovereignty, and would paint for them a canvas as vivid as it was subjective. But that subjectivity would become their truth, and from it, would spring the foundation of unity. First in the valleys. Then, the mountains. Until everything from coast to Silent City believed, as she believed. Truth. Lie. Within her, a growing irrelevance was taking root. There was victory, and there was defeat. Life, and death. She had sacrificed everything asked of her thus far. What was truth but another small casualty, waiting to-
“War Queen.” Her claws were halted. The sun was setting, but still high enough that the beams came angled through the holes to the landing platforms. Shining at just such a slant that they crossed at Ckhehnvraahll’s midsection, highlighting her supple vents while shadowing the pale white of her legs and antennae. Thoughts, and voice, caught halfway out of Skthveraachk’s lungs.
“Slough Queen. I did not wish your distraction, the Miroslava may have much to share with you as well.”
“It is not the humanite I wish to share with.” Only eight attendants for her. Twelve and one for Skthveraachk, though more were climbing around her now, sensing her distress.
“I have spent several fades with you already.”
“You did not sing that the humanites had the weapons to destroy our world, War Queen.”
“I did not desire your worry. Your fear.”
“Nor have you sung of what occurred on the red planet. The damage you carry.”
“Our reports, our messages, were thorough. I gave much info through the pad, and have sung with you of the many adventures had on that foreign world.”
“Sung at, Skthveraachk. You have sung at me, or sung alongside me. But you continue to avoid sharing your truth. Reciting fully of your time there. Even my daughter, my mender, avoids my touch. As if you are here, but as yet not.”
“Accusations-“
“I do not accuse!” The rush of scent. Skthveraachk had faced down allomyrites and tanks with the power to melt her in breaths, yet it was her bonded’s stride forward that sent her stumbling back a claw. Unable to escape before the pair of white graspers had latched themselves to the cusp beneath her skull. So that the softness of her voice traveled directly into the Queen’s throat. Their attendants mingling, binding until one could not be distinguished from the other. “I do not accuse. My voice. My colony superior. I know you. You are the other side of my core, the harmony to the music of my life. But you hide from me. Why? What is it you fear?” You. You, Slough Queen. Skthveraachk had sacrificed much. There was yet one thing she refused to lose. And perhaps her broken breath gave it away. “There is nothing you can sing I will not understand. Nothing you can utter I will not forgive. You are hurting, and I hurt watching how you seek to remain apart. Sing with me, War Queen. What is it that holds you frozen?”
A breath. A beat. Selfish desire weighed against painful duty. How much could be shared? How much could be offered? As much as was needed. As little as possible. But there were things her bonded needed to learn. Another breath. And a single question.
“Ckhehnvraahll Queen. What have you been told of the humanite concept…called ‘lying’?”