2023-08-11

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I: A falling star

There it is, the ripple before the splash. A ship is coming. It reads as clear as day on the defence network. The Admiral’s orders come through quickly. Prewritten, for a day we hoped would never come. Almost an obituary, and one soberingly brief. The gung-ho hurrahs of yesteryear were worn, tired, and rotting in the mound. Redundant. Redundant.

“Kill them.”

The vessel emerges, parting the fabric as though scissors on cloth. I chatter my antennae, a nervous habit, and for once I am glad to be alone, away from the hive. I am the sole source of oversight to this machine that I have become. Plumbed and wired in, tubes replacing organs familiar to me only from lectures long ago:

How to glue on scales.

How to infuse substitute haemolymph.

How to kill a comrade, should they fall to the parasite.

The machine and I are one. It is a form like mine prior to assignment, albeit one writ large in alloy, composite, and ceramic.

I bite myself internally, return my focus to the present and the Enemy. Minor nodes subservient to myself communicate vectors, times, and estimated payloads. They were scions from the hive that failed to develop, ones normally dispatched and returned to the mound, a perfect feed for future generations. Instead, those generations will need substitute feed. An inferior source, despite what the science would tell us. I fire my first salvo at the target, just as a series of new ripples bark for attention.

This is unusual. Every other time it had been a single ship.

That was all they needed to level the other mounds, kill the other hives. Those same hives who had once been our enemies, inferior states fighting against their rightful parental masters. Those who had died by the dozens before running home with a plea. Unity came to us with sacrifice and time. Minor Queens were prostrated and sacked for their glands, giving the main blood traits acquired through selection. My generation were the fifteenth borne from this. The mightiest scions yet from the final twelve under the One. Over two-thirds of us survived, were taught, and achieved adulthood. A record, unimaginable before.

My shot misses, and again I bite myself. I chastise a subservient node for poor targeting. Feedback is essential for improvement. The next three ships emerge as my second salvo fires. They are not like the first. Sleeker, more venomous. Arbite class, to the first’s Clost. Sunkillers. My second salvo strikes the Clost, eliciting a shield flare. A node is rewarded. My contemporaries are placed elsewhere around the Mother, and some also manage to strike. Not as well. This pleases me.

A third salvo is readied, chambered, and launched. It errors out and I curse. My fury knows bounds, but they are distant and pale. The nodes fear me, for I own them, and they seek the source. They find it and alert me. Strange, it is a subnode. One of the few designed able to provide an interrupt, to give me pause. I push the subnode and it infodumps.

A message, in tight-beam and in code. Our code. It is an emergency call, one of help. A prostration, and an offer of glands, to be used or burned.

I am confused.

Then, I watch the Arbites fire.

The Clost lets out a shield flare brighter than any I have seen, right as my third salvo re-arms. The wave from my contemporaries strikes shortly after, a weak afterglow to the main show. But mine is held. I am struck by indecision and contact the Admiral. I chatter nervously as the connection request takes its time. A scutterfly with wings plucked would be quicker. And as it connects, I almost wish I were one, as the Admiral is displeased.

“You are not killing.”

It is an accusation.

“Yes Admiral, I have received a message from the Clost. Forwarding now.”

The Admiral receives the message and ponders. I desperately batten down the chatter. The Admiral speaks.

“The Queen has declared this a trick. You will continue.”

The connection ends. I am torn, as the Admiral is wrong. But I will obey.

I fire.

They fire.

The Clost dies.

A falling star.

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II: Parasite glade

As the Clost skitters down a gravity well I am struck by the corkscrew it leaves behind. A shape all know for it is a gnawing shape, a burrowing shape, a fruiting shape. The shape of death. Of the Parasite. The Clost disappears below clouds and by the Queen’s blessing, the Arbites retreat. The fabric knits behind them, and the ripples fade out soon after. My orders come.

I am to follow the trail down-well.

The Parasite was, is, our Old Enemy. The only spectre we could never quite shake. Every push made to eradicate it would seem successful. Then, in the middle of the mound, a worker like me would fall. A helix would erupt from their bulk, and a cloud would be unleashed. Then, chaos. The cleanup would take half a generation in time and claim half a generation in bodies. These days, the Parasite is left to its own. When unthreatened it is less ambitious, claiming scant victims in the shadows of lesser-worked tunnels. On Paeremos, we failed to learn that lesson.

And now I would follow that tell-tale shape down the well into Paeremos, now the lesser-worked tunnels of the mother system.

Lucky me.

I land inside a field of wreckage. Strange alloys and workings are scattered through the soil. Fires burn unstifled in the strange high-oxygen atmosphere. Growths, presumably of the Parasite, crowd the edge of the clearing. They cringe at the fumes but perk on seeing my shape. Then, they hunger.

I search the ruins, looking for anything of value. An assignment of great value, this is. An honour, worthy of promotion on my success. This is my hope.

I find something that moves. It appears to rise, then halts, falls. I approach.

A communication triggers my array and is forwarded through by a node. It is not the Admiral. I tremble and chatter, as there is only one possibility.

“Stop. Listen,” the Enemy says. It moves part of itself. Like a nip, but thicker and split into smaller pieces at the end.

“Listening,” I reply, desperately signalling the Admiral. Failing to connect.

“I come to prostrate.”

This takes a moment to parse. We know nothing of the Enemy, but this one appears to lack glands. A mental prostrate then, to pass on learnings through speech only.

“I need you to promise that this makes it to your Queen, will you do tha—”

The speech is cut out by a loud noise. Probably bad. The Parasite growths begin to move in around us, slowly but surely. This will have to be quick.

“Yes.”

The Enemy speaks.

Sometime later, as the growths makes to strike, I depart the Parasite glade.

---

III: At the Enemy’s gates

The revelations of Paeremos were worthy of promotion. One greater than I could have known. Now, I am a subnode to the Queen herself, shucked from my lonesome shell and emplaced beneath the Admiral. And now is my greatest assignment, that of ambassador. That of saviour.

So it is hoped.

The Queen herself had never left the mother hive. Such a thing was not possible. Without the Queen to hold the mound another would surely rise. One without the heritage to know best. One who would bring ruin on us all.

But it was time for radical action.

The Queen prostrated herself, and the royal glands were harvested so that the rightful heir could rise, in short order. I was grafted as a prelude to the same ceremony, my learnings last to infuse the glands. My antennae were taken, as befits a subnode of the Queen; chatter would not do. A sacrifice I would make time and again for the honour above all else.

Then, we arrive. The fastest, largest, most beautiful craft ever shaped by my kind is nothing compared to the gates. The giant arches of composite, unknowable, first brought the Enemy to us. A structure we now know is mirrored countless times elsewhere in the great dark. A lure.

We strike the gates and, as the inevitable ships arrive (three Arbites, one larger Stiker) we tightbeam, and I speak, telling my story and forwarding on that from the downed enemy.

They were the first. For an eternity they revelled in the empty beyond, doing everything and anything. Then, everything had been done. And all that was left was nothing. Nothing new. Nothing bold. Nothing worth living for. But death was against their ethos. An enemy of their own, defeated half an eternity prior. Not one that could be allowed to return.

They had Nothing. Nothing but loneliness and enemies gone.

So they looked for others. Those both sentient and intelligent. Equals from which to learn and to share with. And again they found Nothing.

Uplifting was tried countless times and failed in each instance. The product was too alike to the Enemy, raised on the same learnings. Each time, offspring was simply incorporated into the fold, yet more minds to understand the loneliness of the Enemy.

Those they didn’t uplift would also disappoint, but in a different manner.

A membrane would fail to form.

A molecule would fail to replicate.

A cell would fail to leave when its ancestral home cooled and died.

Species would fret and rot in their own filth, others would melt in their own misery.

A precious few would have dominion over their mound, for a time. Then die in a myriad of ways, each no different from the others before, apart from the tools used. They would all be reduced to scum on the surface of a caustic lake, slowly freezing under a dying atmosphere or splitting sun.

Each,

and every,

Time.

Then, a new idea.

Instead, no technology would be provided. No energy or resources would be traded. No cultural wealth given.

Instead, they would become The Enemy. The shadows in the dark. The driving hand that demands unity, in fear of death. The force that necessitates sacrifice and mothers’ invention, both technological and social.

If a unique companion would not arise naturally and could not be made with love, then it would be shaped with fire.

I had asked the downed enemy one question, before the Parasite came too close for comfort.

“Why did you come here to tell us this?”

It had paused before making a noise again, probably bad. Then, continued, quieter. Weaker.

“Because it’s wrong. We will never have an equal, and it’s not our right to force you to become one.”

This learning, this wisdom I had gained, I now sent to the Enemy fleet. Delivered with my strongest voice and supported by the Admiral, greatest of the nodes, and transmitted by the Queen herself.

The final information the downed Enemy had departed remained aboard our ship, not transmitted.

“If they know you know, they will have to make a choice. Keep you or kill you.”

I had asked which was more likely.

But it did not reply. We would be alone at the Enemy’s gates.

---

IV: Eradicate or Incorporate?

Begin signal 67.235.146292_a

HSS Shakespeare’s Globe

> Species 556_a has been compromised, likely through contact with RSS Where the Sun Don’t Shine (event 2.64.4531_c). Request confirmation of action:

> Eradicate or Incorporate?