“I cannot accept.”

“You do not have the luxury of refusing.” Luxury was something from the fade prior, not just for herself, but each of the eighteen who had been contained on the Palamedes. Licked and scoured clean, chitin filed down, and the Queen feeling as fresh as a molting. They stood together, Skthveraachk and Ckhehnvraahll, in the shade of the canopy of thorns and spurs. Grass surrounding the nest had been trampled flat by thousands of claws, and all through the fade had they felt the vibrations as ships told to be thrice the size of a Wyvern landed, opened wide their maws, and swallowed hundreds of her people at a time. Her most disagreeable thinker had volunteered to travel first, with the rest of her thinkers and queens. Sending any others would leave them directionless and disharmonious aboard the Palamedes, and that was a risk unacceptable on all fronts. She had tried to breach the subject with the male, the offer she had prepared for the others, but he had dismissed it outright.

“My Queen is dead. My colony is gone. Even were they not, would they take me to the stars? To other worlds? Show me a fraction of what I have seen here? I think not. Do not waste either of our possibly meager lives with this nonsense.” He had been gone without even waiting for dismissal, off to further antagonize her daughters no doubt. The role of a thinker was to be a ceaseless ache for a Queen, after all. But the ache she felt now was of a smaller sort. A biting sorrow that would not detach itself from her core.

“I cannot deprive you of thousands of warriors while Ktcvahnaah is at your faderise, and there is still the chance of raids from the sopra. Your desire to lend aid is born of emotion, not reason.”

“Three thousand warriors, and you are much less intimidating than you think with all this new weight clinging to you.” Mind’s plague on the humanites for her recent diet. Ckhehnvraahll had been finding great amusement in her uncomfortable heaviness since rise. “I yet will have seven thousand remaining, and as the memories make tell and ballads bellow, my mother held back a force of twice that when Skthveraachk-Colony invaded our lands.” All but the last several hundred of her people had already been swallowed by the great nothing above. Even still, they echoed her restrained annoyance at the repeated prodding jabs made. “If we could hold against your strength, I think I shall not find myself fearfully cowering at the prospect of battle with such like Ktcvahnaah-Colony.”

“And should the humanites choose violence, you would not be able to stop them regardless.” She knew the other Queen had drawn the conclusion as they hummed together underground, wrapped about one another long into the fade. “The likelihood of them returning is an unknown variable, but experience indicates I should strike it as ‘low’. You should prioritize the growth of replacements as soon as possible, if this is the path you are firm in walking.”

“The role of the vassal is to support the superior colony. You have been called upon to serve the humanites, and I, as yours, will call in turn on my children to serve you.” Hathan-Commander had made it clear that Skthveraachk was expected back, but she had been granted leave to await the arrival of their ’lesser queen’, to ensure proper meeting, done properly. Watching the now considered small Wyvern descend into the open field, feeling the raw nerves of the Queen beside her unaccustomed to personally exposing herself as she was, Skthveraachk was thankful she had been. Over a thousand menials, attendants, even a few tens of spitters, were marshalled about the pair. They were half reared already. She made sure the touch for Ckhehnvraahll’s leg was slow, and unalarming.

“I will take your soldiers. But you must replace them, quickly. And you must do as I asked and carry my song of caution to the Triumvirate.” The Wyvern touched ground. It was stunning to watch it swoop low through the sky, only to come to crawling halt overhead. To gently light itself straight downwards, all without a fraction of movement in its frame. “If my warnings reached you, and others, then the Three will have heard them as well by now. I do not know what the humanites intend for our world, or when, but we must prepare as best we can for the arrival. They may not heed me, or you, but when time comes, they will at least have a story to rely upon.”

“I will do both these things. You will focus upon remaining alive, that you be the one to return and your voice be the one to reach them itself.” That hard and greasy smell was flowing across the all but barren greenery. The larger, squarer vessels remained off to the edges of the clearing, but bar after bar of takeoff and landing had made once clean woodland stained with muddy splotches of black. The door opened. Both Queens stiffened. A single male strode from the interior, without single amber or accompaniment, and headed straight for them. Black and white shell. A bared head, capless, but with strange hardstone hooks that had been affixed to the holes beneath his eyes. Not even the vast array of drones halted his progress, and when he came to a halt four lengths from them, he thrust upward his head and bowed, baring his strangely brown neck as shell billowed out around him. Ckhehnvraahll raised alongside Skthveraachk, reared on her legs, and made a perfect bow as the stories of the Palamedes told.

Ckhehnvraahll all but recoiled, looking to Skthveraachk for guidance. She had none to give, eyes gazing down stunned at the polite greeting. A Band. She could see it in his grasper, his hand. Feeding his translated music out to all. Her shock was apparent, but to the grace of her station, Ckhehnvraahll gathered self upwards quickly.

”Aah…Aahdhaarshck-Sovereignty thinker, may your voice never fade.” It was a lamed greeting, but better than Skthveraachk’s first. She did not bother trying to interpret as her Slough Queen had; be it thinker or Queen, the humanite designations were better taken phonetically and left at that.

“Aadarsh of the Imperial Sovereignty, may your claws walk gentle on this ground. I submit only desire to assist in explaining that you will cause great confusion if you offer one name to yourself, and another to your colony. It is not done.” She had fully expected interruption. Instead, the male remained low until she had finished, and kept the hole of his face sealed while edges turned upward.

His grasper raised with the Band, but even after bars of detailed description, Ckhehnvraahll’s displeasure at the slender digits still trembled beside the Queen.

“Your colony is one Queen, near ten planets, and fifty billion voices. Entire new words will need be constructed for what your people are, and we will learn to adjust to them.”

He began to emit the belching, his lips peeling back over the bone, before composing himself back to what passed for formality among the humanites. Her mandibles had begun to seal shut, yet the male was quick to continue.

“Vassal Colony. Unjellied.” Composing herself around the stories already written, already passed from Skthveraachk’s colony to hers, she ended her bow. “My Queen has accepted her role within your Sovereignty. I accept and welcome you to my nest, for as long as you desire to stay. We will need to mark you, and any you bring.”

Pause. Was he finished? No, he had noticed Ckhehnvraahll holding back her queries, and was allowing space for their presentation.

“What sort of work will you be undertaking here, thinker? We have suffered several raids by your people, or another colony of your species, on our feeding reserves.”

It was waved away, cut from the music, excised like growth. The Queens had no response. It was an expected goal, unlike how unexpected the males mannerisms were. Uncanny. Unusual. He did not interrupt. He did not impose. He did not even stink. Even his color was a less an off-putting pink, but not quite so unpleasantly black as the despised Captain. He was almost like the drone of another colony. Instead of reassuring, it only unsettled her more. Ckhehnvraahll consented, and with word to the rise of the protection about his neck, pale shells and soldiers began to file in doubled line from the vessel. The beetroot skin swelled as the male inhaled, and the rod suspended at his face clicked and flickered rapidly.

It didn’t fall upon her until she was halfway to one of the last box transports. The unmarred sky. The smoothness of the wind on her polished carapace. The taste of Ckhehnvraahll in the air, behind her now, strong and upright while two pale shells fastened a Band around her neck. Warmth. Quiet disrupted only by the whirring of machinery. One measure. She had been gifted one measure of her world, to take with her. Come, and gone. They were gathered at the ship, there in the clearing. Among the last few hundred already in progress of boarding. She had ensured they remained the longest. Drones among them had barely registered the question the Queen had posed, but still deserved every beat of the sun that could be gifted. Then, it was but a single small attendant, disc-backed and wan. A soldier, the deepest red she had ever seen, and she had seen many Vhersckaahlhn. On his back, a scout, using the looming figure as outlook without protest from his mount. A delver, earning displeased utterances from covered soldiers as claws tested the strength of the wheels and cords between the gap of ramp and hull. A spitter that had finally bloated and swollen, laden with freshly produced acids, remained contented and silent as ever to the rear. And a mender, followed by trio of drones all carrying discarded plates and molts for later consumption. Staring wistfully back at the nest, from which new thousands of promised warriors had begun to file and march.

“What was made a hope for the future has now come to pass. We return. We remain. Our colony was not a natural thing. It was of desperation, and survival.” Seeing no attendants about her, the lone twin scurried to take place beneath the Queen. Already sensing the longing to remain, patting support into her underside. “Unity in necessity is not unity. A single choice is not a choice. It will be difficulty, there may be damage, but we have seen the truth. The humanites have not destroyed our colonies. They have not despoiled our world. You are capable of returning.”

“Skthveraachk Queen could kill Vhersckaahlhn Queen.” The soldier’s voice shook the nearby fungal roots by its depth, not its volume. “Skthveraachk Queen stronger. Skthveraachk Colony, then, stronger. Vhersckaahlhn sings that strength rules, must be followed. Skthveraachk must be followed. You will mate with Vhersckaahlhn, and grow even greater.”

“It is accepted.” Abundance of biomass promised. Pledged. A war to win. Soldiers would be needed. “You will create broods. Perhaps the first brood of this new planet to which we venture.”

“Who would have considered. Vhersckaahlhn, cycles of war, all solvable with breeding agreements.” The soldier merely clacked claws and scythes as the scout clinging to his crest tittered. Looked out, now down, and she listened as he drew for her the true breadth of the clearing. The floating vessels even now descending, becoming sharp in his advanced eyes. “Ghescktyeelh-Colony is my colony. Skthveraachk-Colony is my colony. I desire return, I desire to warn. My role is to see, and to warn. But there is more to see. There is too much to see. If I returned, now, I would be a half-blind scout. Useless. I must stay. Even if it means I stay with a Queen who volunteers to hunt sky-sent with fewer than fifty voices.”

“Queen! Queen going, attendant going. No separation. Queen, Queen, Queen.” Burbling was the happiness. An ignorant happiness. How close the former nesting drone had come to frenzy. How barely sentient it was now. Did it choose to remain with her, or did it even understand the choice anymore?

“Thinker would say irrelevant.” The delver had retreated amidst cries of anger, and a length of stretchy blackness was gripped between jaws and graspers. A solid object that distended, pulled, could be thinned from tengthlength to nearly half a length. Cut, it seemed, from the interior of the vessel. “Attendant will frenzy if left. Will die if unable to serve. Better to perform function for as long as possible, even if in more limited capacity. You present choice, but choice is obvious. Returning to our former colonies is not safety. It is emotion. They will come here, eventually. Already.”

“The Hymnal Watchers will need to be warned, delver. I send Ckhehnvraahll to warn the Triumvirate, but the Silent City may be at risk. The temples, the paths, the great roads and tunnels. Your music will be better received to them, your knowledge used to fortify.”

“If we had twenty cycles and ten million legs with which to labor, perhaps. No. The city of the Founders is a marvel, but the wonders it contains pale to that of the humanites. They will be warned, and they will listen, and it will not matter. I seek the ingredients. The thinker will assemble them. Then, creations will be made into existence that can change the course of our future.”

“The river is unstoppable.” The scout repeated the idiom, yet with the colder mirth she had come to expect of him. “But we may be able to influence its course, if we try.” Spitter did not wait to be called upon. It slunk back into the great hold of the cubed transport, given space so as not to pressure the precious sack of bile. And so, Skthveraachk reached out arm to the last. The spindlier greyed leg touching back, the mender focused ever upon the great dome of spikes and fibre spears.

“Ckhehnvraahll is my vassal. Ckhehnvraahll is my ally. You should remain.”

“Yes. Should, yes, ought to stay. The Slough Queen is at risk. Danger. A mender assists. A mender heals. A mender prioritizes.” Small mandibles opened and closed repeatedly, the legs pulling across one another as the hard logic took the central section to the heartful weeping’s underscore. “Ckhehnvraahll Colony is threatened, yes? Yes. Skthveraachk Colony is threatened, yes? Yes. Ckhehnvraahll Queen weakens self to strengthen Skthveraachk. Yes. Skthveraachk death darkens Ckhehnvraahll skies. Yes. A piece, a trust, a hope sent with the War Queen to the sky.” The scout gave small alarm at the designation. Were he the one to sing it, she may have struck. “Stay. Yes. No? No. No. A mender prioritizes. Risk to former colony, great. Risk to new colony, greater. Focus efforts. Triage. Needed here. No, no … yes.”

It was not the Queen who began to sing. One of the new soldiers, perhaps, seeking guidance, or one of her scentcrafters detecting the emotional imbalance of the collective. It was not a paean, nor a lament, and it did not bear the weight of either a dirge or rallying call. In columns, Ckhehnvraahll’s soldiers marched and called, and to them Skthveraachk answered as the gathering of the once-eighteen dispersed to the masses. Until the drone of the powered lungs which brought flight to the vessels could not be distinguished under the antiphon of their joining. Their own replies wound out through the growths and trunks, curving around bends and boughs, until the woods themselves seemed to join in the great work. Once more into the darkness, once more unto the stars. She let the bodies pile upon her within the transport ship, and though the voices were lost with the sealing of the ramp, she could feel the vibrations of their singing follow. Follow as the ground was lost to them, follow up as they raced upward. One measure of home. They would be back. Once and Again.

Hathan-Commander had spoke of changes. It was understatement. Draped white sheets, flexible as the aliens’ shells but not as yielding, now decorated the corridors blocked off by amber soldiers. Great announcements flooded through the ceilings, though even such volume could not fully drown out the symphony of life that had taken hold of the vessel. The thinkers and queens had done remarkably; no injuries on the humanites to speak of. No damages. Only sixty odd drones had been wounded, and only sixteen killed when they drew too near or moved too sharply by the soldiers. The bodies were dragged to the central areas, stockpiled so spitters and menders could use the meat and shells to replenish their stocks of fluids. From the landing deck, the tide of movement traveled through opening and sealing triple-doors, into the cargo holds that had all been thrown wide and joined together. So that that entirety of the Palamede’s lower decks ran together, with only ceremonial barriers to progress between each. Spraying was in fullest undertaking, the limits of the new nest being established. This would present problem when unmarked ambers at their stations would soon be considered within the borders, but it was problem easily handled. Hathan-Commander was already calling her to the far end of the cargo bay her people had designated the feeding chamber. But it was the thinker who spoke first, two hundred lengths away within the writhing mess of activity.

“Report of importance.”

“The ambers are unknows, they are fearful of our approach. Order all drones to maintain four lengths of distance.”

“Suggest extending to six.” Six would be too great of a decrease in available room. She began to sing for five when the wave of cold hit her, and the thinness of the air caused a gasp. No. No, better to remain four. They could stack atop each other on the planet’s surface, but she feared suffocation here. How had she tolerated it for measures, the shock of the inadequacy outrageous. “Irrelevant for the moment. I have obtained discoveries from the humanite thinkers. They have fitted me with Band, in your absence. I was required to answer questions.”

“What manner of questions?” It would take a half bar to wade through and under the rippling pools of black and brown and red, almost gliding as though through hills of the living biomass. Questions sounded off within her, a touch of inner caution at how quickly the thinker had drifted past his sudden embracing to their language, as the link drew to her one of the testing chambers of vivisection and research. Of the Pod and ambers, and a new pale shelled male with arms flung high over his head.

The thinker had been left in silence, under watch, while the two stood before a curved wall of screens. Unpresuming. Passive. Deliberately smalling self, and listening.

It was at times difficult to make out the male’s frantic, nearly manic, sounds. His entire body was clad in restrictive shelling and where there should have been face, an artificial covering of glossy eyes and sealed mouth overtook him.

She had seen the Pod frustrated, she had seen her confused and frightened and even angered. The thinker portrayed a Pod with a face that had turned nearly the color of her hairy crown, leaning towards the male with a volume that rung the glass containers of the room. The threat of violence determined very real, and so interrupted with a repeated tapping of his single foreleg on nearby tabletop. And they had halted. Refocused. Broken their argument to instead focus upon the true importance.

“Cuttings?”

Upon the raised screen, swipe of Pod’s hand brought square images of fruiting pods, shrooms, even a few of their tended creatures.

“The greenstalks.” Thinker had not hesitated. “They are staple of our biomass intake. Quickest to root on our world-“

Male pale-shell, the bulbous eyes burgeoning from face, gave own swipe. Claw tapping, the thinker had not quite grasped the meaning, but the refusal was not challenged. His own Band seemed sleeker, less restrictive, but he pulled at it instinctively from time to time.

“Then, the buds from gong-gyl would be able to support the biomass requirements-“

“…Received. Meetikaahr fruits are slower to yield-“

“Several thousand to start.” The thinker began to reduce his music, to cut elaboration to brevity at the repeated interruptions. Pod shook her head.

“These are grasses used to fertilize the proper crops, the fungal-“ Interruption. Refusal. Recant. Refusal. Reply. Refusal. Indignation. Back and forth they went, until the thinker had been dismissed back to assist with the offloading of soldiers. Forced to carry the news first to the queens, then to Skthveraachk herself.

“Phidos, fertilizer, and palmidia!?”

“And lumbrites, of course.”

“Throw to the sky with a hundred jaws and a thousand legs whichever humanite was first to discover the lumbrite!” Queries began to sound all across the colony, queries which the Queen designated to secondary thinkers as she worked to both respond and propel herself to the waiting Commander. “They have promised us biomass of their own making. The farms will be supplemental. It will be difficult first cycle of production, but once underway, they can be prioritized to the spitters for acid production. We will need to determine the size of our area.”

“It is not promising, War Queen. Perhaps if you appealed to the Hathan-Commander…” She pulled at the leg of nearest drone, and the signal sent racing through the establishing nest brought ten claws down to swat and scrape at the thinker’s distant body. Was it his flippant usage of her name, or the notion that she would be expected to prostrate self to humanites for basic crops that upset her so? It did not matter. If their farms were to be of palmidia and palmidia alone, then they would make do. Confidence misplaced perhaps, once more surrounding by tens of thousands, but compared to the trials already conquered, issue of diet and agricultural need seemed far less pressing. Far less important than getting within sight of the archway at cargo section’s end, to the smell of Hathan’s stand. She burst from the hills of bodies, and the myriad soldiers in half-circle about their lesser queen retreated a step. Hathan did not. That did not please her.

“They are not accidents. Deaths are expected when in contact with another colony. Your soldiers attack those who get too close. I have reinforced the need for a perimeter, and we will need to mark them.”

Still half submerged within her colony, she made the signs of non-comprehension, the tilting of head, and the Commander thinned his facemeats.

“Explain.”

“This is wasted effort. I have stated truth of my allegiance. Attack on your crew would be self destructive. They accept my help but also believe me frenzied? No, of course,” She made a showing of waving a scythe overhead. “Your species sings wrongs and falsehoods. So you hear my music, but do not always listen to it. Disgusting.”

“And die with, if necessary.” Oddly, the Hathan barked out lungful of air, twice in a short beat. He fell back into controlled stoicism with practiced ease, but he did not shirk from her nor her accusation.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I do not lack in ability to clutch close the disparate threads of your meaning, I simply find them unpleasant and coarse to the touch. My time on my world has reinforced the need to nevertheless further explore them. If only out of duty to a people soon to experience your ‘delicacies’ as I have.” Another request for adjustment at the third section of her nest. More space was needed for the birthing queens, who were struggling as she had to properly breathe. They would need open access, no bodies atop them. She diverted mass further back to room corners. “What is it you require of me, Hathan-Commander?”

“Once the final few thousand are aboard, a matter of bars. There is insufficient space. The temperature is wrong. The air is strained.”

A blue shell approached the male from behind, the small bristles of his head rustling as he was handed pad. The walls shrieked out that all contact with her people was to be avoided unless necessary, and she assured through the panic that no, the dead had not begun to sing. Vents flexed. Claws curled. Irritation, delegation of tasks, all was for a moment put aside.

“They have selected so quickly?”

She should have been insulted. But something about the way the Commander stood, his timbre perhaps, did not quite allow her to muster her anger.