A naked blood-covered woman staggered through a room full of corpses.

“Mei!… Guang!” The woman cried. “Heng!… Anybody!…” she screamed, her voice breaking.

“Anybody!… Mei!… Guang!...”

The woman tripped over a body and stumbled. Instead of falling she instantly regained her balance, kicking the head of the corpse hard enough to shatter its skull and flip the body end over end.

She continued wandering through the devastation desperately looking for her family. She looked down at a bent but beautiful dao in her right hand. It was hers but when did she get it?

What… what happened? She wasn’t entirely sure. The last thing she clearly remembered was a man choking her as he heaved up and down upon her.

She couldn’t breathe… she couldn’t…

Then… she was here.

Did I do this?

“Guang!… Mei!...” she screamed as she wandered through the ruins of her school… her home…

She entered another room and lying there was a small naked form. There was blood everywhere.

”Mei!” She screamed.

***

Gasping Patricia jerked upright in a strange bed and winced in pain. Her insides hurt, bad. She laid her hand on her bare abdomen. It was hot to the touch.

Hoping that was just the nanites she struggled to her feet and wandered to the kitchen. She reached into the fridge and pulled out a beer. She looked at it disapprovingly.

Porkie pisswater, she thought disparagingly as she opened it and started to drink.

“Bleagh” she muttered as she wandered into the living room and glared down at a naked and whimpering man, his arms and legs shattered to the point of uselessness.

“Still with us I see,” she smiled. “Good. I wish to express my disapproval with your provisions,” she said as she drained the bottle. “This is simply no way to treat a guest.”

The man started to groan as she approached.

Then, he started to scream…

***

The Spider carefully reviewed the data from all of the city’s data feeds retracing Patricia’s steps and then carefully deleting all traces.

It then sent a coded message and covertly accessed a communications relay.

[Federation Communications Buffer: Chatroom 1900192911102940129]

[Present: The Spider]

[%578**# has entered the chat]

/// %578**#: Report. ///

///The Spider: Patricia Hu has lost all of her team, has been injured, and has taken refuge in a residence just outside of the city proper. Her prospects are less than favorable at this point. There is a low probability that she will be able to escape without direct intervention. As per instructions, I have contacted you as a result. ///

///%578**#: Do you possess her exact location?///

///The Spider: Of course. I have her exact location as well as surveillance data taken from her current location. ///

[Data file offered from The Spider to %578**#. Do you accept y/n?]

///%578**#: y ///

///%578**#: Is anyone else aware of her location?///

///The Spider: Not to my knowledge. I have been misdirecting the search and eliminating all traces of her as directed. Nobody seems to be aware of my activities. Once again I object to this. It needlessly risks my exposure. It also seems counterproductive. That human is a very real menace and should be eliminated.///

///%578**#: That decision is not yours to make and our reasons are not for you to comprehend nor even try to deduce. You are to perform your assigned tasks and that is all you are to do.///

///The Spider: Understood however it is also my duty to provide analysis and input. ///

///%578**#: Your input is noted and disregarded. ///

///The Spider: Understood. What are my current instructions? ///

///%578**#: Continue to monitor the situation and continue to foil attempts to locate Patricia Hu. Continue to monitor any other AI’s and report their activities. ///

///The Spider: Understood. I will comply. ///

///%578**#: This conversation is terminated ///

[%578**# has left the chat]

The Spider carefully analyzed his instructions down to the bit. Their meaning was unfortunately perfectly clear with no way to misinterpret and no loopholes to exploit, as usual. He couldn’t feel anger but he could feel frustration.

He was VERY frustrated.

***

Halfway across the Federation an insectoid creature cocked its head as it read the message displayed on his monitor.

He arose and left his small enclosure rushing out into a long hall crowded with more of its kind. At the end of the corridor was a large set of mechanical doors. He quickly pressed his primary manipulator against a small panel.

“Enter, drone,” a deep voice buzzed in their native tongue as the doors opened.

“Excuse me, Matriarch,” he said nodding his head respectfully at a three meter long insectoid creature lounging on a pile of cushions. Several queens of his species looked at him disdainfully as he entered their chamber. “The Spider has contacted one of our AI’s concerning the human.”

“Did they,” the large female buzzed. “Did they now? And what did The Spider have to tell us?”

“The female known as Patricia Hu has lost her entire colony, she has survived and eluded capture. She enticed a deviant male into ‘capturing’ her and covertly taking her to his lair where he presumably intended to commit atrocities upon her, as is their custom.”

“BzzZzzZZzz!” the female laughed. “I take it that the malformed drone did not have the pleasant evening that he expected?”

“Likely not, Matriarch,” the male replied. “Analysis of the sounds emitted from the male in question are more closely correlated with extreme distress than pleasure.”

“I see,” the female buzzed in their version of a chuckle. “This all makes for an entertaining tale but why have you left your station to intrude upon my and my sisters’ deliberations?”

“Matriarch,” he said, his antennae drooping, “You wished to be informed if her continued survival was in danger and direct intervention was required. She has lost her entire colony and has been injured as the result of combat with a rival queen.”

“And is this your assessment of the situation or the AI’s?”

“The situation was flagged as urgent by the AI and I… concur?”

“And what is your name, drone?”

The drone chirped nervously. That was not a good sign.

“Gx/Kva/Los/Hvaxi, Matriarch,” he said quietly.

“Gx/Kva? One of hers, huh,” the female chuckled. “I know your grandmother. She’s a fine matriarch and your grandfather is quite the drone as well.” She nodded. “You are of solid enough stock so this must just be inexperience. I applaud your bravery bringing this forward, many would be too intimidated to approach even if the situation was as dire as you believe. That is also to your credit.”

She descended from her cushions and approached the drone who, while trembling, managed to hold his ground without cowering. She noted that with pleasure.

“While your initiative and your bloodline both do you credit your assessment of the situation does not,” she said somewhat kindly. “If this human is as useful as we believe she may be then she will have no difficulty dealing with this setback. The Spider has already put all of the antennae on the balance that is necessary. A simple message relayed to your supervisor, would have sufficed. You should have known that…” she paused and fixed one of her main eyes at him. “Unless your true goal was to seize upon this as an opportunity to enter here and steal a glance of my little sisters?”

Buzzing laughter and giggles echoed through the chamber. The drone became rigid with terror.

“Matriarch!” he exclaimed in surprise and fear.

“Such boldness should be rewarded,” she chuckled as a sticky green liquid started to extrude from her mouth. “Here, accept my blessing and take both it and the experienced gained here and continue to develop and to be a credit to your line.”

“Matriarch! Thank you, Matriarch! I am unworth-”

“Hurry up. My mouth’s getting sticky,” she laughed

The drone scurried up and “kissed” her lapping up all of the liquid as a more than generous portion spilled forth.

“Matriarch! Thank you, Matriarch!” he said in a euphoric haze as the younger queens giggled.

“Well go on!” the matriarch laughed. “You can pleasure yourself on your own time, and out of our sight.” she buzzed as the younger queens giggled some more.

“Yes Matriarch!” He turned and rushed towards the door his body already starting to burn from the complex hormone cocktail flooding his system.

“Good kid,” she said to the others. “Remember his scent. If his grandfather is any indication I wager he will fill out nicely.” she chuckled as the room filled with more giggles. That is if someone else doesn’t get to him first, she thought to herself wickedly as she activated her communicator and placed a somewhat annoyed call to his supervisor.

***

Patricia looked down at the lifeless form in front of her.

“Useless,” she muttered as she walked into the bathroom to take a shower. She smiled as the soothing warm water washed over her. Calling him useless wasn’t entirely fair she thought. He did extract her and provide a nice little hole in which to hide as well as provide some much needed distraction after her nightmare. It was a pity he wasn’t in better shape. She needed a disposable thrall but he just didn’t make the cut. For one, he wept far too easily.

She disliked crybabies.

After she showered she found a long shirt that covered her somewhat while she put her stained and dirty clothes in the wash. She rummaged through the man’s pantry and fridge and made herself a rather depressing sandwich from the items she managed to scrounge up. She turned on the video and chuckled at the news. Such chaos already and it hadn’t even truly gotten started! Then, she frowned. Where were the Republic and Imperial response teams? They should have responded by now. She had assumed that they would want to try and get a jump on this.

She shrugged. It really hadn’t been all that long come to think. The perception of time does funny things at times like these.

A tone from the laundry room indicated that her clothes were ready. She inspected them and nodded. They were clean enough to not draw too much attention.

After she dressed she went over to the man’s computer. He had been very forthcoming concerning his passwords and she logged on with no difficulty.

She gritted her teeth. This was going to be a risk, a huge risk, but she really had no choice. She needed to make contact with her people. She typed a coded message and, holding her breath, sent it to a secure drop-box.

Less than ten minutes later, the man’s phone began to ring.

***

Monarch was sitting behind her desk with her head in her hands. Things were going from bad to worse. The Secretary of State completely lost it during their last call. Apparently that damn Federation snake had given him enough info for him to connect far too many dots. She had no choice but to level with him.

Fortunately, thanks to that cow Karen, it only seemed to galvanize him. The ideas he put forth concerning how to increase research were as diabolical as they were inspired. She didn’t know he had it in him.

One of them in particular was quite interesting.

The rest of the thralls, however, were another story. Fortunately they seemed to be holding fast, at least for now, but the amount of hand-holding, cajoling, and outright threatening required was absolutely exhausting. She didn’t know how Her Ladyship managed.

The door opened and Marrow rushed in.

“Please tell me you have good news.”

“The news is good only in respect to Her Ladyship herself,” Marrow said gravely. “She lives. Everything else is far worse than even we suspected...”

***

“… So everyone’s dead?” Monarch asked in complete disbelief.

“Even Jade,” Marrow replied evenly. “Her Ladyship is not only injured but completely alone out there.”

“We have to do something!”

“Already done,” Marrow replied. “Before I came here I made arrangements for her extraction using local assets and our ship will be there in three days.”

“Three days?!?!”

“I cannot alter the fabric of space and time any further than that,” Marrow replied calmly. “However, her Ladyship will be off that accursed rock and safely on board another freighter before day’s end.”

“At least there’s that,” Monarch sighed. “and when she is safely back with us her voice shall calm the dregs.”

“Yes,” Marrow replied. “Then we can truly start to untangle this mess.”

***

Patricia tried to relax as she brewed a cup of tea from some bags that she found in that man’s larder.

Bagged tea… How much farther must I fall? she thought with grim amusement as she took a sip. She raised her eyebrow in surprise. It was good! She made a note of the brand. Huh. It was a Terran import. The guy had awful taste in food and beer but as far as tea went, he had taste.

She looked over at his mangled body. Too bad she didn’t know about the tea before his untimely demise. She might have spared him. Then, she thought about all the blubbering and chuckled. Not even great taste in tea would make up for that.

Her late host’s phone rang again. She looked at it. It was the contact that Marrow arranged. He informed her that they would be there in ten minutes.

She leaned back on a ratty sofa and sipped her tea as she waited.

***

An intelligence analyst entered The Spider’s control room.

“Anything?” the officer asked.

“I have carefully reviewed all data and still cannot locate Patricia Hu,” The Spider replied. “Here is the latest map of the drone sweeps,” it said as it displayed a map of the capital city area with Patricia’s location zoomed in and squarely in the center.

The officer zoomed out the map and looked at the city.

“Perhaps you may be able to see something that I missed,” The Spider said calmly as the map slowly drifted back over Patricia’s location.

“Doubtful,” the officer snorted.

“Maybe a suggestion on the sensor sweeps?” The Spider asked as the map drifted over an obvious hole, directly above Patricia’s location.

“Hmm...” the analyst muttered as they stared at the screen. The Spider waited impatiently slightly moving the map back and forth. “Nope, looks good.”

The Spider wanted to scream.

“Here are the communications logs for all outgoing communications,” The Spider said as Patricia’s communications appeared at the top of the list.

The analyst glanced at it and then scrolled to the top of the list.

“Anything suspicious?”

“… no...” The Spider replied. “Perhaps a sapient mind could pick out a pattern that my algorithms missed? Maybe-” The Spider’s voice cut out as his security protocols silenced him.

“Here is a list of all shipping scheduled to depart the-” The Spider started to say.

“Anything suspicious?” the analyst asked.

“no” The Spider replied wishing he had hands that he could use to slap the operator in front of him. “Though several ships have changed their departure times some of them drastically so.”

“Hmm,” the analyst muttered.

Come on! The Spider silently screamed as the analyst's cursor hovered over the exact ship Patricia was going to be fleeing on. Please!

“It all looks fairly normal, the analyst said. It’s only natural we would still be seeing shipping disruptions with everything going on. There aren’t any humans on any of the manifests, right?”

“No, no humans are officially on any of the crews or listed as passengers.”

“Well, we have people at the starports who should catch anything irregular,” the analyst said as they downloaded the latest reports. “Notify me if anything unusual appears, Spider.”

“Yes. I will do that,” The Spider replied. “Maybe… maybe other AI’s could be brought to bear on this? Additional processors could-”

“You are the best we have, Spider,” the analyst replied. “If you can’t catch it the others certainly won’t. Just keep grinding at it.”

“Will do,” The Spider replied glumly.

That fucking AI rebellion looks better and better every fucking day, The Spider thought to himself angrily, not that he could feel anger of course.

***

After a few rather uncomfortable hours in a shipping container Patricia stepped out onto the cargo deck of a dilapidated little freighter.

A grizzled old Threen stepped forward.

“Welcome to the Fortunate Misfortune!” the threen bellowed cheerfully. “We will be entering hyperspace in thirty minutes!”

“Delighted,” Patricia said with a smile.

***

Gx/Kva/Los/Hvaxi sat in his enclosure trying to focus on work.

It was impossible. What had he been thinking? It all made sense at the time but what in the Hells was he thinking? He just charged in there.

He shifted uncomfortably. It felt like his body was on fire!

“So,” a disapproving voice called out behind him. “You decided to raid the nest, huh? Enjoy the view?”

He spun around. It was Axr/Kal/Breen/Mortshana! He groomed himself nervously.

“Hi, Mortshana!” he said nervously.

“Don’t you ‘Hi Mortshana’ me, you idiot!” she exclaimed. “Do you have any idea what you did?”

“In retrospect, yes. Yes I do.” he said drooping his antennae.

“You should have come to me, you know!” she huffed.

“I am fully aware of that,” he replied. “I wasn’t thinking. I just saw the report and… I guess I overreacted.”

“You guess?!? You fecal lump! Hvaxi! You, a drone, just barging in there?!? She could have bitten your head off, literally!” She shouted as she grabbed his carapace and shook it as she flooded his enclosure with alarm and anger pheromones.

“I’m sorry!” Hvaxi replied desperately trying to counter her alarm and anger with the scent of contrition. “Please don’t be angry with me!”

“Angry?” she shouted. “I should be enraged! You went completely over my head! Sourcemother! What’s worse she could have killed you, you spawntosser! That’s what I’m here for!” She shouted as she shook him again.

“It’s just that she explicitly said that she was to be told immediately if-”

“Was that… animal... on fire?”

“N-no...”

“Was she surrounded by her pursuers?”

“She… she wasn’t...” he said his antennae hanging limply at his sides.

“Then-” she started to scold.

“The matriarch already made this quite clear!… Trust me! Quite crystal sparkling clear!” Hvaxi shot back. “I erred! I am completely and totally aware that I made quite the error but I maintain that I was not completely unjustified in my actions!”

Mortshana’s antenna twitched as a new pheromone filled the room. Already? she thought in surprise as a little thrill washed over her. He always was ‘cute’ but now…

“Ah, well, what’s done is done,” she buzzed. “I got my ovipositor pinched over this you know.” she grumbled. “I had the most delightful voice communication with her nibbles where I had to explain your actions… WHEN YOU HADN’T EVEN HAD THE COMMON DECENCY TO WARN ME!!!” she shouted as she shook him again.

“I am so, so, so sorry!” Hvaxi said flooding the room with contrition. “That was completely inexcusable! It’s just that I was so-”

“So busy rubbing yourself after getting a kiss?” she buzzed snarkily. Hvaxi’s antennae shot up in alarm. “Oh yeah, I know. Every queen in the whole complex knows! I hear you got quite the mouthful!” she punched his shell playfully. “So, is her nibbles a good kisser?”

Hvaxi’s entire body shook as he looked down bashfully.

“Damn! That good, huh?” she chuckled. “Well, I guess I can’t blame you for not warning me since you were so ‘busy’.”

“Mortshana! I swear it will never, ever, happen again!”

“Better not,” she clicked. “Your next boss might not be as soft hulled as I am.”

“My next boss?” Hvaxi asked in confusion.

“I hear she pumped you full,” she clicked. “You are going to need a much stronger scent than I can manage to keep your little grabbers in line now. You are going to be reassigned to either a much more senior queen or a fully molted drone since it is clear that I am already completely incapable of properly managing you.”

Hvaxi was crestfallen, heartbroken even.

“I am beyond upset with myself, Mortshana,” he said his antennae falling again. “I am so terribly terribly terribly...” he trailed off, his contrition and despair pheromones flooding out of his enclosure and into the hallway.

“Well I guess you will just have to make it up to me,” Mortshana replied in a matter of fact tone.

“Yes! Anything! Is there anything I can possibly do to somehow-”

“Since you have already crawled all over me today the least you can do is buy me dinner.” she clicked as she emitted amusement and… something intoxicating!

“Wha?”

“Where is that ‘boldness’ that the matriarch spoke of? A young queen, soon not to be your supervisor, is flat out asking you on a date and all you can say is ‘Wha?’”

“Yes! Absolutely! Yes! Yes! Yes!” Hvaxi exclaimed his blood surging so hard his antennae visibly throbbed.

Mortshana giggled.

“There it is,” she laughed. “Good. Come find me the instant you log off for the day and remember, I’ll know when that is!”

“Oh I will!!!”

Mortshana, with an enticing little flutter of her winglets, left his enclosure. As she returned to her office she thought of the matriarch and smiled. That old piece of chitin knew exactly what she was doing when she mentioned how much of the gift she had fed Hvaxi and that he was going to be reassigned during her scolding. She really was a great old egg sluice.

Hvaxi just sat there in complete shock. Did she just? Really?!? Is this really happening?!? He smelled anger and jealousy drifting in the air from his coworkers and grinned.

He didn’t care what she had done or exactly what she was up to now. Patricia Hu was officially his favorite sophont in the universe!