After working for a whole day, I coiled to rest and sleep. Yet it was not a peaceful one, as I had a nightmare. I'm sure it was one as I slashed a few times with my tail. I woke up and then returned to sleep for a few more minutes, and this time, it was different.

I recovered what seemed like old memories of a child. It was smiling, and I could hear her calling my name.

"Who was that girl? Was she my daughter?"

I wasn't sure. It was too blurry to see that kid's face. But I remember her smile, as I was doing some hand tricks to make her laugh, trying to discover where I hid a small object. I was playing with something small, shiny, and rounded.

Using my chitin biomorph, I started to create some small byproducts that were rounded and tiny. It took several tries, but I was satisfied with the 6th iteration. “What was this called? A coin?”

I tried to play with it with my claw, but the small coin kept falling. I got distracted while playing with it for a few minutes, trying to remember my dream.

Once I had failed too many times, I sighed and absorbed it again into my organism. I felt it was a waste of time, but it also helped me focus while I cracked my neck and got ready to keep building the nest.

“Darwin, can you recall the records we saw at the awakening? The ones the AI showed us.”

As I was doing a repetitive and uninteresting task, I started to look back at the images the Tyranid body memorized at a near-perfect level.

Back when I first woke up in this body, I had put all my attention and absorbed all that information, but I had no time to look at it in detail properly. I just had the data, without any idea of its meaning.

And now, I had time to think, waiting for Norn to wake up while in this darkness and silence.

“Okay, let’s read about this galaxy… By the way, do we know where are we exactly?”

“We suspect that this lab was a hidden base at the Eastern Fringe, but we’re not sure where exactly.”

Darwin remained silent most of the time, giving some data or solving some of my doubts about a race, an enemy, or a situation. He knew way more than I expected, but it was little more than a passive communicator. I missed a proper conversation.

My metabolism allowed me to sleep a minimum of 3-4 hours and work over 20 without any problems. I heard this was also the regular work time from trillions of humans in the Imperium. Their living conditions were just awful. Work hard, have kids, praise the Emperor. That was it.

Worse than cattle in some worlds.

I can’t understand how this galaxy descended to this level of darkness and obscurity. It is almost a mockery of what humanity once was.

"It seems like the Emperor failed to the worst possible level. He is about to turn into a warp god at this level..."

As I moved through our growing base, I looked back at the digestive pool devouring some prey.

We had opened a tunnel towards the biome, luckily at the area in dispute from both parasites and spiders, so only a handful of enemies entered such tunnel to investigate.

We noticed that the parasite flowers were guided both by energy and by pheromones, and we managed to lure a few of them towards the pool of acid, where any creature was slowly being dissolved, unable to climb back as the walls were slippery. I had invested quite a significant sum of biomass, but it was worth it. The trap was self-sustained by semi-sentient units that pumped acid and provided an easy way to lure prey and dispose of them at the same time. It was efficient.

After a few more hours digging and hunting some minor prey, I managed to gather enough biomass to level up. Yet Norn was nowhere present. It looked like the last few days, and the accumulated damages had slowed her recovery.

Another 20 hours passed, and I went to sleep. I closed 3 of my eyes and left a few scouts here and there on the tunnels, with bombs and tanks. Lastly, I had one tank near me, just in case.

“What do I want?” It was a hard question. Or maybe I was overthinking.

I wanted to survive, and for that, I needed power. Tyranids only understood the power of accumulative growth, disregarding technology, and investigation. Their sole focus was on adapting to the threats through their particular way of evolution.

As a human, I knew that our bodies are way, way less robust, resilient, or durable compared to any other race. Except for the Tau, those are even more useless physically, yet it was precisely such weakness that allowed them and us to rise towards the stars.

However, the Imperium had cut off that path through religious fanaticism and an obscure machine cult.

They only attempted to recover the remnants of the Dark Age of Technology, their old peak, and almost universally disregarded any other progress as an insult to their creed. Especially from Xenos' tech.

They had their reasons, though. This era was one where the Imperium had been forced time and again to amputate and cauterize any traces from Heresy, Mutation or Psyker could contaminate it. And the AI's were one of those threats that nearly took down humanity at one point.

I stopped moving for a second and looked at my claws. "Where does that leave me?" I pondered, lost in my thoughts.

My mere existence was an aberration to the Imperium, and most other races would shoot first without a doubt. I knew I could play a role somewhere. I just had to find it.

The route of technological superiority wasn't all that appealing to me, nor was the route of pure natural adaptation.

I could try to merge both realities through society.

The best of both worlds would be using Tyranids as a workforce and fighting force and human or Xeno technology to allow me to surpass any obstacle and gain more power to change my fate.

The only way I could think to achieve that was a Genestealer Cult.

That would allow me to return to society, and even change it to my advantage. I would turn people from total slaves of the Imperium to being half slaves to a Hive mind, but any change was better than what the Imperium had been offering for 10 thousand years. It was oppressive, obscure, and twisted beyond reason. And it was collapsing.

"Aghh, what a headache. This galaxy is just too obtuse!"

I was having a hard time understanding the scale and horrors of the 41st Millenium.

And that was only focusing on the problems the Imperium had within.

I didn't even start with what was without the Imperium or beyond reality. If I included Xenos, Cults, or Demons, it was just unbearable.

Right now, humanity can only hope to hold on. There is nothing else, just death and suffering. The tech-priests have chopped progress; the Ecclesiarchy had purged ideas.

Maybe I could do something about that. “Maybe I can change something…”

* Brrrmmmmmm

The whole biome trembled again.

* BRRRRMMM!!! CRaacckk!!!

“Host, there has been a cave in provoked by the continuous tremors! We have several enemies incoming.”

A whole section of the tunnels collapsed, and I started hearing hissing noises. “Fuck! When the trap was working perfectly fine melting those bastards, we now have to face more enemies!!”

I went on full alert mode and started moving towards the area where the tunnels caved in.

There were a ton of spiders entering the tunnels. A few dozens of small ones were starting to throw their webs, and 4 or 5 big ones assaulted a pair of tanks that rushed to the area.

“Great, I just had a showdown with the other eight-legged freaks!”

The spiders started to capture units again, and I sent a scout in a suicide mission to gave me some visibility on what we were facing.

I could ‘see’ through my scout the number of enemies. It looked that the spiders had access to a sub-biome from where they gathered resources. And the last tremor had just collapsed part of its walls and our tunnels.

The second I realized the abundance of enemies and the presence of one or two highly mutated creatures in their ranks, I rushed back to the inner areas of my own nest.

“The spiders have started to work on moving the rock from the collapsed tunnels. It will take 10 or 12 hours for the elite units to reach the main corridors.”

“Can’t we collapse them completely?”

“Corruption will keep spreading and mutating our enemies. They might start turning them deadlier the longer we remain on the lab."

"Right, and that’s without taking the Imperial spaceship."

Their battle with the Drukhari has been taking several days, and it's weird, as the dark Eldar are usually more on fast attacks, raids, and hit and runs. That means this place is as vital to them as it is to Imperials.

But it looks like their fight is not over, and I don’t think they will send troops anytime soon. I hope they won't.

“Darwin, how long till Norn wakes up?”

“Queen Norn is still in slumber. She will take several hours more to awake, maybe a full day. I can’t tell with certainty.”

“Fuck… Okay, you take two transporters and start digging towards the river, then follow it towards the waterfall, we will try to hide there. I’ll take care of our friendly neighbors.”

I crack my back and neck, ready to kill some freaking spiders.

It’s a nest vs. nest fight.