Every part of him hated the coldness the room exuded. It was not a matter of temperature, of course, though even here below the rock and the soil there was a nipping in each breath he took. Chkervthnaakt hated the table formed from castoff aluminium scraps and bones, rather than the living bodies of drones arranging themselves about him. He pressed his five legs to the floor lined with stones, their formation a parody of the tales brought to Skthveraachk from Guir which told of great pathways of interconnected rocks, fitted and then glazed over to infinitely smooth surface. Hated how it made his furled claws ache, reared back as he was. Hated how there was barely room in the purposefully squared burrow to turn without his gaster scraping along the wall. But most of all, he loathed with a frothing malice how, no matter how many measures he sat on the reconstruction of a humanite chair within the reimagining of a humanite office staring at the fractured mess of a humanite duraglass tap-pad, all the room made the thinker feel was…inadequate.

“Jennifer approaching.” Chkervthnaakt felt the vibrations of the song through the floor. The tempo was quick, but music vacant, awaiting his response. He did not give one. He waited, alone, knowing it rightness to affirm his receipt of the information but refusing to all the same. The link, right there beyond those doors of glued carapace and metal castoffs, ignored. The thinker’s legs began to tremble, and he seized his single knotted foreclaw into the table’s surface to remain steady. This was how the aliens lived. This was how they existed. Alone. Isolated. Walls curving in on them, only their eyes to see, only their mind to think. Coldness. The frigid expanse of loneliness. Only Chkervthnaakt. Only him, the world afire all around as he laughed and screamed and licked away the blood on his scythe. His own blood. Frenzy. Frenzy. Beautiful. “Repeating last; Jennifer approaching. Received?”

“Received.” Eighty-eight beats. He could bear the weight of isolation for six beats longer this rise. Chkervthnaakt scratched a polite and apologetic ballad, rejoining himself with the colony. “My work was distracting. Intrigued. It is likely the Pod is reacting. Welcome her in, War Queen’s plan needs enacting.” His silence broken, Skthveraachk thinker breathed easier as menials outside formed patterns flanking either side of his burrow. Their movements easier to hear through the walls, their songs wrapping about him as his music was made one with the symphony. Grip was released from the table, the claw ran down his thorax to knock away any mud that had latched to his shell in his crawl, and when the door was creaked open to blind Skthveraachk with the beam of light from the humanite’s shoulder he did not so much as wince. Instead, letting the single limb sweep wide to both take hold of and offer forward the sole chair. His Band thrumming to life. “Jennifer thinker, may your presence make sharpened scythes dull. I was unsure if you would gift me another meeting before the great and last battle for the peninsula. Would you like to sit?”

She didn’t even try to hide her disgust. That wrinkling of noseskin around the silver tube affixed to her nostrils, the squinting of the flaps of her eyes. Skthveraachk, in turn, didn’t try to hide his pleased laughter; she would not recognize it. Humanite bone and Skthveraachk carcasses were dragged back, replaced at the front of the desk. The beam of light was turned back to the door, and the female shut the ill-fitting barrier before continuing. Lie. Half-lie? The studies made were not yet exact, but her eyes twitched and pulse quickened just enough to betray her intent despite the toothy smile. There was a flash of anger in the harmony. The thinker suppressed it; it was not productive right now.

“You will explain this idiom to me at a later time. You are here, I am here, I can see you do not enjoy being inside my abode-“

“-So please, let us not waste your precious attention. Has your humanite leadership rescinded their decision on denying my requests for research material?”

There were brown stains at the hem of her white uniform. The shell of status. She was covering herself with both arms, folding them protectively as she remained still near the door. The beam of light bobbed as Jennifer nodded to the frayed wires protruding from the broken tap-pad on the desk.

“I small experiment with materials, that is all. If you feel it must be stopped, I will of course oblige.” She would not request such. She didn’t. “It seemed exceptions were permitted to me, what with the Queen’s combat lifter, her ‘throne’ as you succinctly have put it. But, then, are you here to assist in another lesson on the individuality complex of your species?”

Anger, this time both in the harmony and melody. He fought against it, but felt its color growing at the outsides of his outer eyes.

“I must disagree. Our compilation of human responses is utterly incomplete. My understanding of your signals is insufficient.”

It took fewer than two breaths to verify, and though he knew it to be a habit of knowing overstatement, the lie darkened the already pulsing colors.

“Skthveraachk Queen engaged in conversation encompassing six exchanges and forty-seven words only last measure with you. I find her decisions distasteful at times, but when you have threatened or attacked the colony multiple times, I cannot argue the logic.”

Skthveraachk tried not to let the squeeze of the table fracture its surface. That, even for all the humanite female’s obliviousness and lack of registering the sour pheromones which had begun to fill the room, she would notice.

“You are here to stop our plan of attack.”

The floor squelched beneath cobbled stones as his weight was shifted, ramming his gaster back into the wall to prevent its quiver. His reared stand placing him only just above the female as she took a step nearer, confirming his suspicion.

“Perhaps my eyes dance in the goldboughs, but where in this plan to preserve colony integrity and save drone lives is there cruelty to be found?” The forward base was a buzzing of life and movement above them; he could feel it so much clearer now with half his abdomen shoved into the wall. Preparations. Assignments. A singular vision, carried out and through. Humanites were his role, now. This humanite was his role. “Your own strategists confirm the validity of it.”

“This word holds no meaning.”

Rage, no longer anger, stomping through the exterior and into his legs. Wait. Just wait. He responded with excitement, diverting the coming storm for precious beats. Not a logistical wrong. Not a practical wrong. An emotional wrong. Data was here that could be assessed. He needed time.

“This word has been used repeatedly this last measure. It was studied, and decision reached. Torture is the infliction of suffering as punishment, or as motivation for action. It is an inaccurate descriptor; there is no malice for those humanites who will be used next rise. Suffering will be a by-product. Emotional turmoil in the enemy force is the goal. That it is affecting members of the Sovereignty only reaffirms its projected efficacy on our opposition.”

“Status of living or dead is irrelevant, designation remains as ‘resource’. There was no meaningful protest when we repurposed their corpses for our armor and gear. There was consent given to utilize their fallen for the benefit of the war-”

The female’s arms were thrown down, and like some blunted scythe, fingers were launched forward to strike at his core. A ripple of impact. A contact of control. Skthveraachk was well glad his abdomen was already buried, for all his focus was suddenly required in keeping his scythe sheathed and claw furled tight enough to puncture his own chitin. Yes, there it was. That smell of amber all over her. A confirming whisper of the amber shells on guard, far enough to not be looming outside the door, but near enough to be always present. He could do nothing to her; she knew it. She abused it.

“You are one of the most ignorant of your kind.” She did not respond. He regretted the notes immediately, but they had been flung. The thinker had let his own fury at the contact meld into the vibrato rage trembling in the symphony. Forward then. “Interruptions. Twice, just this measure, you have done so. They are a great rudeness to us, or great distress; the haughty assertion that your music deserves not just precedence, but sole existence over ours.”

“That is not your role.” She tried to interject. It was not permitted. The calls were sounding loud and bellowing in the distance. “You are a crafter. You create and fix constructions, machines. ‘Engineering Corps’. You are a crafter, and a queen, and sometimes you deem to be a thinker, but more and more we have been shown that just because you creatures adorn yourselves in the armor and shell of a soldier, it does not make it truth.”

Was there astonishment, almost a hint of joy in her tone? Of course there was. The Pod was fascinated by the new. Saw it as a puzzle, a challenge, even as her own anger rose.

“You tell us to kill your enemies, and we oblige. But when we ask for tools, resources to make this task easier, we are refused. You teach us of yourselves, we exchange knowledge of ourselves in equivalency, but you do not heed us. You say now that we, that I, owe you for this? All that has been done has been in service to the tasking the Sovereignty has given us, the Sovereignty you serve as well!” It was hopeless. He had guided the storm past the field, but it had turned and scarred the land in its return. Uprooting. Disintegrating. The thinker no longer had chance to act. All that was left was to relax, and let it swelling howls carry him. Jennifer was anything but relaxed, her shoulders square and fists formed into meaty balls at either side.

She paced, stalked from side to side as arm went animate.

“Expediency is the reason, Jennifer.” His mandibles slashed together, clicking twice. “There is no grander reason. To win, with the fewest numbers lost and greatest gains taken. Bars and measures have we thinkers labored to find solutions to the problems we are posed, and upon this critical realization that will win us the entire peninsula by this time next measure, you demand it be halted? Because a few humanites will die, painfully? You send us to murder thousands!”

The female ceased her pacing, and sought to approach Skthveraachk again. Distantly, he thought perhaps she would strike him again. She did not.

“Teach. Taught. Tell. As though knowledge is an egg you push into the skull of your lesser, a wrapped bundle of data that is sent from one and another receives. Information is given this way, not knowledge.” His eyes fixed upon her, even as the beam of her emitter half blinded his attempts to stare. “You have shown us much, but taught us nothing. The Hathan has taught us. The Sovereignty has taught us. Even the Aadarsh, that browned alien whom we left to our equal and vassal, taught us more with his honesty than you ever did, because for all your speaking, you have never listened.”

That subtle joy was gone. Good. Soon she would be, too, and that was also good.

“So alone. All of your kind.” The thinker wanted her gone. Wanted to return to his work. The link flexed and swelled, and there was no denying it. He felt the words hiss through him, the emotions pouring forth. The humanite was already trying to depart, but the song would not allow it. “It was impossible for us to comprehend, at the start, but only when we came to this world, this wasteland of crimson dust and burning sun, did we truly understand. You see drones. You see menials. You see thinkers and soldiers and Queens, and in your infinite loneliness, you hear their voices and think them disparate.”

“I am a thinker.” His gaster was pulled free of the wall, and his claws advanced as the humanite retreated. As was her instinct. As was her way. “My role is to learn. All I have done since meeting your kind was to dedicate myself entirely to you, to your comprehension, to peeling back the layers of your flesh until I could see within. There are other thinkers who have labeled me half-frenzied, obsessed, claiming I see nothing now but humanites. And they are right.” The aria was upon him. Another claw forward. Another foot back.

“I saw a soldier do as it always did. Repurpose the fallen. Peel the shell. The dead no longer require it. All a soldier knows is to kill, and to pursue any advantage to fulfill its role. A soldier charges a line of lances, dies. Unsuccessful. A soldier picks up a weapon, attempts to fire it. Unsuccessful. A soldier straps the corpses of fallen Coalition to itself, throws himself into what would be certain death, and survives. I see it. We learn. Our armor is insufficient; yours is not. We can adapt it. We can use it.”

“I saw a delver think on this same problem. A soldier adapts their armor and overcomes obstacle? The solution to our obstacles can be found within the creations of the humanites. A delver faces obstructions, and must clear them. It is all it knows. You are frail, and you are weak, but your inventions are not. We are strong, and we are hardy, but we could be more if we followed the same paths you have tread. Axle and wheel. One drone becomes two. A foundational concept. All that you have, we can achieve, with time.”

“I saw a mender clad in the flesh and bones taken from the dead of our enemies, better, more efficient for it. But still we failed and fell, failed to utilize the advantages we had discovered. Helmets, shields, our new creations made us greater, but still we were told we were less. A mender patches, heals, breaks down one thing to build up another. It is its life. Humanites are to be preserved, even at our expense. Natural in some cases. Madness in others. When one of ours is injured, it knows if it can be saved. If not, it writhes, it claws, it fights to ensure none save it. One life is not worth two. You will kill your enemies without thought, but send a hundred of us to die if it means we may rescue a single humanite. The mender questioned and we could not answer. Are we so worthless? Is our priority so low?”

“But then I saw a scout.” His legs stopped, and his foreclaw scraped over his eyes repeatedly as the hairs combed against the wet. The thinker’s own excitement joining like a purple smoke the black clouds frothing around them. “A wonderful, glorious scout, who’s only role is to see. To see, and to return with all that was seen. To deliver, without thought or interpretation, what was encountered to the colony. And that scout saw a humanite. Ready to die, wanting to die, for the impossible and insane chance to save a fellow humanite. Not for the Sovereignty, not for an advantage, not for logic or reason. A humanite soldier, wanting to put himself in danger, to protect another humanite he cared for. And I knew, there, that all my watching and all my seeing had been worth it.” She was looking to him with wide eyes. Fearful eyes, but empty eyes. Empty, isolated eyes that could shout for help and have it come running, but could never know what it felt like to feel the tremor in the ground as that salvation approached. Never taste the emotion in their rescuer. Never know what it was to see yourself dying in the eyes of the other that you were also, staring up at yourself staring down at yourself staring up.

“When the next humanite points a lance at me or my children, should I appeal to his fingers not to pull the trigger?” The Pod recoiled like she had been struck, but the thinker did not advance. He supposed there was no longer a reason to. “Or should the next Coalition soldier we capture be convinced to return to his people to end this war? So alone. So very, very alone.” The thinker could rise no higher without his antennae stirring the soil of the ceiling, but he felt a hundred lengths tall. “I was told your species is all queens. I did not know how to process that. But I do now; you are not queens. You are colonies. Each and every one of you. A Colony of One. A colony of eyes and fingers and claws and teeth and thoughts and healers who are so used to their isolation that their voice calls out, and cannot comprehend the chorus that answers. Who see a Queen, and think her the individual in the mass. Who can speak with us for bars, measures, a cycle soon enough, yet in ignorance and arrogance, not realize that they have only, ever,” His legs thrummed and cracked, the Pod laid her hand on the door, and a thousand voices sung out as one. “Spoken with -me-.”

Skthveraachk twitched as the Commander raised a hand to her forelegs, and there was hasty withdrawal to both deny and safeguard the blue shell’s body. Attention returned to the here, to the now, and away from the link that still darkened in the opposite end of the FOB. The thinker could handle his own mess, penalty for previous inability to parse the humanite’s emotions and priorities. Solovyova-Major had that look about her, fingering the strap on her combat armor, and Hathan’s expression suggested her brief lapse was poorly timed. The Queen bowed as the Commander refolded his hands behind his back, the spacious tent’s canopy fluttering above them.

“A matter called my focus elsewhere. It will not happen again. It has been resolved.”

Bringing her crest up once more, Skthveraachk gave the fullness of her attention to the female Major, assigning the higher cognitive tasks to thinkers diverted from their own preoccupations. Sensing another tirade brewing in the humanite as the Queen’s own tempers soothed to the beat of the attendants drumming on her thorax.

The Major spat. If there had been ambers present, Hathan would have launched into his own rant. Thankfully, save for the murmurings of her attendants and the whistle of the faderise wind through the command tent, they had what passed for privacy amongst the Sovereignty. It allowed Hathan to merely tap his finger to the table, prompting the equally wet bubbling of liquid to fill his cup from its bottom.

It still sounded coarse on her shell, but after hearing the name of the colony, or more likely nest, so many times the past measure, it had seemed prudent to add it to the Band’s database. Hathan offered the filled glass to the Major, and she snapped it from his hand. His own was placed onto the indentation, growing full itself with the hazel fluid.

“They were exceedingly hostile.” Such reinforcement was not needed, but the Queen could not deny the touch of excitement coloring her carapace. “One of my soldiers was killed.”

“It was acceptable.”

There was a brief marveling at how quickly the fluid passed through those thick lips, the breath which followed laden with a bitter scent that made Skthveraachk lean forward to test the air.

Gloved hand around the shapely glass, finger was thrust forward without ever losing grip on the item. It made the fabric and flesh beneath web in an unseemly spread.

“Our engagements with the Coalition have helped Skthveraachk-Colony identify weaknesses in humanite mindsets and priorities. These weaknesses can be exploited. The Commander assures-“

Joints tightened at the interruption, but the dozen smaller drones were quick to wrap themselves around her legs. Vibrating their cores as they sung of the alabaster sands of the sopra sea. The tension had passed by the time the hard clunking of glass on metal table echoed out, and the Major made the respectful salute most unrespectfully.

He tried to hide his smile behind the glass, but she caught the spread of it in the reflection as the Solovyova-Major strode through the canvas, the material warping to form a doorway that outlined her form before sloughing back to straightness. The other humanite likely had not.

“Is she incorrect?”

His truth came immediate.

“There is not. Not without unacceptable losses.” The false-light map was deactivated, and she did not make to turn it on. Images of the cliffs, of the slope, of the trees, and of Guir were burned into her eyes like by searing branches. “If your launchers cannot get close enough to silence their artillery until the attack commences, we will suffer greatly in the first beats of the battle already. And if these ‘kinetics’ are as deadly as you say they are, firing in straight lines from beneath the safety of the activated dome, we will be torn apart on our approach unless we can prevent their music of death from sounding.”

Exhaling, the sigh came with the briefest mist from the air let in after the Major’s departure.

“You speak as though the battle is already won. It is not.” Skthveraachk sent out a tendril through the link, checking the progress of the crafters. Forty constructed, twenty more to go. They would work through the fade if needed. “They improve. Every battle, they are slightly better at facing us. Smarter. It is unfamiliar feeling. Excitement. Hesitation. They seek to understand us, the same as we do them. Whichever of us achieves such comprehension first will succeed. We have the advantage now, in our attacks before they have a chance to muster or fortify. If we give them ten or a hundred measures to prepare, I do not know what tactics they will employ.”

Her vents flared as he turned, and claws dipped within them to pull at clogging gunk. Skthveraachk rattled her hairs together, and Hathan’s smile was closed and boneless for her benefit in response. Distantly, she watched as the Pod, now free and lurching through the camp, punched fingers against her tap-pad just as Hathan’s own pinged an arriving message. Reputation. Legacy. Survival. The Sovereignty wanted a demonstration. She would sing them a victory their memories would never see lost.