Her blood still rushed and hairs yet stood as needles, threatening to skewer the Pod in her hunched seat. The Queen had tried to offer explanation, a quick summary of events thus far as Hathan had traversed the length of deck from ramp to clearing. Reassuring. Affirming. He had given her such a look that the music had died on her before ever being birthed.

Second time she had heard the ritualistic exchange. The Arbiter repeated the notes beat for beat, from memory and practice, while Kamenev created a cloud of hazy smoke while pooled upon the ceiling. Exhaling it, emitting it, from the stick practically chewed in her mouth. Tension had just about drained from both Admirals, now fixed in their seats.

He was so sure. As the Captain before had stood, but not rigid, not thrusting of core and uncertain shifting of feet when queried. None had stood when the Commander had entered, but it had not unbalanced him. He knew what he was doing.

It did not require a Band of inscrutable alien design to interpret the shock which rippled throughout the room. Skthveraach felt confidence waver as the Pod stopped breathing beside her. Kamenev’s chewing of the stinking, glowing stick halted outright. Ambers posted along the walls drummed fingers against their lances, the blue shells looked to one another with myriad expressions, like ripples in a pond refracting back the same face in a dozen forms. Even Huan-Arbiter seemed caught as a tad feeds, the ritual of procedure cast off and aside. Features set but body no longer held with straightened poise, he brought himself to face the Oskar-Admiral, who was the only one present amidst the incongruent individuals to maintain the mandated calm of his role and office.

Whereas Oskar had hunched forward when speaking to the Captain, he now reclined. Stretched an arm out along the high-backed chair bearing design of circles overlaid in repetition.

Like sucking on the fetid length provided her life, Kamenev was stirred from initial shock and was devouring the stick between folds of flesh.

Skthveraach was trying, ever more focused, to discern the Commander’s intent. For man who admitted to being frenzied, who admitted to having failed in his role, there was none of the shrinking or unrighteous fury the previous lesser-queen Captain had demonstrated.

Snap from Kamenev-Admiral, the stick pulled from her mouth as fluids flecked the desk, was answered by a renewed tightness of the Commander.

The fingers tapped. The hair over mouth tugged and shook as wrinkles of skin began to grow taut on the Admiral’s face. With floundering knowledge, a quick look to the Pod who was yet insensate and uselessly frozen beside her, the Queen could only accept that it was pleasure the seated grand male Queen offered. Was pleasure good? Too many emotions. There was a risk of death here. Wait to be called. He had said she would be needed.

It was the third time Skthveraach had heard the mention of these ‘articles’. Hathan recited them like they were canticles.

Murdering demon from beyond the sky. A quick laugh escaped her as antennae beat together. Yes, what did her Hathan-Commander think of his useless former superior?

Her laughter ceased.

Her claws were refitting to the grooves already established in the floor. Resource. Biomass? They did not eat her kind. The humor was still in the Admiral’s features. Why was he baring his teeth and bone?

Hathan’s hands were balls of white behind his back as the female struck the smoldering end of the rod into curved ornamentation. The stamped butt was thrust like a blunted scythe for Hathan.

Her gaster was spasming. He cut short the song of darkness. The song of truths concealed. Unknowingly concealed? Then why did he turn his head back, now for the first time, to catch sight of her with shaded eyes and shaded mind. Then why did his music grind to an end, as if in realization. As if in … regret.

Hathan dropped any regard for Skthveraach, the Arbiter’s affirmation turning all eyes, Queen to Commander, to room’s head.

Hathan managed to keep his voice steady, but the shake of his hands would not be halted.

You did not interrupt the Queens. When the Queens interrupted you, it was the moment to clench tight to silence. The Admiral yet grimaced his white teeth, but that knitting of brow had begun to resurface. Skthveraach stood, brought herself onto four legs as the Admiral sung of her and made gesture with hand. He did not address her further. Whirr. Click. Swish. Roll. She did not let herself be swept away this time. She was newborn in this strange world, and she was ignorant, but she was not stupid. Hathan refused to look back, but the Queen let him stand beneath her watchful gaze. He had saved her. He had ended the deaths. His truths.

They were back on the bridge. The overseeing platform of the battle still raging on the ground. Where was Skthveraach now; had she breached the second line of their defenses that mad rush to their deaths with her children? Had she already fallen on the field? The screaming pitch of wailing alarm remained, but voices were yet frozen stilled. Nothing. A female’s noise.

A male, not Hathan, responded.

The Commander again.

What was this?

What was Hathan saying?

The Queen knew where she was.

She was in her swarm. The second column of aliens was torn and broken. Her armor was melted over her gaster, but held still. The workers would clean what was left. Her soldiers, her spitters, everything she had left was driven wild by her pheromones and was with her. The third column of creatures in sight. Their lightning dropping her children all around her. Striking and burning at her. At everything.

Something was whistling. She remembered it. Like the strongest of winds through the grasses and trees. She heard it over the death, over the pain, over her head.

Flight. Her last memory. The ground opened beneath her, and it did not swallow, but expelled. Into the notrocks she had been tossed like discarded inedible chitin. Onto the ground made muddy with blood, hers or her daughters or the creatures, she did not know. There was no air. There was no light. She had fallen. She had sunk. And she had known no more.

The response was not immediate, but it was deliberate when it arrived.

There were more words, of course. There were always more. But they dropped away as the hum from around her came to its end. The song running its course. She knew where she was. She was here, on the vessel of the aliens from the sky. Just her. Her, and him.

More shock than anger. Admiration? She didn’t care.

Six thousand dead. More. Any who survived would have frenzied, or collapsed without purpose. Only a few would have found way back to the colony nests. Kamenev made a grunting sound the translator did not process.

She was still standing. She had not thought to sit. Not given much thought to anything, in fact. The Hathan was before her here, but so too was he before her in the memories. Exposed. Awaiting. Dead within her containment cell the beat she desired it, but unafraid. He meant her no harm. He had not attacked her people. He desired peace. Then he was on her carapace, ordering the death from above to fall on them all. On her specifically. A thing to be destroyed to halt the fighting his own superior had begun.

The Arbiter made inclusion to the chorus, and their eyes turned together towards their readouts.

The air was unsettled. The vessel was cold. The Queen had never really stopped to appreciate, to let sink just how tepid her fluids ran on this unliving hulk of hardstone metals. She first feared it as a beast who reared past mountain peaks. She then marveled at it as a testament to the power of these new creatures. But it was dead. And it was hard. And it was cold. Coldness was crawling from it, and up her legs like invisible tendrils.

The Pod had pointed to Skthveraachk. Identification. With fingers around the arm of another pale shell, she had turned fellow thinker around and pointed to its back. Gestures understood. Armor pried off her body with the creatures’ permission. Thanks given. Communication.

‘It wishes us to move to the other side of cavern,’ she had hummed in hushed recitation to her scout. ‘Received.’ He had paused. ‘Why, does it wish this?’ ‘I do not know. Accompany me.’ Obey or be harmed. She had known it then, before the Pod could sing in ways she understood and no longer needed the painrock. No longer needed, because the Queen no longer disobeyed.

Bravery was to face death, to put life on the line in pursuit of goals. She had thought the Commander brave. She had been a fool. Her eyes were unblemished and uncovered now. The deaths he caused. The betrayal of the one to whom he reported. Who ruled him. He had already been a dead man once his Queens arrived. Unless he had something to show. Unless he had something of … value.

No.

She had shown them her people could be led. That under leadership they would unite, and obey, for the sake of survival. She had taught them this.

Physical examinations of their prowess? The motions had been so simple. The lights almost amusing. Where was the difficulty in catching them, in cooperating? ‘Locate and touch lights. Retrieval unnecessary. Mark path. Gathering formation.’ One line of command, ten bars of activity. Trivial to them. Impossible for animals. And the humanites did not need animals.

No.

Hathan increased the tempo. Skthveraachk felt how his heart beat, felt the ripples it left in the heated currents pouring from him. Warmth vacated him. Words spilled freely as the room soon was filled with nothing but them. She was drowning. She was drowning in knowledge always before her, knowledge it was her role to see and catch, but now it was all around her and she could do nothing but sink.

Her attendant. Sacrificed for the colony, willingly so, to defeat the chaerilite. Songs which would be made legends would be written of it, of how one death had felled a star-sent, to prove to the humanites their power. Their will. Power and will the humans could bend and make theirs.

What had she done.

Tables laden with legs. The crests of soldiers, workers, drones. Carved off and left to rot. A Queen’s scythes hanging from the wall. No different from Skthveraachk. Perhaps she had awoken first and deemed unsuitable. Perhaps she had awoken too late, and the humanites did not require a second subject. She was not special. She was simply fortunate.

What had she done.

The pad clattered as it was laid down by the haired Admiral. ‘Workers. Laborers.’ Her thinker had been breathless. Not processing the information rationally. ‘I am unsure of their number or colony size, but these tests seem designed to measure cohesion and strength in body.’ She had told him to reassess.

She could see but one eye. One white orb, within shining the unnatural lights as the sun had caught the glow of her world. Standing where no other but the departed had stood. Seeing what only the Composer had before witnessed. Hathan-Commander had shown her a lifetime of wonders stretching into alien infinities, and she had missed the pit awning before her. The white slid, the soft colors of his gaze graced across her. And for the second time since the arrival of the humanites, her world ended.

The Pod was more nimble than Skthveraachk would have suspected; she managed to tuck down and shrink into a ball as the Queen’s gaster flew overhead in the turn. One of the ambers made it two of their lengths, a half of hers, towards her as she made for the ramp. She felt something break, on or within him, when her forelimb swung to send him spiralling through the air and into one of the sealed viewports with wet squelch. A shot rung out. Skthveraachk felt no heat. It was ignored.

Another was approaching. Previous warning unsuccessful. She had ensured scythes were sheathed when she struck the first of the ambers. She made sure one was exposed as her mandibles split wide and vents hissed out threat. His lance came down, but his eyes were wet and wide. He halted. She advanced past.

Attennae came low to switch the translator off. The contraption, the technology grafted to her skull felt like a bulbous tumor ready to pop. The Band was choking her. She knew she was scarring the metal of the walls as she thrust herself down through the opening, ready to tear open the door before it wisely slid apart. No. It was not alive. The dead moved in this place, and she walked with them. Out into the corridor, where she was forced back down onto all legs as unintelligible gibberish was hooted and hollered after her. No room to breathe. No room to think. Forward. Forward to the mess, then to the cargo elevator, then to the lower corridor and to cargo hold where her colony would-… was-… unity. Togetherness. She was alone. She could not be alone.

“Svera!” Heard the footsteps. Knew the scent. Tasted the excretions. Couldn’t turn around. If she turned around, she would kill him. Forward. Forward. “Svera, *^&**^&*! *^&*, *^&*!” Syntax was wrong. Pitch was crude. Volume was needless. Repetition was insult. Better he used the humanite words for her. Better that he not remind her with each mangled usage of his effort to appeal, to assure. Better he call her thing. Tool. “Svera!”

“SLAVES!” Her wail endured for beats, echoing down the lifeless passageways hewn from hardstone, that bore no warmth nor welcome. He was there. In the blues she found so enthralling, wondering how they could have trapped such beautiful shades in perpetuality. His hands emptied and opened. Ambers were in the distance, but she was sure a dozen more were just out of sight behind corners by now. She rounded, and slammed the tips of her scythes into the floor lest they snap forward for the man mere three lengths away. “From the very first. From the moment our composition began. You stood before me, and swore alliance. You taught me. You showed me my world floating in the sky. You told me of how you had killed those who had frenzied, to learn of us, and I forgave you. You told me you had fought against the order to destroy us, and I accepted it of you. And throughout all, you knew.” She scrabbled at her translator, slapped at it. “You sung of truths incomplete. You withheld knowledge pertinent and known. There is no word. There is no concept within my tongue or the songs of old! You… you…” What was not. What was wrong. The translator accepted the inputs, and the alien concept was hurled from her like spitter’s acid. “You LIED!”

That disgusting meat slipped from his mouth and wiped at his lips. Once more his words, spoken as they had been before he threw back the fronds and let sear the light of reality. Her mandibles snapped.

“You will not excuse yourself. You will not defend what you have done. We were never to be your equals. We were never to touch your heights. You have taught us so we may better serve. So that we may better obey.”

“I HAVE LISTENED!” Resistance, screeching and painful, met her as she dragged scythes forward through the floor. Her legs buckled and body braced against the firmness of the ship, but slowly did the panels give way and allow the distance between them to shorten a length. “I have listened to your every note, to your every breath, since I was brought and imprisoned here! I listened, and I adhered, and now you will listen, Hathan-Commander.” Control. No control. Breathe. No air to breathe. “Do you know what Jelly is to us?”

He had taken a half-step back. Corrected himself. Then returned to his stance. It no longer impressed her. She continued her advance.

“It is the death of the self. It is the end of the song. When we are born, it is fed to us, and through it we know ourselves. We find our place in the grand choir. To take one grown from another colony, and to force upon them your jelly, is to make dull their minds and enrapture their voices.” Metal gave way, torn up in two jagged lines which cut and carved at her scythes. Marking them. Gouging them. “They no longer know themselves. They can no longer differentiate their music from the others. To them, they have always been of this colony. They have known these voices all their lives. They feed on the jelly, and there is no longer a mind to be discordant. They are unified, for they no longer know of any alternative. They are the departed. Bodies that move but no longer live. Slaves to another’s will.”

She brought herself to a standstill. A half length. A precise length. The exact length in which the Commander had last stood before her, unguarded, unprotected. Close enough that her outer eyes could barely register him.

“You show us marvels, then use them to lure our focus. You show us weapons, then teach us that to combat them is death. Your education is double bladed, your intentions a trap. No, Hathan-Commander. The jelly robs us of our senses first, then it robs us of our choice. You keep us awake when you enslave our purpose to yours. You are worse.”

They watched one another, then. Stood there, in that hallway, listening to the wetness of their breaths and the finality of their truths. No more barriers. No more subtly. No more guises. Just him. Just her.

She pictured him cut in half. Leaking. Oozing. Clawing at the wound as though it could save him, as she had watched others do.

“My people take. We consume. We kill one another. But it is not senseless. It is not to absorb. My vassals obey because I am the stronger, and where there was once disparity, there is now unity. One day, my world will no longer struggle. They will no longer kill. The Founder’s Will shall be realized, and with one voice shall we raise ourselves to heights unceasing.”

Hands were left at his sides. Not behind his back. Not hidden from her, not any longer. She believed it. Even knowing the man could speak untruths willingly, Composer rest her, she believed these creatures could do it.

“And how did you achieve your harmony?” She wanted to know. She wanted to kill. To tear, and maim, and punish this man who had made her betray her role. Her race. By what power did these creatures pilot themselves to the sky and beyond? “How did you finally unite your people?”

There was no sadness. There was no faltering. Numbers struck her with their impossible weight, but merely rebounded from his implacable stance. She did not shrink nor shirk. But the Hathan-Commander maintained his stance, a half her height and a third her length.

Specks in a hurricane. Motes on a breeze. All her life, Skthveraachk had been told she was fool for abstaining from enslavement. She had called her mother, when she was brave enough to do so, the same. What was in the best interests of a colony now would not always be the case. Loyalty was always to the collective, to the self within it. While they spent cycles with scentcrafters concocting tales of peace and notions of harmony, their enemies would absorb three colonies for every one they convinced. Her mother had gazed from the peak of Hollowcore, down the spiral causeway lined with the carvings of her Queen, and her Queen before, and sung out for none but Skthveraachk to hear.

‘The discord will not be silenced by cowards. The Founders will not embrace the weak. They silence the other because they fear their own voices too frail, they bind the other because they can only lead those chained to their will. When the Final Song at least rings out, it will not be a song of cruelty, or of fear, or of power which crushes all others. It will be of a truth so pure that none can deny it, and all must follow. Our harmony will not be enforced, Skthveraachk. It will be discovered, together, by all of us. On that day, all will remember, and sing as one once more. Once, and Again.’

All her life. A fool who fought against practices all others had adopted. And the final irony of it all. For soon enough, these star-sent would descend, and all would serve. Faithful or separated, Triumverate and Queenless Raiders all. Serve, or die. Heavy. Hunched. And so, so very tired.

“You have taught me joy and sorrow, Hathan-Commander. Shown me worlds beyond my own. By your actions, you have killed thousands now, millions later, and saved hundreds of millions beyond. Skthveraachk-Colony will remember this, from now until the death of the song. Of how you have ensured the preservation of my species, the memories will hold in remembrance forever.”

She thrust her head forward. Felt it strike true, impacting Hathan at his chest. Air was flung from him, his body striking ground before her. Below her. Forced to angle his head up awkwardly, to gaze up rather than as equals eye to eye, holding hand to his core and trying to regain his air. The Queen was unsure if the Band could pick up the intricacies of her emotion. She only hoped.

“And until the last breath of my last child on the last day, Hathan the First. First of the Humanites. First of the Liars. Until the sky swallows us all, Hathan-Commander. All you have done, all you have caused, all you will cause; Skthveraachk Queen of Skthveraachk-Colony, War Queen … will NEVER forget.”