‘Khshnareechk-Colony marched from Tellthlla, his column arranged into one as he sought food and prey. First, he came to a great field of shrooms, and his spotters called to halt. ‘Rich pastures. Inhale the fertile spores. We should stop and harvest.’ So Khshnareechk-Colony gathered from the field and filled both their stomachs to bursting. Then, they were sent on, to cross the river and ford its width together. And the drones began to sing. ‘Good harvest. Warning markers ahead. We will not advance. We will return the biomass.’ The others made their voices unison. So Khshnareechk-Colony severed the head of the column and killed every drone that had eaten, then drowned every soldier and menial that had purged them from the chorus in the river beyond. When the column returned, many waiting died of starvation and want, and never again did they return to the great mushroom field.’

The parable of Khshnareechk was one taught early, one referenced frequently, and one of the most vital in the memories of all colonies. Hunger, secondary. Success, secondary. Better to be a choir of thousands, unified, than a cavalcade of millions in which a single set of legs marched out of step. Body had been moved. Blood, licked up and cleaned, then purged from the menials who had handled disposal so as to not risk infection and transmission of the frenzy. The purity of purpose it had taken. The will to excise from the collective of Khshnareechk-Colony not just those who had strayed from the song, but those who had come into contact with them, and those too who had carried out the purges. Skthveraachk had, as a queenling, clutched tight around her sibling and feeling the spurs of another dig against her thorax, lay in the embrace of the many and dreamed of a day she would face similar trials with such unwavering certainty. Now, within the dome of bodies, the miniature bivouac erected about her, she hoped only to never be faced with such a choice and need.

“The Hathan-Commander calls to me once more. It is distraction I can neither address nor ignore. You neglect your duty, War Queen.” Only the thinnest rays of the unnatural light slit through the gaps in the bodies above her, the living wall formed of drones to provide a cavern for her rest. The humanites had dulled the brightness of the area, yes, but she had had enough of being watched. Of being huddled within the giant, empty spaces. Settled on the forms of ten attendants shaped to seat, she reached out across the writhing floor as leg extended up from the mass to meet her.

“The Hathan-Commander speaks untruths. The Pod is of disparity of action and thought. Humanites, thinker, are beings of contradictions within their collectives. To listen to their music invites madness. It is not necessary at this juncture.”

“He is insistent. He borders the bounds of demanding you return life to your Band.”

“It was not accident that I silenced it.” Lethargic, the Queen felt through the colony to the five-legged thinker, situated in his own corner of a bay. Surrounded by a half-ten of her other cognitive drones, head thrust up while delver fiddled with graspers and tongue over the Band at his neck. The posture and nearness to head’s underside brought her a twitching disgust, which she suppressed. “You have been clamoring for opportunity to speak with our new masters. Utilize the opportunity.”

“Since you have refused inspection of your own instruments, it is more important we inspect as closely as possible this gifted technology. It requires stillness as we attempt to locate its heart and lungs. Stillness these constant interruptions from the Commander are making impossible.”

“You seek to distinguish you as first amongst equals, your fellow thinkers, do you not? I have greatest trust in your capacity for focus in the face of distraction.” Displeasure rippled from her other thinkers at the claim, no small amount of irritation from the former outsider himself. Skthveraachk released her grip on the arm and rolled, the drones beneath gripping and turning along with her. Until her underside was shone up, her eyes shaded from the dimmer light, directing those forming the floor to feel at her carapace. Touching the healing cracks, exhaling when the tickling, itching feelers peeled away molt from the small divots of lance holes suffered measures ago. Her throne, her seat of bodies, curling up until she was cupped within bodies rubbing their curled claws along her core. Quiet. Calm. Protected within the shield of bodies, guarded against the sight of the great machinery and metal walls and the duplicitous machinations of the humanites. Prepare. Wait. Fight. Seeking understanding, she found only pain. Cease. Obedience did not require comprehension. For once, she did not care to question. She was content to simply be.

“Movement near colony edge.”

“Soldier section.”

“Identify as Hathan-Commander.” The thinkers supplied the order. “Designate non-hostile.”

“Response?”

“Skthveraachk Thinker!” The Queen did not flip herself over, but her mandibles gnashed as the bivouac rattled about her. The response was polite and tender of tone. It only further infuriated her.

“I am unclear why he is present, War Queen. I advised only that I was not as well versed in communication as you, and was preoccupied. It seems the alien took this as invitation. You are right. Their language is quite crude.” The rippling from the nest indicated the disturbance was within two bays. Swearing to the Founders, Skthveraachk yanked far harder than was necessary on the nearest drone, ignoring its signal of pain.

“Individual? No soldiers or spotters?”

“Single entity. Holding at perimeter.” Of course he would come alone. Not bravery. Knowledge of safety. Do not let yourself be tricked into respecting it. “Response?”

“Spray and bring to Queen.” The anatomy of the humanites was engrained within her colony now, but she made sure to signal for delicacy all the same. A touch of odd satisfaction warming her as she felt, saw, how Hathan’s arms were flung out and flailed as mandibles seized around his waist. Hoisted him to the back of a drone, which then clasped central legs up as though hauling egg. Knowing both how it would disturb the alien soldiers undoubtedly watching, and that Hathan would not allow interference despite his discomfort. Her drones rolled her, hid her abdomen’s underside away and brought her back upright. Seat was reformed from the living flesh beneath her, folded legs hooking into the bodies for stability, and though she yet tapped her antennae softly at the feeling of Hathan’s hesitant squirms against her children, the Queen ensured to raise her upper half before his arrival. Folding her scythes, watching down, until the wall of the dome split and opening grew. Menials crawling over one another to form entrance, through which the freshly scented Commander was carried. Deposited, as he slid down and off the frontal drone to unsteady feet. Quick to gather himself to his fullest height, as Skthveraachk had already done, his arms set to sides and gaze upturned.

“*^&**^&**^&*. *^&**^&*, *^&*?” His sounds pattered off her, the crass and wet noises reminiscent of a row of drones feeding one another. It was soft and jagged, all at once. There were small tears in his shell, rips from both sharp mandibles and his own brief struggles. He felt them, touched at them briefly, but did not otherwise react. “*^&**^&*? *^&*?” Pink and small. Tasting of Skthveraachk and of the salty, oily undertones his kind were known for. Blue eyes were unlike theirs, but still saw. Voice hardly musical or pleasant, but still communicative. Two legs standing unsteadily on the breathing floor of bodies, but still maintaining some manner of balance. Skthveraachk scraped a claw beneath her, the entryway letting the colder air beyond resealing at her command, and raised another to touch at the Band.

“I had stilled your device in hopes of silence. Forgive my rudeness in asking you to repeat yourself. What is it you require of me, Hathan-Commander.”

“It was an accident? It was unintentional?”

Two verses, and already the aliens sung nonsense. Skthveraachk drooped her head forward, her forelegs crossed at her core. Seeing the movement, the Commander let out a long breath.

“Fear response is natural to a large object approaching. It is not excuse for engaging as an enemy. I was no threat to it, or your soldiers. I have never harmed its colony.”

Clacking her mandibles together, incredulity seeped from the Queen.

“You have killed sixteen of my colony in the last four measures, thousands before that. I do not lash against your every move with terror that you may kill another.” The Commander recoiled visibly, and Skthveraachk hissed out a breath. “I injured one meaningless drone of the Pod’s colony in all my time here, but still gave them my truth that it would not occur again. It sent me pain regardless. It insults me, accuses me of frenzy by its actions. I do not wish to see it again. Assign me a different colony’s thinker.”

“Please stop moving.”

“Your movements.” He had frozen now, but the shifting and attempts to rebalance were drawing her eyes with every twitch. Trying to find meaning in the meaningless motions. Remembering the great seat of the Admirals, she hastily scribbled out design onto a nearby body. Three drones crawled free of the floor, and interlocked their bodies as directed. One using head as elevated platform from floor, the other thrusting legs forward to provide the rests for the humanite’s arms, and the last straightening to take form of chair’s ‘back’. “It is … unpleasant. Is this suitable?”

Hesitation was written out in both face and scribed into music, but the Commander lowered himself down onto the formed seat. Ignoring the offered arms to instead clasp hands before his groin.

“I am aware of this. The Palamedes is not a colony, it is a nest. It houses many different colonies. The Pod was angered by his injury because he was of the Pod’s own name.”

“I do not understand.”

“I understand this. It is the reason I continue my adherence to your commands without protest.” Uncurling, then curling, her foreclaws clenched into themselves. “Obedience saves the lives of the colony, mine, and the colonies of others.” The Commander spread his hands, and there was silence. She waited for his continuance, then submitted her own. “…The amber shell was an individual. His death would not have harmed the colony in any measurable way. Sympathy is not required.”

He must have again seen her twitches.

“Yes. She is a Queen, and her colony is vassal to mine. It would be tremendous loss. The comparison is meaningless.” Raising her scythe, she attempted the ‘halting’ motion she had seen oft used by the humanites. “I carry many soldiers from her aboard your ship. Many will die in the battles to come. It is natural. They are soldiers. They are birthed to fight and to die for the colony. Their loss is not the loss of a Queen.”

The abrupt change in topic, the hard turn from natural flowing melody was sharp enough to stall her response. Several thinkers had joined the exchange, molding themselves into the living dome to draw closer the music, and their confusion mirrored her own.

“It was unlucky. The beams pierced through shell into the muscle. Two of its legs no longer function.”

“Why?” She fought to keep her irritation under control, bidding the attendants resume their massaging of her body to steady her nerves. A brief request sent through the colony had the requested information brought forth. “It was replaced. It will be relegated to the drones participating in the first wave of attack, hopefully to protect another from a few lancer beams before it dies.”

The Queen thought it musings, until the Commander actually stopped his song to await answer. She sent a supplementary request.

“She. From the fifth menial brood of Skthveraachk queen, my sibling.”

“It is not being punished, Hathan-Commander.” Like speaking to a newly birthed queenling, she tried to simplify her terms. To refine the ideas to their base component. “It is defective. It is no longer capable of serving the colony. It will be a drain of resources to continue feeding and supporting a drone unable of contributing to the collective. It is best that it dies, and in a way that protects or benefits others, that it may serve final function before being removed.” His face was all scrunched up again. The Queen diverted her gaze from the unpleasant wrinkles of meat, and tried to return to the former topic. “I have seen your species does not prefer excising its defects, like your former Captain, and I do not expect the Pod to be killed. Another colony’s thinker will be much preferable-“

It was difficult to be angered by an interruption when it was with such absurd information. Her attendants were drumming her carapace, and her thinkers tittered curiously.

“You have explained this. Your drones are transient, moving from one colony to another. One nest to the next. As Ckhehnvraahll-Colony sends thousands to me now. But rather than adopt them fully to yourself, they remain separate, cooperative, until they return to their colony once more.”

“I have seen your control over your drones and soldiers, your orders obeyed and will enforced. There is no error, only discrepancy.”

Two bodies fell from the ceiling, Hathan’s statement vibrating through Skthveraachk like an icy wind that fogged out across the dome. The whipping shock reflected all around her, the drones rapidly signing forgiveness as they retook positions at the base. Commander had lurched away from the impact site, but the Queen barely paid notice.

“Explain.”

“You were a tender of plants.”

She felt as though the room was pulsing. The shape of the Commander warping, his outline worming, shifting from one form to the next. Her stomach was churning. Claws were desperately trying to calm her innards as the attendants huddled around her, but their success was minimal. An agricultural drone. A tender. Her hopes, her struggles, her victories…her losses? All for and against, for the sake of and in spite of, a tender drone?

“Processing.” It was one of her thinkers, taking lead on her thoughts as she reeled. “Clarify growth pattern of castes.”

“Processing. Consider possibility of ‘lies’. Humanites capable of singing untruths.”

“Processing. Advise rejection. Would be impossible for collective to function with this system of governance.”

“Who is your Queen?” Skthveraachk fought back the darkness, refocused her eyes on that twisted face. “Who converses through you, at this moment? Who am I speaking to?”

She took a breath. She did not have time to exhale it. Hathan looked even more alien now, in his makeshift chair of chitin and cartilage. A thing that was, but that shouldn’t. Not a chain. Not a link. Ideas, thrown from one to the next. ‘Processing’ was all her thinkers could offer.

“You are all mad.” Skthveraachk was the mouthpiece of twenty thinkers, all singing in unison. No anger. No wrath. Hollow shock and empty coldness, like a breath which frosted as it exited your sides and vents. “Or you sing falsehood. You cannot survive, you could not survive, in such a manner.”

He made the belching sounds of mirth. It was not an emotion even near her minds.

“Roles may be changed, this is known. A tender may become an attendant. A scout, a spotter. But a menial cannot become a soldier.” Her mandibles quivered. “A male cannot become a female, a soldier cannot birth as a queen and a spitter may not be ‘appointed’ a thinker. To serve outside your role is a matter of emergency, or necessity. A temporary measure. Soldiers would not follow an agricultural drone.”

“You do not even relay the words of your Queen, why would those born soldiers ever entrust themselves t-…”

“Processed. Extrapolations are uncomfortable.” None were born soldiers. None were born Queens. They were not fed jelly as pupae, or given the proteins needed to grow larger. The shells they wore differentiated them because in form, all were identical. Menials, soldiers, thinkers, all at once. But if that were the case … if that were the case … sympathy. Sympathy? For a soldier? Horror. Now, horror. Skthveraachk did not wish to ask the question she needed to ask. That her thinkers were insisting be asked. Even the five-legged sky-forsaken peeler had ceased his fiddlings, and focused entirely upon the dome. Fluid oozed from her vents.

“What … differentiates, your soldiers from your thinkers?”

“But what separates them, by what metric do your people partition their creation?” She had uncrossed her scythes long ago, and now dug them down for balance to her increasingly nauseous core. “If you are all born menials, if you are all drones to start, what merit permits one to focus upon killing while the other dreams and creates? What nourishment is changed, what experiences are different?” Fifty billion voices. Fifty billion drones. Fifty billion disparate and directionless bodies, clamoring, pulling, swarming. She saw them as a wave before her, their disgusting graspers and drooling mouths and naked pink bodies cascading as they pulled her down into their lunacy. Purpose. Skthveraachk begged for their purpose.

His shoulders shook.

Sympathy for a soldier. Sympathy for a drone. Because that soldier could have been a thinker. Because you yourself were once a drone. Horror. The horror. Alien. Other. Wrongness. A species who chose to remain a drone when they could have been a Queen. Thinkers who could send others to die in simple, unimportant, necessary battles without hesitation. Force of will? Skthveraachk returned to the battlefield of her brooding nest, charging the line of humanites as she bled and screamed. And around her, four thousand other Queens, fighting and killing and dying against hundreds of humanite Queens who were cut in half and split apart and pierced and melted. No. No strength in this. No respect.

“Your species is insane.” Not even hollowness any longer. She wanted to believe this was an untruth. A thing that wasn’t. Her thinkers agreed; it explained too much, it fit too neatly. It solved problems. It filled gaps. Two humanites disagree? Not two colonies. Two individuals. Captain attacks, Commander retreats? Same orders. Different … interpretations. Lunacy. It made sense. It made no sense. “You should not exist. You should not function. You. You.” Her anger was a distant thing. How could it even be reflected properly? Could she even find hatred for a Queen who led other Queens because a Queen received order from a Queen that a Queen wished conquest and expected Queens to command their Queens to fight and die for the sake of their Queen? Her head was throbbing. She sunk down onto all six legs.

Salty moisture was leaking from the male’s brow and follicles, slipping down his neck like droplets of rain.

“My people will be slaves to a species who has no unity. I must obey the will of a drone. Former, drone.” She tried to ease the insult. It came out lamed. “We are not ready for this. For you. We cannot even forge harmony with one another. How can we be expected to now hold truth with things that can choose to lie?” The Queen sought answers within her colony. Her thinkers were silent. They had no answers to give. “How can I follow you?” Within the bivouac, the heat and swelling of breath, there was only them. A Queen, a colony, and an alien from the sky. More alien now than she ever knew or suspected. Perhaps it was the needs of familiarity that saw her grasp at what she could reach. What Skthveraachk could understand. “You were afraid. That you would be killed, for disobeying your Captain’s orders.”

Hands back at his legs. But he had sunk back, awkwardly pressed against the raised back of chair. She beckoned, and the bodies leant further up, seeing a relief brought to Hathan’s face.

“Because you are like a Queen.” The nausea was subsiding. Focus on what could be understood. Ground in the real. “Your death would not be acceptable, unless absolutely necessary.”

There was a darker color at the joints of his blue shell, and the male ran hand across his oozing head. Holding up his slick hands, the man made a ball of his fist and pointed to it. He repeated himself, as Skthveraachk inputted the name.

“What of your Captain’s ship? Why was it sent?”

Another slumping of shoulders. Dragging his hands apart, space widened and widened. Ball dissolved, and in the opposite direction, fist reformed. Smaller, even more distant.

“An accident.” The scale was monumental. The parts, inconceivable, the methods unknowable. Refine it down, do not be smothered by it, view it at a distance. “You had … scouted, this place before and found nothing. Missed my world, somehow.”

Arms dropped down, and the Commander deflated. He rested, his composition concluded and song finished. Skthveraachk almost wanted to laugh. Or perhaps puke, again. Simple misfortune. Random chance. Hundreds of measures? She remembered the peace-talks with the vassals, the war. And all the while, slowly approaching above them, came their future. How meaningless their old squabbles seemed now. She had no time to spend on old hurts and failures. She was a Queen. She needed prepare for the new.

“You must never lie to me again, Hathan-Commander.” He looked up. And, she found to her pride, asked the first question she would have had roles been reversed.

Sitting forward, once more settling his hands at his groin, the hunch of body gave him an almost familiar curve. The way his head was held lower than the joints of his first legs, arms, as it should be.

“You will sing with me. Here, now.” The scentcrafters roused across the colony, Skthveraachk’s intent immediate. Spacing themselves within each bay and cargo hold, slumbering or stilled bodies shaking themselves awake. Hathan did not comprehend. He could not. She assisted. “To join the voices of colonies under single purpose is to pledge a singularity of being. Two Queens who sing together from the canticles, from the memories, even in the crafting of their own song, form an unbreakable bond. It is said, before the music is forever silenced, that every Queen of my world will clasp legs and deny forever the notions of otherness or colonies. It is sacred. It is truth.” She waited just long enough to ensure the translator had served its function in imparting her words. “And any who break such contract are anathema. Never to find rest nor refuge, until they are purged from the memories.”

If humor was present before, it was lost under the gravitas she found in his voice.

“I am familiar with ruses. My people do not sing what is false to one another, but we are capable of duplicity.” The thought of the bulbous, fatty Queen lounging even now within her former mossbed chambers of Hollowcore drew displeased chitters. “I am familiar with betrayal of trust given. If you tell me you cannot answer my queries, I will accept it. If you tell me I must go, I will obey. I cannot believe in billions. I cannot believe in an ‘Emperor’ I have never met. I cannot believe in humanites. I will believe in you. As I did once, as I will now. I must.” She cut the air, and his already forming protest. “Your survival depends upon me and my successes. My survival depends on your deliverance of truth and aid. I do not trust your species. If I do not trust in you, we are both doomed regardless.”

Skthveraachk did not want to die. She did not wish her colony’s song ended. The Commander did not want to die. He needed result, victory, for his people. Understanding. Comprehension. At long last, it was something she could touch and know to be true above all else. Hathan’s expressions were unreadable, like all of his kind, and for a moment, she thought he might refuse. There would be nothing she could do if he had. He stood. He advanced. And as once before, forward came his arm. The same arm she had had torn apart in her haste, shredded with rigid hairs. He raise his lips, and thankfully, kept his bones hidden.

“I believe the Composer will see and understand your intent, Hathan-Commander.” The bivouac opened at its crest, allowing light and air to flow as beam from above. Carefully, ever so carefully, she grasped Hathan’s hand her in claw. Guiding him instead to lay it against her stiffened carapace, briefly marveling at its softness upon her. The smell of her Queen, of her mother, was winding its way across the colony. And her mother, and hers before. Skthveraachk could already taste the dew and rain, its cool breath as the pure secretions sapped from sky. Deepest of baritones had begun at the fringes, finding the reverberations within the metal hull. Smallest drones took places atop their siblings, and legs pulled taut with hardened hair as friction made whine of toning search. Breaths were exhaled from ten thousand lungs, and the breeze washed past her. “Are you prepared?”

“I accept your truth. Join my voice.”

It was different, without the void above them or walls of soil to embrace. The hardstone of the Palamedes echoed back their notes, returned their voices to them like siblings long ago sent to the sky. It began tentative, the drones now from nine colonies seeking a balance against one another’s strength. The power of the Vhersckaahlhn. The guile and play of Ghescktyeelh. The embrace of Ckhehnvraahll. The surety of Skthveraachk. And with both folds of skin sealing eyes and mouth, the alien at their center too emitted a music never before heard. A vibration from his neck, trembling out into floor and form of the Queen with whom he stood. No longer hesitant, no longer unsure, pitches of all colors wound together, swayed without fault, and sung. Sung of the past, of the first. First in fatigue and elation, in the rising of their glory and triumph, and, at last and end, the mournful finality.

‘The blood upon their scythes fell wet

and blighted soil. Their voices yet

rose as a din descends to dirge.

And call across the world was heard;

'Chelice, the Mother, Thshehvaach's End,

the Death that Walks, the Last Sky-Sent

lies low with neither heart nor head.

The last chelicerite is dead.'

From mountains steeped in broken shells

of fallen ones, which into dells

carved far below through woods now stilled,

and nests beneath torn wide and filled,

Came clawing up those who still lived

and raised their heads. No longer hid

they deep within cold rock's embrace,

and felt song's light upon their face.

The blood upon their scythes had dried.

The hate now smothered from their eyes

turned gaze and spur from war to craft.

Together, bound on fields of wrath,

Their legs were joined and lifted true

the voices silenced; seeds anew

from plough'ed fields sprung forth to sky

pods greenest glow long draped on high.

No markers laid on field or tree,

No borders drawn on land or sea,

One chorus sung by Colonies.

The Founders forged their harmony.

As Queens they led from Kchevhnaach's Call

in moss-soaked towers over all.

Where nest was bare in sun-bathed light,

from broodling pits to arching heights

Of spit and sand and gleaming stones

arranged as ring about their thrones.

To catch the light and send it on

Through halls and tunnels rung with song.

The depths of quarries, hewn and cored.

There ore from thousand stomachs poured.

The veins of hardstone delvers drained,

The crafters struck, the shellplates rang.

There chitin, stone and sealant smooth

And motewrought crystals set to grooves

Helmets and cuirass, armored wall

Adorned the soldiers, hale and tall.

There every scent of world was stored,

Preserved in silken strand and cord.

The memories of mothers passed

In grandest chambers spools amassed.

As one they stood a million strong

A legion voices carried long.

The thinkers mused, the tenders preened,

And Queens atop their pillars dreamed.

The blood upon their scythes is dust,

once peerless armors browned by rust.

No voices raise, no soldiers crawl,

The wind it cries through Kchevhnaach's Call.

The darkness drowns the harmony

Within the now Silent City

Betraying vice and selfish sound,

The discord stained the hallowed ground.

There rests the Founders’ final cry,

Above the earth, beneath the sky.

“As One we turned from baser songs,

now to the future we belong.

To wait for unity’s refrain,

as we did Once, and will Again.”