Of all the contingencies he had put in place, the thinker had somehow overlooked the most basic when it came to the aliens; humanites were illogical, individualist maniacs, and thus where one excelled, five more would fail spectacularly. Where one was a pinnacle and paragon of curiosity and creation, five more would recoil in revulsion from realities they reviled. Yet where five merely made notes upon their floating displays projected from the ‘emitters’, the crystal lenses set into their tap-pads, one instead dropped to its knees, tore its mask from its outer tissue, and expelled two stomach’s worth of blood and broth into the dirt. Chkervthnaakt thinker had prepared for almost every contingency. Except for their peelable emotions.

“Danger! Danger?”

“No danger. Scentcrafters to eighth layer. Prepare masking. Something pleasant.” Nursery drones, breeding attendants, had begun to cease their harvesting across the sprawling mecca of pits; lined with freshly ruptured cocoons, and filled with the coagulating failures. All knew the smell of humanite blood by now. Even over the smell of the blood of their fellows, veritable rivers of it pouring down the channels as body parts were disseminated. “Skthveraachk queen, console the humanite.”

“I utter the Canticles in a lesser key!” Not even a breath was wasted on acknowledging the thinker’s direction, the diminutive female fanning her head at the fallen man. He applauded the queen’s singular obedience. “Distress was not the intended outcome of this demonstration! We shall leave. Your apologies are unnecessary. There is no damage inflicted.”

Listening to the Band trying to translate what sounded like chaerilite fighting to keep down a drone that had wrestled its way halfway out of the thing’s throat was a small humor. The alien’s own fellows yanking in ways which should have dismembered the arms of the fallen creature, but instead merely brought it back to both legs.

“Killing would be an incorrect term. Or, more specifically, an inconsiderate or impolite one.” Thinker had found that insults were much more easily taken by the aliens when they believed them to be educational. “Recycling of failed mass is a vital process to ensuring a closed system. Waste is the greatest of sins, Arbury-Thinker.” A few of the party chuckled. The queen remembered her lessons, and clacked her antennae together as well. There was nothing funny about the statement. When humanites laughed, you ensured you laughed with them.

“Please, we will return to the central artery of our passages.” The queen was insistent. Her Band sung for the humanites, while her legs scratched and rubbed for attendants to wad the vomit with sealant. Thinker kept his form to the left and slightly behind, a way to signal her superiority nonvocally, while his own directions thrummed out and filled the spherical space. Demanding over the clamor of panicking nanitics, their first warped note followed closely by their last, for a return to full productivity. Calling, despite the interruption of distant shrieks as the pemphredonites were once more wrangled into mating positions, for the drinks to be moved from the fourth layer to the eighth. Intended surprise ruined, but at least there would be value in the preparation. “Apologies unnecessary, Arbury-Thinker, we sing our apologies to you instead. Attendants will handle the mess. No damage inflicted. No damage received.” Perhaps it had been the smells which unnerved the male the most. The sounds? Formite screams should not be a new experience for humanites, and it was unclear if the aliens could even register distress from something like a pemphredonite. The thinker struck down his desire to question exactly what had provoked the extreme reaction as the waifish attendants shepherded the scientists from the room ahead of himself and the queen. Vhersckaahlhn-spawn soldiers forming a barrier of their bodies to block sight and noise of the harvesting from the brooding chambers once they had gone.

“Watch? My voice’s uncertainty, I am not receiving the intent of your notes, Akasuki-thinker.” Attendants arrived with their precious goods as the humanite thinker considered, stopping before the amber escort and proceeding only when they permitted it. Smoothed sections of keratin had been fashioned into flat trays, upon which clay goblets and pitchers had been modeled after no small amount of trial and error. And no small amount of protesting from the crafters up on the first layer, still obsessing over their dream of a caldera paved in brick and tile. Even the amber guardians opened their helms to accept the cups. Two hundred bars of practice on display from the attendants who went on four legs to pour full each mug, Arbury downing his own in a single slurping.

“Birthing queen.” His interruption slashed and tore. The humanite merely smiled and bobbed her head.

Skthveraachk queen remained near the sickened humanite, letting Chkervthnaakt answer in her stead. Knowledge came from the colony; it mattered only to the humanites, not her, which voice sung of it.

“Their actions are immaterial. It was a touch of the piece’s composition that a mating happened to be scheduled just as the cocoons were hatching.” Attendants offered drink from their stomachs to the thinker once humanites had been served, and he declined. Not while the humanites were in within the clarity of eyes. “Like birthings, hatchings are rarely without complication. Though it varies by species, our own young are most calm when in the scent and sound of their birthqueen. Similarly, when seeking crossbreeds, the memories tell those previous successes, like the spitter, were more at ease by the presence of their seeding male. It is unclear if this presents in something like the pemphredonite, but,” A few refills. A few thankful nods. All but two of the serving attendants remembered to pantomime the gesture back when received. Excellent. “A humanite comparison would be the notion of ‘tradition’, I think. And, may your heart beat steady; the beast does not identify the spawn as its own, and the birthing queen is focused instead upon the successes. We departed before the count, but I saw at least eighteen successes among the seven hundred. A monumental triumph.”

The mutter of discontent from…Elias, that one; discoloring the otherwise vibrant hues of his preparation. Chkervthnaakt clicked his mandibles together, his missing leg itching. The queen caught his irritation, clutched near his anger, and subtly shook her gaster from left to right. When his scuttling turned his frame to the thinker silhouetted under their floating light, the music the thinker sung was ceaseless in its brightness, banishing the shadow.

“They would live false lives, regardless. Eighteen successes, in the first clutch no less, means that within another cycle, maybe two, we shall see again the stingers which were utilized against your Wyverns on K-H-13.” Reprimand. Too heavy. still. The humanite was puckering the portal of its face at being challenged by a bug. Raising his arm, the thinker stroked across one of his twitching antennae. “Do you require more water, Elias-thinker? You look upon this success with a ‘glass half-empty’, as you say.” Immediate reception. Immediate laughter and physical contact, rubbing, patting, from his fellow scientists and researchers. Indignant still, perhaps, Elias-thinker was compelled into chastening his irritation. Surrender the point, or lose social standing within his collective. He chose the former.

“If they offer impress, then you may keep them.” Skthveraachk had finished with the weak-stomached one, and though at her age she remained two tenths of a length lower than the thinker when on all six, he ensured a show of backing away and surrendering his lead to her. “Now with the knowledge and practice, new ones may be crafted by measure of your next visit. Though we have yet to complete this rise’s assessment. Your advanced plan dictated a desire to observe the refuse pit fertilization process, then conclude with the palmidia reserves?”

There was a belly-based ‘urp’ing from the Arbury as, to a one, the humanites clutched close their mugs of clay and plant. The pinkish shade of his face faded now to practically match the pallor of the Akasuki as she tittered a grating mirth.

“That is against our schedule.” Chkervthnaakt locked his jaws shut. Felt the keratin crumple, impact, bend at the curves from the sheer force.

The female was already walking. The queen, with a confused twitch of her antennae signalling back to the thinker in music the Bands did not register as ambers and thin attendants both formed up. The procession embarking out into the network of carved stone tunnels.

“Skthveraachk thinker wishes bars spent in the fecal pits?”

“They demand advanced notice. Determine our itinerary. They should follow their own processes.” He did not wish to spend even ten beats in the fecal pits. He had indeed been looking forward to a reason to walk slow beneath the warm shade of the towering pillars, now breaching the crust from the eighth layer straight to the ceiling of the sixth. It would have been a welcome distraction. “You process memories quickly. The humanites respond well to you. I sing the most azure of praises.”

“Your memories are clean and pure in their organization. My mother was wise in entrusting special priority to you before her departure. I process these thoughts only thanks to your unique outlooks.”

“If your skull did not raise when such was sung, I would accuse you of an unnecessary flourish within your music, Skthveraachk queen.” Humanites were fascinating. Formites, however, were… appealing.

“Please repeat last, Akasuki-thinker, my translator did not receive that.” He had beats, at most, if schedule was held to. Thinker could smell the palmidia stalks already, but doubted he’d be able to see them.

The queen followed his example, her antennae tapping and stroking the now meaningless, perhaps later explained, terms into the terminal affixed to her skull.

“Our farming reserves assist your planet?” That was the queen. Chkervthnaakt’s thoughts went elsewhere. Sending messages through the link, preparing the line of communication to the surface.

Cluster of humanite thinkers tapped at their pads and chattered between their teeth.

“An expansion. This is information which will be received with great celebration! We expand beneath the walls of the caldera, and within them; how much further have our borders been extended?”

The speed at which the thinker was back in the now would have shamed the humanite Gates. Voice of the Composer be gentle, the queen managed not to screech out as she replied.

“Such a space will take… cycles, with our current numbers, to fully convert and fill. We would have to recall half our menials from combat-“

How many lengths was the Silent City? Memories so old they may as well be legends suggested it stretched the breadth of the Print, some ten thousand lengths from horizon to horizon. Near an eighth of the grandest nest upon the homeworld, merely…handed, as the humanites said, to them. He was reeling.

The alarm. Drones from up and down the corridor, carrying eggs and tools and stones, turned to a waking torpor as the wailing scent-sirens flowed in screaming streams from the upper layer. A full twenty breaths through Chkervthnaakt’s erected link before the queen received the alert, and another forty before the humanites all pressed fingers behind the flaps of their head while ambers held to sides of their helms. Two of the guardians unslung their lances; queen had already warned and sung peace to the attendants and all those nearest.

“There has been an accident. Mistake? Unclear. Drones have attacked a humanite.” Thinker took a single leg forward, but a lowering of an amber’s lance brought him rapidly back. The queen striking loud chords of obedience as all were ordered away from the suddenly tepid aliens.

Noted.

“No! Never!” The fear was not just within the queen, but racing through every leg and lung. Filling the halls, from the refurbished troughs of the feeding den to the subterranean springs, laying of organic pipework halted mid-action. Still, Skthveraachk clutched to the scent of Chkervthnaakt’s steadiness, coring herself. “My voice is of certainty and yet rife with confusion! You are marked. You are allies. There is no hostility here!” Ambers were set about the thinkers in a protective wall, but already some of the scientists had begun to relax. Akasuki most of any, though the deep slits of her eyes were even thinner than usual.

“I will investigate. I will solve whatever issue is present.” Chkervthnaakt crossed his one arm over his core, and scraped low with his head. The queen scrabbled on his shell, loathing to part with his odd calm, but he signalled back refusal. “Skthveraachk queen will continue to aid in your tasking. Her hold and touch upon your ways is delicate, but sure. I will return when able. May your songs be untouched by the sudden rain.” Turn. Down on all five. Racing to the central shaft, and forgoing a wait for the lift to instead sprint up the parallel ramp while the urgency of the thinker’s responsibility was both sung ahead, and sung behind; hundreds diving out of his way to provide a cleared path to the source of the threat. Unfortunate. He had been so looking forward to the glow of the fungal farms.

One of the drones was still alive. Surprising. Shocking, by all which the memories recorded. Blood still dripped wet from its mandibles as it rolled and squealed on its back, the severed arm of the humanite pooling crimson vitae in the dirt aside. The other two were much more expectedly silent, what with the twelve melted holes through each corpse the thinker counted on his approach. From the twenty and more ambers and simple black-on-red soldiers which had surrounded the similarly shrieking, armless man. The first of his graspers, a clean stump. The second, a shredded amalgamation of white bone poking through red meat and sodden white fabric. Aliens were shouting at formites. A thinker, the only nearby with a Band, was trying both to answer and guide the near hundred which had grown agitated and frantic by the death and danger signals from the scene. Chkervthnaakt chattered his priority ranking; it was not needed. The other thinker, a lesser male, assigned to ruminating on new disposal tactics for processed corpses or some such tedium, was chanting praises and relief to be relieved from the duty.

“I am Skthveraachk thinker of Skthveraachk-Colony!” His single foreleg went up over his head. Waving as he returned to four legs. “Peace! Calm! Surety! What has transpired here, what is the fullness of this?!”

“Received, received!” The previous thinker had already called for scentcrafters. Expected and perfect. Cohesion would suffer on the opposite end of the surface, but it was not as though brick-layers needed perfect harmony at all moments.

“Danger! Death! Threat!”

“No threat! Threat dispatched! Designate area as dangerous, terrain a risk. Received?” A few spurt out droplets immediately. The others backed away from the unseen, theoretical hazards. Spewed their own warnings. Backed further away. Forcing more to do the same. Save for the writhing drone. It was another matter entirely. An unpredicted matter. Thinker switched back to tones which would resonate with the warriors currently aiming lances upon the crowd, and him. Despite knowing the security the Band afforded him, both his stomachs were tightening in preparation for emergency purging, to lighten his load in case of fleeing. Not an experience he wished to relive, and so, it was controlled. “Humanites! Distance granted. No threat. There is no threat here. I am Skthveraachk thinker. Which of you assumes direction of those present?”

Another whited coat had settled alongside thrashing humanite, more with boxes and cubes in hands rushing from assembled buildings along the perimeter of the cliff walls.

Amber. Indistinguishable from the rest. Chkervthnaakt maintained his spacing, continuing to splash droplets of his own assuring scents across the terrain behind his gaster.

“I was not present when this incident occurred.” Scattered reports, memories, sightings; he had already pieced together a rough understanding, but sung level and far slower than his heart was beating for the alien. “I require information before I am capable of providing comprehensive answers. You are the humanite who can provide me with such?”

A circular, shining mesh of threads was fastened over the stub of the wheezing male’s arm. Steam, smoke, slithering up and away from the site. Rising, the white shell with an impressive number of facial follicles pushed to make his way to the amber. Black shells moved aside. The golden hued guardians did not.

Motion to the two silenced, one which could not stop crying out.

Chkervthnaakt risked a few spaces nearer. Some of the ambers ensured their lances were pointed away from the gathering and solidly towards his upturned core, but they would not fire. The knowledge only slightly aided his courage.

This humanite was intelligent. He liked this humanite. He made a show of adjusting his body just enough, as the fuzzy-faced creature broke through to the front, to angle away from the amber and give the greeting motion to the white shell instead. Scientist, thinker, doctor, bent shallowly at the torso in response. This name, he bothered to add to his translator.

“Kendrick-Thinker, may your composure be sung and echoed by all those in your trail. My people confirm your soldier’s words. They sighted him on the edges of our clay pits. He was flagged as a threat encroaching on our territory, and attacked.”

There was heavy rudeness in that series of notes from the amber, heavier than the translator was indicating. The Kendrick brought hairy ridges above his eyes down as well, but the thinker made a show of bobbing his head submissively.

“Crucial information is missing which would explain much. May I examine the humanite? I need not touch him.”

The alien’s thinker began to argue. The amber shouted back. Chkervthnaakt did not listen. He was counting. Eight ambers now, twenty-two soldiers, an additional twelve forms reported nearby by drones helplessly confused as to the point of his query, but obligated to answer. It was as the aliens had sung; the drones which had been guarding managed to latch and cut long before the first lance was fired, and though the two immediate threats had been dealt with, when the third dropped back under the realization of what it had done, they had not pressed the attack. The thoughts took all of two breaths, and the thinker twitched his head left as the amber, grudgingly, stepped back. Scientist, thinker, gesturing an arm to the fallen and almost insensate victim, still in the soil. Now all but a clawful of lances were on him as Chkervthnaakt approached. Dropped down to five legs. Waved his antennae over the darker than usual meat, angled his head so all four eyes reflected the taut and elastic pull of the concealing skin, let the click of his mandibles send ripples of air near enough to ruffle the lip of the shell at alien’s neck. It was without purpose. It was a display. He could have smelled from ten lengths back. But then, the alien would not have the bleary, half-conscious memory of his skull, mere tenthlength from its own, embedded in its mind forever. However long ‘forever’ was to the star-sent. Long enough.

“The reasoning behind the attack is cleared. This humanite is unmarked.” Some of the ambers did not parse. Almost every soldier groaned. Thinkers, once on guard and hesitant, looked now to the groaning, armless male with condemnation. Chkervthnaakt resisted the urge to break out into an ode there and then.

Many of the colony remained alert, unwilling to depart despite the lesser thinker’s assurances and commands in the face of the still-present warning signals. Scentcrafter had arrived, thankfully, already beginning to throw fluid in high arcs as the heart and head cords mixed into perfect synchronicity.

Chkervthnaakt felt his claws curl.

Claws unfurled and relaxed.

“I sing more sincere and true sadness that this event occurred. Not even if need was dire would Skthveraachk-Colony wish harm upon any individual of the Sovereignty.”

Lances were relaxing. That, in its turn, brought peace once more to the more stubborn of the alarmed colony. Drones returned to labor. Nearby pit once more grew full with stomping bodies mashing the mud and fibres. Mandibles snapped shut. Antennae, once rubbing, spread wide.

“It is possible to do such things? The scope of your technology and mastery of nature is truly something we have yet to even partially comprehend. It shocks me such injuries can be recovered from.”

Haulers were requesting access to the corpses. Chkervthnaakt granted it, timbre now mimicking the grating of a rockflow, watching amber and soldiers depart one after the other as the soon-to-be-hale alien was loaded to a one-wheeled stretcher.

“I do not expect so. But I will inspect and determine if the drone’s song may be salvaged. Your respect is praised and will be praised by those of greater importance than I. I sing farewell, fond, and with only a few regrets.” Humanite tipped its head. Chkervthnaakt rose only to bend once more. He made certain the alien thinker was halfway back to the great lift to the plateau before his steps turned to a stalking. Letting the brief frustration alleviate itself openly before reaching the bloodied drone. Its screeches and cries now submerged under wallowed sorrow.

“I have doomed colony.”

“You have not doomed the colony. Your attack was forgiven. Humanite was at fault.”

“First priority. Preserve Sovereignty humanite lives.” It curled around an unseen bough, ground patterns of dismay into the dirt. “Failed. Fallen. Frenzied. I attacked humanite. I am faulty.”

“This was your first tasking as a spotter.” Stroking, tasting of the drone with his antennae, the thinker put off requests from the queen as long as he could. “Spotter priority is always to identify and, if needed, eliminate threats. It is only natural your tasking priority overruled colony-wide priority. If not immediately, then quickly after the conflicting orders were identified.”

“I am frenzied. I attacked humanite. I am faulty. My song is tainted. My memory is a curse on the colony.” Requests repeated. Any further dismissals would be highly irregular. The corpses were dragged past as he continued to pat the trembling drone, letting one of the menials bind its leg to him and relay down eight layers. To the queen, who smelled of fresh-cut palmidia and the dew of a hundred phidites as they grazed on the shoots. His vents trembled and chirp slipped his lungs. Accursed timing.

“Skthveraachk thinker. What has occurred? Is the colony in danger?” He recited the events. It took eight breaths. The queen was felt to sag, relieved, letting out the lungfuls of air she had no doubt been keeping in reserve. “Unfortunate circumstance, but with thankful resolution. What of the remaining drone?”

“It remains distressed.”

“Recommendation?” Chkervthnaakt offered but the briefest glance. His patting slow upon the black chitin coated with the dust of the foreign world.

“Attacked a humanite. Dangerous to the colony. Understands the fullness of its failure. Recommend recycling.”

“Received. Will send haulers. Will you return to the fungal farms? The humanites sing of such wonderful things! Such bright rises and potential for the colony!”

“No.” There was a familiar scent on the breeze. His contact with the drone ceased as it murmured thanks, farewells, forgiveness for a role betrayed and relief in the approaching silence. “Trust fully in queen’s designation. I must return to my priority tasking.”

“Received. Your tasking is of purest necessity. When its purpose is revealed, I will delight in the telling of it.” Two familiar scents. Two familiar sounds. Drone lay still as a menial approached, fastening claws to its shell and beginning to drag it to the lower levels. Somewhere along the way, if another could be spared, a hauler would snip cleanly head from abdomen. If not, it would need wait until reaching the feeding troughs and larder. He hoped for the former; it was owed more, and earned that much at least. She came into view as the blood, formite and humanite, was all but cleared as balls of mud and sand were formed from the fluid and carted away in wheelbarrows. Swept from between the tile with poles affixed with brushlike clumps of hair and bone.

Her shell fluttering about her legs, the Pod strode towards the entrance of the nest with purpose. Trailed, followed, by the amber. Her amber. The most disagreeable of all ambers. Chkervthnaakt did not make the same mistake as the Queen had many memories before; he waited by the entrance growing ever more prominent in its masonry and construction, and made no movements to indicate he heard anything of their exchange.

” He reached for her arm, but was halted by a pair of menials carrying a pile of bricks on struts between their legs. Jennifer not even pausing as they moved like a stream around her.

A finger to the site of the scuffle. Orange sand, red mud, piles of scooped liquid insides settled into the carts of the haulers to be buried beyond the walls of the caldera.

They were too close now. Feigned ignorance would no longer be effective. Getting on four legs, the thinker chittered with suppressed excitement.

“If you are speaking of the injured humanite, you will be pleased to know he is believed to be capable of making full recovery to health. Limbs returned. Body saved.” The vehemence in the amber’s body could be felt clear through the unreadable suit and helm. Jennifer, however, managed a brief and strained smile. “And such regrettable violence came into being only by the humanite’s own ignorance of clearly established protocols. Procedures, as you say, put in place for his, and your, safety.”

The air was thick. The sound of bodies crawling up from the hole, down through its depths, winding about the three of them. Chkervthnaakt hated this amber. All who heeded the memories hated this amber. But Chkervthnaakt did not need to take heed of a temporary problem. He focused upon the Pod, and rubbed hairs across his itching eyes.

Stopped at the mouth of the artificial cavern, the archway blended into the erected stone pillars as though the stone had melted into the formation, the Pod flustered. The fluster remained as she began to descend, a disk floating free from the shoulder of her shell and blinking on light to the blackness. The Thinker waited to determine if the amber would follow. Whatever force held him back was reliable; he would not.

Even by humanite standards, that was an almost universally untrue statement.

“Though translation may adjust the beauty of it, the closing verse of the third Noteless Hymn sings that, ‘Only frenzied or Queens nest in the valley of chelicerites.’” In the humanite’s language, it sounded as a shitting lumbrite. “Only in the future, or by the Composer’s will, can it be determined which designation best suits you, alien.”

The thinker could tell it had been meant to sound threatening. When the pair faced and held, subtle flickers and shifts from both indicated a shared agreement; neither had been effective. When Chkervthnaakt caught up with the Pod and left the Sentinel to bump his way through budging bodies, a Pod who was growing unpleasantly familiar with the layout of the nest, it was not after the amber that she first asked.

Set of utensils, cannisters, and a larger bag over one shoulder. He would see shortly which items she deemed unsuitable to deliver as he requested.

“Yes. It is truth that he seemed to forget the importance of our markers, as you are wearing now. A trio of spotters attacked him out of instinct. Regrettable. But at least the damage was, comparatively, minimal.”

Looking about, as though an alien was to leap from the darkness, the Pod’s voice lowered.

“Of course not. There is matter requiring your immediate attention. On the bottom layer.” It was a true statement, but one meant to express more than it spoke of. The Pod grinned, patting the bag with what the thinker assumed was subtly, and continued towards the lift. She had been of great benefit thus far, more than the thinker would have expected, in explaining idioms, behaviors, patterns. Trying to force intelligence and secrets from the Coalition captive was pointless, but there was much more he could teach. Much more to be pried from his wet and sticky meatsack of a shell.

Focus to the now. Alert, at fullest. Beat. Beat. A third beat, just to be sure there was a space wide enough in breadth for thought.

“Yes, actually. Queen, myself, the colony, has great experience with restraining ourselves despite natural inclination. But with these newest births and with Queen absent, the younger generation of the colony lacks practice with such, despite the memories.” She was not looking his way. Her focus split. Her attention, minimal. “Three drones were tasked for the first time with the role of spotter. That they were stationed on the perimeter where your comrade passes was most unfortunate for him.”

The tap-pad came out, and down into the slack where it had come from came her interest. The thinker uttered a chirp, and signalled that a humanite was to arrive at lift within four beats.

“It is less a matter of familiarity than recognition, the two not being synonymous. A pale shell like the male is not differentiated, nor identified. Unlike the Hathan, or the Solovyova, or the Pod; even without scent, most would know you. Recognize you.”

He pondered. Considered. Weighed the reality against the fiction, the true against the suspect. There was time aplenty’ the Pod made no signs of expecting an immediate answer. Perhaps he would explode. Perhaps he would simply melt into puddle. But such suspicions had long since been proven false, such threats and warnings shown by the humanites to be incorrect assumptions. When they had at last reached the lift together, Chkervthnaakt bobbed his head, rubbed his legs, took a breath, and responded clear without drawing look nor query from either the Pod, or the colony entire.

“Yes,” He sung the lie. “I assure you, I will.”