It had been too much. Skthveraachk saw it, felt it, knew it, even before her unsynchronized steps carried the Queen into the bivouac constructed for her arrival, and the huddled bodies of Ckhehnvraahll therein. Too much witnessed dissent, too much anger in a victory corrupted, too much strain on a colony already stretched taut and twisted to conform to alien geometries and mindscapes. Thinkers reprimanded her; had her mender of the Palamedes been present, condemnation would have doubtlessly flowed untapped and unceasing. She had been able to hold herself under the view of the Herald, the Blessed. Upon reaching the lopsided dome of twitching legs and beating bodies, the ring of pallid attendants rising like pasty worms from a bed of living black, Queen could only collapse into their touches. Chittered assurances. Bites too soft to pierce carapace and touches along the interior ridges halfway to her lungs. Thinkers indicated pauses to their processing. Torpors were interrupted across the entirety of the all clusters. Perimeter observers, scouts, formed duos rather than stand solitary. One of the tenders began to hum beneath her head, the cadence Skthveraachk and Ckhehnvraahll had birthed together as their columns marched as one to the Remembering, and the vibrations sent sprites of shuddered light through the Queen’s body entire.

They knew her as Slough Queen knew War Queen. Touched her, as they remembered being touched. Feared, as the Ckhehnvraahll they had known would have feared upon seeing such horrors, such wrongness. True light blinked in the darkness, a lightning’s lifespan illuminating the intertwining forms, but all ignored the accidental activation of the tap-pad. All but the Queen. Unceasing in the relieving motion of her hairs, pinning paired antennae between them to draw upon them as threads, but unable to look away from the drone who mumbled apologies at the unintentional bump of leg which had brought it life. Former Ckhehnvraahll drones knew their once-Queen’s heart, her voice, her mind. A Ckhehnvraahll from a time before the humanites, before she became host to their thinkers and researchers, who even now used their machines to send thoughts across the void. One of the tenders sensed her uncertainty, the way the Slough Queen could sense even the start of restraint, and wrapped its mandibles around her neck. So that feeding tube could extend and suction to the old scar, the spot of thinnest and never-healed chitin. A collective sound sung as sigh from basin of the risen cliffs, to those huddling at their peaks for both heat and comfort.

And yet.

“Be still. Calm. Savor. Queen hurt.” Not her voice. The pale drone, placing its abdomen between the Queen’s jaws so she, as it, could reach antennae for the upperside of crested body, had been with her colony too long to carry still Ckhehnvraahll’s voice. But it yet bore her timbre, her inflections, the subtle way she always dropped and lisped the endings of her kchv’s. “Unity. Peace. We are one.”

“There is peace. There is unity. We are one. I-…” She had not vocalized the desire, the need, for the affirmations which stroked and sung and slipped around her. She had not vocalized the want of the pad. It came to her all the same, even as the living floor sought to roll the Queen onto her top. Into her foreclaws, once more powering into a cold and unliving light. “Wish the Slough Queen’s voice.”

“We are one. Her voice is in us.”

“Yes.” It was truth. It was right. It was they had always done, was as it had always been. Then the Queen pulled from the intangible insides of the humanite tech that image of her vassal once more. The dance, the awkwardness. A Ckhehnvraahll not of the past. A Ckhehnvraahll of the now, captured in her fullness, repeating again and again her hopes. Her dreams. Menials continued to embrace, another stroke was made which sent Skthveraachk’s own gaster spasming, but for the first time in her life, it was only…pleasant. Reminder. Simulacrum. A memory of a Queen whom no longer existed. Not as that image existed before her eyes, upside-down and half covered by the cleaning wipes of legs made across the curve of her eyes. She did not merely want a memory. She was no longer satisfied with memory.

“Locate Banded.”

“Re…ceived.” Palpable delay. Message sluggish, moving from couple to trio to couple and quadlet. There was no use trying to rise; another scrubbing on the underside of a claw assured the Queen her legs were as paste and goo even if the menders would not demand of her a compliance to the treatment only exercised authority could undo. Body was needed here. Mind had already departed, flowing out into the hive of squirming. Locating one which could be used as relay, as substitute, as body in her place. The first it found was solitary amongst formites. But not alone.

“It was not a scream.” The scout hid embarrassment with indignation, trying his best to mimic the upright sit the other three humanites had managed on the squared furniture. Antennae flicking to the opened sky on uncovered head as he heard Queen’s call, and prepared to receive instructions. “I sung to the Founders, asking to taste of their bravery from the sky-sent.”

The unpowered lance leaned alongside the drone, who tried not to shiver each time the humanite pressed a hand to his skeleton.

“I would have simply fired the weapon, but it does not function for my people.”

Fingers from the grinning man wiggled, independent, like five fat antennae.

Second and third amongst the aliens, helms removed yet with tubes still connected to their mouths, dissented even as they shared the warmth of their company.

“Intrusion was not my intent. Participation was not my intent. I was brought here, as much a hostage as the Coalition from the hill.” The heating cylinder thrummed mutely, and scout was quick to raise both claws. Hostile gesture to a formite, halting to a humanite. “Though I am always at the service of your superior colony. Collective. Honored. Thrilled.”

“It is my role. I was tasked with recovering humanites left behind during the withdrawal-“

Rising in voice while seated in form, the exuberant and endlessly touching male bared his facial bones. Formed in a four-sided circle, the three smaller looked to the hunched larger. His antennae, flicking, seeking desperate escape. The Queen, warmed by touch and sight, only watched. Resigned, eyes went downward, and claws clutching the metal strip each other also held poked a single grasper forward.

“Then…as I too am in possession of two number ‘sixes’, I will choose to ‘raise?’” The far pair groaned, and the energetic male made a noise like a choking pupae.

“It is a powerful combination. Given how unlikely it is you will initially beat such a formation, informing you of it will surely make you rescind.”

Wiping a finger across the stick’s base, lights winked out on each’s strip.

Numbers increased. Sigils, patterns, read out heightened amounts of…something, now placed within the center. A thinker, despite the two female soldiers holding suspended its body and most of its attentions, joined the Queen’s regard of the exchange.

“If you are willing to fight on these numbers, you must have a superior set of numbers. I should fold?”

Dust was kicked towards the largest of the alien trio, who had taken to running a knife across its, her, helmet. It was utterly ignored.

“Challenging your opponent with a weaker force always results the same way.” A muttered ‘someone should’ve told Prescott these last thousand lengths’ went unanswered. “You would be foolish, even for a humanite, to oppose my trio without superior numbers.”

“…Do you have superior numbers?”

The Queen wished to be offended on the scout’s behalf, but found that despite complaints, deep thoughts filled the male as he looked between his visible numbers, and the opaque backs of the projected rectangles floating before the humanite. Determining. Considering. Until, finally, caution won out.

“Fold.”

Wrist flicked. Symbols spun in the air, revealing a mosh of images and single, lone numbered squares. Female snorted while the last of the three pulled closer the reflective silvery cloak he wore in the cold.

“My people call it frenzy, and would decapitate you for fear of it spreading.” Grumbled came the response, but with enough color that there were only laughs to meet in response. Intensifying, as the Queen began to detach and withdraw, as the scout focused upon the shifting balance of the floating amounted totals. And as the thinker, quietly, sent a request for the rules, beginning quick calculations. “We now deal again, yes?”

Female dug the tip of its metal weapon into the helm, an eagerness to the scratching.

Away from the gathering, out of the tents where humanites avoided the convulsions of the pairs upon the link, and towards another she knew to be resting. The trials of the battle demanding care and calmness both. Out and through the lighted periphery of the convoy, until male still in his suit of ten collected armors and sixteen taken skulls was found within recuperative circle. But not alone. And not resting.

“I am glad of your presence.”

“You delivered me to the menders at the Battle for the Caldera.” A drone. A female, of no particular marking nor merit. The hulking purple sheen, even cracked and filled with sealant as it was, held the worker with sheathed scythes as he drunk deep from her stomach. “It was refrain. Poetic. That I was to carry you, now. With assistance of four others.” Humor. Former Vhersckaahlhn lifted the drone as if she were humanite, seized between claws and maw, utterly devoid of discomfort in position which had seen death of a thousand of her sisters.

“Your song was meant for greater. Your song is meant for greater.” His antennae beat as drumsticks upon her underside, slowly draining the contents as she assisted with the convulsions. “I knew it would not be your final note.”

“The score of your life is already grander. Grander still. You have mated with the Queen.” They knew she listened. It did not matter. The contact of her mind was as a bristly leg, comfortably rubbing against them. “Thousands are your offspring. You have killed sixteen humanites. No other soldier has survived to do so.”

“It is expected. It is demanded. Vhersckaahlhn-Colony birthed the greatest warriors of the world they call now Kayyhaitch. I must be the greatest warrior of this world, too.”

“Greater than the Queen?”

“Queen is Queen.” The stomach emptied. The worker, lowered, but not set down. Suspended in the male’s grasp, intertwining legs with his claws. “Queen is not soldier. I am the greatest soldier.”

“Greatest soldier. Greatest warrior. Humanites can be both Queens and soldiers and warriors.” Their music interwove, the strength in one filling into where the other sagged. Even as the others nearby continued their own embraces, they listened, drawing inspiration of their own from the verbal dance. “Formites have workers. Formites have soldiers. Formites now have workers who are also warriors.”

“Wrongness.” His mandibles scratched. Rubbed around her head, pinched and straightened a bent antenna while scythes beneath stubby graspers gently began to extend their blunted sides. “It is against the Composer. Against the ways and memories. It should not be done.”

“It is done.”

“It is done.” Echo and refrain, the one set before the other and then switching back again. “It succeeds.”

“It succeeds.” The menial worker reached, sought to assuredly determine the quality of the sealant. Spit and shell, globules of sticky glue, making up more of the soldier’s shell than his own chitin now. Revealing the pulsing membranes within. “Workers are not warriors. You fought to save me from my final note all the same. I am not Queen. I am not priority.”

“You are not priority. Queen is not soldier. Queen is,” Beats of hearts worked as one word to will. “Warrior. Vhersckaahlhn-Colony did not birth the greatest warriors. Vhersckaahlhn-Colony birthed the greatest soldiers. Vhersckaahlhn Queen is not a warrior. Vhersckaahlhn workers are not warriors. It is right. It is good. It is…weaker.”

“Our voices, one.” Tentative but calming, the menial brought her head forward. Until the wetness of her eyes met with his, pressure would could pop both tempered by the trust and unity ensuring only soft contact. “I am a worker. You saved me because I am a warrior.”

“There are soldiers. There are workers. There should not be both, as one. You are a menial. Your role is to die for the soldier.”

“I would die for the soldier.” A beat. A chitter. “And I would kill for the soldier.”

“I will kill for the menial. I will kill for the Queen. Vhersckaahlhn-Colony, the strongest soldiers. Skthveraachk-Colony, the strongest unity.”

“Once, and Again.” Out in a satisfied chorus the prayer was repeated, and Skthveraachk allowed herself to be carried upon it. Touches upon her, ever dwindling in the attentions they were granted. Thoughts. Plans. They pulled her from the pit of mutual satisfaction, a need all experienced yet only seemed to ease her most surface tensions this fade. There was remorse within her, and no small amount within the banded thinker she located, as she pulled the drone from its entanglements. Ensuring dew and scents had been washed clean before guiding it through the open passageways of the stationary convoy. The encampment which rustled in the chilling breeze around it. Sentinel ambers were heeded when they barred passage to the officer’s portion of the humanite’s nest. Bowed to, after they sent ahead and received the expected permission. Yet somehow, even knowing of the female drone’s coming, the Hathan looked up with surprise as it entered through the airseal of his tent. The slimy fabric clinging in a vacuum to each pore and hole, until the female was within. Devoid of his blue shell, donning whites and greys instead, the humanite set down the disk which floated image, and rose.

“The Queen does not need to be reminded how your technology functions, Hathan-Commander. I am not in a position where my notes would be suitable to transmit.” His shock annoyed her. She allowed the honesty of her annoyance to enter the song as the drone reared, folded its legs, and settled back into the suitable pose for conversation. “But you seem to be reminded that your notions of separation and independence are notions which should best be kept to your own species. They do not apply to mine.”

He returned to his seat upon the stretched bag of spongey fabric. Sagging a bit into it, but not being swallowed entire. It reminded her of the bivouac, somehow; walls, a sealed entrance, a ceiling and floor. But there were so many more… things, within it. Devices. Tables. Crates for storage. Shells, suspended over stuck rods in square interior.

“The thinker before you is describing your actions between the notes of your exchange. Tapping through the ground the way you look. Way you speak.” Skthveraachk could not help but exhale and shiver as three legs began to comb her gaster, breaking free the mud and dirt which had grown as secondary shell. Impossible to remain upset. “Drone fourteen lengths away, between the tent used for disposal and where you are storing the Coalition prisoner, repeats this to another through touch. It reaches me through thirty-six more connections.”

He smiled with closed lip.

“I do not know this game. I know the game you call ‘Poke Her’. Is it similar?”

Stretching mental leg, a tap against distant scout was met with his clacking dismissal. His cards were mediocre, but thinker was assuring him that based upon the last two hands played, statistics favored an impending victory over the oddly flailing and much louder now humanites. Queen retracted, and took the Commander’s advice.

“Should not you?” He let her get away with the challenge. Knowing it was not barbed. She felt her antennae rub together, trying to smile back. “I am resting. But was unable to find relief similar to my colony. I am preoccupied. With, thoughts. Of home.”

“I should not be surprised you continue to monitor the usage of my tap-pad. I am not surprised. Ckhehnvraahll Queen of Ckhehnvraahll-Colony. Her messages have been a great comfort, and I sing gratitude for their allowance.” A distant thought nibbled at her like the mandibles of the attendants, but it tickled more than it stung. “You should not refer to her by the name you used. It is not a public name.” Perhaps realization would have been immediate under circumstances other than current. Not until her notes had left her did the Queen halt the embraces upon her, rising up in physical body as well as in the thinker itself. “You should not know her by the name you used. This is not a name she would have given. And has only ever been said in my presence.” Color within the humanite’s face, rubied. Suspicion, confirmed without word. “Which could have been heard through my Band.”

Trilling left her, though Skthveraachk was dragged back down by the orders of the menders who took her embarrassment as sign of additional service needed.

“Pleasure is useful in easing tension, building comradery and reinforcing unity. It is accepted part of colony interaction. Such connection occurring between individual Queens is, instead, one of our most private and vulnerable exchanges.”

“Please cease your efforts to assist in this topic, they are not assisting.”

Skthveraachk doubted Ckhehnvraahll would ever find out. Just another piece of information the Queen would need keep private and quiet, not a lie, but not the truth. She began to imagine the Hathan listening, entire other colonies of individual humanites hunched around computers and terminals and screens. She ceased imagining. Pointedly. He took her silence as consent. And, perhaps, it was.

“Within our own colonies, there are those we believe have been born apart. Fragmented. A part of a greater whole, as the Composer creates sounds which alone are acceptable, but together, beautiful. It is, celebrated, when a single voice finds duet with another. Complimentary lives. Complimentary roles. Rejoiced over, if duet becomes trifecta.” The surprise was readable upon the Hathan’s face, and a touch of pride lighted upon the Queen. “Within Skthveraachk-Colony, our largest union is of five drones. A soldier, thinker, herder, and two workers.”

“Exceptionally. For one to find another whom will tie their last notes together is a wonderous affirmation of solidarity. For five to share in this same union, who believe and know that the death of one will be the death of all, is divine. I imagine it is similar in your own people.” A species of independence, of otherness, of lonely isolation. She left this unsaid, but implied. “That unions of notes would be celebrated.”

A cough, meant to fill a gap of words best left unsaid.

“You limit even such fundamentals?” Now, it was the Queen who showed her surprise, raising a few more tenthlengths within the square tent.

The tone thrummed of an inadequate word, but one which would be too difficult to fully explain. Clasping hands, the humanite sought to keep his head level with the Queen’s, the thinker’s, own.

“It confuses, and disappoints. Your Sovereignty is preoccupied so intently with the ideas of unity, as we are. To limit such things would be to limit growth. To limit expansion and the strengthening of the whole.”

Unabashedly, the strike of antennae in laughter was as much a surprise as it was a crack of laughter.

“You will only partner with birthing queens!? Does every ten thousand to the one simply go without emotional contact!?” He smiled to her, a knowing sort of smile. A challenging smile, waiting for her to reassess the preconceptions which had seemingly failed. Skthveraachk thought. Skthveraachk realized. Skthveraachk retched. “Your females…are ALL birthing queens…?”

“Your efforts to cause me revulsion will fail. I am wise and learned to your tricks and wordplay.” The thinker kept to its posture. The Queen, on the reverse, jolted within the bivouac as if each statement had been a blow to her core.

Reaching now, the Hathan’s arms were almost like that of a formite without the concealing shell. Haired, though with fine threads rather than rigid protrusions. Pale like a newborn, but not translucent as such. Retrieving the disk he had left, it was extended to the thinker, which knew better than to try and take such delicate device from even more delicate body. At the touch of the center, images raised out of the miniature dais. Of a Hathan, with much less sag to his meat. Female. An orange sun, a blue sky, a landscape of impossible structures and wonders. And a single, smaller, shrunken humanite menial. Likes of which the Queen had never seen.

“I had suspected one of your strength would be selected as breeding male. Though, it seems this does not mean as much to your species as mine.”

“It is.” The hair upon the small humanite’s head was light, lighter than both the Hathan and female alongside. Its body, pudgy almost, seeming as though it should topple over from the excess weight the squat legs should have been unable to support. Eyes, for the briefest, flickered away from the tent’s interior to the Slough Queen illuminated in Skthveraachk’s own claws. A memory. A reality. Captured. “Your female, your partner-“

“She remains, to nurture your offspring, while you battle the enemies of the Sovereignty?” The picture deactivated. Was brought back, as the smile still closed upon the Hathan’s face waned only at the corners. “Forgive any insult made. Our birthing mothers remain with children for periods of tenmeasures after the hatching, and while it seems wasteful for a half of your population to dedicate to such tasks, I expected it possibility of your strange minds.”

Held within crevice between legs, the male gazed down to the thing. He put the disk away.

“The will of the Composer?”

His head shook, the smile still genuine, and regaining some of its luster. Sadness. Loss. The Queen would have reached out physically if not for fear of damage. She instead reached in a way she knew was less likely, less destined, to harm.

“My mother, sought to conquer Ckhehnvraahll-Colony when she was expanding the borders of our territory. They were smaller. They were of a single nest. Even in that time, as the memories tell, our colony encompassed three entire nests beyond Hollowcore, and fed from two separate reservations. The conflict was expected to be brief, regardless of the reputation Ckhehnvraahll Queen had claimed.” Skthveraachk could have consulted the memories, sent for one of the weavers. There was no need. She had brought the story to her own self long ago, and recited it from her own voice. “The first battle was a loss, and we were driven from the thorny forests back to the slopes of the mountain. The second, a stalemate. My mother sought to cut a path through the wood, but even upon reaching the Stand, lost ten thousand trying to breach the ditches, walls, and shield of vines. The third encounter, my mother, Skthveraachk Queen, advanced ahead of the column, and around her, a hundred workers. Haulers.”

“They carried hardstones of blood, of black rock, of shinestone and perfectly smoothed mountain pearls. She called to Ckhehnvraahll Queen, and after an entire bar of her song and solo, Ckhehnvraahll Queen emerged herself from the forest.” Even now, as Hathan leant forward with folded limbs, the thinker and Queen gently shook at the glowing memory. “Surrounded by soldiers, but releasing back eight hundred captured drones. Drones which had told her of us as we had learned through combat of her. That she was as the wood and swamp and fen, immovable and as part of the land as land itself. That she would never be dislodged, shaken, or moved from the roots she had put down. And of us, Ckhehnvraahll had learned there would be no use of the jelly. That we did not seek her enslavement, or even her destruction. We bestowed upon her the most beautiful gifts of Hollowcore, and she returned to us the siblings we had thought lost. Becoming our first vassal. Guarding, forever, access to our lands from the risefade.”

It was difficult to determine his intention. She guessed, and was proved correct, that it was the humanite meaning of the world.

“I was not born yet. My mother grew close with her over time, until more than vassal, Ckhehnvraahll and Skthveraachk were as once voice. When my mother was killed, it was Ckhehnvraahll-Colony which helped me greatest in my transition. To assume her role and duties, and ensure our colonies never wavered in their unity.”

He ceased the attempt.

“There was nothing to leave. When my mother was taken from me, the anger felt by Ckhehnvraahll was only a tenth-octave lower than my own. I hated.” Her scythes began to extend. She urged them, demanded them, to rescind. “A part of Skthveraachk was killed that measure. My vassal, my Ckhehnvraahll-Colony, was all whom ensured that it was but a part, not the whole, which was returned to the sky. I would have been lost without her.” Her intent had been to distract, to elevate. It had brought opposing effect. Her antennae beat once, the awkward abdomen bobbing still in view on the recorded screen. “Perhaps, I still would be. She is what keeps me in harmony. Reminds me, of my fight.”

It was not a darkness, not a threat. Concern. Clear. And of experience.

“As of your people, then. So too was it with ours.” Claws clicked, and memories which threatened to bubble forth were clogged and sodden with mud, drowned back to the depths from which they came. “Of all the instruments of war, the music of love is the most damning. To kill by striking at that which your opponent cares most deeply about. It is why I follow you, Hathan-Commander. Why the Sovereignty will win.”

“That is not my meaning.” Her interruption caused a wince within the thinker, and Queen herself. But Hathan had begun to sound of the Herald. Of the Arbiter. He was neither. “It is not your conviction which will win. I do not know which of you is the right. I do not know your species. The book you have given me has shown me much, shown me methods and pathways and routes to victory, but as the river flowing from the peak, they stem all from the same source. That the only requirement, the only true requirement for victory, is a willingness to do that which your enemy will not.” The glowing from the tap-pad showed a Slough Queen radiating with joy. The War Queen deactivated it, so as not to need confront the image. “All I have seen of the Coalition teaches me that they will adapt. They will create and scheme and plot. They will throw themselves against impossible odds, and manage even victories. But the Sovereignty will order their troops, order my people, into battles where death is a certainty. They will fight until the ground is scorched, and then they will fight until the air is aflame, and then they will fire from the skies above the world itself. They do not expect to be taken prisoner, and a tenth of their own prisoners taken are executed. The Solovyova speaks, and knows, that the Prescott would never destroy this terraformer which your kind covets. But I have heard your Herald, and I know that if such was necessary, he is a humanite who would do so in a breath.”

They had called Hathan faithless. The faith upon his face now would shame a Hymnal Watcher.

“I was possessed of limits, Hathan-Commander, yes. Once. Before this reality you speak of was brought to me. Before the choice was between my beliefs, and my species. Now, I am unsure if I still hold them. I am sure only that I hope never to know.” The thinker was at the edge of composure. It would be safer to remove it. Song was made in sequence with stand. “The Coalition has rules. The Sovereignty does not. The victor, to my mind, is certain. Prescott will fall. Only shall we discover the number of silenced it shall take to carry us from here to there.”

He halted her with a word. He had that power, even if he chose to rarely wield it. The thinker, before the airseal already sucking wet alien-like lips towards its body, turned about to better recite the image. Of the Hathan, no longer seated, but advanced. Concerned. Knowing the Queen enough to detect the thoughts she sought to hide, to read through the link as she read him. Fear. Tremors. Her physical body, lethargic and treated, shivering as much from the limbs thrust inside her as the gaze which pierced her from without.

The Pod knew of a Coalition captive, kept secret from Sovereignty and her own colony, in order to learn of weaknesses not just in her enemy, but in their species. Her children, growing more humanite by the measure, seeking to learn of the ways of their conquerors. A desire, a hatred, a truth; knowing that all she fought for, all she did, was but bringing the subjugation of millions, of perhaps a billion voices, into and under the control of the beings from beyond the stars. And the barest, faintest, whispers of a wish to do anything, everything, anything at all, to stop it from becoming truth.

But the Pod would still know, even if the Hathan were told.

The captive would not be made less offensive if the Hathan were to learn of its existence.

Woes of her colony, not diminished if such burdens were shared with the Commander.

And of what business was his, these private woes which she did not share with even her colony. With even her vassal. With, even, herself?

Was there anything the Hathan needed to know?

“No, Hathan-Commander.” She sung the truth, resolute. “There is nothing you need to know.”