Another rise. Another enclosed pavilion of fabric with the glistening strength of hardstone. Another circle of blues and blacks and golds, another table of false-light projection, another murmured slapping of internal muscle along ridged mouths. Another plan of attack. Another battle to be prepared and executed. Repetition. Routine. The Queen was able to refill the ranks of the newest potential caste from the menials and lamed soldiers, to disperse orders and supply lists to the menders disassembling the dead, without losing the needed attention within the command tent. Another rise. Another measure. Tarasque loomed on horizons seen, and heard, and felt.

Central display, as well as the personal map links upon their pads, rung with metallic chimes unseen as the male’s synthetic voice filled them. Colonel. Bigger, grander Colonel than the Solovyova who stood behind the translucent humanite image. Skthveraachk’s own projection was quick to highlight the opened, empty expanse leading to the tri-lined trenches; the elevated barrier walls, the circular parapets upon sectioned platforms for stationary weapons. Black spikes like hundredlength-tall mandibles thrusting up to the sky, to form the network of shielding.

She wished for her delver to be here. He would have chirped with wonder at the triangular and blocky structures bursting from the world’s crust behind the defenses, the glassy finishes mixed with hardstone meant to emulate brickwork, the constructs with no purpose other than to serve as deifications and monuments to persons unknown to her. Chittered, and marveled, at the great curved bastion spore which dominated the skyline behind and above every other building. Their prize. Their ‘terraformer’. Smoothed sides ringed with supports and pumping arms larger than even the towers of Guir. All to belch many-colored clouds out of the wide upper portal, filling the air for a thousand lengths in all directions. Instead, the crafters reached antennae out through the Queen’s eyes, cold and assessing of the cold, dead image.

“These defenses appear far newer than the rest of the structures.”

“You are certain, then, that they have not further modified the internal passageways of the city?” The exterior image was hazy, a fuzz of conflicting dots made uncertain by the lies the Coalition filled air with to confuse scans. Beyond was but a blur. Skthveraachk made a wave of her foreleg for the jutting spikes of metal hastily added to burrow and barricade, almost striking the Hathan in the cramped quarters. “These defenses were first intended to halt your species, not mine. They have had time aplenty to rectify that.”

It was not the Hathan who used her name, but the Solovyova. Drawling on behalf of her own superior, who had grown suddenly quiet. Suddenly tense. Suddenly sour.

Herald’s clear voice sung out. She must have offended the upper Colonel, across the wastes in his own encampment, somehow. Not worth dedicating the brainpower to wondering how or why.

Ranked male looked past the Solovyova, the Hathan and Miroslava, and even the emitted silhouette of the Admiral beyond fathoming above them. Leaders of ground, and of air, and of the unending sky.

The Commander tipped his head, and the Queen resisted the innate urge to follow his example.

Ambers flanking the tightly packed and shelled Aadarsh, Blessed, did not react to the step the man took back and away from the table.

Another fifteen minor requests as the Solovyova maintained her neutral skinshape amidst the glare from Miroslava, and stiff grunting from her commander.

Unphased, the Herald raised head to one of the blue shells at table’s end.

The unknown male gave a quick dip of his head.

“Unacceptable.” Every request was diverted. Every problem, delegated elsewhere. Skthveraachk was in the now. Another briefing. Another rise. Another terror. “Unbelieveble. Thirty thousand is near half my remaining children. It is almost the entirety of the force brought with me from Kayyhaitch. We have not suffered more than thousands in a single battle. We are to lose tens more that number in the span of three bars?”

th Fleet is more than capable of prevent the majority of its interference, but with the anti-orbital cannons in Tarasque and the remaining Coalition ships in orbit, breakthroughs are expected.”>

Chuckling, though it could have easily been mistaken for a growl, the Admiral extended a pair of fingers in signalling to the ever frozen smile upon the Commander’s face. th is ready to do ours.”> Smiles. Nods. Madness. The Solovyova was the only one to match the sickness the Queen felt in her posture, and the way she downed throatfuls of fluid from metal flask with the thirst of the dying.

“Hathan-Commander, you have sung that such things were not to be considered in our conflicts.” The beginnings of desperation. Skthveraachk could not let it show, yet tried to help the Commander to see the fear turned towards him. Fear of the weapons of the sky. “That the ships of the skyward sea would not interfere in the battles of the land and earth.”

Had he? She tried to wrack her brains, thinkers and compositions all.

“Why do we even engage these enemies upon this world, if your vessels can wreak such havoc, such destruction? Seventy, eighty thousand voices, simply accepted as losses before the battle even begins, it is…” She could not find the words. She could only find the images. Clouds of dust beyond sight. Impacts leaving craters the size of lakes, forming new rivers. Nests lost to their deepest layers. Madness. Madness.

Solovyova spoke not with condescension, but with a fatigue. A bitter resignation. Her canteen sloshed.

Sloshing ceased. Postures tightened. Herald had not moved, had not shouted; he had only looked, those golden eyes clicking as they oriented towards the female. For the briefest breath, there was a clench of defiance in the woman’s jaw. It could not survive. Her bow was lower than Skthveraachk’s ever were to the Blessed. As sure as it was inevitable, the closed smile turned upon the Queen next. Relief from the humanites? Even the Hathan seemed to relax by tenthlengths. Skthveraachk did not withdraw. Her mind raced as every thinker was reassigned to the horror before them.

With a wave of his hand, the map upon the table shrunk. Slid, across the mesas and ferrous outcroppings of the red planet, until an arrangement of circles flashed in recognition. Praise unimportant, the brightened moods unwarranted as fearful arias began to emit from scouts and untasked drones. Legs shaking as they constructed spears, bonded voices embracing in expected loss.

Miroslava stared at the images with contempt.

Even Skthveraachk knew Solovyova was risking herself with further words. th engaged with Prescott’s fleet, they lost two ships, third crippled, just to take out one of his cruisers.”> All humanites were Queens, but not all Queens were equal. Some served as only soldiers, menials, others as divine leaders of billions. Humanites were colonies, but not all colonies were valuable. The Prescott would decimate her. The Sovereignty would accept it as necessity.

Remove Prescott. Fewer lives lost. Prescott would never leave the safety of his city. Incorrect, he had done so before. Possibly? Yes, possibly. To save his men. Left the Sovereignty for its cruelty, joined the Coalition for its honor. Heads lowered. Fragile arms were set across chests, no, the small hearts beneath.

It was murmured by all; some fervently, some muttered, but none dared keep silent. Beautiful in its attempt at singularity. Mockery in its failure to be so. She would die for these creatures. She would burn for these aliens. Another way. Another way. Any other way.

A single thinker suggested an alternative.

Skthveraachk did not turn as she backed out and away from the tent, legs reared and folded, head bowed, bile dripping and sludging out of her mouth to the floor as her stomachs clenched into flatness. The airseal slid over her like a thousand small tongues, and her shaking was only intensified by it. There was no destination intended. No answer but quick apologies and assurances when Hathan and former Major both questioned her health. Queen did not wish to think. Queen did not wish to consider. Her sons and daughters came to her as the tide, and carried her upon their bodies towards the edge of the star-sent’s constructions. She had heard plenty enough from them both, their trust and doubt, their support of the Sovereignty’s unity while harboring their resentment of its failures. Neither the Hathan nor the Solovyova could help her.

Sixteen thinkers raged against the solution. Two more confirmed its validity.

Where was Ckhehnvraahll? Where was her tap-pad? Two soldiers began to rush it from the forming bivouac, but turned away as Skthveraachk recoiled and lashed at the air. No. Ckhehnvraahll was not here. Ckhehnvraahll should never come here. This was a planet of monsters, a place of silence, a nest of the sky-sent being prepared to hold a billion new colonies for ten billion more to feast upon. Males who could be thinkers, serving as infantry. Females who would have been birthing queens, dead in the mud. Former drones of the Slough Queen, amassing for comfort, were ordered back to their duties. Ckhehnvraahll-Colony could not help her.

Eight thinkers illustrated the wrongness. Ten agreed on its possibility of success.

She wanted the memories. She wanted a Remembering. Hymnal Watcher, one of the chroniclers of the Triumverate, weavers. The delver that had touched the Silent City, send him to her. Scouts began to race away from the nest, preparing for the measures it would take to return to the Caldera. She was Skthveraachk Colony. She was Skthveraachk War Queen. This was not war. This was not battle. Composer, see her. Composer, hear her! What joke was this music which had been written for her to perform? How was she expected to adapt to these flourishes, to sing these melodies and not sound frenzied? There would be no answer. The sky was as cold as it was silent. The Composer could not help her.

Six thinkers refused. Twelve accepted. All eighteen hated, and feared, and shook, and demanded further data.

She was carried more than walked, her legs betraying her as much as her own mind. Unsure of how she had arrived. Unsure of why she had decided, if she had decided at all. ‘My tent is always open’, he had said. ‘If you wish to unburden yourself.’ There was to be no further data, not from the Colonel, not from the Commander, not from her memories of Ckhehnvraahll and assuredly none from the vigil of the Composer’s compositions, so sublime that they came as only silence to her kind. Skthveraachk was unsure, too, of whether he could truly speak to his Queen, his Emperor, as a formite did. Sure, only, of the sudden quiet. The solitude. The absence. Seventy thousand voices became one. One voice answered in response.

It smelled of ash and flower petals. Boiling water of geysers and the steam off the ocean. The Herald reached forward, and though it had been light when she left the command tent, it was faded beyond the slit of his tent’s exit as she brushed her leg numbly against his haired bracers. Sat, curled, upon some manner of furry rectangle which stretched the length of his floor. Ruined, no doubt, by the excretions she still felt roll from her vents and gaster.

“Need to talk.” Colors were muted, but somehow more beautiful. Empty in core, but clearing in head. She had not felt this way since the Palamedes, when she strode alone, truly alone, through its halls. “Accept terms made, to speak with Emperor.”

Retracting his arm, the humanite was perfectly at ease. Perfectly calm. Perfectly safe. She no more would have struck at him than the Emperor, for there was no distinction between them here.

“How does it start.” The Queen had begun to hum. One of the canticles of sorrow, the lesser, the smallest of them, while curling her body around the Unseen Stalk. There was no Composer here. It relaxed her all the same. “How do I contact Queen-…Emp-…you use many names for him. My scythes are folded. My voice, awaiting.”

“Even your Queen is more than one role. Like your entire race, you cannot be satisfied and accept what you are.”

Acceptance. She had already used the note, and as parts of her singular mind began to try and construct the melody which would give voice to the absurdity of the humanite’s reality, it was not why she was here.

“Then it does not matter if he is a humanite, your Queen, or your Composer. Let him be all at once.” The Herald tipped his head, and as her senses began to return to her control, offered a hand the color of the forest’s silt to the air.

“From whom?”

She acquiesced. Tapped her antennae to her head as the Herald brought himself to a kneel beside her sideways-laying body. Unbothered by how her legs had knocked over strange metallic cups the size of half a humanite. Damage she could not remember having caused.

“There are no failures beneath the Composer.” He was silent. She sung. “The only failure is in the one heresy, the falling to frenzy. The Composer has written the music of our life long before we exhaled our first note, put forth the script which we all must follow.”

“The dangers, the obstacles; they are as sure as the cords on which the notes are spun, sheets from which the song is read. How they are read, how the tempo is followed, how the one or the ten or the many sing; this is what matters. How the challenges are answered.” She could feel the memory of her mother’s leg upon her, and recoiled from the ephemeral touch. “There is no need for forgiveness. You do not fail the Composer when you stutter across the music. You fail only yourself.”

Hands were settled, clasped, at only a slightly wrong angle from the norm so that the hairs he still wore did not penetrate his legs.

“I do not believe I should be forgiven. I do not wish to forgive myself for my failures.” The dampness within the tent was a remarkable thing. Not dry and frigid like the rest of the world, cold in its exclusion. Skthveraachk was unsure whether to fight or embrace the slow relaxation. Insult or expectation of this God of theirs. “What comes next?”

“Your God, it listens as well?”

“Then it is not as the Composer. It judges you. God. Emperor.” Her trembling had ceased, and once more, she felt as the one within the glass and thass shielding. Stared at from without by beady eyes and prodding appendages, yet capable of gazing back through the barrier herself. “It, he, determines what is right, what is wrong, and delivers its assessment.”

The Herald did not quite laugh, but the noises were a reverberating thrum within his core.

“But you follow this greater will, regardless.”

“There is no choice for us. We cannot avoid the dangers arranged in our future, the undertakings we must endure.”

“The Composer does not ‘mean’ for us to fail, Aadarsh-Who-Has-Been-Blessed.” A touch of frustration curled her body tighter around that invisible stalk, as though she could feel its link reaching beyond to the great void. “Nor does it ‘mean’ for us to succeed. The only measure of success is unity. Harmony. You speak of tests, not of challenges. Any challenge, any obstacle, can be overcome when voices unite as one. We are tested, every bar, every beat, every breath, by our ability to maintain that oneness. We see the result of failure, immediately, when a child breaks from the many and seeks to be the one. We do not trust in a will we cannot understand.”

Her mandibles clenched. Chewed upon nothing.

“I know your power. I fear your weapons. It is not faith I take my servitude under, but truth in the reality that opposition is impossible.”

Her chewing ceased.

“Vhersckaahlhn Colony was, is, a blight upon my world. Vhersckaahlhn Queen believes herself the one who will silence the discord. The inheritors of the Founder’s vision and voice, Once and Again.” Outside, the colony murmured the mantra amidst the hymn they had begun to sing. “They would not have permitted us to live, they would have enslaved body and mind and voice of every formite from drone to Queen. You…” Caught by her own admittance, there was a pause. A clacking grind. “Are not Vhersckaahlhn.”

“Your voices have lied in the past. Your actions speak true in the present. My people will be vassals. Lessers. Serfs.” But. “But we will live. We will grow. Your science. Your technology. Your marvels. You will guard much of it, zealously, and still even now my nest in the Caldera grows larger than most on my world. Prospers. You will cause much harm to my kind, and at the end, I…know, it will be worth it.”

Reaching a hand outward, buttons upon the nozzles hissing fragrant steam were adjusted. Her lungs clenched and hissed.

“A future worth the deaths of tens of thousands of my children. Hundreds of thousands of yours.” She had tried to circumvent the topic. Tried to keep it down. Tried, and once more and once more, failed. “How many will die before this conflict is concluded? How many will I be tasked with executing, as you execute those who deviate from your promised future, your faith in your Queen-and-Composer?”

His calmness was a dead thing.

“Drones!” She unwound herself. Knocked over another chair, smashed in her sudden rise a glassy, reflective surface. Too caught in her emotions to mediate her mind. “Menials, born to only labor! Soldiers, born to only kill and die! These are beings whose purpose can be replaced, whose existence is made redundant a thousand times over. I have killed tens of thousands of soldiers, but I have never…! A Queen, a Colony, I would never…!” It could not be stopped. It was as internalized as her first memories of her mother, of Hollowcore. Even alone, even without the link. She felt. She knew.

“When I learned of your kind. What you are. What you really are. How each humanite was a colony unto themselves, a world within a body, I tasked a single thinker to consider the ramifications. Ensured only one was set upon the idea. After the first battle of Dracan, after we took the Caldera. It told me…” Memories denied. Thoughts cut from the collective so they did not need to be addressed. Flooding back. Bursting in. “It told me, that we were now the greatest murderers of our world. We had not silenced a thousand soldiers. We had not cut apart a thousand extensions of some greater being. Skthveraachk had taken a thousand lives.” Fluid seeped from her vents. Her lungs, wet and heavy as they panted. “Skthveraachk had silenced a thousand colonies. Skthveraachk had ended a thousand possible futures of Queens, thinkers, crafters, scent or otherwise. I had never killed a Queen before this world, Herald. I would never seek to lessen the chorus by even a one. That single thinker is yet the only I have dared assign to the task. It no longer speaks to me. After the Caldera. After the trenches of Pelal, after Guir, after the marching to Tarasque, it no longer sings at all. It screams.” Her hairs were limp. Her truth, spilling from her like the wetness from her slits. Antennae barely moving. “All the time. Rise to fade. It only screams.”

“He must be.”

Then it was good there was no Composer here, for there was likely no God either. Hands set against one another, the Herald made a marking of the air. Skthveraachk searched the pathing for meaning, and found only the symbol each and every Sovereignty soldier wore.

“You advise I sate myself on the knowledge that my heresies, my murders, my role in the killing of entire symphonies, is done in the pursuit of a better future? Your Queen-God’s decree, its guidance, is that my sorrow is both righteous, and a thing to be ignored?”

Twelve thinkers had agreed. Majority accepted. Wrongness. Damnation. Filth which could never be cleaned. And it would work. The word did not parse. At first. The translator attempted to fill the void with ‘voice’, but that was not the Aadarsh’s intention. She searched his golden eyes, his browned flesh, his blackened whispy hair beneath blacker cap of station, for any doubt. Any sign of a future she could prevent. Twelve thinkers had agreed. A million humanites killed, a billion saved. Numbers. Logic. A million humanites killed. Half a million colonies saved. What else but frenzy.

“After this conflict on Dracan, my people are to be spared this.”

“Your people require soldiers. Disposable. This is accepted. I will dedicate my colony in its entirety to you, I will be your soldier. I will kill your enemies. But my people must be spared.” She had no position. No authority. No power. Save the victory of the next rise she could deliver, or deny.

“They will not be harmed?” It was what she had already been promised. It came now from the Herald. It was now a truth undeniable. “You will not seek damage, control, interference?”

“It would be considered the heaven you speak of with such reverence.”

“You may have me. In my entirety. With your aid, I can grow my army to tens of thousands more, hundreds of thousands. I could take worlds for you. Would, take worlds in your name.” The thought of Ckhehnvraahll to have seen what Skthveraachk had seen. Felt what she had felt. Died as she had died. Never. “I would dedicate entire future to it.”

“Five.” He began to speak. She rushed to conclude without further interruption. “Six planets remain contested. Even if you were to deploy them all at once, you would need no more than six armies of my kind. Five additional colonies. I would assist in their selection. I would share my memories with them. I would ready them for this, that they would not need to suffer in confusion and darkness as I have. Five other colonies, and the rest, allow to live in peace. To farm. To be.”

“I will make them see. I will sing as you sing, until they accept what is new and truth.” One life for two. One colony for ten. Skthveraachk knew what needed to be done here, and knew it would kill a lesser Queen in mind as much as it would a scythe through the core. She would protect the species. She would protect Kayyhaitch. Even, if needed, from itself. “Promise me this. Promise me this, Herald Aadarsh, and I will promise you the Prescott. Taken from his city, removed before the battle.” He was interested. He was curious. He was restrained. “I will deliver him alive. To you. Directly to you.” He wanted this.

“You are the Emperor’s Word.” The Miroslava’s conviction returned in her mind’s light. “I will share with the Hathan your promise. Others will hear of it. The Emperor will keep his promise, and I will accept it as a truth uncontested.”

“Success will be delivered.” Fingers clasped. Lips were set. Nothing was desired more by the Sovereignty than an example of their success. Nothing was needed more by Skthveraachk than the safety of her people. They coveted victory not just of deed, but of faith. How much would the Queen give for the same? She had sworn. Everything. Everything and all.

And so it was done. And so it was finished. Would he honor his word? Yes. Yes. For there was a price. There was no exchange on the Palamedes, only her juvenile and innocent hope in a future of peace. Now, peace came at a cost. That was how she knew it to be true. And that cost was but her inclusion within that great future. Acceptable. She had died once already. He was waiting now, for her part. A single thinker had suggested it. A Queen chose to accept.

“We must reconvene the officers. It will require the Hathan’s wyverns. And your knowledge of these…rules…by which your Sovereignty engages the Coalition.” Herald nodded. But instead of immediately rising, stood instead from his kneel to dip fingers within the wooden cup. Bringing the fluid forward to a retracting Queen, frightened briefly of the contact. Until the fluid was drawn and dripped against her crest. Water. Unchanged water.

Ceremonial. Conclusive. There was no need to find their God’s light, nor was there a need for the Composer’s forgiveness. They didn’t choose to crucify and cower behind sapients. They didn’t command her to promise the subjugation of her world. They didn’t kill Queens. It was just her.

“Your story teaches an incorrect message, Herald.” She waited until his hand retracted to speak. Taking his silent expression and canted head as the unspoken question it was. “To save the many, abandon the few.”

“Then whether it is life, or belief, does not matter.” Her mandibles rubbed. Her hairs tightened. It was a solution. It was accepted. And within her mind, she planned the murder of thousands as the new definition the Herald had offered was updated. “To save the country, abandon the village, yes. But to save the world? One should not hesitate to abandon the soul.”