The Herald was not the Herald. It smelled like the Blessed, appeared as him, moved as he moved and commanded aura as he always had. But it did not sound as he sounded, did not bring control and surety with each syllable and beat of its cadence in near-musical recitation; almost formite, almost natural. The thing wearing guise of the Herald had been a danger. Skthveraachk had identified it, held Solovyova back from the threat. The thing was still a danger. Why had Skthveraachk not been able to hold her own self back as well? Hathan was not moving, not even breathing by the feel of the hairs of her supporting attendants. The Queen’s own graspers remained fixed needlessly around Solovyova’s shoulders, and the Lieutenant made noises like a menial preparing to dispense mass into a feeding trough. The body that was both humanite and not remained burnt, perforated, seeping on the floor; indistinguishable from what had once been Prescott, save to the more experienced eyes of its fellow aliens. And the one small, sanctified mercy the Queen could identify that amidst the hesitant aim of the Hathan’s own soldiers, the unflinching lances of the ambers, and the opened portal perfectly rounded beneath the not-Aadarsh’s whirring eyes as it clutched the miniaturized weapon? None present, neither Herald nor officers nor Skthveraachk Queen herself, had any idea what to do now. But Skthveraachk could think faster then them.

“Providing context. Require assessment. All roles. Priority. How to proceed?”

“Received.” Feelings, fears, she naturally sent them to the depths. Drawing out the message with rear legs, whilst attendants relayed them out to the colony entire. Nearest drones responded first, transmitting forward and replying back at once.

“Herald’s role is cohesion. Herald breaks cohesion with violence. Herald’s role, corrupted.” Skthveraachk soldier was carrying drones wounded from the field. Depositing, with the same care of a tender, the bodies from his armored frame to the soil wet with blood and the sealant of menders. “Humanites allow emotional override. Can be exploited in battle. Consequence, irrelevant. Act as they do. Defend the colony. Defend the Queen. Defend the species. Warned humanite not to attack. If humanite ignores warning, attack with everything colony has. Next humanite will be smarter.”

“Retreat. Reassess.” Humanites around the table could still be heard complaining as Skthveraachk scout dropped his graspers of cards, backing away so all six legs could beat out his warning baritone. His threat markers already puffing from the end of his gaster. “Action taken. Response provoked. Humanites operate often with insufficient information. Expect to. Expect it of opponents. Act as they do. Apologize. Withdraw. Their frenzy will subside. Return when it is eased.”

“Queen neglects self! Queen neglects colony!” The thinkers were raging within their bivouacs, their sectioned and protected domes dotting the landscape. “Improper care of the self corrupts the song of the many! Humanites react! Humanites lash! Formites plan! Formites consider! Act as they do, and improve! Admit failure, explain reasoning. If Herald is displeased, threats cascade to world! Better to lose the Queen than lose the planet!”

“War Queen.” Arms rose against her underside. Claws, furled inwards, gently ran the grooves of her chitin and exposed flesh where plates met, though numbed body could only half appreciate it. The smell of the moss her vassal cultivated, the way her song rippled through the concealing vines of the forest. Ckhehnvraahll’s former drones, pieces of her own body and mind, weaved and hummed between the agitations of thousands. “Colony Superior. Skthveraachk. Stop.” Each time they joined the link, they were less of Ckhehnvraahll and more of her. Each time they sung, their colors faded and joined the canvas of life. Not a one held themselves back as the Queen continued to look. Down, at the faces arranged before her. “The Herald is Blessed. The Herald is praised. It is not his humanity which won our love. All humanites fail. All humanites falter. Their species is of separation and difference.” The aghast arrangement of spit, bone and skin had congealed itself into patterns on the Aadarsh’s face like the undulating abdominal spread. A word from him could have seen her dead. Why, why had she reacted? “He is Blessed because he is like us. Because they all, the Herald all, the aliens all, can be as us when they try. You emulate them to ingratiate. You strive to adopt them that you may understand. You forget who you are. You forget the music within you.”

“I forget nothing. The humanites are inevitable. Our change is inevitable. I do what I must.” The living, the dying, the dead. She forgot none of them. Remembered, all. Survival was mandated. It was the only universal good. It was necessary.

“They are not Gods. There is only one perfection, and through the Composer shall it be found. You forget your music. You forget your mother’s music. Consensus is not forced. It is not imposed. We are not slaves, and we do not take slaves.” The air outside whistled through the beamed hole of the tent. “You are not a humanite. Learn to behave as one. They are not formites. Teach them to think as one. My War Queen.” Legs from across a galaxy encircled her, and she could almost feel the head pressed beneath her neck. “Sing. Let there be no other, no they, no them. Let the harmony be all.”

“You have dishonored our union, Aadarsh-Who-Has-Been-Blessed.” Thinkers raged and ranted. Soldiers bristled, prepared for a combat that she refused to allow. Scouts fretted, menders fainted to torpor, menials carried collapsed bodies to safety and haulers prepared to quarantine the corpses to be made. Tens of thousand refuted her choice. Fewer than three thousand, their shells as pale and mottled and beautiful as Ckhehnvraahll’s own, lent their voices as the interruption cut cleaner than any formed blade across the Herald’s chest. “I pledge and swear my colony to you, and you raise scythe against me. The Hathan-Commander of the Palamedes of the Imperial Sovereignty has slain for you. Lied for you. His loyalty is unquestioned, and you call him frenzied. Your words are tainted as your music congeals in fetid, crusted pools.”

A humanite would be forgiven for the absence of her title. The Aadarsh knew the insult he levied, his weapon swung back to the perforated corpse.

“I challenge nothing. I condemn the shame you bring to us all.” She couldn’t feel her antennae, and manual pushes from beneath made her doubt her breathing was coming properly either. Secretions from her gaster were collected mid-fall by drones, hidden, before the weakness and fear of bodily function could be detected. “The Hathan-Commander informed the Herald the Brigadier-General had not been fully scanned. The Hathan-Commander identified threats potential. The Herald chose to accept the risk. The Herald’s authority is absolute. The Herald decided. The Herald is accountable.” There was not a doubt in her clouded mind, not a shred of confusion in how the Doctor stared, how Solovyova shivered under grasp, how blood seemed to have been voided from the Hathan’s face. If she had been a humanite, she would be silenced on the spot. But she was not, and so, she was not. “A Queen accepts the responsibility of their role. To blame castes subservient is wrongness. It is weakness. You must not the sound to live, and strike it from the chorus with the surety of the rising sun. Skthveraachk-Colony serves the Emperor. We must ensure the Herald does not shame the Emperor.”

It would not have mattered if one of the celestial orbs had begun to fall. If the city of Tarasque had sprouted six legs and begun to crawl towards then. Founder and Mother, Sh’e Queen, covered in the hundred crests of conquest and trailing the thousand threads taken from spinnerets of the vanquished could have walked into the tent then and there, and it would not have been able to break the hold Herald and Skthveraachk locked themselves to. The lance he carried had been swung back at Hathan, but now, shivered and shook as it strayed tenlengths higher. Golden eyes widened until they were more black than gilded in the Queen’s own quartet of regard. The representative of the Queen of fifty billion colonies challenged, and with numbed leg and insensate body atop ten meager drones, representative of but a single world held. Only vaguely aware of the redness which had begun to seep up from Solovyova’s gripped shoulder, wetting uniform and claw. Only distantly hearing the Hathan’s offered words, their poeticism erecting a wall of sticks and hope before her even now.

Whispered. Hissed.

The Doctor had not heard. As uncertain in her step forward as in the conservation she offered.

Ambers were backing away, unsure. Hathan’s soldiers, their weapons thankfully lowering, shifting out as Miroslava tried once more to step in.

Three officers had already vanished through the seal before the Herald’s voice roared from him. And as the handheld lance was raised clear past the Queen, to the ceiling points themselves, Solovyova, Hathan; restraint upon them no longer became necessary. It was they who sought to drag Skthveraachk and her attendants, uncaring for the terminals knocked back and chairs toppled aside as a clearing formed around the golden-eyed humanite.

Salutes, hasty and desperate, were flashed or marked from all. In a daze, Skthveraachk released her graspers from the Colonel, folding her scythes across her chest and crossing her antennae with a bow of her own. The Herald was not looking. Turned, to the falselight table, slamming his hands down as his back became the only reply. Bodies pushed and edged and rubbed as they poured out of the sealant entrance. Shouts following, even as the cold air once more pierced into already frozen body.

Like the lance itself had become a dirty thing, the Herald flung the weapon from his grip, and as Skthveraachk’s strained mass was removed last, and fully, from the tent, the walls indented as the tool struck the side. She gave no heed to the looks from those she knew not, from those who’s station was less than her own. Miroslava had gripped tight to the Hathan, despite his attempts to shrug the contact off, and a growing bulbous mass in purplish discoloration had begun to swell on his jaw and cheek as he stumbled forward. There was a smell of blood in the air. She couldn’t quite place it. Not until, feeling tongues on her forelegs, she realized how sodden her graspers had become with fluid. And how, still upright, the Solovyova’s shell ripped and fractured to either side of her neck. Leaking viscous red into the coat.

“Did…oh, by the sound of the falling rain, Solovyova-Colonel, I am-“

Lies? Damn the humanites to the sky, was harm and pain not even enough to provoke honesty from them!?

Many soldiers had hurried on. More than a few remained, and even though they refused to fully look upon her, Hathan’s own troops, who had just before been ready to fire on the Herald’s command, stood behind the Queen now. Waiting. Miroslava, stiffened by the verbal blow, did not break her contact on the Commander’s arm. Looking up, as the attendants tried to beat relief and calmness into Skthveraachk’s body without even a modicum of success.

“I will join you! I will accompany. No, this is wrongness, no,” A quick correction, smell of the blood still winding up and into her vents. “I will aid the Solovyova, and then come to you.”

There was almost monotony to the Colonel’s voice as she slouched, bleeding, arms folded under her coat while the Lieutenant merely nodded. Pulling Hathan away, preventing the attempts to turn and gaze back at the formites while the few soldiers he had followed in silence. Her colony was in turmoil, and the agitation flowed both to and from her in a perpetual feedback loop of anxiety. Thinkers were tasked, menders sent to aid the scentcrafters in the formation of song. Every breath was ten new role issues, and rather than fall into frenzy herself, the Queen focused on what she could. On the here. On the now. Looking down upon the Solovyova as she brought out a kit from her belt, slipping white squares through the torn fabric to flesh beneath.

“Why? Why? Why. Why, why, what purpose did it serve?” Even the Queen was unsure, truly, of the meaning of her question. “He bore no symbols. He was once of the Sovereignty. He fought, he lost, he submitted, knowing? Wanting, for the line of his life to be ended here?”

“Everything he could have been, everything he was, needlessly lost. Needlessly! Your reaction. It was a choice, a decision to cease his fighting, to accept the end of his song. Your own words! Had he not done…whatever he had chosen done to his flesh, his body, he could have rejoined your choir, once more bound his voice to the singular direction the Emperor-Queen had mandated.”

The words were honored. The sound, though, came as though from a thousand lengths away as the woman suddenly sank to the ground. So quick that Skthveraachk tried again to reach for her in support, only to catch sight of the red flakes still painting her graspers. Withdrawing thick forelegs as the Colonel contorted herself into the humanite way of sitting. Skthveraachk saw how the female barely winced as the patches were applied, stemming the blood flow.

“You are injured. I am injured. Your mind does not function, your feelings overpower your thoughts. You are a loyal soldier. You are a good queen, a thinker, a relay drone. You take your orders and execute them. They will not come for you as the Prescott. But I, I accused the Herald of failing the Emperor. I swore to the Prescott he would not be harmed. I chose to kill, all those drone-queens…our deal, our arrangement!” No. He would honor it. It was stated, and so it was truth. She had delivered the Prescott, what the Herald had chosen to do with him after was not her fault. Urging the attendants to turn, to press for reassurance. It was small miracle Solovyova did not gash her hand as it struck out, grabbing hard around the center leg of one of the attendants. Enough to freeze the drone, and as such, the entire group.

The Queen hesitated, and when the Colonel did not drop her hand, the growing fatigue overpowered her fear. Hand, at last, released. Cold breath fogged out of the female’s fleshy lips, drifting over the tanks, the tents, the soldiers who had ceased their cheering long ago.

“You are a humanite. You are of the Sovereignty. You are an ally to my kind, and to me, Solovyova. You are not the Coalition, and you are not different.”

She did not rise. Merely, jerked her head off in the direction the others had gone. There was nothing further to say. Tasks piled onto requests upon calls for aid, and whatever thoughts milled and churned in the impassive humanite’s head were not thoughts the Queen could assist with. Her life, though? Like the Hathan, that could be preserved. Testing if she could stand on her own, frame collapsed before the attempt was even halfway completed, and so it was again on a sled of her own children that Skthveraachk journeyed to the rings of marked tents. Under the lighted, false banners and sigils of cups held high. Seeing Miroslava, alone, taking post outside the male’s familiar yet entirely unremarkable habitat. When she saw the Queen, she at first pretended as though she didn’t. It would have been accepted, and acceptable. When Skthveraachk prepared to try and fit her unfitting bulk into the smaller space, however, the Lieutenant held up a hand. An order. A request.

“I do not grasp the terminology your species yet assigns to significant partners and colonies. His care for you is undeniable, however. You are his vassal inferior. He would fight for your safety. It is a stupid thing, and it is a beautiful thing, and you should rejoice in the parallelism of it.”

Was her tenor lacking this fade? Did her mandibles seem more open, yet less taut? Prepared for yet another admonishment, the Lieutenant instead grit the bones of her mouth together, and sucked air through the tube at the holes beneath her eyes.

“They were invaders. They set fire to my world, to my nest, to my children, and to me. They were soldiers who acted as soldiers. I killed them as I would kill soldiers. There is no sadness in the act, no regret in the blow.” For a moment, her hairs rattled while the Lieutenant soured. Scowled down to the ground. When the discord began to gather, Skthveraachk sucked her own inhale, and let spread her truth as it was found in a sigh about her. “There was no hesitation at Rugoro-Auslander, either. Yet I hear still the screaming. Taste still the meat as it was puked from guts and cores. I did not want to kill them, here. I did not wish to kill your soldiers, then. I would do both without pause once again, as I will in my memories forever. But I…am sorry, that I was forced to do so. I am sorry that they were the notes the Composer saw fit to lay before me. That they were casualties of a war neither wanted. That their deaths occurred. I am sorry.” Miroslava kept her post. Kept her head level. Shuddered, internally, so that only the vibrations could be felt as eyes of humanite of formite both could not see.

It would have been clearer for a formal acceptance. But the lack of such apology’s denial was, the Queen found to her bogged and wearisome surprise, enough for her. The Lieutenant made no move to stop her entrance, and as Skthveraachk parted the sheets and worked so as not to topple the meager furnishings, crunching steps could be heard carrying the female away. Attendants, drones, kept hold of her rearmost legs as they laid her across the inner flooring and changed from throne to linking chain out of the structure. Unpleasant, yes, to make contact with the ground. More unpleasant to cram the space meant for one with ten times that number. The Hathan reflected within a square mirror, touching his cheek with a wince as he pressed an ampule into the flesh.

“It would do equal the good for me to condemn how maddened you are for nearly allowing yourself to die without protest.”

His voice was hard. Her song was crisp. His lips arranged into a smile, as pained as it was genuine. Insensate antennae flicker and rubbed in relief.

“Then we should not waste our time upon such. Upon looks to our rear. Upon wishes to retread the paths of memory. They have been recorded, they have been chronicled, and they-“ Screaming. She had, errantly, allowed her thoughts to drift to the humanites. Their beauty. Their wrongness. Their bodies, ragged and torn and strewn with limbs awkwardly splayed on tent floors, in burnt fields, and in towns ringed about desiccated statues. The thinker charged with the task of their consideration received her thought. As he had for the past half a cycle in response, all he could do was scream, and scream, and scream. “-should not be dwelt upon, unless necessary.”

Not a word. A feeling, expressed in the soundful emittance of adolescent passalidites.

“I am so repugnant, that you would desire my absence whenever possible?”

He hadn’t turned, but in the mirror, the touches to his cheek paused as he looked upon her. Saw the way her antennae rubbed, hairs remained soft, and scythes were kept fully within their sheathes on her legs.

“Humanites enjoy posing questions and composing musics which they know indicate falsehoods. It is an interesting form of humor, to suggest something may be true despite both parties knowing it is wrong, while still ensuring not to lie to one another.” Chittering, mandibles tapped twice together. “I do not feel it is something one can grasp, however. If I was capable of truly holding untruth, I would seek to smash it against the ground.” She clacked her antennae together weakly. The Hathan laughed in response, and though he smiled, the sadness of the sound was louder than the Herald’s shouts. Her sounds faded. His smile, fell away. They were so small. So fragile. It was natural desire to reach out, to form connection, to eliminate the space obfuscating their truth. “I do not wish to make my words sound of violent control. To say you are of me. Of the colony.”

“It is not what was meant, when I called you of Skthveraachk. I fear I have incorrectly used another word of significance to your people.” Remembering the ghastly shock the Hathan had worn the last time, she rushed her tempo. “It was an expression of oneness, of belief in our synchronicity, that our goals and minds are as one.”

She wavered. Bindings in the link shook and twisted. The wall had been broken already, and as emotions melded with calculation, she cursed and moaningly praised the way her mind felt both smothered by soft tufts, and yet as open and cleared as a cloudless rise.

“The Herald would have killed you. I would not allow it. It was nothing, over nothing, for nothing. The Prescott. The plan. We did all that was asked, and yet the hate, the fury, the rawness of a truth which shatters all. What had he done, Hathan-Commander? Let us not regret.” They hurt, together. They stood, sat, together. Blocked off the tunnel down which the dying queens still called, accused, and cried, together. “Sing to me of your memories. Of the stories of your people. That I may understand, that I may learn of what causes such hate. No lies. No half-truths.”

Guilt. She called for his honesty, but hid parts of her own. Another sensation to bury down in layers unreachable. In chambers, which did not exist. Her focus went to those portals, those windows, those eyes as blue as the uniform the Commander had left hanging and discarded on selves and stands. As blue as the hardstones found in the walls of the temples. As the still sea and sky.

“It is not certain to be truth entire?”

Chair unfolded as the purple blotch on his cheek and face was cradled, the humanite sitting. Stood, his head matched her in her laying. Now, she angled her head down, so that eyes could catch better his fullness.

“Something which I will struggle with, but accept. Can almost consider similar, in a warped and unsavory way, to my own world. The Triumverate. The Queenless Colonies and raiders within the deserts. Those who are said to live across the ocean, in emulation of the Founders.”

She tried to imagine it. If she had had flesh like the humanites, it would have rolled up into a mountainous range of crevices and peaks upon her skull in distaste.

“This word is unknown.”

She did not parse the meaning, but made a show of slow nodding all the same. The snapping noise as fingers broke against each other made her chitin ripple. Despite the crunch, the Hathan showed no pain.

“As we work to add the traits of species to ourselves. As it was in the creation of the spitters, the weavers. To take what makes the creatures of your world strong, and make it your own.”

There was something sick within the humanite, something which dug and ground at his guts.

“Your song contorts, your body writhes, but this sounds to be not a curse, but a joy. A thing of idealism, of perfection and the potential to enhance your species beyond its limits.”

He clenched his fists. She had been. Had been considering, when the Hathan’s dark features were drawn forward.

A species apart. A thing that was better, greater, more than you could ever hope to be. Skthveraachk thought of the chelicerites. Thought of what it was, to those first amongst her species, who had lived as prey to something beyond them. Thought of what had been done. And knew, even before the Hathan continued with dying hope, what had been done.

“It should never have reached such a point. A common threat, a single cause.” The Founders, the first six colonies; their differences put aside, the Queens uniting together as color and belief was discarded for the one truth. The need for victory, to march against their one foe. “If only millions,” Millions. How casually she used the number now. “Of these not-humans existed, how did the struggle consume your world?”

Something white was oozing from his cheek, and the humanite pressed another patch to it as the skin’s color began to return to a more reddish hue.

“The purging of your world.” She remembered, standing with him, looking out over the stars from the observation deck of their ship. Of their Palamedes, changing her life forever. “That was what had caused it? The power to elevate yourselves, squandered?”

He didn’t try to smile, not even in the way he did to ease her mind.

“Do not regret.”

“Hathan-Commander, please,” It was natural. It was normal. She thought of the first time she had reached, extended her leg in peace, and torn the male apart. Thought of how she had reached since then, eyes of those beneath her shining with wonder, with fear, with pain, with hope. “We cannot allow the memories to overwhelm. We cannot allow ourselves to falter. We cannot allow-“

The smile went on. It taunted more than the name of the hated Captain, stuck fast within her like a spear of Queen’s own crafting. She felt the slats of her vents close, and begin to water.

She knew, if she sung now, it would be with wailing and lament. With cries which would not aid, but only harm more. Skthveraachk knew the horror of his kind. Knew the pain, the hate, the sorrow. She’d known it since the sky above her world, hated it then, resented it now. There was more to them than just pain. There was more to the Hathan than just lies. And there was more to life than just blame. He tried to speak again. She curled her claw, softened her hairs, and the fingertips so delicate and soft wrapped about the three prongs of the grasper of right foreleg. Barely a touch, barely a contact, all she dared risk, and all she could remember as she had watched the aliens when they dared risk a hold. Hand in claw, arm in arm. He squeezed, and it was his own meat which molded around her limb without any possibility of crack of arm. She flexed back, careful not to crush. And as the shuddering, wet noises escaped him, and her vents oozed in time with her tapping gaster’s excretions, somehow. Somehow. Somehow, in that tent of killers in a camp of soldiers of a species of self-murdering monsters; she felt the pain, shared between them, begin to lessen.