It was Miroslava, not Hathan, whom Skthveraachk heard crunching across the dirt of the Caldera’s plateau, approaching the Queen with step which was neither hesitant, nor in any particular hurry to arrive. This was to be one of the last risefades the Queen herself would see on this planet, and despite all that had transpired, all that had become and been lost since setting claw onto the world of unnaturally bouncy terrain and thinned air and freezing nights, Skthveraachk had found a desire within her to watch the sun set in silence. The pair of floating orbs, rocks large enough to be their own worlds she knew yet appearing to be nothing more than unblinding suns in their own right, drifting as they slowly sunk in twinned circulation. The sky, not quite as vivid as on Kayyhaitch, still a wash of colors where light met the black, the stars here at last visible now that the great beyond was not suffocated by plasma and artillery and a thousand, thousand firing lances. And even with the noises of the humanite encampment and structures, confined as they were to a fifth of the Caldera’s upper ring, songs from the colony toiling in the barrens below rose and filled the wasteland in synchronous and somber tones. Praise of the new cycle, but tarnished and tempered with the mournful farewell.

Strange, for a humanite to be able to tell. There was no railing here, away from the main collection of structures, and the Lieutenant stopped a distance away from the ledge.

“Interesting. To us, it is softer. Reflective. Acknowledging of loss, and allowing it to strengthen rather than sabotage.”

“No. He was patient with us, explained what these funerals mean to your species.” Tremors in the soil where ships descended, dropping the devices which would funnel moisture from the atmosphere into subteranean rain. Grinding of ropes and pulleys. An obvious patch of nothingness, a dead space, where humanites of the Palamedes, of pale shells and blue and amber, collected in grief on the plateau. “To sing farewell, celebrate achievements, share in sympathies. He did not need to ask for my absence; it was understood quickly I would not belong there.”

“The Jennifer was of your vessel, of your crew.” Miroslava said nothing. As another craft descended from beyond the sky, floating down the device into shaped hole of the landscape, the Queen made the question more implicit. “It would not be right in your customs or mine for her killer to be present, circumstances despite. The Captain is in attendance. Most of your compatriots are in attendance. Even her amber is in attendance.”

Her hairs had started to harden, instinctively, and the Lieutenant had noticed before Skthveraachk could will them back to softness. The silence now was of the Queen, with the humanite being the one to fill the break. A creasing of wrap. An offering, from the alien, of a single packaged Composer-cake. Skthveraachk only maintained her stillness for a few breaths before accepting it.

“I oversee the delivery of reclamators from afar; my participation, unnecessary. I route relevant requests.”

Eyes followed the Queen’s foreleg as it gestured to a pair of antennae poking over the ridge, though the humanite was unable to see the invisible trail of connection from that single drone to the hundreds of communicating menials.

“His concern is unnecessary. Here, I stand; raised above a nest more expansive than the Hollowcore of my mothers, the breadth of my domain stretching beyond sight of scout or observer. Farms which will feed hundreds of thousands, territory encompassing all that I had and have on Kayyhaitch and more. I have conquered my star-sent foes and laid claim to their land in the name of my colony superior, the Sovereignty and Empire.” The tunnels were being excavated in all directions. The stones stacked upon one another to build the central tower ever higher. “Mightier am I now than in generations, more lives shall be birthed here in ten cycles than perhaps the last fifty on my world. What could plague this triumph? What could dishevel the threads which weave the stories of my ascension?” She quieted the menders, tenders and queen which sought to balance. Stilled the thinkers which chastised the music used. Miroslava did not reply, though knew well the pointed tip lurking beneath soft sheath. Stood, watched as Queen watched, until with crinkling slide of cake’s unpeeling and a chitter of jaw, formite once again made clear what humanite would not speak. “The pain-rock. It is not confined to the Palamedes.”

“It may be utilized anywhere, if there is cause seen.” Nearly statements, but seeking a confirmation which came as simply as they did levelly.

“You do not have this power?”

“And the Hathan?” She did not regret the brief rudeness, even while knowing it to be unnecessary. Feeling the unmasked and soft texture of the biomass in her graspers. “He would be able to inflict the white pain upon me?” An answer was given the moment the Lieutenant looked downward, off to the side at nothing. “It is sensible. He is my overseer, my keeper. If any should have the means to bring about my obedience, or death, it should be him.”

“How is it done?”

“Its existence is known to me, Miroslava-Lieutenant. It’s function, apparent. I would not be surprised to learn it bears the power not just to harm, but to kill, if needed.” A less obvious question, slipped into the music, easy to dispel if it were untruth. No such correction came, and the light tremble in Skthveraachk’s voice was covered by the consumption of the cake. “I am not asking for the technical. I need not know how such commands are received through the air like your communication devices, or what metals and materials constitute its construction. Your Queens and leaders hold the power to end my life with a thought, the press of a button.” Sweet. Crumbly. She focused upon the treat rather than the notes she sung. “I do not sense it unreasonable to request comprehension of how my song may some day be ended.”

She had heard this word. On the lips of the Coalition dissenters. Skthveraachk did not need to turn, but it was a show to ensure the Lieutenant she was heeding the music. Noting where the female touched, just below where the single of its double-jointed graspers met with the rest of its limb. Base of the neck, opposite the face.

“It does not, but the effort is thanked regardless.” A proper member of the Sovereignty. Monitored. Bearing pieces of their creations. Free, until freedom was abused. As the cake vanished, she felt the oddest urge to laugh at the reality of it.

“Sought my protection by shielding me from unsavory facts. I am familiar with this foreign mindset. Perhaps once, I would have raged against it, too.” The surprise flickered as freshly rubbed fire, blooming only when the Queen turned far enough away that a humanite would have lost sight of other’s features. “I clutch to me no resentment of the Hathan. The choice between fullest honesty, and the safeguarding of your values or people, is a struggle I have come to understand. Come to respect. There are no lies between us, and yet, not always is there complete truth. Alien. Unnatural. Reality.” Vestigial crumbs were cleaned from graspers with tongue, and before the Miroslava could offer a return, folded limbs and bowed head bid her farewell. “The settling of reclamators is complicated process. I am needed below.”

Had circumstances been otherwise, perhaps a remark to the casual reference to the returning of one’s voice to the choir. But the Queen had no place reprimanding. They had bonded, shared in music and traded valuables; from Lieutenant, the biomass. From Skthveraachk, forgiveness sought though not bravely asked after. A good exchange.

The matter of bringing the alien monoliths into the middle layers of the nest was, of course, a complicated process. And that the Queen was needed, was undeniable. That the two musical measures happened to exist parallel did not make them part of the same song. Under the shade of the canopy of silk, on the lain roads in which grooves for clawed grips had been spaced perfectly, she fell into the procession of workers disappearing one after another into the awning cavern of entryway. Using the chitin of the drone in the line ahead to tap a rhythm out across the surface, until her delver could be located.

“Skthveraachk delver.”

“Skthveraachk Queen. I halt my labors to sing delight at your new cycle, and remorse for the location of its occurrence. I have advised crafters journey to the Tarasque humanite nest, to decorate the site.”

“I chant in equaled emotion, joy and sorrow, for the bonding you have formed in my absence. It is honored for one who has breathed the Silent City to exhale in our presence.”

“I am Skthveraachk.” The hints of indignation were only tasted at the edges of his reprise. “Skthveraachk delver. No longer of Jchlehaalhn-Colony. No longer of maintenance and reverence. I assist in creation. I learn of the humanites, and build upon them.”

“And you are certain you wish to return to Kayyhaitch with me?”

“I am.”

“There would be peace here. Opportunity. Expansion, integration, the war far removed and purpose only to procreate.” Response was not immediate, return not without consideration. The delver had made a decision, but it was not one made with the fullness of voice and mind, and the drumming began to reverberate as the Queen slipped down through the entryway.

“Creation does not mingle with the void. I am not a crafter, but the colony does not burrow and spread when there is no force from above bringing urgency. Without challenge, without need, discovery stagnates. And of all I have discovered here, it brings questions.”

“You have voiced no questions.”

“Questions which cannot be asked here. Questions of the Silent City.” Skthveraachk retracted her inquiries, unwilling to break the tenants which guided the drone, but he chittered slow continuation regardless. “I can not, will not, divulge the sights I have seen. But in those hallowed halls and tunnels of hardstone and vegetation and light, I find…familiarity.” Queen’s antennae twitched. “With the principles, projects, we have birthed here. How were such things forgotten? Why? Curious. Strange. I will seek, with you, on Kayyhaitch. My role here is done.”

“Not yet.” Information to internalize, questions of her own, now, but later. As the delver signed confusion, the Queen bid the drone ahead come to a halt. It apologetically gave notice of its prioritized tasking, and so, a less busied menial took its place beneath Skthveraachk’s claws, relaying the diagram as she drew from purest memory. “Assess this design. Increase in scale. Use central pillar of Caldera as support. Twenty lengths in height or greater.”

“Receiving. Received. Purpose?”

“Temple in humanite fashion. Like the molt. Statue, to commit event to memory.”

“Portions appear damaged. Extrapolate and fix?”

“Leave as described. Increase scale and proportions only.”

“Will relay to crafters and ensure plans in place before departure, Skthveraachk Queen.” Thanks were sung. Information, disseminated. She was not truly surprised, even if the offering had been genuine for the male to remain. It was mostly the juveniles, the youngest generation, who now filled and assumed primary roles of the nest as all throughout the layers the more aged prepared their departure. Willing to fight for their world, to die for it, but ever desiring to return to its fields. To the rest? It was as a half-dream, a vision in which they believed almost in the same way as the Sovereignty, or Emperor, or Composer. This cold and barren planet was a battlefield to some. Now, it was home to others.

“Requesting Queen on layer seven.”

“Received.” Moving again. Detouring, winding through the serpentine tunnels now more trapezoidal than triangular, with the smaller drones riding up along slanted walls as the largest proceeded down the center. So long it had been since she had been given time to crawl through the passageways of the Caldera, and here on these diagonal surfaces she could feel inscribed and carved already a host of memories. The name of the first delver to locate hardstone on the new world. The tale of Skthveraachk scout and the Furred Creature. The ringing, resonating scrapes of the Queen’s hairs and claws as they scratched and stroked along the wall in her descent heralded her approach to the one who had called her. To the purple leviathan, seeming even larger now in his suit of Coalition plating, and bone, and skin. “Our departure approaches. What is-“ The head of a scout, her scout, barely a half of the soldier’s own, poked up from the curve of his crest as the momentary surprise stuttered the Queen’s tempo. “-the purpose of my presence?”

“Smearing. Queen’s scent, ideal. Newest births are volatile.” It was one of the cluster garrisons, but, nearly devoid of life in its center. All usual inhabitants, pushed up against the curved walls, trying to remain in torpor and sleep despite the frantic buzzing. Between columns and upon the ceiling, winged stingers circled and darted, clutching to clawholds and hissing from thin slatted vents on their sides.

“Yes. Volatile. Should be calmer when being shot at.” The scout clacked, though the Queen did not share in the amusement. “Confuse us with designation hostile.”

“Repeat last. You attack one of the most precious of castes?”

“We train. We test.” The explanation coincided with a beckoning, and Skthveraachk curled her gaster below her while she crawled towards the pair. Pulling mucus and buildup from the glands of its underside, the smell already causing the panicked beating of wings to slow and mellow. “No harm possible. No danger present.”

“The star-dwelling humanite in Tarasque educated greatly the usage of this.” Antiquated lance was thrust upward, the barrel still distorting air from heat expelled. “These slides, here! To adjust the power, the damage, of the white light. The humanites charge their weapons greatly. To melt and pierce through armor. Decreasing power limits effectiveness greatly, especially against their silvery metals, but so much quicker is the fire.”

“Scout wished experimentation with new…tool.” The soldier bent himself, allowing the gel clinging to her hairs to smear down in a line across his crest. “Stingers require practice avoiding ground-based lances. I located information in Tarasque. Rapid engagement. Strike, and withdraw. Speedy deployment. I test. Inform thinkers of result. Determine efficacy.”

“Caution advised.” The scout climbed with only four legs as Queen sung and signalled, the other two cradling the deceptively dangerous piece of clunky technology. Receiving his own marking enthusiastically. “Have not approached humanites about your new weapon. Single drone, aged technology; crafters agree, too valuable to attempt and disassemble. Previous attempts with lances all disastrous. Humanites may not be angered. Humanites may be angered. Using sparingly.”

“Received, Skthveraachk Queen. Will ensure subtly when transferring to the Palamedes.”

“Scout’s role, investigation. Observation. Locating of the new. Came to Dracan to witness and see. No longer true?”

“Scout’s role, confirmed. Have investigated, observed, located. Scout’s role, now to return and deliver report. Ghescktyeelh-Colony must learn what Skthveraachk has learned. Must be prepared, as Skthveraachk-Colony has prepared.”

“Will scout return to Ghescktyeelh-Colony?” The pair rose together as the Queen’s administrations were concluded, the buzzing and hovering stingers with their spindly legs and thin chitin daring to draw nearer now. “Will scout remain with Skthveraachk-Colony?”

“Unknown. There is no surety in my core. There is no uniformity in my song. Both colonies are home. Kayyhaitch is home. I must return home.”

“There are no more battles here.” The soldier’s bluntness was at odds with the scrape of his razor scythes as he turned about, facing down the length of the room once more. “Purpose, irrelevant. Where the War Queen goes, there will be conflict. I travel with the Queen.” It was a dark praise, but meant as praise all the same. Her tasks called to her, the Queen’s own body preparing to withdraw from the cave, yet she allowed just enough time to watch. Watch, as the soldier’s heavy husk of muscle and power abruptly charged forward on all six legs. Watch how the scout, braced and steadied upon the other’s shell, brought the lance up to his rightmost eye with tip aimed upward. The accuracy as light burst from its end was questionable, one of the targeted stingers diving away in arial spins as their songs became music of false-threat and alert as the beam struck ceiling. The sight, scout mounted upon soldier, peculiar. She left the two to their machinations, riding about the cavern together as the speed of a greater being was paired with the fine manipulation and weapon handling of a lesser one. Curious combination.

At last, and at length, Skthveraachk Queen descended by claw and ramp and groaning lift platform to the very depths of the nest. Knowing, already, the smell of the one who awaited down the tunnel to Queen’s own resting chambers. Less and less were attendants permitted to travel with her, and many drones noting the lack of accompaniment as she passed them tried, and were denied, their requests to meld their songs and remain nearby for her assistance. Dangerous to bring them. Unnecessary, too; Skthveraachk no longer felt the urge for constant petting or cleaning or contact when there was tasking to handle. All had consented to her pointed suggestions, not needing to be ordered away to hear the forceful request in her voice and music. All, but the permeable pale and perched cross of thin legs and thorn mandibles who, as Skthveraachk turned from the hall into the unmarked and unscented tunnel, followed with hairs brushing against hers. A final thrumming of assured safety, and transfer of duties made to the queen and daughter, as Queen severed herself from the great choir. For the last time.

“Skthveraachk mender.”

“Queen will explain.”

“Mender commands Queen?”

“Commands? Orders? Demands? Yes? Yes.” Was the destination not already known, and the oppressive emptiness of the lack of a trail not causing the Queen’s internals to clench and grind, the barely contained wrath gleaming like a deathly black light from the white drone’s every joint would have brought Skthveraachk to surprised halt. Her antennae reached back, seeking connection; the mender refused to accept them with her own. “Queen will explain.”

“There is no purpose in explanation.” Ckhehnvraahll could be heard in the mender’s notes, even here. Even now. It made condemnation difficult. And every rudeness leveled against Skthveraachk dig all the deeper through her chitin. “My role is collection. Interpretation. Determination. Execution. Humanite hands do not explain reasoning of action to humanite feet.”

“Queen is not humanite. Mender is not humanite. Queen does not inform the colony of the situation. Does not allow thinkers to consider. Does not allow menders to balance truth. Does not allow any to coordinate and find consensus and truth. Queen leads? No. Queen chooses? No. Queen is followed because she represents all. Queen is obeyed because it is the will of the many. Where is the many? Where is the all? You forbid their involvement. Queen wishes solitude? Yes? Queen corrupts her own music, yes? Then Queen will explain. Why is he not dead?” No guards. No spitters, no menials or soldiers. Emerging into that pit, with all its darkness and wrongness, humanite and thinker looked up as one from their dirtied scratchings. “Why, by Composer and all the temples of the Remembering, is he still alive?”

“WAIT. NEED DISCUSS WITH OTHERS.” The letters were written, then wiped away, and audible cricks and creaks were felt as much as heard as the unnatural thinker rose onto four legs. Reared, but not out of any necessity or threat. As if the male found it more comfortable than his proper stance. The humanite may have looked the same as its fellows, moved the same as it pushed back and into a folded seat at wall’s base, but it no longer reeked as they did. Salty, musting and with tinges of metallic flavoring. It smelled as their newborns. As their own bodies. “Skthveraachk Queen, may your visit be as long as is required to reach illumination. I did not think to receive any this rise.”

“Silence. Silence, silence, silence.” The mender’s scythes were fully extended in a breath, scuttling around Skthveraachk’s larger body as they stabbed at the loamy ground repeatedly. “Corruptor. Dissenter. You have made mockery of the song. You have brought danger to entire colony. Frenzied. Frenzied!”

“Cannot be frenzied.” The mender was right. Core knew the mender was right. Isolating and containing a warped drone was unthinkable, unthinkable! Forcing the individual to live apart from the whole was not a punishment, it was a curse, an evil reflecting as much on the many as it did on the one. Emotions knew the mender was right. Mind and brain rebelled against the label. “Impossible to be frenzied.”

“Queen will explain!”

“We are taught the frenzy is the failing of the one.” Spitting fury from the mender could not silence the thinker, who stroked and felt with strange twitches across his own body as he sung. “The memories chant that the Queens must lead, and the colony must follow. When the one believes themselves more important, believes their decisions more correct, then the frenzy is ensured.”

“Thinker has betrayed role, betrayed the heart of Skthveraachk-Colony. Use of jelly. Lies to the humanites, yes, lies.” So, it had happened before. Like the thinker, the mender had been commanded to hide parts of her mind, but looking down on the rivaled pair, soul and thought, heart and brain at odds, the distress the Queen felt was matched only by the disgust broiling within her. “Thinker sings falsehoods!”

“Formites do not sing wrongness. But is singing wrongness frenzy?”

“It is not done!”

“It is not done. This is not the same as it cannot be done.”

“It should not be done.” Skthveraachk snapped her jaws open and closed. “The aliens wield such as a weapon, and so we must counter it with half-truths. Omissions. Careful application of notes that do not spread wrongness.”

“And yet, all of this comes so easily to our species, it is a wonder we have never engaged in it before, is it not?” The thinker clacked in pained amusement, his cracked and bent body still bearing the marks of tens of fresh sealant applications. “How much different our memories would be were our histories filled with hidden truths and deceptions. How much more devastating our wars, how much more crippling our victories.”

“Thinker wishes to be humanite? Wishes Kayyhaitch more like Earth? Should be sent from the nest, from the planet, let live amongst them, yes? No. They would eat him, as they seek to feast on our world. Good. Finality. Deserved, for frenzied. For traitor.”

“Never once have I acted in any way but to benefit this colony. My role was clear, my tasks, implicit.” The humanite was swaying, oddly, as though in time to their rhythm. As though he could hear it. Foolishness, distraction. “Queen commanded I learn of the humanites. Queen directed me to speak as them, think as them, learn as them. Think it possible to learn of another without becoming as them? Impossibility.”

“He cannot be frenzied.”

“He must be frenzied-!”

“Skthveraachk mender! If thinker is frenzied, then I am frenzied!” The bellow was sudden, the sharpness with which Skthveraachk sung enough to peel flesh as the paler formite snapped head and legs back, as though to shield self from the thought. “Queen gave order! Queen has sung not lies, but not truths! Queen has learned of the aliens, colony has acted as the aliens, and if thinker is frenzied in existing exactly as they do, then Queen, and mender, and Skthveraachk-Colony entire is either already frenzied, or soon to be, and this cannot be our truth. Will not be our truth. Skthveraachk thinker is not frenzied.” Repetition. Until the recitation became reality. “And so Skthveraachk thinker cannot be killed.”

“Fear. Cowardice. Unwillingness to accept what is real and what is dream. If thinker is frenzied, and Queen has acted as thinker, Queen is also frenzied.” Shaking, trying to piece together fragments, the mender continued to stab at the ground while thinker merely laughed the louder.

“Frenzy is disobedience of the many. Queen is the center of the many. How can Queen be frenzied? No, mender. Queen has merely changed. Less formite, more now something else. Menials become warriors, thinkers lose their voices in the choir, and Skthveraachk-Colony becomes more alien to our species than even these beings from the stars.”

“Refused.” Harsh, the emittance from Skthveraachk slashed forward on the backs of half-unsheathed scythes. Silencing the mocking laughter as the mender rocked and ran small circles in distressed rage. “You are not frenzied. But you are not of Skthveraachk. Skthveraachk would never do as you have done, fall as you have fallen, act as you have acted. You delight in the loss of what is formite, what is beautiful and right. Skthveraachk-Colony rejects you. Skthveraachk-Colony becomes what it must to fight the sky-sent, but it does not revel in the evolution.”

“Do you think it matters to the aliens whether you slaughter them gleefully or with mourning calls?”

“Perceived as monster is not the being of a monster.”

“A role is defined in the tasking of its own work, War Queen. We are what we do. A thousand soldiers can claim heresy and wrongness, but when menials fight now with as much efficacy and fervor and results as soldiers themselves, it is either soldiers who have become redundant, or menials who have become more than their caste dictates.”

“Thinker has become more humanite than formite. Thinker cannot rejoin the link. Thinker will not be permitted to leave this place. Skthveraachk-Colony does not kill the unfrenzied, and thinker is not frenzied.” The Queen’s hardness provided brace against which the mender could begin to recover, to rise, to stand sure even as the persisting trembles ran through its length. Understanding, now, that the disgust in Skthveraachk’s song was not at the thinker. Only at what the Queen had birthed by her action, and inaction.

“Thinker is not of Skthveraachk? Accepted. Chkervthnaakt Thinker is no longer of Skthveraachk.” The dead colony’s name sounded out from beyond the veil of the abyss, necrotic limbs bursting from soil to breathe and sing with lungless songs once more. Skthveraachk tried not to let how unsettled the statement made her feel show on her hairs and thorax. “Skthveraachk does not kill the unfrenzied. Skthveraachk does not kill aliens designated as non-hostile. I understand well, then, what this meeting’s purpose is. How flatteringly interesting. How many Queens exist, do you think, who would be able to accept the danger of keeping one such as I, such as this creature aside me alive, and permit it all the same?” He did not resist when the Queen herself crawled forward. Spat upon her graspers and, like the staring drone gazing back up at her would suddenly burst into acid and death, marked the male. Not with the scent of the colony, but with that of vassal and servant.

“Is risk worth potential calamity?” To the aliens, asking such of the one hanging between life and death would be absurd. To them, it was a question well considered, and answered as truthfully as any other as the thinker bobbed its body.

“Yes. Many risks taken, these past ten and hundred measures. All risks, worth it. Do you wish to draw to the humanite? Singing, impossible, Bands record and memorize all notes, but if they contained mechanical eyes upon them or within this area of the nest, they would have already stormed the location.”

“Singing, drawing, speaking to this humanite is what has altered you in unsavory ways. I will take its knowledge, but you will filter it.”

“Should be melted. Disposed of. Buried.” The mender, smelling now the new assignment of role and belonging, no longer seethed with rage. Thinker was no longer a part of them. No longer a growth needing to be cut. Now, it was as much a prisoner as the alien beside it. Good. Right. Macabre, at how little it seemed to affect the thinker, who carried on with recitative light and clear.

“Think this is punishment? I drink readily and willingly from the mouth of this creature. It spills knowledge of their God, our God, all Gods. How friction may birth heat. How energy can be converted from heat, to movement. Wheels will turn. Shapes will be carved which may some day fly with rigid wings. We are so crude a species. So simple. So primitive.”

“Sing to me of the Pod.” All gathered, even the alien, made guttural noises of distaste as the Queen spun the noise. “Sing assurances you thought of ever contingency.”

“She was disposed of with utmost care. All has been considered.”

“You live only so long as I believe this, thinker.” Though spaced apart once more, the statement was a verbal lean forward; threatening, and certain. “My voice is of thinness and my music of strain. If the humanites discover what you, you and not this colony, have done, it would harm my children. My people. Sing to me convincing this will never come to pass, or I will seal this chamber and have your last measures be spent in transcription of your knowledge before you are silenced forever.”

“Every step was prepared, every action made with purpose. I am certain there will be no danger.”

“Certainty is impossible, yes? Yes. Certainty means knowledge. Knowledge you cannot posses.” Mender seemed all too pleased at the possibility of the failure, even in knowing what it would bring upon all their shells. The thinker merely snapped his back legs together.

“Knowledge was gathered. Not of the alien technology, no, that I cannot account for. But what was studied? What was learned? All was of the Pod. That the Pod was selfish, and by binding the Pod and I together as conspirators, meant I sing with certainty that any evidence of my involvement would have been eradicated, lest the Pod implicate herself.” Single claw scratched and picked and crawled upon his core. “That the Pod was ambitious, and would allow no other to benefit from our arrangement. There would be no threat of hidden safeguards, of data or learning stashed away, for it could easily fall into claws other than hers. That the Pod was arrogant, and so there would be no fear of countermeasures or plans for her failure or my betrayal. She was the superior species. She was the more intelligent. To prepare for the scythe which eventually found her heart, the Pod would have needed to believe me, us, our species, an equal. A threat. No, Skthveraachk Queen, I am certain in the truest tones of the note which I sing.” Where should have been the coolness of indifference in a plan executed and concluded, Skthveraachk heard the basest drumming of pride in the thinker’s voice. “There will be suspicion, but no proof. Consideration, but quickly swept aside. The Pod covered my own actions for fear of her own discovery, destroyed any evidence or threat, kept no copies or details. Method chosen for her disposal was believable, circumstance, already proven to be tolerated. To the humanites, it will be accepted as a tragic accident, and the only ones who would seek further or doubt are either removed from equation by their own emotional imbalance, or slaved to their emotions in trusting the Queen over the deceased Pod. Certainty.”

“It is an ugliness in which you celebrate, thinker.” The room reeked not of aliens, now, but something worse. Something pungent, and sickly, and half-formed. “A dark thing. A cruel thing.”

“Do not force your own compunctions upon me, Skthveraachk Queen, War Queen.” It still bit. Even now, after everything, after her own acceptance; the thinker wielded her name as a weapon, and it stung where it impacted. “The Pod had harmed us many times, by inaction or direct action both. Her failure at her role led, leads still, to miscommunications and poor translations which have killed thousands. She was an inferior creature who thought herself more than a menial, more than a drone, and despite her vast superiority of intellect and technology and experience? It was a formite who killed her. Me. Chkervthnaakt Thinker!” Chattering wildly, the strange jubilation once more bubbled up, and the mender needed little prompting to begin her exit from the room with Skthveraachk near behind. “They burned my colony, they silenced my bonded, they melted a hundred cycles of memory, but I will remember! A single formite, outsmarting them all! I will remember!”

“May you sing yourself to torpor with this memory, Chkervthnaakt thinker.” The Queen turned, and though her voice drifted on ashen clouds through the hall, it faded ever with her return to the link. To the unity that would now be forever denied the male. “We return to the chorus. We return to Kayyhaitch. But as we depart, the music you have made will shackle your legs and song to this place. My failed daughter will be your Queen, and your jailor, and the threat of your taint shall never be permitted to reach the homeworld.”

“She knows the value of my role. Of my knowledge.” Legs swayed to a beat the Queen could not hear. “She will accept my data, make use of my discoveries. I will be remembered.”

“The fire of her adoration will be quenched with waters of duty. And while your knowledge travels with us through the stars, neither your truth nor memory will travel beyond the walls of this cavern.” Laughter soured. Animation became lethargy. Two strides were felt, the thinker approaching the tunnel, but not even he could disobey a directive so singular in its intent. “Bask in the glory of your victory, thinker. None shall ever be permitted to learn of it.” His silence was deafening. His stare, more piercing than any lance. The Queen rejoined the link the moment the tunnel was exited, and amidst the swarming contact of minds and thoughts and songs, the order was made clear.

“Complete preparations. We depart this world come the rise.”