Path of the Hive Queen

Regina had been right about one thing: Trying to suss out the loyalties of her subordinates and intelligence officers was good training. She’d started her screening, and while several issues she hadn’t thought about before had popped up, she was confident it was going well. Of course, if she missed something she wouldn’t know it, by definition, so she had to remind herself not to get overconfident.

Robin Daine was pretty helpful for this effort. He was one of the first people she put through this psychic testing, and the results were more or less what she’d expected, although he was also one of the people where she knew she could be least sure of not having missed something, ironically.

Lord Daine was more loyal to Cernlia than to the Empire, that much was clear. He hadn’t even tried to hide that fact when she went looking into his mind. But as long as Kiara as Queen of Cernlia followed Regina and there were no real challenges to her position or rule of Cernlia, he would be loyal. Daine wasn’t a nationalist or royalist, exactly, but he did feel a sense of honor and duty, and once he’d accepted Kiara as his queen he wouldn’t betray her easily.

Regina had tried not to go digging much beyond that, stifling her curiosity. She wasn’t going to go prying into her people’s private lives. Besides, that would only make these screenings even harder. If someone was resisting her, fearing her looking into their minds, because they only wanted to hide an affair or something, it would help no one. She knew she would still stumble on plenty of their personal secrets, but she’d have to resist the temptation to use or share them in any way. Even when it might be politically relevant.

One thing her ‘interrogation’ of Daine did show her, though, was that she needed to make these checks a regular thing. If she only had them once, it wouldn’t be enough. Only checking someone once they were hired would barely be better than doing nothing. So much could change, people could be blackmailed or bribed even if they thought they wouldn’t give in to that, or loyalties might simply shift. That, of course, meant that she would have to devote a lot more time and attention to these checks than she’d originally hoped.

Finding someone else with psychic abilities or who could handle these tasks had become a lot more important.

For now, Regina focused on the checks she was doing. Almost to her surprise, she didn’t actually catch anyone who had been inserted to spy on her. To be fair, she’d only checked senior positions so far and was slowly moving her way down the ranks, contemplating when she should stop. And although there were no outright spies, Regina still found a few people she wasn’t quite comfortable having in her government. They either carried resentments about their countries losing their independence or about the lost war, or they just seemed like they would too easily bend in the future. Regina was still hesitant about how to handle this.

She should probably just dismiss them from her service, she supposed. It wasn’t like she owed them anything, besides severance pay. But it would probably be better to wait until a while after the checks and maybe find another justification.

Today, she had a much easier task and anticipated she’d be done with it quickly. She was really only doing it as a formality. Because she didn’t want her human subordinates to complain about the drones getting special treatment, even when it should be obvious that she didn’t actually need to check them.

“I don’t think this is actually necessary,” she told Ira, the one she started with. “I’m just doing a ‘screening’ so we can say we’ve done it.”

Ira nodded, relaxing in her chair. They were sitting in Regina’s office, and Ira had just straightened out the papers on her desk. “Do you need to ask me a few questions?”

“I suppose I could, but I could also just take a quick look at your mind, if you don’t mind?”

She didn’t, so Regina focused on Ira’s presence in the psychic link and quickly delved deeper into it. This was hardly the first time she was doing this, even with Ira in particular, and her personal assistant easily yielded to her entry, opening her mind for Regina to look through. She got a quick mental overview and then started to withdraw.

“So?” Ira asked, teasingly. “Do I pass muster, or is my loyalty not sufficient?”

Regina snorted, smiling at her. “I doubt your loyalty could ever be anything like insufficient.”

Ira nodded, smiling back, before her expression grew more serious. She sat up a bit straighter and looked at Regina, pausing for a moment before asking a question. “I’ve been wondering a bit about that, actually — Could one of us betray you, Mother? I mean, in principle?”

“Sure,” Regina said instantly. “You’re sapient people, you have free will. I don’t think it would be easy, obviously. But you could go against my orders if you wanted to.”

Ira nodded slowly. “That makes sense. Not that it matters.”

Regina shrugged. “I haven’t been worrying about any of you defying my will,” she admitted. “Maybe it’s arrogant of me. I don’t think I’m a terrible queen …” She paused, tugging on her mandible. Have I become too used to this, too much of a tyrant? she wondered.

Ira huffed. “You’re not and you really don’t have to worry about it. I could only imagine drones turning against their Hive Queen if she was truly a terrible one. Don’t beat yourself up over it, you have our obedience and it’s entirely reasonable of you to rely on it.”

Regina sighed. “Because I’m your ruler?” she asked drily.

“Because you’re our mother and we love you.”

Regina swallowed hard. Such simple words, spoken with sincerity, as Ira utterly believed what she was saying. “Thank you,” Regina whispered. Then, after a moment, “I love you too.”

And she did. Not just Ira, although she did love her as well, but her Hive. Looking at the drone, her daughter, she smiled a bit and allowed herself to just feel it for a moment. Through her hive, Regina was connected to all of them at a deeper level than she could have known in her previous life, and even if she’d never talked to one of them in person she would still always be with them in some way.

Ira smiled back. After a while, she said, “You’ve always kept a bit of an emotional distance, but that’s understandable. There are so many of us and you can’t have personal relationships with everyone.”

“I also don’t want to play favorites, although I inevitably have to,” Regina added, shaking her head. She looked up at Ira. “You don’t think I’m a terrible mother?” It was the kind of question she wouldn’t normally pose, and she hated the insecurity in her voice.

Her daughter shook her head emphatically. “No, never. You can’t judge yourself by the standards of your human life, Mother. It’s different and we’re Hivekind, not human. We don’t need a mother’s care in the same way.” She shrugged. “And even though we don’t need raising, you still made sure we all have older siblings to care for us and help us. That’s more than some would have done. You made sure we build strong bonds and help us come together as a family. And you take pains to protect us, or avenge us if we die.”

Regina nodded. “I do hate having to send your brothers and sisters out to fight this war,” she said quietly.

“It’s ultimately to help keep us safe, and we need to get justice for our dead,” Ira replied. “Believe me, we understand. We’d protest if we didn’t, and as you just said, we could even refuse to fight.”

Regina slumped back, sighing. “I suppose.”

“Not to sound like I’m criticizing you, but you can afford to be vulnerable sometimes, Regina. You’re only mortal. And I appreciate the heart-to-heart, even if I didn’t expect it. What brought this on, if I may ask? Does it have anything to do with little Robin Lyns, maybe?”

Regina sighed. “I suppose seeing Florance and her son has brought up some questions for me,” she admitted.

"Don’t let it bother you too much,” Ira advised her. “Even if you used to be human, the situation is different now.” She paused, frowning a bit. “You said you didn’t have children before, right?”

Regina shook her head. “I seriously doubt I would have agreed to this if I had kids to look after. And as best we can guess, I was pretty young. Besides, there was no mention of any in the documentation we found.”

“So none of these people are your direct descendants,” Ira mused, nodding at the world beyond their room.

Regina grimaced. “No, and thank god they aren’t, I’m not sure I could be doing this if they were. Although it has been a thousand years and many generations.”

“There could still be descendants of your family,” Ira noted.

“Yes, maybe children of siblings or cousins, I suppose. But it’s been so long I’m not sure it matters.” Regina sighed, running a hand through her hair. “My family name probably died out, clearly. We would have found by now if it hadn’t.”

“Seems like it. You could pass it on now.”

“I suppose, but it would feel weird to give it to all of my drones.” Regina sighed, tugging on her mandibles, and glanced hesitantly at Ira. “I guess I do care about my family name a bit, though … I kind of want to pass it on, now that I’ve reclaimed it.”

Ira cocked her head. “So, you’re giving it to Janis?”

“Yeah, I guess. It would just be weird to pass it to a drone, you know? But Janis is …”

“Different.” Ira smiled at her. “At least she’s mostly human and all, and she can carry it on. Don’t worry, Mother, that’s not going to upset me or any of us. If it’s important to you, we wouldn’t begrudge you reclaiming or keeping a part of yourself that’s not centered on being a Hive Queen.” She shrugged, her smile widening. “Actually, I’m just glad that Janis is our sister, for real, not just a companion in the psychic link.”

Regina laughed. “I guess she is. Even if it’s still weird, I prefer to think of it as her being my younger sister.”

“But she’s officially your daughter, right, given you’ve adopted her?”

“Officially, maybe.” She shrugged. “I suppose it makes more sense to make it a clear and unambiguous adoption in the official documentation and just consider it as her being my sister beyond that.” You’d think I’d be used to having adult children, Regina reflected, but apparently not.

Ira seemed to understand what she was feeling. “She might only be a few years younger than you, but you’re also a thousand years older, my Queen. No one is questioning the validity of it.”

“I guess,” Regina conceded.

“Anyway, is the testing over?”

She laughed. “I’d say so, yes. Not that it was ever in question. But I should move through the rest of the drones and at least do quick checks. It’s going to be a pain to schedule.”

“I know,” Ira said drily. She was, after all, the one mostly managing Regina’s schedule. “Is there any possibility of someone else helping you? Madris, maybe?”

“I’m not sure I’d trust her with something like this, or rather, be seen trusting her with it,” Regina mused. She frowned. “I have been considering trying to teach psychic skills to others, but I don’t think it’s going to do much good for the Hive.”

“You don’t think we could learn it?”

“I’ll try to teach you if you’re fine with that,” Regina suggested. “But no, honestly, I don’t think it’s going to work out. Call it a feeling, but I don’t think drones can really use psychic powers like that.” She paused, running a hand through her hair. “Any time a new drone hatches, it’s like a little bit gets added to the psychic link, right? I mean, that’s not quite what happens, but it’s a reasonable metaphor. The link is definitely … growing with the hive, at least. And my mana pool grows as well. Sure, some of you drones have your own mana, but it’s different. I think whatever you might have used as psychic connectors, so to speak, just gets coupled into the link. Or maybe it’s that Hivekind are just adapted so any psychic sensitivity we have is subsumed into the psychic link.”

Ira nodded slowly. “I’d like to try to learn, if only to test that theory, but it sounds plausible. Could you try and teach someone else, though? Maybe Janis?”

“Janis is also part of the psychic link now,” Regina pointed out. “It would be an interesting test, though. But she’s also part elemental, her magic is all shaded by that. She might have too much elementalism in her blood to do well with something like psychic magic. Still, I’ll certainly try to teach her something. No one I know of really has much talent for it, but there are ways to achieve the same effects, with spells and such. June might be my best bet, though.”

“Well, she is your apprentice,” Ira mused.

“True. For now, I’ll try and see if I can give you a sense of our surrounding minds with you just piggybacking off me,” Regina said. “Come over here, let’s sit down.”

They settled down on the carpet, sitting cross-legged across from each other. Regina took Ira’s hands, not that it was necessary, but it felt appropriate.

Then she focused on her psychic senses and the minds she could see surrounding them, as well as the psychic link. At first, it went well. She pulled Ira mentally to her, establishing a closer link, then fed the information she got to her.

I can sense it, Ira whispered, an undertone of awe in her mental voice. It’s like the link but very different.

I know. I’ll try and let you sense it on your own.

Regina carefully and gently retreated from her connection to Ira, trying to keep up her sense of their surroundings while disentangling herself from her drone. She could tell that Ira’s focus remained sharp, but her senses seemed to be wavering. As Regina withdrew further, it got harder to tell what Ira was feeling or doing.

“Shit,” she finally cursed softly. She looked at Regina and shook her head. “I tried to keep it up, but as soon as you were no longer there for me to talk to, it felt like I lost it all. I couldn’t see what you showed me anymore. I tried to reach out again, but I don’t even know what to do, or how.”

Regina sighed. “Okay.” They could try again, but she didn’t think it would be very successful, and this approach seemed like their best bet.

“You were probably right,” Ira concluded. “We’re just not made for psychic abilities outside the Hive.”

Regina made a face. “I wouldn’t completely count it out yet. We can try again. And maybe I’ll think of a better way later.”

Her heart wasn’t really in it, though. It seemed like she’d have to stay her hive’s only psychic for now.