They Answered The Call

Queen World of the Insectoid Empire, 2174 A.D.

The Hive mother had not eaten or carried out her duties as Hive mother for almost two days. Tens of thousands of larvae remained unfertilized, and she killed every male that blindly shuffled in, not caring for the loss of their genetic material. The mound of male corpses grew in the brooding chamber as her worker drones wandered aimlessly without direction as the Hive ground to a halt, leaderless.

She did not care. The loss of her daughters broke her, and she tried to get a measure of revenge by taking command of the fleets that were sent to destroy the animals that were fleeing their system. She rejected all attempts by her daughters to lead the fleets; she could not lose anymore. She controlled the commander drones, and she relished the thought of witnessing the destruction of billions of animals and all the ships in the system.

She was momentarily disquieted by the unexpected presence of the new animal ships in the system, but the small fleet was not enough to stop them, and she gave them battle, assured of her victory. The animals fought with ferocity, and she felt a measure of grudging respect for them.

The battle went on far longer than she expected, and her frustration grew as she watched her fleet reduce in size as the animals continued to fight tenaciously. There was finally a turning point where her fleet now had an advantage, and she pressed the attack, trying the break the animal's spirits and get them to retreat. Suddenly, a number of those cursed spirit ships appeared, and she immediately started targeting them. They were the most powerful animal ships, and she had to destroy them as quickly as possible.

She directed dozens of her ships to attack them, and she had a moment of doubt as to her mental state when she saw that the spirit ships were unharmed despite being hit with a tremendous amount of particle beams and missiles. She fired at them again, and still, they were unharmed as they continued targeting her Hive ships.

She changed tactics and had twenty ships target a single spirit ship, seeing through the eyes of the commander drone as an invisible force flared brightly around the targeted ship. She had the ships continue their attack, and she finally saw some of the particle beams pierce the invisible force and hit the targeted ship before it entered null space to prevent its destruction.

Her worry over the animal’s ability to deflect her weapons threatened to overwhelm her, and she was considering abandoning the system when she saw that two of the spirit ships had finally been destroyed.

She changed her targeting preferences, and the weapons drones of the fleet were ordered to focus on the spirit ships. Two more were destroyed, and she could see the spirit ships changing their patterns, no longer willing to engage in close combat and easing the pressure on her fleet somewhat.

It was too late, and the addition of the spirit ships turned the tide. She suffered a severe lapse of focus as she saw the last Hive ship finally get destroyed, and the animal ships turned their attention to the remaining cruisers, destroying them shortly after.

The animal ships had destroyed her fleet. She reeled in panic, and before she realized what she was really doing, she sent in the reserves of two hundred new battlehives her ancestor had shown her how to build.

These new ships were to be used to attack another animal system to divert them to their location so that she could eliminate the infestation in this system without interference. She also wanted to see how they performed in battle. These battlehives had tens of thousands of the new hiding missiles. They were built by the same daughter who had discovered the materials and chemicals that hid the asteroids from the animal detection network.

Another daughter had been searching among the wreckage of thousands of the animal ships that were left behind when they invaded over a solar cycle ago, and after a few lunar cycles, she had found a mostly intact engine that survived a scuttling attempt by the retreating animals.

She had taken it apart and put it together again, seeing the differences between the animal engine and theirs and building modified engines based on the animal design that were added to the new battlehives. The Hive mother had intended on testing the new engines by sending a few ships deeper into the gravity wells of a star to see how far into the system they could get before being destroyed.

When she witnessed the animal fleet do the impossible and destroy her fleet, her thoughts were distorted by the rage and panic she was feeling, and she made a critical error in judgment, sending the battlehives far deeper into the system than she had intended. Over half of them failed to survive the transition, and the ships that did survive had numerous system failures and malfunctions.

Still, the remaining battlehives were incredibly powerful and much larger than the scattered remnants of the animal fleet, and she pressed on, knowing that the animal ships would flee the system as they had always done before when faced with overwhelming odds. When the new animal ships flashed deeper into the system and continued to fight her, she was stunned by their insanity, unsure what to do.

She knew these animals were different than the others, and she witnessed first-hand their unusual fighting abilities when they destroyed the most powerful swarm she had ever assembled in the tree animal system and killed her daughter. That was different. She was not prepared to face thousands of unknown ships, and neither she nor her daughters had ever dealt with the weapons and tactics they employed.

She could not adapt to the circumstances quickly enough while her mind was affected by the loss of her daughter, and the fleet was destroyed.

She was certain of her victory here, despite the illogical actions of the strange animals. Their numbers were too few, and the other animal ships did not join the battle, too afraid to die. They just lingered outside the battle, firing weapons from long range. When the new weapons were dumped out of the larger animal ships and started destroying her battlehives, she ordered her ships to retreat, but it would take time to charge the engines, so she had them increase speed and maneuver wildly.

The powerful weapons started destroying themselves as her ships were charging their null drives, and she stopped them from making the transition and continued pressing on. She had to finish this; she had to make them suffer and die. She had her ships fire their hiding missiles and watched with glee as they started hitting dozens of the animal ships that had not joined the battle, destroying many of them.

They fled into null space, afraid to die, as they always have been. She then turned her attention to the few strange animal ships that were still fighting her. She would have victory at last and wipe out every animal in the system. She watched with happiness as the last large animal ship that carried those small gnat ships that she hated got destroyed, breaking in half before its core breached and it disappeared, unfortunately taking a battlehive with it.

Her thirty-one remaining battlehives started destroying the less than fifty animal ships that were still fighting. An animal ship rammed into a battlehive and destroyed itself, taking the battlehive with it as its core overloaded. Two seconds later, another battlehive was destroyed in the same fashion. Then another. She realized that what all the animal ships were doing, and she lost control of her thoughts as they continued ramming her ships.

The psychic power of her thoughts killed the commander drone she was inhabiting, and she entered another one, only for that ship to be rammed and destroyed, and her mind reeled under the pain of constantly undergoing the violent transitions as she continued to enter the minds of drones and get torn out of them as the animal ships kept ramming and destroying them.

She entered the mind of the last commander drone and watched through her eyes as the spirit ships targeted and fired on the ship. Less than a minute later, she was violently returned to her body in the brooding chamber of the Queen World, her mind finally broken.

She closed off her mind to the thoughts of her remaining daughters, and she retreated into the memories of her genetic ancestors. For almost two days, she stayed there as she lived vicariously through her ancestors in a time of greatness and peace, when her species was alone and their Hives felt the warmth of numerous suns.

She was so deep in memory thought that she did not register the presence of her daughter, who had made the journey to her Hive from another world. The daughter entered the brooding chamber and knelt next to her quietly, careful not to disturb the Hive mother’s trance. The ancient Hive mother within, her advisor for so long, tried to wake the Hive mother.

The Hive mother never finished her last thought as her daughter plunged the ceremonial blade in between her large, black eyes and pierced her brain. The daughter was ready and caught her Hive mother as her body went limp, preventing it from falling. She tenderly and slowly lowered her Hive mother's body to the floor.

The daughter then leaned over the body and used the ceremonial knife to carefully cut the birthing canal away from the abdomen of the former Hive mother. She gently moved the lifeless body away from the birthing canal, gingerly placing it to the side of the chamber. She positioned the body properly, laying it facedown and smoothing out the wings before placing them in their final resting position.

The queen returned to birthing canal and turned her back to it. She squatted down until her abdomen was nearly flat on the floor and backed up slowly, focusing intently on activating a part of her body she had never used before. She felt her ovipositor slowly and painfully start to extrude from its opening just below the base of her stinger.

As the ovipositor continued coming out, she backed up carefully, ignoring the tremendous pain it was causing her. She only had one chance to make this connection. If she fails to connect with the birthing canal, the ovipositor will stay outside of her abdomen. She would not be able to retract it, and it would become infected, causing her to suffer many days of agony before finally dying.

She felt the ovipositor slide into the birthing canal, and she relied on her deeply ingrained instinct to guide her through the connection as barbs came out of it and joined the ovipositor to the canal. Over the next hour, she felt herself become one with it as neural and biological connections were made between the two parts, and her hemolymph was now passing freely between both parts that were now joined as one.

The queen rested for some time as she tried to recover, feeling the connections getting stronger. The next part was the hardest and most dangerous part of her ascension. She concentrated with all her might, and she looked within herself, looking for the path that would lead her to her genetic ancestors and unlock their memories. She saw an opening within the deep recesses of her mind, and she entered it.

She entered a realm of pitch blackness, and she was floating on a black sea, bobbing along with the movement of the surface. Underneath her, she saw many points of light, and they emerged from the black water, hovering above her. The lights moved away from her for a short distance before forming a straight line that stretched forever. The lights then turned into the bodies of her direct ancestors, and she was no longer on a sea but on an endless plane of black obsidian.

The line of her ancestors all suddenly looked at her at the same time, and she saw herself in billions of fractals. They assaulted her mind, a great torrent of images, thoughts, and feelings that threatened to overwhelm her and destroy her identity. She saw one of her ancestral Hive mothers leave the line and fly over to her, landing silently on the obsidian plain directly in front of her. All the thoughts of her ancestors were receding, and she was once again alone with her thoughts.

The Hive mother sent thoughts, and she received them, terrified of what was to come next.

This went on for what felt like eternity to the queen, every reason for why she was worthy being ignored, and always, it was the same statement from the Hive mother telling her she was not.

They will kill her mind if she does not prove to them that she is worthy. It is their duty to ensure that weak queens do not rule the Hives and destroy their species.

Another eternity passed, and there was always the same answer. She was going to die.

The queen gave up and accepted her death.

The queen accepted her fate and waited for her death, staring boldly at the ancient Hive mother in front of her.

She took the queen by the tarsal claws, and they flew off together, the Hive mother bringing her to the first ancestor in the line before letting go of her tarsal claw and retaking her position in the line. She faced the first ancestor and communed with her, knowing her entire life in an instant. The ancestor embraced her. She moved on to the next ancestor, and then the next. She continued down the line, repeating the same process until she finally stood in front of her oldest genetic ancestor.

Her thoughts were barely sapient, seeming to be based primarily around primitive emotions and urges. As her thoughts entered her mind, she saw that this ancestor did something different than the ones that came before her. She cared for her daughters and let them stay in the Hive instead of driving them out. She felt the love this ancestor had for her young, and she let the simple, primitive feelings of this one linger, realizing that this was the first true Hive mother. She embraced her, sending thoughts and feelings of love to her.

She felt her mind be dragged away suddenly, and she reemerged in the brooding chamber. Worker drones were in there, dragging out the male corpses. She looked at the body of her Hive mother, still laying on the side where she had placed her. She will have her sisters come to see her body and accept her ascension before burying her.

She felt the thoughts of the Hive mother within, who had judged and accepted her.