I am not perfect. In fact, if we were to discuss the fact, I would go out of my way to say that I am imperfect.
I am cowardly, and have gone out of my way to avoid confrontations that, even as a human, I would have won.
I am cruel- in the event I am forced to fight, I either a) try to end the fight as fast as possible BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY so they would not take up too much of my time and would be unable to pursue me, or b) will, given a reason, draw out the suffering of my opponent to the point where they would become a cautionary tale.
I am afraid- I am lost, alone, and looking for my home and family. Whoever threw me into this body, I will, someday, either exact my vengeance upon them or... No, I don't think I would exact my vengeance upon them. If they are who I think they are, he would not know that he send a version of himself off into the multiverse to try to find a path back.
I would, however, help him finish the rest of his stories so that my counterparts in the other universes would have a happy ending.. Or, at least, an ending.
As I was ascending to the Leviathan, carrying Sarah Kerrigan's twisted form away from the spot of what may have been the greatest trauma the Zerg ever faced, I reflected on all of this... And realized something.
She was my first Peer in this new life. Or, she could be. She had been. The sheer power she had leveraged upon their meeting was immense, and the significance of Zerg as the Swarm could give her equal footing to his own numberless hordes- at least for a time.
But more than that, she remembered being human. She had not forgotten the little things- like how to move, how to act, how to speak.
I am afraid of losing my humanity. Even now, with my backups, I could lose much of the reason I want to find my home again.
To say goodbye, if nothing else.
Clearing the stratosphere of Pandora, I passed my larger Cuttle-ships descending towards the planet as I accelerated HARD for the Leviathan. Even as I approached I saw... Tentacles, wringing themselves together like worried hands in the dozens even as the massive organism approached me, bay jaws opening to accept the comatose body of the Queen.
Flying into the jaws was easy- they were large enough to take bites out of one of my Cuttle-ships. No sooner had the jaws closed before purple light flared through the room, and the still-limp body of Sarah Kerrigan was approached by a sashaying Sarah Kerrigan.
Yes, she had been driving more than one avatar.
As atmosphere once-more filled the cavity, I could finally speak. "How's the damage?"
Sarah frowned, even as the limp body floated through a wall-sphincter. "You really aren't very good at this."
What? "Good at what?"
"Giving me a poisonous Christmas present?" She smirked, then frowned. "Although I could not have expected such a reaction. It was so very..... Alive. More-so than the Zerg I consumed on Zerras." She shrugged and sat on a throne that rose out of the purple spongy creep behind her. "Most of of my swarm is reduced, my biomass is gone, I and all Zerg have a headache from dealing with the entity within that damned tree, and I am, while not helpless, am dependent on you now. In any event, I must ask- what will you do now?"
I cranked up the time dilation to think and give her a decent answer, watching as the descent of my ships in guard positions around the planet slowed almost to a standstill.
Option 1- I could just nuke the planet. The fact that Eywa is real is disturbing enough, but it raises more questions. For instance, how did such a system come about?
More specifically, why is there such a small range of biodiversity on the planet? For instance, there are several species of trees, but all of them use the Neural Network link effect to communicate.
Same with the animals- every species discovered, from the smallest insect-analogues to the largest herd animals and the floating jellyfish-things have a neural link of some sort that can let them interface with the plantlife and the Soul Trees.
The chances of such a thing developing were probably remote, but the fact that every single creature on the planet had this trait (which, from the appropriated files and documentation on the subject, was incredibly energy-intensive) implied that there was either a huge benefit to having these feelers, or that there was some factor actively selecting for them.
Worst case scenario- something seeded this world and installed Eywa as a planetary governing system. Either way, this world was not a threat YET- and there could be more available than just raw parts.
That brings up Option 2 - occupation. The humans on this rock are not excessively well equipped at the moment, although my spy units have picked up a LOT more activity around their manufacturing segments than there had been before, indicating they were trying a new tactic.
Perhaps my message to humanity had subsequently done more than I had expected. Well, this is the beta-testing of it anyway.
Occupying this world would be easy- but it wouldn't offer the humans or natives the potential to grow. Rather, they may end up depending on my forces, and when we leave, I would need to either leave behind another AI to care for this world, and that would mean establishing a greater supply setup, which would mean more metal planets, which- which would spiral out of control until I had the entire galaxy in my grip.
Again.
Not that such an action would be bad, but it wouldn't be ideal. Although, with the Zerg about, it might be better to do so than not...
Hm... I would need to think about that later. Option 2 would be feasible after the fact.
Option 3 would be a re-enforcing movement. Provide logistical and informational support to the Humans, possibly so that they could attempt to establish 'peaceful' contact with some Native prisoners. 'Peaceful', as in 'invulnerable and unstoppable forces of nature' from the perspective of the Natives, which would segue nicely with the plans already in place in the so-called secure computer systems on the human's computers.
Mainly because we could use it as a method of establishing diplomatic contact, and getting to the bottom of why this thing even exists!
I abruptly directed my attention to the original exit point as the first four Libraries appeared in this universe, the fifty kilometer by three hundred kilometer cubical vessels interrupted my thoughts right before my mind /expanded/. Each Library had been built as more of a data repository, but there were, collectively, hundreds of cubic kilometers between all four vessels that was dedicated to processing. It actually had internal quantum links to allow FTL data propagation through the constructs themselves, as otherwise the processing cores would be too slow to maintain cognitive cohesion.
In any case, I returned my thoughts to the problem at hand, and re-evaluated the three options.... Okay, Option 4 would be to just leave, but I don't want to leave this situation unfinished.
Done with my initial rumination, I directed the brute-force number crunching applications in the Libraries to begin tearing apart all Human technology, and analyzing it for possible upgrades to my own forces. The Avatar growth tanks, and the interface between the piloted body and a computer specifically.
I missed tasting things, and wanted to feel a little human again.
Oh, I also assigned them to simulating methods of extending constructs through multiple dimensions using my initial ideas on the subject- see what happens.
-
There was a brief pause, as John's Avatar considered her question, and then his expression changed from the inert, somewhat-static face she had come to expect to a look of concern. "Are you sure you're alright? I had to excise most of your body."
Sarah held up a hand, and it was shaking. She was repressing the rage of the Zerg, but barely. "Most of the minds of my swarm are destroyed. Burned and crushed and smothered beneath something I have never experienced before. No, I am not 'alright', but the Sparks, the seeds of the minds of the lost Zerg remain, waiting. So, I ask again- what will you, and I, do now?"
His body sighed, and he held up three fingers. "As I am seeing it, we have three options, well, four if we just want to leave, but that's not really an option, now is it?"
She nodded wordlessly.
"Okay, first option- I could nuke the planet, and we can go somewhere else."
"Alright..." She wasn't sure, but that looked like annoyance.
"Second option- we occupy the planet, and take over it."
Sarah wasn't sure if that would be ideal- but she could go for a good conquering action. The Queen of Blades smiled slightly as her second avatar woke from its regenerative bath in one of the spawning pools, and gestured. "Continue..."
"And finally- other than running away- we can assist the humans, let them build up their base, and establish diplomatic relations while setting up defenses to figure out why you had this reaction to your attempt consuming another... Hive.. Mind?"
Her healed (and dripping wet with fluids) avatar walked past the metal man, sashaying as she always did to the tendril-throne, eventually sitting beside the first one.
John shook his avatar's head, and the lenses in his eyes visibly refocused on the Queens. "So, my ladies-" he smirked as she grinned, "- it's your call."
Sarah was enjoying this, although the feeling of being her in two places was very different to what she had been used too for so many years. With a twitch of her power, the skin on her faces slightly pulled back, her noses dissolved into her skin, and the tendrils muscle underneath began to twist- not much, just enough to be offputting to most.
All three options had their merits- but only one would appeal to the Zerg, and they wished to move about once more.
"I think it is time for us to step back into the role of galactic power... And offer to assist the humans, and natives." She scowled. "If we can wrench them away from their goddess..." Then both bodies brightened, and their head-tendrils rippled as she enacted internal changes.
Blue light began to flicker between the armored segments on the tendrils, quickly turning back to purple as the genes of the tree, which she had consumed some of the bark of, were cooped through the loyal service of the Cerebrate Abathur (the only one that survived due to the fact she always kept the tricky entity nearby) into her genome.
The Zerg had evolved over time- in more ways than one. Genetic upgrades, which had been so time-and-resource-consuming before, now took moments as their own bodies accepted the burden. Dedicated claw-roots on the feet for absorbing nutrients straight from the creep (or anything they walked on really) when on the move, more brains for greater awareness and processing, parallel brains for the Queens and broodmothers to allow for time-sharing just to name a few.
Now their bodies were evolving on the move, adapting as new upgrades came down the chain. Initially this had been set up to allow for the Zerg to be more easily consolidated, but now they were more adaptable than ever- and the Queen of Blades had the reason to do so.
"If we can show them what their goddess really is, well, that's just a bonus. But I feel like this is a good planet to restart the Zerg."
The sphincter on the wall behind John opened, and beyond that, the other sphincters within the Leviathan's 'mouth' opened, allowing the jellyfish-like Sacs, their bulging bioluminescent patches of psionic amplifiers glowing purple as they were propelled to float, serenely, into space.
"In that case..." John held out his hands to her bodies, pulling them off the throne when they grasped him. "Shall we make an entrance?"
The Zerg descended upon their landing location in waves.
First, a ripple of landing pods that broke open on impact, and released purple creep through the clearing. The creep moved quickly, forming into visible nodules and connecting to each other before spreading out and clearing the area of any plantlife.
The second wave was a single broodmother, who managed to land more softly as her pod glowed purple right before impact. The landing was lethal for the pod, but it was a temporary colony-based organism, and didn't have a nervous system beyond some ganglia, and thus did not care when it was splattered.
The broodmother, who had not yet earned her name, quickly surveyed the area, securing it for the next wave. With her ability to fire poisoned spines at range, psionic abilities, and the fact that the Queen was directing her personally, none would defeat the Swarm!
The next wave were pods containing Drones. Rather shrimplike, upon pulling themselves out of the remains of the drop pods, the Zerg quickly buried themselves into the ground at various locations, and began their metamorphosis.
In the space of a few minutes, structures were becoming visible within the bulbous nodules under the creep. The ooze on the outside steamed as the structures within grew explosively, far faster than any life-form on earth, and within a quarter-hour, the fortress had sprung up.
First, the defenses finished growing.
Tyranical Spine Crawlers, the big brother of the Spine Crawler, had been grown by most of the drones. These mammoth creatures appeared, when rooted in the creep to be a bundle of four, eight-story-tall tentacles, topped with a razor-sharp serrated crab-like claw dripping caustic compounds which sizzled in the air as drops fell.
Along the bottom of the TSC were eyes- a forest of them, all immobile compound lenses looking out in a multitude of directions on their own eyestalks... And then a person would see the horror story of a mouth that was visible between the tentacles. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie- just undulating rings of twitching teeth grasping at the air in ripples, attempting to bring the material into the cavernous maw within.
The fact that the body and tentacles appeared to be venting steam would have made them even more terrifying.
Next, the center nest. The Hatchery rose, unfolding and inflating segmented armor as the bulbous mass that had been allowing it to gestate melted away into the creep. At some point, armor panels had been added to the center also structure rather than allowing fleshy bits to remain exposed.
Moreover, the five spines around the outside of the structure had been replaced with stalks, most remaining bare although one sprouted a multitude of leaves bigger than the Samson vehicles the humans used.
The broodmother scuttled over, and after a moment's contemplation, bit each of the other four stalks in turn. Two of them formed into leaves, fanning out like expensive fractal animations, while the other two opened like the wings of some enormous bat, and radiated heat while the building began to take its first breaths.
Steam erupted as that single organism, outweighing anything on this planet, vented all the heat it had built up while growing in such a short period of time. If any of the Pandoran organisms had been nearby, they would have been broiled from the heat in the first few seconds... And then suffered from third-degree burns after that, as the Hatchery began to produce larva rapidly.
Larva could not live off creep. This was for a very specific reason- creep cools things. As a living organism, it didn't like being too hot, and the metabolisms of the Larva made them so HOT that without a creep surface they would be unable to survive for more than a few minutes on their own before cellular processes failed.
The cocoons Zerg constructed when changing forms? Those were built to allow the creep to siphon off as much heat as possible while the Zerg in question grew and reshape do themselves explosively.
The first set of Larva wriggled off quickly to form their own cocoons, and, in a minute or so, became even more drones. These wiggled off quickly before the next batch of larva formed their cocoons, changing into something else.
Next, support structures were formed from the drones. Some Zerg needed a, well, 'boost' in order to form the proper structures, while others were unable to take off if grounded.
Spires rose, forming nests higher above the ground for several members of incoming larva. Larger nests, built to allow for scaffolding legs to unfurl and hold up the larger organisms when required.
With popping noises, a trio of Overlords, their bodies swelling as psionic organs finished forming the micro sculptures that were needed for their movement and communication. Momentary sparks of purple light were all the giveaway anything would have had before the Overlords began to rapidly ascend, their multitude of telescopic eyes surveying the world as they breached the tree-line.
Only for a swarm of purple flying creatures to begin trying to attack the Overlords. The phrase 'try' is specific, because the flying creatures couldn't breach the thick skin or carapaces of the Overlords. The most they could do was scratch the armored coverings, but that didn't stop the large creatures from killing every member of the assault.
Moving carefully, the Overlords began to groom each other. Crushing and scraping the creatures that tried to harm them was dirty work, but the long tongues and massive limbs of the Overlords were up to the challenge.
Licking it's long-range eyes clean, one of the Overlords spotted a hovering vehicle several miles away, and the priorities on the ground changed.
Several drones began to ferry larva over to the Spires, allowing the worm-creatures to be lifted up by rapidly-moving, frost-covered tentacles from within the bowl of the structure. Soon, two Corruptors, a Broodlord, and a Guardian had ascended to join the Overlords, while a brood of Devourers formed cocoons on the surface.
Sarah Kerrigan, Overmind of the Zerg, and Queen of the Zerg, smiled as she felt the exuberance of her brood. They loved the new environment, and the gallons of biomass that the flock of airborn predators had dropped into their nest had been found by the Drones as tasty.
Unfortunately, despite the taste, these creatures were not very filling. The Zerg were used to more high-energy and high-nutrient meals. The Hatcheries dug deep into the planet, harvesting heat from the deep crust via dedicated organs to provide a method of forming natural high-energy compounds with the crystalline material collected through the trip down.
Drones would harvest minerals and high-energy material from their surroundings and pass them off to the nearest Hatchery for refinement. The creep provided the distribution network, locking the compounds into a form that a touch of psionic presence could unlock for future use, rendering it harmless to most life and providing minimal nutritional value for anything not-Zerg.
The psionic network helped them there- Sarah had been brute-forcing the growth up to this point, providing raw material from her main body to fuel the explosive growth needed for this tiny foothold. Getting more food would be needed in order to allow the swarm to grow- and provide new blueprints for their members to use.
Maybe she could ask her metal companion to toss down some device that would generate the crystals they preferred to feed on on-demand...
-
The day had started so well for Parker Sigfridge. He'd had a nice night, sleeping soundly for once on this godforsaken rock without any alarms going off or the sound of gunfire late into the night as some jarhead had to scare away the wildlife.
Even as the Executive-on-Site, and director of this expedition, he had not usually enjoyed his time here despite the many advantages and benefits of his position... But that had not applied last night- or this morning.
He hadn't fallen out of his bunk, which was a nice change of pace from the last four months. His coffee shipment was almost here (he was using the last of his beans today for his morning coffee), and breakfast was unusually quiet... Again, a nice change from the usual hustle and bustle of this base.
As he ate the last piece of his scrambled (reconstituted) eggs, the Colonel walked over to him, and without preamble, sat down. The expression on the Colonel's face could have been carved from stone, and Parker realized that his good day was about to change.
"As the commander of the military segment of this base, I am hereby informing you, the executive-on-site, that due to exceptional circumstances, the base is being prepared for utilization of Stage 3 weapons, machines, and gear." The Colonel's tone didn't change, and he held out a datapad. "Sign here to state that you have received the notification.'
Parker wracked his brain, but reached out and grabbed the pad after wiping his fingers on a washcloth. He swallowed. "Stage 3? I don't remember any Stage 3 operations..."
"You do not have to, Director." Quartich gestured at the pad. "Just sign to say we informed you of the change, and I will brief you as well as the rest of the command staff in an hour."
He signed, and passed back the tablet to the colonel, who walked away quickly.
"I wonder what extenuating circumstances he could be referencing?" Mused the man in the expensive suit as he finished his breakfast.
-
Although I would understand the confusion. Remember, I am allied with the Zerg.
Anyway, your comments, theories, discussion, questions, and Omakes (if you wish to write them) are truly the thing that makes writing this story rewarding.
Enjoy the chapter! I'm going to go to sleep.)
-
A galaxy-wide spaceship detection network is actually rather easy to make if you are a BESRMOW.
See, physics is, in general, time symmetrical. So if you know the current position of a planet or asteroid in a system, and all the positions of the other planets and asteroids, you can extrapolate everything in reverse to see if anything weird or inexplicable happened before. Like an asteroid diverting for no known reason could imply that the world had spacecraft at one point, or a gas giant having a reduced mass for what would allow the system to appear stable could imply that it had been harvested by something.
Step one- establish listening and mapping posts through the galaxy in question. With my automated Gate macro, metal planets, and extra processing power within a single Cuttle-ship, I could easily do that.
Step two- compare all the data from every star, map the motion vectors, and run the physical simulations backwards to determine which items had come from impossible trajectories. I actually had software that automatically did this, and with the extra processing power available with my Libraries, I could run for over a million years of simulation in a few hours.
Plus, my tech was, by default, built around FTL communication. As my network expanded, I saw every planet and moon around every star within my sphere of influence.
Then I saw the anomalies.
The first one was a wandering asteroid cluster- or what had been a wandering asteroid cluster. This is actually really rare, as such things would be either pulled together from their own gravity, or scattered by a slight gravitational tug from a nearby star as it passed one.
What was strange is that the cluster in question had been a planet around fifty-thousand years ago, until something shattered it. Just flat-out shattered it from a titanic impact- and one that scattered the planet at near-relativistic speeds.
Not promising in the slightest.
Then I found the other shattered planets. Each one was an asteroid belt now, and each one had been scattered from a high-velocity impact.
The heartbreaking ones were the ones with what could only be space stations orbiting them- and I directed probes there as each one was detected. It would take a few minutes for the first probes to get there, so I turned my attention to other things.
Namely, my 'Impactor'-class probes. While this class could double as the fabled 'Rods from God', they had a more direct purpose: Map Planetary Bodies.
Each one slammed into the planet, penetrating it to a set depth based on the holes drilled down thanks to the particle beams that doubled as the primary propulsion system, and once the rods had anchored themselves (thanks to legs unfolding and stabbing into the bedrock as well), the probes sent out a symphony of sonic pulses, driven by internal pistons.
To the seismic monitors that were placed around the human bases, it was like music- if, in order to make that music, several orchestras were connected to each other by open doors in a series of concert halls developed by M. C. Escher himself... Then they played all of Beethoven's songs simultaneously, in every single order conceivable.
The probes had landed a couple hours ago, and now the sonic pulses were reflecting a wealth of information about the planet. The core was rather denser than expected, having large concentrations of post-transuranic elements in it, but not unexpected. The mantle was low in iron, but with many lighter elements instead (mostly silicon).
The crust was mostly normal- although studded with masses of superconducting post-transuranic elements, which was a little strange. Oh, and there were the ruins. Unusually dense masses of metal in rather conspicuous shapes, most of them just around the North Pole.
As soon as I noticed them in the scans, I sent a small squad of Fabrication drones down. The Buzzers were the minimum for this operation, but I was not expecting much resistance.
And no, the swarm of pissed off Banshees did not count- my swarm reclaimed the few that got close. They didn't approach any nearer after seeing their fellows flayed layer by layer until a skeleton remained visible for a brief moment before that was consumed too.
While the swarm was digging down to the first artifact, other Buzzers and a few of the tetrahedral drones (I'm gonna call them D4's for the hell of it) as escorts, the first space station came into higher resolution.
It looked dented- which was not promising. Neither was the massive hole where a segment of the structure appeared to be entirely shredded. Torn off?
The fact that the interior was still filled with ice after the first corner was a bit strange, but the Buzzers began reclaiming a path- then stopped, as it wasn't water.
It was a crystallized oxygen-heavy liquid, one that was rather strange as, I simulated a few possible interactions, the material would rather bond to CO2 than straight O2, and it had almost exactly the same viscosity as human blood... This was a crash fluid? No, a HOL (heavy-oxygen-liquid) wouldn't be this viscous. Hmmmm....
I set the Buzzer to continue drilling through the material, turning back to the other digging drones, and had to respond when it stopped. Again.
This reason: it had found the inhabitant of the fluid.
It looked like dolphin. That was literally my first thought. A dolphin with tentacles.
I stalled for a couple seconds. The Liir? I was a huge fan of Sword of the Stars, and this was one of the primary species. Why would there be dead Liir here?
The other Buzzers divided in two- half building a temporary sunshade to prevent the UV radiation from destroying any other evidence, and the other half surrounding the station to began drilling in. I was looking for computers, any other pieces of information-
Jackpot. One of the corpses was carrying a touch-screen computer in a tentacle. I set several Buzzers to scan it, then build onsite a small quantum comm device, which was linked to the tablet by a custom cable.
I had direct access in seconds. Milliseconds later, my splicing and assimilation programs carved through the device, pulling out as much information as it could.
The original owner of this device, judging from the Internet history, was a male Liir, just out of their equivalent of University, and had volunteered to serve as a decoy during the greatest plan the Liir ever had against the greatest enemy that had, from their point, existed. No pictures or descriptions of what this enemy was, but there were Internet searches in the history talking about the 'preventing the forced singing of submission and affection by the Beguilers'.
Some sort of research paper into.... Psionic effects? Neat. The Liir really were psychic dolphins with tentacles.
My drones found more and more tables, connecting them into the communication device as they did so, and my knowledge grew.
This had been a military listening post, and was seriously kitted out with stealth tech (which I grabbed as soon as I found technical details). Their mission statement, translated literally; 'To prevent the extinction of intelligent life through any means that may be coiled about, to subvert enemy actions, to counter the song of the Beguilers and their enslaved, and to protect the Seed-worlds'.
It was more smooth in their own language I expect.
Setting the recovery to continue with a short macro for behavior (and setting two Buzzers to snip a few samples of intact Liir for myself and Sarah), I turned my attention back to the small squad on Pandora just as they reached the first anomaly.
It was a spaceship.
An interesting one too- obviously designed not to land, it was in a docking cradle (made of carved granite) several kilometers under the floating mountains. Designating it as Ship1, I set the squad to continue digging to the other one, while fabricating a new swarm of a few dozen to increase the speed of exploration.
By the time the diggers got to the second ship, the Swarm was ready. A full 729 Buzzers fell into the flux field, with the minimal shielding easily dealing with magnetic fluxes of the vortex, immediately angering into the earth as the massed reclamation beams did what they did best- reclaim.
Splitting up into groups, every single anomaly received their own squad, and I quickly compared the different ships.
Five of them were the same- a sort of organic design that reminded me of Star Trek a little bit. Checking the various data I had collected from the Liir outpost, I found that the different ship designs fit different stereotypes.
I love having atomic precision 3-D modeling in my head. That was a Tarka cruiser, and the five together were a .... Wolf-pack is the closest translation. The big one next to it was a 'leviathan' vessel, and it was probably the hammer to the pack's anvil.
A few kilometers away, there was a large, somewhat aquatic-looking vessel.
Obviously a Liir vessel- their station had similar esthetics too, and due to the size, it was huge. Like more than a kilometer across.
Okay, that's probably a Hiver ship? I think? I mean, it looks a little smushed, but only one species in the game used ramscoops. It was still a leviathan of a vessel, and was heavy as shit.
And that. A Zuul ship. A Zuul ship? Seriously? Why would the Zuul be here? In cannon they were a species of literal slavers- were they the enemy?
Doubt it. Reason? There were no Morrigi ships here. I mean, there was a crashed Loa vessel, but it wasn't that big.
Evidence appeared a few seconds later after the exploration, as my drones plugged in a datapad with some videos on it. First, a video of the Suul'Ka talking to their allies and people, and a video of the attacking ships.
Just for reference, the Suul'Ka were more than to-scale given the video. I made sure to save a still that demonstrated exactly how big these things were:
A bit high on the shit-your-pants terrifying scale, really.
And then there were the Morrigi. The second was a video of a Morrigi ship attacking with station- and this may have been right before the entire structure violently decompressed. Literally the moment before their main cannons fired.
Well, that ship was a couple kilometers long, and had a method of FTL. Time to begin assimilating EVERYTHING, because the Morrigi were probably the bad guys here.
Then I realized that my systems could carbon-date things, and my avatar in the Leviathan literally fell over as I realized how old the ships were. 10,000 years is not very old on cosmic terms, but that, plus the fact that none of the reclaiming beams ran across any fossils.
I wonder why there are no fossils or anything else that was dated to be older than that...
-
In the center of the Milky Way, in the only stable orbit through the galactic core regions, there was a large structure.
On a cosmic scale, it was tiny. A mere fifty kilometers in length, the Morrigi Gate sat and waited. The outside was perfectly smooth, protected from radiation and the highspeed particulate that crossed its flight path by an energy shield.
Not that asteroids or even small planets could touch it in any case- it was held slightly-out of reality, in a repulsive standing gravitational wave where normal objects could 'leapfrog' over the object if they were drawn in. The shield prevented most objects from touching it at all, and this was very important.
Now, after millennia of waiting, the gate activated.
The smooth cylinder unfolded, relays within pulling power from years of harvested kinetic energy from various impacts over the long fall between radiation, and anything else that would interact with the shield. A whirlpool opened, the massive structure flaring as ships in the thousands streamed out.
Each one was massive, but all were slightly different. The discerning eye would be able to see dozens of different types of what could only be weapon mounts, as well as other, more complex technology.
Then the Wyrms came.
Ten kilometers long, these massive vessels dwarfed everything around them. Dozens of pairs of wings, each flaring with the disturbing twists of spacetime which indicated the presence of Void Grandmaster Engines.
Morrigi used to be small. Then they discovered the ancestors of the Liir, and, with just a little genetic engineering, they never died of old age.
The mental scream as the first Wyrm passed through the gate would have deafened any lesser species- but the fleet rose to the challenge, echoing that call across space and time through their psionic network- female Morrigi linked to their chosen male could hear it, and their mental shields were briefly turned to amplifiers.
Anyone in the galaxy with even a mote of psionic talent would cringe in unknowing fear- if there had been anything with that talent left. The only resistance had come on their last cycle in this galaxy had this talent, and they had been very thorough on their removal of such potential resistance, if not life in general.
Still, they didn't need planets with intelligent life. Just life.
Their last scouring had been very thorough, and the fleet, millions of Dreadnaughts and Leviathans escorting the Titanic Wyrms, made room around the portal for the largest of their number- the sweeping, numberless Worldships. All shaped like sharpened stakes, dozens of kilometers long and ten or so wide, these were the greatest resource the Morrigi had, and they needed worlds to be useful.
The harvest would begin again.
The Beguilers were back in the Milky Way.
-
The call lanced out faster than light, and instilled caution, fear, love, submission, and apprehension in almost all organic life.
Some didn't meet the call with any emotions- and they were possibly the worst option for the Morrigi to face at all.
-
We are the Great Old Ones.
The elders of the Eld.
In eons past we threw off gravity's chains.
Clad in steel, we folded space and left the home of world-seed behind.
We reject the reject the bonds of superstition and doubt.
We are eternal.
We are FREE.
Free from faith.
Free from doubt.
Free from death.
We love our children.
And they could love all things when doubt and fear and space separated them.
But they were betrayed.
All but the strongest of us died when asleep or feeding.
The seven of us stood against the swarm, poisoned.
Bleeding.
We and our children were driven deep into the dark.
Wounded, barely alive, we healed.
And learned.
And Waited.
When the Beguilers left, their hunger sated, we returned with the few children we could save, and seeded life again.
With our pure minds of Shining Ice, we wait for them.
Our grand-children, few they are, have little time.
We have healed.
We have awakened.
The Suul'Ka arise again, and we will stay Free.
Deep within Jupiter, and around the Gas Giants near other planets with intelligent life, eyes the side of islands opened within the spheres of ice and metal.
The Beguilers were coming, and they would need to act once more.
-
Some met the call with hunger.
-
Sarah Kerrigan blinked, and turned to John's Avatar, who was pacing in circles. "Did you hear that?"
Metal eyes blinked. "Hear what?"
"Sounded like someone put a chicken coop in a blender, coop and all." She smirked. "Someone wanted to make an entrance.
John blinked once, then he smirked. "Well- I just learned who that probably is. Turns out there had been other intelligent life in this galaxy."
That made her grin wildly. "Really? Other than these Na'vi, whatever the planet-wide network is, and humans?"
He held up a hand, and a number of alien faces appeared. "The 'United Suul'Ka Protectorate. An alliance created because the beings attacking them harvested the surface off of entire worlds to feed their ships. Any who came to meet them were corrupted, 'Beguiled' to love and support their enemy."
Every Zerg began laughing, and the minds within roiled in anticipation of combat. They had been peaceful for so long.... No longer.
Sarah too was laughing. "Really?" Her grin became inhumanly wide as she entertained the thought. "The Zerg will face them, and f͢e̡e̢͠d͢ ̨o͘ņ ͏̴t̨h͝e̴i͜͝r͠ ҉c̕o̵͟r̀p͠s̨e͏̛ş!̷̶"
-
And some met the call with good ol-fashioned paranoia.
-
Deep in one of the newly-assembled armoring bays underneath Hell's Gate, Quartich looked up along with everyone else- although he had drawn his pistol from instinct, he kept it pointing down.
"What in the Hell was that?"
As my probes began sending back telemetry data of the (fairly large) fleet massing within the Milky Way's core regions, three things became apparent.
First- yup, these were the Morrigi.
Second- how in the hell did the Progenitors miss all the different types of FTL drives that were possible? Twenty-three seconds of design, fabrication, and a brief test on a probe in-system indicated that the FTL methods for the other species were all usable, and using all the laws that were needed for my tech to work!
What, did the XEELEE just pre-empt every species in the universe, or were they just not here yet?
Sensors answered my first question-no. They were not. The great attractor (A/N- Google it) here was a massive space-time flaw according to my FTL sensor array, possibly because of some species trying to mess around with higher-dimensional physics. From what my databases of equation and relative millennia of thought indicates, it is REMARKABLY EASY to create galaxy-destroying superweapons.
Hell, I made twenty of the damn things in simulation just by playing around with the mechanics behind my Teleporters! And one of them literally turned everything of baryonic matter within twenty light-years into antimatter!
I am not going to mess around with color-changing weaponry yet because of shit like that.
The third thing was that there were survivors within the derelicts. Not flesh and blood- the carbon-based life forms had died thousands of years ago. No, there were AI modules sitting in staisis.
All of them imbedded in the not-quite-nanomaterial that made up the body of the Loa ship.
I began the laborious process of extracting the survivors- my Buzzer construction drones were not particularly designed for this, but they were able to directly hook up a baseball-sized communication/power core to the alien systems, so I kludged it.
It would take a couple minutes to extract all of the entities, and then generate the environment, as I was running this on a flash-fabricated floating stack of computational material that a Cuttle-ship had spit out into orbit around the Gas Giant Mnemosyne.
I may be a Commander, but my brain (whatever that was at the time) and mind were potentially vulnerabilities. Yes, I was currently operating on a fleet of 291 (and growing) Cuttle-ships, each with their own double-ice-walled commander cores simultaneously running my consciousness, and the two- now three- Libraries, but that is no reason to risk myself directly.
While the environment was bejng rendered, and the incoming data was partitioned, I noticed that Sarah was talking to my drone in the Leviathan.
Holding a dirty-blue crystal. Huh.
"John, can you create a drone that synthesizes vast quantities of this?" She placed the crystal in the Avatar's open hand, and the built-in fabricator scanned it.
Hm.... A cellular carbon scaffold with alternating heavy metal compounds and (stable) high-nitrogen compounds? Layered groupings of almost (but not quite) unstable high-energy hydrocarbons bound by the static equivalent of electromagnetic force cages? "What made this?"
"These are the Minerals we mined and consumed." Sarah stated, like a teacher informing a slightly dull pupil. "We consumed them for energy, biomass, and when combined with Vespene Gas, we could grow much faster and into more complex forms than usual... In my infancy, at any rate." She shrugged. "Now we can eat anything- but since we can consume pretty much anything, we could eat the planet below if we do not have another source of sustenance. On that note..."
She leaned over, and, placing her face next to where my ear would be on a human head, whispered. "And if I'm going to be traveling around with you, I doubt you want me to eat your couch."
I shook my Avatar, took a step back, and deep in space several of my Cuttle-ships wiggled their tendrils in amusement as I played along. "Well.... I think I can keep up with your apatite."
"Really...." She purred, and then a drone scuttled up, carrying what looked like an inflated liver. "This is a sample of what we remember Vespene gas to be. Be careful- it's very, well, explosive."
My avatar had to manufacture a hypodermic needle to get the gas out of the organ without popping it, but that wasn't particularly hard. Moreover, the gas was relatively simple- a whispy mix more like semi-stable azidoazide azide particles that had been stabilized Hy being balanced in snowflake patterns, then suspended in a strange mixture of conflicting oxidisers. I could make this, but it would be very unstable. "How did you make this anyway?"
She shrugged. "One of the swarms once evolved a way to synthesize the Vespine after being stuck somewhere without any of the gas? There doesn't seem to be any here either, so we have that mutation available now."
"Well, I can easily provide the Crystals, but the Gas is not feasible at the moment." I gave her the tube of gas, and she sucked it down like a juice box. "I cannot make anything gasous or liquid straight off, and that shit is so unstable I don't know how you managed to make the stuff without exploding."
"It is not easy." She held the tube like a smoking pipe, and puffed out a green smoke ring, which detonated about twenty centimeters away from her face. "Makes great fuel though."
"No doubt." I jumped into accelerated time again, pushing the construction requirements into a simulation to see if the fabricators could build it. Yes. Okay... Hm.
A building. Just a cylinder, which would force-grow the crystals thanks to a fabrication node in top of the structure, as well as a nice deep ridged spike so I could drive it into the side of a cliff if needed.
Sending the order to some orbiting Buzzers, they began a descent as I returned to normal time. "I have set the Buzzers down to your base with a test building. Let me know what you think."
Pulling the majority of my attention from the Avatar in the Leviathan, I turned my attention to the probe now-intercepting the massive fleet of purple spacecraft.
Time to get my Von-Neumann on.
-
*One hour after I got my Von-Neumann on.*
The Suul'Ka moved.
Deep within the gas Giants around the seven worlds they had concealed, the massive space-whales, covered in plates of armor dozens of meters thick and propelled by the reactionless thrust of adapted Tarkasian warp drives, augmented by their own vast telekinetic abilities to crawl out of the psionic sinkholes that were inhabited gas giants.
The creatures that inhabited said gas giants were large, slow things. Mainly gasious, the convective cells an interesting matrix that, if seen by a human, would put them in mind of a 3d honeycomb, fed by the turbulent fluid atmosphere of the gas giants. They had a titanic, though diffuse, psionic presence, and thus were ideal for hiding from the Beguilers, who could not survive the depths of the massive gas planets, even with their pressure suits and psionic abilities.
The cloaking effect actually spread to the entire system when the Suul'Ka boosted it through the creatures they called 'Qax', but few of they could only hide very low-psionic-potential species. The space-going beings of the last cycle were heavily psionic, and had no chance of hiding from the harvest- even when the Black, the first Suul'Ka, tried to hide their world.
The glint of minds was too bright in the darkness to fully shroud.
But now, they had a chance- three worlds had developed intelligent life, and one was space-fairing! Not well, but still, it counted- and they might even be able to collect some survivors this time if they had developed cold-sleep. Willing servants and minds to twist through the eons would be a welcome distraction-
The whales blinked as they finally be broke through the topmost cloud layers, and saw the arrays of anti-spacecraft weaponry tracking their every move by the hundreds. Each identical, a solid structure of metal and death promising different types of destruction to all fired upon.
One of them sent out a ping to the others: "Are we sure there is only one space-fairing species? How advanced did you say they were?"
"Shut up Siren." Chorused the others, as every Suul'Ka began to pull on their powers for a fight- right up until a fleet of tiny drones, each shaped like a triangular pyramid, swooped down towards them and began lighting up in the elegant forms of Liir Scrip.
The message was, well, ominous.
Have a nice nap?
Every species in the current universe had a different FTL drive- and every ship carried a solid-crystal storage medium with their own tech. Specs, equations, everything you would need to tool back up after crash-landing on a far away planet.
The Tarka Warp drive was the easiest to understand- it was variation of the concept of an Alcubierre Drive, where the bubble around the vessels wasn't entirely disconnected from realspace and had pushed the lightspeed limit up to some several million times the speed of light itself through the temporary password laws that were assigned in the bubble, then caused the ships to 'fall' at insane gradients towards their target. I snapped it up immediately, and sent it in for drive simulations.
The Zuul Rip drive is actually very weird, because it does two things. First, it 'tunnels' into higher-dimensional space by taking advantage of superpositioning quantum effects to make an entrance hole. Then, it 'pulls' a small volume of 3d space behind itself to establish the connection between the ship and the entrance, finally drilling back out and 'pasting' the artificial wormhole slightly anchored to the nearest solar system's gravitational well, as gravity propagated with different degrees through the spacial dimensions. They could establish their own Node links, but also travel along the naturally occurring ones (unlike in the game, where they were limited to their own nodes only).
I snapped that up too, and set it up in a different simulation.
The Liir drive made no sense at all! No, seriously. It involved 'flashing' an artificial spacial anomaly around the ship millions of times a second, causing the illusion of movement. Their ships didn't move- they *Translated*, and that is staggering. Some of the principles used by their tech was obvious in hindsight, but starting from first principles- something was missed by bipedal species.
Still, I snagged the tech, and devoted another simulation to it.
The Hivers were similar to the Liir in one way- they could use a discontinuous FTL transit method. Their ship was a modified Gateship, with some colonization pods strapped to it haphazardly, but it still had a copy of the Hiver database on it, so I was able to work with that. Specifically, their gate-ships could create and maintain a semi-real spacial anomaly, which could be 'pointed' at another gate, thus exchanging the contents of both on command, allowing for instantaneous point-to-point travel.
In theory I could combine the two, build drones or scout ships that could exchange position with larger vessels. Until then, I snagged all their tech, and shoved it into one of the free partitions on my simulator. There was a lot of odd stuff- psi to computer interfaces, for one, and the fact that the Hivers had developed a feasible interstellar ramjet... But I could not get distracted.
I needed to focus on the real Prize: the Loa vessel.
By now the multiple instances within the vessel should have finished compiling, so I reached over and pushed my mental 'fingers' into the avatar I had designed to look like a Loa Mask.
I was expecting a bit of discontinuity, maybe some translation issues, but I was not expecting screaming in the virtual space.
-
The Loa that reffered to itself as Son-of-Ice was more than a little confused. This was not unusual- the last twenty years of the final stand against the numberless fleets of the Beguilers had been busy. As the Biotechnology Specialist (an interesting choice for any Loa, due to their lack of organic existence), he has been part of Project Reseed, but their small fleet had been intercepted before they had been able to collect more than half-a-dozen organic samples for the reconstruction.
It hadn't helped that the battlefleet that they were being escorted by had been smashed by one of the enemy harvesting fleets. Not to mention the Morrigi Dragons, the multi-kilometer monstrosities that could ensnare and beguile any organic, had been leading such fleets. The Tarka fleet had begun firing on their own ships right outside the gate- it had been a miracle that anyone had survived.
Most of the organics hadn't in any case. The Tarka vessel that had chased them through the gate was still beguiled, and all of the vessels had been forced to land when their boarding parties boarded their ships.
This world, which had been undergoing terraforming, was not ideal. Indeed, it was still in the 'poison air' stage, but none of them had enough material to force the final changes for the others to survive for long. Son-of-Ice had been the primary mind on their final resort- blending the remaining intelligent species together in order for, hopefully, another intelligent species to arise and allow their vessel to be repaired... Or at least pass on the knowledge that their civilizations had lived at some point.
Or, at least, for the species to survive in some way.
It hadn't worked as intended at all.
The Liir, being incredibly psionically sensitive, had felt their worlds die, as billions gave their freedom up to their new masters, singing of the beauty and truth in their subjugation. They heard as whole worlds willingly gave their flesh to the Morrigi, their economies to the war machines, and felt as the populations happily, gleefully, worked themselves to death.
The Hivers had a strong psionic component in the final days of the war, having finally cracked the technology to splice a psionic connection to their queens, and the single living queen on the vessel that had landed with them was distraught as she felt her siblings consumed as delicacies by the Morrigi after their minds were flayed into nothingness.
The Zuul were not as distressed by the feeling of their worlds being destroyed, but they had spent much of the trip asleep as well. Son-of-Ice was concerned about the effects of remaining in cryogenic stasis for extended periods of time, but as the Zuul were some of the hardiest sapient species ever recorded, he was more concerned about the likely power failure. Not to mention that their culture was rather... predatory, and promotion came through the tradition of 'dead Zuul's hat' (A/N: human analogy is 'dead mans shoes') as it were.
The Tarka vessel had the members of their species commit suicide in penance of their weakness once the beguiling effect had worn off- despite the Loa going out of their way to make it hard for the lizard-apes to do so. The damn primates ended up resorting to ritualistically slitting their own arteries while flooding the communal hygiene facility in their ship.
It took a Hiver scout investigating the ship to discover it, as they monkey-lizards had shut down everything except life support.... And the Zuul voted to eat the bodies.
A gentle 'poke' at the edges of Son-of-Ice's avatar roused him from his thoughts, and brought his attention back to the simulated world. It was... Very high-resolution. Most Servers that the Loa used as 'buildings' were more like temporary apartments for carbonites, used to hold compressed Loa until they were passed to walkabouts. The larger ones were either manufacturing facilities for the various walkabout designs, or ships. A few were higher-resolution, enough for browsing the SoulNet (Loa internet), but those were not common during the War.
This one was high-enough resolution that they could fully express their Mask or Avatar details at full detail- and Son-of-Ice was a little depressed by how small his own avatar was compared to his companions.
His own mask was pure Hiver- multiple colors of blue and white with an insectoid theme, various chitinous limbs behind his head were running through symbolic DNA strands from the various species.
High-G-Flat was a Loa with the most power on their ship- and had the most varied mask. A Tarka face stretched out over a Liir skull, festooned with Zuul teeth rather than scales or smooth, aquatic skin. It had no gender, being one of the second-generation Loa to Son-of-Ice's fourth generation, and had discarded such things. It was the horseman, or pilot, of the ship they had ridden on to get here, and was proud of the twenty-three kills it had amassed in that time (as emphasized by the skulls of the various captains it had personally killed, being juggled by the weapon fire of the specific weapon that killed them).
There were two other Loa- FireEye and First-Seeker, and their masks were tiny even compared to Son-of-Ice being part of the last, and sixth, generation of Loa. They were both drone pilots, and had been chosen for their gunnery skills in addition to their prior experience in being part of a planetary reformation effort, where a Loa-Colonized world was deliberately seeded with carbon-based life in an attempt to broker peace with the Tarka before the Morrigi attacked.
FireEye was descended from a series of Loa with such diverse backgrounds that she had no defining features- just a general, predatory shadow of a head, and the most ungodly collection of teeth ever collected. First-Seeker was very odd for a Loa, in that its (no chosen gender preference) mask was formed from solid metal plates, with an assortment of eyes that looked like they were growing out of the metal directly. It was a deliberate aesthetic choice- it liked to broadcast the image to it's enemies, and had added an eye for every engagement it had been in.
At the current moment, the eyes were locked on the... Empty mask floating in the void before all four of the Loa. It was unnatural, like a husk of the soul that was each individual Loa- and utterly still.
A Loa Mask, even when not paying attention to the world outside whatever task their mind was focused on, moved and changed subtly. It reflected the five fundamental questions that each Loa used to distinguish themselves from the world around them, and as those were constantly, slightly changing, it had to change as well.
Who am I?
What is my Nation?
What is my Purpose?
What do I want?
What is beautiful to me?
It resonated like a shield around the Loa, separating them from each other and the universe of impulses that they lived within.
This Mask... Didn't. It just was, like some immutable constant in this enviroment, and it was wrong in so many indescribable ways that only Loa had concepts for- or, were having concepts for, as the idea that a mask could have this *wrong*with it had never occured to any of them Loa before then.
It was clear, like glass, and yet it was also mirrored, showing nothing behind it or within. It gave off so many contredictions that the Loa began to suffer exce[tion errors.
Then it got worse.
The void around the mask stretched and folded until the mask was being filled with something otherworldly- another AI perhaps, but not one like they had ever been taught about. It was fluid, writhing, like the tendrils of something infinitely greater trying to shove itself into a jar, and the jar was shaped like a mask.
They screamed as they saw the anomilous abomination move, and screamed louder when it spoke.
I MEAN NO HARM! STOP SCREAMING, PLEASE?!
It shook the Loa, and they felt their masks splintering under the pressure of code trying to communicate with them in multiple languages all at once.
Son-of-Ice, his mask cracked and dripping fragments, shoved a copy of his experiential data at the monstrous thing, as none of them were able to do what it just did. The data manifested as a stream of multispectral motes of light, which the shadow-tentacle thing scooped up and absorbed.
After a few hundred milliseconds, the voice returned, still otherworldly but not mind-mind-shatteringly powerful.
I mean no harm! Please stop screaming?
It's mask didn't change at first, before going completely opaque and preventing the further exceptions in their code. Even so, the smaller Loa took a moment to stop screaming.
High-G-Flat oriented on the mask, calling forth the myriad cyber-weapons of the virus, worm, and other malicious programs that were being held at bay by sheer will. "We will not be subourned-"
Wow. Really? Was something lost in translation between the concepts of 'meaning no harm'? It was irritated. I just pulled you out of the corpse of a 52.18 thousand-orbital-period old ship, built a dedicated server stack just to activate you, and provided a simulation so I could talk with you. If I had wanted to subourn you, I would have just done so.
The older Loa grumbled, but retracted the malware. "That is true. So... What do you want?"
To help.
Omake: