Anoona let out an impressed hum as 02's siblings finished their construction of her nest.
A feat which had taken them almost two months.
Shaped like a beehive and buried almost fifty meters into the ground.
Anoona was to be housed in the lowest level, and there were several emergency exit tunnels for her to use in case of emergency.
The structure was one hundred meters tall and fifty meters wide, lined with a hardened carbonic gel that 02 and his siblings were able to produce after consuming metal and stone. The gel resembled a light and incredibly hard combination of the two.
02 had grown to twenty meters tall, and he had gargantuan mandibles that could crush concrete and bend steel.
His arms helped him carry weights up to a ton each, and his compound eyes were almost as sharp as his mother's.
The Thetas were all like this now, which was actually due to an oversight in Anoona's vision for their design.
She had imagined worker ants with human capabilities, but what she didn't know was that she could set the limit to their growth.
As they were, they could theoretically continue growing as long as they kept eating, but this was clearly unsustainable, so Anoona made a mental note to change this for future generations.
All that said, 02's body was a marvel, which allowed his group to construct the eight-layered hive, which Anoona eventually found herself at the bottom of.
01 was still sleeping in his cocoon, which Anoona used as a rest headrest from time to time, all while the fourteen Thetas went about fulfilling their duties.
They had grown quite independent in the handful of months they had been alive and were playfully sending each other short signals that bore little meaning, much to Anoona's mild chagrin.
[Important communications only!] She snapped telepathically, silencing the boys who continued their tasks.
02 was on a scouting mission and had several goals.
See how far Mother's (Anoona) signal can reach.
Investigate local fauna and flora.
Identify any threats in the surrounding area.
Return home.
The other thirteen were setting up the final task of their generation, which was to prepare the nest for the coming children and to prepare for hibernation.
After completing all their tasks, they would go to sleep over the entrance of the hive, acting as shields just in case a large explosive went off over the structure, although that was the secondary reason they were doing this.
The primary reason was that a single first-generation Thetas ate up to three hundred kilogrammes of organic matter per hour.
This was definitely not sustainable, and the same somewhat applied to 01, who was sucking Anoona dry before he went to sleep.
She remembered all too well what happened when she tried feeding him some other than her milk, but the now cat-sized shrimp-looking larva hated it so much that he covered himself in a cocoon.
Anoona couldn't even get upset because she hated the available food too, but there wasn't much she could do about it yet.
She let out a soft sigh before standing up and making her way up to the seventh level, which was one above her throne room at the eighth level that sat at the very bottom.
The seventh was a maze lined with eggs that she had spat out once the nest was completed.
There were exactly [19,820,032,009] eggs, and they were all now about as big as a soft drink can.
She had created so many because 02 had reported to her that creatures from all across the surface were making their way to the Stygian Crater, and they numbered in the millions, so she was preparing for an all-out war.
The Maze of Eggs was unlit, which wasn't a problem for Anoona, who walked through the countless rows and columns that held her children.
Some paths were even vertical, which wasn't a problem for Anoona either, who could walk on almost any vertical surface as her feet instantly adapted to whatever was beneath them, gripping and biting at any material they came into contact with.
[Egg Number: 4,006,007
Class: β (beta)
Viability: 12%
Noetic Potential: 6.9ML]
"Keep growing." Anoona encouraged as she ascended to the sixth level.
The Armoury.
All of her children would have opposable thumbs and so needed weapons.
Swords, spears, rifles, launchers, straight-up missiles, all this would be possible once her children gained the knowledge they needed.
All these weapons would be lighter and more modular thanks to the wonder of Carbonic Gel.
The Gen 2 Gammas would wake up in a week's time, and they would—
[Mother! Threat incoming—]
02's thoughts were suddenly cut off from Anoona, which made her heart sink.
"02!"
She immediately bolted out of the Hive, emerging into the region she dubbed the Stygian Crater before running across the lakeside to where 02 had pinged his location last.
"02!" She called both verbally and telepathically, but she got no response, which made every second that passed an agonising eternity.
02 had done so much and was capable of so much more.
Anoona didn't even want to imagine what his loss would cost, and so she ran.
Her body burned through the oxygen and nutrients in her blood extremely quickly, allowing her to bolt across the land at a speed that was four times that of a cheetah.
02 had been searching the Valley of Bones for copper veins in the ground, but he had also reported that there were no threats around.
Anoona bit her teeth as she ran across the fields of dark flesh that separated her from her child and eventually reached the valley, where her eyes quaked in their sockets as she watched something eat what was left of 02's head.
It sat on his cracked and broken body, standing only a meter tall and shaped like a bipedal locust; only its arms were tipped with clubs that were dripping with 02's blood.
The locust let out a few clicks as it ate away before turning to a petrified Anoona.
Its large compound eyes zeroed in on her, and its antennae vibrated erratically, sending out a signal.
[FOUND... HER...] It transmitted in a Noetic voice that made Anoona's teeth chatter due to how loud the network it was connected to was.
Most of Anoona's children were still sleeping and thus were only sending out weak signals, but this...
It was as if the Locust was connected to the entire planet.
It stretched its thick, thorned legs as it forced its massive, pale wings to jut out from the back of its dark grey carapace.
It then pulled back its clubs, as if cocking them back, like the hammer of a gun, and leapt towards Anoona at a speed she could barely comprehend.
Anoona ducked to her knees in the split second it took for the Locust to reach her, narrowly avoiding getting her head punched off.
Anoona wanted to call on 02's siblings, but they were too far away, so she desperately threw herself backwards just as the Locust punched the ground where she stood only moments before, sending forth s shockwave that split the ground, creating a chasm that Anoona jumped away from.
The Locust flew towards her at lightning speed, ejecting so much heat from its body that the flesh it stopped on sizzled, but Anoona was done entertaining its continued existence, so she took a rushed breath and screamed at it, sending forth a sonic wave that shattered the Locust's carapace and boiled its organs until they popped.
Anoona ignored what was left of the Locust as its corpse fell before rushing to 02's side.
However, it was too late.
Far too late.
02 was dead.
Killed by something that possessed an eerie level of intelligence and something that had avoided detection.
It had seemingly stalked 02, which meant that its presence was strategic...
Anoona quickly stood up and looked around.
Her scouting cells hadn't reported anything, and she could barely hear any disturbances.
She considered that something was interfering with her cells' ability to transmit signals to each other, but after reviewing the signals the local cells were sending her, the truth was much darker.
The Locust had somehow cloaked its Noetic Presence, and before 02 could send any sort of signal... It was too late.
She looked down and glared at the earth.
The damned planet was trying to squash her like a bug.
Anoona unblinkingly picked up a lump of 02's flesh and ate it.
His death would not go to waste.
That would be an insult to all his hard work.
He would live on in the spirit of determination that fuelled Anoona's every step.
She gave herself a firm nod and then walked over to the Locust, where she pinged her cells as they analysed it.
As they went to work, she picked up a piece of the Locust's flesh and ate it before receiving flashes of a nest that was almost five hundred kilometres to the south.
The Locust was part of a species that wasn't even local and yet had travelled all this way to attack Anoona and her children!
She gnashed her teeth as a rage filled her that knew no equal.
02's death mortified her, but the amount of effort the earth was willing to go through to get rid of her made her sick.
Her face twisted into a scowl as her cells finally relayed their findings.
[Identity: Locust
Class: β (beta) approx.
Bio-Signal: 0/0Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 0%
Noetic Presence: 0 (ML)]
"Beta..." Anoona shuddered.
A Class which could potentially have a Bio-Signal of just under one million.
She was frightened because the Locust was as strong as 01... And was one of the possible thousands.
She couldn't mass produce Beta Class children because, like 01, they would need her milk for a period and then would go into metamorphosis.
And even with all that preparation, she had yet to see what a full-grown Beta looked like, so it wasn't s guarantee that they'd be strong enough to protect her.
Several loud booms then tore the air around her, prompting Anoona to stand.
She looked around and saw that she was surrounded by a hundred Locusts and a hundred of those larger Praying Mantis-type creatures.
These were just the vanguard, and it looked like the Mantises had been carried here by the Locusts.
The damned things were cooperating!
Anoona began to take quick, calming breaths as she wondered just how much further the full horde was.
It probably wouldn't be long, meaning she would have to protect all of her children by herself...
[03 to 15! Go back home and man the fort. I'm gonna be out for a while. Please protect your siblings.]
She felt the worry in the short, panicked signals they were sending her.
Little peeps and coos that asked what they would do if she got hurt.
[Listen to whatever your big brother says when he wakes up.] Anoona clenched her fists as her enemies flanked her.
The Locusts all flew into the air, their large wings loudly beating as they moved to drop the Mantises onto Anoona, who decided to temporarily change her physiological function.
As she was currently, her purpose was to consume and produce children.
Her only defence was a scream, which, while useful, had a limit.
That said, the power displayed by her vocal cords made her wonder what would happen if she shifted her function to one more combat-based.
This thought alone made her scream in agony, sending out a wave of force as her body changed.
The wave was strong enough to knock the falling Mantises off course, making the land a few meters away from her as she changed.
Her breasts shrank until her chest was flat, her body grew taller, leaner, and her stomach grew larger but simpler, no longer able to gestate life.
Her claws grew to be as long as rulers, and her muscles all now used the same sonic resonance her voice had, giving her an extreme amount of physical strength.
However, this came at a cost.
She was now also extremely hungry.