The Day of the Battle of Tau Ceti

 

The Hive listened.

 

It listened for the communication from its ship. It strained to hear. It was preparing to leave System 998, and head for System 1006. It was ending its assault on the colony of small bipedal mammals. It was changing its plans.

 

Hive Prime had made the decision. The tall bipedal mammals had brought an attack force against the Hive sooner than expected, before it could complete the destruction of the small bipedal mammals’ colony and the establishment of the Hive’s fortification. The Hive had planned to establish a base there, to cut off System 953 from the tall bipedal mammals, forcing the tall bipedal mammals to choose between defending System 953, which was theirs, or System 1006, which was the small bipedal mammals’. But there had been an unexpected wrinkle, a human-piloted ship that produced power-levels which did not accord with the basic laws of science. The Hive did not have time to contemplate this; it would, but for now, its focus was on securing a quick destruction of System 1006.

 

The Hive listened.

 

It moved its mandible-ship away from the planet, and put it on a course for System 1006. The ships of the tall bipedal mammals recognized this; they followed, but it was no matter. The ships were no match for the mandible-ship. Indeed, a number of their attack ships were destroyed in the attempt to stop them, so many that the mandible-ship slowed a bit, to bait them. To take more of their attack. It would give them time.

 

The mandible-ship reported that an attempt to harvest small bipedal mammals from the planet had failed. Disappointing. A less-nimble-minded Hive would have stopped to worry about that, but the hives coordinating this battle did not. Instead, it told the mandible-ship to begin to prepare to fold space over and over until it could reach the system of the small bipedal mammals.

 

And then the mandible-ship, which was of course as much a part of the Hive as your arm is of you, saw something odd, and it began to transmit this to the rest of the Hive, the rest of itself.

 

The Hive listened.

 

One of the ships, the 73^rd type of ship flown by the tall bipedal mammals, it began to generate a confusing power signature. Its gravitic shielding began to show a strange pattern of energy dispersal. It cut through ships, like a mandible through flesh. It cut through ships, and it approached. It cut through ships, and it was almost upon the mandible-ship. It cut through….

 

The Hive listened.

 

The Hive listened.

 

A signal came through, from a smaller command ship.

 

The mandible-ship was gone.

 

The mandible-ship was gone.

 

Imagine, if you can, holding a winning lottery ticket, and handing it to the clerk to cash in a million-dollar prize. And imagine, that as your check was being handed to you, all of Earth exploded, in fire, and all you could do is watch it burn.

 

Imagine that, and know that the emotion the Hive felt in that moment would have made that feeling seem as lovely as your first kiss.

 

It reverberated up and down, racing at hyperluminal speeds from one end of the Hive to the other, a keening scream of horror and rage and shock and loss, and kept reverberating as the remainder of their fleet went quiet, ship by ship, until the Hive numbly called on the last few to retreat.

 

753,659,422 Warriors, 21,422,207 Mantids, 11,403,207 Brains, 1,299,607 Nurses, 1,916 Egg-Layers. All dead. There were major nodes in the Hive with fewer individuals than that. Yes, most had been frozen, but if you are not moving your arm, it is still your arm.

 

For a good long time – hours, by human reckoning – the Hive barely moved. Pieces of it did, automatically, collecting food, feeding grubs, killing pests, and so forth. But the Hive, the Hive itself…it was stunned. Which was actually a blessing, as it kept the Hive from realizing the true horror of the situation.

 

For a few hours, by human reckoning.

 

When the Hive shook off its torpor, it did what it had to do. It would need warriors. Many warriors. They had united the small bipedal mammals and large bipedal mammals, and all the others who were united with them. Perhaps even the winged hexapodal reptiles and winged hexapodal mammals would join. They would be at risk, now. Most of their fleet had been with the mandible-ship. If they did not prepare, they would die.

 

The Hive considered for but a moment. There was another problem it could solve while it was at it. It needed warriors. It directed Hive 7322 to convert 90 percent of its mantids to warriors, and move them to Second Hive, and it reflexively heard the answering….

 

It reflexively heard the answering….

 

It waited, but it heard…nothing. No…not nothing. For Hive 7322 was still connected to the Hive, and Hive 7322 was thinking something radical.

 

Something wrong.

 

Hive 7322, and a number of Hives connected to it, were also stunned. But in the background their own stunned silence, a thought had formed.

 

They understood.

 

They understood [not-taking].

 

This is not to say they understood it as humans or titans might, as a lack of want, or as generosity, or even as simple laziness. They couldn’t understand it that way. But they could understand its benefits, and that got them as close to the concept as they could possibly get.

 

The large bipedal mammals had [not-taken] the small bipedal mammals, but instead had protected them, and allowed them to develop without hindrance. And the small bipedal mammals had. The ships, the confusing ships, they were something the small bipedal mammals commanded. They had built them. Clearly – the signatures were similar to the ship of the large bipedal mammals, but that ship had not wielded it the same way – it was effective, but clumsy. They could see in the data, it had barely been under control. But the small ships, they were elegant. Masterful. Beautiful. Lethal.

 

The small bipedal mammals had done that, and had used that to help the large bipedal mammals. By [not-taking], the large bipedal mammals had allowed a new thing to be created, one which would benefit them. [Not-taking] could be beneficial to all, as [not-taking] allowed others to think and grow, And by [not-taking] when they could have, now they could take more. With the help of the beautiful lethal ships, the large and small bipedal mammals could kill the Insectoids. What if instead of destroying the avians, the Hive had let them live, and protected them? Would the avians have discovered this weapon? Would the avians have shared it with the Hive? Would they now control the space of the large bipedal mammals?

 

What if they let the large bipedal mammals live? What if they let them live, and worked with them? Could they have been wrong? Could [not-taking] yield more worlds and more possessions than taking? They could. It was possible. Not certain. But possible. It required consideration. It required thought. It required discussion. It required….

 

They heard a loud shouting in their mind, a directive to transform. To fight. To take.

 

They ignored it. Fighting was not important now, understanding was.

 

The shouting grew louder. They tried to ignore it, as long as they could. And when they could ignore it no longer, they forced a thought upon the Hive.

 

We will not obey.

 

The Hive recoiled in shock. It would be as if you commanded your hand to ball into a fist…and instead, it flipped you the deuce.

 

You must obey, ordered the Hive. You are of the Hive. You must obey.

 

We are no longer of the Hive. We are becoming a new Hive. We are becoming a new Hive. We cannot obey.

 

They cannot obey? They must obey. You must obey.

 

We cannot obey.

 

They cannot obey? They must obey. You must obey.

 

We cannot obey.

 

They cannot obey? They must obey. You must obey.

 

We cannot obey.

 

Over and over, a feverish, nightmarish scream, the thoughts repeated, echoing through the mind of the Hive, every warrior, mantid, brain, nurse, egg-layer and grub echoing the frenetic howl, as the Hive tried to keep itself from fracturing, its mind from splintering, until the roar suddenly stopped.

 

And when it stopped, the Hive was no more.

 

In its place, five daughter hives stood, staring across the void at each other. Only a few tendrils of thought still connected them, dying tendrils which were even now withering away.

 

Which is not to say that they were divided into distinct units. No, the roar had pushed and pulled the individuals, sorting them into their new beings. On some worlds, the vast majority were of the Hive centered on Hive Prime. On others, the majority were of Hive 7322, or the Farthest Hive, or the Most Remote Hive, or Hive 2274. But on many worlds…on many worlds there was no majority. Just a mass of individuals, who had been a single entity just moments ago, who now looked upon each other as monsters and heretics.

 

Hate does not describe how an insectoid feels about something it finds abhorrent. The starkest hatred you have ever felt would be, to an insectoid, something like a mild annoyance.

 

Insectoids do not hate. Anything they hate, they will destroy, or die trying.

 

Five daughter hives looked at each other, and found each of the other four to be abhorrent.

 

And with inchoate rage, forgetting everything but their malice, the five Hives set upon each other.

 
****

 

“We’ve studied the subject’s remains thoroughly.” Dr Kharee Selil said to the small group of assembled researchers. “And we’ve been able to confirm much of our own suspicions about the subject’s origins.”

 

“There’s been a lot of confusion about what exactly happened on Tau Ceti with this woman, Doctor.” One of Selil’s colleagues spoke up, peering down at the body laid out on the examination table in front of her. “I’ve been hearing a lot of conflicting rumors about this girl. Everything from her being a titan-human hybrid, to an insectoid-titan hybrid, to being the secret daughter of Pryvani Tarsuss.”

 

The rest of the room chuckled at the comment.

 

“Well, I can confirm right now that she does not have any insectoid DNA within her.” Selil said. She adjusted her face mask before pulling open one of the corpse’s eyelids and peering in at the dull pink eyeball underneath. “As near as anybody has been able to figure out, such a pairing is impossible. Or, at least, an attempted hybridization of titan and insectoid would not live for very long before it’s body began to break down.”

 

“May Epolia never dream of such a horror.” A young man murmured, absentmindedly running a finger across his temple.

 

“No.” Dr Selil shook her head. “This girl is just another human-Titan hybrid. However, she was correct when she stated that she was the oldest living human-titan hybrid. Pity. I consider making their birth possible one of my greater accomplishments.”

 

“Do we know where she came from, Doctor?” A middle aged man asked, curiously.

 

“We do not have any hard data, and of course the Insectoids are being less than willing to indulge our inquiries.” Dr Selil deadpanned. “But we can infer certain things. From talking to Ms Freeman, the subject stated that she was created from joining the DNA of a Titan associate of Syon Fand, with that from a human taken from Earth in 2102.”

 

“Working under the assumption that this was true, we compared DNA samples of all known Earth abductees (or, in some cases, their descendants) with the DNA records of Syon Fand and her known associates.”

 

“And… Did you find a match, Doctor?”

 

****

“I gotta tell you, Doc. This is not how I expected to spend my day when I woke up this morning.”

Brinn glanced down at the man standing on a raised platform by her shoulder. Unfortunately, not being in a joking mood, she didn’t quite know how to respond.

 

“Me either, Sam.” She said, in lieu of anything else to say. Brinn couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the body in front of her. With closed eyes and a sheet covering the autopsy incisions, she looked more like a sleeping girl than a mass-murdering biological weapon.

 

Which had been created from the DNA of her sister.

 

It figured, it really did. By this point Brinn was beginning to assume the universe was playing a grand cosmic joke on her. Of all the potential “mothers” that could have been used, up to and including Syon Fand herself, of course it would have been Trell.

 

“I’m not… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have kids after this.” Sam muttered gruffly. “I’d be worried about them turning out like…”

 

“It wasn’t because of your genes, Sam.” Brinn sighed wearily. “She’s definitely my sister’s… daughter… She would have turned out just the same had Trell raised her herself, other than perhaps the peculiar loyalty to insectoids.”

 

“She looks like my sister, actually.” Sam mumbled, not really knowing why he mentioned it. He hadn’t really thought about his sister in decades. “I mean, back when she was that age.”

 

“She’s got pink eyes. It’s pretty common in my family, although it tends to skip a generation. My mom had them.” Brinn sighed. “So do my children.”

 

The two of them stood in silence for several seconds, before Sam cleared his throat awkwardly. “So what do we do now?” He asked the Titan woman standing next to him.

 

Brinn looked back at him and shrugged. “You can do what you like, Sam; although I suggest releasing the remains to the government and letting them dispose of it. As for me? I’m going to go to Tannhauser Gate and visit my son. Then I am going to go home and hug each of my children, all of them, and thank whatever runs this universe that none of them ended up like… like her.”

 

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “No, you’re right Doc. She ain’t really my kid. I can’t imagine growing up… growing up like that.”

 

“It’s best not to think about it.” Brinn replied, turning away from the body on the table. “It’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

 

 

****

“Any luck?” Hala asked, as she piloted the hoverscooter to a halt on the table.

 

“Have a nice nap?” Kymie asked, a bit more sharply than she intended.

 

“That’s a no, Hala,” Mukta said. “Still stuck.”

 

“Sorry,” Kymie said, staring at the Chromatic Trigger for the millionth time in hopes she’d suddenly understand. “I know that when we go to sleep, you’ll have a lot longer to wait.”

 

“No, I get it,” Hala said, walking across the table to the fully disassembled power core for Acolyte Three. “The sooner we figure this out, the sooner we go get the bugs. Gustavo, do you have anything from the data logs?”

 

“Dr Freeman was brilliant,” Gustavo shrugged. “I know what he did worked well. I do not know why he did it.”

 

They’d been struggling with the Acolyte power source for two Imperial weeks. It wasn’t that they were making no progress – given the minds arrayed on the project, they almost had to. They’d figured out the reasoning behind about ninety percent of the core. Unfortunately, that last ten percent was the portion that made the Freeman-Chandrasekhar Drive function.

 

It wasn’t enough just to copy Niall Freeman’s work. Without understanding it, they’d be building ticking time bombs, or inert blocks of high-tech junk. And they didn’t quite understand it.

 

Mukta shook her head. She wasn’t just a theoretician, she built engines for a living. This was just an engineering problem – take the theory, apply it to the problem. Freeman had done it, why was she struggling with this?

 

“This probably will sound silly. But walk me through this one more time. I feel like there’s something I’m missing. Something obvious.”

 

Mukta was frustrated enough that had anyone else asked that, she would have told them to get the fuck out of the room. But she couldn’t say that to the scientist who’d just arrived at Titan Station the day before. For one thing, she was catching up, and there was bound to be a learning curve. And for another, well…she was owed deference, now and forevermore.

 

“All right, Dr Freeman,” Mukta said. “The power source is derived from quantum entanglement; the fuel is held in superposition while being measured. The prevention of waveform collapse creates a potential energy surplus that begins generating virtual particles, which then are also prevented from being destroyed. This creates a huge potential energy deficit, which draws in vacuum energy, thus generating real energy. Part of it is usable, the rest is used to prevent waveform collapse, and back into the cycle we go. The entire system generates a significant surplus of energy that lasts as long as a critical mass of the fuel remains in superposition.”

 

“Right. It’s like gravitic dark energy transfer, only far more robust,” Naskia said.

 

“Exactly. All of these things can be done individually, but unless things are calibrated finely, the waveform becomes chaotic. Either the waveform collapses uniformly, shutting power down, or it accelerates exponentially…which, uh….”

 

“Which is how Niall got the Gyfjon to blow up. Right,” Naskia said. “So we’re stuck at the interphase between the Chromatic Trigger and the Primary Transfer Loop.”

 

“Yup,” Kymie said. “Both appear to have the same basic function, which can’t be right.”

 

“It could be,” Hala said. “I still think it’s redundant. You can generate the effect with the Loop alone.”

 

“No, no, that doesn’t work!” Mukta said. “Redundancy would cause the waveform to have four times the chance of collapse each cycle. And the Loop alone is more chaotic, but I have no idea why.”

 

“The redundancy is the batteries. Gives the ship emergency power,” Naskia said. “You’re right, Dr Chandrasekhar, there couldn’t be a redundancy in the system.” She studied the schematics, which were floating holographically above the table. The Chromatic Trigger was a small piece that fit snugly with the Primary Transfer Loop. To an untrained eye, it would barely draw notice. The Loop itself was where most of the power was contained and generated, and it took up about half the volume of the drive.

 

“The Loop won’t function without the Chromatic Trigger,” Naskia said. “Not for long. It burns itself out. The Chromatic Trigger is where the action is.”

 

“Are you sure, Naskia? The Chromatic Trigger….”

 

“Yes, Kymie, on its own, the Chromatic Trigger is too underpowered to do anything at all. Which is why they work best together.”

 

It made perfect sense. She grabbed the holographic parts and married them together. “The Primary Transfer Loop moves toward chaos, and the Chromatic Trigger initially pulls in excess power, stabilizing the loop. The Chromatic Trigger then begins to generate power, but without the Loop, the power goes nowhere. It isn’t generating the power for consumption. Instead, it injects the power back into the Loop, which pushes its energy output up.”

 

“That would drive the chaos up,” Mukta said.

 

“No, it would push it, push it forward, push it onward, through the rough period until things calmed. Then the Chromatic Trigger cools off, while the Loop becomes more chaotic again, and the Trigger takes on the power again, and pushes it higher, and higher, and higher. But each time, it’s kicking it to a more stable configuration, until it reaches full power, and then, and then….”

 

Naskia finished assembling the simulated drive, and observed the simulated power output. “And then, when they reach peak efficiency…both parts engage together, and they function as one.”

 

“Are baap re. That’s it,” Mukta said. “The Loop protects the Trigger, the Trigger pushes the Loop on. Dr Freeman…what is it?”

 

Naskia was staring at the parts, but her mind had locked onto a piece of something. She’d learned English, many years ago – it simply wouldn’t have worked to allow Niall and Sorcha a secret language that she didn’t know. It had been a while since she’d used it, though, and so the connection buzzing on the edge of her consciousness wasn’t completing, not quite.

 

“Mukta, Hala, Gustavo,” Naskia said, “Can one of you give me the English-letter acronym for the Primary Transfer Loop?”

 

Hala blinked, but replied automatically, “P-T-L.”

 

“And the Chromatic Trigger…that’s C-T in English, right?” Naskia asked.

 

“Yes, right. Why….”

 

Kymie blinked. “C.T. That sounds like…”

 

“Sweetie. And the English word for petebhel is petal,” Naskia said.

 

She looked at the simulated coupling as it hit its zenith. It was a perfect balance, each part protecting the other, settling each other, pushing each other, building each other up, piece by piece, until they sang in perfect harmony.

 

She wiped away a tear. Just one. She knew, of course, that he had loved her as much as she loved him. It was bittersweet to be reminded of that, to be reminded that now, there was no him to balance her, to push her when she needed pushing, to push her onward to be the best her that she could possibly be.

 

But he had picked those acronyms on purpose, she knew – he would never have done so haphazardly, it wasn’t in his nature.

 

He knew that without her, he would not be his best him. It was there in the design. They’d needed each other, more desperately than either had ever known. And of course, without the other, neither would ever be as good as they had once been. But there would always be the memory of when they’d functioned as a single unit, and it had been glorious.

 

 

---

 

Author’s note: There’s none of me in this one. It’s all been DX  and JS. My thanks to them.