Eighth Swarming, Earth Year 2172 A.D.

Queen World of the Insectoid Empire

The Hive mother raged impotently in her brooding chamber as she saw the animal message being played out through the eyes of her millions of worker drones in the swarm, seeing the mocking visuals playing over billions of fractals that her mind coalesced into a clear, three-dimensional image.

An unknown animal was burning an innocent nest with fire and grimacing in pleasure, a sure threat of what these new creatures intended to do to her swarm. She felt disquiet as she surveyed the massive fleet arrayed against her, unsure of the risks these unknown animals presented.

My daughters were right. It was time. She thought to herself as she pushed down the rage she was feeling and focused on the chemical processes necessary to continue making more drones, feeling her body resume the larval impregnation and sending them out of the birth canal.

Blind male drones mindlessly shuffled into the room, following her pheromones and zeroing in on her sex organs before penetrating her. As they died after a fleeting moment of ecstasy, the Hive mother glanced back at the pile of male corpses building up behind her, feeling the infusion of fresh genetic DNA coursing through her.

I am so tired. She thought to herself. Tens of billions of daughters have come from me, so many mouths to feed. She fell into a momentary despondency, looking around the brooding chamber she had been trapped in for the last three hundred solar cycles as she made and impregnated new larvae continuously to ensure the survival of the Hive.

I wish to feel the warmth of the sun one last time before I die. She thought, fondly remembering what it had felt like to fly before she became Hive mother. I long to feel the water of the sky falling on me once more.

She felt new presences make themselves known to her mind, and her twelve queen daughters imbued her with thoughts of love and support.

<We are here with you, Hive mother.>

She felt their strength and a renewed vigor washed over her mind. She focused her mind on a particular daughter queen, the one leading the eighth swarm.

<Swarm daughter. Are you ready?> The Hive mother asked, sending her thoughts across vast distances to her daughter, who was leading the fleet in the tree-animal system.

<Yes, Hive mother. I am ready.>

She felt a wave of confidence emanate from the swarm daughter, which she did not share but hid from her.

<My thoughts and those of your sisters are with you, always.>

The swarm daughter sent feelings of happiness and anticipation, eager to prove herself again after avoiding the obvious trap they laid for her in the animal core worlds when they tried to get her to invade the heavily fortified system.

A few moments later, looking through the eyes of her many worker drones, the Hive mother watched as the swarm fleet sped up towards the unknown animal ships, anticipating the clash despite this new animal threat facing her swarm daughter.

As she watched, she saw the unknown animal ships in the center of the formation seem to panic and blast off in all directions as they abandoned their battle lines in a disorderly fashion.

<See, Hive mother? They are fleeing already.>

She felt the pleasure emanating from her swarm daughter as she charged into the open gap that was left by the fleeing animals, firing all her weapons.

The Hive mother shifted her view of the battlefield by simultaneously entering the minds of thousands of drones throughout the swarm; it was only when she shifted into the drone views in the reserves behind the formation that she realized with horror that her swarm daughter was heading right for a trap.

<NO, NO, NO!> she screamed with her mind as she watched the leading edge of the swarm formation charge through the gap and get targeted with weapons locks from the very animal ships that were just fleeing.

They had executed pinpoint flips with their thrusters, and the hundreds of animal ships were now drifting backwards with all their bow weapons pointed towards the gap where her daughter was heading. Looking through a drone's eyes, she felt confusion as the antennae readings tried to discern the power output of the strange weapons, showing that none of them were comparative to the other animal weapons. What are these, she thought, her anxiety rising as the power readings suddenly increased exponentially.

The hundreds of animal ships fired at the same time, and her confusion over the strange weapons of these new animals turned into shock as their missiles, primitive kinetics, and orbs of coherent plasma charges intersected the path of the Insectoid fist formation with an accuracy the Hive mother had not seen for a long time.

The results were devastating, and she felt hundreds of thousands of worker drone minds ripped away from her. The entire front of the Insectoid formation was peeled open as the tremendous volume of animal weapons fire slammed into the screening cruisers, exposing the Hive ships that were inside. The same animal ships fired again just before they reoriented their ships again, and another volley of death penetrated the now exposed mass of Hive ships, destroying two of them outright and severely damaging several more.

Exit flashes appeared all around her daughter's battered formation, and she watched as those spirit ships, the ones she couldn't make sense of that had left at the beginning of the battle, suddenly flashed out of null space right in the middle of the swarm formation. Executing turns and maneuvers that were impossible for a ship containing animals, the spirit ships achieved velocities that defied the Hive mother's comprehension as they penetrated right through the center of the Hive ship formation.

They fired more of those strange orbs of triple coherent plasma charges and powerful particle beams that punched right through the tough organic hides of the Hive ships as they weaved through the formation. The Hive ships fired back, thousands of particle beams reaching out to hit the spirit ships and most of them missing as the spirit ships continued to jink the target locks.

They continued onward, leaving a path of chaos and destruction until most of the spirit ships flashed back into null space when they completed their attack runs through the formation. Some spirit ships had damaged engines and could not transition to null space with the others. Continuing to fire their deadly weapons, they darted in and among the Hive ships, and despite evasive maneuvers, they were finally destroyed as hundreds of particle beams found them.

The thousands of tiny ships that had poured out from the animal hive ships hit the now disordered formation, angrily buzzing around like the corpse gnats that infested the Hive cemeteries. The gnat ships fired small missiles that somehow penetrated the hulls of the insectoid cruisers and Hive ships, and she watched as the missile's engines flared again, pushing them through the hulls and into the interior of her ships.

She did not understand why the animals would use such small missiles, and her thoughts turned to dismay as massive detonations suddenly blew the insectoid cruiser and Hive ship hulls out, ripping great gouges in the organic carapace that protected them and spewing out tens of thousands of drones. Her mind reeled from the devastation she was witnessing, and she became greatly distressed as she realized that these new animals knew the secrets of antimatter.

It was the only explanation for the small missiles having such power, and the gnat ships then targeted the massive hull breaches, firing more missiles that darted through the large openings and detonated deep inside the Insectoid ships. Her cruisers simply vanished, and even her Hive ships were being torn apart, tumbling out of control as tens of thousands of her innocent daughters were expelled into the vacuum.

The surviving cruisers and Hive ships fired their point defense weapons to great effect, and gnat ships fell by the hundreds from the particle beams and flak guns, but they still kept attacking as they swarmed around the formation. As more gnat ships were destroyed, she expected them to flee, but they did not. The remaining ones, still swarming her ships, continued to attack undamaged cruisers and Hive ships, killing too many of her daughters and destroying more of her ships.

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Only when more than half of them had been destroyed did the remaining gnats start fleeing, and the Hive mother's anger turned to happiness as the point defenses began targeting the rest to destroy many of them as they fled on straight courses that could be easily followed. Right before the point defenses fired, those cursed spirit ships flashed back out of null space on the outskirts of the now broken sphere formation at full acceleration and penetrated into the center, targeting ships that still had functional point defenses with particle beams and those dangerously powerful plasma charges.

They seemed to work as one unit, focused entirely on disrupting the target locks and destroying already heavily damaged cruisers and Hive ships as they covered the retreat of the surviving gnat ships. Her happiness turning to rage again, the Hive mother sent a thought command for the weapon drones to target all available beams on a single spirit ship at a time. She hated them, and she wanted them destroyed.

She watched as the drones obeyed her and dozens of beams hit one of the spirit ships from all directions, a wave of rare pleasure passing through her as it was finally destroyed. She picked another target and fired again, destroying another spirit ship as it tried to get away. She ignored the still fleeing gnats ships as she targeted another spirit ship. She will kill them too; she will destroy the animal Hive ships they came from when the time came.

The remaining spirit ships, now through the broken formation, headed towards open space and flashed back into null space as dozens of beams bracketed another spirit ship, destroying it. The Hive mother took control of a nearby worker drone and surveyed the space around the Hive ship in shock, seeing a rapidly expanding debris field all around the now much smaller formation as dozens of Hive ships listed out of control, wracked by massive internal explosions.

The Hive mother took advantage of the momentary lull in battle and reached out to her swarm daughter with her thoughts.

<Daughter, are you there?>

There was no answer, and she tried again.

<Swarm daughter, answer me.>

She felt her swarm daughter's presence in her mind suddenly, and it was full of panic and indecisiveness.

<Daughter, I will take over. Sleep.>

The Hive mother sent a mental command that she used to put her queen daughters to sleep and took over the command drone of her swarm daughters' Hive ship. The drone didn't resist; it couldn't. Suddenly, the Hive ship crew noticed the command drone was staring at them with eyes filled with intelligence that penetrated their minds while releasing queen pheromones. They detected the pheromones, accepting the change in leadership and going back to their tasks.

The command drone, now inhabited by the Hive mother, gently picked up her now sleeping daughter and ordered nearby worker drones to bring her to her queen chambers. The Hive mother assumed the swarm queens' position on the dais in the center of the hive chamber and tried to get her bearings.

She commanded the weapons drones to fire all their beams and missiles at the animal formations in the distance, hoping to encourage them to keep away as she brought order to her rapidly dwindling formation. She once again started flitting throughout the formation and got drone views from all angles, and she realized just how perilous her situation was.

The larger animal ships that had blasted off to the outside in the beginning of the battle had now completed their turns and were maneuvering to envelop her formation, while hundreds of smaller animal ships were intercepting most of her missiles and jamming her weapon locks, disrupting her ability to target the larger animal ships.

I need to get this swarm out of here, The Hive mother decided as she watched an animal cruiser that was heavily damaged intentionally collide with a much larger Hive ship, causing catastrophic damage as it speared right into its side and the crew of the animal cruiser overloaded their core. The Hive ship disappeared in a mini-supernova that took out a nearby cluster of Insectoid ships, destroying another nearby Hive ship and dozens of cruisers as the cascade of explosions through the tightly packed formation continued to feed itself until there were was nothing left but a massive field of wreckage.

Despite hundreds of animal ships already destroyed and damaged, more of them kept coming and engaging her increasingly smaller swarm. She watched as the larger animal ships, their carapaces covered with weapons, entered her formation and engaged her remaining Hive ships. They came to within 1/10th of a planetary diameter of the Hive ships, drifting past them and firing their strange mixture of deadly weapons with a ferocity that she had never seen from animals before.

As their flak guns fired small balls that obliterated the point defenses, the larger kinetic slugs blasted giant holes into the hulls, with some passing entirely through and creating even more massive exit breaches on the other side of her Hive ships. The remaining animal ships then fired into the breaches with very small plasma charges, thousands of the orbs penetrating deeply and killing more of her daughters as her Hive ships began to lose power and atmosphere.

The animal ships looked liked the small, scaled sea creatures that followed around the large lumbering ocean animals of the Queen World next to her Hive ships, but she was no longer fooled by their small size. The ferocity of their assault and their deadly weapons destroyed eleven more Hive ships while leaving the broken hulks of dozens of animal ships in the wake of their violent passage through her formation.

Just as the surviving large animal ships were flashing back into null space, the remaining spirit ships flashed back in and destroyed more ships, breaking up her attempted counterattack and destroying another five heavily damaged Hive ships. The Hive mother was too shocked to respond to the spirit ship's incursions this time, and they flashed back into null space unscathed as she surveyed the destruction all around her.

No more. I must save my daughters from these dangerous animals, The Hive mother decided as she looked for a path of retreat from the battle. The remnants of the swarm were now condensed into a small, perfectly spherical formation of only fourteen undamaged Hive ships and four hundred cruisers, and their momentum was already carrying them into the inner system.

The Hive mother, seeing how the rest of the animal fleet was out of position as they flashed out of null space and tried to reorder their battle formations to attack her again, felt a fleeting moment of safety. The remnant swarm headed towards the inner system and she commanded her formation to continue firing all weapons in an arc that provided full coverage as she felt the Hive ship engines continue to send power to the null space capacitors.

As the Hive mother sensed the capacitors nearing their full charge, the swarm formation passed the orbit of the fifth planet and the Hive mother watched from the command drone eyes as thousands of tiny objects shimmered into existence and sped up towards her remaining ships before latching onto the hulls. What is this? She thought to herself as the unknown objects suddenly began to violently explode, blasting hundreds of holes in her ships.

There were so many of them that cruisers and Hive ships were suffering from explosive decompressions as the thousands of small breaches they had were beyond their ability to seal in time. As she watched more Hive ships suffer violent decompressions and eject hundreds of thousands of worker drones through the breaches, she saw hundreds of the tiny mines heading directly toward the Hive ship her daughter was on.

NO! NO! She wailed in her mind when she saw it was too late to eject the queen's chamber where her daughter was sleeping as hundreds of the objects latched onto the Hive ship and triggered their charges.

<Daugh- >

The Hive mother never finished her thought and screamed in agony, feeling herself being ripped from the command drone's mind as the Hive ship suffered catastrophic decompression. The Hive mother felt her mind suddenly rush back into her body in her brood chamber on the Queen world, and she reeled from the loss of her daughter as she silently screamed with an anguish she had never felt before.

She immediately started feeling her other queen daughters trying to comfort her and share in her pain. I must save what remains of the swarm, she thought as she blocked them out. She jumped her vision back to worker drones on the surviving Hive ships and watched with deep sadness sadness as those drones also died in the minefield. In the end, only two hive ships and 34 cruisers were able to flash into null space and escape.

The Hive mother trembled with rage and lashed out at a nearby male drone who chose an unfortunate time to enter her brooding chamber, lifting him up and tearing him in half at the junction between his thorax and abdomen. She tossed the two pieces of the male drone onto the floor and watched as the two halves twitched from death throes, chiding herself for the precious genetic material she just wasted in a fit of rage.

She felt her eleven remaining queen daughters trying to reach her mind, and she lifted the block and let them in. As she felt their thoughts and feelings mingle with hers, she lamented the death of her daughter. Her other queen daughters joined in, flooding her mind with thoughts of anger and vengeance.

<My daughters, not since the Great Persecution has a queen died in battle, and these animals killed your sister before I could take her memories and share them with you.>

She sensed them receiving her thoughts, and she could feel their sorrow and anger as they came to terms with the loss of their sister's mind and the end of a precious genetic line.

<Daughters, we will swarm again. Decide among yourselves who will create and lead the new swarms and who will stay behind to defend the Hives. Do not intrude on my thoughts until you have decided.>

She felt her queen daughters honor her wishes and leaving her mind, their desire for revenge tinging their thoughts as they departed. As she sat there alone with her thoughts, she aggregated all the memories of the drone minds she inhabited during the battle and, with perfect recall, replayed the entire battle from start to finish. She examined it from all angles and viewpoints as she repeatedly ran through the battle in her mind, learning from the mistakes that were made.

As the Hive mother's powerful brain collated billions of data points and analyzed the tactics of the unknown animal ships, she felt a stirring deep inside her genetic memories as her ancestral Hive mothers struggled to make themselves known after centuries of silence. One ancient Hive mother reached out, sharing her memories of the Great Persecution and the desperate migration that led them to this area of space after fleeing for many cycles.

As images of ancient battles and entire genetic lines lost from queen deaths played across her mind, she felt an emotion from the ancient Hive Mother she had never known before as she resumed analyzing the battle with the unknown animals. She put a name to the emotion, and it suddenly washed over her, rendering her senseless.

Fear.

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