They Answered The Call

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

The Hive mother was deep in memory thought as she communed with the ancient ancestors within, something she had been doing more of as the stress of running the Hives and the state of the swarming caused her to seek refuge in the genetic memory of her ancestors. As she traveled deeper into the past, she kept finding herself returning to the memories of the time when they were alone and living in peace as a thriving civilization spanning many worlds before the arrival of the unknown animals.

A distant ancestor stirred within and whispered in her thoughts. ~ We weren’t always alone, daughter. ~

Memories came to her, and she found herself in a lush jungle full of life. There was a cacophony of animal sounds and a dizzying array of plant life and colors, and the Hive mother allowed herself to be taken through the memories as her ancestor walked along a well-defined path through the foliage. She heard a sound, and she felt the fear of her ancestor as she fled down the path, trying to reach the nearby Hive before the unseen danger got her.

She could hear the movement of it as it barreled through the jungle towards her and a distinct sound of rapid tapping against the ground as it pursued her. She had reached the edge of the jungle and continued fleeing towards the entrance of the Hive in the distance. She turned towards the tapping sounds when she had gained some distance, and her fear overwhelmed her as the pursuer emerged from the jungle edge.

It was dark red and large, as long as five Hive queens in length, and had a segmented body. Under its armored chitin body, a multitude of short legs accelerated the predator towards her, the rapid tapping sounds increasing in tempo as it finally spotted its prey and its dozens of legs moved faster to catch her. Its ferocious-looking mandibles clacked together as it started drooling viscous saliva in anticipation of the meal fleeing from it. She turned back towards the Hive and ran as fast as she could, hearing the tapping sounds grow louder as the predator drew closer.

She sent thoughts to her Hive queen, asking her to rescue her as she continued running. She tried to use her wings, but they were not strong enough as they were still developing and not capable of lifting her adolescent body. The Hive entrance drew closer, but she knew she wouldn’t get there in time, resigned to her horrible fate of being slowly consumed over many hours while still alive. She saw her Hive queen emerge from the Hive and fly towards her, while worker drones surged out behind her, ready to sacrifice themselves as a meal to try to save the young queen.

The Hive queen flew over and behind her, and she could feel and hear the wings buzzing as the Hive queen tried to distract the predator by loitering just out of reach above it, barely piercing the armored chitin with her stinger. Predators are immune to the venom of stings, and they tend to ignore the small injuries they sustain from stingers when pursuing prey.

It was less than two meters behind her now, and the young daughter was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion when she spotted a long, sharp piece of wood that had broken off a tree limb during one of the recent violent storms that regularly occur on the Birth World. She grabbed it as she ran and was wondering why she picked it up when she had a flash of inspiration as she thought about how their stingers had little effect on their hard exoskeletons, barely penetrating. She envisioned the sharp stick penetrating the unprotected underbelly and killing the predator in her mind.

She went over the action in her mind again and decided to try it, as she was dead anyway. She stopped in her tracks and spun around, the sharp wood pointing out as she held it with her two thorax legs. The predator ran right into the sharp wood, and it penetrated deeply through the soft underbelly, piercing through the armored top from the inside as its heavy body and the speed at which it was moving helped the sharp wood break through.

She was knocked down as the predator ran over her, a shrill whistling sound emanating from its feeding hole as it fell to the ground behind her, violently twisting its segmented body as it tried to pull the sharp wood out of its body with its short legs, not able to do so.

The Hive queen appeared, repeatedly stinging the now exposed underbelly of the predator, her stinger penetrating deeply and piercing its internal organs. The young daughter got up off the ground and helped her Hive queen by pulling the sharp wood out of the predator’s body and then sticking it back in it repeatedly.

Soon, the predator was barely moving as it leaked ichor from dozens of wounds, and the young daughter took the stick and stabbed it into the feeding hole of the predator, penetrating its brain pan and finally killing it. It was the first time her race was able to kill a predator, and it changed the course of their history forever. The predators had almost driven her race into extinction, and now there were less than a dozen Hives left, when there were once thousands.

The Hive Queen had the worker drones find other pieces of wood and sharpen them into points by rubbing them against rocks. The Hive started stockpiling them by the entrances to defend against invasion by the predators, drilling the worker drones on how to use them to pierce the heads of the predators as they entered the small, narrow confines of the tunnels in search of prey.

Lunar cycles passed, and many rotting predator corpses littered the ground around the entrances to the Hive. They stopped coming to the Hive, leery of the predator graveyard filled with their dead brethren. The young daughter started going into the jungle to lure them onto the open grassland, where the hiding Hive queen and worker drones would ambush and kill them.

More lunar cycles passed, and now there were no more predators in the surrounding jungles, allowing the worker drones to access the bountiful food supplies that grew in them and support many new larvae, increasing the size of the Hive.

With her Hive queen’s blessing, the young daughter left in search of other Hives, journeying across vast distances with a small army of worker drones and killing any predators they came across. She found the first Hive many solar days away, and it was under attack by four predators that had entered the Hive and were feasting on the larvae, the resident Hive queen and daughters already dead and half consumed. She killed them with her worker drone army and took the surviving drones of that Hive with her, along with the forty-six larvae that remained.

She continued her search, coming across two Hives near each that formed an alliance by sharing the meager food resources they had and donating larvae to replenish each other’s numbers when they were attacked by the predators. She taught them how to make sharp sticks and showed them how to defend their Hives when the predators entered them. She also showed them how to lure them into the open and ambush them, doing it several times with her drone army until she was sure they understood how to do it.

She stayed with them for a time, watching with pride as the two Hives reclaimed their territories and slaughtered every predator they could find. One of the Hive queens had thought well, and she used a shard of volcanic glass to cut up the chitin armor and add it to her body, protecting her from the potential bites of the predators as she lured them into ambushes. Soon, both Hive queens and their daughters were adorned with predator armor.

The young daughter left those two Hives, leaving behind her knowledge and the larvae she saved from the other Hive. She was now clad in predator armor and was gifted with twenty worker drones from each of the Hives as thanks for teaching them. She resumed her journey, and her army of worker drones had grown to eighty-two.

She traveled for another two solar cycles, growing into adulthood and leading an army of over 1,000 worker drones that were armored with predator chitin and sticks that had sharp points of volcanic glass tied to the tips. She had cleansed the large island that her race inhabited, and there were no more predators to eat them and their larvae.

She returned to her Hive, and her Hive queen welcomed her back, flying into the air to embrace her when she saw her long-lost daughter return. She showed her how to become a Hive queen and access her genetic memory, and she was there when her daughter laid her first eggs. They ruled together for many solar cycles and became the largest and most powerful Hive as others incorporated with them, eventually bringing the entire island under their peaceful rule.

Many solar cycles later, new animals came to the island on large structures of wood that floated on the water and invaded the Hives. They brought with them terrible things of destruction and destroyed many Hives along the coast. The Hive queen, now the first Hive mother, once again led an army to save her race. They suffered horrendous losses against the new animals that could control fire and kill with sticks from a distance. The only weapon the Hive mother had was numbers, and they would swarm the animals, losing a hundred drones for every animal they killed.

Eventually, they killed all the animals at great cost in drones and Hives. The Hive mother had her daughters learn how to make the animal sticks that killed from a distance, and they dragged the wood structure onto land and took it apart, learning how it was made by putting it back again. They learned the secret of fire, and they spent the next twenty solar cycles building many wooden hives and sticks that killed from a distance.

The Hive mother, now ancient in years and near death, watched as her daughters set off in thousands of wooden hives that floated on the water with tens of thousands of drones and larvae. She died on that beach as her daughters disappeared over the horizon, bringing war to the animals.

The memories ended there, and another ancestor entered her mind, showing her life memory hundreds of solar cycles later. She was a Hive mother, and she was hunting down the last of the animals in their former territory. The animals were on the verge of extinction, and the last remnants of their race were hiding in the caves of the mountain they had fled to.

The Hive mother had a massive army of drones around her, and they were firing metal balls from cannons that spat fire and smoke as the metal balls entered the caves, killing the animals within. There were thousands of drones climbing up the mountain, wearing chainmail and boiled animal skins, and wielding long sticks of metal that they used to kill the animals.

The drones entered the caves, slaughtering all the animals that they came across, and by the next solar day, the last of the animals were killed. Her race was now the only intelligent species on the planet. The Hive mother was shocked at the revelation that there was another apex animal species on their world, and that they had killed them all. Animals and predators have always tried to kill them, it seemed. She was right to swarm and try to eradicate all the animals near her Hives; she must ensure that her daughters inherit an empire with no animals around it. They all have to die.

The Hive mother continued to see the memories of her ancestors as they stirred within and added their stories and memories through the ages. She saw her race conquer their birth world, building massive Hives and changing the surface of the planet as they continued to expand and advance over many millennia. She saw the first Hives go into space to colonize a nearby planet. She was there when a Hive mother discovered how to build an engine that could transport them to other solar systems. She watched as they expanded across star systems and built more Hives on alien planets.

It was a time of greatness and peace as dozens of Hive worlds all coexisted for the benefit of their race. She found herself lost in the memories of her ancestors, and she wished she could stay there.

She was torn from her peaceful meditation as a part of her went dead, and she returned to her body in the brooding chamber. She felt less than whole and panicked, calling out to her daughters in worry. Only nine answered her. She called out again, putting all her mental power into the call, dreading the truth that she knew in her soul was true.

Only nine answered again, their worry for their Hive mother evident in their thoughts. There was a void where her daughter, who was in the secondary builder world, had filled. The other one that was there was still in her place, but not answering. Alarmed, she entered the thoughts of the only commander drone that she could access there, and what she saw rendered her senseless.

The animals were there, and the thoughts of the commander drone confirmed her worst fear. Her daughter was dead in the Hive, and the other one was on the surface in a Hive ship with no way to escape; she would be destroyed by the animals before reaching orbit. She was ripped from the commander's mind as its ship was destroyed, and she was once again in her own body, reeling from shock.

She tried to enter another drone, but that one died soon after she entered it. She entered another drone and watched in horror as her still living daughter tried to escape by using the null drive on the moon, and her Hive ship disappeared in a cataclysmic explosion.

She watched as the moon broke apart, and she left the drone’s mind before it died, seeing the huge piece of the moon’s crust that was heading directly for the ship it was on. She stood in stunned silence, ignoring the thoughts of her remaining daughters as she mourned for the two daughters she just lost.

She kissed them with her tongue as eggs, and she watched them turn into larvae. She communed with them as they pupated, knowing their thoughts before they did. She remembered waiting patiently as they struggled to break out of their pupae, hoping that they were both strong enough to do so and sparing her from the sorrow of having to cull them. She remembered taking their hands and helping them stand up on weak legs as they entered the world as her new daughters.

The Hive mother's legs gave out beneath her, and she fell to the rough floor of the brooding chamber, her soul wracked with anguish as she grieved for her dead daughters.