A young Lady's Journey to become a Hive-Queen

“What the fuck is that thing?!”

- Random civilian during the defence of the New Savannah undercity

Understood. Prepare for arrival.

There was a long moment of nothing and I saw my point count plummet. I was just about to ask Kaysa what went wrong when something big appeared in front of me and right over the flood of aliens still trying to get through our defences.

The something turned out to be an egg the size of a train car and with a deep thump it crushed a good chunk of the aliens in front of us, shaking the ground and knocking me off my feet.

Before I even managed to scramble back to my feet there was a loud crack, then another, before the shell burst apart in a flurry of shrapnel that was blocked by a Hard-Light construct from my Pristine Fortress, probably thanks to Kaysa.

A deep and rumbling growl rang out as the Delta class Mark IX Progenitor Najav unfolded itself from the confines of its egg, long limbs thrashing about and crushing the antithesis surrounding it to paste.

When I finally had a moment to get a good look at my newest toy, my jaw dropped.

It was a Scorpion alright, or at least Scorpion shaped. Our new friend was the size of one of those large mobile basis PMC’s used to keep track of things, as long as it kept all its limbs close, and limbs it had a lot of. Two ginormous pincers the size of trucks, easily taking up a third of its general size and big enough to grasp a tank and cut it in two. It had six legs, giant things, with long-ish feet like things, similar to earth insects, made to distribute the probably ridiculous weight of the damn thing.

At the other end of the Najav were three tails, although instead of scorpion tails that would curl over the body these ones were more like thick lizard tails with mean looking blades at the end. It also had two… I didn’t really want to call them arms with hands on top of the pincer arms, but they were obviously for gripping stuff.

Its skin was a weird mix between chitinous carapace, metallic reinforcements and cybernetic armor, scales and some strange fur on some parts of it. Embedded in its outer shell were various different emitters and other things, while weapon emplacements could be found all over the body. One of the pincers had an integrated heavy machine gun that looked to be a combination of Jenna’s Legion tech as well as Chloe’s weaponry, although I was pretty certain that on their own they couldn’t piece this thing together.

The underside hid two large slits, one on each side, probably the hatchery and the sentinel factory. Would need to get a closer look later.

Its movements were eerily silent with just a hint of mechanical noise to it, I would have thought that something this size would be much louder, but somehow it wasn’t. The steps were definitely audible, but not the ground shaking and deafening kind.

Once it had unfurled itself from its egg it seemed to go through an entire check of its new body, connected to my implant, and then turned to look at us, weird gripping arms resting on the inside of its pincers above the face, if one would want to call it that. It had a giant maw with smaller spider-like appendages, twelve eyes although I wasn’t quite sure why it needed so many, considering that the pincers were blocking most of its field of vision, and pretty heavy looking armor around its face and pincers. Made sense I supposed.

Just looking at it gave me shivers and I couldn’t stop my manic grin at the sight of this majestic beast.

“What the…” Chloe muttered, similarly shell-shocked.

Then it stomped the ground, turned around with a long swish of its tails, before it rammed its massive pincers into the ground and started to rush through the alien horde in front of it, smashing them apart at a speed that nothing this size should move at.

It will take some time for it to finish growing, although it can already start on Hexclaw Production. To achieve that I had to make some concessions elsewhere, so don’t expect it to perform at its best yet.

I honestly couldn’t have cared less. This thing was fucking awesome.

Then I mentally slapped myself out of my stupor, this wasn’t the time to sit around and watch the action! Raising an arm, I squashed an enterprising model Four that was trying to sneak up on us.

“Chloe, deactivate the lure, the Najav can deal with things for now. Blitzer, where do you need our help?” I spoke in my Virtual realm, my body too busy fighting off the smaller aliens still in front of us.

I just barely evaded the projectile of what I thought was a model Nine-S and flung a Lance into its general direction in response. There was no way for me to confirm if I hit it or not, nor the time to send any of my Hatchlings to check up on it, so I simply marked it on the map with a danger marker.

“Uhm, like, everywhere? We have hotspots popping up all around the undercity. It’s like there are stealth hives hidden all over the place!”

He sounded a bit panicked and I couldn’t blame him.

“Fuck! We need to deal with this Hive now! Kaysa? Anything the Najav could do? Doubt we can get in ourselves to plant a bomb!”

Indeed. For the time being I can take control of your Hexclaws to more efficiently deal with the antithesis; between the Progenitor Najav and the Devouring Roses you have a very solid combat force. Theoretically the Najav could burn out the Hive all by itself, once the majority of the flood is dealt with, but it will take some time for it to burrow its way to it. At least if you want to limit collateral damage.

“Good idea, get to it. Blitzer, can you update the map in the conference hall so we can coordinate from there?”

Blitzer, or maybe his AI, was quick on the uptake, the moment I handed out invite permissions several more connections came in, dozens of people from the undercity he probably knew and organised things with. I didn’t even have time to invite Omega and the contacts Cassiopaia had given me before someone else beat me to the punch.

Private rooms started to pop up in my communications suite, different information packages were sent around, people got organised in smaller groups, and soon my inner eye was watching a beehive worth of network activity.

Not wasting any time I sent my Hexclaws out in every direction, hoping to get some more reliable information as the local network buckled under the sudden slew of data requests. Kaysa took over control pretty much the moment I made intentions clear, freeing me up to take care of the next issue.

At the same time I called Shrapnel and pulled his call into a separate room to have some privacy. Waiting for him to pick up I quickly checked the map, marked my destination and took off at a dead sprint, leaving the Najav to deal with the remainder of the horde behind us.

Chloe and Jenna were also ready to head out, and I paid careful attention to their selected destinations.

A small warning in the datastream running through my Virtual realm informed me that more distance to the Najav and the Roses would heavily diminish the points I would earn from them, but I ignored it.

Not only couldn’t I change anything about it right now, I also had too many things vying for my attention. Even with basically having two minds I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with everything at once.

With a quick thought I shot off a mental note to Kaysa that that would need to be remedied once I get my body mods.

Before I could jump on the next issue, Shrapnel finally picked up. I pushed that call to my physical body, unable to deal with it in the virtual realm, and focused back on organising people, as more and more connections popped up.

“Wha…. Princess? What is it?” Shrapnel sounded half-asleep. Probably ripped him out of a nap or something.

Well, tough luck. I could apologise later.

“We have a giant breach of xenos in the undercity! Tried to bust a hive but there seems to be a much bigger network of stealth hives all around. Can you get down here, please?!”

That sobered him up real quick, “What?! How many are there? Where are you?”

“No clue and below the entrance in the redlight district. I have Chloe and Jenna with me, and Blitzer does what he can, but we are overwhelmed. I’ll pull you into the network, then you can organise with our AI’s. Can you get the others?”

“I’ll wake them now. Be there soon.”

We closed the call without any more wasted words and I focused back on the task at hand.

Before I had time to invite him and his group to the network someone else did it for me, a quick ping from Blitzer’s AI indicating that they would take care of it, since they already organised the majority of the communications.

Happy to have a load off my mind I left them to it and looked over the map again, to ensure I didn’t take a wrong turn.

The previously serene map was rapidly filling with information, points of importance, population centers, whatever passed for weapon and supply lines down here, White Dove clinics, gang organised defences, and a steadily increasing collection of orange and red blobs denoting xeno presence.

Not even five minutes after everything started and I could already see that we had lost four groups. Mentally cursing our luck I ignored it for the moment, wouldn’t help to mourn them right now, we had to make sure the rest would survive.

My destination was switched at least twice in less than a minute, before it landed on a population center next to a giant red blob marked ‘Top Priority’. I was the closest Samurai and from the indicators on the map it seemed like they were very sparsely defended, even by undercity standards. Not that I thought I would be able to accomplish much, considering the giant red blob next to it.

On the plus side my points were back at around two thousand and climbing steadily, even with the diminishing returns from the distance.

After the second wrong turn Kaysa put a few display windows in my normal vision: A small map, the status of important targets, a GPS module that overlaid with my vision and showed me the quickest way to my destination, and a small status summary for Jenna, Chloe, and Blitzer.

Drawing on every last bit of strength I increased my speed and within two minutes I came into line of sight of my target.

The xenos had come up from an old sewage cleaning facility that was long since abandoned. Trash and junk piles surrounded it, old abandoned and half-salvaged cars and trucks to one side, a variable collection of metallic debris on the other. Next to the plant was what I would call a scavenger town, a collection of containers and tin homes barely holding together used by those who searched through the trash nearby.

It was on the edge of Sweeping Dragon Territory according to the map, and they had a small contingent of people here, although by far not enough to weather the storm. The defenders had taken position behind makeshift barriers, flimsy walls and trashed cars and were desperately fighting off a wave of xenos coming out from the abandoned sewage cleaning facility.

Taking a couple deep breaths I looked around real quick to find the least defended part of the wall they had put together. From the looks of things they were already busy evacuating people and I saw a constant stream of civilians head towards a small outpost a bit deeper into Sweeping Dragon turf.

When I finally caught enough of a breath to continue moving I headed over to the front lines where a couple of people in misfitting armor and old, well used weapons tried their best to keep the horde at bay. Some seemed to have Samurai grade rifles, which was the only reason they hadn’t been overrun yet.

Not wasting any time I raised my arm and started to fire into the horde of xenos, trying my best to hit the bigger units first. It didn’t take long though for me to realise that that was all but useless. For every bigger model I sniped, five smaller ones made their way closer.

Instead I started swinging with big sweeping motions with a variable blade, cutting down the leading mass of xenos before they could cross the street separating the scavenger town and the junkyard.

“This won’t work,” I muttered with laboured breath, “I need something to more efficiently defend the area.”

I took a quick glance at my point counter. It sat at over 2700 points, rising steadily. Well, I did just buy a huge fuck off scorpion, but at least it looked like we made some of those points back already. Only bad thing was that the point income had slowed to a trickle, I was now too far away to get any appreciable amount.

An explosion further away caught me off guard for a moment. Only when I checked the map to see what was going did I realise that it most likely came from Chloe’s location. She was facing her own horde of aliens and seemed to be quite effective at it too.

Since I was already at it I checked up on the Najav in my virtual realm, while I continued fighting off any aliens trying to come too close. It had started burrowing down into the ground not long ago and was steadily making its way further down. At the same time the two Devouring Roses I had placed at the entrance to the Hive had burrowed their tentacles deep and were closing in on the center of the Hive.

Not that it looked too much like a Hive. Oh, there was some Hive biology there, sure, but it was much smaller than I would expect even from a small Hive, nevermind the size it should be considering the army of xeno it had unleashed.

I have some options for you. First would of course be another Devouring Rose, but I also have some recommendations for a more mobile force. Which would you prefer?

Just when I was about to ask for another Rose, I stopped and reconsidered for a moment.

“I need something mobile. Fighting off this horde is important, but I need the flexibility to go around and I can’t afford to drop Roses everywhere I go, that’s just not point efficient, especially with the point drop off. Do I have something like Chloe’s fortifications or something? Or maybe drones that can defend shit well and move afterwards? Basically a mobile Rose?”

Of course. Considering that we do not have the time to go over every little detail for the moment, I have put together a list of Hexclaw Units that could help you defend the place. Part of them are defensive units that will be stationary while they hold the line, but are capable of switching locations, while part of it will be a sort of hunting swarm that will flank and clean up any stragglers. Plus additional scouts. How many points would you like to invest?

“As many as I need, but I want around 100 points, probably a few more as emergency funds. Can you work with that?”

Of course.

New purchase: Mark II Hexclaw Siverin Bile Spewer x15!

Points reduced to: 1712

New purchase: Mark III Hexclaw Sabertooth x5!

Points reduced to: 712

New purchase: Mark II Hexclaw Kaimon Scout x20!

Points reduced to: 212

A large number of eggs appeared next to me, all neatly arrayed by size. A moment later they started to crack, revealing three kinds of creatures.

The first were similar to small meerkats, just really alien looking. These things immediately started to run off in every which direction, some even burrowing underneath some rubble, vanishing from sight.

Wherever they went my map was updated, more and more detail filling in the vague blanks. It made it much easier to see what kind of terrain I was working with, not that I had any ideas how to properly use that knowledge.

To my surprise a lot of them also travelled away from the horde in front of me. From their input I could tell that they were going around trying to find any other hidden nests, which I was glad for. Didn’t need any additional surprises.

The next group were five huge cats, easily bigger than a tiger. True to their name they resembled a sort of Sabertooth, and all of them immediately started off to the sides, smashing into the smaller models on the way.

It was quickly apparent what Kaysa had meant by flanking and picking off stragglers. The majority of the horde was coming directly at us, but there was nothing that would prevent them from running off into different directions if they wanted to. Well, until now at least.

My Sabertooths quickly began making sure that any alien that tried to sneak around us was dealt with, making the entire fight a lot less stressful. Oh, it didn’t make it any easier, but knowing that I had something in place that could prevent ambushes already helped.

The last group were my new defenders and by far the strangest looking.

In some ways they reminded me of ants, six legged and with three separate parts to their body, although that was the only similarity. Unlike ants their biggest body part was the one in the middle, thorax? I really didn’t know, nor did I care too much at the moment. Their faces were ugly looking and could shoot some strange acid that immediately started to melt the aliens in front of them. A similar contraption was on top of their big middle part, this one more like an organic turret.

They started to spread out a bit before they burrowed their feet into the ground and bent forwards, achieving the optimal spread for their weird turrets. A wall of acid greeted the next wave of xenos, quickly melting through the front lines.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would buy me some time, time I used to finally catch my breath and quickly check up on the people around and behind me. Some were wounded, although none seemed to be too injured which made me breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe I could manage.