Chapter 2: Chapter 1 - To absorb as many lives as he can.

Floating in a place too close to the planet to be called 'deep space' but far enough that it couldn't really be called 'outer orbit' (shallow space?) there are two shuttles, blipping data signals at eachother. They're hiding in the shadow of a potato-shaped moon, like the peeping toms that they are.

"Take a look, everything else is slop, boiling point of water, dictionary-definitions, etcetera:

Intercepted BroodFactory transmission.ftext

Pre-digestion Protocol, engaged.

Broodmothers Deposited: 15

Group Composition: 'Basic Standard - Resource Gathering'

6 Broodmothers Compromised during Impact, One Leader-Class Broodmother Compromised,

activating Supplementary Leadership Node.

Your Directive: Feed, Breed, Build, Pacify the enemy population

Success; Estimated time of planetary assimilation: 14 cycles

Success; Estimated time of planetary depletion: 72 cycles

Failure; Estimated time of planetary assimilation: ??? cycles

Failure; Estimated time of planetary depletion: ??? cycles

Likelihood of Failure: 0.8%

Extraction Assessment: 12,199,354,221,231 bushels. More information here

Enemy Population: Civilisation Level 0.12 -proceed with 'minimum caution'- More information here

Exceptional speed of resource-provision will be rewarded with elevation.

B- Location: 22°N 122°W

B1 – Leader – Status: Functional

B2 – Engineer - Status: Functional

B3 – Gatherer- Status: Compromised

B4 – Warrior- Status: Compromised

B5 – Honeypot- Status: Functional

C- Location: 17°S 32°E

C1 – Leader – Status: Functional

C2 – Engineer – Status: Functional

C3 – Gatherer – Status: Functional

C4 – Warrior – Status: Compromised

C5 – Honeypot – Status: Compromised

D- Location: 4°N 150°E – Intra-atmospheric Collision Detected ; Location: Unknown ; Reason: Unknown

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

D1 – Leader- Status: Compromised

D2 – Engineer – Status: Functional - Supplementary Leadership -

D3 – Gatherer – Status: Functional

D4 – Warrior – Status: Functional

D5 – Honeypot – Status: Compromised

-Intercepted BroodFactory transmission end-"

"So, we glass the planet, no?"

"It's... Kyros. We're supposed to stay off, so are they, what the hell is the procedure for this?"

--

The family gathered around the fifth egg, Wings prodded it with a claw. Arms hummed a “What do we do?” and Leader began to speak. 'Eat. We have work to do.' The three began looking at eachother, Wings’ eyes darted in surprise, Noisemaker observed from the side how Leader, when viewed through the protruding bubble of Wings’ eye, was bent and warped in a strange looking way. Arms’ eyes, in contrast to Wings’, were a collection of small beads that reflected light in rainbow colours like oil, bone plates moved over them, hiding, so that their head looked like a big, craggy block. Leader’s eyes were very beady, almost sunken inside the wet blue flesh of their head, vacant and black. 'I won’t eat family.' Noisemaker said, now looking straight at dead Fifth.

Leader responded, 'Eating it to honour it, keeps it with us, or else those other enemy creatures will eat it, steal it.'

Arms moved forward, hesitant, giving submission pheromones to signify reverence, applied onto the dead family, Wings and Noisemaker concurred and the three began holding the dead one, not willing to rip it apart. 'If we eat it, it’s with us forever' they all agreed.

Arms peeled their head apart from where a great crushing mouth was revealed, opening down to the sternum, a tongue covered in grasping fronds pulled Fifth's head against the tooth-plates. Arms crushed it flat, plumes of goo spilling out.

Two large arms tipped with flat pads pushed out of Noisemaker’s hole-mouth, the worm-man kneeled at the residue, lapping it up. Wings sliced limbs off of the corpse with their cutting beak. In an hour, the three entirely consumed the body.

They sat, basking in Fifth’s scent.

Fleeting smells, comforting and familiar, blown in the wind like dust.

Leader interrupted the moment, 'I’ve been given some information about us.'

Wings chittered “What do you mean?” and Leader explained

'You can spit acid. Arms can shoot their tongue out. Noisemaker can make hard shell material.' Wings waggled their fingerclaws and moved their head around, trying to work out what Leader meant, they opened up their beak and a stream of water-y substance sprayed out, bubbling and fizzing on the ground, mushing dissimilar globules of soil together, leaving a small hole.

Arms slowly let a lengthy rope-like tongue spill out of their mouth. Noisemaker had a moment of realisation. 'What do I look like ?'

Arms announced in a low melody “Your face is a big hole with four stalks covered in feathers. You have two stalks on your neck. You have two eye stalks.” Wings spoke to Arms,“Your face is a big stone with tiny eyes that are hidden by more stones.”

'Wings', Noisemaker told, 'your face is like a stone that splits in two with a jagged mouth, you have two big eyes like bubbles.'

Noisemaker looked at Leader, who had clouds of pheromone wafting around them, command-scents mixing with ‘impatience’ as Leader tapped their foot up and down. ‘Do you want to know what your face looks like ?’ But Leader’s response

‘not particularly’ was a disappointment.

Leader grabbed the two tubes on Noisemaker’s neck and squeezed them like a farmer milking a cow, promptly two jets of white liquid came forth which struck the ground and Leader’s shin. Where the fluid landed formed crystal structures of a spherical habit, like clusters of grapes, decaying from a white colour to something of a brown-ish hue.

‘You’re the builder.’ Leader announced, attempting to pull the material off itself. ‘Arms is the digger, for now. Wings is the collector.’

“Collector?”

‘Your job is to bring us food.’ Wings gave submission pheromones.

“Why me?”

‘You’re the best for collecting.’ Leader expelled a command pheromone, ‘Collect.’ Wings flew into the canopy again. Noisemaker, meanwhile, was enjoying their new ability. They experimented with their material, it could be built into a tall tower but after a while it fell over. If they built a pyramid though, with a wide base… now we’re talking, Noisemaker used their hands to carve the mounds into shapes, poles, spheres, like a kid with batches of play-doh.

‘Dig.’ Arms was already in the process, grumbling.

“Move the eggs first.” And they rolled the eggs off the barren ground onto the green-grass before driving away the earth into channels. Quickly Arms reached more tree-roots. “mmm.” And they used their large shelled arms to punch away the thickest of the wood, which did not submit to blunt force. Noisemaker took notice and, covered in crystals, started pulling at the roots, ‘Use your cutting teeth,’ but Arms only had crushing teeth. ‘Fury’ pheromones entered the air from Arms who cried “oooohm” and punched the root again, their middle-knucke cracked the root away, if just a little.

When Wings returned from the trees, the others were grumpily clearing dirt out in a large circular area, the shared sentiment appeared to be that digging is so difficult and stupid.

Wings spat at a visible root, sizzling it into mush. “ooomh” Arms released more ‘Fury’ into the air. Wings responded in kind and stood up on their stilt-legs to tower over Arms, buzzing fervently. Leader stood at a fifth of Wings’ height and a twentieth of Arms’ weight, ‘STOP.’ The two backed down, still coated in ‘fury’ but without an outlet for their choleric impulses. Noisemaker, in the meantime, had found that when the crystals harden they fuse into one structure, homogenous, the engineer made something like a huge, dull caltrop and rolled it around, apathetic to their siblings' grievances.

Ignoring the fruits given to them, they chewed instead on mineral-rich eggshells, the one that Arms had not yet eaten, they saw it before them, their master project, the hive, the nest, the fortress. Directive or no directive, creative impulses felt so good.