Like Lightning, Part 3: The First Insect Politician

 (Co-written with Steel Komodo)

“Now, normally I’d say this isn’t going to smell very good...except we have two organically challenged and two super attuned to nature types here, so who knows.” Dawn said, and began spraying down Vent, Bernard, and Neeko with the pheromone mix.

Neeko immediately wrinkled her nose in distaste, her skin shimmering and darkening in hue. “Ugh. Stinkbug smell.” Vent made no comment, perhaps having turned off his own sense of smell as a precaution.

“...this is exceptionally strong.” Bernard noted after a bit, rubbing his two primary fingers and thumb under his nose.

“With the species we’re dealing with, better safe than sorry.”

“You get a detail wrong, you will make them think we want to mate with them.” Bernard said.

“A good thing I rarely get details wrong.”

“I will refrain from comment.” Bernard said. Vent, in turn, coughed and looked pensive, but said nothing.

“Would you kindly?” Dawn said, and sprayed Vent some more.

“I’m still a little awed,” Vent commented, “that you managed to obtain this substance. Considering that species’ reputation for aggression, it’s a miracle you came back at all, never mind in one piece.”

“Well, that’s the funny thing.” Dawn said, flicking her head, as a hologram image appeared behind her.

“Provided you’re not overtly invading their territory, immanemque decem milia really aren’t THAT aggressive. Overtly invading, like, say, building colonies on their planets. They just...don’t react well to being attacked. And they consider that sort of action an attack. And like a lot of these types of species, the Tyranids and Zerg to name two, they not only evolve fast, they evolve in response to threats.”

“Didn’t they drop a meteor on Earth?” Vent said.

Neeko, who had already been looking pensively at the warrior bug, suddenly hissed, fins rattling. “They here?! Maash-ka! Invaders! Upset nature!”

“Not here, no. Vent’s referring to the Earth in their dimension. Which they haven’t done yet where we come out. And also, which they never did at all. I’m sure you can figure out why, Vent.”

Vent thought for several seconds.

“Aiming a meteor propelled solely by natural forces across interstellar ranges so that it strikes a moving target like a planet requires calculation on an immense scale, which, even if this species is exceptionally intelligent, would be nigh impossible to do without immense computational power.”

“No offense to them, they’re quite a formidable bunch, but the odds of them having knocked a meteor across who knows how many miles of space just via ground to orbital based plasma projection so that it flies across the stars and hits a planet they don’t like...I think we’d see the same odds as air spontaneously transforming into gold.” Dawn said.

“Great. So why are we visiting them then?” Bernard said. “I mean, I can tell why Joy didn’t come along. She’s far too trigger happy.”

“And she’s busy with another mission anyway.” Dawn said. “No, this is more line drawing to find Oovi-Kat travel.”

“...Again, I fail to see why this requires us to go down and say hello to their faces. Even IF we’re overloaded with their scent, they’re going to pick up SOMETHING being wrong.” Bernard said.

“This is not a fight I want to pick.” Dawn said, waving a hand, as the viewpoint of the hologram switched from the warrior Klendathu species to a recording of...well, a rather disastrous battle between them and what appeared to be humans. The humans had guns, lots of them, but the insects had numbers and utter fearlessness. The results were...unpleasant. “I wouldn’t want to pick it even if I had most of the Kobbers at my back. This is a no offense mission. Worst result, we teleport out and establish what we can from a much greater distance.”

“Will you please stop answering without answering?”

“My thoughts exactly,” added Vent. “Mother, you have a very bad habit of dancing around a subject. Far be it for me to criticize, of course - I suspect it’s a family trait. But for the benefit of everyone here, it would really be better if you just told us what was on your mind.”

Dawn was about to reply when she put a hand to the side of her head.

“Doorbell. Neeko, can you go get it?”

“On way!” Apparently unconcerned that she smelled of rancid alien bug, Neeko dashed out of the room on all fours.

“...Mother, even if there was a doorbell, and even if it was for Neeko, she has no idea where the front door equivalent is. Why did you not want her here?”

Dawn told them.

A few minutes later, the intercom came on.

“Neeko, it was an error, sorry. No doorbell. You can come back.”

When Neeko returned, she looked a little perplexed, but made no comment. Dawn had switched the picture.

“All right. Rough plan. This species has a hive mind, which is directed by these rather large ladies. We go down, we hopefully make our way to it, and I hopefully communicate with it while you nature types try and make sure the many brain bug aids don't become cross at us. I will negotiate with it, and hopefully we’ll get what we want. I shall become the first insect politician.”

“...Please tell me that’s not the point of this.” Vent said.

“No, that is what you would call a joke and/or a reference.”

Vent shook his head. “I don’t get it, but very well. But I’ll be taking my new belt, just in case. I refuse to go unarmed in the event that something goes wrong.”

“Considering the thematic elements of your new mantle, maybe they’ll actually think you’re one of them.” Bernard said. “If they don’t fall asleep while you equip it anyway.”

---

It was only a few minutes before they left, when Vent was alone in the meeting room, when he remembered just what his mother had been referencing. And with his mind semi-linked to the computers, it quickly procured the clip and played it on the same hologram generator that had been showing the Klendathu diagrams and events.

“Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid, uh... “

“...huh,” was his sole comment on the clip. But it had got him thinking. Was this some kind of code? Mother did like to layer a lot of her implications and ideas in references in things like this. Yet another family trait, it seemed. No wonder people didn’t seem to gel well with them. And the reference itself couldn’t have been mere coincidence…

He decided to store all this in the back of his mind for now. But it was definitely going to be the first question he asked if things didn’t go to plan. For now, he needed to prepare. Pack some essentials, get the new equipment ready...

He pressed a button on his wrist that hadn’t been there before.

“MAIA?” he asked.

“Receiving.”

The voice that came over the other end was female in the vaguest sense. As if someone had taken the concept of a female voice and fed it into a computer, with this being the result. If it was text to speech, it was very good text to speech. The kind where you wouldn’t know unless they came to a difficult word such as ‘extensive’ or ‘Nietzche’ and stumbled over it the same way a sewing machine gets snagged on the cloth. It came out, tinny and faint, from a speaker in the device that was wrapped around Vent’s wrist.

The Mark II Sifter had come a long way.

“Are all relays working?” he asked.

“Confirmed. All communication, recording and transmission relays are at 100% operational capacity.”

“Record the next set of destination coordinates I provide. And prepare Rider Model RH-01 for launch on my command.”

“Confirmed.”

Vent switched the device off and went to the business of preparing for the trip.

---

-Planet P Venta Monis-
Vent had read somewhere that there was a certain way to deal with a gorilla.

A gorilla would put forth an act of great aggression, stomping around, bearing its teeth, pounding on its chest, and finally charging. The trick to try and defuse hostilities (provided you weren’t already doing something hostile already) was to stand your ground. They’d break off and sort of putter away. Running, it was said, would get you a buttfull of gorilla teeth. And if you fought back, well, the average gorilla was about nine times stronger than the average man, so, good luck if you wanted to get in a fistfight.

Even so, when the masses emerged from beneath the rocky cliffs and charged, Dawn still took the precaution of spraying fresh pheromone.

Of course, the actuality of the bugs stopping was only mildly comforting. Because now they were surrounded on all sides by hundreds if not thousands of insect aliens, each three or four times the size of each of them, and while the bugs were no longer in INTRUDER DESTROY mode, they were clearly aggravated and confused, one of their senses going ‘All clear’ while the other was going ‘Not correct’.

“Dawn, whatever you plan on doing, do it fast, these are not the types of creatures to think killing ‘their own’ is anything bad.” Bernard said.

“I am. Let me do the ‘talking’. Neeko, don’t turn into one, it will be counterproductive. Vent, I don’t want to tell you to take your hand off your belt, but you’re still working that out and I don’t want you transforming by accident. The last thing we need right now is a bunch of flashing lights and sounds.” Dawn had produced what appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, some high tech turkey basters. She squeezed the bladder of one, a fine mist spraying from it.

Much to her relief, Neeko did not turn into one of the bugs. But that’s because she was staring in mixed awe and fear of them.

“Green Father’s sapling…” she breathed.

Their sho’ma was… well, it would be more accurate to say sho’ma in the singular. It was, to her, like the shared spirit and energies of a hive of ants, but on a massive scale. A perpetual river of thought and experience and memory flowed through each and every one of the jagged, black-and-yellow-striped creatures milling about all around her. It seemed to pool into them from somewhere far off, although she couldn’t be sure. And it was all a chaotic blend of one individual merging into another, uniform in feel yet with distinct tinges of the fiery orange that each Warrior possessed.

She didn’t take any of the precautions that Vent did, like moving one hand to the Progrise Key in his pocket, or whatever Bernard did. She just sat there, eyes wided, too amazed. Any one of them could have scooped her up and snapped her like a matchstick before she comprehended it.

And they darn sure seemed like they were leaning towards that. Above them, other Klendathu bugs buzzed, defying nature as it was generally known even more by being able to take flight. The warriors in front were snapping at Dawn, but her only response was to squeeze another cloud into the air.

It was a staredown except one side had no eyes.

“Okay Neeko. NOW you can turn into one. Be warned, it’s going to be loud.”

Neeko did. And it was.

For a moment, she cringed. A billion voices shouted inside her own head, and she could barely grasp the words but everything was urgent, everything was now. Horrible recollections of the hissing voices of Ghidorah flooded through her, and the panic-terror rose in the pit of her stomach. And the spindly legs she’d suddenly acquired now had to deal with carrying the bulky, triangular body - Neeko could normally adapt on the fly, but the shock of the voices meant she staggered on sticks trying to hold up a bag of flour…

But she’d turned into things like ants and wasps before. She understood how that went. So she breathed in, letting the shouting carry on and on, letting it run until it faded into nothing more than an annoying buzz. The buzz that said there was work to be done, patch this hole, tend to this fungus, clean up this patch of dirt, the young need feeding…

The new warrior bug stood upright, indistinguishable from the rest.

Turns out, Dawn meant another kind of noise.

Because the reaction Neeko was having inside her head was mirrored by the masses around her. A strange mix of the aliens’ version of ‘HOLY SHIT!” “HOW?!” and “BLASPHEMY!”, though only Neeko and Bernard could really suss out those details. Pointed legs scraped sand and rock, massive jaws snapped together, but the movement was the strangest. Instead of closing in they sort of...backed away, spreading out more. Like Neeko was possibly some sort of infection.

Dawn never wavered. Why would she? She had no heart, in a sense. As another robot once said, if you have no soul, you have no fear.

“I’d like to point out you strike me as more alien than them, Miss Cosineau.” Bernard finally said.

“It is what it is.” Dawn spritzed the air again.

And after a little regathering and some more snapping, the Klendathu parted.

“Okay Neeko, you can turn back. If you want to turn again, I’ll leave it to your discretion.”

“So they...accepted your argument?” Bernard said.

“More or less. But they’re going to be on a hair trigger, so do your best not to make any sudden moves. They’re doing us, in many ways, an immense, one of a kind service. We’re going to go talk to their mind.

“And it might just decide we should all be killed anyway, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

---

The upper nest was...oddly airy.

Which made sense when Vent saw a massive beetle like bug crawling past them in another tunnel. Dawn noted his gaze, and said it was what would be dubbed a ‘Tanker’, the bug’s equivalent of ranged attackers, capable of spewing an immensely volatile, both in corrosive and conduction senses, chemical from a firing tube on their heads.

The warrior bugs had not been idle though. Even now, they pressed in on all sides, growling and snapping. Dawn had to stop every five minutes to spray more pheromone.

“They really, REALLY don’t like us being here.” Bernard said.

“Would you allow a parasite to take a tour inside your body?” Dawn said.

“...It would depend on how well I could talk to it.”

“Neeko never ask that before. Sho’ma too small, usually.”

“There ARE beneficial parasites. The problem is sussing them out. You meats have lots of issues installing ‘new programs’, after all.”

The room was opening up.

The Tanker they’d seen passing by suddenly made sense: they were positioned in holes high up, their heads tilted downward and their intent clear. If the masses of warrior bugs on the ground floor didn’t rip them to pieces if they decided to, they’d be blasted from above. Of course, between the Sifter and Dawn’s machine reflexes, they’d probably be gone long before anything got them. Unless for some reason Dawn changed her tune and told them to fight. But she probably wouldn’t do that.

Probably.

2 out of 10 chance, Vent estimated.

The reason for such heavy defense became crystal clear when the ‘brain’ did.

Some leader-castes in insectile hives were superior specimens: a queen bee came to mind. In others, they were helpless and needed the hive to keep them alive. The Brain Bug was the latter category, so grossly bulky it couldn’t move on its own, its vestigial legs more ceremonial than anything, the insect needing a mass of cockroach-like dog sized bugs underneath it to actually move it and bring it forward. Its virtually quiescent girth had been clear via the hologram shown, but being there in person was another story. Vent did a quick scan.

Interesting. So fat because of utterly massive caloric expenditure to allow what seemed to be eight brains operating in sync. It needed to be that fat to function if it wasn’t constantly being fed. Energy stores.

Then Vent swore he felt someone poke him in the eye. Did the Brain Bug SENSE he was looking?

“Yes.” Dawn said. “It’s telepathic. I’d stop now.”

“Ugh. It’s in my head too.” Bernard said.

“Only because you’re so attuned to nature. The average human would be aware of a mild headache, at best. But yes, some form of limited telepathy. One way street, however. Going to have to work to communicate.”

Dawn had produced several metal pieces that looked like thimbles, placing them on her fingers before she began to tap them together, in various patterns and incredibly fast, pausing to spray more pheromone. Clicks and smells. It was really the only way to communicate beyond the most obvious basics, all of which would more likely than not prompt a singular response of KILL THE INTRUDER.

And they still weren’t much liked. Neeko was having the same sensations as Bernard. The same piercing, intrusive weight that smothered everything else and shouted down all the other thoughts of the bugs around her. But she’d noticed something that Bernard had not. Something was abnormal about the great mass of colour and memory bearing down on her. In a vague and disused corner was a strange spark, a spark that stood out, a spark she couldn’t understand or identify…

She was still trying to make sense of it when Dawn sprayed her with the pheromone, sending her into a spluttering fit. It was, perhaps, a small mercy she did. Heaven knows what the Brain Bug would have tried to do, if Vent got the mental equivalent of the rolled-up newspaper.

“Sorry. Trying to convey ‘We mean no harm’ is difficult with creatures who only see the world in themselves and everything else, and ‘everything else’ is always ‘going to do harm’. But I got somewhere” Dawn said.

Only Vent actually sensed Dawn using her equivalent of a ‘bag of holding’ to pull out the giant container of…

“Mother, is that-?!”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get-?!”

“Cloned it.”

“From who?”

“Mother.” She meant Sine.

“...I certainly hoped you asked permission.” Bernard’s face was a mask of distaste. Neeko peered around. A bunch of...hamburger? No, too ‘smooth’ and ridged. Actually, it reminded her of...

Brains. It was a mass of brain tissue.

Neeko stared in horror.

“You… make brain? Like making clay?” Her voice was a strained whisper - she was trying not to scream, lest it bring the whole hive down on them.

“Not much more different than a tree making fruit, Neeko.” Dawn was putting the container on the ground, unsnapping several locks to open the top. “Just need the right circumstances.”

“...is not like making fruit at all!” Neeko looked outraged. “Making flesh with magic is bad! Worst kind of magic!”

“Neeko. Mother might be...VERY unconventional. But she wouldn’t do that.” Vent said.

“It is very complicated.” Dawn said. “But it didn’t hurt anyone.”

“I am siding with Neeko here and really don’t appreciate you mucking around in that sort of process, hurt anyone or not.” Bernard said.

“Okay, okay, we’ll discuss this later-”

The spiked proboscis that had emerged while the four were quietly arguing got everyone’s attention as it snapped down, plunging into the mass of brain flesh, the tube of muscle attached to it contracting as it began to suck up the offering.

“But there was no way we were getting anywhere without a bribe.” Dawn said.

“Mother, I doubt that’s a delicacy to them. What’s IN the brains?”

“Knowledge.”

“What KIND of knowledge?”

“Knowledge they’d find useful.”

“The Nine damn you, you PROGRAMMED the tissue?” Bernard said.

“I would have put it on a USB stick but they don’t have computers.” Dawn said. “I didn’t kill anyone or destroy any sort of personality, Bernard, Neeko. It was blank tissue I put raw info on. Stem cells, more or less, if you know what those are. Would you feel like someone had been killed if one of my computers melted down?”

“It’s NOT the same.”

“Apples, oranges, both fruit, not the same either.”

Bernard opened his mouth, but stopped, clearly stumbling on what further point to make, and perhaps whether there WAS any point in making it. They were already in the lion’s den with their heads in its jaws; now it just really mattered if the beast bit down. Bad time to argue about having stuck ones neck out when it was done.

“I think,” mused Vent as he watched what the Brain Bug was up to, “that we should be worried about more important issues right now.” His hand was on the Progrise Key in his pocket again, ready to snap into action the moment things went south. If this plan of Mother’s backfired...

Neeko looked as though she wanted to continue the argument. Her skin was flushing a bright orange and she was baring her fangs. But when one of the Warrior Bugs hissed at her, misinterpreting her snarl, she withdrew them and turned her attention back to the Brain Bug. The sharp glare she threw at Dawn, however, said as much.

We are NOT done talking about this.

Fortunately for Neeko, something promptly turned the aggravation of the sole warrior somewhere else, as the Brain Bug withdrew its feeding...talon? Whatever with a hard snap, and the warriors all began to snarl and growl.

“What did you do?!” Bernard said.

“Nothing sinister.” Dawn was back to clicking her ‘communication thimbles’ rapidly. The Brain Bug withdrew its proboscis back into its body, emitting a low trilling shriek.

“It doesn’t like some of the information I gave it.”

“What did you GIVE it?”

“Advice on how to handle the invasion when it comes-”

The warrior bugs swarmed in, cutting off Dawn from the other three, seizing her and throwing her forward.

“DON’T DO ANYTHING!” Dawn yelled, as the bugs moved to cut Dawn off from possible rescue. “STAY! THERE!”

Vent would have liked to say a lot of things at that moment. He also would have liked to ignore Dawn and actually do something, yanking the Progrise Key out. But when he tried to move forward, the wall of Warrior Bugs stepped forward too and snapped at him, and he had to jump back, the mandibles clacking mere inches from his face.

Yet another genius move from you, Mother. What’s next? Teaching them to build nuclear warheads?

“Your mother is a bad politician.” Bernard had crouched down, wooden weapons beginning to manifest on his hands, arms, shoulders, and knees.

Neeko didn’t say a word. She’d crouched to all fours, tense, seming to sense something that the others couldn’t.

“I’ll be fine.” Dawn said, kneeling in front of the brain bug.

It promptly extended its spiked feeder again and drove it into Dawn’s head.

“MOTHER!”

“Ow,” winced Neeko.

There was a very thick silence.

And then all the warrior bugs recoiled, the brain bug doing the same, yanking the tendril out, a few sparking pieces of some mechanical something or other coming with it. Dawn waited another two seconds, then stood back up, twitching some as sparks shot from the damage. The bugs were wailing, all in tune, low and pained.

“I told them not to do that. They didn’t listen.”

“What did you DO? If I have to ask that again…!” Bernard said.

“I told them I wasn’t something they could feed on. The brain didn’t believe me and tried. It is now having an existential crisis as it tries to understand the concept of a sapient robot.” Dawn reached up, two of her fingers coming off as they broke down into nanites to repair the damage. “It might take them a little bit to ‘reboot’.”

“What made them DO that?” Bernard said.

“I basically told them that there would be an invasive species and that they would get further in their defenses if they basically took prisoners or just broke their weapons. The people coming are ineffectual fascists who will get millions of their own killed under the mindset these creatures are all malevolent, murderous THINGS. And they don’t shrug off losses like the bugs do. If they get massacred, they’ll get worse and worse until they finally snap and invent planet-cracker technology to kill the bugs, which will snowball into...well, does ‘galactic scale extinction level event’ give any idea? Anyway, they really didn’t like the idea or being given it at all, so they decided to eat my brain to show me what they thought of my knowledge. Except they can’t. Which basically means in their general thinking I’m right, and also something completely outside of every concept they have, so...existential crisis.”

Neeko shook her head, half-admiringly and half-reproachfully. “You scare them real good. Best hope they not be angry after.”

Vent, fists clenched, didn’t say anything.

Fifteen minutes later, Dawn was communicating with the Brain Bug again, first with the clickers and pheromones, and then by walking up and putting her hand on its head. The warriors remained alert, but they seemed a lot more wary and disturbed. Their sho’ma had completely changed, become more...lower?

“They’re basically seeing us as gods, more or less.” Bernard said quietly to Neeko. He was pretty well in tune with her, and sometimes had answers she hadn’t arrived at yet. Now just why she’d wanted him and Neeko to ‘keep the bugs from being cross’ had become clear. With the ideas she’d planted, just her and Vent might still have prompted raw ‘WRONG KILL IT’ fight or flight response. But himself and Neeko? Two beings of flesh along with the impossible thinking tools? It took the crisis and magnified it even more. Dawn had turned the brain bug against the hive, in a sense. By themselves Dawn could have never reached them, but with a network of ‘higher minds’ that could grasp higher concepts but still had a very long way to go to figure out the REALLY advanced ones...

 “Vent, your mother doesn’t want an insect army to command, does she? Because I am concerned she could spin that sort of web if she knew just what to do.” Bernard said.

“I can hear you. No.” Dawn said.

Another ten minutes passed.

“Pardon my irritation, but I must again ask WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS?” Bernard said. Dawn didn’t reply.

“Because she clearly wants something from these insects, but I don’t know what she wants, because she’s just a little too enthused with HOW CLEVER SHE IS-”

It took a moment for Vent to realize that it was his voice. And when he did, he clapped both hands over his face. Some of the Warrior Bugs stared at him - not aggressive, but showing a bemusement at the strange noises the not-Bug was making.

Neeko tutted and wagged a finger. “Naughty!”

Dawn spent another several minutes ‘speaking’ before she turned around.

“Neeko. The reason we came here is that there is an Oovi-Kat here. I think you should be able to find him, or her, now.”

Neeko’s eyes went wide, and her skin started shimmering. For a moment, she looked like a dog that had just witnessed a card trick for the first time.

“Oovi-Kat? Here? How? Neeko sense something strange about brain-bug, but not guess it was Oovi-Kat!”

“That’s because it’s assembled itself into the hive. Finding it without going through all this...would have been a lot harder. I think you can do it now. Just don’t run too far ahead. The Klendathu are somewhat pacified, but that’s fading and I’d rather not push it.”

Neeko was vibrating in an almost Sarah-like fashion. “N-Neeko promise to try!”

“Whatever you’re going to say, just wait for now, Vent. Okay?” Dawn said as Neeko dashed off.

“...it’s that something else you didn’t tell her, isn’t there? That’s why you want me to be quiet.” Vent said. Bernard gave Dawn a dirty look, as if he’d been thinking the same.

“...let’s just follow.”

---

From the upper levels into the depths.

It was hard to tell if being inside the tunnels was worse than being in the upper rooms or not. The outside and upper constructs were just hot and dry. Inside and down was much cooler, but there was a humidity that was impossible to shake off. The air was damp and thick, making breathing an annoyance instead of an automatic response, and moisture collected and dripped from nearly everything. Also, it stank of bugs. Everything seemed designed to confuse the senses.

So Neeko sort of “found” what they were looking for by chance. When one Klendathu scuttled by her, she did a sudden double-take and cried:

“IS HIM!”

“Wait wait wait, don’t go running off!” Dawn produced...what looked like a grenade, tossing it out, the small orb popping into a fresh cloud. The selected-out warrior stopped immediately.

If Dawn had a heart, that would have made it sink. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe…

Then she saw Bernard’s intent gaze, studying, and then looking at Vent and shaking his head.

Neeko did not see that. Neeko was running over to the bug warrior. It turned towards her, perhaps more surprised than anything, as she caught up with it. She shouted something in her native language - a greeting, perhaps, or some other identifying phrase.

It didn’t react.

The smile from Neeko’s face dropped. She said something else, a question.

Still no response.

She tried various other phrases, questioning, then demanding. She waved her hands, stood on her tail and behaved like a baby monkey trying to gain its mother’s attention. Green fire sparked from her hands, sprouts grew around her feet. Faint auras filled the air around her as she tried to get something, anything out of what her senses had told her was one of her own, at last, she’d found one…

But all she did was wear herself out.

She dropped to all fours, panting, her face riddled with the despairing confusion of a lost child. The bug continued to stare at her, with only a twitch of a limb or mandible to indicate it was alive.

“Wh… why?”

Neeko’s voice was small and pathetic, lost in the tunnels.

She reached out. Her sho’ma came forth, and mingled with that of the creature towering over her.

It was there. She could feel it. The vague shape, similar to her own. Once a friend, a playmate, perhaps raised in the same creche. She could remember him as clear as a painting or photograph. Broad-shouldered, tough of scale, hair the colour of wild roses and a smile that could freeze a jaguar. Full of life and laughter and love for the forest around him that rivalled Neeko’s own. A trickster in the making who’d pelted the most dangerous animals with a coconut just to see if he could outrun them.

He’d been there for her when she’d first lost her tail. For when she realized she liked girls and was too terrified to tell her parents. For when a rival tribe had come making war and had tried to break into her nest. In another life, he might have been her mate, although that was probably a stretch.

But he was a pinprick of light against the steaming, teeming chaos of bug.  It shut out everything else, deafened him to the entreaties and pleas of a fellow Oovi-Kat.

He probably didn’t know he was one anymore. He’d come here - how, he didn’t know. He’d seen the bugs, and how they treated those that weren’t their own, and had decided the only way to live amongst the bugs was to be a bug himself. But the days had stretched into weeks, months, maybe longer. No chances to resume his normal shape, to remember what he was. His sho’ma had faded, inch by inch, and inexorable Klendathu had filled in the gaps until…

Neeko didn’t realize she’d started crying until she blinked and felt wetness running down her face. The bug had already lost interest and scurried away to be lost amongst the horde.

Then she gave a banshee wail that echoed off the walls and slumped to the floor of the tunnels, sobbing, tears pouring down. She was vaguely aware of some sort of strong ‘pulse’ in the back of her mind, but it was so far away to her that it might as well have not been there at all. She vaguely felt an arm around her.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Dawn said. That just got another wail.

“Mother…” Vent said. Bernard was doing...something: the warriors hadn’t exactly liked the wail.

“He’s alive. He’s here. Whatever is pulling your people doesn’t seem to affect him. Maybe you couldn’t immediately shock him back to his senses, but this is new territory. It might just take time, Neeko. It’s sad, but not hopeless. And even…” Dawn stopped talking as Vent firmly shook his head. “Don’t lose all hope. If there was no hope at all, I never would have brought you here.”

“This Glorious isn’t going to work in perpetuity, people.” Bernard said. A technique from his world, that was essentially an ‘AOE stun’. He’d seen some negative reactions from the bugs, and decided that this was a bad time for them to stop fearing the ‘gods’. A mild demonstration was enough to make it flare back up, without pushing it over into hostility. “Eventually the apex predator is going to be overridden by ‘protect the nest.’ And I don’t think there’s a pheromone mix for ‘We’re not a danger, just let us leave.’”

“Come on Neeko. We need to go.” A brief look between Dawn and Vent to confirm something. “It will be okay. I know that somehow, it will be okay.”

---
“So you knew that there was an Oovi-Kat here. And that it had been subsumed by the hive.” Vent said. He already knew the answer. She’d told them, after all. But in the actual experience of going through things, he’d forgotten it, until the reality of it had slapped him in the face.

That was over now. The four had left the hive, the bugs melting away as if they couldn’t wait to get away from them once they were back amongst the rocky landscape of Planet P Venta Monis. Bernard, who was more or less carrying Neeko, couldn’t blame them. Intruders were bad, but unknowable via their pool of knowledge THINGS...well, no ant could understand the ray of the sun as the magnifying glass focused it. Just fear it. And get away.

“I had a firm hypothesis. I needed to keep it from attacking us with the rest of the nest, because it would be impossible to tell it apart, and I need to convince the brain bug to sort of ‘unforce’ its connection with it so there was a chance she could wake him up. But I knew there was a good chance it wouldn’t work, based on my observations and evidence. And I didn’t want to tell Neeko because well...I think she would have been hurt even worse than she was if she’d had the hope earlier and had it still snatched away. II looked at the situation and made what I thought was the best choice. Maybe it wasn’t.”

“...and you decided the ‘best choice’ was to grow a cloned sample of your own mother’s brain tissue - with or without consent, I still don’t know - and use it to store possible future events to feed to the bugs?”

“There was other information on there besides that, but yes.  They weren’t going to be agreeable in any other way. And I also took data to keep narrowing down the overall search, so it wasn’t all tragedy and sorrow.”

Vent sighed and massaged his temples.

“Mother… Do you remember what Hong Meiling said to you, on the day Vince took your belt? That you have all of this power and you don’t understand that it has consequences, so you freely use it regardless? Did it ever occur to you that, well… he might have been right? Once again, you’ve overstepped the boundaries of ethics and morality because you needed a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, and you tried to deflect the argument when people pointed that out.”

He produced the Progrise Key from his pocket. The matte black grasshopper glinted against the chartreuse background of the lid.

“I mean, I’m the last person who should judge. I have a satellite positioned above Olympia that beams down giant metal animals which I wear as armour. The phrase “weapon of mass destruction” could not be more appropriate. Never mind the other issues of privacy and surveillance that come in its wake. But I’m not blind to those issues. That’s why I went out of my way to work with Olympia’s ruling bodies. Because the last time I broke boundaries just because I could, I spent years of my life fighting a madman in a bat mask.

“I don’t want to have to do that again.”

He put the key back into his pocket.

“I’m not going to rail on every mistake you make. As a family, we get enough of that. But you and I, Mother… we’re geniuses. Geniuses on a calibre the world can barely comprehend. And unless we learn from our mistakes and reign that genius in… well, it’d be small wonder Joy asked why nobody seems to like you.”

Dawn didn’t answer at first. First she stared ahead at Bernard and Neeko, then glanced back the way we came.

“I’m not really a genius. I’m just standing on the shoulders of some very tall giants. I’m much like that brain bug, in a way. All I can do that’s amazing, I have to take from others. Maybe I overcompensate.

“After all, I’m only human.”

Well, not quite. But that was still the goal.

Despite her claims, she really had no desire to be a politician.

---

The moment they got back to base, Neeko staggered into the locker room. There was too much on her mind at once, and she needed to be alone so she could go through it all.

And then she saw Joy there.

Grief clouded her mind and her vision. She didn’t process Joy as being anything but there and okay at first. So before she could look twice, she’d pounced on her, practically wrapping herself around her and sending them both to the floor in a tumble.

“What in tarnation- Neeko, you alright?!” Joy was more alarmed and surprised by Neeko’s state than the sudden tackle. She’d expected this greeting after she’d been gone for the duration she’d had, but she didn’t expect… well, the frantic sobbing into her shoulder. What had Dawn done this time, she wondered.

It was a struggle for Neeko to get the story out in between sobs that wracked her frame. But through the gasps and blubbering, she managed to tell something of what she’d seen. Of the masses of insects, and the one that had given her the faint spark of hope, only to be dashed like glass to a stone floor. She’d been so close, so close to finding one more, of not being the last of her kind, and fate had crawled over on chitinous legs and laughed mockingly in her face, and she’d hadn’t realized she’d lost so much already and couldn’t bear to face any more of it-

“Neeko.”

She felt arms around her and a hand in her hair. That was new.

“It’s fine, it’s okay, sshh…”

Neeko didn’t realize she liked being scratched on the nape of her neck until now. It sent a tingle through her body that felt like ants doing a line dance along her spine. Despite the sobbing and sniffling, a purr started up in her throat - if you could something that sounded like a congested alligator a purr.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Joy was saying. “Mebbe Dawn can figure somethin’ out. Maybe it needs a bit more hooch than just a passin’ hello. But he ain’t gone. We’ll find a way, an’ I’ll be right there behind you with guns cocked if I gotta be. We’re all here for ya.”

More scratches. The purring got stronger.

“I’m here.”

It took a little longer. More hugs and more pets. But little by little, Neeko began to think past the dark cloud in her head, grasping for whatever light she could.

I’m here.

Yes. Joy was here. The woman who stood firm and didn’t crumble, who bit and barked and spat fire. The woman who’d put a hole right through the chest of Ghidorah, King of Terror, Eater of Planets. The woman who carried on despite the massive scab over her soul and would have used her fingernails and teeth to fight the good fight or any fight she thought good if she had to. And even if that scab couldn’t be properly healed over as Neeko hoped, that didn’t change one thing. Joy was here, and would only leave if dragged by the hair, kicking and screaming.

She was here, no matter what.

The thought shed a little light into Neeko’s mind. She sniffed, and forced a smile.

“Thank,” she managed to croak out.

“Anytime,” came the reply. “Now, would you kindly mind getting off? I was about to-”

Neeko, in the act of disengaging, looked down

In her misery, she’d missed two important details. The first one was that Joy wasn’t wearing anything - she’d been about to step into the shower before Neeko had pounced on her, and now the Oovi-Kat could see… well, far more than enough. Not that it mattered - as she’d told Joy before, Oovi-Kat didn’t mind nakedness. And she might have been able to appreciate what she was seeing very much, had it not been for the second important detail.

That detail being she was soaked in dried blood from head to toe.

“Mirree!” she gasped, alarm flashing through her.

“Oh, don’t worry.” Joy said. “It’s not mine.”

---

And Vent found himself watching the reference his mother had made again. And beyond.

“I'm saying... I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man, and loved it.

But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake.”