The shows of Star Trek, this is what Paramount owns:
Corporate fist of the giant, suited VIP clones.
This poem continues on, praising Decker and his Star Traks,
Created one day at a job where mental stimulation seriously lacks.
M. Meneks ends this silly ode, BorgSpace the spin-off of a parody,
Author searching for a rhyming word, and giving up-o-de.
Dog Days of Summer
Although the room was not overly large, it was more than vast enough to hold a brooding self and four soldiers and five half-grown worker selves and one of the three remaining Not-Born-Of-Self. Brooding self curled around four eggs in the central chair, where she would have a central overview of all actions; four other brooding selves were spread throughout the ship, two with similar sized clutches, the other two between the time of eggs. The brooding self in the chair on the bridge was eldest, not that the term held much relevance.
Four selves directly interfaced with the ship's computers, three workers and a soldier, passively extending the senses of self farther than self could see or taste or hear, even if all forty-eight of self and three Not-Born-Of-Self had been on a planet and strug in a kilometers long linear formation. The remaining two worker selves performed body upkeep, especially important for the brooding self, on the other selves on the bridge.
Self suddenly saw the signature of the ship she had been hunting, had been tasked to hunt by Self when Self had painfully budded the smaller self from the primary Self. Ten eight-limbed, vaguely reptilian beings of gray hide hissed and barked in a primal hunting cry; the rest of born-self throughout the ship simultaneously took up the peal, echoes bouncing from stem to stern. Unfortunately, self was much smaller and weaker than the prey hunted, which meant an ambush would need to be laid, a trap baited so that the nest might know food, even if "food" was not quite the proper term. Self began entering the necessary commands into the ship computer.
Born-self bodies had two primary "hands", but they were crude: a stiff thumb paired with three stubby razor clawed fingers. Although self had trimmed her claws, the hand was just not evolved enough for overly complex tasks. Back when self was still with primary Self, Self had learned of "genetic engineering" and how that would eventually create parts of Self with good hands. Budded self did not know how that task progressed, and would not know until she remerged with primary Self. Until then, components with good hands, such as Not-Born-Of-Self, would need to be brought into the nest.
Brooding self blinked; all of self blinked. The ten self on the bridge halted their tasks as the Not-Born-Of-Self balked at what it was supposed to be doing. That was the problem of those not of Self's genetic lineage: they had different minds which were required to be retrained to fit in with the metaself. The nestlings, like the other two Not-Born-Of-Self on the ship, were much more malleable than the adults. Before assimilation into Self, this particular ship nest contained twenty adults and five nestlings. Initially thirteen adults and three nestlings had died; over time the remaining six adults had been terminated as they proved unsuitable for incorporation into Self. The final adult Not-Born-Of-Self had been the most promising, but now it was resisting self.
Not-Born-Of-Self spoke its gibberish, which self understood even if self could not emulate: "Get out of....get out...out of my mind! I...I...I...I will not submit to you!" It began to push buttons; self read what Not-Born-Of-Self was attempting to do.
Self screamed in rage! Self-destruct would sabotage the nest, would sabotage the grand task! The adult Not-Born-Of-Self was no longer necessary: self had stripped the mind of relevant knowledge long ago and could, if clumsily, run and repair the ship. A soldier self sprung into action, leaping from floor to console, one leg of four slipping on the slick surface. It did not matter because momentum was too great to foil the attack, self leaping onto Not-Born-Of-Self and overtoppling it to the ground. Other soldier selves converged, claws of feet and hunting arms and teeth closing for the kill. And Not-Born-Of-Self had to be thoroughly killed, dismembered and decapitated, or else it might regenerate as swiftly as did Self.
Not-Born-Of-Self was dead, its mental presence of itching individuality removed from the metaawareness. Workers selves on the bridge began to salvage parts from the Not-Born-Of-Self. Organics would be put into the regeneration system reactors and implants either broken down for their elemental components or stored for surgical attachment to additional not-selves assimilated in the future.
Self was completing its trap at the same time, soldiers taking the place of the workers at the consoles. Final computer commands were entered, two brooding self subunits in the engine core finishing self's needs. All that remained was to depress a button.
Brooding self uncurled from around her eggs, leaping lightly down to the floor even as she closed ranks with two soldiers and a worker self to protect the clutch against imaginary dangers. A claw was reached out, eyes of the brooding self just able to focus on the too near touch screen awkwardly placed for born-self selves. A quiet beep chimed as the trap was activated.
Self did have a name; in day-to-day operation it was used about as often as a normal individual would refer to him/her/itself in third person. The name was old, part of a distant memory stretching back when Self had been small and only one, when Self had not even had the current shape of born-self, when Owner, slain by the Bad-Mans, had catered to all desires. Luplup was the designation of Self...Luplup.
*****
Bright "light" hit the current forward-facing sensor grid, spilling to side arrays such was the intensity. In the Einsteinian universe, the one which regulated light to a mere 300,000 kilometers per second, the only indication of the event would be a wave of neutrinos radiating out from a focal point. A transwarp conduit, however, did not function in the universe of Einstein, instead tunneling through the lower levels of subspace to escape the speed-of-light constant. Exotic particles, native only to high-order mathematics and never seen outside subspace, sleeted over Cube #347's sensor array, brightness without photons, static without noise.
{Sensors sees an unusual energy flare, extrapolated to real universe at distance of 23 light years, coordinates as follows....} A stylized representation of the cube was sketched into the dataspaces, a flashing pinpoint roughly located on a line which was bow-port-galactic north of the current direction of travel.
{Analyze,} the command was nebulous, emanating from many minds within hierarchies of command and control, weapons, engineering, as well as subunit #522. The sensor hierarchy began to do so, cataloguing particles and processes, sentient-derived and natural, which might have spawned them. A new pattern of subspace wave modulations impinged upon the sensor array, this one immediately identifiable as artificial. It was a distress call, audio only.
Static. "..llo? Can anyone hear us? W...*static*...eat, we have experienced catastrophic malfunction of ship systems. *static*...have lost propulsion, most of our nav and com arrays, and life support is going fast. Please...*static*...find us by tracking this signal as we have no idea where...*static*...ated. We are a peaceful nomadic people testing a new engine which is based upon observed Xenig principles. Again...*static*...searves are not large and will be gone soon. This *static*....will automatically repeat."
Pieces began to fall into place, a hypothetical scenario outlined. Language was traceable to species #56, Bumixian, an old race of technologically advanced nomads who had left an ancient homeworld after it became inhospitable due to environmental disaster. Through most of recorded Borg history, species #56 clan convoys had eluded the Collective using a mix of guile, speed, and firepower. In the last thousand years few reports of Bumixian contact had been noted, leading to the postulation the species had either died out (unlikely) or retreated in annoyance to intergalactic space beyond the rim.
Assuming the origination of the distress call was confirmed to be species #56 (likelihood increasing despite no visual component to message as cube dropped out of transwarp to positively identify the target vessel's silhouette), then it was conceivable they could have had relations with Mech Species #3, Xenig. Xenig employed highly advanced drives which drew energy from a zero-point field array, and were capable of near instantaneous transportation to any prerecorded "energetic address", a kink in the fabric of reality. The Borg, and no other species for that matter, had found the key to duplicating this holy grail of faster-than-light movement; and the Xenig, unassimilatable at this time, weren't offering free samples. If species #56, quite susceptible to nanoprobes, had indeed managed to duplicate the feat, then the Borg would be on the cusp of technological advancement akin to a civilization leaping from the horse to warp drive in less than a year. In comparison, quantum slip-stream looked like a Yugo with a three-legged hamster under the hood.
{You know,} offered a pessimistic Second as his assigned subhierarchy weighed cons, this whole situation seems a little too convenient. {A damaged ship with a prototype drive appearing directly in our path just as we happen by this region of space is so...suspicious. Damn suspicious. We never get lucky breaks.}
{Sensors reports the particle combinations which hit our sensor grid have a 87% probability of originating from a malfunctioning Xenig-type drive during translation back to normal space. However, it must be noted there is very little direct observation of Mech Species #3 technology, and probability estimate falls in confidence interval of plus or minus 10%.}
Captain: {We will advance and examine the ship. If all is as it seems, then...}
<< We will assimilate technological distinctiveness to service us. Cube #347: priority command to secure species #56 vessel at all costs. >> The rolling voice of the Greater Consciousness blew through the minds and dataspaces of Cube #347, overturning infant consensus with barely suppressed eagerness for the technology. The Greater Consciousness did not care how the task was accomplished, only that it was done with minimum of wasted time. Captain grumbled even as he began procedures for containment and dissection of the target; the presence of subunit #522 on board was like having the Greater Consciousness staring over a shoulder, instead located at a more comfortable arm's length. It was beginning to cramp the sub-collective's dubious style of simple survival.
*****
Worker selves placed piles of jellied goo throughout the ship, concentrating them in quarters, bridge, and engineering. Each semi-clear conical mound of quivering jello contained enough degraded DNA to identify it as belonging to the Not-Born-Of-Self species. As a final touch, fabrics called clothes were tossed on the oozing masses.
Meanwhile, brooding selves and soldier selves retreated to hiding dens self had prepared earlier, carefully transporting eggs nearing their hatching time. The two nestling Not-Born-Of-Self, both only slightly taller than a born-self, helped, dexterous fingers enter commands to the computer so the ruse might be complete. The bait had to appear innocent, inviting, else closing jaws and claws of the trap would not catch the Bad-Mans in their cube ship.
Self noted the Bad-Mans ship would shortly enter the sensor range where it would be able to precisely count living things. No living things must be seen. Self drew the rest of herself to the hiding dens, connected to the outside only through passive ship sensors.
*****
{Tractored. Lower shields.}
{No fair, I should have tractor beam control! And it has not been proven the ship is harmless.}
{Lower the shields, Weapons! Sensors, any change in vessel status?}
Weapons whined, {The tractors are mine! Mine! Mine!}
{Negative. Sensors sees a ship with no lifesigns, although environmental controls continue working in a limited fashion.}
{See?? Now lower the shields! I need to bring the ship in closer for a proper dissection.}
{No fair! And you get to use my cutting beams too!}
Weapons had held his position for twenty-seven years; Delta had spent many of those same years as chosen hierarchy head for engineering. From day one neither had particularly gotten along well with each other, the bane of existence for many a Captain and Second. Today was no different. True, weapon hierarchy normally controlled tractors and cutting beams, but in this case, both were needed by engineering to begin technological sampling procedures.
{Weapons, stand down and cooperate. Delta, take control of the systems you need.} Pause. {Weapons and Assimilation, prepare standard assault force; Second, coordinate to include two from command and control. Delta, ready secondary team to begin internal examination and subsequent dismantling of the species #56 ship.} Neither drone maintenance nor sensory hierarchies were immediately necessary at this point, beyond the latter continuing overwatch. Subunit #522...well...Captain did not wish to contemplate the sheer uselessness of subunit #522 in the greater scheme of things.
The vessel, "Voidmiester" as sloppily painted on the hull by the former owners, was typical of long-range scout ships associated with species #56 convoys. The body of Voidmiester was an octagonal shaft, abruptly terminating at one end as a flat face, the other smoothly tapering to a sharp nose. No exterior windows were present. Two double rows of "strip" nacelles were located on dorsal and ventral surfaces. To either side of the main body, stubby wings extended; the wings did not convey an aerodynamic status, but rather served as focal points for a massively robust shield system. Crew of the ship class typically ranged from twenty to thirty beings drawn from two or more breeding subclans. Incongruously, Voidmiester was painted a rather garish color scheme of pink and yellow.
{Target secured. Beginning exterior sampling protocols.}
{Good,} said Captain. {Primary assault team, beam to vessel.}
{Gross me out! Bring in the Kleenex! Someone sneezed a mighty blast and they didn't clean up their loogies!} complained 26 of 133, drone maintenance. After securing Voidmiester from nonexistent resistance, the drone had been dispatched from Cube #347 to examine the occasional piles of mucus-like goo. He held some of the sticky, stringy substance in one hand while waving the other hand, Borg equivalent of a tricorder embedded deep in the flesh, over it. 26 of 133 internalized the findings. {DNA profile matches that of species #56, although the...being...is too degraded to determine further details. Preliminary analysis of biological compounds and elements suggests the goo represents one adult Bumixian. The articles of clothing found with the snot include two shirts and three socks; I will not hazard a guess about the odd assortment of laundry beyond reporting presence. Can I go back to the cube now and wash this crud off my hand?}
{Not yet, good boy. Continue analyzing other goo piles for more complete DNA fragments,} returned Doctor. Captain turned his immediate attention away the drone maintenance hierarchy to focus on assimilation datastreams. The Voidmiester's computer was undergoing a complete cybernetic brainwashing, divulging every nugget of species #56 information. Current efforts were directed at logs containing mention of the Xenig-type drive. A rather depressing tale was emerging.
"Rakh-captain's log, supplemental - it has been three hours since testing the prototype drive and subsequent yelp for help." Rakh was a rank, conveying notions of senior male breeder of one of the ship's subclans as well as undertones of feudal inheritance. Every subclan on a vessel had a rakh; the "captain" suffix denoted this particular rakh was dominate over all ship subclan leaders.
Captain watched the log on his viewscreen. Species #56 bore the stereotypical humanoid bipedal stature common in the galaxy. Distinguishing features included turquoise scaled skin, unusual for mammalian stock, which covered most of the exposed body, giving way to a mane of silver hair following the vertebral column. Somewhere, out of view, the evolutionary remnants of a cowlike tail poked out of uniform trousers. This particular rakh-captain did not look well...he appeared to be melting.
"Our senior medical doctor did not survive the translation, and her journeyman and apprentice are doing the best they can. Unfortunately, I don't think it will be enough. The field that the prototype drive creates protected us from instant annihilation in nullspace, but simulations did not take into account how those same fields would affect our DNA. Strands are unwinding, and we are literally falling apart; a competent medical staff and AI on one of our generation ships would be hard pressed to find a cure in the amount of time remaining to us.
"Right now the engineers think the Xenig are not affected for the simple reason they are almost wholly inorganic. Those parts of their chassis which do employ organic technologies, as well as the perishable products GPS couriers transport, are most likely protected by a counter field placed just outside the hull. I'm told to think of it like a thermos bottle, two alternate layers of fields providing a buffer between nullspace and Xenig chassis.
"Anyway, we probably only have a few hours left. The drive is shot, and the same process which affected us toasted all the organic technologies the Voidmiester employs. I just hope we can figure out where we are in the time remaining to us and are able to fix our ultra-long distance communication arrays in order to tell the convoy of our failure and how not to repeat the mistake.
"Rakh-captain, signing off. End log."
Captain contemplated the log for a moment; something did not seem quite right. The feeling was not a hunch, far from it. Various inconsistencies had been found on board the Voidmiester, items if taken singly, as a group of individuals would be wont to do, would not raise suspicions. However, the sub-collective knew as each discrepancy was noted, filing it into an ever growing list of paranoia.
First of all, very few of the DNA puddles were associated with the "proper" clothing regime for species #56. Uniform components did not match, articles of intimate apparel were often missing, and in one case, unless the physiology of species #56 had radically changed since the Borg had last encountered them, fifty pairs of socks was about forty-nine too many for a single individual. Contemplating the engine, it appeared on the surface to be the remains of an extremely broken Xenig-type drive. However, further examination revealed the "prototype" engine was a victim of careful, and irreparable, sabotage; the warp counterpart was oddly unscathed. In its current state, the technology was fit only for the recycling bin. And speaking of technology, the computer of Voidmiester was oddly lacking in files a crew would need for testing experimental hardware. Logs like that by the rakh-captain were prominent, but glaring omissions such as time-stamps on files was worrisome.
Nothing was as it initially appeared. The whole setup was too good to be true. Truth was mixed in with lies to create a clever facade.
Captain gathered the inconsistencies together, linking them. Drones paused in their activities as increasing resources were drawn into the data cascade, bits and bytes of information held up for close scrutiny.
Suddenly Sensors exclaimed, {The warp drive of the Voidmiester has begun irreversible power-up. It will catastrophically breach in five minutes, thirty-four seconds, mark.}
<< TRAP! >> The sub-collective came to an abrupt, unified, consensus. The ship was a trap.
Within two minutes, final samples were grabbed from the vessel and all drones returned to the cube. The Voidmiester could not seriously compromise the bulk of Cube #347, but the explosion might hurt peripheral systems and necessitate a long series of time consuming repairs to fix damage. Tractors securing the ship reversed polarity, becoming pressor beams which flung the ticking bomb out and away. The Voidmiester exploded into a premature fiery death as three photon torpedoes detonated against its hull.
*****
Self was in many places, performing many tasks. Luplup did not quite understand the "why", but did know the "how", the procedures to do, to piggyback pieces of herself on the transporter beam of the Bad-Mans who returned to the ship. She was not noticed; and she was careful as she materialized in the cube, component at a time, to scurry for cover. She did not wish to repeat the process upon which she became very, very small the first time she feuded with the Bad-Mans and their superior technology.
This time, self was better prepared. Self was no longer limited to a between unit distance of mere kilometers. Using the knowledge, the power, gained from the Bad-Mans, Luplup had been able to adapt machines in the moonbase where she had been transported like so much garbage many, many clutches ago. The "neural transceivers" were crude in comparison to the Bad-Mans, but they worked using similar principles. Biometric power was difficult for Luplup to understand, and so parts of Self needed to stay within eight light hours of each other, or be lost. The technology was not perfect, but it was much better than an organic transceiver.
Additionally, Self was more robust, knew more of Self's capabilities. Self had eventually left the moonbase for the more hospitable planet below. On the planet Self grew big, each clutch a success, improving and expanding units with machines left behind by the Gone-Ones. The Gone-Ones did not exist anymore, were extinct, fouling their nest with biological and nuclear poisons, altering the ecosystem of the planet. But Luplup did not rely on a natural system anymore, dependent instead upon machines.
A point came when Self was confident, was ready to send scout packs, scout selves, beyond the ken of Self, looking for ways to make Self ever bigger and stronger. Self had plenty of room to grow, but the concept of "future" needed to be planned for, a time beyond the lifetime of any individual unit when Self would have outgrown the planet, the star system. However, there were two problems. First, Luplup did not have any starships, did not have the knowledge to make them; second, the Bad-Mans still existed, and they had the capability of making Self small as long as Self was bound to a single nest planet.
Luplup needed starships. Using technologies of the Gone-Ones enhanced with stolen Bad-Mans knowledge, Self made a telescope-thing able to peer into unreal-space and read the shapes found there. At first there was nothing, then the telescope showed a small group of alien ships passing near. A trap was laid to bring the ships in closer, a distress signal sent from the moonbase, a recording made by the last Gone-Ones, pleading for help to the heavens as their civilization self-destructed. Curious, the convoy neared, folding into orbit near the moon.
The beings who would eventually be known as Not-Born-Of-Self did not find what they expected, instead an old base gone to dust, inhabited by cybernetically enhanced pets. The planet was the same. Luplup did nothing to correct the initial impression. While the Not-Born-Of-Self tried to figure out the conundrum which had lured them to a dead system, parts of Self was distributed to the science departments of all the ships. Satisfied the prey was well within the ambush, Luplup attacked.
The Not-Born-Of-Self convoy fell in hours, the tiny machines which were in Self's blood converting the Not-Born-Of-Self to part of the metaself...those who survived, that is. Alien machines became obedient to Self; Luplup grew more powerful.
Now Self had starships, had more knowledge, had more power. The ships were special, had a "folded-space drive," technology of which was based upon observations of a people called the Xenig. The ships were more powerful than even the Bad-Mans! Luplup was excited! It could now be possible to find the ship of Bad-Mans, eradicate them, and make the galaxy safe to be one big nest for Self!
Self painfully budded a smaller self from the primary Self. The small self was tasked to reach beyond the ken of Self-at-home, find the Bad-Mans, destroy them. It was not expected small self would survive, but then again, neither would the Bad-Mans. Sometimes a part had to be sacrificed to allow the whole to survive. Self sent self away on a scout ship, folding space abruptly cutting self off from Self. Self mourned, the self on the ship rechristened Voidmiester, as it became very small.
Self triggered the Voidmiester to self-destruct, energies building to a critical point in the warp core. In response, the Bad-Mans began to leave en masse, returning to their own nest. The final units of self leeched upon transport signatures, riding to the cube, running through the maze of the Bad-Mans den to regroup with self. It was now time to begin the process of stealing more knowledge from the Bad-Mans, find a way to contact Self so far away and, most importantly, exact revenge and secure peace for future little selves.
*****
Cube #347 moved away from the scene of the almost trap, speed a sedate warp three as the sub-collective digested the information it had gathered before the Viodmiester had turned into a bomb. It was increasingly apparent the logs, including the distress signal, were forgeries; not precisely fake, but historical files dated well before the present. Species #56 /had/ constructed Xenig-type propulsion ("folded-space" drive was the correct term), but had done so about a millennia ago, approximately the same time period their convoys had mysteriously disappeared from the galaxy. The purpose behind the trap, and the unusual bait within, was unknown.
A transporter anomaly was flagged by a subset of the command and control hierarchy as it reviewed drone activity prior to the Voidmiester's self-destruction. The anomaly was repeated many times during the period drones were transporting between the Voidmiester and Cube #347; in all, forty-eight plus two unknown patterns had hitched a ride through the cube's transporter system. The signatures were unfortunately too "blurred" to resolve specific details, such as species, beyond the fact two differing types had invaded the cube. Considering the Voidmiester was a ship of species #56, it logically followed the forty-eight being majority was of species #56 as well.
{New directive, path all members of Cube #347 sub-collective, inclusive subunit #522: expand general awareness to include species #56. If seen, detain and assimilate. Individuals will be processed by subunit #522,} Captain ordered.
Second, just completing a regeneration cycle in his alcove, blinked to full awareness. He stepped to the catwalk, stretching an arm which had developed a cramp over the last several hours of motionless. The ligaments needed replacement, but Second was loath to add his name to the maintenance docket. Instead he quested out for Captain, finding the latter working to reconstruct what was now perceived to be the erased traces of the Voidmiester's true log. {Might as well erect a sign on our hull: "Need a lift?"}
Captain distanced himself from the reconstruction effort to return a questioning ping.
Second nodded, both literally and as an figurative addendum to his response, {Hitchhikers. We seem to be picking up an awful lot of them since we were flung to this quadrant.}
An absent acknowledgment came from Captain as he returned to his current task after giving Second an assignment to complete. In the backdrop of general chaos, the computer added six new repair requests, priority flagged, to the engineering hierarchy docket; all had coincidentally occurred in the space of fifteen minutes.
*****
Luplup mentally regrouped, reviewing her most recent actions even as self was spread all over the ship of Bad-Mans. Self had to destroy the Bad-Mans, but unlike the Not-Born-Of-Self scout, no convenient self-destruct pathway which was accessible. The vital systems - power, propulsion, weapons, life support - were noncentralized, precluding simple cutting of wires or removing of devices or smashing of machines. Self had to hurt the Bad-Mans' ship a little at a time, hoping enough damage could be done to allow the prey to bleed to death from hundreds of otherwise nonfatal wounds.
Self was not totally devoted to the primary task, not quite yet. Soldier selves were out and about, but worker selves were completing the construction of food fluid unit-nests. Each body would eventually become tired, would need to rest in not-sleep; Luplup's almost death had occurred in the ship of Bad-Mans because Self had not known the proper way to skim food fluid without alerting the Bad-Mans' workers. This time self was spread throughout the ship as five subunits of self, drawing food fluid from multiple arteries. The arched unit-nests fit the bodies of self snugly, performing the same function as the "alcoves" of the Bad-Mans although there was no structurally similarity. The Not-Born-Of-Self units required bed-nests which were alike to the Bad-Mans, although smaller.
Three of five brooder selves and five worker selves and a soldier self, were now connected to the computer system of the Bad-Mans, covertly accessing the upper levels of the local intranet consciousness. A small body part, "assimilation tubules," facilitated this action. Luplup could feel the surge and flow of data, of power, in the net, but knew she had to be careful in gaining it. Security codes and traps and pitfalls had to be avoided, relevant information cut from the larger matrix. And, most important, the evil Captain, the unit Luplup distinctly remembered as the mind who was the One of the Bad-Mans, needed to be avoided.
When the proper time came, self would announce her presence to all, would relish in the evil Captain's fear as the Captain was trapped into a corner. She would hurt the Captain, would bite the Captain, would claw the Captain, would make the Captain small...and would finally watch in glee as the Captain was destroyed in the fires of his ship.
*****
The faults were widespread and designed to have reaching effects. Delta had come to the conclusion the damage was deliberate; even without clues such as cleanly cut wires and unscrewed bolts, the emergent pattern was one of organized maliciousness. Over a third of the engineering hierarchy was now devoted to damage control and cleanup. The instigators, hypothesized to be species #56 hitchhikers, had yet to be found, or even seen. One might as well have been battling ghosts.
Delta, via body A, was among the first to realize species #56 was not the cause. She had been surveying a short-circuited power distribution node, examining the series of metal poles, now melted, which had been used to ground the relay to the superstructure. The mess had knocked out primary power in subsection 23. Auxiliary grid systems currently routed power to the area, so the problem was more annoyance than danger. The bark, uttered in the matter of a curse and certainly not a normal sound in the cube, caught her attention.
A trio of the repair team were dispatched to check out the noise. What they saw was a creature, waist high with a distinctly reptilian outline, hissing at the bulkhead. A wall panel had swung down, pinching a finger, causing the initial outcry when the digit became stuck. The being, animal?, suddenly turned, eyes wide as it became aware of the trio's unsecret approach. It wrenched the finger from the wall, clicked its mouth twice in threat, hissed, then ducked into a low hole leading into the interstitial spaces. As the drones watched, the hole was obscured by a second panel, sealing the bulkhead such that it appeared it had never been compromised.
Cube #347 had a vermin problem. Vysts, immediately recognized as such, not species #56 were aboard, sabotaging systems. Hunter parties of the weapon hierarchy swiftly formed to search for the main nest.
*****
Luplup was now deeper in the intranet, crawling the dataspace equivalent of interstitial areas. Vital systems were warded; and as self watched, encryption codes solidified to impenetrable barriers, the Captain signature alerted to the presence of self. Self needed to focus on one ship system. Self finally decided on propulsion...without propulsion the Bad-Mans ship would not go anywhere, would not be able to resupply itself of needed things. Luplup did not actually believe she would be able to sabotage the propulsion system to the point of failure, but it would serve as a feint as she secretly attacked elsewhere, dug at the supposedly inaccessible dataspace barriers to wrest control of the ship away from the evil Captain.
Self needed to find things in the dataspace, things which would make her strong, both as little Luplup, and as big Luplup. Big Luplup also needed to be told about the information little self gathered, which would require access to the communication system, boosting intraself communications to the level the Bad-Mans enjoyed when accessing information that was physically tens of thousands of light years distant.
A soldier self barked, self taken by surprise as a Bad-Mans jumped from an ambush point, firing a metal stable into self's side. Luplup remembered this ploy, however, and knew the next thing the Bad-Mans would try woulb be to beam that piece of self into space. It would not work: when self had originally been abandoned by the Bad-Mans, one of the nuggets of stolen information was how to make a "transporter lock disrupter." All units of self had a lock disrupter inside them. The attack by the Bad-Mans was futile, soldier self running to cover even as the transporter beam failed to obtain a lock. Luplup removed the stable from herself, tossing it back into the corridor, snapping her beak in annoyance.
Self would not become overconfident, no...never overconfident. That attitude had led to her original near-fatal smallness. The Bad-Mans would try to devise another way to make Luplup small, but Luplup would make the Bad-Mans small first!
*****
A hunter squad of four - 104 of 212, 167 of 300, 193 of 300, and 237 of 300 - peered around the corner leading to a blind corridor in unconscious imitation of slapstick humor, four heads stacked on each other, arms occasionally waving in consternation as breath fogged optic implants. The object of attention, however, was not a laughing matter: two Vysts had been found, busily sabotaging a propulsion element. If allowed to complete their chore, ionic station-keeping thrusters along Edge #11 would be disabled. The outcome would not be serious, but it would be annoying.
For the first time, the animals causing maintenance headaches in the cube among the engineering hierarchy could be clearly seen. The Vysts were reminiscent of saurian raptors with four extra limbs. Both creatures were 100 centimeters tall when they stood straight, although nominal stance held the heads at about 80 centimeters. A complex double hip arrangement sported four legs, the thick and powerful limbs of a sprinter able to outdistance fleet prey by sheer speed. Of the non-walking limbs, the forwardmost arm was fine, three stubby fingers offset by a thumb, claws neatly trimmed. The second pair of arms was very robust, the terminal four digits more than making up for an inability to use tools by being tipped with wickedly sharp talons. The head...the head was distinctly reptilian, except for the cranial bulge indicating a larger brain than the normal lizard. Every once in a while mouths were opened in a soundless hiss, revealing carnivorous dentition. The length of the Vysts was approximately 110 centimeters, over a third of which was tail; minute Borg-gray scales gleamed in the corridor's subdued light like chips of smoky quartz.
Unnatural metallic protuberance sprouted along the backs of the Vysts; one even appeared to have a targeting laser soldered to the side of its skull. The sub-collective was not pleased...the Vysts seemed to have advanced quite a bit from their "birth" aboard Cube #347 due to an indiscretion by Doctor.
The pair were oblivious to detection, engrossed in their task. A tool belt of sort encircled the waist above the hip girdle; the heavier arms clumsily held tools while the smaller arms poked and prodded at wiring in the propulsion unit. The Vysts worked as one, neither getting in the way of the other, no obvious communication coordinating their efforts.
{Ready?} asked 167 of 300, the nominal leader of the squad. Weapons had already dictated the actions which were to come, but 167 of 300 was nervously trying to stall for time. The Vysts did not look like nice targets.
The order was given by an impatient Weapons, compelling the foursome to advance into the corridor. As the two Vysts suddenly came to alert, raising their heads to full height, lights in the dead end were extinguished. The corridor plunged into darkness; to further confuse matters, several heat flares were tossed to the deck to scramble thermal signatures. Yelps of surprise escaped the throats of the Vyst pair, scratching of talons on metal deck as they retreated in confusion.
Personal disrupter fire, hidden target triangulated through use of acoustics, momentarily lit the corridor with liquid green shadows. One Vyst fell, head blackened, forward left walking limb burned to ash. The Vysts, Borg enhanced, had never been exposed to this weapon, would not be immune. Before the second beast could be targeted, it was heard to make two running strides, followed by a sickening crunch as it ran into something solid. Silence. Returning lights to the corridor revealed the second Vyst had smashed into a bulkhead, fatally breaking its own neck.
Doctor began procedures to autopsy the two Vyst carcasses - one blacked by excessive use of a disrupter beam and the other outwardly undamaged but for the unnatural angle of its neck - directing the bodies to be placed on separate worktables. A trio of his hierarchy consolidated around the table with the non-crispy animal, while two others advanced to assist Doctor at his own bench. Six direct points-of-view as well as multiple sensors in the maintenance bay focused on the limp octopedal reptilian animals.
{Computer-ruter, begin recording of Vyst autopsy log. Compile and collate all data, slaved to input from drone 27 of 27, drone maintenance.} The computer acknowledged the demand, creating a new file. Doctor began the protocol, starting with an exterior examination. Following orders, both carcasses were scanned from all angles, Doctor providing a running commentary, consciously editing himself of the dialogue he wanted to use, even as he guided the actions of the other five drones.
{General body form is same as Vysts encountered at earlier time point. [Computer, insert pict from file path visual/species/Vyst3; display side-by-side with input current time index] However, several cybernetic devices of non-nanite manufacture have been crudely implanted through primitive surgical techniques, as witnessed by scarring despite inherent regenerative ability bequeathed by Borg-derived nanoprobes.} Cameras and eyes focused on various areas of the two carcasses, noting exterior couplings, optical enhancement, exoskeletal braces; scars on torso hinted at deeper surgical work. {[Computer-tuter, engage deep sensor scans of limbs, abdominal and torso cavities, and cranium. Present five pretty-birdies, do likewise with embedded sensor suites.] Interior scans show nanoprobe enhancement of bone, muscle, and nerves. Both bodies have embedded biometric power sources...crude, but effective. Beginning dissection of samples.}
At both tables, two drones positioned the Vysts, belly up, limbs splayed. Doctor and 54 of 133 reached for laser scalpels simultaneously, positioning the business end at the junction of neck with torso. Tools lowered to the corpses.
"Hey!" said 54 of 133, jerking her scalpel away after making an incision of less than a centimeter, "this one moved!"
Doctor looked up in annoyance, focusing on the other bench. He swiftly reviewed the input from the devices trained on 54 of 133's subject. "Don't be scared," he soothed, "nothing to worry about. No, nothing to worry about. Shhhh. Just a little excess chemical energy in extremity muscles expending itself. Shhhh. All perfectly normal."
54 of 133 snapped, "Shush yourself. This thing moved, and it wasn't due to a biological curiosity."
"Here, let me demonstrate you are wrong." Doctor left his bench, leaving scalpel upright in the chest of his Vyst. {Computer-puter, pause Vyst autopsy log.}
"Doctor?" The pressing call came from 104 of 152, behind Doctor at the table just vacated. "Doctor??" The second cry was more urgent, accompanied by the teeth-grinding sound of metal scraping metal, worse than nails on chalkboard.
"What?" Doctor redirected his attention in the direction of the pleading question, only to be greeted by the sight of both drones backing away from the workbench, supposedly dead Vyst rising to its feet. Tail whipped back and forth, balance wavering as the animal adjusted to a three-legged stance, forward left walking limb burned to a crisp by the disrupter beam which had originally downed it. Before the stunned audience of six drones (and multiple others observing remotely), the Vyst looked sightlessly down at its chest, the right manipulatory limb slapping blindly until it found the scalpel handle. The instrument was tossed to the deck with a clatter, loud in the otherwise silent bay. The Vyst gave a lisping hiss, almost incoherent as it emerged from badly burned jaw.
104 of 152: "That's not possible. The animal was clinically dead. Returning from death is not possible. There is no documented evidence of this happening. That is not possible." The drone had begun to babble; 54 of 133 hit him upside the head, silencing him.
Hitttttttthhhhhhhhh.
Hissssssssssssssss. Scrape...clatter.
Six drones turned to regard the momentarily forgotten Vyst, the one with the broken neck. Not only was it not dead and not the octopedal version of a quadriplegic, it glared at the maintenance hierarchy gaggle, eyes filled with malevolence. Both undead Vysts hissed again in stereo. The sub-collective shook itself out of its shock. Doctor received orders from Captain to rekill, or at least severely damage, the two animals.
The Vyst pair suddenly stood at attention, as if they too had heard the order, and it was not to their liking. A bark was sounded as both leaped off their respective benches, landing on the floor with a thump. The burned Vyst stumbled on its three legs, quickly regaining balance before racing off in a limping stride after its compatriot. The pair separated, lost as they ducked into separate holes (which had not been present an hour before) to the interstitial spaces.
The incident was later dubbed the zombie fiasco.
{I don't care who does the explaining, just explain,} said Captain to both Doctor and Assimilation. {Dead things do not normally get up and walk around, much less remove scalpels from incisions in their chests.}
On one level, both Doctor and Assimilation were quiet, figuratively sharing mutual sidelong glances of guilt. On a deeper level, proceedings represented by hundreds of underdrones were processing acquired data, formulating a workable hypothesis.
Rock, scissors, paper. Doctor lost, his scissors graphically pounded to scrap metal by Assimilation's five ton boulder. Assimilation faded to the background, letting the other drone have the bulk of Captain's directed awareness.
Doctor began by projecting a typical representation of a 5' nanoprobe, which, among other things, was programmed to repair abrasions in its host. A second nanite, outwardly alike, joined the first; both started to freely rotate in the dataspace. {The first nanite is Borg standard; the second little bugger was recovered from fluid samples left behind by the not-so-dead Vysts. Assimilation notes that they are basically the same, except the latter is mutated in respect to programming, perhaps as a result, pause, of its introduction in a presentient species. The alteration is not a biggie: the nanite continues to function, repairing the host body, even after cues of "death" would otherwise terminate the babies.}
The nanites were erased from display, replaced with a picture of a Vyst - the original Luplup. {All Vysts are essentially extensions, mentally and genetically, of the original Luplup-girl; all Vysts /are/ Luplup-girl. There is only one individual, in the pure sense of the word.
{The typical drone in the Collective retains a unique mental signature. This identifier is used to coordinate drones, to separate and catalogue experiences. The Greater Consciousness, the combined will of the Collective, oversees the process. In the case of Cube #347, the mental signature is more pronounced than normal, but it remains true for even the most integrated Borgie. In cute Luplup's case, there is only /one/ mental signature, period, spread among many bodies.
{This means the individual unit can be compared to a leg or arm, much more so than the same analogy can be applied to a drone of the Collective. There is no sense of self lost when the individual goes to the big doghouse in the sky, no unique mental signature which is snuffed out as synapses in the brain fail. When a Borg drone is terminated, the unique mental signature is lost, and the Collective can no longer "see" it. When a Luplup Vyst is fatally lost, it is more akin to chopping off an appendage. No separate consciousness is associated with the limb; and thus when the nanites sufficiently repair the broken Vyst body, Luplup-girl can re-establish a connection with it the same way an accident victim can re-establish rapport with a reattached leg.
{The important thing to remember is that we are not dealing with a minimum of forty-eight Vysts plus two unknowns, but one mind which happens to inhabit that many separate bodies. And, more than likely, this is not the "original" Luplup, but a subset out of communication range of the original self; it is unknown how large the primary Luplup mind may be at this time.}
Doctor completed his presentation. Before the general sub-collective could digest the information and begin to form increasingly dismal conclusions, Delta indicated an incident of sabotage which placed Auxiliary Core #7 off-line. Cameras activated in the area caught the glimpse of several retreating Vysts. One, with a pattern of burns on its head, was familiar as an escapee from its own autopsy. The forward left walking leg, however, appeared to be whole, an impossibility as nanites were unable to regenerate such gross damage. Detailed enhancement of the picture revealed not an organic replacement, but the lower segment of a generic limb assembly. The Vysts had apparently learned to apply basic surgical techniques to themselves using hardware stolen from drone maintenance stores.
Deliberate cybernetic augmentation would not be far behind.
*****
One clutch of eggs had hatched, four little selves making the metaself bigger, four new workers to add to self, freeing four current workers to function as soldiers. Luplup could not do much with her four new selves, but the newest small hands did work well making tiny machine parts and putting them together. And machines were an important thing to be making right now.
Self needed a way to protect herselves when she was vulnerable in the corridors of the Bad-Mans ship. The Bad-Mans, like self, could adapt to energy attacks like phasers and lasers; self was still vulnerable to the Bad-Mans' disrupter, and would continue to be until self could taste all the ways it could burn. The Bad-Mans, on the other hand, had more knowledge and were bigger, which added to being able to adapt quickly to similar attacks. Therefore, self had to focus efforts on non-energy weapons.
A small worker self passed the completed gun to a larger worker self. The gun was designed to spit rounded pellets of metal from its barrel. Luplup had found the directions to build the weapon in the Bad-Mans own data files, attached to a label which associated the gun with "common, non-warp-capable civilizations." The same file included many other gun forms, but they were all variations of the one self had already constructed. Luplup needed a second weapon, and a new class of weapon - taser - caught her attention.
The taser shot projectiles much like the transponder staples the Bad-Mans used to try to beam parts of self into space. The projectiles were attached to a wire which led back to the gun. When the staples were in a target, one depressed a button, which released large amounts of electricity along the wires and into the target, disabling it. The taser was a suitable weapon; self began to gather the supplies to build several.
Attacking the propulsion system of the Bad-Mans ship had done its intended outcome: focusing attention to the outside and not on the dataspaces. For this reason self had been able to find the weapon designs. Moving from the weapon files, Luplup abruptly skirted away from the roving Captain mentality, blundering into a new information tree, one associated with the "sensory hierarchy." It was a list, very long, of Bad-Mans ships: designations, class, unique identifiers, engine signatures, crew compliment, and most recently known location. Self mentally slid to a halt, contemplating the dry length of numbers, making connections within herself about what had previously been abstract (and subsequently not important) knowledge.
She remembered her first encounter with the Bad-Mans and their intranets and their databases and their information. There had been a something, a path, leading away from the Bad-Mans ship, leading to what she perceived to be more knowledge, hidden away in a different location. The Bad-Mans...the evil Captain...appeared to be more than this one ship, much more. Self concentrated, trying to make a leap of logic, a process at which she was not good, especially when this small; abstract thought was difficult.
Many ships not this one, but of the Bad-Mans none-the-less meant the Bad-Mans were very big...very, very big. The Bad-Mans stretched beyond this cube, beyond the evil Captain. The Bad-Mans were thus very strong, and not just because they owned advanced machines and devices. The list was just a numbering of ships; surely there would be nests. Therefore, the Bad-Mans were large enough that if they went to the primary Self's nest, Self would be crushed as easily as self terminated rebellious Not-Born-Of-Self units.
Self made a decision: she needed to contact Self as soon as possible. Communications to boost self's thoughts to reach primary Self could not be accessed at any immediate location. However, the brooding self which just had a clutch hatch was somewhat close to a Bad-Mans communication node. Self redoubled her efforts to keep the Bad-Mans occupied, then snuck the brooding self and part of the associated subunit out of the nest, heading for the target node.
*****
A hunter group, three drones, noted the location of their target - a lone Vyst snipping wires between a tertiary power distribution conduit and a backup warp nacelle plasma sensor. The primary sensor had already been taken off-line, the action of which had alerted the engineering hierarchy, whom in turn warned Weapons of a threat in the area. A total of thirty-six warp nacelles were buried under the twelve edges of the cube, three subsection length segments per edge. In conventional warp drive, only six nacelles were active at any given time, high sustained speeds obtained by rotating nacelles between resting and on-line status. A faulty plasma sensor could delay routine power-down of an active nacelle during high velocity pursuit or escape, potentially causing an extremely large and possibly debilitating explosion if unnoticed stresses passed a critical point.
The Vyst had its forebody deep in the guts of the bulkhead, tail swishing back and forth to keep balance. The hunter group advanced, disrupters on vaporize. Weapons had ordered the setting, going behind the back of Delta's concerns should aiming be less than precise.
A barking yip sounded behind the trio; one drone turned to see the commotion. 95 of 212 fell as a shotgun blast caught him in the leg with a mass of what appeared to be birdshot! A Vyst had stepped out from a hole leading into the interstitial spaces, awkwardly holding a long barreled projectile gun. It appeared to be displeased at its lousy aim, carefully raising the business end higher, targeting flesh which wasn't protected by armor, i.e. the face. 95 of 212 ducked as the shotgun fired again; 52 of 300 grunted in annoyance and dropped to her knees as she was drilled in the back.
76 of 83, the only member of the trio not pegged with birdshot, turned to look behind with confusion as obscure oaths broke out aloud and in the intranet from his companions. The shotgun toting Vyst was trying to change a stuck cartridge, whacking the weapon against the floor in a method commonly known as "delicate application of brute force." Disregarding the original target, 76 of 83 aimed a disrupter at the busy creature.
Impact! 76 of 83 whirled back around, nearly tripping on a length of wire which was attached to the small of his back. What was now revealed to be the unarmed "bait" cradled an odd contraption in its larger pair of arms, wire trailing to a spool underslung the wide barrel. 76 of 83 belatedly recognized a taser, wincing as one of the smaller arms depressed a button next to what followed to be a power source. The resultant shock was quite a bit more than 76 of 83's exoskeletal shunting system could handle.
The pair of Vysts sprinted away. Transporters locked onto the three victims, beaming to a maintenance bay a singed, although still functional, drone, as well as his two birdshot-peppered, and much more vocal, squad members.
*****
More sabotage, more cutting of wires, more tearing of devices, more smashing of critical sensors. Given enough time, self knew it was possible to wreck the Bad-Mans ship, but time was the one thing she did not have.
The brooder self and part of attendant subunit were moving toward the primary communications node, but progress was slow. Many levels required to be climbed and corridors traversed and busy areas skirted. Feints and skirmishes in other parts of the ship kept eyes and senses trained away from the moving brooder self. Unfortunately, the Bad-Mans were changing their tactics, rushing in to attack selves with overwhelming odds. Self returned the favor when possible with projectile gun and taser; the weapons continued to be useful as the Bad-Mans had not found a way to fully adapt to them yet.
A pause at a busy intersection, a wait for it to clear. After several minutes, the brooder self and nine others ran across the corridor, ducking back into the safe areas between bulkheads.
While the one part of self sneaked towards a primary communication node, Luplup carefully dropped below yet another security barrier in the dataspace. She stopped, listening. She had found the place where the Bad-Mans thought, where the evil Captain directed the actions of the other Bad-Mans. Many, many thoughts were flying around, many more than Luplup's capability. Somewhere the Captain signature was talking, but it was not doing so to the other Bad-Mans, but rather to a presence which self could feel was larger than anything directly associated with the ship.
Luplup eavesdropped. The two-way datastream was not words or even thoughts, but pictures and data and information and memories and recordings and time indexes and other things compressed into packets. Cryptic queries and acknowledgments and commands and requests flowed, the hugeness to which Captain directed his attention towards putting the network of the Bad-Mans to a perspective size of smallness.
For the first time self realized, understood, the ships of the list she found were connected to each other, connected in a way which was like, yet unlike, the way Self was spread out among the many body units which made up her corporeal Self. The Bad-Mans was not just the evil Captain and those on the ship, but a BIGNESS which was represented by the countless mentalities Captain conversed with.
Luplup might be able to destroy this ship of Bad-Mans, including the evil Captain, but the Bad-Mans as a whole would continue to live. This sudden crystallization of thought spurred Luplup to redouble her efforts to access the communication node, to find the appropriate command codes. Primary Self had to be told, had to be warned! Knowledge and revenge was no longer of utmost importance, simple survival was. The Bad-Mans would not be tolerant of competitors.
Self distanced herself slightly from the talk between the evil Captain and the BIGNESS. She cast about covertly, hoping to find something useful, something which might yet allow the mission of revenge to succeed despite the looming setbacks. The group known as "engineering hierarchy" were busy, a subset of the dataspace full of their brainstorms. Luplup listened for a few moments, confused, then hissing in fear when she looked up the meaning of words in the Bad-Mans' own dictionary. The Bad-Mans were recalibrating internal sensors; they would soon be able to see and track self using their machines!
*****
{Got it. DNA profile locked,} announced Delta to the general sub-collective as a generic cube schematic was thrown up in the dataspaces. A yellow bar swept over the wireframe picture: the real time representation of scanners sequentially updated to specifically target Vyst genetic material. Scattered blue dots appeared in the wake of the bar. Six obvious concentrations were apparent, with the rest distributed throughout the cube's volume. One of the smaller groups was on the move.
Captain circled the five stationary masses, marking them with dark red. {Weapons, you will eradicate these nests first, then concentrate on the more mobile individuals and conglomeration.}
{Yes, Captain, we will vaporize the enemy!} Weapons was entering that mood of his when the goal would be accomplished, come hell, high water, or inconvenient spatial anomalies. Mental images of mass destruction, prominently featuring Vyst bodies, filled his accessible thoughts.
Delta cried, {Wait just a second! You'll cause more damage to the cube than ten thousand Vysts! Captain, I protest the means Weapons is obviously planning on using.}
{Acknowledged,} said Captain, himself leery at the demon on the verge of popping out of its bottle. {Weapons, use slightly less destructive means to capture the animals, then disable them to what would be considered normal death. Cremate the bodies.}
Weapons was silent. {You have no grasp of proper tactics and means, but I will comply.}
All five nests had been targeted for simultaneous assault. It was not possible to obtain a transporter lock on the Vysts, but it was quite easy to beam things into the nest areas. Heavy nets coated with superglue materialized in the appropriate spaces, capturing over half of the blue DNA-tagged targets. Bulkheads were cut away to gain access to the interstitial spaces and the snared Vysts hidden within, members of the weapon hierarchy charging past as engineering crews opened the holes.
The third nest which was entered held a surprise: the owners of the two mysterious "other" hitchhiker signatures that had been detected in the transporter logs. Two children of species #56 crowded with five Vysts under a net, hissing in concert with the animals. The naked children were excised from the trap, detained securely to the side as each Vyst was summarily executed and vaporized. As each of the gray animals died, the children yipped, a sound eerily alike to the Vysts, tearing with teeth and blunt nails ineffectively against armored arms.
During the nest attacks, sabotage efforts doubled, systems stressed earlier now falling from faults which would normally be dismissed as inconsequential. The Vysts obviously knew they were being tracked, and while they did not appear to be able to vanish from scanners, they had found those areas of the cube with electromagnetic fields which would distorted their genetic profile. Blue tracer dots vanished, only to reappear again, like confused ghosts. Hunter groups and engineering details occasionally came under fire from hidden Vysts, or caught in traps and snares. The sub-collective, busy with real world concerns, did not notice the rogue mentality slipping ever deeper into the dataspaces, searching for specific communication system command codes.
*****
Self fought in the darkness, singletons and doubles and triples luring Bad-Mans away from the remaining brooder self and nest subunit. It was becoming harder to think as self diminished, but it was still possible. Certain metals blocked the remote eyes of the Bad-Mans; self kept her brooder and subunit members masked by the metals as much as possible, deliberately provoking the Bad-Mans to attack her lone selves by allowing them to be seen. It would be easier to scatter and hide all of herself, but the quest to reach the communication node was paramount.
The option of revenge was no longer relevant. Survival, not of the poor self on the ship of the Bad-Mans, but of the primary Self, was vital. Yet another soldier self was lost; Luplup forged on, goal near.
*****
With every Vyst dispatched and removed as a menace, increasing efforts could be focused on countering those which remained. One by one, with varying degrees of success, the vermin were found, corralled, and destroyed. Drone maintenance kept busy picking metal pellets out of bodies and treating severe electrical exposure. The Vysts had concocted a wicked type of crossbow which shot a barbed quarrel able to penetrate exoplating; several drones reported to maintenance bays with joints frozen due to wedged metallic darts. Finally all, except for the last mobile group of ten, adept at staying in inaccessible locations and running at the first hint of trouble, were cornered and killed.
Regarding the two species #56 children, both had been placed in jury-rigged cryostorage units. Proper assimilation of the subunits was not possible: the bodies, bolstered by the Vyst-mutated version of nanites, actively rejected introduced nanoprobes. Conscious, the children were wholly members of the greater Luplup, submerged deeper into the One of Luplup than the normal drone in the Borg Collective. The choices thence were two - termination or suspension. The Greater Consciousness decided upon the latter option; species #56 was a known sentient, and it might be possible to eventually convert the children to Borg standard, at least long enough to gain useful general knowledge about species #56, such as how the Vysts were able to capture them and perhaps a child's perspective of the folded-space drive.
Captain's attention snapped back to the proceedings of the weapon hierarchy as it reported the rogue Vyst group had stopped moving. The animals had taken up a relatively indefensible open space near a major communications node, spreading themselves out such that it would not be possible to repeat a mass netting.
As the hunter groups gathered, preparing for the assault, Captain felt a presence, one not Borg!, rooting in the communication system pathways. It paused as Captain focused his (and the command and control) attention on it; it appeared to have let itself be seen on purpose.
{You are Luplup.} It was not a question, but a statement.
A fleeting glimpse of teeth closing around a Borg neck, then came the response, {Yes. We/I are Luplup. You are the evil Captain of the Bad-Mans. You once made me/us small. I/We am/are big now, even if this part of me/us is growing small.}
Captain did not know to feel amused, or threatened, {You are more articulate than when we last met.}
{Yes...articulate...we/I know more words. We/I have more knowledge, more power. We/I will kill you, will stomp you, will crush you!} Defiance.
{Little bit on the small side to be offering threats.} Weapon hierarchy drones were advancing; a Vyst defender was dispatched, vaporized. {And you grow smaller with each passing moment.}
{Does not matter. Sometimes the part has to be sacrificed for the whole Self. This part will die, but I/we will live. I/We are better than you, better than the Bad-Mans. The Bad-Mans pretend to be One, pretend to be many as one Thinker. I/We are One, are one Thinker. The Bad-Mans will be hurt one day, made very small, until only one unit is left. The evil Captain will be that last unit, and I/we will tear it to pieces and make our nest safe. Evil Captain. Poor Captain.}
{Wait a minute...what do you mean "poor Captain"?} asked Captain, but it was too late. The tactic had been a stall, a feint as a particular command code was finally found and copied. The subspace booster array opened a new channel, one slightly out of phase with the normal frequencies the Borg Collective utilized to communicate with far flung sub-collectives. A compressed message squelched along the temporary channel, followed by an alien acknowledgement. The transmission abruptly terminated.
"Why that little piece of...." The muttering cut off midsentence as Captain transported himself to the scene of the fray.
*****
Luplup was unable to destroy the Bad-Mans; they were too big, too powerful. And they were bigger than she had thought, stretching well beyond the one ship which had once made her small, and were doing so again with this part of Self. The Bad-Mans were part of a Collective, as big to Self as Self was to a Not-Born-Of-Self before incorporation into the metaself. To take revenge on this ship, one small ship!, of Bad-Mans would be pointless because the Collective would not be hurt.
The commands to the machine controlling communication between the Bad-Mans were found and copied into self, although it meant talking with the evil Captain, keeping him occupied while she completed her task. Self now understood the boggling largeness of the Bad-Mans, and how they would not tolerate anything challenging their superiority. At least Luplup wouldn't if she were in the position of the Bad-Mans, would fight to the bitter end to keep a marauding intruder out of her nest space; and the Bad-Mans would surely think the same. Self had to be warned, Self had to be told to flee the nest planet in the fold drive ships until Self was large enough and powerful enough to attack the heart of the Bad-Mans.
Another unit died, and another. The Bad-Mans had adapted to the projectile guns, knew to avoid the snares and pits and traps placed to catch individuals. Self components did not have the armor, not yet, to stop similar attacks, although better agility did compensate a little. Not enough. Another self faded from the metaself, making self smaller, more alone in the universe.
The last of self fought only meters distant, frantic actions of delay to protect where the final brooding self was plugged into a port on the data pillar. Self completed her message and flung it outward through the Bad-Mans' communication system; even as she disengaged, she felt a far distant and familiar presence, Self!, accepting the warning and accompanying data dump with confusion. Self did not have time to explain details to primary Self, did not have the luxury of basking in the momentary expansion of self from a duel to one fluid among tens of thousands of bodies spread over several hundred kilometers. She slammed the connection closed before it could be traced, then turned to confront her attackers with a snarl, ripping assimilation tubules from the pillar.
{I/We will prevail! I/We are One!} Luplup exclaimed to all the Bad-Mans even as both of her sprung forward, brooding self jaws reaching to bite, claws to rend, and soldier self firing the taser.
*****
Captain frowned down at his leg. "Why, after I get fixed, I just become damaged again?" The question was rhetorical. Doctor, wisely, did not answer, instead busying himself picking out the final cone of tritanium reinforced fang which had embedded itself deep in flesh under exoplating during the suicidal rush of the last two Vysts. They had almost escaped, dodging among chaos of drone feet with liberal use of natural weapons once the taser had been neutralized. The final cordon halted the Vyst's progress, multiple crew grabbing hold of the animals, snapping their necks. The carcasses had been subsequently cremated to prevent repeat of the zombie incident; as these were the last two Vysts, the Luplup mental signature should theoretically be terminated, but the sub-collective was not going to take chances.
"Done. Your vet suggests a minimum of four hours regeneration. Personal nanites will complete repairs," said Doctor, silky black fang held in a pair of large tweezers.
Captain held out his whole hand, "Give me that." Doctor complied, dropping the object into waiting fingers. Captain grasped the tooth, holding it up to eye level, rotating it thoughtfully. The Greater Consciousness had stripped Cube #347 of the information concerning the location where the original Luplup had been spaced. Although a squadron of fifteen Battle-class cubes (overkill) had been immediately dispatched to eradicate the cybernetically enhanced beasts, Captain did not believe the effort would be successful. Probability estimates hovered at 90% the Vysts would not even be in the system when the battle group arrived, abandoning it with their stolen Xenig-type folded-space drives.
Luplup would survive against the odds; the Vysts would return.
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