Sometime later the shrade reappeared, popping out of a drainage pipe in the lower levels deep beneath the castle. Slapping unnoticed in the forgotten corners of the lower labyrinths, the shrade investigated the varied garbage of the vertebrates’ technological society. She spent only a few minutes indulging her genetic compulsions, rummaging about in heaps of burnt out memory modules, acid-leaking energy cells and ruptured data-liquid cabling. Soon, she managed to slip beneath a few doorways and entered the more frequented areas of the dungeons.
When she found the war machine, she knew she had made an important discovery. Standing two-thirds the height of a jugger, the gleaming hi-tech weapon stood out from the primitive feel of the dungeon itself. That the machine was no discard was clearly evidenced. Not a millimeter of its surface contained tarnish and the walls were festooned with tools and diagnostics equipment. The machine itself was open hatched and undergoing maintenance service by a squad of vertebrates, clearly technicians.
The shrade knew exultation. Here, at long last, was a clear example of the enemy’s greatest powers of war. To study the machine was worth the deaths of ten shrades.
The shrade reported her findings with a short blip of data to the Parent. Though she fairly quivered with curiosity, she contained her violent need to know. Fantasies of attacking the three service vertebrates and expunging them ran through her tactical brain, but she managed to restrain herself. Built into every successful scout was a good dose of caution and patience. Hiding herself among a stack of fuel cells, she bided her time.
Hours passed before the vertebrates finally left the fantastic machine unattended. Quickly humping forward, the shrade mounted one of the metal monster’s great legs. Nosing about inside, she discovered a myriad of wonders, all of which she catalogued and reported in coded transmissions.
A sound of approaching vertebrates warned her. She popped an optical organ just out of the hatch, eyeing their noisy approach. There were many of the vertebrates approaching, some of them armed and armored. It was too late, the shrade had over indulged herself-there was no way to slip out. She coiled herself inside the war machine, preparing to kill as many of the soft technicians as she could.
Another idea occurred though, concerning the numerous open hatches inside the war machine. Could she possibly hide inside the thing? Wriggling and scraping herself severely, she managed to slip into one of the hatches and seal herself in. Waiting inside to be discovered, she began to regret her hasty decision. How could the enemy’s diagnostics not discover her immediately? She chided herself for being overly concerned with her own survival.
Outside, the sounds of the vertebrates rose in level, and then dropped away again. The shrade inside knew great relief. Soon, she judged that they had all left her alone again with the great machine.
Surprised at her own good fortune, she made to stealthily exit, but couldn’t. Try as she might, the hatch wouldn’t open. She was jammed in tight.
Scampering larvae simply thronged the nest. The Parent grunted and heaved, depositing another egg into the waiting arms of a clittering hest. Three large, cavorting killbeast larvae chased a smaller one, probably a hest or a culus-it was difficult to tell them apart in the larvae stage-up onto her birthing throne, across her painfully swollen chambers and down the other side. An involuntary hissing sound of discomfort and exasperation escaped from her food tube. It was simply too much for one Parent, all this birthing. Already she had laid an estimated five thousand eight hundred eggs since arriving on the target world. Developmentally, the offspring were now broken roughly into thirds, one third as eggs, one-third larvae and one-third adults.
…Suddenly, a cramp gripped her fatigued fourth birthing orifice. The fourth chamber was currently at the end of its cycle in producing a jugger. The fourth orifice cinched up tight, puckering at the worst possible moment during the cycle. The jugger egg was of course the biggest variety, requiring the greatest dilation of the birthing orifice in order to pass. Powerful muscles involuntarily contracted, bearing down on the rubbery egg and attempting to force it out. The results were inevitable, and exceedingly painful. A great wet ripping noise filled the birthing chambers. Her fourth chamber ruptured, releasing a gout of fluids. The Parent set up a tremendous fluting howl that turned the orbs of every hest and larvae in the nest. The hest came scrambling to her aid, while the larvae, fearing discipline, stampeded away toward the farthest reaches of the tunnel-complex.
When the Parent had regained some of her composure, she reprimanded herself sternly. She lacked experience and had made the classic error of a young Parent, thinking she could do the whole job herself. Enough was enough. She had to have help: she had to have daughters.
Leaning her vast bulk heavily on her left-side clump of tentacles, she raised her drooping orb-stalks to call for the eldest nife. It was time to meld.
To her vague surprise, she found he was already swaggering into the chamber. His manner was that of barely concealed triumph. His stalks stood excitedly at full extension, his orbs all but popping from their cusps. “I heard you cry out, and knew I should rush to your side. Are you damaged?”
“Yes,” she said weakly, past being offended by his obvious excitement. “You are chosen. We must meld immediately.”
The nife’s frontal tentacles slapped together in an exaggerated and enthusiastic affirmative. He swaggered forward and began climbing the birthing throne.
After discovering the culus, Mai Lee moved to her command bunker immediately, sealing it off except for the datastreams which came from every sector of Garm. Her ancestral computers were legendary in technical circles, and nowhere else on the planet did such a comprehensive and intelligent nerve center exist. Every city on the continent was wired in for sound, many of them providing full holo-plate feed. The computers served to perform the gargantuan job of assimilating this continuous mountain of data, finding interesting tidbits in the vast ocean of insignificant events.
She ordered the culus dissected by her medical team, a group of seven middle-aged Manchurian women. They wore white smocks and thin paper slippers. They worked at the task efficiently, only their dark eyes visible over their masks. Every step of the operation was carefully recorded. Small hands wielded flashing scalpels; the culus was quickly dismembered.
While she awaited their report, Mai Lee riffled through the incoming intelligence reports. She paused over a transcript from the spaceport.
Grunstein Colony Spaceport, aboard militia command lifter: Salient. Governor Hans Zimmerman has a private discussion with General Ari Steinbach.
Transmitting Agent: Major Drick Lee. Imperial grand nephew.
Agent Reliability Index: 84 %.
ZIMMERMAN: I see you have yet to rid us of this man. I fail to understand your hesitation in this matter. Note the full media team that has now arrived. KXUT will be broadcasting the whole thing live if you turn it into a bloodbath now.
STEINBACH: We lack the firepower, sir.
ZIMMERMAN: You have an army here!
STEINBACH: Since the renegade Colonel Dorman brought in a squadron of Stormbringers, deluded into thinking they support the legitimate Governor, they have held the decisive edge.
ZIMMERMAN: You should have moved immediately! If you had attacked when the tactical squad first arrived you could have wiped them out.
STEINBACH: Your point is well taken. Please excuse me now, sir, while I return to my duties.