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

“Thanks to Protector technology we have made incredible leaps in medical sciences. Illnesses that only thirty years ago were known as untreatable are almost trivial to deal with these days. Not long and we might finally be able to find a breakthrough on our quest for immortality!”

- Prof. Dr. Dr. Chantalle Zelus, Medical Professional, 2054

While my body self was busy walking around and getting to the next location that needed help, my virtual self was in a separate private room with Kaysa, a couple of new Hexclaw drones projected in the middle of it.

To begin with the Mark VI Hexclaw Field Medic, which is a pretty standard drone meant to work in conjunction with a specific variant of the Mark V Carrion Juggernaut, which works as a transport for patients and the medical staff across the battlefield.

While you do have access to the Class I Medical Utilities, it would help to either upgrade that catalogue, or unlock an additional one for use by your medical drones to treat more severe injuries. By default they can treat most minor injuries, but are pretty limited.

“Huh… That… doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Even if we won’t use it too much now, it will definitely be useful later. Makes me question how I’m going to store and transport my army though.”

The Mark V Carrion Juggernaut is part of the Carrion Lineage, which is meant to function as troop transports. Even with the medical variant, it would still have enough room to transport a full contingent of medical staff.

“How much would that cost if I got one of the Carrion things fully staffed?”

A total of 6570 points.

“Damn, that’s quite expensive.”

Most of that are the Field Medics, I’m afraid. They are quite specialised, even if their overall combat power is rather low.

“Fair enough I suppose… If I go ahead and grab more medical stuff for them to use, how much would it be then? Like, my goal would be to properly equip it to handle basically whatever we could run into.”

If you want to prepare for any eventually you could reasonably encounter, the point cost would go up to 9545 points. Short of esoteric diseases and specially designed biological weaponry it would be able to deal with pretty much whatever the antithesis could throw at you at the moment. It would also help with most injuries that could be inflicted by humans and their weapons and machinery. Although please understand that while it is quite state of the art medical equipment, even it has its limits. It is advisable to upgrade their equipment further in the future.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t expect you to raise the dead or anything. And honestly my plan would be for them to work in conjunction with the White Doves if and when. I might have the medical equipment, but considering it’ll basically be me controlling them, I am missing a whole lot of experience in the field. Of course that can come later, but it would be outright idiotic to ignore the experts already present.”

A sensible decision.

I took a quick glance at my point counter, sitting at 14657 points at the moment, steadily if slowly rising. I had the points to spend on it.

“Bundle it all up and get it. Medical shit is the kind of stuff I rather have and not need than the converse.”

Understood.

Class II Medical Utilities unlocked!

Points reduced to: 14364

Tokens reduced to: 0

New purchase: Mark V Carrion Juggernaut (Variant M)!

Points reduced to: 11794

New purchase: Mark VI Hexclaw Field Medic x16!

Points reduced to: 7794

New purchase: Various Items!

Points reduced to: 4819

Seventeen eggs appeared behind me, sixteen smaller ones, plus one really big one. It didn’t take long for my drones to untangle themselves from their shells and start moving over to the big pile of boxes that had appeared not far from them.

The Medics quickly started to unpack the contents, while the Juggernaut got closer so it could be loaded.

Much to my surprise the Field Medics looked a lot different from the other Hatchlings. Instead of the weird alien anatomy they looked like pretty normal human women, even if a bit on the curvy side, just with an additional arm on their left shoulder blade and a long tail.

Their body was covered in chitin and fur that made them look like they were dressed in some fantasy offshoot of nurse uniforms, with a slightly more provocative cut. Any of them could probably pass as a heavily modified Samurai without too much problem, if you excluded the eyes since they still very much looked like the rest of my drones. Well, hopefully this would be enough for my patients to not run screaming from the room.

The Juggernaut was also a lot different from what I expected. Probably also a lot different than what it would normally look. To put it simply it looked like a massive armored combat walker from a really old LEGO Bionicles movie, just with a more insectoid body structure. The insides were quite roomy and similarly designed to look more like human construction than the insides of a weird alien species.

“Damn! I did not expect that,” I said, watching them work. “But they will do as a medical corp. I guess you stocked them with whatever they need?”

Indeed. You may also buy more supplies and have it directly delivered into the Carrion Juggernaut Storage, if need be. It was a rather small upgrade and I thought you would appreciate it.

“Oh, I do! It will make things a lot easier.”

Taking a moment to give my new drones some orders, I sent them out to help with any medical emergency they find. By this point I had gotten a bit better at breaking up my attention into multiple smaller bits, to properly organise my army. It was by far not perfect, and basically only split them up into different units, but it worked for the time being.

It did help me realise though how the Hive-Mind part would work later on. During the time since I had started the upgrade I had sort of realised what that weird thing that had woken up with me afterwards was. While I couldn’t be entirely certain it felt a lot like a sort of biological learning algorithm which slowly but surely figured out what I wanted and how to react to it.

It made sorting through my army a tad easier, although of course it was still in its early stages. But even now I could already designate a specific group to follow a specific drone and the algorithm would work on making sure my orders were followed.

That really was all it did at the moment though. It wasn’t like something acting on my behalf, it was more like a part of me simply making sure my attention didn’t slip. If I didn’t have a part of my own attention working in conjunction with it, it did nothing.

Regardless, before I could even properly finish giving them orders I got a call from Shrapnel. Pulling it up immediately I pushed it over to my body.

“Hey! Glad to hear from you,” I said with a wide smile.

“Hey. We arrived a couple minutes ago, trying to get situated. Had to help topside real quick with another emergency, but it’s all dealt with. Where do you need us?”

“Wherever there is a call for help on the map. I just sent out a team with medical supplies to make the rounds, should help a lot. Chloe is cleaning up things around the northern and eastern areas, with Jenna as backup. She has the most important locations secured by now. The second Hive is in Wasp territory, so we will probably meet there once we cleaned up sufficiently.”

“I see… I guess we will help where we can then. I have Dominium Fortress and Martin here, but we’ll probably split up. Anything you need?”

“Nah. Thanks for the offer, but we’re swimming in points and I think we got most things covered.”

It was a bit of a wild thing to imagine that we managed to get this many points and resources in such a short amount of time, but considering the shit we had to deal with in the last couple hours, I suppose it wasn’t too strange a thing.

We talked about a few other things, mainly to inform them about what was going on and why I would be taking a step back in the direct fighting, before he hung up to organise with Dominium Fortress and Martin.

Talking about organisation, in the time I spent getting my new medical crew things had slowly but surely played out. At this point we had pretty defined defensive lines which were quite equipped, mainly thanks to Jenna and me, although Chloe and Blitzer did help a lot with personal weaponry.

The entire thing might even make it look like we had things well in hand, which while true now, definitely wasn’t an accurate description. Despite our best efforts we had lost close to a quarter of the small groups at the edge of the territory. It made me feel… Inadequate. Like I could have done more.

I knew that really wasn’t the case. I did the best I could so far, and I am pretty sure the others did as well. Still, it hurt to see.

I promised myself to have a good drink in memory of those I had failed to protect today later, but for now I had to focus still. While we had our defensive lines laid out, we still had to deal with the xenos definitively. And that meant cleanup on the smaller hives, before we were able to tackle the big one.

Having as many bodies as I did meant that for me the entire situation felt a lot different now. Instead of having to run everywhere or check the map to get a good grip on things, it felt more like watching things from afar. My drones had lost some combat prowess, mainly thanks to my missing experience with fighting using their bodies, but overall it made it quite easy to help protect things even without me being present.

At some point I was even able to sit down somewhere and rest my body a bit, even if I couldn’t fall asleep without issues.

The problem was that things took a lot longer than I wanted. By the time the fourth hour went by since this disaster had started I was barely staying awake. I could prolong that with some of Kaysa’s energy drinks, of course, but there was no way we would be effective if we pushed back dealing with the Hive any longer.

“Okay folks,” I said in the virtual room that all the Samurai were connected to, “I think we need to move on the Hive. Exhaustion is our main problem and I don’t think we can put it off any longer. I know there is still a lot of clean up that needs doing, but that simply has to wait. I vote we meet near the Hive in Wasp territory and see how we can deal with it, then see how we can continue.”

“Yeah…” Chloe agreed, sounding tired, “Best do it now while we can still think straight.”

“Agreed,” Martin added. He had also finally gotten a name, being called Snapshot by the people around since he focused on long range weaponry and surveillance. It fit him quite well I thought.

The main problem was dealing with the Wasp thugs, since they still stubbornly believed that they could deal with an entire Hive by themselves.

Actually, that wasn’t true. Their thugs didn’t think that, they knew how fucked they were, but their boss was some hardass bastard that had people all terrified of him and forced them to listen to him. Some people had broken away, but the majority was still stubbornly refusing anyone entry into their district.

And so, since I was the only one free at the time, and probably best suited for this kind of situation anyway, it was my problem to deal with.

In a way it was a blessing. While they most certainly wouldn’t be able to deal with the Hive themselves, it did mean one less front to worry about. And considering the absolute chaos we had to contend with, it made things a little easier. It sucked for the people living there, sure, but we just didn’t have the resources to do much about it until now.

Even with my swarm of living weapons I could only do so much, and my drones were needed elsewhere. And really, if they needed help, they would ask. I wouldn’t let anyone guilt trip me into feeling bad for not helping. The offer had been made multiple times before and they refused.

It did make me a teeny bit angry though.

Even from afar I could see that they had a multitude of armed people on their border, much more than I would have thought considering that their numbers weren’t infinite and they had an entire Hive to contend with. Probably some attempt to make it look like they had things well in order, and the grunts wouldn’t mind since it would mean being further away from their death sentence.

Walking up the street they had designated as their border, I could see many eyes following me, most of them a mixture of hopelessness and stubborn refusal.

Shaking my head I arrived at my side of the street and made my way over, only to be stopped by some brutish looking guy with a woman even more brutish next to him. Both of them gave me sneers, even if the common thugs behind them looked a lot less sure of themselves.

“Fuck off. This is Wasp turf and you aren’t wanted here, Samurai.” The man’s voice was gruff and raspy, probably a heavy smoker by the sound of it.

Sighing theatrically I crossed my arms, “I don’t particularly care, to be honest. You have a Hive in your territory and we need to deal with it. And before you waste your breath, we both know you aren’t able to actually deal with it yourself.”

He sneered, “Of fucking course we can. Who the fuck do you think we are?”

“Useless grunts with less than a dozen braincells shared between the lot of them, manipulated or probably blackmailed by your boss to do what he wants to make him look all tough and shit while he hides in some hole somewhere, shitting his pants, and hoping he won’t get eaten by some pissed off plant.”

“The hell do you think you are to talk like this about Boss?!” the woman asked, obviously trying to play all tough and shit, although from her expression I would almost say she was braindead enough to actually believe it.

“I’m a Samurai. A very tired Samurai who’s finally run out of patience to deal with a group of fuckwits that seem to have a death wish and willing to kill innocent people to prove it.”

The brute snorted, “Yeah, and? Samurai are useless. Just take a look at Blitzer, all he does is mouth off then fuck off when he’s threatened.”

I raised my eyebrows. Did these knobheads think that Samurai were pushovers because Blitzer so far had been spread too thin to show them otherwise?

“Are you actually stupid? Wait, no, sorry, wouldn’t want to insult stupid people like that,” I rubbed my face with my hand, “Look. Just get the fuck out of my way so that someone competent can deal with the problem. I don’t know what is going on behind this facade, but I bet my last dose of Daemon that you lot are here to uphold an image while the rest of the folk in this district get slaughtered in job lots.”

“Listen here, you little shit-” the man began, then was promptly silenced by the armada of Hexclaws forming up behind me. I didn’t have the patience to deal with this idiot, so if he wanted to play hardass I had no qualms about removing him.

“No, you listen, you brainless waste of oxygen. You get the fuck out of my way right now or I’ll send my little friends here in, to turn you and anyone trying to stop me into new little drones so that you finally have some actual fucking use.”

I wasn’t actually planning to do that, but at the same time he didn’t know that and I didn’t want to deal with this shit right now.

The two stooges in front of me eyed the growing army of alien murder machines behind me cautiously, while the rest of their friends took a couple steps back, panic clearly written all over their faces.

The woman snorted again, although from the way her heartbeat had accelerated a bit I was almost certain she too was feeling a bit panicked.

“Yeah, sure. Don’t you guys want to protect people or something? You wouldn’t dare touch us.”

I shook my head. She had a point, which meant I either had to put up or shut up. If I didn't, everyone would know that they could push me around, which just meant a whole slew of problems in the long term. So I decided on the former, rather than the later. One brainless goon less in the world wouldn’t mean much and it would bring my point across. Hopefully.

“Snuffles, fetch.”

Once I had gotten some more Reavers I had decided to name the leader of their little group in honour of their late predecessor. And so the biggest of the Reavers stepped forward, snarled, then jumped her before she could move, taking her head off with a single bite.

It was… a lot uglier than I had expected, and it took quite some willpower to not let myself show my displeasure, but I had a role to play here.

Of course the display made everyone take a couple steps back and some thugs behind the slaughter dropped their weapons and ran.

“Anyone else? Or can we finally fucking focus on the maneating aliens?”

Admittedly, I only realised after the fact how stupidly hypocritical that sounded.