The door opened, and he emerged into a vast chamber. What first struck him was not the sight, but rather the incredible stench; a reeking odor, reminiscent of a blend between mold, pizza, cigarette smoke and deodorant spray, accompanied by a slight scent of ammonia. The contrast against the sterile environment from which he had come was too much for his senses to withstand. Slowly staggering backwards, on the verge of fainting, he leant towards one of the walls for support, and that was when his eyes were finally able to take in the sight. The chamber was enormous, not horizontally, but vertically, dimly lit by four green beams of an unknown kind of light, reaching up into the inky darkness above and casting deep shadows wherever the light was obstructed. Above him was a platform, running in a great circle along the wall, but the whole sight was dominated by the elevated platform in the middle of the room. A circular disk, supported by four legs, each directly below one of the beams.
The sight was so astonishing that for a moment he even forgot about the smell, only to have it crashing back upon him shortly thereafter, and this time it was too much for him to take, so he fell down on his knees. That was when the lights turned on. All of a sudden, the dark green light was joined by a soft indigo-blue colour, illuminating the bottom of the chamber, revealing that which had formerly been hidden from his sight by the shadow of the central platform. In the middle of the room lay a dark silhouette, with a shape unlike anything he had ever seen before. It was a life form, no doubt about that, but the sheer size of it was enough to startle even the bravest of men, and its shape was not to speak of. The monstrosity that was sleeping on the floor before him was a reptilian, yet centaur-like creature, with two muscular hind legs, a pair of spike-like rudimentary front legs, and two arms, both of which ended with a taloned, three-fingered hand. Staring in awe at the black scales of the hideous abomination, he stood up, appalled, unable to fathom what he had just stumbled upon. It was not until he saw the two tusks that protruded from the creature's lower jaw that he realized that this was a member of the same species as the humanoids he had fought before, but this one was very different - it was a female. Suddenly, everything made sense to him. The ship was like a giant hive, run by workers and drones, all protecting the being that was the source of their young, the female that gave birth to their children - the Queen.
Unfortunately, he did not have time to speculate any further, because in the moment of this realization the Queen raised her head. For an instant, his eyes met hers, those luminescent emerald green dots staring back at him through the dim glow of the lights, and a fraction of a second later, she vanished in a flash of scarlet light, only to reappear on the ring-shaped platform on the wall, releasing a shriek so loud that the whole room seemed to tremble. Stunned by the discovery that this beast had the ability to teleport herself by will alone, it was merely with an infinitesimal margin that he managed to throw himself out of the way from a series of glowing orbs of pure energy, launched from, and seemingly produced by, the chest of the monster that towered high above him in the indigo shimmer of the wall-mounted lights.