I. (Hive ship, Wraith-Lantean War, Pegasus Galaxy, 10,000 years ago)
Four days until I am nine: My sister-queen gave me this data device today to help me learn my letters. She says I will need to learn the letters when I become a queen. I think that is a long time away. I hope so. I don't like work. I don't think she uses her letters much. She just makes everyone else use them.
Three days until I am nine: She read my device today and laughed at me. She says she uses her letters to read reports from the battles with the Lanteans, and to write sneaky messages to other queens on other hives, and to read our scientists' and commanders' reports, and lots of other things. I asked her if she liked reading all of that. She said that sometimes it was exciting and sometimes it made her angry. I think today she was angry until she read my "report." I made her promise not to read it without asking. She promised, but I don't believe her.
Two days until I am nine: We are moving into another sector. There are Lanteans there. I haven't seen a Lantean ship yet that I remember. She is very quiet. I feel her silence, so I know she is hiding something from me and everyone else. She has never told me on purpose, but she doesn't think she is old enough to be a queen. She is the youngest queen now. I think she is the youngest queen ever—but I haven't asked anyone, because that would make her angry if she found out.
My favorite brother took me to see her late in the cycle. She was talking with a commander when we came. She felt very happy to see me and our favorite brother (he is her favorite brother too, though she does not let him feel that.) She told us that the location of the Lanteans' newest research post has been discovered by our scout ships and that our hive is going to destroy it. Our favorite brother is eager. It is almost like hunger.
I am the only one who feels that she is afraid. I just feel sick.
Just one day until I am nine! One of my brothers spent all day with me teaching me about how the dematerializers on the darts work and showing me how it is done. The warrior he used to demonstrate was irritable by the end of the day. I don't understand how it works—but my brother is very excited, and I don't want to disappoint him. I am not like her. I do not have a great mind like hers. At least not yet. She is much like our scientists and commanders. I don't know what I am.
Another hive ship joined us today, so we will not be attacking the research post alone. She is a little happier now, but I don't think the other queen likes her. I don't like the other queen. She scares me.
I am nine today.
400 days until I am ten: As we came near to the research post, we saw a Lantean ship guarding the post. It wasn't there when the scout ships found the post. I talked to her just for a second today, and she said there will be battle. I think she believed this would happen. I asked her about the scout ships not seeing the Lantean ship. She told me that the Lanteans can make their ships invisible. They call it cloaking.
I don't feel like entering anything today. Our favorite brother and many others died in their darts. The other hive was destroyed and we all felt all of them die. She doesn't want to talk to me.
399 days until I am ten: After I made the last entry, I sneaked past the warriors (they can't see very well in their masks) outside her chamber and sat beside her. We sat there for a long time. Then I asked her, out loud so the guards wouldn't "overhear," what had happened to the other ship. She thought I meant the Lantean ship. She told me it was disabled and that we would board it and take prisoners to interrogate and feed upon. I told her I meant the other ship. She didn't say anything for a while. Then she asked me didn't I know that it had been destroyed? I told her I did, but what happened to it after? She understood what I meant. I'm not sure what I meant, but she understood. She said she didn't know. I asked her if that meant she didn't know what happened to our favorite brother either. I shouldn't have asked her that. Queens shouldn't cry. She told me, then, that she is too young to be a queen.
Today, she sent a boarding party to the Lantean ship. I asked if I could wait with her to see the Lanteans. I am angry with the Lanteans for killing our favorite brother. I hate the Lanteans. I tell her that. She says that this is war. I don't know what that is supposed to mean.
I have never hated anybody before, not even the Lanteans, but I hate them now. She hesitated. I thought she was going to say no, but she didn't. She hates the Lanteans, too.
The warriors and her high commander are bringing them in now. They look funny in their soft, unnaturally-cut uniforms. There aren't many of them. The Lantean commander is old and balding and has a fat little belly. He has a bruise on his face and he looks tired. I feel her surprise as the realization sinks in—just two hive ships actually defeated a Lantean ship. Our people have not had many victories like this in this war. She does not show it on her face, though. She just looks smug and cool. They seem surprised when they see her and me standing behind her and off to the side. Does she look young to them? I hope not. That would make her uneasy.
She glides towards the huddle of Lanteans. Her hands are flexing like she is preparing to feed. They are trying not to look afraid. They believe they are better than us. They believe they all deserve to live and all of their favored creations deserve to live, while we all deserve to die. We believe some of everything dies—it's just a matter of which ones.
The Lantean commander steps forward. She smiles and runs her fingers down his chest. She doesn't touch him with her palm. She is teasing him.
He speaks in his ugly, strange language that moves like ours except all the sounds are ugly. "There will be no purpose in torturing me or any of my crew. We will tell you nothing." I want to hate him, but my sister-queen and my brothers have taught me that sacrifice and loyalty to your people are good things. I know they believe this, but do they not believe that these qualities are good things in Lanteans too? I am confused.
"I know my own purposes, Commander Berainn," she said in his language. It is strange to hear her use his name as if she talked with Lanteans daily. I don't understand names. What kind of word can mean a whole person? Her voice is not the voice she uses with me and my brothers or our sisters or even the worshipers.
"I—" he starts.
She has him kneel, like at most feedings, but the feeling is different. I feel the power of her mind. She never opens all of it—ever. She is angry. He falls to his knees.
I have seen many feedings before. It is part of life—for life to exist, death must also. But she has no hunger. She has only hate and vengeance and a purpose. I try to stop listening. By the time he is dead, she knows how to attack the research post. She lets his dead body fall. A warrior drags him away quickly. She turns to the next Lantean. I feel her mind. It is excited and hungry—not in a necessary way, but in what the warriors call kill lust. She wants to know whether or not she should try to get inside the research post before she destroys it, and she intends to find out from the others.
I leave. If this is war, I hate it too.
398 days until I am ten: She read this without asking. She told me she did it tonight, out loud, when there was no one else around. She broke her promise to me. I am angry because I trusted her. I ran away from her and hid among the darts.
397 days until I am ten: They destroyed the research post late last cycle. The warriors came into the dart bay where I was hiding. One of them found me and sent me back to the living quarters. When the survivors came back, I went to find him and asked him to tell me about it. He told me that, ever since the battle between the hive ships and the Lantean ship had begun, the Lantean post had been covered by its shield. I saw its shield when I saw a glimpse of the battle from one of the display screens. It looked like a shiny bubble. The warrior told me that the Lanteans could have hidden behind their shield for decades if our queen hadn't noticed that it was not designed to expand downward. She told the warriors at the guns to fire at the rock beneath the edge of the shield instead of at the post behind the shield. I didn't understand everything he said, but somehow they made the shield fail because it had to go all the way around and didn't after our weapons made holes underneath it at the edge. I can't believe they would design something like that. I asked him if we could defeat Atlantis the same way. He laughed at me. He said this little outpost and its shield were never designed to run away into space like Atlantis. The weakness in this shield was based on the idea that it would not have to extend any further. My sister-queen is smart. I am not so angry at her now. Maybe just a little.
I guess Atlantis is more important and has a better shield than a little old research post, but everyone is still happy that we destroyed it. I wonder what they were working on.
396 days until I am ten: Nothing happened today except a boring hyperspace jump and a small culling.
395 days until I am ten: We met up with six other hive ships today. Another queen came on board to talk with my sister-queen in private. She was very tall and had long white hair like a male's. She brought a large party with her, including some worshippers. My sister doesn't like worshippers. She only keeps one or two of them because other queens have them. I think that's stupid. She says it is politics. I asked my sister-queen later what was going on with the other hive ships. She said she couldn't tell me yet because I didn't need to know. I pouted the rest of the cycle, but it didn't help.
394 days until I am ten: We ambushed a small Lantean transport convoy that was guarded by one of their warships. I think they were stopped for repairs to something. Our hive ship was not in charge until two others were destroyed. I was sad that the others died, but my sister-queen kept us and one of the others safe. She says it was the way the battle went, but I say it was because of her. The Lantean warship tried to contact us during the battled. It jumped to hyperspace soon after all of the transports were destroyed. The other hive ships wanted the chase it, but my sister-queen told them it would be too fast for us. I could tell it bothered her not to chase it.
393 days until I am ten: I got to fly a scout ship today! When we and the other hive ship stopped on a hyperspace rest, one of my brothers took me far out from the hives so I wouldn't run into anything and let me interface with the controls. It feels funny to know what the ship's programming is thinking.
When I told her about it, she tried to act excited for me, but I think she was thinking about something that was worrying her. I don't like that. She doesn't show me her thoughts anymore. I told her that. She looked surprised. That surprised me. I can almost never surprise her. She always knows what I'm thinking. She must be really worried. I asked her out loud what was worrying her to keep it a secret. She took me into her chamber and shut the door in her warrior guards' faces. I thought that was funny. She told me out loud that I could not tell anyone. I said I wouldn't. She took a breath and sat down with me on the steps up to her throne. She said that we had eavesdropped on a Lantean message—and it was about her. She said they have a picture of our hive and name for her. I don't know what that means, but she is afraid.
381 days until I am ten: I haven't made an entry for two sets of cycles. That seems like a long time because a lot has happened. After the other hive ship that was with us left, a Lantean warship came out of hyperspace and attacked us. I was asleep when the first drone hit us. We jumped into hyperspace. A set of cycles after that, we were surprised by three Lantean cruisers. We had to destroy one of them before we could even jump to hyperspace. The high commander was proud of himself for losing no darts. Two cycles later, we went into orbit around a planet to cull it. The culling darts came under fire by cloaked Lantean fighters. They were returning to the hive like they were supposed to for reinforcements, but she ordered them shot down before they could get near us. They had been tagged with something! The high commander says he thinks it was either a biological agent or a high-yield explosive designed to destroy our hive. Everyone would have died. I hate the Lanteans. I can't sleep anymore.
380 days until I am ten: She came to me late last cycle. She told me she had read my device again. I tried to be angry at her, but I couldn't. I don't know why, but this time I wanted her to know what I was thinking. Out loud, I asked her if the Lanteans were chasing us, even though it seems obvious that they are. She said yes. I asked why. She told me that we were the most successful hive—that we won more than anybody else in a very short time, and that the Lanteans wanted to stop us.
I felt that there was something she doesn't want me to know—and that part of her does want me to know: she thinks it is her fault we are being chased. I asked her if it's true. She laughed. It was a sad sound. She looked away and asked if it is arrogant to think so. I told her I didn't know. She said that the Lanteans are arrogant and that was what would bring them down in the end. Then she smiled and took my hands and told me she doesn't think that we are important enough to be chased for very long. We have just attracted too much attention and that I shouldn't worry. I can tell she doesn't believe it.
What she said about the war…"in the end." She doesn't except to see it end. That makes me feel sick. Our mother-queen died in the war. I don't want my sister-queen to die too.
379 days until I am ten: There was a little culling today, and no Lanteans! The high commander brought up the leader of the village to her because the leader claimed to have made a deal with the queen of our hive (he wouldn't know one hive from another, I don't think) to trade scheduled acceptable offerings for leniency. I think the high commander was amused by him and thought she would be too. She was, for a while, but then she got tired of his whining. She had him hauled off and sealed in a pod with the rest of them. I don't think he is very strong, though. Whatever warrior or scientist gets the leader as his portion will feel slighted.
378 days until I am ten: Next cycle we are going to meet up with another hive ship and go t[(([([''' (('['''[(['( [([' (''((
[data corrupt, abort translation
The wreckage of the hive ship floated eerily in the silence after the battle. The only motion aboard was the ghostlike drifting motion of the debris and the bodies, both of the Wraith crew and their human victims that had somehow been released unconscious from their pods during the failure of the ship's systems. A cluster of Wraith had escaped decompression, only to die from the suffocation. The Lantean crew exploring the wreckage had found them already. A few dozen survived in the command chamber. They killed all but the queen with some measure of difficulty. Hand-to-hand combat with the Wraith was not a wise tactical maneuver.
The technician just wanted to get out of this place and get back to Atlantis. There were too many dead bodies here. Everyone on this ship was dead except for him and his spacewalk partner.
A hand brushed against the Lantean technician's suit. He jumped and looked down. A Wraith commander floated by, staring off into the vacuum.
He heard a laugh in his helmet. He turned around slowly, looking for his partner.
"Was there anything worthwhile on that?" His partner gestured widely in the clumsy suit to the egg-case-shaped data device he was holding.
He looked down at it. It lay, gleaming in the half-light. The edge of it oozed a thin yellow fluid that floated away in perfect frozen droplets. There was something written on the surface that he wasn't sure he was translating right. Hers, perhaps? He turned it over in his hands. "No." He gave it a shove and let it float away.