Biological Perfection (Starcraft x GoT)
Story may contain some games elements.
– [Prologue] –
The blaring siren finally stopped, but the intense heat remained. Amidst the smoldering ruins of twisted metal and shattered glass, something – a worm-like creature with four pair of short, stubby pincers for mouth – began to squirm. It unraveled itself from a defensive, spiky sphere. Curling into a sphere was its natural instinct whenever danger was imminent.
The predatory worm was known as a larva. It was the primal evolution stage of the biological contagion that infested many fertile worlds and killing millions in the sector designated as Koprulu.
The small larva took a brief moment for the shock to its miniscule brain to diminish before scanning the surrounding with its multitude of pitch-black eyes. The room was in a shamble with fire and sparks raged fiercely on every flickering holographic console nearby, and the cylinder imprisoning it for almost a year had been smashed around during the crash landing.
With the glass screen fractured, it slipped through the jagged opening and attained its freedom at long last. Unlike those that confined in every glass cylinder adorning the metallic grey walls, it had survived the impact by hardening its carapace – an ability that it was forced to evolve when being experimented ruthlessly upon by the numerous scientists. Those scientists littered around the floor and in the hallway, scorched beyond recognition.
Whatever had happened to the interstellar research vessel during the transition to their home world, it did not know and had no actual motivation to find out. There was no point of learning why the craft was forced to crash land onto the nearest habitable world. It wanted to know if any of the marines on board was still alive, however. Since there were lack of bodies belonging to the marines, it was very likely that they were still alive – somewhere.
The superstructure that kept the room intact buckled and groaned repeatedly while it slithered around, searching for a way to open the reinforced door. The control next to the door was buzzing hazardously with sparks of electricity.
Sensing that the heavily damaged craft would soon succumb to its grievous wound, the larva squirmed, slithered and weaved through one of the small openings located along all sides of the rooms. Those gaps formed during the violent landing less than half an hour ago. The tunnel was dark and filled with heated steam, but not discomforting to the creature that thrived in inhospitable world.
Soon enough, the larva found its way onto the outer hull and saw what remained of the starship, which was its torturous prison for the past year. There were burning wreckages littered for several miles in all direction. Nothing else besides the quiet trees could be found under the stormy weather, however.
Curling into a perfect ball, the larva rolled down the incline side of the ship and landed onto the thawing snow hundreds of meters below. The abrupt change in temperature stunned it for a fraction of a second before its biology adapted to the cold climate of this new world.
The larva swiftly uncurled once the cold no longer bothered it and made its way towards the untouched wood almost a mile away through thick ice and snow. Half way towards the wood, the interstellar ship it left behind roared in agony and exploded spectacularly. The intense shockwave came forth, ravaged the land and sent it flying. Instinctively, it curled into the ball as it sailed through the air, and its momentum was only stopped when a boulder decided to lend a hand.
Another jolt shocked it miniscule brain. It quivered a minute later and uncurled itself. The first thing it saw was a mushroom cloud forming from where the ship used to be. Whatever stayed within the blast radius was incinerated. It watched the fiery inferno and bathed in the radiation for a moment before turning around and headed away from the spot. Someone would surely come and investigate that, and it didn't want to be there when they did.
For the next several days, the larva wandered about the icy landscape, searching for substances. As the creature gifted with purity of essence, it could devour and assimilate anything organic, strengthening itself through the power of evolution, but sadly, besides the birds sailing above and out of its reach, the land did not provide.
The larva knew the planet it had been stranded on was habitable. This was due to the amount of oxygen constantly invading its microscopic pore. That meant there must be some indigenous carbon-based life form on the planet. It could assimilate such life form with impunity thanked to the prolonged war with the Terran Dominion. That war had forced the Swarm to adapt and evolve in order to combat the threat the humans and their non-biological drones – machines – proposed. Under the guidance of the Queen of Blades after the untimely death of the Overmind, the swarm only grew more ferocious and genocidal.
Speaking of Queen of Blades, her will was no longer imposed upon its feeble psych. Those scientists had somehow severed its telepathic connection to the Swarm while trying to improve upon its evolution in their unique way. What the Terran managed to accomplish during its capture weren't entirely unheard of amongst its brethren, but it knew the Queen of Blades would never allow such corruption into the Swarm and threatened her undisputed rule.
And with the connection to the Queen of Blades severed, its purpose returned to biological perfection as engraved into its genetic makeup since the days the Overmind first revolted against their creator. The Dark Voice still echoed within its mind. The Terran had failed to severe that hidden connection, and it would be their undoing if they believed they had created a perfect and controllable biological weapon.
The larva stopped after another day of fruitless search and decided to gnaw on the surrounding trees instead. Insects could also be found near the root, thus allowed it to acquire much needed sustenance to keep its body from deteriorating. Once it gained enough strength, it decided to burrow into the earth under all the ice to gather more organic materials as well as some minerals.
Months passed before the larva could harvest enough minerals to spawn another Zerg. If it was a drone, evolved specifically for harvesting and gathering resources, it could have acquire enough mineral within a week or so. When the larva returned to the surface, it quickly entered a mitosis state, allowing its cells to divide when sufficient organic matter assimilated. This was one of the improvements introduced into its genetic makeup by the Terran after some ingenuity.
When the splitting was done, the prime larva stared at its duplicate. The duplicate while had taken on its appearance had a blanked expression. It just sat there, looking into empty space. The mitosis ability was interesting and useful, but it wasn't complete.
During its captivity, it learned that the Terran wanted a biological weapon that would not revolt, and to do so, they would imprint each new larva with a specific ideal and repeated the cycle of mitosis until the final product was fearless with unquestioning loyalty. Once they had such a larva in the end, they would have their army through mass replication. Those scientists would have succeeded in a decade or so, but by then, the war would likely have been lost.
The Queen of Blades was relentless in her vengeance, and with the threat from the Protoss, the Terran Dominion would be overrun in another year or so. Unless something changed, their extinction would be assured. They were desperate, but such notion did not affect the larva the slightest.
The prime larva ordered its spawn to morph into a drone. The larva did so without hesitation, morphing into a drone – the weakest of the Zerg. The drone immediately burrowed into the ground, searching for more minerals and perhaps vespene gas if any could be found below the surface. That was unlikely since the gas appeared to be native to the Koprulu sector from its genetic memory.
Before the Swarm invaded the sector under the Overmind's command, natural minerals such as copper and iron were consumed and assimilated in their path for stronger and harder carapaces, bones, teeth and claws while petroleum was a source of nourishment to accelerate metabolisms. With the discovery of Vespene gas, petroleum was quickly abandoned in favor of a higher energy yield, but petroleum was never forgotten.
While the drone sought out minerals and petroleum deposits, the prime larva resumed its hunt for more sustainable organic matter. Insects and worms while abundant won't be able to further its evolution and helped it reached biological perfection. It would return back to the spot and spawned more drones to speed thing up. Even with a dozens, gathering enough mineral for a hatchery (300 tons) would still take at least a few weeks.
By the time the larva and its mindless drones had gathered enough minerals, it stumbled upon a small village at least 20 miles away. It watched the town from an overviewing spot, trying to search for any sign of sentries, cloaking or otherwise. The world was populated by what it had immediately assumed to be Terran, but the lack of marines and turrets around the village made it extremely wary. It decided that assaulting the village would likely alert the Terran to its presence before its forces could be assembled.
The larva continued to build up away from the village, but with even more haste. It spent every ounce of organic materials it taxingly managed to gather to spawn more drones, and whenever it was hunting for subsistence, it also attempted to locate a defense position for a permanent base. It also ran into some wild animals once the cold weather cleared up, which it tried to hunt, but found the effort was futile. It was too slow and lacked any proper offensive capabilities.
After some consideration, the larva decided to spawn some Zergling to hunt down animals. For Zerglings to be spawned, a spawning pool was required. A spawning pool cost 200 tons of mineral while Zerglings cost 25 minerals each. Zerling came in pair so it cost 50 regardless.
With dozens of drones working without rest, siphoning through the earth for anything harvestable, the amount of minerals gathered was slight more than 600 tons. The larva knew that without a rich mineral deposit, it couldn't amass an army that it needed to take on the Terran before it was discovered. If that was the case, it should have some Zergling for protection.
On order, one of the drones separated from the ground and headed to a small clearing. It made itself comfortable before mutating into a bloated tumor. The tumor grew in size and throbbed violently. It exploded after an hour or so, spraying guts over the ground, revealing a pool with green ooze.
While that was happening, the larva entered mitosis again, replicating itself repeatedly. By the time, it exhausted the amount of organic matter it had stored, it had created six mindless larvae. Once the pool was formed, those six larvae headed to it while the drones started dumping minerals into the pool itself, causing green mist to erupt upwards. It cost 50 minerals for each larva to morph into Zerglings, and with the cost of the spawning pool, the minerals the drones had collected in the past month was expended.
The larvae cocooned themselves around the spawning pool, sucking up the massive amount of genetic materials and minerals from the base. The cocoon grew in size, pulsating with evident movement within, and when half an hour gone but, powerful claws tore through the cocoon, bursting forth Zerglings. The twelve Zergling growled at each other before two started attacking like feral creature.
The prime larva watched the Zerglings while retreating to safety. It did not know if it could control the Zerglings once they were spawned from the larvae it made, and from what they were doing, it appeared that it could not. Before it could get away from the area, the Zerglings stopped fighting and shook their head while using their sharp appendages to carve up the ground. They noticed the larva afterwards and immediately surrounded it.
The larva curled into a ball for defensive purposes, but the assault it expected from the Zerglings never came. It soon learned that the Zerglings still recalled where they came from thus would listen to what it would say for a time. It immediately ordered the Zerglings to go hunt down any animal they came across and brought their kills back to the town. It took a while for the twelve Zerglings to growl and scattered much to the larva's relief.
When the Zerglings disappeared from view, the larva pondered on how to control them so they would not go rogue and attack the hive it would build. It obviously lacked the mental power to do so without evolving into something that could.
It could evolve into a Celebrate, but that meant it would be stuck in one spot forever, not to mention the amount of organic materials, minerals and gases it would require. By the time the larva reached a conclusion, a few Zerglings had returned, bringing with them wild deer and boars. They dumped their kill onto a pile before heading off again. A few growled at each other like they were having a rivalry.
The larva began to engorge itself onto the organic matter. It could only digest so much before its body became too bloated to move. It split itself into several more copies so they could consume the organic matter simultaneously. The amount of animals brought back by the twelve Zerglings dwindled and far in between as the sky darkened, and by the end of the day, one of them dragged back something that the prime larva wanted to avoid at the moment.
It'd brought back a Terran, who clenched a primitive wooden bow tightly in his cold dead hand. His dark widened and fearful eyes framed on his grey bearded face were as lifeless as they came. The prime larva hesitated in consuming a Terran since doing so would alert the others to its presence.
The larvae it had spawned showed no reservation in assimilating the Terran, whatsoever. They were told to eat and split, and so they were doing what they were told without question.
They all eagerly devoured the carcass presented by the Zergling, ripping out bloody chunk of meat with their powerful pincers, leaving only gnawed bones, clothing and tools behind while undergoing mitosis, increasing their numbers exponentially. By the night was over, there would be hundreds of them!
– To be continued –
Just for fun. This might be rated MA due to extreme horror (?). Will update whenever I feel evil enough.