Chapter 4: Severely Slower Skirmish
A large organic structure, a chrysalis that contained bubbling and sloshing liquid from within, was quickly gestating and developing the primary machination that spawned forth monsters. Creatures without form were brimming inside of this structure, and they demanded to be shaped by the command of the zerg.
The cocoon bursts open, showering anything that was too close in a viscera of chrysalis and amniotic fluid. A bio-structure of several thorns emerged from the explosion of sealed flesh, releasing a five sided pyramid of muscle and shaped organs. Five of the sides contained carapaced tubes, delivering larvae that slid out of them. The top of the structure had what looked like overly large teeth, with five curved, almost fang-like, protrusions that surrounded this orifice. Five curved, also almost fang-like, spines surrounded the bio-structure, protruding from its base.
Kay looked up at this... thing and smiled. A sense of accomplishment washed over him, much like how one would feel when they successfully made their tent for the first time. "Well well! It's done!" He said, proudly.
'We need to collect the creep now.' Virid said, coming up to the bio-structure and inspecting its growth. 'As creep seeps into the ground, it will draw nutrients and metals out from it. The drones will collect the creep surrounding the hatchery, but you may assist them for the moment.'
Kay turned to Virid and raised his eyebrow. "Oh... Uh... Kay. Do you have a bucket?"
Virid turned to Kay and gave him a deadpanned stare. '... Just use your hands.'
"Uh..." Kay said, looking down at the sludge covered ground. "... Do I really have to? I don't want to get gunk under my nails."
Virid hissed. 'Either do something else or get down on your knees. Otherwise I will fetch the zerglings to persuade you.'
Kay immediately leaned down and gathered up as much creep as his arms could carry, the clump of creep seeping into his hold. "Alright, alright! Yeesh!" He then proceeded to deliver whatever he scraped from the surface of the creep and transported it to the hatchery.
However, when he had arrived at the hatchery, a puzzling thought came across his mind. How does a hatchery acquire resources without any mineral deposits or vespene geysers? How is he supposed to feed it with the creep that oozed in his arms? How would the drones know where to feed it? With nothing to go on, Kay figured that if he waited for a drone to start carrying a supply of creep in its pincers, he would watch it and examine what it might do.
He found a drone nearby that had finished scooping up the gray and purple jelly, which floated towards the hatchery. As Kay watched intently, he noticed that the drone simply dumped the collected creep on the side of the bio-structure. Kay's face expressed puzzlement, and he felt as though he may have overestimated the processes that involved feeding a zerg hatchery. However, as he looked more carefully, he noticed that the collected creep was actually being absorbed directly into the hatchery's sides. One could surmise that the entire outside surface of the hatchery was like an inside-out organ that is both a stomach and an intestine all at once. As Kay released the creep in his arms onto the side of the hatchery, he wondered what would have happened if something other than creep was brought to it. Kay wasn't too sure on what happens with collected mineral crystal ore, and vespene pods collected from zerg extractors, when they were deposited at the hatchery.
A tumbling sound resonated from one of the carapace tubes. Rolling out of one of the five tubes was a wiggling, fleshy maggot with abnormally large and pointed mandibles, and sporting a patch of carapace on its back. It screeched as it was born, rolling around in a flailing manner. It looked up at Kay seconds after it came to a stop, only to begin trilling softly as it digged its mandibles into the creep.
Kay was beginning to understand the importance of creep. It was produced by the hatchery to help sustain the larvae. The larvae would then eventually turn into drones when they consumed enough nutrients, deriving it from the creep. Gathering the nutrient and mineral rich creep and delivering it to the hatchery must be an alternate method for the zerg swarm to grow a hive cluster when they lacked minerals and vespene. It was a significantly slower method than mining directly from mineral deposits or gathering from zerg harvesters. Even so, the mineral crystal ore that is mined and collected by the drones had to be brought to the hatchery for digestion anyway, which stores the nutrients until it is needed to be released for zerg larvae to consume. After a short time of gestation, the larvae would then mutate into what was needed for the swarm.
Speaking of deposits, after an eighth or ninth armful of creep was offloaded onto the hatchery, Kay was reminded of the drone that was commanded to dig at the sand filled cave. "So uh... Virid. How's our little drone in the cave doing?"
He swore he could hear Virid hissing in slight annoyance and contempt. 'The hivemind connection is always available for your perusal.'
"And ruin the fun of breaking the monotony?" Kay sighed, now figuring out that if there wasn't something meaningful or urgent to say to Virid, he might as well be taking chances with teasing a parole officer, or some equivalent of.
'Terran boredom is not of my concern. I would rather remind you to not bore me with inane chatter.' She said, launching green somethings from her body and attaching them to the surface of the hatchery, which pulsed and emitted mist.
Kay shook his head and waved. "Alright alright, I'll check on the little guy myself. But if I want a pedantic discussion, I'll come back to you for that later." He said, waving goodbye and walking to the direction of the red cave.
Virid took her turn to speak plainly. 'Just remember. We have already been discovered. We need to increase our forces and soon. It is bad enough that we have not spawned a hatchery with no readily available resources close by.'
Kay sighed, but decided against poking at the proverbial bee hive. He would let that conversation come to a close. Virid was right after all. Since two of the lizard-man hunters retreated, there was no telling what they would do. Warn the scientist lizard-men of the zerg that have selected this location to make their base in? Tell any of the other hunters to avoid this area? Amass an army to eradicate the zerg infestation? There was no telling what might happen!
Putting those thoughts aside when Kay reached the red cave, he noticed that there were huge sand piles that was somewhat obstructing the entrance. A scuttling sound was heard, followed by the sight of a drone pushing sand out of the cave entrance. The drone looked up at Kay when it saw him. 'More commands?'
Kay shook his head. "Not at the moment. Just keep digging and bring as much sand that you can find back out here. How is your progress?"
'Lots progress. Deep tunnels. More sand. Need digging. Me dig!' The drone said, returning to his duty.
Kay raised an eyebrow at the retreating drone. He noticed that a lot of the differing zerg strains had unusual speech patterns in their communication. From what he remembered, the zerglings... Well... Were simple, since he only got one word out of the one that was nibbling at his foot a while ago. The drones seem to speak with two words in each of their sentences. Overlords have their somewhat broken English with lots of differing emphasis on 'the We' and 'We', the former mentioning the zerg swarm as a whole, and the latter mentioning the overlords as a whole. Virid, the only zerg queen that had the idea to spirit him away and transform him into an infested zerg commander, seemed to be able to speak English perfectly. But then a new theory went into his head that made his mind race. What if the zerg hivemind psionic network automatically translates the zerg thoughts into English when they intermixed within his own mind? Or is it through Virid's mind that she translates the zerg thoughts into English for Kay? ... Again, Kay felt like he was overthinking on the details that was present to him.
And speaking of overthinking, Kay reminded himself of the overlords. "Virid, how is our injured overlord doing?"
'I refuse to be your secretary. Use your connection to the hivemind network and leave me be to tend the hive cluster.' said an annoyed Virid.
Kay sighed, deciding to do just that. Searching through the lights of consciousness in a sea of black, filled out by the terrain that was painted by the awareness of the zerg organisms, Kay reached out for the overlord that had been damaged by the lizard-man hunters. Despite his attempts, he found out that there was now three overlords instead of two. Except... one seemed very different. A newly spawned overlord had recently emerged from a chrysalis, its carapace still wet from its recent transformation, yet Kay noticed some details when he focused on it. It didn't even sport the ventral sacks, or even travel as fast as its two brothers. Its carapace was not even fully hardened! Forgetting to determine which of the fully mature overlords were injured for the moment, he focused his mental attention to Virid. "Uh... Virid?"
'Yes. I too am aware of this as well.' Virid hissed in contempt. 'This is unexpected. The mutations we had carried into the battle with Amon didn't carry over to our arrival here.'
"Uhh... So does this mean that we'll have to mutate our zerg from the ground up?" Kay asked, rubbing the back of his head carefully and walking back to the hatchery.
'We can mutate one of the drones into an evolution chamber. For the mutations needed for our flying strains, we will need a drone to mutate into a spire.' Virid said, turning to face Kay as he neared her and the hatchery she was tending.
"But do we even ha-... I'll uh... Just check the hivemind network." Kay said, remembering that he could use his connection zerg psionic hivemind to communicate with the hatchery. He needed to in order to see how much nutrients it had ingested.
'You are finally learning.' Virid said mentally, sighing in slight exasperation. 'Perhaps there is hope for you yet?'
Kay rolled his eyes and checked his connection to the hivemind again. The hatchery seemed to have even less mental acuity than any other zerg organism he had ever focused on before, but at the same time it also amplified his psionic control over the swarm, but in a manner that was less than an overlord. It would appear that this organism has receded in its thought patterns, only being receptive to certain commands, such as sending the appropriate amount of nutrients to the larvae it produced, developing mutations for the ground zerg or to the overlords, metamorphosing into the next stage of its life, and detailing how much resources it had stored. The only time that a hatchery would ever communicate to the other zerg organisms is when it was registering damage in some way.
From what Kay could tell, the hatchery had already accumulated two types of resources during its life. The two resources that hatcheries can normally utilize were minerals and vespene, but this hatchery was now forced to used lesser alternative resources. These alternate resources, which Kay assumed would be called bio-material and bio-accelerant for the moment, are slightly less effective than the mineral crystal ore and vespene gas resources.
But it was then that Kay noticed that the bio-accelerant was distressingly small compared to the bio-material collected by the drones. "Don't hold your breath, Virid. I have a math question for you. How long do we have to wait till we have collected enough gas from the freshwater spring to make, say, a baneling or a roach?"
It took Virid several seconds to come up with an answer. '... It would take roughly forty minutes.'
Kay slouched, staring at Virid in disbelief. "You have GOT to be kidd-... Oh right, I remembered. Zerg do not make jokes."
'Spending our resources too hastily will cost us too greatly. Kay, I recommend using the gas from the spring for our mutations.'
Kay nodded, looking down and thinking aloud. "We have a slight excess of bio-material to work with, with little bio-accelerant to capitalize on. But... I think it would help every zerg here if all of us can have some early abilities to access. Being able to burrow and heal underground sounds like an advantage that is too good to pass up on. Plus, we can use more overlords for control, and drones for more creep collecting. And if we can morph a drone into an evolution chamber, and store enough bio-accelerant, we can then afford some additional mutations later on."
'Bio-material and bio-accelerant? Perhaps it would be better to shorten those names? I suggest bio-matter and accelerant. Anyway, I am commanding a drone to morph into an evolution chamber as we speak.' Said virid, bowing.
Kay turned to Virid and nodded. "Eh, tom-ay-to tom-ah-to. How about we put it next to the hatchery? That way, we can better defend it once we further fortify our position. And I think getting a spawning pool up and running might do us well too. Getting more zerglings and queens would be good for us. And aving some static defenses, like the spine and spore crawlers, would protect our hive cluster."
If Kay didn't know better, he could have thought that Virid was smiling at him. 'My accident in transforming you into a free-willed member of the swarm is turning out to benefit this hive cluster.'
The former spectre sighed. "Even so, I would love to hear an 'I'm sorry' from you. But... Even if you chose not to say that, I would still accept the apology."
Virid scuttled up to Kay and patted him on the shoulder. 'Human expressions is meaningless in the swarm. But still, I will remind you that distractions are not tolerated.'
Sudden pain shot up from Kay's leg again. "OW~!" He looked down to see what the sudden problem was.
'Distracted!' A zergling had managed to sneak up behind him and gnawed at his ankle again. Kay wasn't sure if it was the same one, but he was now beginning to understand why. If at anytime he was having any of his more 'human moments', his link to the zerg psionic hivemind network would weaken briefly and significantly. So much so that this zergling could get away with sneaking a bite on the leg of the infested terran, despite the infested terran being a member of Virid's newly emerging brood. Despite everything, it would still use that window of weakness to ambush Kay when he was careless and antagonizing Virid. The zergling was rewarded with a powerful kick that sent it flying a distance away. Its brother zergling appeared a few seconds later, hissing and snarling at Kay with its constant grin of sharp teeth as it stood over its kicked kin, almost looking like it was mocking Kay.
Kay huffed in disdain. "Man, am I ever thankful for zerg regeneration."
'You're welcome.' Virid replied.
Kay turned to stare at Virid with an annoyed expression. Kay huffed again and turned to a larva that was on the ground before commanding it to turn into a drone. "How about we get the overlords to dump their creep for the drones to collect? Or to help expand the creep?"
Virid shook her head. 'Creep generated by the overlords would do little to provide nutrients. Overlord creep is saturated with less nutrients derived from hatcheries and creep tumors, in fact. If the creep aged for a while, it may contain enough nutrients for the larvae to feed and grow from. The overlords may provide a temporary means to keep larvae from suffering, since they need the creep to survive, they still would shrivel up and perish without it.'
Kay nodded. "Then we need more hatcheries and creep tumors." Seconds later, a wet sound emanated closeby as a heady smell pervaded the air, distracting Kay from his thoughts for the moment. It was then that he saw Virid... 'producing' something from her behind. "Gah! What the hell?"
Virid gave Kay a nonplussed expression. '... What?'
"Do you have to do that in front of me? You could have asked me to give you some privacy first!" Kay said, turning away.
Virid scoffed. 'Kay, you are being ridiculous. To survive and thrive, I need to lay creep tumors to spread more creep.'
"Well I get that, but... It just sounds so gross! Ugh!" Kay said, shivering.
'Then cover your ears or leave me to my work, Kay.' Virid said, agitated and moving to the next spot to lay more creep tumors.
Kay sighed, but moved away from Virid and getting out of hearing range from her... squelches. It didn't help that the hivemind connection made it so that he could still see, from Virid's point of view, her laying the creep tumors. His gut lurched and his spine tingled with discomfort. Spreading creep was not something that he supported, since it would mean choking and killing the surrounding plant life, and leeching nutrients and minerals directly from the ground. The only thing that creep is ever good for is just spreading and spreading on every available surface possible. Even over and under water in some cases!
Speaking of hivemind connections, he also witnessed the birth of several zerglings, a new queen emerging from a hatchery, and the hatchery developing the mutation for the ground strains to burrow. There was a chrysalis already forming next to it, which Kay could tell would be the evolution chamber that would grant the zerg the means to become stronger.
... And speaking of zerglings, he noticed a pair that was gnawing on a dead body, crunching on a skull that seemed to be barely on the verge of rotting. "... Ah, dammit." He said, turning to see the viscera and fluid leaking onto the creep.
'Yummy.' A zergling mentally said, happily munching on the lizard-man corpse. They were using their attack-claws to divide the body into equal parts, then using their fore-claws to rip open the hide armor to get to the juicier giblets within. Kay would make a mental reminder to only use zerglings on enemies that deserve to be drawn, quartered, and eaten. ... But in the zerglings' case, not in any order whatsoever.
Sadly, the zerglings that was hatching from the hatchery emerged with no strong mutations, much like the overlord that was recently born. No harder carapace to provide protection. No sharper blades for more offense. Not even the ability to burrow and safely hide to restore their health. They don't even have wings! But once they hatched, the zerglings split off in groups of two and ran off in separate directions. As such, a zergling mainly had only three purposes in its life: being cannon fodder, smothering enemies, and scouting for threats. Despite being a completely expendable unit, they were also cheap. And since they were cheap, and faster than the floating overlords, they would be an effective first-line defense against any early offense that dared try to fight the zerg. But what they really need right now was the ability to burrow.
As of this moment, the overlords were too valuable in reconnaissance purposes. As a result from the earlier attack sustained by the overlord, the zerglings will fulfill their new scouting roles just fine.
The scouting efforts of the zerglings proved to reveal various things about the summit of the mountain's caldera. For one, there was an animal presence that existed here, evidenced by the nest of alien rodents that the zerglings had disturbed. They found their nests in the bushes. That, or finding otherworldly birds that had taken to the skies when a zergling tried to climb a tree. Overall, the summit was bare of any perceived dangerous lifeforms.
But then a question presented itself to Kay: Where did the lizard-men come from? The rock walls of the caldera summit were too steep and high in various places, which would make scaling the mountain and entering the caldera very dangerous for anyone who doesn't have climbing gear. The zerglings searched and searched, but found nothing equaling a path into the caldera's rather flat summit. Not even a cave entrance that lead to a tunnel leading out from somewhere, or even a naturally formed ramp that led up and out.
Another question came to Kay's mind: Did the lizard-men use a secret tunnel to enter the mountain's summit, and hidden the entrance from anyone who doesn't know of its location? It was a worrying thought to Kay. "Virid, I'm thinking we might need an overseer soon."
'Why?' Virid asked.
"Because I have a hunch. Notice the walls of the caldera surrounding us? That group of lizard-men that came here and wounded our overlord must have used a secret passage. If one of our overlords was wounded by their hunting attempt, they might use that passage to sneak more hunters to us and try again. An overseer's eyes can detect hidden things, right?"
'The overseers have detection capabilities, true. But in order to make overseers, we need to morph our hatchery into a lair. We do not have enough resources for the transformation, however.'
Kay sighed. "I guess it's back to collecting creep and expanding out our hive cluster..." Kay said, turning and deciding to go back to the hatchery. "Maybe I'll go back and see how much digging the drone in the cave is doing?"
'Kay.' Virid said in a deadpanned tone. 'Don't annoy me unless it's something important. Like if we're under attack. And not more of your trivial terran small-talk'.
An amused snort escaped Kay as he proceeded to return to the cave once more. Soon, the hot sun would set in the sky, and everything would become significantly colder. Kay didn't notice it till he entered a large shadow that managed to creep to the cave he first awoken in. From what he could tell from the overlord's synaptic processes, the orbital rotation and polarity of the world made it so that the sun sets in the west and rises in the east. The world he was on also has defined north and south poles that were parallel to the world's orbit. But there was also something off about this planet. Kay couldn't put his finger on it, but he had a gut feeling that there was a detail that he somehow missed.
Whatever it was, he would bet that using an overseer can help determine what that might be.
A/N: Kekeke.