{2523 words before authors note. Sorry but the muse was as tired as I am and I am working seven days in a row before going on my newly scheduled days off. Love and huggles to the reviewers and here is chapter 4!}
Jessica sighed and leaned against Alpha Dog in the elevator. He was feeling a great many things including a twisted sort of delight mixed with sadness that came from having been taken into yet another hive. It was bad enough in his view that his Queen who was his Mother had not kept him as a pleasure servant that did not breed, which many queens did with their prouder Praetorian sons, but she had sent him to the furthest Hive she could sense away from her as if he had somehow shamed her.
Now he was willingly given up again. For in his mind that was what the Queen of the Northwest had intended. To give him to Jessica regardless of her former status as a not Queen. If it had not been ridiculous for her to know of this event in advance he would also have thought she was aware of what would happen to Jessica and had prepared by sending them along with her.
Oh Alpha it is not that way. You were not rejected by any of your Queens. They wanted what was best for you and set you in place to receive those gifts. They loved you very much. I love you very much so please don't be sad that we are a hive now...
You love me?
I am pretty certain that I did from the moment I first was touched by your being. I have never trusted anyone like I trust you, I have not felt safe around another since he whom is in my cells died protecting me from the Hunters who came that day.
The conversation had led them further into the laboratory complex of the space station they currently were making their way through. Three other scientists had submitted without a fight. They were botanists not working on the same experimental tier as the infamous Dr. Charles. She would need them and she knew it somehow, so Jessica gave them the option to refuse and then claimed them as kin of the hive when they agreed.
Spikes teased her a little bit for this, indicating that a true queen would surely not give them the chance to refuse. She glared at him for a moment then moved forward as if his little tease had never happened. Perhaps true queens did not care for the feelings of their hives but she did and she knew that human people being a part of her hive meant that the overall structure and the ways by which she ran it would have to completely change. Otherwise the humans would not feel at home and would find any and all excuses to leave the hive.
When she knew these things she shared them with her Praetorians. She shared most of her conscious stream of thought with them. This at least, or so Spikes assured her, was normal for any Queen to do with her trusted lieutenants.
Jessica was growing tired from all this wandering around and so little food. At last they had acquired all but Long Knives from the captives that were members of the clan from which he sprang. Those who followed along after were well raised and smart enough to not argue with a female of any stature. They were eager to take the heads of the ones who had captured them, but they had acknowledged that those she took into her hive today were no longer prey as they had agreed to the momentary peace accord.
He is in severe danger my Queen!
Then move faster!
The Praetorians and drones sprang ahead at her orders, leaving her behind with the humans and Yautja warriors. She followed after as quickly as her unsteady feet would allow her. They too had changed and she was still learning to move all over again. Her clawed limbs had strengthened greatly as well as growing longer and more obviously thickened. Where she had once had scant arm muscles and those only from heavy work on her part, she was now rather thick in the forearm, so much so that she equaled many of the human soldiery in that regard and surpassed a few of them as well.
Her legs had changed into talon tipped three toed feet with what felt like thick bones pointing ahead. Two raptor like thumb talons that would help her gut prey also grew out from her former the heel area of each foot. Her skin was whiter then it had been and her hair had gone stress white. Her knowing of herself continued to advance and she knew that her former dishwater blonde hair was not going to grow back in. She was practically albino save for the icy white washed blue of her eyes and a row of winter white scale growth as wide as her old hand across the knuckles grew up from her new jaws into her cheeks and onward in a thinner stripe into her newly receded hairline. Her ears pointed backwards and seemed fully mobile where they had not even been wiggle capable before. It was so strange even to her,but she hesitated not at all when the door came that had hidden Long Knives behind it.
She was needed now. She could feel the distress of her hive. They knew she wanted very much for Long Knives to live and yet they did not know what to do to effect this act upon an uncooperative universe. He was gravely wounded. The scientists had started the process to turn his entire body's worth of genetic code into their wicked mutagenic substance. It would dissolve him utterly while drawing up the resulting DNA soup they desired into the tubing and storing it in a large plastic jar meant for collecting it. Blade Claws had been long dead when they did what they did to his corpse. Long Knives was awake and alive for the procedure and howling at the top of his lungs. It had not yet injected the dissolving liquid into his flesh though and a slim chance remained.
"Doing that to a sentient being. I underestimated Dr. Charles severely."
"What you do not believe yourself capable of you do not think others capable of Dear Dr."
Jessica knew what the doctor was capable of. She could sense a lack of morality and a sociopath-like nature hidden beneath a very false veneer of one extremely civilized and educated. No truly civilized being would hurt another in this way unless no other choice was available to save many more then just a few individuals. This one did it just out of a childish curiosity to see what would occur when he did so. Education was no excuse either, for his fellow educated persons were just as bemused and disturbed in turns by his actions as she was.
The leap carried her across the space between them and she knew with relief that it was in time. Her new strength was so great she tore the apparatus cleanly from the mounts that held it to the room's ceiling. Then Jessica tossed it like a javelin through the observation window. She felt the fatal blow strike home. It was not Doctor Charles, but this one was also not acceptable, and found these wicked experiments to be fully entertaining and amusing. His death then was a mercy on the universe and she would not mourn it.
The others, including the wicked destroyer of kin, were on the run once more. Snarling in fury, Jessica lifted along with two others of Long Knives clan and they managed to get the heavy predator up on his feet. She had not realized how thickly massed he was. She made a purring noise in her throat and Long Knives chuckled painfully.
Long Knives knew what the small queen wanted and he was not in any mood to argue. He doubted for a minute that her ability to destroy was a s great as his own. He forgot though that, as small as she was, she was still a queen, a mother of all. The fiercest thing ever encountered by his kind was the hard meat queens. Now the small ooman whom had been hive raised had become a hive ruler. She would be out to prove herself and form a hive that would secure safety and peace for all who dwelled in it. He reversed his thinking. Oh this one would have been fabulous in her ferocity before hand, now she was going to be a wonder of the universe!
He watched as she claimed or killed or ordered killed anything that got in their way on the path to the Medical facilities where the dreaded Doctor Charles was. Very few of these she allowed to live now. Obviously many of them were of the same stripe as the slain soldier, or their leader. She looked inside them and the small queen judged them and found them wanting severely.
He settled a head and spine, minus the rest of the corpse, on his back and formed a more human looking smile by twitching his upper mandibles into the gesture. The small queen understood it and returned it in the same way though her first mouth also smiled in the way she had once expressed her pleasure. He contemplated something that perhaps he should not have ever thought of, but pushed it to the back of his thoughts in favor of killing the enemies he shared with the small white queen.
The human scientist begged most amusingly for his life, but it was a deception so he could try and use a weapon on the small queen. Jessica laughed aloud at the attempt and ripped an arm off the screaming man. The arterial spray covered her in his blood quite rapidly. Other things were then torn off and tossed over her shoulder in various directions and her queen's will did not allow the pathetic doctor to pass out even though the blood loss was quite horrific for something born so weak.
" In your next life don't be so foolish as to try and dominate your betters. "
That was her final word and with a wrenching motion she tore his head from his shoulders. He did not think anything of it when she held out her hand he simply handed her enough twine to secure the head to her body. It would have a place of honor on her very own trophy wall where ever she managed to make her new hive.
The station was going to be destroyed. Even with the knowledge they currently held, human kind was several millennium behind the Yautja. They could not be allowed to keep any of the knowledge they had gained through this dishonor. The small queen agreed.
"I will take the videos though since they only show what horrors they perpetrated on me. Should any human justice system seek to pursue me over my vengeance I can prove to them that I was merciful for the most part compared to how they treated me."
"Have you decided where your hive will be little white mother?"
This one was perhaps a century younger then he was but he was known for asking questions that made others think sharper and focus better. He often led hunts of new bloods because of this trait. In her own way the small queen was just another type of newly blooded one. His talents would serve her well.
"Cousin Axe I am certain of only one thing, that I must leave the earth for too many hives already exist on it's surface. Beyond that I will trust in Long Knives to find me a suitable planet to drop kit on and begin my new life."
Her words startled him somewhat, but when he though about it he instantly knew where he was going to take her and headed to the docking bay where they had been keeping his stolen ship.
"How did you keep them out of your things then Long Knives?"
"I spoke a code word when they were dragging my nearly unconscious body from the vessel and the doors locked behind us. They did not have the ability to crack them open again without destroying the vessel and we are fortunate enough that they were disinclined to destroy it and pick the bones for the knowledge they sought."
" One of the few times in our lives that the laziness of others will be an unmitigated blessing. The next time they will use all manner of what they would call deadly force. I must prepare to meet it. Have you thought of a place to put me and my future broods yet? "
"Yes Jessica I have."
"Excellent. Can we go now then? We need to frag this place and then get everyone safely back into their happy lives."
"It will be as the lady wills it."
The strange response got a purr and a smile that actually almost reached the eyes of the sad little queen. This batch of enemies defeated she might well have time to dwell in a most unhealthy manner on her captivity and the horrors it had brought her. Long Knives did not wish this on her already overburdened shoulders. So it was that he instead slowly stroked the spines that had grown up in her hair from her hairline to her neck before they slowly merged into one row of spines. These flowed down her back they were like the small roots of a hunter's own rubbery hair growth before it was made to merge into the dreads they all wore it in. The only difference was the winter white coloration.
The purring started again and did not halt as long as he continued his ministrations. The musks she released were most desirable. He felt himself harden beneath his loincloth. A tart warning in the lower telepathic frequencies told him not to push to hard. The small queen had been forcibly mated before? Anger rose up in him until a stolen memory of the death of the long ago enemies at the hands of the still human Jessica made him smile. So fierce! Once she had been an equal to any and superior to many, just as an ordinary hive raised orphan. Now she would be very difficult opponent for the ones who came against her. Very difficult indeed.