Chapter 107: Meeting of the Minds.
Jack Mason's attempts to brute force his way into the mind of the insect commander were met with a level of resistance he would have not thought possible from any sentient being.
Suddenly the reasons Adem had taken these insectoids into his employ to conquer his planet was rapidly becoming more apparent by the minute.
Not only were they loyal to a fault thanks to their ridged command hierarchy but they were also fearless in the face of danger and combat but now he was discovering that they were highly resistant to Dream Warrior psionic abilities as well.
But Jack Mason was not a man who was easily defeated or dissuaded when he set his mind to something.
He prided himself on being a natural problem solver and this obstacle that the insectoid commander was throwing in his way was just another problem for him to get his teeth into.
For hours Jack tried many different ways and methods to penetrate the commander's mental defences to no avail, never in his life had he seen such a powerful set of mental defences.
Eventually, he had to take a break as he was growing increasingly frustrated and what was making it worse was he swore that he could feel the insect's smugness at his fruitless attempts.
As Jack stood on the command balcony overlooking the base below Liam came up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Not having any luck boss?' he said and Jack glanced at him.
"The insect's mind is like nothing I have ever encountered before, it's like a steel trap, it's infuriating," he said pacing back and forth on the balcony before placing both hands on the steel railings.
"Don't beat yourself up boss, I don't think I've ever seen a problem that you couldn't solve and this is no different, you will find a solution just have faith and patience, we all believe in you," Liam said but right at that moment, Jack wasn't sure it was all that warranted.
As arrogant as sit may have sounded Jack had never anticipated finding a mortal being with the mental fortitude to rebuff his mental attacks so easily, not even a Xenoqueen could lock him out so easily.
That is when it hit him, one of the major tricks Xenos employed when they needed to amplify their psionic power was to link their minds together and use the power of the hive mind, perhaps he could use a similar trick to break through the defences of the commander.
"Liam gather as many Seekers as you can lay your hands on, I've got an idea," Jack said and Liam gave him a knowing smile.
"Thought you might, on it boss," he said saluting before heading off to the barracks.
Once Liam had rounded up as many Seekers as he could find which was only about ten or so as most of those on the ground had already been deployed with the battle groups that were operating out of this FOB he returned to Jack who was waiting for them at the prison.
"Reporting as ordered boss," Liam said saluting the Grand Patriarch as he and the other Seekers walked in.
"Alright good, our friend in there is a bit of an enigma, he has a very high resistance to our psionic abilities, but I'm willing to bet that as good as they are they won't be able to hold up against all of us working together, so we're going to show our insect friend here what true unity looks like, so here's the plan..." Jack said before launching into detailing out what he wanted each of the Seekers to do during the interrogation and as he talked he could see Liam's grin getting wider by the minute.
As Jack entered the room he could see the insect's multi-lensed eyes tracking his every movement, he could also see its antennae twitching curiously not to mention the muscles under the carapace surrounding its large forearm blades twitching under the metal bands that the Xenos had secured them with to prevent it from turning the place into a B film slasher flick.
Jack took a seat opposite the mantis-like insect and looked it right in the eye, "Well so far it seems that you have thwarted our efforts to try and get any information out of you and I have to commend you there, there are few that can resist a Dream Warrior's abilities for long but you have stonewalled us, it's not often I find myself impressed but here we are, so rather than me taking a stroll through your mind how about this, how about we take a stroll through mine instead?' Jack said with a smile.
The insect clicked its mandibles and twitched its thin antennae in obvious confusion, Jack stepped forward and placed his hands to the side of its head but rather than try to force his mind into that of the insect this time he simply pulled its consciousness out of its own head and jammed it right into his own.
It seemed that while the insects had figured out a way to prevent a Dream Warrior from brute forcing their way into their minds they had not been prepared for one of them to pull their mind out of their own head, as the insect now found itself standing free in a very white place with nothing in it other than Jack Mason himself.
As soon as it saw him the insect chittered angrily and launched itself at him swinging one of its forearm blades at him in what would have been a blow easily powerful enough to decapitate him, had he been a physical being and not a spirit.
The blade passed right through Jack's form like he was made of smoke and left the insect standing there looking at its own arm in confusion.
"You know I'm beginning to see why Adem chose your race to help him with the invasion of his planet, your kind are capable warriors, loyal to a fault and fearless in combat, the reports I've been reading say that you throw troops at my people like ants defending their nest, plus the casualty reports I've been seeing show that you are very skilled at what you do, but I think you'll find that you are up against a very different type of enemy this time, we will not bend or break under the weight of the intimidation of your numbers or the mindless beserker charges that your soldiers throw at us, I think you'll find that the Yautja in my Clan had the handle on pulling that shit long before you even thought of the concept," Jack said strolling around the insect with his hands clasped behind his back.
The insect commander decided that the first strike must have been a fluke because it began to swing at Jack with a flurry of furious swings, each of which passed right through him.
"Here let me show you a little bit of the races you are coming up against on the field out there," Jack said and with a wave of his hand the white room changed to show a megacity on Earth.
There were crowded streets, massive high-rise tower blocks rising high into the sky to the point where their tops vanished into the clouds above their heads, people and vehicles in every direction as far as the eye could see.
The insect commander stopped its assault and looked around itself chittering as it did.
It tried to touch one of the people who walked passed it only to have its claw pass right through them.
"This is Earth, the birthplace of my species, I'm a human, there are numerous billions of us packed into a very densely populated planet and unlike your race, we don't have a hive structure with everyone working together for a united goal, my kind operates on the survival of the fittest, you either succeed in your endeavours and make it to the next day or your fail and die, its that simple," Jack said showing the insect something his intelligence operatives on Earth had sent back to him of the bodies of the poor, homeless and the unclaimed being burned in furnaces which were used to generate power for the megacities since fossil fuels had run out years ago.
The insect stares at this obviously trying to comprehend what in the name of hell it is seeing.
"So as you can see we humans are not in the habit of giving up easily, if we can do this to our own kind just imagine what we can do to yours," Jack said before waving his hand again.
Now the scene became a thick and humid jungle, it was filled with bright plants and animals of all shapes and sizes.
"Now we have the mighty Yautja, hunters and huntresses of the biggest and nastiest prey this universe has ever seen, there is no animal too big that the Yautja will not think of hunting it to add its skull to their collection, to them the bigger and more dangerous, the better as it adds glory to their name and proves them worthy before their Goddess the mighty Paya the Eternal Huntress," Jack said gesturing to the massive disosaur that seemed to be stalking it was through the trees that it dwarfed.
The insect looked up at the dinosaur in what might have been alarm and also confusion, it seemed to be looking around for the Yautja that Jack had mentioned but this confusion simply made Jack smile.
"Can't see them can you?" he said in amusement and the insect chittered at him angrily obviously realising that he was mocking it.
Suddenly out of seemingly thin air four Yautja hunters decloaked in the branches of the trees on either side of the dinosaur.
The four of them worked as a perfect team to bring the creature down, two of them fired line darts through its legs into the trees around it causing its legs to get tangled up while the other two launched themselves onto its back using their wrist blades to hang on as the creature fell.
As it roared and thrashed around the pair rushed up its back and along its neck to plunge their combi sticks into the sides of its neck under its armoured skull and fired the extending poles into its brain from underneath.
As the massive creature fell silent and as dead as the floor on which it now lay bleeding the four hunters let out war roars of victory startling the insect who chittered at the display.
"So you see they are not impressed by the size nor the nature of your biotech, to them it is just an excuse to hunt worthy prey that they can take trophies from," Jack said before waving his hand once more.
Now they found themselves inside of a dark cavernous building that had resin coating every surface giving it a very distinct organic feel.
"Now we have the Xenomorphs, these are probably the most familiar to you because of their almost insect-like nature and hive structure, they live together in a giant hive that is ruled over by one of the most formidable creatures you will ever encounter other than my wife on a bad day, a Xenomorph queen," Jack said as he spoke Xenos seemed to simply melt out of every surface of every wall around them surrounding the pair and making the insect chitter in alarm as it looked up at the much bigger black creatures.
That's when the queen appeared.
She was like a giant shadow simply melting out of the features of the black resin of the walls, moving like liquid smoke as she silently stepped out into the little light of the room and lowering her large regal head to look at the pair with a deep resonating hiss as she looked at them.
Without warning the queen lashed out with her long tail slamming the armoured spear-like tip right into the chest of the insect commander causing it to throw itself backwards before realising that the projection was nothing more than that, a projection and couldn't hurt it.
"Well well it appears that you can feel fear or at least have some measure of both understanding and self-preservation, that is interesting now isn't it?" Jack said clasping his hands behind his back and leaning down to look at the insect as it picked itself up off the floor and glared at him before unleashing a barrage of its chittering language at him.
Jack simply grinned at it because now he had an ace up his sleeve, any species that could feel fear could have that fear exploited and in this place there was no nightmare that he could not bring into reality, in this place his will was law.
"Now you have met the three primary species of Clan Mason let me introduce you to the two latest newcomers to our ever-growing Clan," Jack said and with a wave of his hand they found themselves in a deep and endless desert.
The insect looked around itself chittering as it obviously felt the shifting sands beneath its four feet and the heat of the imagined sun above it.
Suddenly out of the sands all around it, four large figures burst out making it chitter and jump back extending what appeared to be large wings that it had hidden under the carapace of its back.
"Meet the Serpentinus," Jack said as the four large female serpents slithered up to tower over the insectoid commander and glared down at him as their multicoloured scales shone under the harsh sun.
"These girls and boys are the masters of adapting to harsh environments given the nature of their homeworld and add to that they are masters of ambush tactics as you can see, oh and they have Dream Warriors they call Ghost Slitherers who are trained by yours truly to defend their people and way of life with everything they have," Jack said as seemingly out of thin air four of the Ghost Slither variants appeared before flashing forwards so fast that they had the commander surrounded before it could even blink.
Just as fast as they appeared they were gone and so was the desert it had now been replaced with a very thick and luscious jungle that was so oppressive it blocked out nearly all light around them.
Jack really amped up the sounds of the jungle all around them and moved himself among the shadows of the massive trees.
"Next up are possibly the smallest members of both our alliance and my Clan, but don't let their diminutive stature lull you into a false sense of security, these girls and boys have the fire and heart of a Yautja crammed into their small bodies and they fight with every bit of it, but then when you evolve on a planet where every thing wants to kill and eat you I suppose you have to have a lot of fight in you just to survive," Jack said and as he did a whole pride of Raptorians burst out of the under growth jumping right at the commander with their razor sharp claws aimed right at him once again causing it to dive for cover.
Jack chuckles as he looks down at the cowering and angrily chittering insect as it picks itself up again and dusts itself off.
"If you think these girls are fearsome then you are going to love who's up next," he said before he waved his hand and this time they found themselves on a massive rolling plain.
"Now let me introduce you to the ones among us who have the most at stake in this fight for you see the one that's commanding you and running this show killed millions of their people and destroyed their very homeworld, the survivors were taken in by Clan Mason and they've been among us ever since, learning our ways, training with us and becoming part of us, now they stand here alongside us ready to not only do their part in defending the Clan but its friends as well but more than that, they are here because of a blood oath that every single one of them took, to seek vengeance for their fallen and for that which was stolen from them, meet the Beledon," Jack said darkly.
No sooner had the words left his lips than a tremendous bellowing bray tore across the landscape seeming to come from all directions all at once.
It was accompanied by the sound of thundering hooves that seemed to shake the very ground on which they stood causing the insect to chitter and look around itself before an entire army of armoured Beledon Knights thundered into view charging right at them all carrying weapons that were bigger than they were.
The army of Knights charged them only coming to a halt directly in front of them like they had run into an invisible wall, every single one of them was glaring down at the insectoid commander with pure murder blazing in their large bright eyes.
"You see them and they see you, and right now you and your fellows are the ones standing between them and their righteous vengeance, honestly not the place I'd want to be in your shoes if I'm honest," Jack said turning from the large army of knights to face the insect.
As he spoke the army faded and they were returned to the white room again only this time Jack was surrounded by a member of each of the races he had profiled, the Yautja present was none other than his beloved and feared wife Tik eleth Mason.
"This is who and what Clan Mason is, many standing as one, fighting as one, breathing as one, loving as one, all different races and species altogether in a perfect unity, let me tell you something, we will not stop until this world is back in the hands of those it rightfully belongs to and you will not stop us, we will go right through you no matter the cost because that is who and what we are, Guardians of the innocent and avengers of injustice," Jack said passionately and that's when something fired off in the back of his mind and a smile crept on his face.
"But I've spoken about my kind for too long I think, why don't you take me on a tour of your mind now instead?" he said and suddenly the insect looked startled betraying that it blatantly understood Jack's words.
There was a flash and the pair found themselves standing in what appeared to be an underground chamber filled with what looked to be some kind of accelerated growth pods filled with blue and green swirling liquid.
Inside the pods were insects of all shapes and sizes including ones that looked like the commander itself.
Only now did the insect show some truly potent signs of any other emotions other than anger, as Jack watched it there were true signs of fear in its eyes as it dawned on it that they had somehow managed to break into its mind and were now privy to the secrets it had tried so hard to hide.
"Hmm so it seems you are all purpose-grown to specifications, man that sucks, born to do a single job with no reward other than the satisfaction of doing the job," Jack said as he strolled up to one of the growth pods and peered inside at the growing insect within it.
Once again the commander attacked his, swinging its bladed forearms at him wildly only to have them pass through him each and every time.
"Fuck you you vile primate! You will never win here! My queen will push you and all of your kind from this soil and she will create the greatest hive anyone has ever seen!" the insect yelled and Jack turned to it and grinned as its expression faltered as it realised that he'd understood its words.
"Yup that's right young one, now we have your language as well, with every second that passes we tear more from your head, leading your kind might be what you were born to do but this is what we were born to do," Jack said strolling over to a computer terminal and peering at it before everything started to crackle and turn grey.
He looked at it in confusion before turning to the insect that was now smiling at him and looking kind of unsteady, "We shall see mammal, we shall see," it said and with that, the insect collapsed and Jack was snapped into darkness.
With a yell Jack was thrown out of the creature's head and back into reality where he stood looking confused for a moment before he looked down at the insect's body slumped on the floor.
Exactly one second later the door burst open and in flooded the Battle Angels that had been charged with caring for the insect commander.
They surrounded it and immediately began scanning while hissing and shrieking at one another.
They tried every single trick they knew to save it but it appeared the creature was dead.
"It had some kind of suicide switch built into it Grand Patriarch, we are detecting an incredibly high concentration of a deadly poison," the lead Angel said with obvious dismay in her voice.
"How? I thought you scanned it for any kind of weapons or suicide devices?' Jack said in annoyance.
"We did Grand Patriarch and we have the scans to prove it," she said handing him a pad that he looked at and indeed it was true that there was nothing on the scan.
"Perform an autopsy and find out how it did it, if we get our hands on another one I want to prevent this from happening again, after that is done treat the body with respect and perform a cremation, this creature might have been only born to fight but we were not," he said and the head Angel snapped to attention saluting as she did.
"Right away Grand Patriarch," she said before turning and screeching at her companions who loaded the body onto a floating gurney to take it to the medical bay.
"How much did we get?" Jack turned to Liam who was standing nearby with all the other Seekers who had each been grabbing as much intel as they could from the creature's mind once they'd broken through the blocks.
"Not as much as we would have liked, that language of theirs was an absolute pain in the arse to tear out but from what we have pieced together they have set up some kind of mega hive on the planet somewhere, it contains their queen and the vast majority of their infrastructure, though from what I can tell as easy as it is for them to branch themselves off and take over a region due to their quick spreading nature if we cripple the main hive then we cripple them completely as it is their method of replenishing their soldiers almost endlessly," Liam said.
Jack looked thoughtful for a moment.
"It makes sense, they are insects so it follows that they follow insect rules, kill the queen and you kill the hive,' he said.
"Unless they get a chance to set up breakaway colonies though from what I did manage to pull out of the commander's mind there is much more here than we are seeing, I think they are planning on betraying Adem and his lot," Liam said and Jack glanced at him curiously.
"Oh, what gives you that idea?" he asked.
"Just something I saw in there, it didn't make much sense at the time but the more I think about it the more the feeling grows, I saw a world covered in hives and swarming with their kind, I think that they are concealing their true nature from Adem and his lot, I think their true plan is to help him kick us off the world and after that, they will do the same to him, they intend to claim it as their own and strip it of its resources, he has essentially just handed his homeworld over to these creatures without realising what they really intend to do with it," Liam said darkly.
"Growing their soldiers on site is a very good way of endlessly replenishing your numbers in the field, it seems that they have a very rigid caste system in place with each of them bred for a singular purpose, it's ingenious when you think about it because it not only locks them into that role but from what I got from the commander they are only happy when performing that role, it seems that the vast majority of their numbers only have low-level sentience, but there are a few that are elevated like the commander was, these are given varying levels of sentience relative to their role," Jack said as he trawled through the memories he'd managed to pull before the bug commander killed itself.
"Odd how it didn't try to kill itself when we initially captured it, gotta ask why it waited for so long to do it?" Liam said.
"It was most likely tempted by the offer of intel on us to bring back to its hive, it probably thought that it had a chance of escaping us at some point and felt it would be better to wait and see if it could break free of us in order to bring the information back to its queen when it realised we had outmanoeuvred it it pulled the trigger so to speak," Jack said thoughtfully.
He sat down at the head of the conference table with his Seekers, "Alright people let's do this, time to compile what we learned in there, I gave you all a different part to search for a reason, we didn't know how long we would have before it found a way to lock us out and well I was right, I will admit I didn't expect such an extreme response but that was a failing on my part, I should have foreseen such an event, but either way lets see what we have," Jack said holding out this hands to his sides.
The Seekers around the table all joined hands and as one began to focus their thoughts together, from all the little pieces that each of them had managed to grab as they had broken through the bug commander's mental defences a much larger picture began to emerge, granted it was very incomplete as they hadn't managed to get even a quarter of what was in its mind, but when things like the language was applied to what they had learned things began to slot together better.
It seemed that Jack was right in that they had a very rigid hive structure of hierarchy, the queen of the hive was responsible for not only birthing the members of the hive but once she laid the eggs they were immediately transferred into one of those bio pods he had seen in the commander's mind.
It seemed that once inside the pod the queen could adjust the genetic profile of the embryo inside of the egg into what she required it to become, whether it be a soldier, a worker, a pilot, or whatever she needed.
It also appeared that some of them were sculpted into some form of consciousness to be implanted into the vehicle frames so which answered the question of whether the vehicles were alive or merely shaped like their insectoid cousins, they were alive.
A lot of what they saw in this assembled image horrified all of them, the main hive was ginormous, it dwarfed any Xeno hive that any of them had ever seen by a great magnitude and it was already active and set up on this world.
The queen herself resembled a giant spider-like creature with two massive abdomens that seemed to have the sole purpose of producing eggs by the thousand.
She was roughly three times the size of a fully grown Xeno queen and would be more comparable to what the Xenos referred to as an 'Empress.'
She controlled the entire hive from a chamber deep within its subterranean chambers and to say the place was heavily defended was an understatement, the place had an entire army whose sole purpose was defending it to the death.
Hive guards were large vicious creatures that were somewhere between a Rhino beetle and a scorpian.
They were covered in thick spiky chitin armour but while that armoured appearance would give the viewer a false sense of security that these creatures were slow and cumbersome when nothing could be further from the truth.
They were fast and agile with four massive crushing claws that could cleave through metal armour like it was made of paper as well as two large whip-like tails that had stingers loaded with powerful neurotoxin on their backs.
Their six powerful legs could propel them along at incredible speeds and they could turn on a dime.
In short, they were the perfect defensive soldiers to guard the hive.
Commanders like the one that the alliance had captured were much rarer, they were highly intelligent and had an unparalleled level of sentience within their ranks, they were next in line only to the queen herself and infact were designed with the purpose of taking over the hive should the queen herself fall as their genetic template actually allowed for the queens wombs to be grafted right onto their bodies along with her enhanced carapace, with very little work allowing them to grow into their role quite literally.
And this was only the tip of the iceberg.
One of the roles of the commanders had indeed been to gather intelligence on their enemy and to discover how best to kill them.
This included finding out what chemicals and biological agents they were susceptible to in order to best eliminate them with little effort.
When the Seekers all came out of the collective trance the look of horror was painted onto every face along with a grimness that had never been seen among the Clan before.
Each and every one of them turn to look at Jack as their Grand Patriarch.
"These fuckers will actively try to take prisoners but not as prisoners of war or even as bartering chips, they'll take them to find out how best to kill us," he said in a voice laden with both sorrow and anguish not to mention pure rage.
"What do we do boss we can't allow our people to undergo such cruelty if captured?" Liam said his voice heavy and sullen.
Jack nodded grimly.
A large part of him wanted to hold onto the hope that these creatures could be reasoned with but the more of the memories that he trawled through from the collection the more he realised that this was not just going to be a fight to the death, it was going to be a fight of extermination, either the bugs exterminated them and then everyone on the planet or they exterminated every last insect.
Jack rose from the table and he adjourned the meeting, he needed to confer this information with his wife and possibly the other leaders of the alliance so that they could find a solution together.
As the little holographic Tik eleth appeared on his desk Jack sighed heavily, what he wouldn't have given to have been able to reach out and touch the real thing, to feel his wife's powerful muscled arms around him and to feel her mandibles nibbling gently on the back of his neck as she conveyed her love to him wordlessly.
"What troubles you my Ack?" Tik asked softly as she sensed her husband's pain.
"This place is so much worse than we feared my love, this world is in a level of trouble they do not understand, we captured one of their ground commanders and we learned some things from it that to say they disturb me is an understatement," he said.
Jack told Tik of what he had learned and as he watched her saw her beautiful face go through the whole same spectrum of emotions that he himself had gone through upon learning it.
'We must bring this news to the leaders of the Alliance my love, they must be told of this vileness!" Tik said her voice laden with barely contained rage and Jack nodded.
"I know my love I wanted to bring it to you first so that you could help me with a decision I wrestle with, never before in my life would I have imagined having to give an order to members of the Clan that told them to take their own lives should they fall into enemy hands, but it is better than the alternative surely?" he said and Tik growled and clicked her mandible tusks darkly before nodding her head.
"I believe that the Eternal Huntress would forgive such a thing considering the circumstances but I believe that would be more your area of expertise than mine my heart's truest star," she said.
"I will have to beg an audience with her to find out, but either way every life that ends on this world will be paid for in blood whether it be at their hands or because of them, they will be paid for tenfold," Jack said and Tik nodded making her predlocks swish and jingle.
"Agreed my love, we must also double our efforts to locate this hidden hive, if we can destroy it then it will be just a case of slowly eroding down the remaining resistance," Tik said.
"As long as we can take out those commanders of theirs yes, but if just one of them survives they will be able to rebuild the place from scratch, they have to be our priority targets," Jack said.
"I will task teams of Hunters with kill orders to hunt them down my love and I do believe the Knights of Beledonia will wish to be in on that, they have been itching to have a target to hunt," she said and Jack nodded.
"Good, assign each team you drop a Seeker and give them express orders from me that they are to assist your Hunters in any way they can to track these creatures down," Jack said and Tik nodded and growled.
"Worry not my heart's star, the Clan will prevail here, we will uproot these vile insects and destroy them, we will wipe this planet clean of their filth and make them pay for every innocent life they have destroyed," she said and jack breathed a little easier, his wife's fire always soothed him but there was something else plaguing his mind and Tik knew it.
"What is it my love?' she asked.
"Our teams found test subjects underground, at first we thought that they were just prisoners that they had been experimenting on but now the reasoning becomes clear to me, they are preparing to wipe out every sentiant being on the planet using the same methods we saw in the commanders mind, it must mean they are already developing chemical and biological agents that will kill every living Velon of every race, if we don't stop them quickly there might not be any Velons left to save," Jack said and the look on Tik's face told him everything he needed to know, it was the very same look of mixed horror and rage that every one of his Seekers at the table had worn, Tik had just learned the truth, this shit was a whole lot worse than any of them had ever imagined.
