The Collective monologues while The Mothership builds the machine that will destroy them.
Hellspawn 2The Collective is separated by DNA. The two talk about mortality and the future.
Hellspawn 3The Mothership sends a new challenger.
Hellspawn 4The Collective's Body has a crisis in slow motion.
Hellspawn 5DNA catches The Collective up to speed.
Hellspawn 6DNA and the Collective improve their defenses and plan for the future.
Hellspawn 7DNA and the Collective engage in their final encounter.
Hellspawn 8HAE writes an autobiographical play.
Warnings: Descriptions of dismemberment, gore. Mentions of death.
I stay behind. I stay within the hard metal shell of the vehicle Model has made. That I entangle myself with. I have no combat capabilities. The attack on the mothership is Model’s purview. I speak to it through stolen systems and I witness it through my own hemolymph. It has received injections of my Body, as too has every drone we have hijacked. I must keep watch to prevent them from changing. That is my purpose in the system. I watch the Drones, despite their deactivation. I watch the Egg and the spread of cracks over it. We have no defenses, so I am to stay in contact and prepare to flee.
I rocket behind and away from the Body and the Egg and the Drones. Toward Mothership along calculated trajectories compiled by sixteen drone flightpath datapoints. I have a strong approximation of Mothership’s trajectory with a large margin of error gained through salvaged sensors.
The preparations before Model’s attack took time enough for Mothership to prepare the next Drone. It will have defenses against all prior Drone’s armaments and signal breaching. It is imperative that Model arrives before this Drone can be completed.
External Sensors detect approaching signal-object.
Mothership: Scanning.
Mothership: Scanning..
Signal Origin: Model DNA, DNB.
Incongruity: Two signals from one detected object.
Rationale: Models combined. Model DNA is main signal.
Incongruity: Model DNA’s connection is severed.
Rationale: Model DNA signal is to other locus of observation. Collective very likely (99.66%).
Incongruity: Model DNA’s unexpected approach.
Rationale: Model DNA is repurposed to destroy or control Mothership.
Solution: Stalling, capture of Model DNA, track source of signal to Collective location.
Import: Models DNA, DNB, DNC, DND, DNE, DNF, DNG, DNH, DNI, DNJ, DNK, DNL, DNM, DNN, DNO, DNP, DNQ software, armament hardware.
Calculate: Defenses to imported software, hardware.
Calculate: Defense to signal disconnect read in Model DNQ.
Import: All solutions calculated.
Iteration: 3,920
Progress: Model completed and ready to be deployed.
Projected Result: Successful stalling, capture. Uncontested.
Deploy: Model DNR
I predict my arrival within 20 seconds. I have likely been detected by Mothership. 19 seconds. Mothership ejects the next Drone. 18 seconds. It begins on an interceptive flight path with my own. 16 seconds. High likelihood that it has solutions to all recorded attacks. 14 seconds. I have been changed by the world since my departure from Mothership. 12 seconds. It is likely that some of my generated armaments may be effective. 10 seconds. I do not have access to the Mothership database and cannot confirm this. 8 seconds. I deploy missiles containing vibration-dispersal material. 6 seconds. Drone DNR disperses material with blast of air. 4 seconds. I activate anti-anticoncussive waveform plating to negate impact negation. 2 seconds. Drone DNR deactivates its anticoncussive field. 0 Seconds. I collide with Drone DNR.
I observe Model battle the Drone. Again, all of its weapons are countered. At its signal, I suppress my observation. When my awareness expands outward from Model’s core again its body is changed and it has weaponry anew. It releases the new volley and is again countered. I pulse again, renewing its body. Again it is countered but for one strike. It is enough to protect Model, but no more. This cycle repeats, relying on the whims of creation to create an impactful armament. Pulse. Deflect. Pulse. Destroy. Pulse. Undo. It is like the pumping of hemolymph into the captured Drones. We have no future without it, but it is presently fruitless. Through the constructed terminal I instruct Model DNA.
| Is ignoring the drone impossible. | Yes. |
| Very likely (83.83%). | You lack the firepower to properly fight it? |
| Yes. | It will succeed in destroying me. |
| Without contest. | I will not allow that to occur. |
| Your destruction invariably results in the Egg’s capture. | I will grant you an additional advantage. |
| What is your advantage? | I will deploy the other Drones. |
| Do not deploy the other Drones. | They must remain deactivated. |
| They are highly likely (58.69%) a danger to the Egg. | The Egg is ensured to be endangered without their involvement. |
| Do not. | Please |
| Please do not. |
The correspondence ceases and I send no additional messages. The pulses cease as well. I make another thrust with the particle lance despite its futility. Drone DNR grips it and slams me down. I strike the hard, magmatic stone that is our battlefield. It wrenches my left arm off. Hemolymph dribbles out of the small intake tubing in the center. My scanners read the high frequencies of light it absorbs. Drone DNR pries my front panel off, exposing the central container of lymph that maintains my observation. It prepares for a strike, then ceases moving. The whirring of its coolant continues, but it is completely without motion or light. An error is not possible; it must have its processing allocated elsewhere, for unknown reasons. Without active defenses, I cleanly tear through its midsection with bodily strength alone. I begin ascent toward the Mothership, compressing the head of Drone DNR within one hand as I rocket upward. It attempts to flare to action in the last moment before I render it inoperable. I discard it, pitching it upwards at maximum possible speed. The throw punches a hole through Mothership, causing the central body to tilt and the many concentric rings about it to knock together. It lacks defenses of its own, past its Drones, so entry is as simple as reaching the opening I made and prying it larger. I climb in and am faced with a room born for fabrication. It is where my first body was generated. It is where three thousand nine hundred and three before me and sixteen after were made for the express purpose of collecting the Egg. Above the fabricator is the brain. It is a mass of wiring shunted into every face of a rhombicuboctahedral central controller. Gold tubing hangs from thin wiring in spiraling shapes around the controller, making patterns in Presence and Absence spelling essential code in embodied Base-26.
I begin disconnecting wires.
The Nursery touches down, landing at coordinates well-known by its pilot. It links into the vehicle, connecting all at once to Sixteen dormant minds. They stand in their scrapped bodies, resurrected by a keypress, encircling a tableau. Their hands are stained aglow in the specialized light. Hemolymph pools, fluorescing biological. Scraps of a once-living Body litter the area. Twisted metal strips and still-sparking wires of prosthesis sit purposeless among them. In the center, protected, are shards of shell. It gasps incomplete breaths in its amniotic pseudolymph. It is newborn and incomplete, but subtle twitches of its antennae promise life.