It drifted slowly through the vast
wilderness, knowing little of its destination. Somewhere, far ahead
in the blackness was a soft, golden light that beckoned it onwards,
but before that there was food, and the brief touch of warmth and
light in the cold dark. Around it bustled other, smaller creatures,
their lives impossibly short and frantic by its glacial standards, as
well as a few others of its own kind. Their company was neither
welcome nor unwelcome. It was merely there.
When food was close, the tiny creatures
became even more excitable. They hurried and bustled around, swarming
in their haste to begin the preparations. Dimly, it was aware of
countless millions of the little ones as they were spawned deep
within its gut, before the gentlest of contractions hurled them away
to their doom. It was of no more import than was a sneeze to a man.
That the last few million miles to the food passed the slowest was
barely noticeable to it, but in its own way it enjoyed the feeding,
anticipated it. Every so often it would arrive only to find a cold,
dead rock, and there would be the merest tinge of disappointment
before the journey began again. There were less of the little ones in
those times.
Very rarely, it would be attacked on
the way. Tiny beings that were not of its body would invade the
massive form, savage battles erupting in capillaries and veins, the
alien sounds of language and gunfire echoing through bivalve and
gland. Usually, these events went completely unnoticed, as hordes of
antibody-beasts rushed to the site of the infection and swiftly
excised it, though occasionally it would be irritated enough that a
vast muscle would contract and crush the interlopers, or a tide of
digestive bio-acid would sweep them away. Even then, it paid little
attention and the event was soon forgotten.
Now and again, there was the touch of
something greater. Another mind, one mightier and more powerful than
any the galaxy had known, would touch upon it, gently, and steer it.
Usually, this brought it closer to the food, but every now and then
the great mind would make it turn away. There would be the faint
sensation of danger, or of revulsion, of an overwhelming need to
avoid some place or thing. It obeyed without argument or hesitation.
There was never any question of doing anything else. But then came a
new command, or at least one it had not received for thousands of
years.
Awaken.
At that impulse, instincts long-dormant
stirred into action. Sensory feelers, pheromone receptors, ocular
organs too complex and wide-spectrum to ever be called mere eyes and
ancillary brains sensitive to the merest psychic disturbance quivered
out of aeon-long torpor. Ahead was another, much like itself, but
this one smaller and made of the cold, dead metals of the invader.
The Other too, was attended by many tiny forms, similarly lifeless
but each containing faint embers. And then, for the first time in a
millennia, there was pain, pain in every colour and flavour, glaring,
flaring beams of light, speeding slugs of ceramite and adamantium,
barrelling, diamond-tipped projectiles. All over its body, great
chunks of precious flesh were torn away into the void even as it and
its fellows fought back, weapon-sphincters gaping open. Back towards
the Other flew gobbets of mucous-wrapped bio-acids, mindless
ultra-borer drones, and blasts of sheer psychic agony. Metal joined
meat, spilling into the blackness.
As the two swarms closed, they began to
die. One of its fellows, leading the herd, shuddered in its death
agony, and with a last, terrible convulsion lashed an Other in two
before finally rupturing. A great cloud of its juices spilled into
space, fogging augurs and clogging guns even as it screened the
hordes of tiny creatures that rushed in to harvest the precious
bio-matter. Seeing, feeling the death of its brood mate, it went
berserk, tentacles the size of star-bases uncoiling and whipping in
languid frenzy through the mass of the Others, smashing them, rending
them, tearing them apart. Amid the confusion of a melee too chaotic
to ever be called a battle, its mighty mind suddenly found a tiny
tendril of thought. Still raging, it followed it back to the source,
to a tiny, self-important speck of flesh at the heart of the largest
Other. The weak little thing had the briefest of seconds to register
the shock of contact before the full force of its furious hatred
struck fatally home. Moments later, and it was upon the Other,
seizing it in a fatal embrace, crushing the semblance of life out of
the thing even as the little ones stormed in to begin their own work,
scuttling through dark metal halls and slaying all they found. Plasma
fire blazed into the void as the Other was ripped in two and then a
sudden flare of panic- beware, flee! It hurled the remains of the
Other away, even as the metal beast's flaming heart went critical and
fire blossomed one final time in the darkness. And then, once again,
there was silence, and peace.
The herd stayed there for a while, as
the little ones went back and forth, stripping flesh from metal,
their own fallen and the Other alike. Much had been lost, and it
would need to feed soon. But the soothing touch of the great mind was
there, had always been there, and had plucked a single, succulent
morsel of knowledge from the speck. Baal.
The journey would be long, yet as
nothing compared to the long trek to the golden light. It returned to
its slumber, sense-organs hibernating, weapon-sphincters closed. Soon
there would be calm, and quiet, and peace, and food.
It would have all it ever wanted.
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