//------------------------------// // More questions than answers: 8 // Story: They're home. // by Nameless Narrator //------------------------------// Stumbling, 99 shuffles through the lower tunnels, following the faint signature of 156’s hive link. 387 went easy on her during today’s training and she still feels absolutely ruined. In her defense, it was a long day. Despite the mental attack she suffered and the threat of potential high rank uprising she’s trying to uncover, she feels safe this far away from the throne room for two reasons. One is that the hive mission schedule says that everyone is out on missions today and will be returning in three days at the earliest. The second is that she’s constantly scanning for any hive links in the vicinity and no one seems to be around, confirming the schedule.  Several steps after she passes a branching tunnel she’s sure is decidedly empty, a voice from behind chuckles and asks: “Looking for someone?” 99 gasps and spins around to face 156 and a duo of drones accompanying her. “Hiiii, 99!” the drones wave. 99 identifies them as 99833 and 99214, both drones with whom she played Scufflestick on occasion. Considering that she’s pretty sure she played with every drone at some point, that doesn’t say much. “You, but how? What?” asks 99 as the mental link she’s been following all this time vanishes, “How are you here and not where your link is- was?” It’s not just that 156 somehow created a fake link location. She also entirely hid her real one as well as those of the two drones with her. And on top of that, she somehow masked their physical hoofsteps because 99 can see that the drones aren’t using any specific hoof transformations. 156 just smiles. “In absence of the cutthroat lifestyle of the old days, I’ve been learning instead of hunting down weakened higher ranks. I miss very little from that time, although I admit I’d like to test myself against someone ranked higher than myself.” “Why don’t you ask the Queen?” “Hah!” the infiltrator bursts out in laughter, “That’s still a bit out of my league. Maybe one day…” she briefly looks at the ceiling, “But that’s neither here nor there. Why were you looking for me?” “I, uh, I don’t think I can tell you with the drones around,” 99 nods to the drones who briefly pout in disappointment. “Intriguing,” 156 nods into the tunnel through which 99 arrived, “It’s good that we’re finished then. Let’s head back up.” 99, barely able to raise her hooves, is happy she doesn’t have to keep searching but she can’t help being curious. She should examine the hive map in close detail later, but right now this area doesn’t seem important. It’s close to rock worm territory but that’s about it. “And what were you doing all the way down here?” she asks. “That’s a secret,” 156 beams, making 99 roll her eyes. “Yeah,” one of the drones adds, “Even we don’t know and we were the ones doing it!” “Yup!” the other one chimes in, “I know I did something, but I have no clue what it was. But we did it well… right?” “You certainly did,” 156 nods. “Wow,” 99 parses what the drone’s response means, “How did you do that? Did you somehow… make the drones work with them not recalling what they were doing as they were doing it or did you wipe their memories earlier?” “The former,” admits 156, “They know they spent time working for me during their break, so I’ll have to make it up to them somehow. Any ideas, 99?” “Treats or gems,” she answers automatically and returns to the important topic, “Why did you do it that way? Wiping their memories would have been so much easier. I have no idea how I’d even go about doing what you did.” “My first statement stands,” 156 shrugs, “Let’s say I took a critical lesson from our precious little guard drone friend - everything is potential training, and lessons are where you find them.” To 99, 387 has always been an enigma. The Queen is the level of power and insight she can aspire to, but for the first time since hatching, 99 gets the feeling that 156 is leagues more powerful than she lets on and that no one knows it. Suddenly feeling small, 99 doesn’t press the issue and just follows 156 and the drones up level after level until the the infiltrator says: “Off you go, you two. I’ll tell 10k to give you shorter shifts and longer break time tomorrow.” “Wait, does that mean less digging?” asks one. “Aww, and I got moving a whole egg cavern deeper by myself,” the other frowns. “Oh, right, nevermind,” 156 reconsiders her approach and leans her head to the drones’ level, “How about I give you a high rank’s fang? I hear that 10k has a high rank’s tooth, but only one of the small ones.” “Wooooooow!” the drones gawk in sync. 156 spits out her fangs and gives one to each of the drones. “And off you go,” she lisps, unused to talking without two critical teeth. To the drones’ credit, they both hesitate, exchange glances, one points at 156’s mouth, and asks meekly: “We don't need them if you do.” “I’ll regrow them later,” 156 pats their heads, “As I said - shoo!” the drones rush off with their undoubtedly priceless reward. A love-imbued tooth of someone of her level could provide days worth of love and the two drones are bound to be able to trade them for something interesting if they choose to, “So, 99, why were you looking for me?” “Umm,” the direct question surprises 99 for no real reason. It’s just so hard to concentrate right now, “Right. I was wondering if the Queen has an heir in case something happened to her. You know, if drones somehow accidentally explode the entire hive without warning.” 156 kets out an amused snort. “That does sound like something they would do, doesn’t it? Probably in an attempt to make the biggest shiny ever, too,” after a brief pause to contemplate the mental image, 156 keeps going, “Yes, Her Majesty does have a daughter,” is all she says. “Does?” 99 blinks in surprise, “Is she around? Hiding from power struggles, maybe? Nearby even?” This makes 156 laugh out loud for a while. “Certainly not, 99. She’s far away from the hive, as far as you can be while still technically in Equestria. We spent a lot of infiltrator time and power in search of her. I was the one to get the closest before Her Majesty took the final stretch of the mission over personally. She’s the only one who knows the full picture and, as far as I’m aware, no other missions regarding her daughter are in place. All I know is that she found her place in life and would prefer to never interact with our hive ever again. Her Majesty visited her quite recently, actually, and this is the answer she got.”  “I bet the Queen didn’t take it well.” “She did grumble, that’s true, but familial ties aren’t a changeling thing, and I know Her Majesty well enough to understand that she was happy her daughter survived Canterlot,” 156 shrugs, “Better to leave an immensely powerful changeling be than to first waste resources on trying to get them back and then on making sure they don’t rebel. I’m not going to lie and say that Her Majesty’s old self wouldn’t make that mistake. Times are different, though, and Her Majesty’s daughter can live safely in the Crystal Empire. A good place for a changeling, with the Crystal Heart and everything,” she pauses, “Note to self - send some drones there unaccompanied and one infiltrator in secret to record the chaos.” “Huh,” 99 follows 156 in silence for a while. Okay, so 415 either deliberately lied to me about Chrysalis letting her daughter die or he really believes she did. What of the memory of her being attacked on the way to Canterlot I found then? His appeal to me was shaky at best and this isn’t helping his case. Did he want me to tell Chrysalis and force her to make some wrong move in an attempt to punish him? Either that, or 156 and Chrysalis rehearsed their stories about the royal daughter just in case… of what? Gaah! This entire POTENTIAL conspiracy is so stupid and it’s only working BECAUSE it’s so stupid. 99 sighs. “You should have gone with the drones,” comments 156 in a warm tone, “You look exhausted. Does that mean that 387 has finally returned?” “That too,” 99 nods, wondering how to naturally switch the topic to the missing infiltrator, “I’ve been trying to dig deeper into the functioning and logistics of the hive too, and I’ve noticed some issues with mission timings. How do you deal with a low or even negative rate of return from missions?” “Oh, the infiltrators who are running late?” 156 waves her hoof dismissively, “It happens. Winters are always hard, but we’re still well supplied. All recent short missions had less yield than expected. Thanks to 99856, it’s much less of a problem, though.” “How come? What did the drone do?” “One of the most useful mixes we got from the Silversmith device was a kind of resin that radiates love significantly less than the love crystals we can make out of our own resin. That means-” “Better storage without loss over time?” 99 hazards a guess. “Exactly. It was also one of the first mixes we got from the device, which means the living machine knew what we would need. I doubt we just got lucky. With how much our relationship with ponies has been improving, we’ve been able to store much more love from infiltrator missions before all the roads got snowed in.” “I understand that. Still, with someone like-” 99 pauses to pretend to look at the hive mission schedule, ”-745, who is running way late, aren’t you worried that something happened to her?” “If she’s still missing when the thaw opens the routes, then I’ll start worrying,” 156 shrugs, “I don’t have anyone left to send for her anyway because I sent everyone on assignments in the morning. The only ranked changelings still in the hive are us, Her Majesty, 387, 2119, and 3012.” “Oh.” “Are you sure you don’t want to go and play a couple rounds of Scufflestick with the drones before they go to bed?” 156 smiles at 99. “I guess more worrying won’t help anything, will it?” “It definitely won’t make any missing changelings return faster,” 156 agrees and 99 stops. “Thanks for the talk, 156,” she says, “Tell the Queen that I’ll be sleeping with the drones tonight. 10k has to test the new fireplace at some point anyway.” “No problem, 99. Good night.” *** On the outside, Queen Chrysalis is wearing her casually regal demeanor as she’s strolling through the core network of deeper tunnels. On the inside, she’s scanning the area with all of her enhanced senses despite being fairly certain she isn't going to find anything incriminating. She could delve deeper into branching drone tunnels, but that would require changing her size and so far she hasn’t found any track that would require her to follow in such a manner. That would also mean having to take 99380 off of her back, and the drone sitting there, looking backwards, and absent-mindedly playing with the spider silk cloak she’s wearing is adding a layer of security she’s grateful for. A brief mental check tells Chrysalis that 99380 is also listening to music playing through the drone section of the hive mind. Some kind of swing, if she recalls correctly.  Note to self - order 10k to station a chain of drones between the throne room and wherever 99380 is to use as contact nodes. Make them sweep the floor or something.   Eventually, she’s forced to leave the reworked core tunnel and enter one that hasn’t been upgraded to the new architectural model, although it’s still high enough and wide to comfortably accommodate her three times over. It doesn’t take long to find what she’s been looking for - a dug out burrow at floor level refilled with gravel and dirt.  “99380, clear that out for me. Just move the gravel, don’t dig a new hole,” she points at the burrow. The drone twitches, clearly having been occupied by something inside the hive mind, jumps down, and empties the hole in a shower of flying fragments, “Sized for two drones,” mutters Chrysalis, “This is the place. Fill it back up, 99380.” The drone doesn’t comment on the seemingly pointless work during sleepy time. The Queen says to do stuff, so it does stuff. No explanation needed. In the meantime, Chrysalis sits down and lets her senses spread. “Voice, replay 99200’s memory of the changeling encounter that happened here,” she orders. After the Voice does so, she stands back up and examines the spots on the floor where each ranked changeling stood. 7 ranked changelings. That would be a decent support if they were in the top fifty, not in the hundreds. The reality is that even if every single ranked changeling in the hive somehow returned to the hive without my knowledge and took me by surprise without 156 or 387, I doubt they could even touch me. They must know that. So, what if there is no conspiracy to overthrow me? What’s left? A conspiracy to leave the hive? That would be worse, true, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied in the matter of days. A conspiracy to do something to the drones? That could be it, especially with how bothered they were by the mind control resistance, and they don’t even know about all the potential weapons. It still sounds downright idiotic. I made it clear that abusing drones won’t end well for anyone involved. Deciding against continuing to speculate, Chrysalis’ focus shifts back into reality. As expected, it’s too late to find anything concrete.  She sniffs the air and smiles. Or is it? The faintest hint of mint detectable only by her heavily enhanced senses isn’t surprising, the added little touch of wet moss, however, speaks volumes. 387 was here between the time when the drone encounter happened and now. Did he know about the encounter before Chrysalis? So you’ve been sniffing around too. I don’t like relying on that paranoia of yours, but I guess you’re my best lead right now. Let’s see what the thing you wanted to talk about in person was. When she stands up again, 99380 is already waiting and watching her with curiosity. “Whatcha doing?” “Smelling a changeling,” replies Chrysalis slowly.  99380 bends its neck down to sniff itself. “That might be me,” it says, “10k never said we should keep doing washy time since we returned from the ship. We kinda don’t have water anyway.” “Huh,” Chrysalis’ train of thought takes an unexpectedly pleasant detour. There’s one thing she’s been missing for a long time, “I didn’t think of that. I can now take a hot bath. Those regular reports will be far easier to stomach submerged up to my neck in steaming water, and drones should be able to make a stone bathtub within an hour with proper instructions,” she muses. “Your Magic Stick?” the drone’s voice returns her to here and now. “You know it’s Majesty, 99380,” she says calmly. “Yeah, but I dunno what that means,” 99380 scratches its head, “On the other hole, we have a magic stick that can do anything. And you can do anything, so…” “Did the Reforger do anything other than help you find weird holes in reality and you didn’t report it?” Chrysalis raises an eyebrow.  “You and Voice said 36658 made Voice with it,” explains 99380.  “Fine, but has it done anything else since then?”  “Umm, no? But it’s important that it can, right? We just don’t know how to use it,” 99380 shakes its hoof dismissively, “Pff, if we let what we don’t know stop us, 99856 would never explode itself- uhh, not the best example. I mean, there is so much we don’t know but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a thing. I mean-”  Chrysalis rolls her eyes. “Enough. I understand. Still, don’t call me ‘magic stick’. I don’t like it.”  “Okay!” 99380 beams. Just like that, CH knows 99380 finally got the message and this was really the last time. Chrysalis has 99380 hop back on and heads back to the throne room. Her next words clearly betray that the thought of the conspiracy has been moved to the back burner: “99380, call 10k and tell it to get me enough drones to carry a block of granite to the throne room,” she transfers the required dimensions and map location of the material, “Then have it ask 99856 if we have a resin alloy that can withstand the heat of the stove. If so, make a bucket for each of the drones who will carry the granite. AND HAVE 99111 MAKE SOME SOAP!” A couple seconds pass by after which 99380 reports:  “10k says the drones are working on it. 99856 says the workshop doors did pretty well during the big fire, so it’ll try a goop mix with a lot more iron dust. 99111 tried to make soap and said it’s tapped out, though.” “Tapped out from what? Did the drones suddenly need a pony’s weight in soap? Nevermind then, let’s not overdo it for today. Share the music instead, 99380.” Nodding her head to the slow tune playing in her head which at some point replaced the previous lively swing, she says quietly in a singsong voice: “This evening’s going to be perfect…”