Chapter 1: Reassigning
When the orders came, freshly laid into a wax wafer so fresh that it was still warm, they came as no real surprise to Theoretical Infiltrator Compound. This did not change the shock she felt at seeing them right on the dais in her cocoonicle, tasting their message on her own tongue. She had expected this doom, but knowing it had actually been pronounced was another thing entirely. Her heart hurt. Her belly was hollow, her mind numb. The office seemed to be spinning around her; she clutched the dais with both foreclaws for support.
So, it's really over, was her first fully-coherent thought. Not possibility, but reality.
Reassignment.
To the Hive Provisional Defense Swarm.
In principle, a redeployment of the resources represented by Compound from her previous position, an administrative role; to another position, the direct defense of the Hive. Theoretically, she was not supposed to resent this, as she lived by the sufferance of the Hive on the wealth of the Hive, and existed only to perform service to that Hive and the Queen who ruled it. In practice, it was a tremendous demotion -- from an official at whose wax-marks hundreds of lings and thousands of tons of supplies moved, to a ... she checked the information again ... Team Leader, which meant that she would be in command of a force of 2-4 lings.
In fact, it was worse. For the war had gone badly; the Equestrians were systematically conquering and destroying one Hive after another, and the Hive Provisional Defense Swarms were not even true Warriors; they were members of other Castes who were hastily organized into formations, equipped with the most minimal armament, and given the most basic sort of training. They were not so much opposition to the Equestrian Guards as they were speed-bumps slightly delaying their advances. She had tasted the reports, absorbed the recorded sense-impressions. Should she actually see combat, her likely lifespan would be measurable in mere minutes.
Compound had suspected this was likely to happen. She was a Logistical Analyst; her job had been coordinating the demand, transportation and supply of assets between the Hives ruled by the High Queen Hunger. As one Hive after another had fallen to Equestria, her job became more difficult and simple. More difficult, since there were less and less resources with which she was expected to supply the Swarms in the field. Simpler, because with less and less resources and less and less Swarms, she had to read less reports and issue less orders.
She had known that the point was being reached where her job would become irrelevant. As the Realm of Hunger shrank under the hammerblows of the now-immense Equestrian field forces, as the new Equestrian aircruisers and sparkflyers gained complete control of Hunger's skies, bombing and strafing and blasting their caravans, supplying Swarms became impossible, and even communicating with Hunger's other Hives fraught with difficulty.
Last week, the point had been reached where -- by Compound's own calculations -- her own post was becoming irrelevant, a waste of precious resources to maintain. She herself had written a report recommending her reassignment to internal Hive logistics. She had hoped to continue to serve the Hive as best she could directing the recycling and scavenging of resources to keep the Hive going as long as possible -- before the inevitable breach of their defenses by Equestrian Guards, or their annihilation by Equestrian earthfire bombs.
She had known there was but a small chance of victory at the start of the war, two and a half years ago; she had warned High Queen Hunger of this before Hunger had invaded Equestria. That chance entirely vanished when the Equestrians had deployed their devastating new weapons: the jet-flyers, the armored battle wagons, the heavy cannons, the machine-muskets, and above all the earthfire bombs. The Changelings lost the Battle of the Avalon Valley, and everything after that had simply been the systematic destruction of the Changeling Swarms.
Now the last husbanded resources of Hunger were running out; the last Hives were falling; the noose of Equestrian forces tightening around Hive Hunger-Prime, the Queen's main nest. There was no more need of coordinating the movement of supplies between Hives; each Hive must now hold out as best it could, hoping against reason that the Equestrians would, at the brink of complete triumph, give up and go home.
Compound knew that it would have been more rational to move her to another administrative position. She was highly-intelligent, even beyond the norm of her high and well-educated Caste of Infilitrators; she had many years of experience in military and economic intelligence and logistics management. Putting her in charge of a Provisional Defense Team represented a waste of her as a Changeling resource.
She knew why her superiors had done it. She had perhaps not striven as hard to please them, insisted a bit more on her interpretation of events than was entirely politic. Her old friend Trapcastle, whom she had lost because Trapcastle could no longer risk an association with her, had warned her of this five years ago; but she had not listened. Despite losing her friends, despite being reassigned from Military Intelligence to Logistics, despite being given what amounted to a clerk's job, she had persisted in promulgating what she in her arrogance believed to be the truth.
Compound had been proven right, more than once, which only made those she'd proven wrong hate her all the more. Though noling would admit to it, due to the political cost, she was pretty sure she had at least one secret friend in high places, because time and time before her detractors had threatened to get her bumped out of Logistics. Now, because there was not as much call for her talents, because Hive Logistics was something which a competent clerk could do, backed up as she'd be by the Hive Mind, she'd finally fallen for the last time.
In a sense, she reflected, she was lucky she'd only been reassigned to a Defense Swarm. She could have been reassigned to Personal Resource Reclamation, which meant that her life would have been (painlessly) ended and the chemical resources represented by her physical form recycled into the cooking vats, the normal fate of a ling upon death in the Hive. She had been extensively trained, and was still young and healthy, so this would have been unusual -- but if her mind had been corrupted by wrong-thinking to the point where she was useless or actually harmful to the Hive, it would have been a rational course of action.
Compound would not have liked such a fate, she might have even tried to argue against the decision to her superiors (there was a standard procedure for that), but if they confirmed their initial decision, she would have walked to her disposal, head high and without protest. The Hive had the right to reclaim one's resources whenever it deemed fit, and Compound was nothing if not loyal to her Hive.
What bothered her was that noling had warned her of her Reassignment before the orders came. She hadn't expected anyling to, and as was often the case, her prediction had been accurate. Still it bothered her, because of the reason she had received no warning.
In principle the Changelings of Hive Hunger-Prime were biological machines, mere components in a greater assemblage, due no more consideration than any other pieces of equipment. There need be no felt-love, no friendship within the Hive -- these were but the delusions of lesser Kinds, such as their Pony enemies of Equestria. Only the unity whose ultimate expression was loyalty to High Queen Hunger, and whose specific will was embodied in the messages of the wax wafers, and underlying all, the hum of the Hive Mind, always in the background of everyling's awareness.
Yet in practice each Changeling was a sapient individual being, with its own identity, hopes and fears, likes and dislikes -- in some cases loves and hatreds. They could not work all the time -- the heritage of the creatures they used to be, before they were Twisted twenty-five centuries ago, demanded rest and relaxation, and during those times they played, making friends and enjoying the few pleasures with them that were possible within the confines of their simple, spartan society. Even when they worked, they chatted with comrades, happy to know that they were not mere atoms within the Hive, that there were others who liked them for who they were as individuals.
Compound was very much aware that she had gotten no advance warning of this, and she knew the reason why. It was because she lacked the informal social network that any other Changeling Infiltrator occupying the important post of Theoretical Logistics Coordinator would have possessed. In short, she had no friends, or at least none who were willing to acknowledge her friendship ... so none had been bothered to give her an ears-up.
She felt very lost. For a long moment she sat there, clutching her own ... no, what had been her own dais, and shivering in a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature-controlled warmth of her office in the Hive, and everything to do with her awareness that, even in her own Hive, she was fundamentally alone.
Then, with an almost visible effort of will, her muscles regaining their strength, her stance becoming upright once again, Compound recovered. Her duty had been logistics; now that duty was done. Her duty was now to the Provisional Hive Defense Swarm, and she needed to go from her former posting to her new one.
She was Compound, series XTI-3, number 12, a fully-trained Theoretical Infiltrator of Hive Hunger-Prime, whose loyalty and life and very soul belonged to that Hive. She was no near-mindless Worker nor simple Warrior, but of the Caste that stood below only the Royals themselves. She was the flower of the greatest species the Earth had ever known, and she would not disgrace her genotype with the weak trepidations of some less eusocial Kind.
In her eyes flashed the pride of the Changelings, the pride of belonging to and serving something so much greater than themselves as was their Hive. I will show them how a Theoretical Infiltrator deals with misfortune, she thought, and she swiftly and effortlessly donned the Mind-Mask of a Compound who was indifferent to the issue of just in what way she served her Hive. She knew that some in this office were probably her foes, and she would not give them the satisfaction of tasting her despair.
She stood up, back and neck rigid. She knew that everyling else in the office was watching her; that they might already know why she was leaving. And she strode to the silk-strips that served the chamber as curtain, her face calm, ears neutral, empathic emissions damped down to stoic acceptance of her fate. Through, and into the corridor beyond, with no more affect than if she were making a routine trip back to her sleeping-chamber to retrieve some needed object she had neglected to bring to work.
It was not until Compound was down the corridor to the first bend, not until a quick check confirmed that none from her office were in view, that she could let the Mask slip. Even then, though her legs trembled a bit, she did not panic, did not cry, only let her ears droop a little.
She walked quietly back to her sleeping-chamber. She knew that the Swarm would probably provide her new quarters in barracks, and that even this little chamber, little more than a cheap spittle curtain, a small sleeping mound, and a night-dais upon and within sat the few objects that aided her in grooming and note-maintenance. She knew the rules of the Defense Swarms, knew that she was permitted a small pouch with a few grooming objects.
She also took a few wax strips and a stylus, a backboard, in addition. As a Team-Leader she might need them, and she knew how short of supplies was the Provisional Hive Defense Swarm. Besides, she had gotten into the habit of jotting things down -- she couldn't take all her notes with them, knew they would be recycled as a matter of course -- but she found it soothing to make lists and sometimes little doodles or rhythmic arrangements of words.
That was it. All that she could take with her of her old life. Besides, in at most several weeks, it wouldn't matter. She would be dead, and soon after the Hive would die as well, unless there came some miracle. And the Changelings, in their long sad history, knew better than to hope for miracles.
She would die alone. That was the only part of it that truly saddened her.
In these her last months under Earth, she wished that she still had friends. And what chance was it that, among the rabble the Hive would have scraped together to form a Provisional Defense Swarm Team, that she might find a friend? Not much better than the chance that some miracle could allow anything to survive of Hive Hunger-Prime.
Her jaw firmed; a look of determination shone in her eyes, though there was noling there to see it.
She would die alone, but she would die knowing that she had lived an honest life, been loyal to her Hive, never compromised her soul. Death came to all in the end; what mattered to a ling was how she lived. She would show ... not the Hive, not her superiors, for she knew she would be but another tick on the long list of war dead ... but show objective reality, the uncaring Universe within which the only safety normally lay within the Hive, that she had known how to live, and knew how to die, well.
That was all a ling could do in the end.
Her courage restored by that thought, Compound left her chamber for the last time, and marched down the corridors to her fate.
Cowl was certain that someling had made a terrible mistake, and he hoped that the lings in charge would realize it quickly, so that he could get back to his real job.
He was an Administrative Worker, and he had a very important job. There were Supply Workers whose task was to collect and transport and store and distribute supplies from the producers to the consumers. And there were Supply Inspectors -- a subcaste of Administrative Workers with some Infiltrator ancestry -- whose function was to check up on the Supply Workers and make sure that they were doing their job properly. The Supply Workers had to taste and mark off on all the waxwork that said where the supplies came to and where they went.
And who watched the Supply Inspectors? Why, Cowl did! They sent their waxwork to him, where he tasted it and made sure it was all done correctly, and then he signed it and sent it up to the office where the Logistics Analysts worked and that was how they knew what was happening to all the supplies. The Logistics Analysts were very important officials; Cowl had never actually met any of them, but he had seen their marks on the waxwork receipts, and some of them were high-caste.
Cowl was a Supply Supervisor, and not just any Supply Supervisor, no no no. He was in charge of Inter-Hive Supplies for Hive Hunger-Prime, which was almost as high as he could go as an Administrative Worker. The top Administrative Workers, lings of the highest Worker caste, staffed the Logistics Office -- why, one of them was even a Theoretical Infiltrator, which seemed a bit high-caste for ordinary Administrative work, but that just went to show how important was the Logistics Office.
So there was no way that they could really want Cowl to join the Provisional Hive Defense Swarm. That was a very low-ranked assignment, the sort of thing they'd give half-trained Warriors or ordinary Workers like Diggers or Lifters, not an elite and highly-educated Worker such as Cowl. Any idiot could tote around a spear or musket or whatever it was Warriors were using these days to do the dull and ugly job of fending off creatures who might want to harm a Hive. Cowl was above that sort of function -- necessary, he supposed, but rather degrading.
Admittedly, the work load had been decreasing in the Supply Supervision Office as of the last month or two. He remembered when the Office had expanded, its growth driven by the need to handle all the supplies that the Workers were collecting from the Pony Hives (or towns or whatever they called their primitive above-ground communities) that the Warriors were securing for High Queen Hunger. A couple of years ago, there was some kind of major expansion Outside,and things got really hectic yet satisfying for him.
He was wholly uninterested in the fighting that was doubtless required to gain these goods for the High Queen, but as her domain spread, more and more Supply Supervisors were of course needed. That meant growth in his department, and promotions. And Captives, and Love ... his psychegastrum ached with need, as he remembered those happy times, when Love flowed for all. The Love they doled out these days was so poor by comparison ... someling was really forgetting to close the hatch on that task.
In the last few months, though, the work load had been decreasing and a lot of personnel had been cut. They'd been Reaasigned ... some of them to Provisional Defense Swarms, come to think of it, and Cowl hadn't heard from those lings again. Communications Outside were getting rather spotty. Cowl was sure they would be re-established some time soon; the High Queen's ministers weren't perfect like her, but things always got better eventually, that was just the way of life, one had to be patient and keep an eye out for the best tunnel to take, that was all.
They had been Reassigned, to be sure, because there was some sort of crisis ... wasn't there always? ... and the High Queen needed a lot of lings in these new Provisional Defense Swarms. Most of them worked Outside, where things might get dangerous, but being in a Provisional Hive Defense Swarm didn't sound so scary, because by the very name it must mean that he'd be working inside the Hive, maybe helping to expel Ponies who tried to get in, and the silly things were pretty helpless Inside anyway.
But it was still a huge waste of his talents, so it had to be a mistake on the part of the higher-ups. Some idiot probably left the wrong trail on a piece of wax, that was all, and any moment now they'd notice that the waxwork wasn't moving correctly. Then they'd send someling looking for him, and they'd find where he'd been sent, and come into this chamber and there'd be a huge laugh when they realize they'd almost had him doing Warrior or low-caste Worker tasks.
He wondered who'd notice first. Someling in his office? The rest of them didn't have a lot of initiative, but Clip-press was fairly sharp; no doubt she'd ask around when her boss didn't show for his shift. Or maybe someone at Logistics. There was that Theoretical Infiltrator who sometimes marked the receipts, what was her name ... Compound? ... she must be smart to come from that caste, and she probably knew by now that something was wrong. Maybe she'd even come in personally to pull him out of here, though more likely she'd just send down some waxwork to the bored-looking clerk who was processing the new batch of recruits.
Clerk. Hah! Cowl had watched with a critical eye while the fellow marked the waxwork. Sloppy scenting, barely within the margins and scribbled so badly it was a wonder that anyling could read them. They probably tasted like muddy droppings. Cowl felt sorry for whomever had to taste that dreck. He had nearly said something, but the clerk had noticed his buzz and given him a contemptuous emote that had almost taken Cowl's breath away!
Didn't he know Cowl's subcaste? The Clerk was an Administrative Worker-Warrior, which was a hybrid subcaste thought poorly of by both the real Administrative Workers and the real Warriors. Yet he looked at Cowl as if Cowl were nothing. Less than nothing. Some sort of cast-off equipment marked for disposal. The thought made Cowl shudder briefly, not so much in outrage as in fear, though he didn't quite know why.
He wasn't cast-off. He was a valuable Administrative Worker, far more important than someling who called himself Administrative but couldn't even do his waxwriting neatly and correctly. How dare he look at Cowl like that? Why, if there really was a crisis, that silly clerk would probably get Reassigned to a Provisional Defense Swarm for real. One of those Outside ones, too, where other shoddy Clerks would lose his letters so he couldn't write home to his friends. That would serve him right!
Cowl knew he'd get the last laugh, for he wouldn't be in this waiting room forever. No, someling would be by any moment now to get him back to the Supply Supervision Office where he belonged. Right back to his nice safe warm cocoonicle where he'd have waxwork to process, where everything would make sense again. Back to the office, where he wouldn't be sitting here getting bored and frustrated and feeling so alone and even, maybe, a bit frightened ...
Yes. Any moment now, they'd be coming for him.
Carry took the news of Reassignment calmly, as he took most things in his life.
His job was to pick up heavy objects and move them from one place to another. He was very good at his job; he was big and strong and didn't get excited or scared too easy, so he wouldn't pick up things too sudden and hurt himself, or put them down too sudden and hurt someling else. And he didn't break the load. He was proud of that. He didn't hurt himself or anyling else, and he didn't break the Loads.
Luck had it that he was a bit stronger, a bit calmer and even a bit smarter than most Load Lift Workers. His supervisors liked him for that; he was also pretty nice and most lings liked him. He'd gotten good marks for skill and speed and cooperation. Twice, a Princess actually had him breed her. Her name was Princess Cementite and she mostly made heavy Workers; she'd actually talked to him a bit before and after. She'd been nice, plain-spoken, not what he'd have thought from a Royal.
She'd been Reassigned to another Hive; he had no idea what happened to her because it was none of his business. Sometimes he caught himself hoping in a general sort of way that she was okay. She'd been nice, even kind of sweet.
That had been a few years back when he'd been young. Carry was far from old; he wasn't slowing down yet but he was used to his job. It would be a good long time till he'd be sent to Recovery; maybe decades if he kept calm and was careful with the Loads he Lifted. Carry tried to be careful, because he liked his life.
It was a good life. He got up and ate and worked with his buddies and they moved lots of Loads. They were assigned to a stores chamber that shifted Loads delivered from and were then delivered to places Outside. When he'd been young these were other Hives; at one point when the Queen's Domain spread a lot, he'd shifted Loads gathered from Pony places, like Appleloosa and Dodge and Ponyville. Some of the Loads had been pretty strange.
He worked and worked and worked all shift, and there was only one thing better in life than that. After the shift he'd eat and drink and get Love from the Pool and then he and his buddies would Play. That was the one thing that was better than work, because he never knew what his buddies would say or do because you could say or do different things when you Played; you didn't have to be responsible because there were no Loads to worry about breaking. He loved his buddies, they were all nice lings.
Then he got to sleep and the next day he could start it all over again. Carry couldn't think of a better life.
Lately things had been slowing down. There weren't so many Loads to lift and sometimes the crew would get temporarily assigned to helping other crews gangs move stuff in the Hive: which wasn't so bad, it was different; it meant that they had to go to other parts of the Hive Carry didn't know so well. That was kind of fun because it was different: there were new routes to take and new places to pick Loads up and put them down so he had to learn stuff, it was kind of a game, and he liked it though some of his buddies grumbled at having to learn new stuff.
Carry liked learning new stuff. All Load Lifters knew how to pick up stuff and move them and put them down: they couldn't have done their jobs if they didn't know that! It made him chuckle to think of not knowing that, you'd be stumbling around with Loads and falling into things with them, which was kind of funny to think though it wouldn't be funny if it really happened, because you or someling else might get hurt and Loads and other things might get broken. It didn't fit, that's why it was funny.
But Carry sometimes thought about the size and shape of Loads, how heavy they were compared to how big they were; and how that meant you had to stand and move different when you Lifted them. There were general rules that worked with a lot of different Loads, and he could see them in his mind and he sometimes played in his mind with the thought of really strange Loads, like big boxes full of feathers or little cysts of really heavy stuff like steel, and he thought about how he'd Lift and move them and put them down so he wouldn't get hurt and noling else would get hurt and nothing would get broken.
This helped him one day when he had to move the pieces of what the boss told them was a landcrawler. This was some kind of Pony machine; the Ponies weren't as smart as the Royals so they couldn't just birth or grow the things they needed; they had to make them out of metal. The boss said a landcrawler was bigger than even a Heavy Assault Warrior and it had lots of metal so it was hard to hurt and lots of weapons so it could hurt Warriors, and it had an engine so it could crawl around on wheels and a sort of long thing that was like plates tied together by metal cables in a line. He though the long thing was strange so he studied its shape a bit, in case he ever had to move it again.
It was hard to hurt, but clearly somelings had managed to hurt it; they'd broken it and the High Queen's smart lings were going to look at it and see if there was anything they could learn from it. But to do this the crew had to move it from the loading chamber to the lab chambers and the smart lings weren't going to do it, this wasn't their job. That fell to Carry's crew.
Some of the parts of the landcrawler were really strange shaped. Some had been twisted when the thing had been broken, but some must have been strange to start with. Carry moved plates of its steel armor; boy were they ever dense! He had to be very careful how he picked them up because if he did it wrong they could chip his claws.
Big Dolly wasn't so careful and she cried when her right claw got busted. She was scared they'd have to Recover her but she went to the Medics and they gave her some Love and food and rest and she was better in several days. But that showed you needed to be careful with strange Loads. Big Dolly was almost as big as him, but she wasn't very smart; sometimes she was almost like a really big Nymph.
Carry helped move a really big piece called the "engine block." This was really big and dense and it took four Load Lift Workers, all going together very careful, to shift the thing. Even his own part of the load must have been the heaviest Load Carry had ever Lifted; he could feel its weight pressing him down into the hard spittle of the loading chamber floor, and when he lifted a hoof the other hooves pressed into the ground so hard that at one point he glanced down and realized the floor was actually cracking. They'd have to resurface the whole thing afterward, which was bad though it wasn't his job.
Later he thought that the boss might have made a mistake and should have put more Lifters on the job. Because as they walked it in on the slightly-softer surface of the corridor leading to the lab that surface broke and Orange Withers' hoof sank almost its whole length into the earth underneath. That shouldn't have been so bad but everyling was already lifting the most they could and with the loss of support it shifted down onto Orange Withers, who gave just one agonized meep before there was a really bad sound of cracking chitkeratin and then an even worse squishing noise and just a sort of drumming noise from his hooves.
Now the Load was out of control and it started to wobble and Carry, because he was good at imagining Loads, saw that it was now going to crush Black-Bearer then Strong-Gleam and finally himself.
"Get clear!" he yelled; he was lead caller but that shouldn't have been his decision, only if someling didn't yell orders fast more lings were going to get hurt. Black-Bearer and Strong-Gleam leaped back and for a brief awful moment, Carry had the whole load himself. It felt like his claws were going to snap and his back was going to break and he was going to get crushed.
But Carry had known this would happen and he worked up the strength and heaved the immense burden forward, only it didn't work that way because it was heavier than anything he'd ever held before or after, and instead he shot back like he was a little Larva instead of a big strong full grown Load Lifter Worker. This did what he needed, anyway; it got him out from under and he fell right on his rump while the engine block came down with a huge whoompf! so close to his outstretched forehooves that the vibration shook them; he felt every bit of it through their claws.
The surge of strength faded and he shuddered with rare fear; he knew that the Load could crack open his shell and that if it had fallen on his forehooves it would have shattered them both: once it started falling it had hit with great force. If that had happened, he would have been crippled, and a crippled Load Lifter was useless to the Hive. Even if he'd survived, he just would have wound up being sent to Resource Recovery.
He and his buddies got up, shakily. Carry had aches all over. At least he and Black-Bearer and Strong-Gleam got up; poor Orange-Withers wouldn't be getting up, ever again. He didn't have a head no more, not really, just a nasty sort of squished thing that leaked green ichor and red blood and a sort of pinkish stuff that he realized with sick horror had been Orange's brains.
He didn't complain. However, the boss noticed he was limping and sent him to the Medics, where he ran into Big Dolly and told her what had happened. He wanted to explain it in great detail, but Dolly started to look bad when he said that it squished Orange-Withers, so he just told her the important stuff about the Load and how they'd moved so noling else got hurt.
He'd had bad dreams more than once about that sound the engine block had made when it fell on Orange. The ling hadn't been his best buddy, but he'd known him a while and they'd talked and Played together more than once. It was scary when something bad happened to someling you knew fairly well.
By the time he got back on the job, things had slowed so much that they were being moved from chamber to chamber every day. Clearly this couldn't last; it wasn't very efficient, and something would have to change.
Something did. At the end of one shift, all of them were told that they'd been Reassigned; the boss read off their new Assignments from a wax in his aura. The boss looked scared; he'd been Reassigned too.
Most of them, including the boss, were going to Provisional Defense Swarms. Different ones, though -- they were breaking up the crew, and Carry felt this like a Load shifting as he picked it up, hurting all his muscles at the same time. They were his buddies, and now they weren't going to be buddies any more. Carry felt bad about that.
At least Big Dolly went with him to the same Provisional Hive Defense Swarm. It would be nice to have a friend with him. She seemed nervous as they walked through the halls; more than once she pulled out Little Dolly, that weird little Pony toy foal that she'd picked up one day from a Load gathered from Equestria, and kept with her ever after. This was against the rules, but noling cared; the thing was useless and would have just been Reclaimed for resources. It made Big Dolly happy to pretend that she was a Nurse and it was a Larva she was tending; so everyling just sort of looked the other way.
After a meeting with a really mean Administrative Worker-Warrior Clerk -- Carry couldn't even get an ears-up out of him, and he tried -- they were sent to a big waiting chamber. Some other lings were already there.
They had nothing better to do, so they just sat down side by side and waited for someling to tell them what to do next.
Which was pretty normal in the life of Workers, so they found this almost comforting.
This takes place about a month before The Fall of Hive Hunger-Prime , and introduces my Best Changeling during the end of her long time alone in the political wilderness.
I'm grateful to a friend for helping improve my first draft. You know who you are. 
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Is there going to be tagging of this as the prequel to Fall of Hive... or is this just a standalone that ties into the greater story?
I've seen this once before in Princess Luna's Suicide Solutions where the author couldn't find a way to introduce characters other than a short one-shot
Keep up the great work man!
I will tag this as prequel to The Fall of Hive Hunger-Prime,which it is, it's about how Compound met Carry and Cowl, and what they did together before they found themselves buried in the spider-hole -- I wasn't sure if I should link two incomplete stories together in such a fashion, though.
I'm glad you liked it.
I'm reminded of something I read pertaining to the Drow in D&D:
"They are a humanoid, mammalian race with all the associated need, urges, and instincts, yet they revere the spider, a creature of mindless predation. They are a community that seeks to become a swarm. They are an innately emotional people who revere a creature with no emotion at all."
I really connect with Compound and these two stories, in a "I know your pain" way. I went though a hellish Afghan deployment as an analyst, more worried about my superiors than the Taliban. Getting juggled from new posting to new posting, having to find a way to do my job with little direction beyond "not like that, do it differently." Then as soon as I got my feet and started getting respect from the people I was giving information to, I'd be replaced by someone who was friendlier with my superiors. After I trained them to do my job I'd be moved to a new job in a new place to start over from scratch. But even that was preferable to going and working back in garrison, I could take initiative out there at least.
I normally don't get bitchy and angsty like this, consider it a sign of a well written story.
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I am very happy that I can convey Compound and the other Changelings as alien yet sapient and sentient beings. I'm even happier that this rings true to someone who has seen real war, as I'm totally a civilian whose knowledge of the military comes from friends and from my study of history. I have the greatest respect for those who serve.
Never mind that one of those delusions is a necessary food source.
Well, it wouldn't be a horrific, dystopian regime without a proper philosophy of evil, now would it?
In any case, Compound really is best changeling. She deserves better than this. Still, it's not quite as bad as she's predicted. I look forward to the following month.
(Also, how does changeling writing work? It seems to be based on both sight and taste, and possibly other senses as well.)
Poor Compound. I get the idea that she's just been assigned to a Volkssturm unit, but unlike her real-life counterparts she won't even get a panzerfaust to use.
I also like the description of Changeling 'writing'. I assume that while it may use some symbols or characters, it depends at least as much on pheromones?
The description of Changeling psychology in Compound's emotional and intellectual responses is very well done. She feels alien but understandable at the same time, and I can really sympathize with her.
And one rather foolish question: you said you were using "other-dimensional" versions of Hive Vespid and the Northern Wolf Packs in the background of your stories. I assume that Hive Vespid mostly occupied itself during the war by having their Workers be employed in Equestrian factories, but just what would the wolves be doing? It can't have been easy for them, what with the new weapons and magic being employed. To say nothing of their cultural difficulties; they'd want to defend their dens and Equestria by extension, but given their near-total lack of magic as compared to Pony and Changeling alike they'd have a hard time fitting in with modern Equestrian soldiers.
5626752
Funny you should mention that ...
... I was thinking of having a scene where the company she's in is ordered to counterattack against Equestrian land-crawlers (aka armored battle wagons, aka tanks) and each team is issued a makeshift anti-tank weapon. A bomb on the end of a spear. Which the wielder is supposed to use by running up to the tank and jamming it into the treads then pulling the lanyard. The theory is that this will wreck a track and thus immobilize the vehicle.
The designers apparently did not consider it important to consider how the operator would get that close to the (undamaged) tank in the first place (given that tanks have, well, cannons and machine-muskets mounted on them); survive the blast (there's no shield between user and bomb); or (in the unlikely event of being alive and mobile after the first two events) get away from the now-hopefully-imobilized but still armed armored fighting vehicle.
Yeah.
The scary thing is that I modeled this horrendous last-ditch weapon after a real device, thankfully as far as I know never actually used in battle. The Imperial Japanese Lunge Mine, which worked essentially just like the Changeling Anti-Crawler Bomb Spear, though with better explosives and a verymarginally better design (because the Japanese employed a shaped-charge rather than simple bomb, so it would have been slightly less suicidal for the attacker).
Yep. It's things like this which make me re-iterate that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks, by inducing the Japanese surrender, saved a lot of Japanese lives, on the whole.
I already know how my trio survives. It has a lot to do with Compound's brains, Cowl's scavenging skills, and Carry's size and physical toughness. I'll reveal it in-story.
ADDENDUM: Whoops. Never underestimate Japanese suicidalness. This is, after all, the land of the Suicide Wood and the war which invented aeronaval kamikaze tactics. The Japanese used these insane devices at Leyte Island and presumably thereafter. They would have used them a lot more, of course, in Downfall had it happened.
5625588
Doesn't translate properly. Hunger's philosophy is that felt-love is a weakness, useful to the Changelings only because they can consume the love of "lesser" Kinds. My fault, because I've already established that my lings feel the emotion of love themselves (though their culture is such that it is rather vague and diffuse among most lings, Compound being an exceptionally-intelligent and emotionally-intense individual), and distinguish it from the love they consume.
Hunger's philosophy is much nastier than the normal pre-Reconciliation Changeling guiding assumptions, which were basically "service to the Hive" and "in secrecy lies safety." In other words, Changeling are normally eusocial and afraid of revealing themselves to outsiders. Most are perfectly aware that their relationship to the other Kinds is normally a form of mild parasitism. It was Hunger, back when she was Chrysalis and even back when she was Kifuko, who instead decided to become a predator, and regard killing as an expression of her superiority.
The Changelings are normally not very fierce, save for their Warrior caste, and even their Warriors normally see what they are doing as "defending the Hive." What Chrysalis did by uniting multiple Hives under her and flinging them into war against Equestria was very abnormal behavior for Changelings. She is horribly-aggressive by Changeling standards, and she increasingly comes to terrify other Changelings as well -- which is part of the reason she fails, in that she drives other Hives to ally with Equestria.
Ah. More perspectives, ones that really highlight the different worldviews of our heroes. Cowl can't see past the bureaucracy that he was literally born and bred for. Carry can scarcely conceive of something other than hauling loads, though to be fair, he is quite imaginative in that area. Only Compound truly appreciates how doomed they are. Definitely looking forward to seeing how each adapts to the new circumstances.
5657165
I'm really glad that I seem to have succeeded in letting Compound, Cowl and Carry speak in their proper "voices." Compound is brilliant, intellectual and very well-educated about the larger world in which the Hive is embedded. She's also a moral idealist (though some of her morals would seem strange to Equestrians). She knows theoretically what life is like at the bottom, because her Infiltrator training includes it -- but she's never really experienced it for any length of time.
Cowl has a narrow but deep knowledge of his specialty; he's reasonably intelligent but very much blinkered by his conventionality. He has no idea how bad things are becoming for the Hive. He's a bit selfish but also very naive. Carry is really good at Lifting Loads, and he's also really good at making and keeping friends, though he doesn't realize that this is also a talent. He's not very bright but he is logical, and uses what brains he has very effectively. He genuinely loves other lings.
All of them are going to develop over the course of the story, until they're the trio we meet at the start of The Fall of Hive Hunger-Prime.
I really like the new material! Cowl comes off as somewhat snobbish and overly focused on his work, like the low-ranking office employee who constantly flatters himself with 'This place couldn't run without me'. That poor guy is going to get one hell of a shock when he finds himself in the front lines.
And Carry seems like a real sweetheart for a Changeling. If he's anything like the Workers that the "rebel" Hives gave to Equestria, I can see why they were able to do as much war factory work as they must have. And I like the touch with Big Dolly and her "larva". Though when you consider just how the Changelings got it in the first place...
And this seems to answer some questions I had about how the Queens and Princesses bred the various types of Changelings they needed:
Twice, a Princess actually had him breed her. Her name was Princess Cementite and she mostly made heavy Workers; she'd actually talked to him a bit before and after. She'd been nice, plain-spoken, not what he'd have thought from a Royal.
She'd been Reassigned to another Hive; he had no idea what happened to her because it was none of his business. Sometimes he caught himself hoping in a general sort of way that she was okay. She'd been nice, even kind of sweet.
I wonder, how would a Hive Queen or Princess breed any members of a caste if they lost all of them due to accident or violence? Or would they limp along as best they could without them?
5659330
Yep, and yep. He has no idea what's going on and he is rather full of himself, in part because he is trying to avoid being terrified by his situation. He's denying even what he should know of reality. True danger and hardship actually improve his character. Ironically, he's peripherally aware of Compound's existence already, as a higher-up he's hoping might show to save him, either personally or in the form of a message. He's not going to be happy when he realizes that she's down the same tunnel as himself.
He is. Carry's not exactly brilliant, but he's kind and compassionate, and other lings tend to like him. Princess Cementite did: while there's not much emotional meaning to breeding-sex among the Changelings (less than there is to Play-sex, as Play-sex is completely pointless save emotionally), a Royal would still all other things be equal prefer to mate with someling she at least minimally likes. That's why she decided to mate with him a second time. That's also why she talked to him.
I know it's a standard marker for "dead child," but we don't actually know what happened to the original owner -- just that it somehow fell into the claws of a Changeling gathering team who thought someling might want it. She could be dead, could have been captured, might have died in captivity or been liberated by now -- she might have even gotten away in the evacuations.
Dolly is a truly not very bright Worker: Carry is quite intelligent compared to her. She's pretty sweet, though, and she wishes her job involved more tenderness. Carry likes her, though he's sometimes worried that she'll make a mistake and get squashed by a shifting Load.
Load-Lifters' jobs are normally not as dangerous as implied by Carry's flashback to moving the parts of the land-crawler; what happened is that they underestimated the difficulty of moving the tank's engine block and specifically that their floor wasn't really strong enough for that kind of a load concentrated on their hooves. More often, the risk is of a minor injury which requires downtime to heal. The Changelings actually have a pretty good medical technology: better than Equestrian in some aspets.
Though as noted, the Changeling Medics are far more willing to use euthanasia than would any Equestrian doctors. Workers in particular often have easily-replicated talents and skill sets, and past a certain point of injury or old age, the Hive doesn't think they're worth the resources to keep alive. They're gentle about how they do it -- they consider it their eusocial obligation to give them painless deaths -- but they do it nonetheless, and consider it only rational.
They could re-create them from related stock: if necessary, they can do actual genetic engineering, but that's the hard way to accomplish it. It also helps that a Changeling Royal can keep seed alive for years in the complex compartments of her uterus and associated organs.
They can also "promote" by feeding the Changeling specialized foods, though this works best if done in Larval stage. Most specifically, they can switch on the fertility of an Infiltrator, making a new Royal: in time she'll even grow a pheromone crown. They can also to some extent turn Warriors into Workers or vice versa, or turn a smart Warrior or Worker into an Infiltrator (a stupid one would be useless in that role). It takes time, resources and retraining, so they don't do this sort of thing unless the Hive has a real need of it.
That's one of the things which is ultimately altered by the Reconciliation, and in general by the vastly-greater prosperity the Changelings enjoy after their open integration into the Equestrian economy. By the days of Queen Aphroditis (one of the protagonists of my planned Venus colonization story Sky Hive Aphrodite), two Equestrian and several Changeling generations later, this is remembered as being part of the "bad old days" when the Changeling Hives lived at subsistence levels.
5659624 And I like the touch with Big Dolly and her "larva". Though when you consider just how the Changelings got it in the first place...
I know it's a standard marker for "dead child," but we don't actually know what happened to the original owner -- just that it somehow fell into the claws of a Changeling gathering team who thought someling might want it. She could be dead, could have been captured, might have died in captivity or been liberated by now -- she might have even gotten away in the evacuations.
True, but even so, that foal must have been scared to death for a long time. It serves as a subtle reminder of just what sort of human (equine?) price modern-style 'total war' demands.
And thanks for the explanation on just how a Hive that took losses would manage to replenish their numbers of Workers, Warriors, and Infiltrators. That will be helpful to know.
5659701
Oh yes. Equestria's been badly disrupted by the War. Even though there were large areas that didn't come under direct attack, hundreds of thousands of Equestrians died and millions were displaced. This is the worst thing to happen to the country in at least half a century, maybe over a century. Compared to this, Windvane's Rebellion was a mere destructive incident.
5665238 Beg pardon, but what was Windvane's Rebellion?
5665351
Something I haven't written about directly yet but which is the sequel to Love Amongst Monsters (whenever I finish that story). Takes place in YOH 1512; involves an attempt by Fluttershy's evil uncle Windvane and his followers to seize control of Equestria with an airfleet and super-weapons powered by the Pegasus Device, including a clunky artificial version of the Rainbow of Darkness. It was meant to take place at the same time that Chrysalis attacked from the south, but he got overconfident and jumped the gun, which is why both attacks ultimately fail.
Thing is, Windvane gets stopped by Princess Luna, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Scootaloo, Shining Armor and Cadance when he tries to destroy the Crystal City from the air. He had only maybe ten thousand hardcore followers; in contrast, Chrysalis doesn't launch the Great Changeling War until she has several million (though many of these are young Warriors or Workers). That's why Windvane's attack is over and done in a week, while the Great Changeling War lasts over two years.
5665387 Ah, that sounds like it'll make for a good story. Thanks for the explanation.
Before I read this, what is the Gore and Dark tag for ?
And how bad does it get ?