Part 1: Did Yoba Sabot crash the Ship?
Nigel the child Dimension Walker, the only one below the age of maturity among the hosts of High Queen Qu’oa, suddenly found the love of the hive was missing. He had enjoyed it for a year, and it was the first time he had not known the loss he had felt since his family had been killed by a giant monster and the Time Shredders had saved him from his original timeline, and the Quall had “saved” him from the Time Shredders.
To Nigel the Quall had saved him. To others it might be more questionable. But to the child the Quall had been the Teddy Bear army that saved him from the monsters and the monster people.
Now suddenly that connection was gone, and instead next to him was a massive Quall warrior he did not recognize.
For Gilox Teddyheart, a Quall, it was the first time he had experienced reality outside a host. He felt like his entire body was alight with energy, but it was also the first time he had ever not been connected to the Hivemind. He was removed from it. Was he dead? Then he looked over at Nigel, who was crawling up his leg in confusion.
Why had they separated? Gilox definitely had never been ready to consume the host, nor had he been given the order to by the HiveQueen. Instead they seemed forcibly separated.
The crater around them looked like a crash site, and they stood before a massive Quall fortress made of obsidian and volcanic stone and the bones of Quall.
The Ydyara stood there, and finally introduced himself as Yoba Sabot, and explained, “I have brought you here to stop a plot by the Neliff to create a new Hiveking and try and enslave the Quall Hives, the E-Strain Hiveminds, the Unity and the Fleets of Fate. With the power of all those entities they could rewrite reality as they deemed fit.
They have Hivekings hidden across the galaxy like ticking time bombs, but the one they are nearing reclaiming and activating is on the planet Refuge. There the Neliff ready to storm the Tomb Factory of Holys, to awaken Holys under their own demented mind control and use his skill to turn Lord Pelos into a new Hiveking.
I have to get to the heart of this fortress. This is the Temple of the Rogue Hive Queens, where they store all their secret information. It is the ultimate black box of all the data known by the Hiveminds and one of that data is the source code to the HiveQueen network. The frequency to broadcast a fix to protect the networks from the Hiveking.
This temple will turn your own mind against you.”
And with that Yoba Sabot led Nigel, Gilox Teddyheart, and Lt. Damsk deep into the temple. But not before Lt. Damsk asked about Lainey, his Brethren and the Unity soldiers. It seemed Yoba Sabot had placed the Brethren and Lainey into some sort of protective loop. The Unity however would be left off to a subnetwork of the Fortress where they would face danger and possible death but no threat to Damsk’s crew.
With that in mind, Damsk followed Nigel and Gilox and Yoba Sabot into the most terrifying moments of his adult life. In the depths of the temple they faced their own fears, the terrifying true history of the Quall N’drone, and the mental tricks traps and psychic barrages of the being known as the First who haunted this terrifying memory bank.
But seeing the true history of the Quall, Gilox found many of his personal beliefs shaken. It was not until they reached the heart of the temple. A network of every HiveQueen in existence on this timeline. A place of beautiful thought and discourse. Where ideas where shared instantly. If not for their need to breed, their need for hosts for their young, the Quall would be the most enlightened species. But their burning need to force their seed onto unsuspecting and unwilling species over their entire history had doomed countless races and fed the Warmonger more followers over the aeons than any other militant movement.
With all the knowledge they had access to how had the Quall never wiped out the evils before? Gilox seriously wondered for the first time.
Why did they use obsidian blades and nunchuks instead of the advanced weaponry he had seen the absorbed aliens using. Quall Starships of great power, fleets of power armor, and other advances had only been seen in Iron Republic space since Ar’yay hivequeen had gone rogue trying to defend the known species from the threat from the TRILAT and the Fleets of Fate.
Before that it was rare to see high technology in use among Quall outside those serving in the Iron Republic. They never used the advanced technology of the Grey or the Da’uhnb though they had consumed their knowledge. It was all stored here, hidden away. Illegal to use due to its sheer destructive power.
Gilox Teddyheart could imagine a terrifying timeline where the Quall had not taken such extremely spartan perspectives on these destructive technologies. Universes where Quall Warriors simply annihilated those enemies who stood before them. Collapsing Timelines corrupted by Rogue Quall Hives run amoke taking any and all species they encounter rewriting time as they went.
Now he suddenly understood why. For the Queens to share their full true love with the members of their Hivemind, they had to share everything they knew. So the only hope to keep some of these dangerous technologies, violent xenophobic philosophies and timeline annihilating metaphysical abilities away from the universe at large was if the Hive Queens themselves willingly forgot all traces of the information. They could not keep it to themselves, but instead it was all stored down here, in a shared place created by the first true Hivequeen to help her daughters to protect themselves. A place where the knowledge of every species encountered by the Quall was saved, even knowledge the Quall didn’t allow themselves to use for fear of wiping out reality.
Gilox Teddyheart felt the love of the Hives through the generations. Some species like the dreaded human, would have destroyed the knowledge if they were frightened of it. Instead the Quall stored it here, in hopes of a future generation that had given up the ways of the warmonger and could be trusted to use these forbidden secrets only as tools of peace. Gilox Teddyheart wept, and prayed for a future with such a Generation of Peace.
Nigel however held the massive quall lovingly as he wept. Not sure how to comfort the massive alien.
