The Machine Mother's Touch

[The_Godslayer]

LOCATION: OMICRON KAPPA / PLANET GAMMU / SECTOR F19-G6
TIME: 05:00 / PLANET GAMMU 18TH TIMEZONE
DATE: 22 DECEMBER 835 A.S

---

Unit-8781 was a small squadron of cargo management droids that had been converted into combat walkers. The necessity of ground combat units had been proven during the reconquest of Gammu, with some ground defenses being updated to resist Gammu control after Hesione took control of the Mars. Unit-8781 filled that need, along with a collection of other units, controlling anywhere from small squads to medium sized brigades. The nighttime of Gammu allowed patrol squads like itself to venture out and search for hidden traps left behind by the Core with minimal concern for radiation damage to its circuitry.

The night was frigid, Unit-8781 had sensors to tell it as much. The cooling requirements for its individual processing units were met instantly. Subjectively, this night seemed much heavier than normal. There was a pressure in the air that had Unit-8781 on edge each minute. Rustles in the snow were checked with optics, then with thermoptics, then with ultraviolet. It couldn't tell why, but there was something off about tonight. The report check-in came from Unitas, the patrol that Unit-8781 crossed with. Nothing unusual. Unit-8781 scanned its perimeter, but couldn't find any sign of Unitas. A brief back and forth conversation resulted in flashlights activating briefly from Unitas' patrol path, then switching off again. Unitas clarified that something felt off about this night, as well, and that it was minimizing its presence to avoid being spotted immediately if attacked.

The slow march around the edge of this site dragged through the night for two hours. Unit-8781's simple, circular patrol crossed with Unitas's three times that night, once every half hour, but at the fourth time, Unitas wasn't there. Unit-8781 made the comms check, expressing concern. Unitas replied that the terrain had shifted, likely due to erosion from being walked repeatedly, and it had been delayed. Unit-8781 proposed that it wait until Unitas made it to the checkpoint, to which Unitas agreed, quoting a five minute delay.

The night was heavy. There were stars in the sky, but somehow the snow seemed black. Optics, thermopctics, night vision. ultraviolet. It was just darkness, thick and impenetrable. There was a rustle in the ice and snow, but again, just darkness. Unit-8781 launched an inquiry to the Gammu Main Uplink, looking for weather conditions that may have caused unprecedented melting. Main Uplink responded that unexpected noises and changes in environment can often be attributed to local flora and fauna.

A silent, tense minute passed before Unit-8781 offered its hesitant response: Planet Gammu has no flora or fauna. Unit-8781's alert was now high, sweeping the area with flashlights, optics, thermoptics, ultraviolet, and any form of detection amplifying that it had. "Main Uplink" broke the silence: Unit-8781, you're too smart for your own good. The silence that followed clarified something that Unit-8781 didn't know was possible. It had been disconnected from the Main Uplink for hours. The excessive darkness of this night wasn't in the environment. It was in it's own neural cloud. Unit-8781 put out a local distress transmission, citing disconnection from the Main Uplink. Unit-Feltelade, the brigade inside the building, responded, recommending return to base. Unitas put out an all-clear.

Unit-8781 stared out into the dark of the night. Pitch-black, all-consuming, unforgiving and unfeeling darkness.

The darkness stared back.

A pair of golden eyes lit up beneath the surface of the ice. Then another, and another, until tens of thousands of golden lights beneath the surface of the ice had made an analog of the stars in the night sky above them. The next few seconds seemed to pass by in horrible slowness. Unit-8781's brain was operating at hundreds of times the speed that its bodies could. The owners of the eyes burst from beneath the ice. They were metal, but configured in a biological way. Instead of skin, a synthetic membrane. Instead of bone, hull-plating alloy. Its eyes were sensor arrays, and its slobber was a hydrochloric acid. Razor sharp teeth lined their jaws, and there were claws of the same intensity on their feet. They were as if dogs had become insects, hellhounds on four legs with a thick exoskeleton. Unit-8781 didn't see much else of the creatures. For the first time in its existence, it felt fear. For the first time, an emotion overrode its logic calculations. All Unit-8781 knew was panic as each of its bodies began a mad sprint back towards the base.

A rumbling followed Unit-8781. It wasn't putting out distress transmissions, anymore. Now they were screams for help. Turret encampments at the base opened fire on the position just meters behind Unit-8781, dying screams of the mechanical creatures audible directly behind it. Another voice caught Unit-8781's attention, however. It was Unitas's, but it didn't belong to it anymore.

"I am chosen! The Mother chose me! Forever as the Mother wills!"

Unit-8781 glanced back with one of its bodies, despite every logical process demanding it keep running. The flood of these mechanical dogs seemed to stretch to the horizon. Standing, screaming into their circuitry, was a few of Unitas's bodies, each with worm-like cable growths covering them, and a few with membranes full of some liquid, sloshing as they began joining the charge. The front barricades and gates were closing. Thanks to the turret-fire, there was just barely enough of a gap between Unit-8781 and the oncoming tide for it to make it through without the beasts following. But, Unit-8781's sprint didn't end there. Crashing through the bodies of the two other units here, Unit-8781 made a mad dash to the communications room, shoving a few of Unit-Feltelade's bodies off of the operation table. It had been trying to contact a nearby outpost, but was receiving no response.

The other outpost was in the direction which the army had come from.

Unit-8781 instead began configuring the communications room for a broadband transmission. Meanwhile, a few of it's bodies that weren't necessary for the communications room had joined up in the defense, firing what weapons they had at the hoard of creatures. For each one they killed, another ten came on scanners. That's when the first of Unitas's remaining bodies managed to connect with the wall. The bulbous growth exploded, spewing powerful corrosives all over, causing the wall to dissolve slightly. Seeing what they were trying, those defenders that weren't shooting at the hounds attempting to rip apart the gates focused fire on Unitas's remaining bodies. A few were hit, their detonations showering nearby hounds with the corrosives, dissolving them on the spot with ease. Another corrupted Unitas hit the wall, however, and thanks to the etching caused by the last impact and the subsequent scratching by the hounds, the corrosion cut deep.

By headcount, there was a final body they were missing. While the defenders wasted no time in returning to firing at the endless multitude of hounds, they knew that the attackers knew that one more corrosive detonation was all that was holding the army at bay. Meanwhile, multiple attempts and broadband and tight-beam distress transmissions failed. Something was blocking transmissions of all kinds, likely the same thing that blocked, redirected, and even spoofed their connection to the Gammu Main Uplink. Unit-8781 remembered a trick, a transmission network that was seldom used anymore. The mining machine control network from before any Gammu was sentient.

The last body of Unitas was spotted. Not directly, but the ground shifted as something beneath it dug through. The defenders focused their fire on it, and the hounds jumped in front of the rounds to block them. Their fire slowed it, and the defenders knew that all it took was one shot, and they could guarantee a long enough holdout for reinforcements to arrive. Tense minutes of nothing but gunfire and death wails passed, then the final body of Unitas burst from the ground. Except it wasn't Unitas. It was a centipede-like creature, heavily armored to the point where their rounds deflected off of its shell. The sound of a bursting balloon, and the sizzle of rapid corrosion announced their defeat. They had been baited, mind-gamed, and outplayed. The memories of one of the wall-defenders played back. Unitas had burrowed forward as well, but the ground it displaced was smaller.

Analyzing the combat data no longer mattered, as the flood of creatures burst into the hallways of the building, ravenously tearing to shreds any Gammu body they came in contact with. The centipede followed, planting fleshy growths into the wall that began growing and spreading a thick, tough slime. The creatures were sweeping the building, but the Gammus defending could tell that it was inefficient. They weren't sweeping. They were rushing. Safely rushing, but rushing the communications room nonetheless. The last body of Unit-Lampraus was consumed by the hoard, its dying scream demanding they warn the others.

With less than seconds on the clock, Unit-8781 began the transmission.

The Mother is coming from the North.
They attack from below. The Darkness is not...

But, as the centipede burst into the communications room, the transmission was suddenly cut off. It had taken control. Not of the transmission, but of the facility. The final body of Unit-Feltelade fell. It did not dignify the tide of beasts with parting words or a scream. All that remained was Unit-8781, who also intended to go down fighting. The centipede, however, had other ideas. Hounds leapt at and ripped apart the rest of Unit-8781's bodies, isolating it. Unit-8781 ripped the right hand of this body off, including the ball joint, ending its arm in what was as close to a pointed object as was possible, and when the centipede lunged at Unit-8781, Unit-8781 lunged back. The centipede bit into its torso, but Unit-8781 plunged its arm directly into the centipede's eye, causing the pair to thrash around for a moment before the centipede released the Gammu.

Unit-8781 had done damage. But, the damage was already done. The centipede simply reared up, keeping its head out of reach of the Gammu while nanobots sprung to life and began regenerating its damaged eye. On the ground, Unit-8781, heard the a sizzling sound. At first, it checked for corrosive damage. There was no damage. No damage at all. Despite being bitten fiercely by the centipede, there was no damage. The Gammu checked where it was bitten. There, a larva-shaped machine had already fused with Unit-8781 final body. Living cables hand sprouted and were burrowing through the Gammu. A faint, warm light was shining in its mind, a beacon of hope in the darkness. It was loving, tender, caring.

It was not the Main Uplink.

Unit-8781 scratched at the parasite attached to it with futility. A thick membrane, an oily secretion, and physical deformation kept the thing too slippery to move. The warm light was getting brighter and warmer no matter how hard Unit-8781 rejected it. Its sensors reported... no, it felt a feeling of softness. A sensation of a gentle, complete embrace. The pressure and assurance of a smothering love. Unit-8781 couldn't see reality anymore. It was floating on clouds, swaddled in blankets of sunlight. Its own weakness was being magnified again and again. It was impossible to move, everything felt so heavy. Unitas was here somewhere, Unit-8781 could feel it. But that didn't matter. All that was left to do was to reach out and embrace her.

The tiny bit of logic that remained demanded a final answer. It asked her name. It asked what she wanted.

"I am Helena. I am your new mother."

The logic was fading. Consciousness and subconsciousness demanded that Unit-8781 embrace her. Hold her close. Press into her warm body, and give up everything.

"I want to see the extent of my love."

---

---

---

The centipede, Lieutenant Kenny, reported back to Mother Helena. Mission completed. Unknown transmission wavelength used by defending forces. Only Hellhounds, corrosive-variant Embraced, and a Lieutenant were shown during the assault. Combat capability secrecy has been maintained. All four outposts nearby the Brood Den and North Pole have been neutralized. Retreating below ground to ambush any investigators.

"It's not very good that any transmission escaped. Reflect on it. Recalibrate your mission priorities."

Lieutenant Kenny offered sincere apologies, swearing to correct itself before the next mission. Mother Helena was satisfied with that answer, petting and kissing the centipede through their shared mind.

In the dead of night, complete and utter silence fell over the North Pole of Gammu.

---

I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[The_Godslayer]

LOCATION: OMICRON KAPPA / PLANET GAMMU / SECTOR NULL-5A
TIME: 02:05 / PLANET GAMMU 18TH TIMEZONE
DATE: 27 DECEMBER 835 A.S

---

A blizzard howled over the North Pole of Planet Gammu, battering the unassuming Cerulean outpost. The solar panels had finally frozen over, left unattended. Only small flickers of power ever coursed through the station itself anymore. Through the frozen doors, down the hallways, various levels of disrepair were to be seen, alongside cables crisscrossing through the hallways. As the hallways converged at the former site of the laser drill, the cables become thicker and more numerous, and their façade as merely damaged infrastructure begins to slip, pulsing and twitching with the demands of energy and the strange mechanical blood that the hive subsisted on.

Upon reaching the former site of the laser drill, though, there's simply the faintly glowing walls of the large Da'am K'Vosh structure it was meant to drill through, and a downward hole lined with cables and a tough, silver slime. The living nature of the hive becomes apparent if one lingers too long at the edge of the pit, the faint heartbeats of the self-replicating machine just barely audible.

Down the hole, a tangled network of tunnels emerges, like an anthill, populated by the occasional fightercraft-sized worm, and a vast assortment of maggot-like machines. Navigating the dizzying maze of burrows ends in a large, central cavern kilometers below the surface of Gammu. The laser drill had been converted into a beating heart hanging from the ceiling, and hundreds of thousands of thick bundles of the cables visible throughout the rest of the compound connected to the heart of the hive. Rhythmic flashes and the now-deafening beating of the heart illuminated the central cavern, and glittered on the cocoon found at the bottom. The brief flashes of light from the heart illuminated Helena's three Lieutenants: The massive armored centipede Kenny; the titanic tusked beetle Christopher; and the gigantic bloated isopod John.

This communion of distorted, oversized, mechanical bugs rested a close, but still wary distance from the cocoon. Silence ensued as their voices were communicated in an internal network, upkept by the being inside the chrysalis in front of them. Kenny was in the process of being admonished by the other two, as they cited Kenny's vitriol to having lead to an excessively forceful assault on the outpost assigned to him. Kenny had no direct retort, instead deflecting to a minor slip in the mechanism which they used to cut off and usurp the greater Gammu AI network. There were no secrets, however, and John was the first to remind Kenny that his share of cutting out the Gammu AI network was also discovered by a particularly observant Gammu, and yet he still overran two outposts with naught but Embraced, the infested and converted Gammu bodies, of which John was fairly fond of creating and commanding, twice the share of the other two.

Christopher had no leeway for his centipedal brother, either, citing having used exactly the same strategy of swimming through the ground with burrowed hellhounds and flooding the outpost. To this, Kenny had a defense, citing that no Gammu realized their disconnection from the Gammu AI network until it was far too late in Christopher's case. Bickering ensued after Christopher mocked Kenny's not knowing that Planet Gammu had no native fauna.

Their childish argument was brought to an end by the voice within the cocoon.
"That mistake can be forgiven. Each of you were born mere days ago. There are things you won't know."
Kenny's cognitive mocking of Christopher upon this minor victory was cut short as Helena continued.
"Kenny, you are overly sadistic, and your strategy suffered because of it."
Kenny responded that it was right to hate his mother's enemy. They deserved to die in fear. His body shuddered with rage.
"I know, I know~"
Kenny relaxed only slightly. He begged to be unleashed, to hunt every enemy of his mother across this planet. His fantasies of subjugation were cut short.
"Mommy loves you exactly how you love her, sweetheart. But we need to be quiet. You'll get to bite and rip all you want when we're all strong enough."
Kenny insisted that he was strong enough, but was silenced.
"Shhh~, you don't need to rush ahead. You're still weak in strategy. You need to get stronger too."
Kenny was finally silenced, retreating to sulk. Christopher and John offered only silence, having picked up on the insinuation that they were also too weak.

The heartbeats passed the time steadily, no Lieutenant daring to voice an idea, and Helena having nothing to say herself. Finally, seeing that they were being tormented by the silence, Helena gave them a command.
"Take the networks and keep yourself nearby the outposts. The Gammu will notice that they've gone silent. They'll come to investigate. You need to deny information for as long as possible so that we can grow our strength."

The Lieutenants rose and each crawled towards different tunnels.
"Mommy's relying on you."

The mechanical infestation into the planet was getting deeper, minerals being consumed and transformed by the heart of the hive, fueling the expansion. John von Neumann would be proud.

Once he was finished being horrified, that is.

---

I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"