From Mars With Love

2 Hive

When I came to I found myself in complete darkness. Not the sort of darkness which you get in a room with the curtains drawn, this was the kind of darkness you get in a cave. I could feel something solid under my hands, it wasn’t quite rock but it was hard, smooth, almost like a combination of stone and plastic. I really wish I had been able to afford a xenogeology class back home, It would have really come in handy  helping me figure out where I was.

I concentrated on shifting my eyes, there was no sense having eyes which saw  the visual spectrum here. It took some shifting, but after a while I found a combination of thermal and ultraviolet vision which let me get a look around. I was standing in a very smooth tunnel, cut right through rock, and even a vein of iron judging by the break in the wall’s pattern at one spot. The top of the tunnel was lined with a moss which glowed brightly to my eyes, it must emit UV light.

The tunnel was straight, no paths branching left or right, and I couldn’t feel any air moving so I wasn’t anywhere near the surface. “Left or right?” I mused before turning left with a shrug and walking down the passageway.

The tunnel went for a long time, it curved and snaked around a lot too. At a few points I saw hole sin the ceiling of the tunnel which seemed more like passageways then air vents. That seemed very odd to me, there was no ladder so how were you expected to get up there? Was this some kind of escape tunnel and you slid down into it?

The more I thought about it the more something started to feel wrong. That’s when I noticed the wall’s shape wasn’t like what you would get if you drilled or cut the rock out. It was more natural looking, like how water erodes away rock and leaves odd ripples and ridges. Except that couldn’t be the explanation, the tunnel was consistent dimensions, and the moss on the top was laid out in a neat uniform strip.

Suddenly a clicking, chittering sound reached my ears. “Oh no…” I whispered. That sounded like a really big bug… This was a massive insect hive. I quickly cloaked myself, hoping the creatures which chewed this tunnel worked by sight and not sent. I had to find a way out of here as quickly as possible before… Well I remembered a documentary on what ant’s do when they find something not an ant in their colony. I like my bits attached to each other thank you very much.

The chittering sound grew louder the further down the tunnel I went. Pretty soon I started to see other tunnels branching off of the one I was in on the sides as well as the top. I walked past a lot of them before curiosity had me poke my head into one of the openings. Inside was a large chamber burrowed out of the rock. Oddly enough some stone had been left in the room and chewed into furniture like shapes, kind of like backless benches, and even a table.

The table was covered with trays that looked to contain handfuls of the glowing moss, some resin, and a third compound I couldn't identify. Standing around the table mixing the ingredients into past and packing it into baskets were some of the coolest insects I have ever seen. They looked somewhat like a pony, but with a flatter face, four legs which ended in perforated hooves, gossamer dragonfly like wings which looked sadly ragged, a unicorn like horn, two odd pointed but split ears, and massive glowing blue eyes.

They were working with such coordination and obvious skill at whatever they were doing that they had to be sentient. I mean they had baskets, and were filling them with their glowing moss paste. It should be a simple matter to shape shift into one and simply ask where the exit was, claim to be lost and what not.

I started at the six insectoids for a a few long minutes, my shape shifting was good, but figuring out the anatomy of a new species for the first morph is always hard. It’s not like I had a book telling me how their joints worked, or how good their hearing was. But if I got the looks right I could get close enough to one for long enough to telepathically learn their language and read everything they knew about their own bodies and make the corrections. After all these things looked awesome! I just might dress in their form for fun sometime.

Finally I felt ready enough to give it a shot. I pictured them in my mind, concentrating on the change. I shrank to half my size, my skin darkened and hardened into chitinous plates, I felt wings sprout from my back which I made sure looked pristine, no rips, holes, and perfectly shiny. I felt my head and face rearrange, that’s the part which always grosses me out a bit. It makes a rather gross sloshing squish sound in your skull. A moment later I touched the ground with my four hooves, gave my new wings a twitch, and dismissed my camouflage.

My smart clothes seemed to have a slightly hard time finding a good fit for this form, they kept sliding and shifting around my torso attempting to form human like clothing. I gave them a quick mental command, setting them to form a red x shaped harness around my shoulders and barrel then trotted into the chamber, approaching the table.

The insect people didn't look at me as I approached. Good, I got the look and sent right. It was time for the rest. I carefully sent a mental probe to the one closest to me, gently brushing at it’s mind to see if I could find a way to slip in unnoticed. To my amazement the probe was responded to instantly with a probe back before the insect opened a mental link. They were telepathic as well! Amazing!

I let myself follow the link, I needed to quickly learn everything I could about...these… Changelings, they were called Changelings. They were also shapeshifters, much like myself though their technique was different, they changed all of their cells at once instead of using a step by step… The changeling I was connected to had a very hard mind to explore, it was just so fast, and almost completely alien. Fortunately I was able to pull the basics out of it, every part of Changeling anatomy. I quickly altered my form to match a Changeling's as precisely as I could. I was starting to get a headache from exploding the mental…

It hit me like a ton of bricks the second I corrected my brain structure. My eyes widened in fear I would have screamed but I felt paralyzed. They had a hive mind! I had just telepathically bonded to… My brain now possessed the natural structures for… I could hear countless millions of voices all talking at once! The hive was filled with tens of thousands of Changelings. I was… we were… hungry.

the voices whispered.

I replied in unison with a hundred other drones.

What? No! I couldn’t fall into a hive mind! Odds are good that I wouldn’t ever be able to leave it. My entire personality would be shattered, lost... to... the… we... must collect... food for the hive.

~~

The hive was sick. The hive was dying. We could not gather the love needed to sustain the colony. The drones could provide plenty of physical feed, but we lacked the love required to sustain us properly. The queen gave us many orders. Find ponies. Trick them to come to us. Trap them in the hive. Care for them. Love them. Make them produce food.

The soldiers brought them to us. The drones kept them fed, cleaned, as happy as we could. Quadmatrix 259 attended to three mares from Ponyville. There were three drones working under orders… from… me? What is ‘me’?

the hive ordered.

Of course, our designation was One of Four, Primary Drone of Quadmatrix 259. ‘Me’ must be our self designation. We entered the holding pens. The ponies looked thin. We must provide them with more feed. The cream mare was bucking the resin bars of her pen, blue and pink hair flying wildly as she attacked the bars in a frenzy.

We asked her, directing our thoughts her way.

“Let us out you monsters! I don't want your food I want out!” The mare screamed at us. But she stopped bucking the bars to do so. Success.

“B-bonbon… Did that one just talk?” a pale blue mare with darker blue hair asked.

We offered. We ordered our subordinated drones to gather fresh bedding for the ponies. The three of them quickly left the chamber to carry out my orders… What is ‘my’?

“It did talk!” The mare designated Bonbon gasped.

“It want’s to care for us? Hold on, is it just me or does it look confused?” a third more, this one grey with sand colored hair and green eyes asked.

We asked, wings fluttering in confusion.

The pony designated Bonbon looked at me quizzically. “Girls, look, it’s wings don't have holes. They look well, nice. You think this isn’t a drone?”

Bonbon twisted to look at the other ponies. “Drone’s don’t talk! The queen did when she attacked Canterlot… Lyra told me. Girls, I think we can finally talk to these things!” Bonbon swiveled back to face me. “Please let us out. The Royal Guard will be looking for us, if they find us here, held prisoner by you well… They will have to attack you to free us. You don't want Changelings to die right?”

I informed the hive.

I looked at the mares,

The blue mare trotted over to the bars, “Starve? Are you going to eat us?” She asked in a tone suggesting she had suspected this would be her fate from day one.

Eat a pony? Gross! Equine meat is supposed to have a horrible… what am I thinking about? What’s I? I asked.

Bonbon took a hoof step back in surprise, “Girls… I think that we-”

I asked again my mental tone carrying a pleading quality to it. We must know what ‘I’ is!

“W-what is our name?” the blue mare asked.

“Then for you, ‘I’ means well… whatever you just called yourself.”

We didn’t understand.