Love Starved

by Jordan179

Rating: teen
Tags: Alternate Universe, Gore, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Romance, Adventure, Sex
Length: 5886

Compound's lost her administrative post and been assigned to what amounts to a suicide team. Will she have to spend these last months of her life alone? Or will she find friendship in the least likely of places?

(image by the talented NemoSpecific)

Y.O.H. 1515

As the Great Changeling War approaches its end, and the High Queen Nightmare Hunger is reduced to an ever-shrinking territory and number of Hives, the disgraced Theoretical Infiltrator Compound, already demoted to Logistical Aide, is no longer needed. The resource flow between Hives has ceased, and all she is now is a warm body noling particularly likes.

She is reassigned to to Hive Hunger's Provisional Hive Defense Swarm, a last-ditch unit of Warrior cadets and confused Workers having weapons shoved into their claws and being flung in the path of the Equestrian advance. She has read enough of the reports to know what this means.

Her life is over.

But now, after three long lonely years, among members of a Caste she would normally consider far beneath her, can the impossible happen? On the brink of her death, can Compound rediscover the sense of belonging that alone gives meaning to the life of a Changeling?

Can a pariah finally find friends?

ADDENDUM: AU after S6 finale.

Published 2015-02-14 15:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-02-14 15:50:01 UTC

Chapter 1: Reassigning

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.

Author's Note

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. :pinkiesmile: