The inner workings of the two hundred meter long vessel, dubbed Star Nest, where a complex affair of tightly woven artificial silk in hundreds of layers with thousands of ant colonies bred for a multitude of complex and incredibly vital tasks. Entire colonies were bred to consume dead material and excrete gasses necessary for life in an exacting amount. Other colonies repaired the damage from micrometeorites and unexpected gravity fluctuations and more still were required to maintain the ship's course and act as biological computers for the dense mathematical calculations required for interstellar travel..
The ants had long maintained the organic vessel over the decades as it chased the Destroyers scion ship though the void while its crew were under an artificial hibernation. A hibernation that its crew had only recently awoken from, in the last few months the Destroyers ship had almost been destroyed when the systems sun had moved rapidly and unexpectedly towards it, offering the Star Nest its long awaited opportunity.
Settled with her peer group within the forward inner nest Beska carefully mixed a new set of pheromones, her legs dancing too and fro in the cramped confines of the inner nest. Her joints stiff from the many decade long hibernation, her brothers and sisters were giving her what space they could, curled up together as far away from her as they could. It could perhaps also be that Understandings of Chemistry where a dangerous affair and mistakes could spell death in a single painful and embarrassing moment for the entire crew.
The demanding work of controlling the complex array of ant colonies required a skilled understanding of chemistry to produce the pheromones required to interact with the single minded organisms and Beska rightfully considered herself the best, after all she was chosen for this task where so many others had not.
Febrien, not of her peer group but a friend, crawled into the forward inner nest. His male stature allowing him to slip through the cramped ship with a greater ease than the much larger females could boast. Without deviating from her work Beska quickly tapped a message along the tightly strung web, the atmosphere inside the ship inflating the vessel like a balloon and making messages sent along the web quiet and slow to travel.
*Febrien, you are here to report?* the Spider in question slipped gracefully between two of Beska’s sisters who were doing there best to rest after awaking.
*Yes, the Destroyer ship crash landed on a habited world, any connection to the Creators is uncertain at the moment.* For a moment Beska paused in her work, the clinking of glass at her workstation stopping before she began mixing once more.
*Perhaps the locals in this world had understandings of the Destroyers and moved the sun to destroy the vessel?* she tapped with one of her back legs.
*To move a sun? No Beska you have understandings of physics, we must simply be close to a black hole that we cannot detect* The hair along Beska’s back bristled at that, but Febrian was known for his bluntness.
*The Creators did such things did they not? Our understandings are not perfect Febrian* There was a long pause after that before the male responded.
*We shall land on the world and remove the Destroyers before it's too late* there was a half formed twitch of the web as if Febrian wanted to say more but instead he crawled closer to a large slumbering female, Portia one of the ships soldiers, for warmth and slept as Beska continued her work directing the vital colonies of ants.
They would soon have planetfall and they needed all the rest they could get, real rest, not the chemically induced hibernation or the complex array of cultured viruses that granted the crew biological immortality. Such things came at a price after all.
Beska remained still as a specialised colony of ants crawled across her back, each was less than a millimeter in size, one of the smallest colonies bred, currently they were coating her entire peer group. Each ant rapidly eating the organic inner walls of the ship and secreting a much harder material over the arachnid crews body, forming tough plates of armour that would hopefully provide some protection on the planet.
The concept of armour was once foreign to Beska’s race, as where a great many things. It was an idea brought by the Destroyers themselves, just like great ships of the void and pointless genocide Beska mused bitterly.
*Entering last stage, brace yourselves for landing* Polta spoke in the complex way of her race, a mix of dance and careful alteration of her pheromones. her polyps twitching in anticipation, Beska did not blame her, it would feel good to finally get some dirt under her legs.
Once the entire crew were armoured by the ants the colony slowly withered and died before their bodies were eaten by other ants who in turn would feed the other colonies unaware that their purpose had been served. Equipping a molecule thick suit over her body Beska broke the glass containing her chemical concoction, sending out a sent to the many millions of ants over the ship to move out as far as the could granting the ship's crew extra protection from the re entry heat in a multi million strong shield of bodies.
The descent took a few hours with the ship slowly burning up layer by layer as it entered the atmosphere, the biological chemical propulsion ejected from the ship now that its purpose was completed.
Layer after layer of artificial and natural webbing and silk was burned away from the atmosphere as the crew huddled together. Some of the more religious of the peer groups tapping out quiet prayers to whatever god would listen.
As another layer burnt away the next expanded explosively, woven to be much bigger than the other layers and seeded with a mix of gasses that would react to reentry this layer quickly became a silk balloon that would break the fall of the Star Nest and protect the crew from a hard landing.
Something went wrong and for a single terrible moment the ship was torn asunder sending the dazed crew flying out over an alien forest.
Febrian, like all his race, did not think like a mammal. He did not see things in up and down, left and right. No Febrian, even more than the rest of his kind, had a great sense of three dimensional space and his place within it. His forward telescopic eyes allowed him incredible vision forward and his secondary sets granted him depth perception and spacial awareness that was unrivaled.
It was unfortunate then that the only thing he could see was pink and yellow. Flailing his legs in panic of the all encompassing blanket of soft pink and butter yellow the arachnid just shy of a meter long, with an embarrassing amount of effort, got his legs under him and skittered away from the pink and yellow blob that quickly became a strange looking mammal.
Four legs ending in bone, large colourful eyes that shined like a rainbow to the spider that could see deeper into the infrared spectrum then most. Eyes that sparked with intelligence and compassion. Eyes that belonged to a being with the greater understandings.
The bag, swelling with cotton bundles and stinking of antiseptics and ethanol was also a clue that the creature before the enigmatic Febrian was no simple animal. Thus with that revelation the pair, arachnid and mammal stared awkwardly at each other for several minutes.
Turning to its side slightly as it approached slowly, no doubt so as to not scare Febrian. The butter yellow mammal revealed a rather curious set of wings along its sides. The quiet was broken by an intense vibration under Febrian’s legs and the spider quickly turned to the source of the disturbance his telescopic eyes darting back and forth to identify its cause.
A bright blue blur was rapidly approaching at frightening speed and with a startled squeak the male skittered into the dense protection of the woods deff to the meek calls from the butter yellow mammal.
The forest pressed down upon its denizens with a creeping oppressive mass of vines, ferns, grasses and bushes that coated the ground level, trees crept up and spread out in a herculean effort to block out the radiant sun while twisting parasites curled over their bark in a malicious effort to strangle the life from the stoic guardians of the forest.
Dark shadows slipped and hopped and stalked in this sunless world, things that assumed themselves apex predators were little more but reflective dots in the distance. Eyes that had only malice.
Portia was more than at home in this place. Rearing up onto her hind legs and letting out a low hiss the soldier, trained since the day she was hatched, with decades of experience, squared off against a titanic beast.
They circled each other in a low clearing with sheer cliff faces sporting dense vines climbing up the exposed rock. In an instant the beast lunged forward a swipe of its deadly claw to swat Portia away like an insect.
Portia lept over the lightning fast attack her many legs spread wide to find something to cling too. Landing on the huge beasts shoulder as it reared back as if in disgust that Portia would dare attempt to climb upon it.
To Portia combat was a rush like no other, milliseconds where a resource she would carefully use, each movement a trained mix of gut instinct and masterful control over her body. Portia dug her fangs deep into her foe injecting it with a powerful venom before flinging herself away to avoid the imminent reprisal. A spiderling with less experience would take this moment to congratulate themselves but Portia knew better. Darting away rapidly and skittering to a lone tree the armoured spider leapt into its branches just as the spasming titan raked its claws over the thick bark of the tree’s base.
Its breath was uneven and it was wheezing, its eyes were leaking a white fluid and its mouth was foaming from the rapidly acting weapon in its veins. Portia did not carry a paralyzing venom, she was made for one reason.
The mammal shuddered and clawed at its face and neck as it let out a pained roar and fell over dead its face frozen in agony. Portia was designed to kill mammals.
Dropping down in a low crouch Portia approached her pray, looking around for any other obvious dangers on this new world. After a moment of quiet she climbed onto her dead attacker and began to feed, no point wasting a good meal.
Beska awoke among the dead. The scattered remains of Star Nest lay strewn about a rough stone courtyard, sheets of silk hung from broken ruins with the bodies of her crew clinging to them. Slowly pulling herself upright she moved to inspect the world around her noting that a bundle of fallen cloth had broken her fall and saved her life.
Broken glass littered the ground before her the acidic stink of concentrated chemicals mixing together, some melted the stone and others stained it. The unfortunate remains of Beska’s workshop.
Turning again Beska moved to inspect the ruins around her, stone walls and arches rose up around her. Wide open spaces neatly boxed and contained into damp artificial caves. With a shudder Beska linked the architecture with what she had heard third hand of Destroyer ships. Hallways bigger then any reason would dictate, rooms barron and solemn as if great cathedrals to the Destroyers disregard for others that they would take so much for themselves.
For a moment Beska froze in abject fear, her legs quivering and her eyes darting about as if one of the fabled titanic monsters would stalk out of the long dead ruin and crush her under its foot.
Nothing happened. Beska did not know how long she simply stared around her, at her dead crew and peer group, destroyed ship and at the unreasonably alien construction that surrounded her.
Rainbow Dash landed with a thud that threw up a cloud of dust her eyes locked on the spot that horrible mass of legs and hair and ran.
“Fluttershy are yo-”
“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy raised her voice less than an octave over her normal speaking voice but that was more then enough for Rainbow to reflectively wince and pull her ears back ready for the immanent lecture.
“Did you have to scare the poor thing? What were you thinking?”
“That thing was huge!” Rainbow exclaimed lamely.
“You are bigger then it was, it was more afraid of you then you are of it” Fluttershy nodded at her last words as she clasped her saddled bag shut with a wing.
“I’m not scared!” the prismatic coloured pony shouted to a disbelieving Fluttershy.
“Ok, fine I got a little creeped out, spiders are freaky, nothing with that many legs should exist!” the blueberry mare huffed at her friends gasp.
“What a silly thing to be worked up about, if we meet that nice little spider again you are going to apologize!”
