Hive mind Beyond the veil

Fhaldrum (The Season of Awakening)

Day 59

3 A.E.

989 days since my arrival

This reality was dead and was slowly unravelling, those were my present thoughts as I peered past the ark ships' protective bubble. Beyond lay the Nexus, the only practical method of faster-than-light travel between star systems.

It was an odd, white expanse, littered with floating geometric forms of various sizes, a few as large as asteroids. Most were translucent or opaque, and they kept a wary distance from one another, their shapes warping as they drew near before slowly repelling one another again.

The Nexus obeyed its own rules. Anything that left the protective bubble was distorted, rapidly broke down and vanished. No one could say what happened there were more theories on the topic than I could count, not even the Sil'narae who first charted this realm and mapped the galaxy knew what happens.

I was separated from the rest of my mind by that same strangeness, isolated inside the bubble while the Nexus stretched and performed its silent motions.

What worried me most were the black tears, the blighted rifts in the expanse where a dark, growth crawled out. Anything that wandered too close was seized and corrupted. I watched those geometric objects become entangled in the growth and slowly turn dark, altered into something else. The sight raised more questions than answers.

As we travelled toward the nearest solar system to mine, one thought kept returning, one I was curious about what would happen if I sent a drone out there beyond the protective bubble?

"What do you think will happen, Director Kraklak?" I asked the Grithan. He had equipped himself with the same exo-suit as the ark ship's crew.

He had once staggered in fear at my mere presence, though prolonged exposure to my mind had mellowed him.

There was something corrosive about the constant connection of minds that spent long hours in contact with mine, which tended to soften, to accept anything I say within reason.

It was a phenomenon I was still studying in earnest.

Kraklak stood beside one of my drones, eyes fixed on the cargo hold, where several of my ships rested in stasis. He answered with the calm of someone who had seen the data and preferred to be blunt.

"Anything outside the protective bubble will cease to be," he said. "Objects disappear. Records from past experiments are scant and terrible."

I probed further. "What of the growths in the rifts? The blight emerging from the tears?"

He hesitated a fraction, then replied. "Many have tried to answer that. The trouble is that attempting to extract a sample tends to destabilise whatever touches it. Material from our reality will unmake itself. The Nexus shifts the laws that bind matter. The results are grim."

I could sense the crew's mood intensifying, a dull current of dread running through them. Kraklak felt it too. I already knew their fears, did they truly think I would risk this vessel for an experiment?

He lowered his voice. "In every recorded test, regions of the Nexus collapsed. The rifts widened. The blight accelerated. Entire ships and research stations were lost for less."

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

I already knew the bulk of it. I had sifted and absorbed all their memories and pieced together theories and histories that some still preferred to forget. Yet, I indulged the exchange, talking through unpleasant facts soothed their anxieties against me more than silence did.

"Has anyone tried to use the etheric plane as a bypass?" I asked. Nexus Points were natural choke points. If there were any way to avoid wasting biomass fighting for one, I wanted to ask the Etheric Union about that.

Kraklak's expression hardened. "Attempts have been made. The ether is chaotic. Machines fail, organics unravel, minds crack. Nullite is useless there. It's a never-ending storm of chaotic energy."

Perhaps it was achievable, but the variables were stacked far beyond their control. Still, the experiment fascinated me. Any alternative form of FTL was worth pursuing, no matter how temperamental or improbable.

He fell silent, watching the pale floating geometry of the Nexus through the holo projector. It was another option to fold into the grand plan I was still assembling.

The other major powers in the galaxy posed a worrying complication for my campaign. The Triumvirate's capacity to field disposable armies made it a large military supplier to the growing friction between different nations and the free AIs scattered across the Halo only amplified the risk of another party getting involved.

Most polities relied on dubbed-down virtual intelligences rather than true autonomous AIs because an unfettered AI could run an economy with cold efficiency and then decide for itself what was worth protecting.

Only a handful of AIs remained genuinely free, most were shackled or constrained by law and hardware. That imbalance had to be factored into any plan I made.

My little pocket of space was unstable and dangerous to travel through. If things turned bad, I could choose to destabilise the region entirely and withdraw into isolation until the Nexus stabilised in a few centuries or millennia.

Everything hinged on how far my consciousness could project through my drones. The variables were many, some measurable, some not, and each one changed the cost and feasibility of every option.

Long-range travel was another problem. Conventional propulsion would require centuries to span neighbouring star systems, a logistical nightmare. Still, it offered a research avenue worth pursuing should I decide to destabilise the Nexus

I ran simulations in my head and assigned probabilities to hundreds of contingencies, each calculation folding into the next.

Days bled into one another as we travelled. When the final hour arrived, the ship was prepared and the crew positioned. I had been warned that the transition would be severe, that the pain we would endure might last for hours.

They had stockpiled analgesics and stabilisers, but those would only blunt the worst. The experience would not be painless.

Reality began to bend before us. On the left side of the view field, a storm of blues churned and accelerated, a living eddy of light and motion. To the right, red flowed slowly and viscous, like syrup trapped behind glass. The ship groaned as spatial harmonics shifted, and the external view turned into a kaleidoscope.

I felt the crew's pain as a chorus of raw sensation. Their vitals spiked, neurofeedback loops trembled, and their faces tightened with each wave of distortion. Even their chemical cocktails offered little relief.

For me, the ordeal registered differently. I had subjected my drones to trauma and stress far harsher than this, and so the sensory load was less a torment and more a numb experience.

We crossed the threshold. The ship materialised on the other side intact.

A rush of memories flooded me and, for the first time in days, my fractured mind felt whole. The scattered threads of consciousness slid back into sync and the collective reformed. I could feel the faint tug of every clone linked to me, even Ankrae's and Seer's distant presence folding into the network.

I was whole at last, I stared into the void of a new star system waiting to be mapped and colonised. I hoped I would not be forced to commit wholesale slaughter to claim it.

Captain Orka Zol stirred in his pod as the analgesics took effect. He muttered under his breath, swearing at his luck, at me, at the job, at the Triumvirate and at the universe in turn. His curses were small noises in the broader hum of the ship, and I let them pass.

Taking control of the vessel was trivial. My implant already interfaced with the ark's virtual intelligence, and I routed its systems into my consciousness.

Neural implants were standard on any combat drone now; the war had taught me the hard lessons of cyber warfare. The expeditionary VI's were crude by comparison. The Ark's systems, the Hydrarchs' and Aegirarch's implants, were leagues beyond what most of the expedition had.

For a while, I entertained the idea of building an artificial intelligence of my own. I discarded the notion quickly. Any synthetic mind I could devise would be a pale imitation of what already existed and would never match the reach of my gestalt. My mind was a fortress of knowledge, no sane intelligence could hope to breach it.

The ark's cargo doors opened and six Neskar slipped free. These were my latest variants, they were mobile factories and carriers designed to hold ground task forces, biomass, and supplies for any new colony I wanted to build.

Each was loaded with conventional and unconventional weapons, combat drones and the reserves I required. They accelerated toward the distant sun, heading to survey the system and secure footholds.

The ark itself remained behind for now, it would recharge for another jump back to my home system, where it would load Nullite before returning to civilised space.

Meanwhile, I set my industry in motion. I would build the infrastructure to fabricate the components I needed and scale up production for a larger ship, something capable of housing multiple fleets and sustaining long-range operations.

It is time to begin my expansion.

———

Watching those abominations crawl from his ship turned his stomach. That vessel had been his family's lifeblood for decades, they had bled for the units to buy and refurbish her from the Triumvirate mothball fleet. Now she served a thing from the void, and with her went his pride and every small victory he had ever owned.

He told himself he would rather have died the day he fired on Aegirarch. Regret was a hot, bitter thing in his chest, but it did nothing to change the present. He was trapped, a pawn in an abyssal game that reached farther than any clan politicking.

Around him, the crew who remained sane looked to the stars and found no way to exit this nightmare.