The hivemind is conquering for me?

Aeletha was in the middle of a meeting discussing the current state of the coalition. After successfully warding off the attacks that followed Bastion, the coalition’s attention was brought back east, to the barbarians who had annexed a number of planets.

All of a sudden, Aeletha felt one of many communication crystals she had on her begin to chime and she knew which one it was immediately. ”I need the room.” She spoke softly, yet her words were like a grenade for those present as they left hastily.

Aeletha then proceeded to take the crystal out from her robes and frowned as she looked down at it. She was not receiving any visions, but her foresight was warning her to be careful.

”Speak.” She said like a decree as she answered causing the other end to reply. ”My Seer? Is that you?” A modulated voice was heard from the other side. After a short amount of time with no response, the voice asked again. ”My Seer is that you?”

The silence was shorter this time until Aeletha responded. ”A valiant attempt, whoever you are.” She then cut off the communication and destroyed the crystal with her mind and sighed. ’Useless Spartari informants. Is there only one competent human among that entire species?’ She thought to herself before looking to the side if the room. ”Bring them back in Rekosh, I doubt my mood can get any worse now...”

...

”Hmm, tedious Psionic power. All that work for nothing.” Jocasta muttered as she ceased her authority of the dead body in front of her, the once techno-mechanic now finally given her release long after she expired.

To her right, King Sigismund shuddered before saying . ”For all I have seen, your techno-necromancy still freaks me out.”

Jocasta rolled her eyes, something only she could do in front of the king and live, and manually created a sigh in her modulator. ”For the last time, it’s not ’necromancy’, I am simply using the power from her Augmentations to send bioelectric pulses through her body in place of what her body passively did for her when she was alive. If you want to call it any crude label, reanimation is the least insulting.”

Sigismund said nothing in response, he was simply glad his right hand didn’t start going off on a tangent about every microcosm of her little trick and asked before Jocasta changed her mind.

”So, what’s your theory behind this? Why send such a well dug in leak into our meeting? I doubt we ever would have found out she was a leak if you didn’t spot her recording.”

Jocasta had already been doing the calculations so she replied. ”The same thing we want. Information on Apollo Lambdason.” Sigismund frowned at Jocasta in a way that said ’Are you serious?’ But he let the woman speak.

”Now let’s not over value the young and attractive Archon, he is simply a potential candidate for you to groom, a blank slate. A blank slate that just so happens to be powerful. The Seer has probably gone through all her other means of information gathering to find out why our Archon just turned up out of nowhere to save the day and our little traitor here was probably her last resort after somehow finding out what the meeting was about.”

Sigismund rubbed his forehead as he felt a headache coming on. Too many spikes in his brain lately would do that after all. He paused for a moment before smiling a his friend. ”You know, I don’t think you needed to add the part about our little friend being attractive Jocasta... So is this thing a dead end now?”

”We are in the middle of an investigation my king. In an investigation details matter, no matter how quaint after all.” She winked playfully before kicking the corpse of the tecno-mechanic. ”Also yes, everything I could extact from her I did so.”

Sigismund nodded hearing that and got up. As he began walking away he said. ”Good, now jettison that thing out into space, my ship is no place for traitors, even dead ones.”

...

For the sake of fuel conservation, it took our FTL travel a week to arrive at the now familiar asteroid military checkpoint. Still, this ship was still much faster than the ship I was originally brought here in, so I wasn’t complaining.

After we were given clearance to land, I began the landing sequence, and by landing sequence, I meant flying low enough until the autopilot detected terrain below and did it itself.

Once we were safely on the ground, I patted the ships wall and said. ”Good ship.” Ronnie had already convinced me that technology was somewhat ’alive’ so the tech I did like, I tried to give praise. The ship being the only thing so far.

After Keyla and I put on some clothes and Orchid melded into something pretty, we made our way out of the ship, where as per the last every time, a group of guards were waiting for us.

I recognised the deputy and after telling crazy one and crazy two to wait behind, I walked ahead. ”Greetings Deputy, a thousand victories to you.” I said, my speech having levelled up a few times, now understanding formal procedure.

”A thousand victories Archon Apollo. Forgive my forwardness, but if you are here for Centurion Hailey, she has finished her service here and has moved on.”

”Oh? Is that so? That’s a shame, I would have liked to see her.” I replied.

As I looked around a moment, the deputy felt I was depressed by my ’squeeze’ not being here and informed me.

”Yeah. It was about six days ago. Her and her house guard almost had an altercation with the new Centurion, the current Centurion has been in a bad mood since. However, that’s not your concern. If you wish to find Hailey, she should be receiving some commendations for her service for the next couple of days on Leondis. For as scary as she was, she was beyond a competent Centurion.”

The deputies eyes suddenly went wide as he looked up at and apologised for speaking out of term.

I assumed he said that because I was Hailey friend so I just shrugged my shoulder and said OK. After the deputy finally stopped his spout about how much of an amazing Centurion Hailey was, I finally got to my point.

”So hey, our ship is almost out of fuel, its the reason we landed here In the first place, can you hook us up?” The deputy seemed to have a baffled look on his face, but he recovered quickly and replied.

”Um, yes my Archon, but considering the fact you are wishing to refuel from military stockpile, you will have to pay a premium, is that ok?”

I then took an ingot of platinum from my jacket pocket that the deputy had been assuming was just a gun and paced it into his hand.

”I don’t have any credit chips with me, but that should cover expenditure correct?” I then noticed a confused look on the deputies face causing me to go. ”Oh sorry, I’ve been mining in the outer rim, that’s platinum.”

The deputies eyes went wide and on instinct held his arms out away from his body, keeping the expensive metal away from his body in case he damages it. ”Sir, I. This more than covers the expenses of course, but since the ingot isn’t marked, I’m going to have to take this to the quarter master to get it tested. I hope you understand? Afterwards, we will give you a credit chip with the current exchange rate left over after your expense and a certificate of authenticity stating that your metal was authentic... If it of course, no offence my Archon.”

”Oh, none taken. Though could you perhaps get me a certificate for the rest of my goods aswell? I will donate that ingot to the checkpoint, legally of course, if you help.” I asked, causing the deputy to smile jubilantly.

”Oh, of course my Archon, we would be delighted to aid you. How much platinum are you talking about though?”

...

”By Spartari’s nutsack!” The deputy couldn’t help but say as he witnessed stacks and stacks of ingots inside of the ship. The man began sweating nervously. The amount of money on this ship actually frightened him. There was so much platinum that the idea of greed flew out the window. Someone who could just casually fly around with this much wealth without having a private army protecting it was either a fool who doesnt understand the concept of money, an overwhelmingly powerful person or someone who is so rich that this amount of wealth still meant little to them.

The deputy of course didn’t think the first option, which left the latter two terrifying options. After clearing his throat, he said.

”My Archon, it might take a while to validate all of your goods. Do we have permission to come and go as we please whilst we do so? You can make full use of our amenities here of course while you wait, naturally.”

”Yes, of course. Take your time.” I said patting the man on the shoulder before hastily walking away with a smile on my face.

Full amenities meant food. I loved my hive, but I was getting tired of bland meat sticks.