Mercenary Monarch: A Sundered Divinity Novel (Mercenary Mage Book 3) by S.R. Fauth

Author:S.R. Fauth [Fauth, S.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

ROOK TAKES KING’S PAWN

Hive World Omicron

Lexi

Lexi was frustrated.

She did not often feel emotions outside of longing for Reeve, or love for her vast family, but the task that Reeve had left her with prior to him leaving to cross the galaxy in search for information was… vexing. She had spread her Hive Queens in a chain across slightly more than a quarter of the known regions of space to form a detection net far vaster than anything that could be constructed.

And she had found two very concerning threats, one potential threat, and received some very bad… and sad news.

Concentrating on her screen, she dismissed the sad report that Frag and his flotilla had been annihilated in a surprise attack by an enemy. She had no idea who they were, or why they attacked so ferociously… but Frag and the enemy world had obliterated one another in a rain of nuclear and plasma fire. Even more concerning, it more than likely fed into her first major concern.

That concern was that, against all odds in the vastness of the cosmos, she had located where the Orkin had gone. They, their fleets, and all the populace from their many tribal worlds had converged on a single O Class star on the periphery of known space. The number of beings located in this system was… simply staggering.

They were building ships. Thousands and thousands of ships. but the Hive Mind couldn’t be sure what the purpose of them would be. It looked like a flotilla of self-sustaining World ships. Either that, or a fleet of vessels that would dwarf any Nano-naught in size.

So, she had posted some long-range scouts to observe and moved to the more pressing threat that was developing. Another Hive Mind. Possibly another of her kind, bit Lexi wasn’t sure as of yet. They seemed very similar, if less evolved, than her Gharm and Terrataxian children were. However, they were far, far more numerous and had seeded hundreds if not thousands of worlds, both bare and inhabited, with their spores, allowing them to create drones in numbers that were not in any way sustainable.

Lexi was of the opinion they needed to be eliminated immediately. However, she remembered her own first interactions with Reeve. She could not condone the death of trillions of beings when they could just be reacting to a perceived existential threat. Communication had to be attempted. Unfortunately, Reeve was the only telepathic being capable of bridging such a gap with little to no information.

And he wasn’t here.

That left her, Thirsk, and Alice to devise a possible solution. And that brought the powerful Hive Mind to her third, and potentially lethal, problem.

Alice had been hiding things. From Reeve. From the Council. From them all.

The AI had vast shipyards built near the undead worlds of Acropolis, near the rift that Duces the Lich and his brethren had come through. An apparent region of horrors and death. A region full of things that could corrupt anything living. But that had no way of stopping a determinedly homicidal AI that had built an immense fleet of Nano-naughts.

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