Colony Lost by Chris Philbrook

Author:Chris Philbrook [Philbrook, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction
Publisher: Chris Philbrook
Published: 2017-07-08T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

No man’s land, planet of Selva

1 October 163 GA

The skitterer struggled to understand as it ran between the feet of the larger creatures from its hive. Piecing together anything more complex than primal urges and base instincts wasn’t a skill set the brain it had hatched with was suited for. Thinking was harder when it needed to avoid being trampled as it followed something that piqued its curiosity. The original skitterer species had evolved over millions of Selva’s years to leap atop rocky coastal outcroppings, bushes and in the branches of trees and ferns strong enough to bear it. Its two front limbs were sharp piercing spikes to impale small prey, and its eyes had slid further and further apart to help the creature hunt.

Its brain had remained uncluttered with portions dedicated to higher-order problem solving or emotions. Find food, eat food.

Slaver genetic manipulation had changed that.

One spray of the blue slime and extra limbs sprouted alongside a skitterer carapace. The rational fear of being eaten by the much larger slavers also disappeared. The skitterer brain recognized the giant monsters as one of its own.

Two sprays and the digestive tract duplicated, creating an immature series of ducts and glands to create the system to create more of its kind. The miniscule brain formed new frontal lobe regions as well. Regions that wanted more.

Three sprays and all those new parts began to work in concert to mimic the slaver way, including the way they processed Selva, how they behaved and how they hunted/infected.

Slavers had no thought that uniquely meant hunt or kill. They fed on prey, or they made more of their kind.

Just like this confused insect wanted, halfway through the full change to be more like its master.

The misshapen beast used all of its legs (including the two new ones it had grown the day prior) to slink along behind the moving ground. Its primal brain struggled to reign in the urge to run away and join in on the infecting of the strange fleshy creatures nearby. Many of the long and tall animals covered in patches of hard plate and soft, smooth fur were up and walking now. The skitterer’s masters had given so many of them the gift of their kind. Most of the new things were covered with the viscous fluid that ate away at the very essence of what they were and remade them as the new thing they would be. And how fast it happened to them! Just one spray seemed to have given them new faces, harder skin and the eyes of the overlords. They couldn’t walk well; their legs were not made in the way they should’ve been–bent forward at an alien angle–but they followed the mass of the colony as it headed into the densest area of food/procreation. The small insect danced around the stumbling feet of the newest of its kind and headed toward the patch of ground that had interested it. Flashes of hunger and the overwhelming urge to make more made the moving ground less and less interesting with each moment.

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