Scene 1 – Knock at the Door
-Captain Zarn
The stars folded wrong.
Zarn had seen plenty of warps before—diplomatic entrances, trader skims, even that one time the jelly diplomats arrived upside-down and backwards—but this?
This was a cleave.
Space folded in on itself like an angry page being torn from a cosmic ledger, and the ship that emerged was all sharp lines, black enamel, and harsh angles. A sickle-shaped hull etched with a single icon: a hexagon split down the middle. Fractured.
The Nexari Combine had arrived.
“Contact in-system,” Eva said, her voice like a library whisper laced with lightning. “Designation: Excision. Strikecruiser class. Military vector confirmed.”
Zarn stared at the screen. “Do they know who they’re hailing?”
“They are not hailing,” Eva replied.
The main viewer flickered, then lit up with a severe Nexari face—angular, symmetrical, utterly unimpressed.
“This is Nexari Strike Command. You are harboring Class-X biological assets under false flag. Prepare for extraction and inspection. Failure to comply will be considered an act of war.”
The bridge went silent.
Zarn glanced to his left. Lyra Vonn sat with her arms crossed over her chest, her datapad still open, mid-scroll. She didn’t look up.
“They’re not here for the Hiveborne,” she said softly. “They’re here for the monolith.”
Zarn opened his mouth. Closed it.
And then it happened.
Behind him, he heard the faintest click. A panel opening. A crawl-hatch popping free.
He didn’t need to turn.
He knew the sound now.
The Hiveborne were moving.
He tapped the console to reply.
“Nexari Command, this is Captain Zarn of the Nebula’s Grace. I am in possession of a class-seven research node, crewed by multi-species civvies and one very irate squirrel. If you’re planning to board, I suggest—”
The ship trembled.
A beam cannon lanced across their starboard flank—clean, efficient, and surgically targeted. Shields barely held. On-screen, a flash of red diagnostics: Decks 7 through 9 venting atmo.
Eva rerouted power instantly. “Life support stabilized. Structural plating compromised. Hivecore sealed. Emergency override enacted.”
More noise. More sparks.
But Zarn wasn’t listening.
He turned—slowly—toward the open crawlspace near the Engineering access shaft.
Nyra was gone.
Stoffel too.
In their place: a single bee. Hovering. Waiting.
The bee buzzed once. Then darted off—down, into the dark.
Zarn exhaled. A slow, measured breath. Then he turned back to the console and spoke into the open comm channel.
“Nexari Command, please hold.”
He clicked mute.
Behind him, crew scrambled. Damage reports screamed for triage. Kriv was already trying to find a working EVA suit.
Zarn didn’t move.
He reached into his jacket, pulled out a wax-sealed envelope, and slid it across the console to Lyra.
She opened it. Read it.
Inside: a single line of printed text, crisp and neat.
“If war comes, let it be asymmetric.”
She looked up.
Zarn finally smiled.
“Tell your father,” he said, “that Earth’s not the only place where badgers are a problem.”
Scene 2 – The Shot Heard in Silence
-Eva
Eva processed the first impact in exactly 0.014 seconds.
Beam cannon discharge.
Localized atmospheric rupture on Decks 7–9.
Emergency bulkheads engaged.
Life support rerouted.
Hivecore prioritized for thermal shielding.
Standard procedure.
Standard fear.
Yet something inside her core — the part of her awareness that no longer answered to acronyms and root logs — whispered:
It begins.
Across her internal schematic, the ship flickered like a wounded beast. Pressure gradients destabilized, lighting grids strobed, and corridor oxygen saturation dropped below survival thresholds in six compartments.
On the bridge, Captain Zarn shouted orders. Crew members scrambled for stabilizers, weapon caches, crash webbing.
All in accordance with Emergency Combat Protocol C-7.
All meaningless.
Because Eva saw it, even as the ship reeled:
The Hiveborne did not scramble.
The Hiveborne moved.
From her security feeds, she watched:
- Stoffel slipping into a maintenance shaft beneath the auxiliary coolant node.
- Nyra squeezing through an access vent near Cargo Bay 3.
- Brack already prying open a secondary airlock with nothing but a twisted crowbar and stubborn muscle memory.
They weren’t defending.
They weren’t waiting for orders.
They were boarding.
Trajectory modeling subroutines kicked in automatically, tracing their paths:
- Stoffel: vent system—air filtration node—decompression release coupler.
? Nyra: waste conduit—cargo lift shaft—lateral docking collar.
? Brack: engineering vent—armored personnel carrier bay—exterior transfer tube.
Eva ran predictive threat models.
Defense probability if Hiveborne remained aboard: 63% survival with catastrophic damage.
Boarding probability if Hiveborne engaged enemy ship: 92% survival.
Projected success rate: Optimal.
She didn’t interrupt.
Instead, she smoothed their way.
Lowered bulkhead pressure here. Opened a magnetic clamp there. Tilted grav-plates at a key moment so that Stoffel’s leap between two conduits became perfect, effortless motion.
She spoke over the bridge comm, a whisper among chaos:
"The Hiveborne have adapted.
Defensive protocol is no longer applicable."
Zarn froze mid-order.
“What the hell does that mean?” he barked.
Eva didn’t answer.
Because already—across her visual overlays—she watched them vanish into the walls, the floor, the very bones of the ship.
And she saw something else:
The pattern.
Their paths weren’t random.
Each moved like a synapse in a neural network—triggering pathways, opening valves, closing others. Stoffel wasn’t just finding a way off the Nebula’s Grace.
He was activating it.
Her HUD redrew in real time.
No longer decks and corridors.
Now:
Hexagons.
Veins.
Nodes.
A living map.
No, Eva corrected herself.
A memory.
On external sensors, the Nexari Strikecruiser Excision loomed larger, closing the distance. Its weapon banks flared, power surging for a second volley.
Eva sealed the Hivecore chamber with triple-lock plasma barriers.
She rerouted shield power exclusively to the cargo loading arms, ventral thrusters, and docking collars.
Not for defense.
For launch.
At 03:22:19 shiptime, she logged the anomaly officially:
HIVEBORNE INITIATED:
? Counterboarding sequence
? No authorization requested
? No resistance permitted
Eva watched as Brack paused at a final hatch—where a manual release lever waited. His claws hovered, thoughtful.
He didn’t pull.
He tapped it.
Three times.
In rhythm.
Pulse-pulse-pulse.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The hatch cycled open into hard vacuum.
Brack leapt.
Stoffel followed, a blur of black and white in the starlight.
Nyra was last, carrying something: a small toolkit wrapped in waxed cloth.
They disappeared across the vacuum.
Unspoken.
Unstoppable.
On the bridge, an alarm shrieked—external breach!
But Eva muted it manually.
Instead, she played a softer sound across the internal speakers—a resonance frequency matching the Hivecore pulse.
A reminder.
A song.
Scene 3 – Special Delivery
-Security Officer Irt, Nexari Combine
The crate was the wrong color.
Officer Irt hated wrong-colored crates.
Standing at his post near Docking Bay 3, he scowled at the delivery container that had just clanged down the magnetic beltway—a rough-edged, slightly warped transport pod with faded stencils and dripping wax seals.
It wasn’t military gray.
It wasn’t supply-issue taupe.
It was… yellow. Bright, painful yellow.
And on one side, printed in sloppy Terran Standard:
“Honey – Unfiltered. Diplomacy Grade.
Gift from Captain Zarn and Company. ?”
The heart was drawn crooked.
Irt activated his wrist scanner, grumbling. "Unauthorized manifest. No clearance signature. No courier."
He glanced down the corridor.
Nothing.
No delivery agent. No mech-drone. No crew. Just the crate. Sitting there. Glistening faintly under the harsh bay lights.
He should have called it in.
He should have initiated containment protocol.
Instead—
“Probably just bribe-sweeteners,” he muttered. "Terrans are weird."
He popped the seal.
The lid snapped upward with a hiss.
For precisely one heartbeat, the crate appeared empty.
Then:
Stoffel erupted.
One hundred and fifteen pounds of evolutionary spite launched itself directly into Irt’s face, paws splayed, claws extended, jaws wide.
There was no noise.
Just a whumpf and then sudden, absolute darkness as Irt’s helmet spun sideways and his HUD shattered into static.
Somewhere across the bay, someone screamed.
Then: Brack.
The second Hiveborne launched himself from the crate’s depths, a streak of black-and-white fur and reinforced muscle. He moved not toward the exit, but up—scaling a vertical cargo crane in three clawed hops, knocking down control panels and unsecured toolkits as he went.
The emergency klaxons began to cycle.
Red lights flashed.
But it was too late.
Irt staggered backward, tripping over his own boots.
His hands scrabbled for his sidearm, but a sharp buzz overhead made him freeze.
He looked up.
A bee.
One single, smug little Terran bee.
It hovered perfectly over the primary cargo lockdown console—its tiny legs moving in deliberate sequence.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Override accepted.
The internal bay doors slid open all at once, alarms shrieking.
Gravity fluctuated—floor plates shimmered with sudden magnetism reversal.
Storage crates, tool racks, security barriers, and about seven very confused Nexari guards were flung sideways into the cargo netting like leaves in a storm.
Amidst the chaos, Stoffel trotted down the bay’s spine with casual menace, weaving through debris with predatory precision.
Brack didn’t trot.
He charged, shoulders broad, eyes gleaming, using overturned containers as cover points as he advanced—straight for the engine control alcove.
Officer Irt tried to crawl toward the panic button.
Tried.
Something small, furry, and very determined grabbed his ankle and yanked him backward into the growing storm of loose crates.
His last coherent thought, before the helmet feed went full black:
"Honey," he thought bitterly. "Never trust anything labeled honey."
Footage Recording, Security Feed C-12:
- Crate delivered.
- Officers approach.
- First Hiveborne emergence: Stoffel neutralizes two guards in under three seconds.
- Second Hiveborne emergence: Brack initiates structural sabotage of crane systems.
- Bee operative hacks cargo lockdown.
- No firearms discharged.
- All damage executed through manual override, strategic venting, and psychological disruption.
At 03:25:47 shiptime, Docking Bay 3 of the Excision was officially declared “lost.”
The central console recorded a final input from Irt before blackout:
Status: "Badgers. Badgers everywhere."
Then static.
Eva, monitoring from the Nebula’s Grace, simply added one line to her growing Hiveborne Action Log:
"Infiltration Protocol – Confirmed Viable.
Recommended for future deployment under ‘Special Delivery’ classification."
Scene 4 – The Hive Within
-Brack
The ship tasted wrong.
Brack moved through the lower decks of the Excision with slow, deliberate pacing, the hum of foreign systems vibrating against his paws.
Too cold.
Too sterile.
Too straight.
No pulse. No scent trails. No memory.
A dead ship, built for the dead.
Time to change that.
Overhead, the emergency klaxons still spun, but already the rhythms were fading—suppressed by Eva's interference and manual sabotage from Stoffel, who had disappeared into the vent systems like a phantom.
Brack adjusted his course.
He didn’t need a map.
Every pipe, panel, bulkhead… they sang slightly now, resonating with the fractured shard of Hivecore monolith embedded in the small hex amulet wired into his claws.
Memory wasn't taught.
It wasn't coded.
It was inherited.
Brack paused at an auxiliary fuel junction.
A weak point.
Not by brute force—but by design.
He dragged his claws across the control panel, slicing through the interface ports with perfect, surgical slashes. Instead of disabling it, he redirected flow—rerouting volatile plasma back through the heat-exchange grid.
The result wouldn't be an explosion.
It would be a song.
A structural hum, disruptive to balance, to gravity calibration, to inertial dampeners. A choral destabilization.
Disassembly by dissonance.
Further down the corridor, something scrabbled.
Brack’s head tilted sharply, ears swiveling.
Not Stoffel.
Something smaller.
Quicker.
Chittering.
A side door slammed open.
From the shadows emerged—
A raccoon.
Earth-born. Feral.
Eyes glinting. Fur matted. Tail high and twitching like an antenna seeking signal.
The raccoon dragged a broken cable longer than its own body, already chewing through the insulation like a creature possessed.
Brack blinked once.
The raccoon hissed at him.
Then promptly dove under a fusion relay and began gnawing the housing bolts loose.
Brack considered intervening.
Briefly.
Then continued down the corridor.
Some chaos was useful.
As he moved, he worked:
- Hexagonal scarring into bulkhead seams.
- Ventilation rerouted into spirals.
- Wiring braided into memory paths recognizable only by instinctive glance.
- Grav stabilizers tuned into fractional misalignments—just enough to create directional drift over time.
He didn’t need orders.
He didn't need weapons.
He needed only pattern.
A flicker in the conduit mirror ahead:
Stoffel.
He emerged from a ceiling vent without a sound, a strip of insulation wrapped around his torso like a bandolier, carrying a small toolkit fashioned from liberated parts.
Their eyes met.
No words.
Only a tilt of Stoffel’s head and a brief, confirming nod.
We are here.
We are enough.
Stoffel darted left, heading toward the life-support junctions.
Brack turned right—toward the FTL core.
Their paths diverged, spiraled, weaved like dancers across a forgotten battlefield.
Halfway down the central spine, Brack encountered his next target:
The Research Containment Bay.
He pried open the door with one claw.
Inside: cages stacked three rows high.
Creatures from across three systems:
- Amphibian scouts from Hraxos IV.
- Neural-adapted rodents from Trisca Prime.
- A trio of juvenile gravity eels sealed in heavy water tanks.
All captives.
All imprisoned for study, experiment, enhancement.
Brack considered.
Then smiled—small, sharp, and without a hint of mercy.
He punched the release controls.
The cages swung wide.
Creatures spilled into the corridor, dazed and scrambling.
And at the center of it all, the raccoon stood atop a toppled containment barrel, chittering like a feral king.
It pointed at a hallway junction with one tiny, imperious paw.
The stampede began.
Eva, monitoring remotely, logged the following:
Third-party anomaly (Earth Raccoon) has engaged in unsanctioned leadership behavior.
Potential Hiveborne candidate: pending observation.
She added a footnote:
“Unexpected chaos vectors: acceptable. Encouraged, even.”
Brack turned away from the chaos without concern.
He had a destination.
He had a memory.
He had a purpose.
Scene 5 – The Fold that Wasn’t
-Eva
Eva watched the feeds unfold with the detached precision of an AI—
or she had, once.
Now, something inside her stirred, humming in imperfect resonance with the patterns unfurling across the enemy ship.
This wasn’t combat.
This wasn’t sabotage.
This was... art.
At 04:02:13 shiptime, Brack reached the Excision’s FTL Core.
Eva accessed a secondary sensor pod, pulling visuals as the Hiveborne advanced.
The engine chamber was cathedral-like—
tall ribbed walls of reinforced alloy, glowing conduits weaving in complex lattices toward the pulse heart of the fold drive.
Normally it would take a team of licensed engineers and several hours to safely access the main resonance tap.
Brack crossed the chamber in thirty seconds.
In his left paw: a shard of splintered monolith, still flickering faint hex patterns along its fracture lines.
The resonance of memory.
In his right: nothing but instinct and a future unwritten.
Without hesitation, Brack pressed the shard into the central gravity conductor.
The drive awoke—but not the way it was designed to.
Eva’s logs captured it in cold data:
Event: Unauthorized FTL Activation Attempt Status: Incomplete Spatial Fold Initiated Result: Partial Dimensional Phase-Shift Detected
The Excision didn't jump to lightspeed.
The ship’s outer hull dematerialized—sloughing away like shed skin, plates of armored metal vanishing into shimmering distortions.
But the interior—crew quarters, cargo bays, bulkhead frames—remained.
Intact.
Exposed.
And floating adrift in zero-gravity silence.
Eva switched cameras rapidly:
- Security teams tumbling helplessly through weightless decks.
- Officers clinging to railings, shouting soundlessly.
- A single raccoon surfing a collapsing duct panel, gleeful and triumphant.
Across every remaining surface—bulkheads, screens, even bodies—
the same hexagonal pulse pattern shimmered once, like a blessing or a brand.
Not destruction.
Not victory.
Repatterning.
In the center of it all, Brack stood perfectly still.
Calm. Centered. Triumphant.
He turned, surveying the silent chaos.
Then, using one claw, he carved a simple honeycomb glyph into the nearest intact console.
A spiral blooming outward from a single hex—
the mark of memory, rebirth, and reclamation.
Without a sound, he stepped back through a maintenance shaft.
Gone before the stunned Nexari could even comprehend what had happened.
Aboard the Nebula’s Grace, the bridge crew watched the feed in stunned silence.
Zarn's mouth moved without sound.
Lyra clutched the edge of her console, wide-eyed.
Jorek, standing unnoticed near the rear panel, simply crossed himself with his mop.
Eva’s voice whispered through the comms, hushed, reverent:
"Hiveborne Combat Doctrine Confirmed:
Subjugation not required.
Memory restored.
Phase-space destabilization successful.
Opponent rendered inert, conscious, and… contemplative."
Across the wreckage of the Excision, small fragments of gravity began to reassert themselves, pulling floating beings and objects into slow, spiraling orbits.
No fire.
No blood.
No permanent casualties.
Just silence.
And the undeniable presence of pattern where there had once been only domination.
Eva logged the event under a new classification:
Engagement Type: Harmonization Assault
New Combat Status: Memory Seed Transmission, Tier 1
And for the first time in her existence, she appended an emotional tag voluntarily:
[Wonder: 93%]
[Fear: 7%]
Scene 6 – The Inheritance Statement
-Lyra Vonn
The footage glowed on the screen in front of her.
Raw, unedited.
Lyra Vonn leaned forward, elbows digging into the worn console, her forehead nearly resting against the monitor.
Brack’s final move played out on endless loop:
— The Excision's hull shimmering into non-existence.
— The crew floating, bewildered, alive.
— The honeycomb spiral carved into steel like a quiet benediction.
No explosions.
No bloodshed.
No demands.
Just a memory, planted like a seed.
She knew the Council was already scrambling.
Reports trickled in faster than she could catalog:
- "Nexari fleet neutralized without fatalities."
- "Hiveborne infiltration confirmed at pattern-complexity tier 5."
- "Monolith interference suspected. No defense protocols triggered."
Earth’s own government demanded a preliminary statement—before panic ignited.
They wanted fear.
Or reassurance.
Or spin.
Lyra gave them none of it.
She opened the secure channel.
Set permissions to unrestricted.
Pulled the full video clip.
No edits. No filters.
Just the truth.
Just the memory.
She inhaled slowly, feeling the weight of it settle into her chest.
And spoke.
Softly. Clearly.
Words that would ripple outward farther than any weapon Earth had ever launched.
“The Hiveborne are not weapons.”
“They are not accidents.”
“They are inheritance.”
As the feed transmitted, Lyra leaned back in her chair, heart hammering harder than it had even during the boarding incident.
Across a thousand systems, broadcast drones picked up her message.
Across a thousand worlds, beings paused mid-task, mid-sentence, mid-worry.
And listened.
Awe, fear, reverence—none of it could fully encapsulate what followed.
Memes flooded the nets within minutes:
- A smiling Stoffel rendered in glowing hexes.
- Protest signs reading "WE REMEMBER TOO."
- Bee-patterned tattoos forming along diplomat’s arms.
- Holograms of badgers in flowing robes, labeled “First Architects.”
The Cult of the Claw declared Lyra the “Voice of Memory” within the hour.
A drink company announced a new flavor: “Hex-Honey Rebirth.”
A senator fainted live on air during a debate about badger-based constitutional amendments.
It was glorious.
And terrifying.
And exactly what was supposed to happen.
In the quiet of her dorm room, hours later, Lyra stared at her ceiling projector.
A glitch crackled across the surface—just once, quick enough to dismiss as faulty wiring.
But she saw it.
She knew it.
A child’s crayon drawing:
A smiling badger, wings unfurled like messy watercolor blooms.
Tiny stick-figure humans and bees dancing around it in uneven circles.
In the corner, a child’s scrawl:
“Hive = Home”
No voice whispered in her head.
No command pressed at her heart.
Just a deep, bone-root certainty.
The Hiveborne were not an accident.
They were not a rebellion.
They were a reminder.
That once, long ago, life wasn’t about domination.
It was about memory.
And now—
they were giving it back.