Location: Developing primary hatchery

Whilst the hatchery was still developing Niaysa continued to produce eggs. Granted this wasn’t a continuous process as she felt limited in her output. The process although not particularly difficult or painful is still a novel experience to her. The feeling of an egg being produced and rapidly developing inside of your ovipositor before birthing it into the world would certainly be unique even if your body was designed to do so.

Niaysa was able to increase the number of eggs she developed at once one at a time, after a few repetitions of this she found out her limit was four simultaneously. However, after doing this she felt very fatigued and had to rest. She felt that if she was full strength then she would be able to lay four eggs twice over a period of ten minutes, requiring more than an hour to muster her strength back up, leaving her with a bit of strength left over that she decided she would always save for emergencies.

“My Queen you should be careful with you body. Whilst your devotion to the expansion of the Swarm is admirable I as a hatchery am capable of producing larvae as well, and with the current limit of resources there is no need to sap from your own strength.” A voice echoes through the link between Niaysa and the hatchery that ‘spoke’.

“This is true my Queen, when you felt fatigued there was a slight drop in your psionic control. This is to be expected, but it is not ideal. Whilst I as an overlord may be able to control lesser zerg strains, it is best if you assist me in this action as the newly hatched zerglings are more demanding than obedient drones.” A different voice spoke though the link. This was capable as the thoughts of the zerg within her brood would passively share thoughts and if focused by more capable zerg strains it somewhat reproduces the effect of human speech, although is more inline with the protoss use of the khala.

“Speaking of zerglings, I did feel a new type of link.” Mentioned Niaysa. This was due to when the hatchery finished developing and Niaysa first felt the link for the first time it felt significantly different. She immediately found why that was due to the hatcheries mental capabilities that shocked her when she heard a voice other than her own for the first time since being in her current form. After her first overlord was produced this cemented the idea as the feeling, she got was slightly different again from the feeling of both the drones and the hatchery. The overlords felt much more prominent than the other two, this was due to its capability of commanding small groups of lesser strains.

As Niaysa moved outside from the internal chambers and tunnels within and under the hatchery to the outside world she thought about the events that had happened during the night. The hatchery had just finished developing thus providing a more stable form of storage of zerg strains. These zerg strains genetic sequences were stored within a specialised part of Niaysa’s brain. However, it is very difficult to consciously retrieve this information and practice would be required to unlock more without support. This is where the hatchery came in, due to being specialised in production of more zerg organisms it was able to help Niaysa in unlocking overlords as well as zerglings, but these required the development of a building called a spawning pool. The hatchery was also capable of commanding the surroundings drone which helped lighten the mental load that Niaysa experienced.

The first larva that the hatchery birthed was used to produce an overlord. Suddenly one of the new drones, of the around thirty that she had birthed in the last few hours, felt extreme pain as its screeching cry echoed through the clearing and around the mental link. This encroachment to her domain severely infuriated her. She identified the attacker as a lone humanoid.

“What are you?” she questioned it directly into its mind for no response but a feeling of terror from the being. The clouds that had been blocking the moon were no longer in the way revealing the lone humanoid to not be the typical terran she was used to. No this one was much shorter with a green skin pigment and had horrible disfiguration to its face, or perhaps it was meant to look that way? Niaysa was not sure, but she was sure that this thing was going to suffer for harming her brood especially for harming her personal spawn.

The stubby green humanoid let go of the weapon it had used to impale her drone letting out a terrified scream as it run towards the edge of the clearing hoping to escape from whatever it just pissed off. But alas it was not so lucky as a two-foot-long acidic spine pierced its heart as it was sent flying forwards from the ferocity of the attack pining it to a tree at the clearings edge.

Niaysa walked towards the green humanoid as it convolsed as acid was transferred though its body in a matter of seconds as its pitiful heart continued to pump blood on for it to pour out from around the impact site of the spine. The force of the spine had cracked the surrounding dry skin of the humanoid causing the blood to flow from the very unique looking wound. (Think what extremely dry soil looks like all cracked, if you don’t know what I mean just search ‘extremely dry soil’)

She felt her anger dissipate only to flare up again as looking at the weapon left behind in the drone it was clear that it only took one, by either purpose or sheer luck, accurate stab from an obviously hand-crafted weapon to damage her drones. Luckily for her though the drone survived and with the regenerative abilities of zerg and a transfusion from her it recovered. The transfusion just happened when she thought about how to heal the drone, but it took away the spare energy she had in reserve. She felt very thankful to the previous her that decided to have the reserve.

Thinking about how weak the carapace of her brood were she decided that gathering minerals needed to reinforce them needed to happen now and would need to start right away and she couldn’t wait to find a surface level deposit. “Hatchery please gather some of the drones and begin mining tunnels around the surrounding area that branch out from under the central room of the hatchery. We are in desperate need of minerals so if any are found please inform me immediately.” Ordered Niaysa though the link.

“My queen should I grow into these tunnels and make them of a similar structure to my own tunnels, I could even order the drones to create chambers that could be used for storage or even structures if they are large enough.” Questioned the hatchery.

“Since I don’t want to get caught off guard again like this, please prepare a large chamber to be used as a spawning pool so that zerglings can be produced for defence and eventually offense as if that green humanoid is anything like a terran then there will surely be more of them scurrying about.” Said Niaysa in an annoyed tone.

“It will be done my queen.” Replied the hatchery…

Biggest chapter yet! And the hunger for minerals grows!