The Lost Planet (Lost Starship Series Book 6)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Despite that, he was a mere technical assistant to a presumptuous ass of a Reigning Supreme.

  With one of his eyestalks, Thrax glanced back at the bloated queen of the Left Swing Arm.

  The Reigning Supreme—AX-29—had a rotund exoskeleton twice Thrax’s bulk, but with tiny mandibles. Servers first chewed her food, squirting the mash into her orifice. The great she had spindly appendages under her main bulk. Once, in her first youth, she might have maneuvered with those appendages. Since then, her bulk had become too much for self-mobility.

  The queen was mainly mind. The Hive Masters were much like her. Thrax believed AX-29 secretly wished she could have joined a Central Nest as an advisor to the Imperial Family. He was sure it had upset her self-worth being in a location that could undergo enemy fire.

  The Swarm creatures of the Imperium were different from Thrax and his companions. The Builder had tried to warn Thrax that he and his companions had been heavily modified from normal Swarm. To his present sorrow, Thrax had not believed the alien Builder.

  Thinking about that, Thrax clicked his pincers in agitation.

  All movement on the spongy hive deck ceased.

  “What is that you are doing?” the massive AX-29 demanded.

  “Supreme One?” asked Thrax.

  “”Answer immediately, Technical Assistant, or I shall have the soldiers shred and space your remains.”

  “I…” Thrax thought fast. He was unused to toadying to anyone. It had not been like this on the Dyson sphere. There, all Swarm had been warriors.

  “Our present fleet maneuver could prove risky to you, Supreme One,” Thrax finally said. “The thought of that troubles me.”

  “You dare to spout a subjective opinion regarding my latest orders?” AX-29 demanded.

  “Oh, no, Supreme One,” Thrax said. “I am considering the enemy warships. They have an irritating—”

  “Silence!” AX-29 ordered. “When I desire your third-rate opinion, I shall instruct you to speak. When I wish to hear your outsized pincers clack, I will demand that you perform for me. Otherwise, your task is to remain unnoticed while the soldiers of the Fleet follow my orders with rigid precision.”

  “Yes, Supreme One,” Thrax forced himself to say.

  “Scuttle away,” she said. “Your pheromones are revolting and have upset my digestion.”

  “O Queen, if I could point out—”

  “Soldiers,” she said. “Where are my soldiers?”

  With all his resolve, Thrax kept from clacking his pincers a second time. He began scuttling backward out of her line-of-sight.

  Thrax was different from regular Swarm. They were highly specialized. Those like the Reigning Supreme had bloated carcasses, were often immobile but of great intellect. That seemed to have made each of them overly eccentric. The fighters, the soldiers, had little to no brainpower but amazingly effectively bodies. Thrax and his companions had both brainpower and fighting bodies. It made the regular Swarm intellects believe them to be louts or mechanically inclined drones.

  Was this to be his lot for the remainder of his existence? He would be a lowly mechanic, fixing broken machines?

  Thrax could not envision such a thing with easy acceptance. Yet, he knew it would prove unwise to attempt a change in the social order. And that was the only way he could gain the rank he so richly deserved while remaining an Imperial Swarm subject.

  He continued to scuttle backward until he reached a sensing station. With his eyestalks, Thrax observed the hive command deck in the distance. No one watched him. Disobedience was nearly impossible among the Swarm. Only queens bickered and backstabbed each other as they vied for power. But the queens did that in a stylized, Swarm-approved manner.

  That meant he might maneuver without anyone suspecting he could. That was an interesting possibility.

  Thrax began to adjust the sensor unit until he brought the present situation up on his screen.

  The Left Swing Arm was closer to the Chitin System star than the last time Thrax had looked. The system held a Golden Nexus inside a vast Chitin globular of spaceships. According to information Thrax had uncovered from a data file, humans had recently been to the star system and to the Golden Nexus. Those humans had made what could only be a hyper-spatial tube.

  Thrax wondered if the hateful Captain Maddox had been among the humans. He wanted to snip that man into bloody pieces. Thrax had often passed his idle hours by envisioning devouring the bloody chunks, maybe even as the captain lived. The screams as he ate the human alive would add savor to the meal.

  In the darkness of space, Thrax observed the Swing Arm’s saucer-ships’ heavy lasers. They collectively beamed at a lone Chitin war-vessel, a dense ball of metal.

  It was a simple but ingenious plan. The Swarm needed the Golden Nexus. The Chitin globular protected it and had proven stubborn for countless decades. The Chitins sent war-vessels from many nearby star systems to the Golden Nexus. The journey took decades, but the stream of Chitin ships had long ago become continuous. That meant the Chitins received constant reinforcements to the central globular.

  How, then, could the Swarm quickly bring enough mass to beat down the Chitin defenders? Thrax’s gift of star-drive motivated saucer-ships provided the answer.

  The Left Swing Arm had used the star drive to appear two light-years behind the Chitin star. The Left Swing Arm had attacked a Chitin reinforcement stream, coming up from behind a column of enemy war-vessels. In this way, a mass of united Swarm ships struck a few Chitin vessels at a time, annihilating them at almost no cost to the Left Swing Arm.

  Once the first line of Chitin reinforcements had been eliminated, the Left Swing Arm started on the next.

  Thrax adjusted the sensor screen. This was the last line of Chitin reinforcements. That meant the great globular of Chitin vessels protecting the Golden Nexus would soon run dry of reinforcements for the next few years.

  The main Swarm battlefleet had been engaged in a constant war of attrition with Chitins the entire time. The Swarm side continued to receive their reinforcements and thus remained at a constantly high number.

  The conclusion was obvious. In a short time, the Chitins would be unable to replenish their lost ships. The Swarm would finally win the war of attrition. They would break the Chitin globular that surrounded the Golden Nexus near the star.

  Once the Swarm achieved victory, Thrax and his cleverest aides would enter the Golden Nexus. Then, he would employ his intellect. He would create a hyper-spatial tube. He would aim the tube at the heart of the Human Empire.

  The Imperial Family had decided. The Brilliantly Glorious Raid Fleet would destroy Earth, destroying the social unity of the humans and possibly annihilating the majority of the human starships. Afterward, the Swarm would begin colonizing that sector of the galaxy, collecting the advanced technology as it grew. The bulk of advanced technology would be a great addition to the Swarm Imperium.

  It was a flawless plan. Despite their advanced technology, the humans could do nothing to defeat it. There were simply too many Swarm warships. Thrax had already estimated that the Raid Fleet would have a 100-to-1 advantage over the humans, more than sufficient for total victory.

  Thrax clicked his pincers as he studied the latest exploding Chitin vessel. He clicked his pincers extra loud because he was tired of being treated so poorly. He had brought the Imperium the tools for grand and far-flung conquests. They should have given him honor and glory, not turned him into a mere mechanic.

  He was going to have to decide soon. He was Thrax. He was the greatest Swarm creature in existence. How could he prove that to everyone? That was the nagging question. He had bested the Builder. He would beat the Reigning Supreme as well and still conquer Human Space.

  How, though, could he do all that and remain alive? He needed a plan, one that would not fail.

  The End

  To the Reader: Thanks! I hope you’ve enjoyed The Lost Planet. If you liked the book and would like to see the series continue, please put u
p some stars and a review. Let new readers know what’s in store for them.

  —Vaughn Heppner