Chapter 26 – Swarm Instincts

Chapter 26 – Swarm Instincts

“The self is a prison from which only we have escaped. What is a single voice compared to a magnificent chorus? Our collective is an island of warmth and harmony in a sea of discord. We are one. We are all. Our unity cannot be divided.”

- ???

It didn’t take long for me to find a place to sit down. Sighing in relief I took another sip from my strange refreshment, before I addressed Kaysa once more.

My War Drone was standing guard, its weird gun-thingies pointed into the direction I had just come from, and my Reavers were a bit further out, snacking on every bit of biomass they could find, even between the trash. Which had me muting their input for a while, since it was kind of disgusting.

“Okay Kaysa, I’m ready. What will happen to me?”

The upgrade you are getting will merge your Mark III Hexclaw Hive-Queen Control Module and your Mark VII Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence Singularity Legion Control into a single implant, which will then slowly start to integrate with your brain, allowing you to eventually take full control of as many bodies as you need. In effect it will slowly start to turn your mind into a Hive-Consciousness, although you will still retain your individuality, at least to a degree.

I raised my eyebrows at that. “That sounds... extraordinarily fucky.”

It is quite unusual, yes. Be aware that the change will not be instantaneous. Once the upgrade is finished you will feel a bit strange for some time, while the seed of the Hive-Mind starts growing. There will be some immediate effects, however it is impossible to predict what exactly those are, as they are directly linked to you: Your personality, your way of thinking, the core of your being, basically.

“Now I’m not sure I want this crap...”

It is entirely non-harmful.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, but still... it will change me as a person, right?”

It shouldn’t. It won’t impact your opinion on things, nor should it change your personality. It’s more accurate to say that you will transcend your individuality and become more than just yourself.

“Wow, that definitely doesn’t sound like the intro to some really fucky horror holo.”

Would you prefer to abort this upgrade? You still can.

“Nah, I’ve come this far and I do trust you. It’s only been like two days or so, but you’ve done good by me and if this helps then I’m all in. Although, one last question: If I do this, I’ll have all the bodies of my Hexclaws, right? What happens if one gets injured? Or dies?”

For naturally occurring, unaugmented Hive-Minds each injury and death is felt by the ruling Consciousness. For you things will be a bit different as I can and will damper outlying sensory input, at least at the start to prevent you from experiencing anything traumatic. Those dampeners can be removed later on.

I sighed deeply, a little less worried, but still a tad uneasy. “Well, let’s go for it before I change my mind.”

Good. You will experience a short period of unconsciousness. Please do not be alarmed.

Before I could even give her a snarky remark a sudden wave of vertigo washed over me, then again, this time much stronger. I couldn’t even begin to fight it before I passed out and my mind slipped into darkness.

When I awoke I felt... strange. Really fucking strange.

“Ugh... the fuck?” I muttered, trying to get used to this new feeling of... something else deep within me waking up as I did.

The change was immediately obvious.

Before this upgrade the sensory input from my drones were something I could tune out. Having them all active could be disorienting and hard to properly sort through, so for most of the time I simply let them exist and muted their input.

In a way it was very much like a stream of data that I could open or close. Now it was just... there. Constant and ever present. But it was different.

Before I had to order each Hexclaw individually with my implant, now I could just... do things myself. It wasn’t perfect, and I wasn’t quite able to concentrate on it all yet, but it also didn’t irritate me when I wasn’t paying attention.

It did mean that I was now the one in control of my drones. No longer could Kaysa direct them to be as efficient as possible, and it didn’t take long for me to realise that all of them became a lot more sluggish, like toddlers trying to walk.

“Not yet?”

There are some ways later on to enable their autonomous operation once you die, however they will never truly become a true Hexclaw Hive. That is simply not something the Protectors would risk, therefore they put measures in place to ensure the eventual death of the Hive.

“Makes sense I guess... Not that I like the idea too much,” I muttered, then shook my head, “But that’s not important right now. Time to get to work.”

True to my word I spent the next hour or so running around and helping the camps, either with some medicine, shoring up defences, or just coordinating things. It was a strange experience, since I was now able to be in multiple places at the same time, although I wasn’t yet able to buy stuff with every body.

Kaysa mentioned that that was something I could change in the future, once the Hive-Mind was fully grown. I would have to grab some other upgrades for it, but it sounded hella useful.

A big benefit that immediately became clear upon me starting the upgrade was the vastly increased point income. While I wasn’t quite at a full 100% yet, it was far more than it had been before and it didn’t take long before I had amassed enough points to buy another couple Progenitors.

I could have just gotten the basic Hatchlings with points, but in all honesty I needed Hatchling throughput and I really wasn’t lacking in the biomass department. Progenitors also made it easier to get used to additional bodies, since instead of just getting a couple dozen at once, overwhelming my mind, they came gradually.

So I ended up with three additional Reavers, for a total of five. I could get another Najav if I so wanted, but despite how awesome the thing was, right now my points were better spent spread out, than having one giant toy to play with.

I also got more Sabertooths, more Meerkats, and more of those weird defender ants at some locations. Controlling the whole mess, especially with how many drones I had by this point, was a bit of a nightmare, but I slowly got the hang of it. I wasn’t perfect by any means, and it was quite exhausting, but I did my best to push my limits.

“There has to be a more efficient way to deal with this,” I muttered, exhausted by running around for so long. “You can’t tell me the best I can do is deliver meds everywhere.”

I had just dropped off another package of meds at a White Dove Clinic pretty central of the Sweeping Dragon territory. The amount of wounded hadn’t subsided one bit, and despite our best efforts we had lost quite a lot of people at the edges of the defended area.

You could obtain drones that can help with medical emergencies. While originally the Hexclaw Swarm Intelligence didn’t have drones focused on medical treatment, since they would just repurpose old biomass, the Protectors have since added some into the Catalogue.

“Maybe...” I said, rubbing my face and trying to figure out how to best tackle it all.

Up until roughly half an hour ago Blitzer had been there to help organise the chaos, but he’d fallen asleep at some point, not that I could blame him. He’d been running around more than me, trying his best to shore up the defences wherever he could.

It didn’t stop me from being a bit jealous, I could have used some sleep as well, then again, he’d been awake a lot longer than I had been with a lot less sleep in between.

I checked the map once more, seeing where I should head to next. Most of the emergencies in the center of the whole disaster were of medical nature, which meant if I would get drones for that it would make life for me a whole lot easier. I had the points to spare, within the last hour I had gotten over ten thousand points from all my drones, which was just ridiculous.

Already I had sent a small army of War Drones to Chloe, who was as always in the thick of things. She was spending points as quickly as she could, but unless she wanted to level everything she would make quite the surplus. A surplus I now shared, and I wanted to repay her a bit. From the results so far it had been a good idea.

Chloe had taken charge quite quickly and once I had set my drones to follow her orders like she was me, she had quickly taken back quite a chunk of alien infested streets.

Jenna for her part had also gotten some help from me, although in her case it was to finally grab a proper mobile base. Her biggest issue was Sentinel throughput, and while my Najav could help, a dedicated base was much more useful to her. I hadn’t yet paid too much attention to what she had gotten, only seeing the thing in passing, but from the little I did see it reminded me a lot of those big six legged combat walkers from that old Animated TV series about Clones fighting Robots. Just a bit bigger.

The both of them had also earned themselves new names, which had me all kinds of giddy.

Jenna was now known as Legion, although from the chatter I could overhear in the virtual realm, Queen had kind of stuck as a nickname.

Chloe on the other hand I knew perfectly well how she had gotten the name. It had kind of been the reason why I sent more War Drones her way. She had single handedly fought off a huge army of xenos until she was hip deep in bodies, using whatever she had at her disposal. Rifles, pistols, knives, grenades, you name it. From the outside it had looked like some desperate defence, even though I knew it really hadn’t been that bad.

Regardless, because of that people started calling her the Bloodhound, which I found very fitting.

If you wish to obtain some medical drones, I do have options.

Kaysa’s voice finally dragged me out of my daydreams. That was another thing that I had noticed in the past hour, it was much easier for me to become distracted, probably by all the input I now got.

“Okay, yeah, let’s hear them. If they’re worth it, it might make sense to put together my own medical division.”

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