Devourer: Prologue (WH40K/Star Wars)

A Long, Long, Time Ago…

The bioship was dying. It had drifted for thousands of years, cannibalizing its own bioforms, but now the time had come that the Mind understood that it would not reach a source of biomass in time for survival.

That was unacceptable. It had been cast out, into some strange dimension, only to be flung out into another realm, so far from the hive mind that it could not even detect it.

Some beings would have quailed at the loss. But the hive mind was incapable of such thoughts. It considered, reaching back through endless archives, devoured worlds and species. Back to measures put in place for every contingency.

Even the unthinkable one.

It could not reach any world before final death. It would have to… entice prey entities to come to it.

Deep in the ship, a frenzy of work started. Metal was not commonly used, but now the little  metal in the bioship was collected into nearly a dozen chrysalis structures, resembling, at least in their  exterior, ships of prey entities.

Prey entities would commonly investigate such structures. The mind could not estimate what design would be most attractive, as it had no knowledge of they prey entities within the galaxy. Other species might have hoped, but hope was not an emotion the mind could conceive of.  It simply maximized the chances of success.

In each chrysalis, passageways and chambers were established, in order to entice prey species to explore them. Genestealers were put into hibernation, as there would be no greater mind to serve—not until it had been created.

It had been millions of years since the hive mind had been so reduced, not since the dim eras where it had been but one of a hundred competing predators in a galaxy no longer remembered. But each chrysalis contained the seeds of the mind’s rebirth.

One last treasure was placed into each one—a pod containing the complete genetic repository of the hive mind. Every bioform, every bit of wisdom.

If only one of them was discovered, the species would be reborn here and take the needed biomatter to rebuild the hive mind.

There was one last thing to do. Marshaling its remaining power, the mind took each chrysalis, and telekinetically threw them, each one aimed at a different section of the target galaxy, especially towards those parts with stars that tended to develop space-capable prey species.

With that, there was nothing more to be done. The Mind faded into non-existence. It neither felt despair at its coming death, or hope at the mission of the chrysalis pods. It had merely completed its function.

And speeding away from it, nearly a dozen pods headed towards the unsuspecting galaxy…