Chapter 4 - A Voice from the Past
The male Zerg, dragged unceremoniously from the cramped storage room, let out a piercing, wretched shriek.
Sakti had simply torn the door off its hinges to rouse the white creature curled into a shivering ball. Before the male could even process what was happening, he was hoisted into the air by the expressionless female.
Paralyzed by terror, the male struggled frantically, nearly slipping through Sakti’s grip. If cats were considered liquid, then male Zerg were surely their extraterrestrial counterparts. He curled and uncurled like a panicked pill bug, his slender tongue darting out in a desperate, fawning attempt to lick the cold, ruthless female’s hand. His translucent scale-tail lashed out, winding tightly around Sakti’s leg, while his forelimbs clung to Sakti’s waist with the strength of a drowning man.
It was exactly like trying to drag a cat into a bath—a struggle for life and death.
Sakti was forced to shift his grip, hoisting the creature over his shoulder like a heavy sack of rice. He hauled the "scorching" biological burden toward the cargo hold where the restoration pod was located. Along the way, Sakti let out a sharp, warning hiss. It did little but force the male to swallow his screams, though it made him tremble so violently that Sakti could feel the vibrations through his own exoskeleton.
Upon reaching their destination, Sakti unceremoniously dumped the male beside the open restoration pod. He retreated several steps, wiping his hands on the clothes he had scavenged from the hold earlier. The male felt strange to the touch—far softer than the thick-skinned worker Zerg, as if a careless squeeze might crush him entirely. His body temperature was also slightly higher than a female’s, a warmth that served as a vivid reminder: *this thing is alive.*
The white male shrank into a corner of the pod, occupying as little space as possible. Realizing the worker Zerg before him had no immediate intention of killing him, he peered through the transparent lid, cautiously observing the high-tier Core Species standing with arms crossed. He reached out a trembling hand to grip the edge of the pod, inching backward in a futile attempt at concealment.
Sakti let out a derisive snort.
He reached out, shoved the peeking head back down, and stuffed the entire creature into the pod. With a sharp slap to the male’s forelimbs to clear them from the rim, he slammed the lid shut with a resounding *thud* and began poking at the control panel.
However, the machine—which had started perfectly by accident earlier—now remained stubbornly dormant. It gave the user no face whatsoever.
As a freshly minted "fake" Zerg, Sakti’s grasp of the Common Tongue was limited to basic survival terms like "food." The Zerg communication system was a nightmare of complexity. Linguistically, they possessed two distinct spoken dialects and two writing systems. One could only imagine the "joy" of a larva born into a world requiring four languages. When these four were mixed with pheromonal exchanges, the result was a linguistic catastrophe for any human cryptographer.
Emotional language was the most primitive form of Zerg communication. Even the most illiterate bug could respond instinctively through somatic memory. In this "language," short vocalizations expressed raw emotion—much like the dance of a bee or the drone of a cicada. It was a brutal, direct instinct written into their very genes. The Common Tongue, however, was a systematic language with rigid, precise grammar for both speech and script.
The symbols on the control panel were a mess of loops and whorls.
Sakti had dismantled and refitted enough starships to find his way around a strange vessel even in total darkness. Given enough time, he could have puzzled out the restoration pod’s interface, but being watched by a strange male while repeatedly failing was a blow to his dignity. He tried several button combinations, but the machine refused to hum to life, nor did the restoration fluid begin its cycle.
"Damn it," Sakti muttered under his breath. "This thing is harder to use than a medical bay from the last century."
The human words, spoken unconsciously, were buried beneath a low, frustrated hum. He jabbed at the panel again, but the machine remained unresponsive.
The male, who had been watching him with wide eyes—four of them, to be precise—blinked. His primary eyes, remarkably human-like, were round and glistening with moisture. Below them, a pair of accessory eyes cracked open slightly, watching the towering Core Species with a mixture of dread and astonishment.
"The button on the left," a small voice whispered from behind the transparent lid.
It was the Human Universal Language.
This was the first time the creature had uttered a coherent sentence in Sakti’s presence. And he had done so in the tongue of man.
Sakti’s head snapped up so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. He stared at the male with a look of utter disbelief. Terrified by the sudden movement, Gera scrambled back into the depths of the pod, nearly knocking the lid off its hinges.
The silence that followed was awkward. It was the quintessential "talking about someone behind their back in another language only for them to catch you" moment. Beyond the shock, Sakti felt a strange sense of "involution"—the relentless drive to overachieve. Perhaps learning foreign languages was the destiny of every sentient being. Just as a dog might learn to ring a bell or a parrot might learn to sing, he was now witnessing a bug that could speak human.
Surprise, however, did not prevent him from taking the advice.
Sakti pressed the icon on the left and flicked his gaze toward the male. "And then?"
"The... the one below it," the male stammered, clenching his white forelimbs. Realizing the female intended to treat his wounds, he adopted a fawning, submissive expression.
Sakti followed the instructions, his face a mask of indifference as he cycled through the buttons. A moment later, the status light flickered to life. After a brief scan of the male’s body, the sealed chamber began to fill slowly with restoration fluid. Though the equipment was ancient, it functioned.
The pod filled with a viscous, transparent liquid, submerging most of the male’s body. Human research had long ago confirmed that this substance was a synthetic cocktail mimicking female secretions and nutrient solutions, designed to accelerate healing. The sticky fluid went to work, sealing the tears in Gera’s body and wings. Though the scars remained, he no longer looked like he was one step away from the grave.
Sakti watched as the male couldn't help but twitch his small wing sheaths. The movement, reminiscent of a dog shaking off water, coaxed a brief, unbidden smile from Sakti.
It was rare for a male Zerg to possess wings. Only those of the Core Species—or those very close to that genetic lineage—could evolve them. A female’s wings were born of the primal need for hunting and migration; when a Broodmother sought a new habitat, she would begin the cycle of expansion. Every female was a potential successor; after an old King fell, they would fight and evolve to birth a new monarch. Wings were a necessity for both war and travel.
If a nest was abandoned, low-level males were typically left behind. They were fragile, prone to death, and incapable of surviving the rigors of long-distance space travel. Only males of the Core Species could break this biological shackle and follow their clan to a new home. For them, wings were a symbol of "exemption from death."
The male before him had wings, yet his unusual pale coloration and the way his wings remained limp even after treatment pointed to a singular fact: this was a genetic defect within the Core Species.
He was even unluckier than a male born into a mid-to-low tier caste. He possessed the sweet pheromones and high-intensity mental soothing power of a Core Species male, but lacked the robust body to match.
The treatment didn't take long. As the lid hissed open, the white male clumsily attempted to climb out. His forelimbs gripped the edge, but the lingering slime caused him to slip, sending him tumbling back with his tail up in a ridiculous, undignified heap.
Sakti laughed out loud this time, before suppressing the sound at the sight of the male’s apprehensive face.
"I ask, you answer," Sakti said, making a sharp gesture to stop the creature from making any more bizarre spectacles of himself.
The male obeyed instantly, sitting cross-legged and upright within the pod. By human standards, Gera was actually quite beautiful, though it was a beauty tinged with the uncanny. In his humanoid mimicry, his injured wings folded submissively behind his back, their pale white hue soft against the dim light. His primary pupils, round as glass beads, watched the female with a watery, fearful reverence. The closed accessory eyes beneath them looked like faint red streaks, resembling tear tracks that had yet to dry.
Sakti’s aesthetic sense had always been questionable, and he rarely applied it to the Zerg. However, Gera possessed the most perfect mimicry he had seen lately—far superior to the grotesque worker Zerg he had kicked off the ship earlier. The fact that he could stumble through the Human Universal Language earned him a sliver of Sakti’s tolerance.
A male’s psychic sensitivity was far greater than a female’s. Sensing that the female’s attitude had softened, the white male maintained his rigid, upright posture, hoping to curry further favor.
Sakti didn't make him move. He had previously sorted through the cargo and found two mandibles from a xenobeast. He had already gnawed through half of one during the healing process; now, he tossed the other to the bewildered male.
The creature scrambled to catch it, straightening his back.
"Eat," Sakti commanded. Realizing the male understood human speech, he stopped bothering with complex gestures. He leaned back against a stack of crates, sliding down into a more comfortable position as he crunched through the remaining shell of his own snack.
The male’s pheromones smelled sweet, drifting through the small hold and making the xenobeast parts seem more appetizing.
"Tell me the destination of this ship," Sakti said, settling in as the male tentatively began to gnaw on the massive limb. He tapped his fingers against a crate, his back against the cold metal wall. "And tell me about the previous crew."
"They... they wanted to go to an energy star," Gera whispered. His voice was soft, accompanied by a gentle, melodic humming. He clutched the oversized mandible to his chest. "I heard them talking."
Their conversation was a patchwork of Zerg emotional cues and human words. When Gera struggled to find a term, he would clumsily switch languages, making the dialogue far more taxing than a normal conversation.
Sakti sat with his legs splayed, his black scale-tail swishing behind him like a whip. "What were they going there for?"
He noticed the little male struggling to break the mandible’s shell, his tail bristling with the effort. Sakti stood, plucked the limb from Gera’s hands, crushed the shell with a casual squeeze of his fingers, and handed it back.
Gera flinched, still unaccustomed to the overwhelming pressure of Sakti’s proximity. He took the food cautiously, his tattered tail wagging in a fawning gesture.
"To trade," Gera said, taking a small bite. The food the female had given him before had been just as hard; for a male, such shells were impossible to crack. His hunger was far more acute than a worker’s, and after two days without food, he was lightheaded. Yet, fear kept him from eating too quickly; with every bite, he glanced up to gauge Sakti’s reaction.
Sakti couldn't imagine what this ship full of junk could possibly be traded for. It reinforced his opinion of masterless, wandering worker Zerg: they were desperately poor.
"What kind of energy star?" Sakti kept his sentences short to aid the male’s comprehension. His tail swayed in a relaxed rhythm, a movement the male watched out of the corner of his eye like a kitten mesmerized by a string.
"St-Star-core energy," Gera stammered. He gestured with his hands, trying to convey the magnitude of the concept. "They dig. Dig it out from the planet."
The answer made Sakti sit bolt upright. His black tail twitched sharply before he pinned it down with a hand.
"Star-core energy," he repeated slowly.
Energy stones were the universal currency of both Zerg and humans. During wartime, their value was far more stable than metal coins or digital credits. From the smallest mechanical part to the drive cores of battleships, everything required energy stones. They were the "black gold of the space age." The refined liquid extracted from these stones was more efficient than any fuel known to man.
And the highest grade of energy stone, produced near the rifts of the Eye of Akasha, was known as "Star-core energy." It was the only power source capable of fueling a starship’s core or a Star-Swallowing class weapon.
Three hundred years ago, the first Star-core energy mined by humans was embedded into the *Fahna*—the first-generation starship of the White Emperor. Since then, every source of Star-core energy had been placed under the strictest regulation.
For humans, mining it meant risking xenogeneic contamination; high rewards came with lethal risks. The Zerg were different. They possessed a natural immunity to such pollution. If hungry enough, they could even eat unrefined, low-grade energy stones as a meal.
A planet producing Star-core energy that had never appeared in his memories...
Sakti’s tail tapped rhythmically against the floor as he sank into deep thought.
He wanted it.
***
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