"Bees. An entire planet full of bees of all sizes. And woe, here am I, above it all, allergic to bees." Razion lamented her royal plight as she floated in her bedroom window looking down upon her colony world. She watched as the skyhook hauled up a load of supplies for her and her mother. "Forsooth, doth mine eyes spy upon dainty sucker? Succulent flesh for to sate our thirst?"
A guard bot at her door turned its head side to side in confusion. "Uh, what was that, Your Highness?"
Razion used her arms and legs to roll in the air without touching anything and look to the bot. "I said, 'I think I see them bringing up some food.' But, you know, I was trying to do it all 'princessy,' the way my sister said I should talk."
The bot nodded. "I see, ma'am. Pardon my saying so, but I doubt your speech is what she meant when she said you should act like a princess. I believe she was referring to how you joke around with the fox and cat boys on your monthly visits to the colonies."
The princess reached out and pulled herself along the webbing to her nest. "What? No way. I'm in a full environmental suit every time I go down there, of course I've gotta joke about it with my future subjects. I mean, I know I'll never be queen, so they won't ever carry my eggs, but maybe I'll be a regent. Regent Razion, I like the sound of that. I could finally clean up the crime and help the miners, or the dock workers, or whatever region I get. I heard rumors down there, some of the colonists think we control the crime families, that we use the criminals to keep everyone else in check."
The bed bots in her nest helped her dress, strings of jewels and pearls like dew drops on a web between her many spindly arms and legs. With hair dye they freshened up the areas of her thorax that were losing her black luster. "The other species fear us spiders too much, I can help with that. My older sisters are all so, so, above it all… I say in orbit. But, I mean, how do they expect to rule these people without really knowing them?"
The bot did not answer. Razion knew there were many reasons for this, the network database might not have a response, or protocol might deem its response 'inappropriate.' More likely, it wasn't allowed to tell her what it knew.
Rather than frustrate herself fighting the database for information, Razion decided to leave early for dinner. Clinging to the station's webbing she navigated the three dimensional labyrinth with ease using the subtle variations of light emitted by each of the otherwise identical lightbars.
As she approached the dining module she felt vibrations from the skyhook's cargo finally docking. Her mother shouting at robots as usual, Razion drifted 'down' to the dining table and waited. Drifting as much as her body, her mind didn't really pay attention to her mother taking a call.
"I said to never call me here, she could overhear us."
"Your choice to live with her, but we all agreed to never discuss the PPP through subordinates."
"Very well, Doctor Damion, what is so urgent?"
Doctor Damion? The name drew Razion's attention. She'd learned about all the crime families and their leaders and Damion the Doctor of Wolves was the worst of them all.
"Unfortunately, the Perpetual Princess Project is a failure. We've already lost four stations. We need to phase yours out as soon as we can."
"No, you can't take my Razion. I'll bring her down more often if needed, but I can't lose her, Damion."
"Hypatia, how many times have I warned you not to grow too attached to your experiments? She is dangerous to us all. Evidence shows that on the other stations they formed small colonies before making first contact suggesting that their tactical and intellectual processes are not as centralized to the queen as we thought."
"Very well, what would you have me do, Doctor Damion?"
Razion breathed deep, already afraid of what she was hearing her mother say, her eyes all widened at the sound of her greatest fear. Bzzzzz! Bzzzzz! The most lethal vibration, or so she'd been told. Touching a bee would mean death, even too much pollen from a tear in her environment suit was a medical emergency.
She traced the vibration in the web as Doctor Damion explained his plan. "The Wolf Princess should be arriving on the surface shortly. They have connected with her, but she has not connected back. Wasp Assassins with bee markings will tear her apart in the public square rupturing her death pouch so the people will see bees killing her but the real bees will no longer be linked."
Razion found a single bee caught in the dining room web. Normally she would get a bot to destroy it for her, but normally her mother wasn't plotting assassination with a crimelord.
"That will give you just under two weeks to bring the Spider Princess down to the pheromone dispersion tower where she will be imprisoned until we can come up with a longer lasting plan to keep the bees out of our way."
Driven by fear and hope, her jaw and mandibles shivering, Razion reached a finger toward the little package of certain death.
A single touch and her mind filled with memories. The pheromones already in the air finally carried meaning for her, information, data, billions of lives lived in service to her, no, in service to the Hive, the whole. She exhaled and thousands of the small worker bees emerged from the stations panels, each working together in unparalleled synchronicity by her command.
"Then, Doctor, is there no chance of Plan Alpha working?"
"No, Hypatia, the limited cognition of the unlinked bees suggests a memory reserve of some kind. They hacked our bots. Once the Spider Queen links to the Hive she will be outside of our control, she will remember the old wars and everything we've done regardless of how 'nice' you may have been to her. She will slaughter us all."
Razion looked through her new memories, the new ancient thoughts from a very different body. She was a spider, but altered by Doctor Damion's genetic recoding to grow the sense organs of a Queen Bee. The other crime families, each had a member of their species altered the same way.
At her unconscious command the small swarm on the station gathered around her large spider body and lifted. She flew into the room with her mother talking to a wolf on a large display.
"You are wrong, Doctor, I will not kill you all."
"Fire ALL Weapons!" Damion yelled to his computer.
"Can not comply!" the computer stated.
Razion brought a hand up to her chin, the other on her hips and thorax. "Oh hohoho, no. Did you forget? Bees made these stations and the network, all to extend our Hive. I've already taken control of your station and the pheromone tower. My bees on the planet are, even now, stopping your assassins and welcoming our Wolf Queen into the Hive. I can smell it all now, she is a lovely addition, for a wolf. The Hive will now resume control of this star system, and the colonists you brought to exploit my bees will never need to fear your tyranny again. They will be free to live with us here or to leave and join the galactic community."
She placed one arm on her mother, "You should be proud of the lessons you taught me about justice, for that is an alien concept to the Hive, and all of you, The Royal Council, will be tried for your crimes against us, and against your people."
