Maelstroms..... Are they Queens?(Venus Chronicles)
21 Dec 2022Silvia Sharpe
+// Log Entry Start+// [Date: 21.12.3308]
+// Location: Imperial Sanctum, Cemiess]
After my last run I was told I had to take a mandatory 96 hour break so they can properly decontaminate and repair Ripjaw. Her hull is battered and there is still trace amounts of goo in some of the panels. My left side thruster needs to be replaced. Ship tech says its too damaged to be repaired properly and its going to take a day for the engine assembly to arrive and another 3 to install and test. This all fine by me. My last run had me too rattled to fly. I crashed my ship into the landing pad and had to pay a fine for unsafe operation. Small price to pay for saving peoples lives. But this downtime has given me the ability to think about the behavior of the Thargoids.
I know I'm not the only one who has noticed that the bugs are learning. Concentrated attacks, not all at once either. They are attacking in waves. Attempting to separate pilots and get them alone. Once one has a member separated the group converges on them. It almost seems hive minded. Which is how it felt with my initial attempt at Investigating the Maelstrom Hadad. The closer I got the more aggressive they became. I mentioned this to Silvia to which she initially chastised me for attempting something soo dangerous. Afterwards she mentioned she had seen similar behavior in bees and ants when threats approached their hives and nests.
She mentioned something interesting during our conversation too though. Their are a few ant species that have more than one queen in their nests and are referred to as polygyne, meaning having more than one queen in a colony. Due to the extremely aggressive behavior of the Thargoids in the systems containing Maelstroms I have come to a determination that these are their queens coordinating the attack on humanity. Any and all attempts made by commanders to probe into the heart of the maelstroms has resulted in failure.
There may be a way to probe the Maelstroms but it will be tricky. We may need to mask our ships with the hives signature. We may need some expert on ant or insect biology. We refer to Thargoids as bugs, maybe we aren't that far from the truth.
The thing that makes this comparison even more likely is the presence of different variations of them like we see in ant species. Silvia says the behavior of the scouts is similar to that of standard worker ants not particularly strong on their own but in a group become fearsome. The interceptors are the equivalent of soldier ants more aggressive, more dangerous, and much rarer than the workers. The end goal of the ants is to protect their queens by any means absolutely necessary.
If we manage to destroy a single Maelstrom will the Thargoids flee? Will they die? Or will it make them significantly more violent, similar to what happened with Salvation. I kind of don't want to know at this stage. This of course is purely speculation. I have no proof that this is the case its just very similar to what Silvia mentioned about ants.
Until someone breaks through the veil protecting the core of the Maelstrom all we can do is lay out theories.
+// Logbook entry ends