The starborn queen was massive, the kind of massive you can only get from a creature capable of existing in the vacuum of space. Without the pull of an outside gravitational force dictating the weight and shape of her body, the starborn queen had only to contend with her own personal gravity. Even in space one's personal gravity can become an issue, as a certain mass matter tends to cluster together in a spherical manner.
The upper bounds of mass, at which point matter tends to become spherical, is roughly when the object itself if 600 miles in diameter, though that rule was hard and fast and had a lot to do with the general weight and density of the clustered matter.
In this case, the starborn queen was big, but not that big.
Adam noted that this would be both the best time and the worst time to make a yo' mamma joke, and hoped that the starborn queen would hear the remorse in his thoughts even as he said it. He hoped instead that she would focus more on his own personal awe as he circled their ship around, led by an ever growing entourage of starborn.
The queen was a massive creature, nowhere near 600 miles in diameter, but her body, once folded outward, might have managed a little over a mile in length. She took the form of an androgynous humanoid figue, with with long, bony limbs, her legs folded in a criss cross "beneath" her. She had large, four fingered hands that rested atop her her thighs, and a large curving head just a little bit bigger than the average human skull.
Circling around, Adam pulled their shuttle to a halt in front of her eerily humanoid face. She had full lips, high cheekbones, and the impression of a nose without nostrils. Unlike most humans her face was completely hairless: no eyebrows or eyelashes to speak of over her fathomless, dark eyes stretching out like twin pools of black glass.
They were so big Adam could easily have landed his shuttle, like a bug in her eye, but doubted she'd be particularly appreciative.
Starborn were not naturally occurring. Where life had managed to germinate beyond the bounds of an atmosphere, within the vacuum of space, they tended to take on shapes not dissimilar to that of animals which existed in the deep sea. Adam had seen creatures shaped like jellyfish, and there were reports of other creatures in the general shape of stingrays or whales.
Powerful void creatures, took on abominable Lovcraftian shapes, like deep sea octopus, or other monstrous beings.
Starborn on the other hand, were specifically designed in a shape that was unlikely to naturally occur in space, with two legs and two arms and a head that served no real purpose.
Constructs, however, were almost easy to identify when you knew what to look for. They all tended to hold the same general shape, as that shape was most conducive to holding an Anima without smothering it.
Two legs, an upright torso, and a head, with the desired number of arms. There were exceptions to the rule of course, notably the Celex and the Bran, but with the starborn the rule applied. She was mostly humanoid, were it not for her size, and the massive cape of ribbons that billowed at her back, lazily curling and uncurling in wide, sweeping swaths that collected the energetic power of blue light filtering from the distant star. Each ribbon was somewhere in the realm of a mile or two long, longer than her own body, and wider than a football field at their widest.
It was an intimidating sight.
And all around her the starborn queen was swarmed by a thousand more starborn, dwarfed by several thousand times, as they swarmed around her like worker bees around their queen.
Adam could sense Conn's unease as he moved to the back of the shuttle, passing briefly through the airlock and out into space. He could have stayed in the shuttle to speak to the queen, but Adam could sense the thoughts going through Conn's head.
Speaking from the shuttle simply didn't feel right.
He posed an odd figure as he sailed quietly through the dark. The gravity belt at his waste had been dimmed, and he wore a sharp black suit with vertical pinstripes and a gray turtleneck. He looked like the kind of wealthy billionaire that would hire someone to play golf for him by proxy, but at least it was better than his dad gear phase, where he had insisted on wearing hats with terrine fishing puns.
Conn paused in front of the shuttle and between them and the queen.
The queen's presence was a terrible one, terrible in the awe inspiring fear kind of way. Adam could feel her inside his head, a presence that cast a shadow through his mind like a mountain. Her thoughts were slow, and powerful like the flow of ice, and when she thought her memories and feelings thundered over him like the water from a waterfall threatening to force him to his proverbial knees.
Her question still hung in the air.
"Why have you come?" She was not bothered by the wait. A creature as ancient as she was didn't fear the passing of time. She probably could have waited a hundred years between each sentence in the conversation and it wouldn't have phased her.
"We come seeking allies." Again, Conn didn't speak in words so much as impressions and thoughts. Unlike normal speech, he could emphasize his intentions and meanings with memories, bits of context. Were adam to phrase his statement properly with all the meaning he would have said, "We have come seeking allies. We know that the void is after you and your people, we know that many of them have been corrupted. Many of our people are currently being corrupted, but we have a chance to stop them etc.etc."
He could have filled a book with the information that passed between the two starbon in a matter of seconds
The queen listened, the thundering of her thoughts like the distant crashing of waves over a rocky beach. Beyond her adam could feel the gentle fluttering of the other starborn, their minds clustering at the periphery of his own eagerly pressing in to listen to the conversation.
The starborn queen regarded Conn, her thoughts about him open and obvious for everyone to see. It was a strange experience.
Even with the ability to communicate telepathically, Adam and Sunny had to intentionally try to hear everything. Though things were difficult to block out in the first few days, slowly, over time the natural through process takes over and blocks the mind from external thoughts. It was going to be a great asset when their kids were older, but for now its presence displeased the starborn queen. She had no understanding of secrets, and do meld into the mind of creatures who kept them was alien to her, especially Conn, who made a habit of knowing everyone's secrets without them knowing his.
"Your Deviance disturbs me." She said, and when her thoughts moved through him it was like a ripple running through his thoughts. Not a gentle ripple like a raindrop falling ont o the surface of a pond, but the kind of ripple you get when an approaching T-Rex takes a step in your direction.
"You would not be the first." Conn said
Adam wasn't sure if the best course of action was to sass the starborn queen, but he didn't pipe up. Conn knew better than him.
"Where is your queen?" She wondered
"Dead." Conn responded. Images flashed through his head, a thousand years feeding on the corpse of a queen that had died under suspicious circumstances before the others returned from their foraging.
Conn had grown up wrong.
Distrubed by starborn standards.
And his presence distrubed them even now. Years song humans made him think like one, in words instead of thoughts, and he struggled not to use them even now,
"You abandoned your clan." She therummed
Conn bristled, "They never wanted me. I was simply tolerated through their own guilt." The worst part of it all was that Conn was right, and he had the memories to prove it, "I am not here to talk about my past or why I decided to leave my clan. I am here to look for allies in the coming conflict. The void plans to rule what is left of us, and then destroy all the light in the universe. It does not matter our background or beliefs. I know you and yours have suffered, and so have me and mine."
It was not lost on the queen that Conn did not consider himself one of them,and it wrinkles her, but there was no way she couldn't understand him, she could see his thoughts after all.
Adam tried to keep his mind mostly closed for Conn's privacy.
He wouldn't have liked to have his whole inner soul spilling out like that and have people peep on him, but still he couldn't help but catch a few images.
Ramirez was blissfully unaware of the entire conversation. Staring out at Conn, and the massive starborn queen. To him it would have looked like the two were simply staring at each other. Feeling his confusion, Celex leaned over the mutter something to Ramirez, keeping him apprised of the situation.
The starborn queen skipped the part where she resisted. She had seen that Conn had had this conversation before, she had also seen the aftermath. The starborn were a dying breed, uniquely easy for the void to target. They had no allies and no central representation. They kept to themselves, were nomadic, and hid within the vastness of space itself, but now they were dwindling, and rapidly.
She might be one of the last few queens left, untainted by the void.
A shared shiver ran through their collective minds, a familiar image bouncing through their heads in rapid succession. A massive corrupted void queen with protruding bone antlers that thrummed with power, creating the portal that threw Adam and his crew into a different galaxy. Even then they had been hunting natural starborn, and not even the makers could save them all.
"And what would you have us do? We have no ships to fight in your war. We have no weapons."
"You have your minds. Please," Conn said, "Let us not fail to acknowledge that you could crush us given the chance, with your power and numbers." It was true, uncomfortably so. Together, the collective minds of the starborn could easily snuff them out like a guttering candle flame."
The queen thought through, her mind moving slowly, but powerfully forward."
"And will you protect us in return?"
"Come to where we are at our strongest, and we may protect you in exchange for your collective power of mind." Conn would have liked to ask them to help weed out those who were part of the void religion, but Adam found that idea to be uncomfortably too close to 1984 thought police, and refused. They could believe in the void religion all they wanted, but as soon as they started hurting people was where he hat to draw the line."
The starborn swarmed closer, like a school of fish.
They could sense their mistress thinking.
She knew the danger, she knew they were being hunted.
She knew it was just a matter of time. On any other day she would have rejected them out of hand, but this time was different, this time..... Something had to change.
She lowered her massive head towards them, a sensation that was both unnerving and downright frightening until one of her huge black eyes dominated the viewscreen, making Conn simply a speck against the blackness.
"You will help us."
'Yes."
"Then we will help you." She wasn't happy about it, but she was no idiot.
The starborn were on their side