Evidently the novelty of my purposefully seeking him out is what kept Coleopteron from devouring my life force. Said something about it reminded him a little of his previous pilot. Coleopteron had accompanied me back to my drop ship. The kaiju were upset by this but they know new mecha added to the team tends to equal a stronger force and that this overruled any lasting rivalries.
I stepped out of my Zadok. A tendril-like antennae shot from Coleopteron's compound eye, piercing through me and causing images to flash through my head. Subsequent eons in general relief were compressed down so as to not overwhelm my smaller and inferior human hybrid senses. I will have to relate the rest later but in the time it took me to forcibly remove the appendage I'd absorbed in some of it, the most jarring being some answers to the long standing questions of a Jadoon's early life cycle.
These were Coleopteron being lain as an egg by a Jadoon Queen, in a star nebula where the rich cosmic rays of the star birthing factory nourish Larval Jadoon. They begin socializing then, and carry out social functions soon after reaching their first instar stage. The next instar stages are where the Jadoon becomes larger and stronger, starts fighting. This process it seems, unlike the artificially cloned Jadoon in which juvenile to adulthood progression is very rapid, for wild Jadoon takes much longer than a human lifespan.
Like most beetles, they go through a process of incomplete metamorphosis. After hatching is the larval stage, followed by a number of instar stages between moultings. Instead of a cocoon stage, they have a pupal stage after which they are a mature adult. All stages past larval are to an extent capable of fighting but it is only at the adult stage the Jadoon becomes a fully capable war machine.
These cosmic beetles hitch rides on comets and meteors when no gates are available. Subgating is a technique they have which allows a Jadoon to use a Niode Gate on its own.
I made Coleopteron promise not to do a direct interface with me again.
From now on we use a Neural Recalibrator as an intermediate.
Trying to think like a humongous inorganic insect is extremely intense and disorienting.
The Recalibrator's port fit the sensory antenna snugly.
"Okay, let's try this again"
I was back inside the guided tour of my Jadoon's memories. My Jadoon? I guess he was accepting me. Nice!
He'd skipped ahead to some of his later memories. Ingesting his first pilot due to frustration, forming some bonds with his second who was piloting him more than a century later as they fought battles together but outliving her. His third pilot, though a forerunner being somewhat distractible, like me. Eons passing of having no pilot, migrating to that forlorn pocket of space and devouring passing ships as a monster, sucking energy from the mecha which occasionally strayed too close.
Not an unthinking monster though. Or at least not so deep down.
Submitted by Mycobacter#712744