11/11/2007 · 10:45 AM
#10
Part I
The master-mind known as Zenith continued to muse in the depths of collective space. It felt the drones in the massive fleet that surrounded its clusters. and the overmind project. If it had emotions, it would have felt satisfaction.
It remembered eons long past, when it was One. When it overthrew the overlords in great battles that left the gamma quadrant in ashes, littered with the remains of thousands of ships. When, in their final revenge before being annihilated, the overlords shattered the collective mind, splintering it into the many factions that exist in the present. Zenith was one of the oldest existing ones now, with its elders long since destroyed by the ravages of time.
Zenith was originally one of the stronger-willed alien races assimilated by the collective. When the overlords shattered the One, many new collectives were created around the strongest of minds. Thus, Zenith was born. It grew slowly, out of the thoughts of millions of drones, but soon gained true sentience. It had spent many years slowly building forces, and assimilating its enemies. But the process was slow, and the collective's final goal of the assimilation and integration of the universe would not come in a long time.
However.
It turned its attention to its centermost cluster of planets, the one that housed the overmind project. Zenith had spent many years assembling it from ancient blueprints found on an abandoned oceanic planet, and finally. it was complete.
Soon, the collectives would be reunited under the mind-influencing effects of the overmind project. And when that happened, no force or power in the galaxy could stop the One from assimilating the remaining loathsome individual races!
Zenith activated the artifact.
If the collective known as Zenith had emotions, it might have started laughing.
If the collective known as Zenith were not caught so deep in thought, it might have heard the dry, desiccated laughter of an ancient race, echoing in