The Brood Invasion of Earth:
Recap and Debrief, Auto-Generated Transcript [CM Eyes Only]

Part 3. An Investigation Begins--and Ends

Another Threat to the Invasion Arises

Even as our enslaved workers labored night and day to enhance the capabilities of The Throat, our Hierarchy worried that the human Hierarchy's instruments of deadly force would become aware of our incursion and destroy us. Our human thralls had identified the societal control assemblages called "police" and "army" as being particularly threatening, so one of our first goals was to wrest control of those organizations from the human Hierarchy--preferably without their knowledge.

We had already developed plans to gradually infiltrate and control the soldiers at a nearby military establishment. However, the large number of humans stationed there made its rapid enslavement impractical given the limited number of broodmates that were currently transiting through The Throat. While we continued to enhance our facilities to communicate with the Hierarchy through The Throat and automate its communication and reception capabilities, daily transits currently consisted of dozens--not hundreds or thousands--of broodmates.

Meanwhile, our thralls recommended that we prioritize subjugating the organization called Sheriffs. They noted that The Throat's fortuitous location in a relatively uninhabited agricultural zone made Sheriffs the most likely of these organizations to notice our incursion and forcibly intervene. Moreover, based on the analysis of our human hosts, control of Sheriffs would also provide us with an early warning of the human's Hierarchy turning its attention to our foothold. As the local organization with force authority over the rural area, our hosts believed the broader human Hierarchy would involve Sheriffs in any effort to investigate or eradicate our foothold.

Because our construction efforts would soon became too massive to hide, we concluded that--rather than waiting for these authorities to notice and investigate, the threat should be controlled as soon as possible.

A Hospitable Hostility

To ensure we had control of the situation--and eventually control of Sheriff--we used the farm leader's prior relationship with Sheriff to extend an invitation to the estate at a time of our choosing. Welcoming the head and his underling, the farm's leader and his mate used a social pretext to separate the two officials, engaging with the more senior official out of view of the junior one.

The estate authority's mate had previously provided beverages to the older official that were viewed as pleasing to him, and arranging for the visit to be on a particularly warm day ensured sufficient dehydration to make the venom-enhanced beverage more likely to be consumed rapidly.

Prior to the appearance of Sheriff, we had extracted considerable stinger venom from our broodlings and began to experiment on our controlled hosts to determine the optimal dosage and consumption for humans of the elder official's approximate mass and metabolism. When the enhanced beverage incapacitated the elder official without permanent damage--ensuring his rapid and resistance-free subjugation--it more than justified all of the lost productivity of our workforce during that testing.

The Deputy Investigates

While we initially considered providing the lower-ranked Sheriff official (apparently named "Deputy") with a similarly tainted beverage, it was concluded that the differing weights and metabolisms of the two officials would provide an unfortunate warning to the other when the first human was incapacitated by the venom-infused beverage. Allowing the more inexperienced official to wander and investigate the most important location in our invasion plan was a calculated risk, but our human hosts provided an impressively accurate prediction of Deputy's likely actions.

They forecast that while his elder tried to extract information from the farm estate's leaders (but only succeeded in extracting his own enslavement!), the junior official Deputy would likely attempt to observe the details of our impressive construction effort. Our hosts believed that Deputy would be both fixated on the complex details of our construction and also overconfident in the power of his authority, and thus could likely be restrained and converted quickly and efficiently by our enslaved laborers. However, even in the unlikely event of his escape from the construction site, it was believed that his first impulse would be to report back to his local superior or use electronic means to alert the human Hierarchy. As a contingency, we therefore pre-positioned broodmates with stingers at the ready in their motor vehicle and also over all entrances to the estate's main residence.

The Sheriff Submits; The Investigation Ends; The Threat Remains

Again, reflecting the seemingly-charmed progress of our invasion thus far, Sheriff and Deputy both became devoted slaves of the Brood within seconds of each other. Thanks to the elder status of Sheriff (with the assistance of Deputy and several laborers), they quickly and efficiently arranged for the enslavement of the entire membership of the Sheriff organization. The officials the human Hierarchy were relying on to detect our invasion were now actively working to conceal and facilitate it.

While Sheriff was the first and nearest authority to be controlled, the sheer scale of humanity's Hierarchy continued to prove daunting to our heroic invaders. However, we were confident that our skill, experience, patience, and willpower would allow us to gradually--but inevitably--enslave all of the human Hierarchy.

Unfortunately for the Brood (but fortunately for me... All Praise to Cecelia!), we would soon learn that the main threat to our invasion did not arise from the human Hierarchy at all, but from a class of individuals that were superior to it.