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

Part 4. Securing the Base

Who Guards the Guardians? We Do.

Every society tends to entrust some of its members to guard against threats. Even if those members are not capable of independently repelling threats that might arise, simply keeping watch and alerting the herd to danger is essential to the safety of the group.

So when The Brood launches an invasion of a new world and has established our initial foothold, our next priority is to identify the local society's guardians and subvert them. In some cases, once The Brood has been able to seize control of the society's guardians, we have used them to subjugate the rest of the society and quell any resistance. In our invasion of Earth, we first took over the most salient legal authority in the geographic area containing our foothold (the Sheriff Police), and then began to look for weaknesses we could exploit in some of the other Earth guardians.

As was discussed earlier, we were fortunate that the second human enslaved in our invasion revealed himself to be the male intimate partner of a member of Earth's military apparatus. Even better, that soldier served as one of the internal guardians of the Army organization, entrusted with maintaining its security. Once he had been enslaved, he immediately began to work with our strategists to figure out the best way to bring the entire base under our control.

Inside Man

A key component of our plan was to use our newly-enslaved soldier to betray and enslave his comrades. However, because of the layered responsibilities and multiple personnel controlling access to the base, our slave was concerned that he would not be able to smuggle sufficient broodmates onto the base to enslave a critical mass of his fellow base guardians before their presence was discovered.

Because all items brought onto the base were searched (including the personal items of guardians like our slave), a plan was initially developed where our slave would smuggle small numbers of broodmates onto the base under his clothing, stockpiling them until a critical number were available. However, such a process would take multiple trips, and there was concern that the stockpile of waiting parasites might be discovered (with catastrophic consequences) or that a more detailed random hands-on search or "frisking" of our slave might also uncover the broodmates.

We also explored more elaborate strategies like compromising a supply contractor and using a routine shipment to deliver more broodmates (made impractical due to advanced scanning technology that was designed to detect explosives or smuggled humans, but would easily detect our brethren); simply passing broodmates through or over the fencing surrounding the base (which our slave indicated was too vulnerable to electronic monitoring and detection), and even holding an off-campus social event and inviting fellow guardians (similar to our gambit with the Sheriff organization, but the same concerns about managing a simultaneous quelling of resistance were exacerbated among these guardians, while taking a smaller number would be insufficient to guarantee a foothold onto the base).

Blinding the Humans to the Real Threat

Our slave actually deserves credit for conceiving the plan our strategists ultimately adopted. He realized that--while the base security had multiple checks and overlapping areas of authority--the Brood was a far different threat than those for which the human defenses had been conceived.

Our plan was executed when our slave was working the relatively lightly-staffed night shift at the gatehouse. Despite that, the enemies of The Brood were still disturbingly numerous as our valiant infiltration team huddled in a simple canvas bag carried by the guardian's male intimate partner. The first guardians to intercept our infiltration team challenged the male intimate partner for his identity documentation and interrogated him regarding the purpose of his visitation. These were correctly viewed as being unlikely to raise alarm given the guardians' familiarity with the male intimate partner from his prior visits, many of which included him carrying the same canvas bag. After this relatively perfunctory challenge, a different set of guardians electronically scanned the infiltration party for metallic weapons--none of which were necessary for our purposes--enabling the continued success of our infiltration.

The next stage of the process was potentially quite threatening to our plans: A physical examination of the bag's contents. This would have been catastrophic to our infiltration in normal circumstances. However, by arranging for the infiltration to occur when our enslaved guardian was responsible for conducting such inspections, we ensured that the bag's inspection caused no issues.

Masking the Final Approach

After the infiltration team successfully passed through the gatehouse, they proceeded to the barracks currently being used by the off-duty guardians for their nightly regeneration cycle. Here, again, the established relationship between our enslaved guardian and his male intimate partner proved essential. In this case, it provided the excuse for their intrusive visit to the sleep area and provided background noise that masked the sound of our brethren stealthily slithering throughout the barracks. Thanks to this subterfuge, all of the guardians in the building first became aware of the presence of The Brood at the precise moment they were simultaneously mounted and enslaved.

When these enslaved guardians reported for duty several hours later, The Brood was in complete control of the entrances the base and infiltrated multiple teams. Once we repeated the enslavement of each subsequent sleep cycle of guardians, we not only controlled access to the base, but could begin to use the institutional power of the base guardians to selectively isolate and subvert key personnel. If a soldier at the base noticed any aspect of our slowly constricting grip, they would naturally choose to alert the base guardians, who would immediately deal with the threat (although not in the way the human had probably assumed).

As The Throat continued to increase its output and efficiency, more and more loads of the incoming parasites were sent to the base. Soon our focus shifted away from securing a foothold on the base and toward ensuring that all humans on the base were controlled by The Brood.