Alien Evolution System-Chapter 208: Tracts, Pods, and Evolution Chambers

The Collector watched remotely from within the Command Chamber as the carrier unit known as Thokk made his way to the nearest Evolution Chamber. Overall, within the structure of the Fortress Vanguard, there were thirty (30) Evolution Chambers and fifty (50) Spawning Pools. There were ten (10) major holding bays, one of which functioned as a main rendezvous point for the goblins to gather.

This one, the Main Bay, was meant for the goblins to utilize for social interaction and to fight within when needed.

Thokk passed through a warp door, and as soon as his body pushed through the glowing blue, viscous membrane, he was transported outwards to a narrow corridor of grooved flesh. There were mana crystals lining the muscular grooves for lighting and to facilitate with projecting the Collector's consciousness, though for now, their lighting function was turned off because the goblins all possessed adequate vision in the dark.

Guided by the Collector's psionic call, Thokk made his way across the corridor. Spaced in five meter intervals on the ceiling were individual tendrils of flesh that dangled, glowing with a faint blue glimmer. By pulling on one of these, a unit could ask the Collector for a travel pod.

The tendril would create a temporary cocoon around the unit and then whisk it upwards into the ceiling, from where it would then be moved at high speeds across the innards of the Fortress Vanguard and out of its many tentacles or beak-like maw. The travel pod, filled with cushioning, viscous liquid and a durable, shock absorbing outer shell, would guarantee safe landing before breaking apart and unleashing the unit held within.

The Collector required some tuning for the travel pods, however.

The Collective used the same design to drop units down, but there was no design to bring units back up, because when a unit was sent for battle, it was essentially sent to die as any unit lesser than a Collector strain had low probabilities of surviving a confrontation with the firepower of the United Front.

It was in sheer numbers and swarming tactics that the Collective's lesser units obtained victories and ground from the United Front.

Yet here, the Collector's individual units were important, and though its golems were expendable, sending units that could think for themselves out with no way back would significantly reduce their morale and continued incentive to fight for the Collector.

The solution to this would be flight capable golems designed solely for medical and evacuative purposes depending on how flexible the Collector's creative control was over the formation of golems.

Regardless, this would all be tasks that the Collector would initiate after it had familiarized the goblins with their new home. Once the goblins were settled into the spaces the Collector had set out for them as their personal nests, it would be time to initiate mass spawning of golems.

The mountains the Collector had utilized to create the Fortress Vanguard could only create simple golems that were hulking masses of physical strength. However, the Collector calculated that it could easily apply the structure and principles of Collective unit creation utilizing Genesis Protofluid - the very primordial ooze that the Collector broke down into during its metamorphoses - to vastly enhance the flexibility of the creation process.

The Collector bid Thokk to stop before a drop tendril and bid the goblin to pull it.

Tentatively, with awe in his eyes, Thokk grasped the tendril and yanked down. The bulbous end of the tendril split apart in four segments, vomiting out cocoon fluid. Glowing blue liquid spat down from above, circling around Thokk before forming into a cocoon around him. Thokk, by now, was used to the cocooning process, and simply closed his eyes and remained still.

When the cocoon was formed, Thokk's body becoming visible only as a shadow within the gleaming membrane, it was pulled upwards by the tendril and into the innards of the Fortress Vanguard. This pod would not send Thokk out of the Fortress Vanguard, but instead was personally directed by the Collector to the nearest Evolution Chamber.

In terms of internal mobility for troops, the Collector had determined that it could not permanently have units stuffed into cocoons in large Incubation Chambers, moved only when they were needed. Usually, all the pathways inside the Vanguard unit were tight and compact, minimized in space for absolute efficiency, meant only to push cocoons here and there through strong muscular contractions.

These pathways were adapted from the enormous and complex intestinal tracts of the Vanguard unit.

The Collector increased the size of these tracts to create larger corridors within which units could actively walk through. These walkable paths, the Collector had deemed the "Large Tracts", with each large tract connecting to each other via physical proximity or warp doors. A unit could navigate the entirety of the Fortress Vanguard using the large tracts, but it would take significant time bordering on hours.

However, by entering into a travel pod, a unit could access high speed transportation throughout the internals of the Fortress Vanguard. They would get sucked into what the Collector deemed the 'Small Tract'. Intestinal paths that were smaller and more densely layered with muscle, meant purely for contracting and pushing out pods at high speeds throughout select locations in the Fortress Vanguard.

However, where the Large Tracts were relatively fortified, capable of withstanding internal assault, the Small Tracts were pure, exposed muscular flesh more susceptible to damage which would compromise the high-speed transportation pathways as a whole, and so units that could access them would only be those the Collector granted permission to or those with approved genetic signatures.

For now, the Collector had approved only the elite goblin units, but would recalibrate the permissions over time.

Thokk was spat out inside an evolution chamber, his pod splitting open and sending him hurtling down from the ceiling in a shower of liquid. He spun in the air and righted himself, landing on a knee as he shook liquid off himself.

The carrier unit looked around in surprise at the space around him. The Evolution Chamber was a sizable cavern filled with pillars of coiling flesh lined with veins that glowed bright white. The entire place felt alive, buzzing with energy, each of the pillars pulsating to their own beating rhythm. All of these pillars were linked to high concentrations of primal energy necessary for evolutionary changes, and they were linked psionically to the Command Chamber.

By attaching a specimen to them, it was possible to initiate evolutions with them provided the Collector was present in the Command Chamber to direct them, though it could also program automated evolutions.

The Collector observed with eyes that could freely manifest in any location of the ship, and it projected its physical voice down.

"Carrier unit, place any part of your physical body upon one of the Molding Pillars," said the Collector.

"Yes, Sovnar," said Thokk as he slapped a palm onto a pillar. The glowing white veins in the pillar burst out of their cages of dark blue, nearly black flesh and snaked around Thokk's hand like white roots. Through these, the Collector transmitted memories and knowledge, for Thokk was the only one in the Fortress Vanguard that had direct capability to psionically mesh with the Collector.

Thokk closed his eyes as the Collector inputted the blueprint of the ship into his head and the basic functions of every area, but it kept the location of the Collector's Command Chamber from it so as to absolutely ensure its own safety.

Certainly, since the Collector was technically enclosed in its own pocket dimension, it was not vulnerable to physical harm, but said dimension still had to be physically anchored to a point inside of the Fortress Vanguard, and it was theoretically possible as the Collector had done to enter the Urth Vault that with the right type of magic, if a hostile specimen found that anchor, they could use it to gateway into the Collector's Command Chamber.

Integrated as the Collector was, it was defenseless in the Command Chamber, not to mention that the immensely valuable core of the Fortress Vanguard was located there.

"Got it," said Thokk as the white veins slid away from his arm. He nodded several times to himself, cocking his head this way and then that way. "It's a little complicated, but I think I know now."

The Collector clicked its mandibles in its underwater chamber. The carrier unit had some difficulty mastering the complexities of the Goblin language it was being taught by the elites and the elder, but that belied its actual mental processing capabilities.

That it could adequately memorize the complex layout of the Fortress Vanguard was impressive, though the Collector had collapsed that information as much as it could to digestible format.

"Utilize another Travel Pod and return to the Main Bay," said the Collector. "Inform the swarm of where their personal nests are and teach the basics of navigating the Large Tracts. The fighter known as 'Kui' is included in this command."

"You got it!" said Thokk with a smile as he watched a Pod Tendril unfurl from the ceiling before yanking it.