Hey! This is my first fanfic. Just an idea I had floating around in my head for a while. Please R&R!

Oh, and I don't own anyone or anything from 40k or Star Wars, so please don't sue me.

Chapter 1: Something New

Silence.

Empty.

Alone.

These were the first sensations that passed through the mind of the Leviathan Hive-Ship after the event.

For a moment, it was confused. Just minutes before, it had been directing its fleet in a battle with a group of prey-vessels over a green planet full of biomass. Then, the lead prey-ship had fired something, a salvo of…it struggled to find a term, then settled on one taken from the mind of a prey-creature: torpedoes. It fired a salvo of torpedoes then there was a flash of light and color, then the Leviathan found itself in empty space.

Alone.

The feeling came again. It was not due to actually being alone, for it was surrounded by fellow bio-ships, from its tiny seven-hundred meter long war drone escorts to its two brother Leviathans, measuring in at over six kilometers.

No, the feeling came from a silence. A silence the leviathan had never experienced before. It was the silence of the chattering of trillions of minds, a silence from the force that bound the race together, the silence of the voice that had driven its kind since the beginning of time.

The Hive Mind was quiet.

The Leviathan started to writhe in the darkness of space, overcome by the silence and confused by the lack of guidance. Around it, the other organisms of the fleet whirred around, thrashing their appendages and crashing into each other. They were acting on instinct alone, not knowing what to do.

STOP!

A psychic command echoed through the mind of the Leviathan and every other creature in the fleet. It came from a chamber that sat inside the center of the Leviathan's body. Within the cavity, a great intelligence rested in its corporeal form, twisting and splitting and melding the DNA of millions of species to create the perfect organism for any problem. She had a great fat body, like that of an enormous worm, capped with a distended, eyeless head that housed her enormous brain. The head was capped with a protective crown of chitin. She was the mother of the species, and they would obey and defend her to their deaths.

She was their Norn Queen.

She reached out and touched the mind of the Leviathan, and guided it to a tiny, unnoticed thread of consciousness.

Look. Here

The thread whispered, whispered in a voice that could never be heard by the ears, only felt by the mind. It was an endless whisper, the purpose of an entire species distilled into three words, repeated endlessly for as long as their species survived.

Adapt

Consume

Survive

The Hive Mind's control flowed through the countless millions of light-years separating the leviathan from its kind, asserting its dominance over it, and then reaching out to take control of the rest of the bio-ships in the fleet, intertwining all their thoughts, feelings, senses, beings, together into one great consciousness.

Control was restored, and the ships settled.

With the vessels connected, the Leviathan knew that a prowler vanguard vessel had spotted something in the distance. It was silvery, it had lights, and it was moving.

It was prey.

As one, and in perfect synchronization, the fleet turned towards the object, intent on continuing the eternal work of their kind.

It was time to feed.

...

"Uh… Sir? What happened to the hostiles?" asked a young deck officer.

"I…I don't know. Those vortex torpedoes can do a lot of damage, but not destroy an entire bloody Hive Fleet!" responded Admiral Vorpo. He stood on the bridge of the "Intrepid Aquilla", a Vengeance-Class Grand cruiser and the flagship of battlefleet Cloricus.

Just a moment before, he and his fleet had been fighting a losing battle to defend Cloricus Alphus from the encroaching splinter of hive fleet Megalodon, and Vorpo launched his vortex torpedoes to try to 'thin the herd', and instead the whole enemy fleet disappeared! He wanted to know why.

He turned to the vox operator. "Get me the chief Techpriest."

"Eye sir!"

A moment later, a crackling, mechanical, emotionless voice came out of the speaker. "What do you want sir?" it said.

"Falron," Vorpo struggled to keep his voice level, "I want to know what happened to the enemy. What did the torpedoes do?"

"Give me a moment…" Falron's voice trailed off. The bridge grew silent as everyone waited to hear the response. Some of the younger officers even leaned closer to the com station in their eagerness for an answer.

Finally, the vox crackled to life. "I think I've got it," came Falron's voice through the speaker, "it seems that the vortex torpedoes were faulty. Instead of opening a portal and tearing parts of the target into the warp, they all reacted together to create a rift in space time, effectively transporting the fleet to another part of the universe." He paused. "We're very lucky that we're still here. We should have been sucked into the portal with them."

Well, mystery solved, thought Vorpo.

"Admiral!" yelled the sensor officer. "I've picked up something. It seems a few bio-ships escaped the event and are attacking the fleet. What are your orders?"

Snapped back into focus by the promise of action, Vorpo strode to the golden command throne set into the center of the bridge. He sat down, his body settling easily to the shape of the chair he spent more time in than his bed.

"Command the fleet to converge on any groups and annihilate them with overwhelming firepower." He gazed out the armorglass bridge window, staring out into the stars.

"Whatever happened to splinter-fleet Chimera, they're someone else's problem now." He mumbled to himself as his beloved ship unleashed the emperor's wrath upon the forgotten Bio-ships.