"I Eat Glory"
                    copyright 2008 by Dave Van Domelen
               based on properties owned by Privateer Press
         used without permission, but hopefully with forebearance
===========================================================================

     I am born in fire and starmetal, surging into the skies over a world I
have never seen but know as well as any of my older brethren.  My essence
overflows with the knowledge of my kind, gathered over the eons and dispensed
through the heritage of birth.
     As I fly, I see my slower kin crawl over the surface of this new world,
this new meal.  They chew and swallow, feeding the motherfather the raw stuff
of this planet as their kind has since the beginning of time.  Such is the
lot of their clade, and with it a long life, assuming the unusually
persistent defenders of our feeding trough don't end those lives.
     I do not envy them, though.  They have their purpose, I have mine.
     I soar past the strange, regular structures the natives have built from
our food, and feel a twinge of hunger.  While mine is not the task of feeding
on matter, the hunger is too deep, too fundamental a part of our kind for me
to be immune to its call.
     My inherited memories tell me that on occasion one of my clade does
indulge in that hunger, stopping to eat mere matter.  I see the events
through the eyes of the motherfather, of course, rather than directly.  My
kind does not breed, and cannot pass on memories directly.  The only way we
live on in memory is when we please the motherfather and are noticed,
remembered. 
     I sing my defiant song to the skies as I streak past some contrivance of
the natives that allows them their own clumsy imitation of my own flight.  "I
will be remembered!" I howl.  They do not understand me, cannot understand
me, but I don't care.  I don't intend to be remembered by food.  
     We have been on this world long enough for my memories to contain their
languages, however, and I know by what names they call us.  The context
eludes me, but it is no matter.  My life will end very soon, and with it all
concerns of naming and context.
     There!
     Directly in my path is the lumbering hulk that seeks to slay the
motherfather!  
     THAT MUST NOT BE ALLOWED!
     I arrow in towards the would-be murderer, the cosmic power singing in my
veins, driving me onward.  Power harvested by the ones these feeble creatures
call "Crawlers" and "Destructomites," and passed on to me that I might
perform my mission without needing to stop and feed on matter.
     I have my own meal of destruction to partake in, as this "Defender X" is
about to learn.
     I have my own destiny, laid out the moment I was born mere moments ago.
     I will have my fill this day of the only food I will ever need.
     They call me Explodohawk, and I eat glory!

=============================================================================

Author's Notes:

     This is not so much a story as a character sketch, but it's about as
involved a plot as you can get with an Explodohawk, eh?  Barring one that
gets winged and crashes, I suppose, but the idea of hurt/comfort fic with an
Explodohawk is something that would make a Lord of Cthul cringe.
     I figure that genetic memory is almost inevitable for entities like the
Planet Eater Units...especially Explodohawks, as they're not likely to get
much time to train in the use of their singular talent.  :)  And while they
may seem like mindless devourers to us squishies on the ground, I like the
idea that they actually preserve millions of years of memories of all the
worlds they have devoured, perhaps even having some sort of culture.