Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [15]
Tiger-striped domates strolled among the structures like dragons sniffing for victims. Some of the original colonists who worked outlying farmsteads had packed up and just left, fleeing with their belongings into the wilderness. For the time being, the invading creatures paid no attention to the surreptitious evacuation, but if the Klikiss ever decided to search the terrain thoroughly, Margaret was sure the fugitive colonists would be hunted down.
She would do her best to stave that off for as long as she could.
'What are they building down there?' Orli asked her. The girl seemed to think Margaret knew everything. 'They look like flying cargo containers.'
'I postulate that they are Klikiss spacecraft,' DD said. The three of them watched the insect workers and scientists scuttling about like windup toys, fully focused on their tasks. In an open field near the new alien structures, one of the interlocking independent ships tested its engines, blasting dust and exhaust flames as it lifted into the sky, then descended to the construction area again. 'Do you think that's correct, Margaret Colicos?'
Margaret did know some of the plans the new breedex was making. 'Yes, they're spacecraft, components of a swarmship.'
'What do they need spacecraft for? They've got the transportals.'
'The transportal network goes to many worlds, but certain coordinate tiles were damaged. So the Klikiss have to travel by more conventional means, as well. They're going to hunt down other subhives - and the robots.'
On almost all transportals found on abandoned worlds, certain coordinate tiles had intentionally been destroyed as the Klikiss fled. In the ruins on Rheindic Co, she and Louis had found an intact trapezoidal wall. Trying to escape from the black robots, Louis had chosen a symbolic coordinate at random and sent Margaret through, meaning to follow. Sadly, Sirix and the other two robots had fallen upon him - leaving Margaret alone in hell…
Orli was full of questions. 'Why do the Klikiss want to attack other subhives?'
Margaret had never been particularly good with children, even her own son Anton. She just didn't know how to talk to them, couldn't remember how to put aside her serious demeanour, but this girl seemed much more than a child. For whatever reason, Orli seemed to have taken a liking to Margaret. And DD. 'How old are you?'
'Fifteen.'
'You know that humans war on each other, as well. But for Klikiss it is a biological imperative. A form of population control.' Trapped among them, Margaret had studied the insect race intensely, examining their social orders, their interactions, at last learning to communicate with them.
'I comprehend them more as an archaeologist than a biologist. The Klikiss have a cyclical society whose driving engine is conquest, consolidation, and dominance. When there are many subhives, the breedexes war with each other. One breedex conquers and subsumes the weaker of the two, increasing its own hive, then continues its war against another subhive. Hives fission and grow, breeding new warriors to replace those lost in the battles. Each victor incorporates other hives, eliminating rivals and growing strong, until the entire scattered race becomes nothing more than a few vast conflicting breedexes. And finally when those struggles are over, only one breedex remains, controlling the Klikiss race.
'But a single breedex in a single vast hive would eventually grow stagnant and die out. After a certain point, the last victorious breedex fissions one final, spectacular time and scatters all of the Klikiss through thousands of transportals to new worlds. That is the Great Swarming. Then they go dormant for thousands of years. To wait.'
'Why do they sleep for so long?' Orli asked the question as if there were a simple answer.
Margaret had studied countless alien records, tried to ask the Klikiss for reasons, but even such a simple question seemed beyond their comprehension. No points of comparison. Crouching in the dirt, using sharp sticks and fingers to scrawl intricate lines