Homeworld (Odyssey One) (58 page)

DEEP SPACE, APPROACHING SOL

THE SWARM SLOWED their approach, tightening up as the yellow star drew closer.

They were still too far away to taste the red band that they knew had totally contaminated the entire system of planets, but each member of the swarm was well aware of just how disgustingly filthy the system was. They also knew it was a lethal system, on an order nearly unparalleled in their ingrained genetic memory.

It had happened before, once, long before the existence of the current swarm. There had been a populace that infested multiple stars, spanning untold swaths of the galaxy. Those too had been lethal to the swarm, eliminating them with an ease that none since had matched until now.

It had taken hundreds of queens and millions of under-soldiers and ships to bring that species to its final end. Their last system was a fortress that spanned the entire gravity well of the star, with weapons that could wipe out a hundred drones in an instant, but it still fell to the swarm. More than a million drones fell in battle, but in the end even their inert material was a weapon against the enemy.

The mass of their dead had pushed in on the stellar construct, a massive shell larger than the Hive itself, until the material had cracked and buckled. As it shifted in its orbit, power blown out from the constant attacks, the shell had lost stability and begun to wobble. Over a period of time still lost to even the swarm’s memory, the swarm had pressed the assault so that the inhabitants could not save their artificial world.

It had finally blown out of orbit and collided with its own star.

This time such efforts would not be required, however. The species they were targeting was lethal in ways not seen in ages long past, but they were not fortified. The system was almost natural, despite the sheer stench of the foul band of scarlet.

No matter its lethality, no matter the defenses there, it would fall.

It would fall, and then the swarm would turn its attention back to the true task.

The galaxy must be swept clean.

COMMAND BUNKER, MONS SYSTEMA, RANQUIL

ADMIRAL RAEL TANNER slumped in his seat. The news from the Terran homeworld was not good. He could read that between the lines in Kian’s report, even if it weren’t spelled out by statements from both Kian herself and the Terran admiral, Gracen.

The horror of it, beyond the atrocity that he knew awaited the world, was that somehow they had developed a weapon that could be the savior of the colonies.

If only we had a few more years. Months, even!

Kian intended to ask, to beg if need be, for the plans to the Terran weapon. Even just the concept would be a boon, but he wasn’t certain that she would get it. Tanner didn’t know the Terrans well, but to judge them by Eric Weston, he doubted that they would see their deaths as something to be faced in silence.

No, they would fight to the last man and woman, he had no doubt.

And, Tanner was relatively certain, they would not consider giving away weapons so devastating as those they had developed over centuries of blood and war. Not until the end was inevitable.

Tanner drafted an order to Kian with deliberate strokes, knowing that he was perhaps sacrificing two of his best ships, but he could not give away any chance for the survival of his people.

When he was done with that, he sent it on and slowly stood from his station. “Ithan.”

“Yes, Admiral?”

“Please contact Ambassador LaFontaine. Ask for an emergency meeting, please.”

“Yes, Admiral. Immediately.”

This would not be a conversation he would enjoy, or care to remember in the ever increasingly dark future.

The entity referred to by the local people as Central considered the information it had just processed with what a human might consider a heavy heart. The very existence of the Terran humans brought upon so many confusing thoughts that learning of their impending end set him reeling with even more confusion.

Central was the product of its environment in more ways than even it was likely to admit, but it knew that it was passive and cool because that was the general preference of the people of its world. Order, logical thought, intelligence, and peaceful existence were what it prized above all else.

The Terrans were, in so many ways, the antithesis of that. Passionate, violent, and chaotic. Oh, it wasn’t that they didn’t have logic, nor was it that the Priminae people lacked passion. It was a subtle differentiation, just a matter of degrees and general consensus.

Individuals varied, but the group mind favored one balance or another.

The Terrans were very different in the group mind than were the Priminae, very different indeed.

Their deaths would mean that it could contain the contamination presented by them upon the Priminae, but it also removed the very vital help they had offered. Survival was now more in question than ever, despite everything that Central had access to in the histories of its world and people.

Beyond all that, though, something deeper trembled in the ancient entity.

Sorrow?

Perhaps. Central couldn’t tell, in all honesty, as its emotions were rare. Oh, it was not cold and unfeeling, nor was it bound by the rules of math or some other foolishness. It merely experienced emotions as a gestalt of the world, and it was very rare that any one emotion ruled over an entire planet.

Still, Central personally felt something tug deep inside, in some place it had rarely felt and never bothered to identify.

It would miss at least one Terran.