“Total failure. That’s not even considering the fallout this will have on diplomacy.”
“I know you know how fucking far diplomacy is from my mind right now.”
“I’m aware.”
“We’re protected against direct gate invasion on all worlds. We’ve tested new shield systems. We’ve made huge progress on projectile interception for ground based defenses. We’ve had unbelievable strides in emp technology. So, I’d like an explanation for this.”
“You refer-”
“To the abrupt, simultaneous loss of contact with seventeen frontier worlds. Any probes we send are lost on entry. I want answers, Dupont. Knowledge is power, and I find my reserves lacking. It vexes me. I’m vexed.”
“Consider me motivated.”
“What am I supposed to be seeing?”
[Nothing.]
Nadia laughs involuntarily and leans back, still holding the railing. The vacancy in Tim’s eyes seems a perfect fit for the wholly lightless waste that waits on the other side of the glass. Zen grips the railing and lurches forward, pressing his angular head to the surface.
[This is the grave I will bury it all in. Every official, every bureaucrat, every senator. Every general, hiding behind his troops.]
“You still haven’t told us what this is about, Zen. What happened to you?”
He turns, and Tim is the only one among them who does not flinch at the sudden sensation his eyeless gaze brings.
[A genuine attempt on my life. They threatened me with oblivion, even after I withdrew, and took the Pliktik with me.]
Utter still lays claim to the room, but for the uncoordinated squeaking of Zen’s talons on the railing. Phithia chitters. It is Tim, in monotone, who asks what the others will not.
“What do you mean to do about it?”
He laughs. It is the squeal and hiss of hydraulics, the whine of a disintegrator, the static of radio.
[I will sever the head, and watch the body flail and die.]
They come in hordes. Glistening, buzzing hosts descend from the sky, arise from the dirt, and march through the brush. In droves, birthing pods plummet from orbit, and plant the seed of the Pliktik colony across dozens of worlds. If once they were loosely organized, they now act with perfect precision, overwhelming outposts within days of their arrival. Organic acids delivered by living shells splatters fortress walls in targeted artillery strikes. Openings in the defense are made to swarm with warrior organisms, unloading venomous projectiles into unprepared ranks. Monstrous creatures the size of houses batter through firing lines, disrupting all tactics and formation.
The Pliktik return, and at the behest of their new leadership, devote their efforts to felling the arrays that protect planets from having jump gates formed on the surface. And then come the machines. Amid the chaos of infestation and frantic defense, the sudden, unheralded ingress of countless robotic soldiers can only mean the end of those worlds they invade. Worst of all, the machines and the insects seem not only to spare each other, but to actively aid. Where the Pliktik struggle to breach bunkers and cities, the machines create openings with concentrated artillery and breaching weaponry. Where the metal soldiers are outnumbered, the teeming masses come to flood the war zone with unparalleled numbers.
They have been tamed. Phithia sees all through the eyes of the insectoid soldiers, and carries out the will of the one who, returned to life with her aid, finally answered her pleas. She is loved, she is no longer other.
Her psychic prowess has been augmented, and she has become empress to her kind; minor cybernetic augmentations are embedded in her carapace, attending to her nervous system and easing the load of her thoughts, thoughts that span light-years in milliseconds. The sparkle of millions of microscopic jump gates drifts in her wake as she stalks the halls of the Dyson sphere, a lonely regent, at times accompanied by Zen, who attends to her health with something approaching care.
Seeds of Fear 