“At first, I thought humans love and live to fight. Then I learned they hate it. That’s why they learned to be good at it. They want to go home and be done with it quickly.”

  — System Leader Rish, Memories on Taishon Tar, 25 P.I.

  Rish walked with Lieutenant Koval through the colony. The moment the governor had allowed humans onto the planet and signed a temporary alliance with General Russo, the Pioneers and human soldiers had arrived en masse.

  Rish always found it curious that human technology was primitive by Shraphen standards—particularly their drilling methods. The Shraphen used plasma drill systems to melt through stone; that was how the first colonial bunkers had been built.

  Human drill systems, by contrast, were massive, round constructions that cut and blasted through the stone foundation on which the colony was built. Shraphen plasma drills left an obsidian wall lining the melted tunnel, creating a hard outer shell.

  Human drilling required scaffolding to be erected behind them to prevent the roof from collapsing. But they used the crushed stone immediately to create something they called Flashcrete—a concrete-like substance that hardened almost instantly once sprayed onto the walls. Furthermore, it breathed… kind of. It pulled CO? from the air and integrated the carbon into its structure to form a carbon nanotube mesh, making Flashcrete walls self-healing and part of the life-support system.

  The physics behind it were well known to Shraphen scientists, but no one had ever considered testing them.

  A tiny voice inside her whispered, But if we are superior, why did we never try it? Humans have plasma technology, too. Are they really primitive?

  The bunker system the colony had built was designed to accommodate up to 400,000 people. The human tunnel and cavern network they drilled into the mountain could hold two million.

  Of course, no one in the government had been happy about letting the humans transform the colony into a fortress—at least not until Admiral Browner sent the data from the Batract spawn infestation and Hyperion’s boarding video.

  Now the colony was “tighter than the ass of a Siberian mule,” according to Lieutenant Koval.

  Rish’s ears searched the colony for sounds. It was quiet. The colonists were in the shelters, the anti-air guns manned and scanning the skies.

  The city's outer perimeter had become a makeshift wall, built from sandbags filled with stone drilled from the mountain.

  “Waste not, want not,” another idiom the lieutenant had just uttered. Rish was fairly sure not even humans knew all their own sayings, so she just went with it.

  Krun had decided to join the human heavy infantry for this fight, even though the governor had given him his old job back. After this battle, Krun would leave the pack.

  Tulk was somewhere on the wall, coordinating human–shraphen integration with Second Larrf. The pack was almost back at full strength—only Karrn, Frox, and her brother Kirnuk were missing.

  Frox and her brother were on their way to Earth—Frox to research further into the mysteries of their two peoples, and Kirnuk to heal.

  Karrn had been ordered to join the human fleet to help defend the system and then serve as a military attaché to the First Expeditionary.

  And she was now Pack Leader.

  The colony was well defended, but General Russo was unhappy that they didn’t have any Mammuts. Rish didn’t ask—she was already impressed by the human walker artillery.

  The human officers had passed around ear protection to the shraphen soldiers, explaining that human warfare was loud. Everywhere she and Koval went, shraphen and human soldiers held their positions, intentionally mixed together to promote camaraderie and the sharing of tactics and knowledge.

  Then the waiting ended. She had just joined General Russo in the forward operating base when the information came in: the Batract were on their way. The fleet had all but defeated the enemy force, but six craft were headed for the planet's surface.

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  Before Russo could even order a response, the Shraphen anti-air systems fired—nice, methodical plasma charges streaking into the dark sky.

  Then the human systems opened fire.

  The night sky began to glow with streaks of golden and green light. The sound was infernal, and Rish had to close her helmet.

  From the center of the city, missiles launched, and massive explosions shook the FOB’s walls, all built from sandbags and metal plating.

  “One bogey down,” a lieutenant on the radio informed the general. “Get 1st Recon Charlie Team there and torch the ship. We have to prevent them from creating spawn.”

  Rish remembered her designation. Her pack had been integrated into the 2nd Recon, Bravo Team, along with the newly formed Gamma Team, for this battle.

  Human pack designations were confusing—just as confusing as their rigid adherence to the command chain. Humans lived chaotic lives to the extreme, yet when thrown into a chaotic fight, they preferred to move in rigid formations.

  The ground shook as something exploded again, directly above the colony. A shockwave rippled through the cloud cover.

  “Sir, a ship has just self-destructed above the city. Debris is falling onto the colony.”

  “Shraphen plasma cannons—target the debris. Vaporize whatever you can. Koval, get out into the city and clear it. Don’t let them spawn.”

  Three other detonations occurred around the city; dust trickled from the ceiling of the FOB. In the distance, Rish could see the glimmer of falling pieces of a starship.

  “Three other ships detonated. One bogey is still in the air — it seems it’s trying to reach the other side of the planet.”

  “Goddammit, they’re the true invasion force. The others are just here to buy time for that bastard to grow properly.”

  Rish remembered the surveillance videos of the Argos. If the Batract could create those monsters on a ship, she didn’t want to imagine what they could spawn on a planet.

  “Get me Browner. The fleet has to take them out — with nukes if necessary.”

  The governor was connected to the FOB via video call. He chimed in, “Nuclear weapons? On our planet, General—you know we have to live here?”

  “Yes, Governor. Trust me when I tell you, we can clean this up.”

  Rish and Lieutenant Koval were already on their way out of the FOB, the lieutenant calling their squad to prepare to move out. The thunder of plasma guns firing at the falling debris was fading into silence. Everything they could destroy had been destroyed; the rest was up to them to find. And if they couldn’t deal with it, the heavy troops would come in.

  —————

  Dr. Nesbitt checked her notes again. She and her team were reviewing the Batract samples they had gathered aboard the Rosalind Franklin.

  That, in the last fifty years, nobody had bothered to examine the growths on the Batract’s back was astonishing. Everyone seemed to believe the lie that it was an environmental suit.

  The Batract’s cells were connected via their hyphae, like a neural network. In that sense, a Batract was a hive mind of multiple cells—at least that’s what conventional medicine would call it. But then again… are humans a hive mind of neural cells in our brains?

  No. Humans have specialized cells—so maybe the Batract do too.

  She scanned through the list of specimens the recon team had gathered. There… “a fucking ass-ugly spider,” as the recon team leader had put it.

  A robotic arm transported the spider-like being into the test chamber. The atmospheric sensors immediately detected methane and other gases indicative of decay.

  A laser cut through the chitin shell. Green-yellow slime seeped from the wound.

  She took a sample of the slime and the shell.

  Let’s see what you are—and if I’m right.

  The shell was chitin; she already knew that much. But the density was surprising, and it seemed to contain laminated layers of metal.

  To confirm, she prepared a sample for the mass spectrometer. She had an idea where the metal came from.

  The ship was now back under pressure. That meant she could hear the footsteps of the security team guarding the morgue entry—hoping they’d soon open the damned door and remove whatever lurked behind the welded-shut panels.

  Gerber and the security team wanted to wait until the ship’s repairs were finished. They planned to take whatever waited behind the doors to a holding cell—to test it, or even interrogate it.

  Scans run by some techs, Dr. Nesbitt didn’t know, revealed a single body walking up and down in the dark.

  If that didn’t creep someone out, nothing would.

  Focusing on the shell again, Jane saw it—Batract cells. However, instead of forming a neural network, they had excreted more chitin into their cell walls, resulting in a hard outer shell.

  Not a valid specialization, but rather special roles. Nothing on Earth behaved that way, so no method of cataloging would fit.

  Then she checked the slime—again, only Batract fungal cells, but arranged differently this time, mimicking muscular properties.

  She was becoming increasingly certain: Batract spawn were entirely composed of fungal cells. She could already hear Gerber making some stupid joke like, “Walking mushrooms.”

  Then she saw it—and her eyes went wide.

  Next to the lab she was currently using was her xenobot lab, where they tested various use cases of xenobot technology. The Unigel Matrix had been the peak of her career so far, but they were still only scratching the surface of what was possible.

  The Batract behave similarly to my xenobots. One base cell interacts with its surroundings by creating copies of itself. Xenobots could move, connect to neural networks, and even interface with human brains—as they did in the translator guide use cases.

  They could be programmed to store data digitally and, when used as translator guides, teach people another language via xenobot insertion. They could form larger structures and move across a patient’s body to check for injuries.

  The Batract behaved similarly—but more intelligently. Jane could already see the improvements a fungal xenobot would have compared to the mammalian cells she worked with.

  The implications hit her. A cold shiver ran down her spine. Now it all made sense—the Batract’s scientific rules, the prohibition of xenobot and nanobot technology, the ban on any AI research, the medical experiments.

  The Batract are a biological xenobot weapon that evolved—and escaped.