MorningLightMountain began to expand its territory once more. Herds of motile soldiers, armed with explosives and rudimentary cannons, overran the two valleys it had conquered before. With soldier motiles trailing long multi-core cables behind them, MorningLightMountain could react to the flow of battle instantaneously, easily outmaneuvering its opponents. Those first victories were followed up by a series of swift advances across the countryside until its herds had established a broad channel of land leading directly to the southern temperate zone. The remaining immotiles reacted cautiously, knowing that holding on to such huge areas was impossible. It wasn’t until months had passed that they realized their error as MorningLightMountain consolidated its grip on its annexed lands. With a grouping that now consisted of over three thousand individual immotiles, MorningLightMountain was easily capable of congregating enough motile herds to occupy its lands, mining and farming them in an operation as tightly controlled as the original valley. For the first time, captured industrial facilities were pressed into service, increasing its manufacturing base relative to the size of its budding empire.
With a direct route from its valley to the fresh temperate lands, its expansionist ambitions could now be realized. A torrent of motiles and machinery were dispatched south to exploit the new resources there, setting up the pylons and cables that knitted the whole edifice together.
It took the remaining immotiles years to build the grand alliances that finally limited MorningLightMountain’s growth, although it could never be completely halted. In typical imperial fashion, MorningLightMountain formed its own alliances as a counterbalance.
Within another fifty years all the immotiles had the ability to send their nerve impulses via cable and wireless relays. This development in conjunction with new and powerful weapons derived from the Primes’ increasing knowledge of chemistry and physics led to an era of consolidation. The smaller immotile territories were invaded and taken over by more powerful neighbors. Temperate wastelands were colonized, with mining and manufacturing operations extending into the polar regions. It was only when nuclear weapons were developed that a kind of equilibrium returned. Fission and fusion bombs allowed the smaller territories to hold their larger brethren at bay with the threat of total annihilation.
Spaceflight and offplanet colonies were the next logical development, and one that the Primes pursued vigorously. MorningLightMountain was one of the earliest immotiles to send ships out to the asteroids and planets to catalogue their resources. Given the distances involved, the old problem of time-delay emerged again. Direct electronic linkages were difficult to sustain, control slipped, and without it the motiles were utterly incapable of responding to any technological situation. They simply weren’t smart enough.
One of the smaller immotile groupings provided the solution. ColdLakePromontory was desperate to secure further resources for itself and its herds, which made it willing to innovate to a degree further than the larger more conservative groupings would consider. It amalgamated a new immotile separate from the main group, using an electronic linkage to integrate its thoughts. In effect, the new immotile was a smaller identical twin of ColdLakePromontory. Even with a time-delay, their thoughts were shared; divergence didn’t occur.
ColdLakePromontory2 was placed on a spaceship, and flown out to an industrial module attached to an asteroid. The notion of a mobile immotile was regarded with near universal shock by the other immotiles. They did however watch the experiment with obsessive interest. ColdLakePromontory2 supervised the mineral extraction processes and subsequent construction of a habitation section. More importantly, it maintained its linkage with ColdLakePromontory back on the planet, remaining part of the group mind. Mineral and metal resources from the asteroid flowed back to ColdLakePromontory’s territory on the planet.
Planet-based immotiles dispersed units of themselves across the solar system. It was a space race of colossal proportions. Territories were extended to take in vast sections of the other two solid planets, and entire gas-giant moons. Breakaways were inevitable as wars and conflicts out among the high frontier severed the vital communications links with the planet, and immotile units went independent from their original groups. In many cases that was the cause of conflicts, as the planetary motiles tried to regain control of their lost space-based territories.
The rate of the Prime civilization’s expansion across its solar system never approached anything like exponential. It would take millennia to occupy and utilize all the resources orbiting the star. But the group immotiles were effectively creatures who could live forever, and many of them were planning for the far future.
MorningLightMountain constructed the first interstellar ship on one of its high-orbit asteroid bases. It was a fusion drive vessel; the Primes with their logical thought processes and observation-based scientific research lacked the mental ability to speculate wildly about such concepts as FTL. With MorningLightMountain8658 on board the starship, it took off toward the nearest star, three and a half light-years away. The mission was supposed to be a reconnaissance, sending back information about the available planets and their suitability for exploitation. MorningLightMountain knew it wouldn’t be able to control MorningLightMountain8658 once the ship was outside the Prime solar system. However, it had deliberately restricted the machinery on board the starship, denying MorningLightMountain8658 the ability to establish any sort of technology-based colony. That should have ensured MorningLightMountain8658 simply scanned the system and returned. MorningLightMountain wasn’t sure what use it would have for another star system, but it couldn’t ignore future possibilities. Knowing what was there would help it determine what to do about other stars. There was the remote option that if the resources of its own star system were completely depleted it could move itself to a new planet entirely, one without any other immotile group to contend with.
The one thing MorningLightMountain, or any other Prime immotile, never expected was to find an alien species. All other animal life had finally been exterminated from the Prime homeworld during the last expansion over the temperate lands. They didn’t think in terms of other intelligences. When MorningLightMountain8658 decelerated insystem, it found an extensive civilization occupying the fourth solid planet. Unfortunately for the natives of the second star system, they were a benign species who advanced themselves through cooperation. Physically, they were trisymmetric, smaller and weaker than a Prime motile. They were also individuals.
The starship might not have had any manufacturing systems on board, but it certainly had weapons. MorningLightMountain8658 subdued a vast area of the new planet with nuclear and kinetic bombardment from orbit, and commandeered what was left of the aliens’ industrial base. It began an extensive research project into the trisymmetric creatures themselves. There was a lot for MorningLightMountain8658 to learn, concepts and ideas that both alarmed and intrigued it. Communication with sound. Reproduction via fertilized eggs. Biology in general, and genetics in particular—a field that provided amazing insights into itself. Research into their own physiology and nature wasn’t something Primes had ever conducted; they’d never had the need. Fiction—that was a strange one. Art. Entertainment. All nonsensical distractions to a Prime.
MorningLightMountain8658 began to build its new territory around the starship landing site, incorporating the useful ideas that the aliens offered up into its traditional concepts. Surviving aliens were treated like motiles, and conscripted to help build the territory. Three years later, the next Prime starship arrived, sent by a different immotile. The firefight that ensued devastated half of the continent where MorningLightMountain8658 had established itself. Neither of the immotiles was damaged. They agreed to an alliance, and divided up the planet.
MorningLightMountain wasn’t surprised when its first starship didn’t return. Interstellar travel was a huge unknown; it expected many setbacks. More starships were already being built in anticipation. None of the starships sent by other immotiles had reported back, either. The s
tarship designs were refined, and new missions launched. All of which were swallowed up by the void between the stars.
After almost a century of starflight, and twenty-eight ships sent to the nearby star, the Primes finally had one return. It was the most heavily armed ship they’d built, and the first to have a force field for defense. MorningLightMountain had led an alliance of the three most powerful immotiles to manufacture the behemoth. Only its devastating firepower had ensured its survival as it was attacked by a swarm of warships on arrival. It had managed to capture a large chunk of wreckage from one of the attackers. The knowledge it contained was horrifying to the entire Prime home system. Not only had the immotiles controlling the earlier starships become independent, they had apparently incorporated alien concepts into their technology. Most alarming of all was the use of the new science of genetics. They were modifying their bodies, blending in alien traits to “improve” themselves. Their motiles were smarter and stronger, capable of making complex decisions, while the immotiles were sequencing refinement after refinement into their neural structure, advancing their thought-processing capacity far beyond their natural state. Machines were also being used to supplement body function, cybernetic additions that allowed immotile movement, and even separation from the group home. They were evolving artificially, diverging from pure Prime. They would be rivals, and their new nature would give them advantages impossible for the original Primes to achieve.
The discovery unified the entire Prime solar system into a single alliance. A fleet of warships were built and dispatched across the void to annihilate their enemies. A second, larger fleet followed. A third, the greatest of all.
In response, alienPrime ships hurtled into the Prime home system, armed with terrible weapons. Before the ships were destroyed, the habitable territories on the outermost solid planet were completely wiped out along with all the industrial colonies around the first gas giant. Hundreds of Prime ships had been sacrificed in the defense.
Then it happened: the strangest weapon of all was used. The enemy alienPrimes established a force field around the entire star system. Nothing could penetrate it; not nuclear weapons, nor quantum field interference. It was impervious to everything Prime science could strike it with. MorningLightMountain and all the others were trapped inside, while the alienPrime immotiles remained free to spread themselves and their contagion across the universe. There was nothing the original Primes could do except repair the damage to their civilization, expand their territories across the frozen outer planetoids, research new weapons, and wait.
Eleven hundred eighty-two years later, the force field vanished as abruptly as it appeared.
MorningLightMountain’s outer sensor satellites detected fluctuations in its quantum structure rippling across the surface for nearly an hour before the field finally lost cohesion. Almost immediately, every immotile launched spaceships from their asteroids and planet territories right across the Prime system. They accelerated hard, rushing to get outside the field’s previous boundary line before it reestablished itself. The eight that MorningLightMountain had held in readiness for just this occasion were among the first to leave.
With that action completed, MorningLightMountain and its allies began an extensive sensor search of space beyond the boundary. Immediately they found a huge rotating spherical structure, twenty-five thousand kilometers in diameter, orbiting along the ecliptic. The structure was larger than the homeworld, but with hardly any mass, so it couldn’t be a planet. Yet it was emitting in every measurable spectrum, and had a completely alien quantum signature. Four ships were dispatched to investigate.
Strangest of all, there was no sign of the alienPrimes. Defenses around every planetary and space territory were brought up to their full capability in readiness for the surely imminent attack. But no weapons of any kind tested them. There was nothing. All the alliances combined their sensor information. Everything remained blank.
MorningLightMountain was uncertain how to proceed. It had planned for what it considered every eventuality when the force field was removed. It could fight and flee; it had a grand alliance ready to build a fleet to exterminate all alienPrime life at the second star, and wherever else they had corrupted. That the alienPrimes would do nothing was confusing it considerably.
Its most powerful telescopes were hurriedly trained on the neighboring star for any clue of their activity. That produced the greatest surprise of all. A force field had encased the alienPrime system as well.
None of the immotiles had ever considered there might be a second alien life, one that was more powerful than Primes. Accepting the concept was a frightening thing. They watched the newly exposed stars with a considerable sense of anxiety. Still more ships were dispatched outward in a frantic attempt to establish Prime life on new worlds where the barriers would not imprison them.
Four days after the force field vanished, the most sophisticated spacial sensors that MorningLightMountain possessed reported a very unusual quantum disturbance washing across the system. The effect was traveling faster than the speed of light. MorningLightMountain considered that such an event might signal the arrival of the aliens who had created the force field. The effect wasn’t repeated, which left it deliberating how to respond: to warn the others and form the Grand Alliance to fight back against the attackers, or to attempt its own evacuation.
MorningLightMountain was still considering its options when its ordinary sensors showed it a fight between ships from TemperateSeaIsland and SouthernRockPlateau close to a cluster of asteroid bases. Even now when the Prime alliances knew they had to cooperate to face their enemy, the old conflicts still raged. Expansion had been massive throughout the last thousand years, and resources within the Prime star system were now extremely scarce. The pressure on individual territories was greater than it had ever been before. For the last two centuries, MorningLightMountain had been increasingly concerned that the immotiles would end up fighting a terminal war and exterminate themselves. It was a common worry. As a consequence, immotiles had diverted more and more effort into building and stockpiling weapons.
Almost a day later, thousands of sensors orbiting the homeworld picked up a microwave emission from a point beyond the second gas giant. The signal was crude, using patterns that had been developed for messaging long before the time when the force field appeared. A brief identification sequence revealed the sender to be MorningLightMountain17,735, who had been on board one of the early starships to visit the alienPrime star system and never returned. The content of the message was short and simple: This ship contains aliens; there are many of them, and they are dangerous. Destroy them.
The message repeated ten times, then ended. MorningLightMountain was puzzled. How had MorningLightMountain17,735 survived for so long? What was it doing on an alien ship? Why was the message so short? Not that it had many options remaining. A scan of the section of space where the message originated revealed a tiny glimmer of infrared next to a small chunk of cold rock. MorningLightMountain knew of no Prime settlement at those coordinates. Other immotiles were already ordering ships to investigate the message’s origin point. MorningLightMountain sent instructions to its subsidiary groupings on the moons of the second gas giant. Four of its most powerful ships launched on an interception course.
Alliances broke down and new ones formed as the first eight ships closed on the alien. Immotiles disagreed on how to deal with the situation. Some wanted to capture the aliens and their ship, others were keen to follow MorningLightMountain17,735’s advice and exterminate the invader.
The alien started transmitting signals at the Prime ships as they closed on it. They were incomprehensible; no immotile could understand it. Missiles were fired as alliances came into sharp conflict over how to proceed.
With the lead Prime ship approaching fast and launching a missile salvo, the alien vanished inside a huge burst of spacial distortion.
The surface-to-orbit transport ship descended vertically through the Prime homeworld’s lo
wer atmosphere. It was a large blunt cone shape, although it made little use of aerodynamics to land. Eight fusion rockets were arranged around the rim of its base, roaring out slim two-kilometer-long jets of incandescent plasma. Between them, they produced point nine of a Prime gravity, lowering the ship gently toward the coastline beneath it.
Steam began to swirl up from the surface of the sea as the wavering tips of the plasma stabbed down into it. Within seconds, a hemispherical tempest of radiant vapor was streaking up and out from the epicenter like a squashed nuclear mushroom cloud. As the ship sank down into the supersonic storm front, force fields came on to protect the fuselage from the maelstrom it was creating. The fusion rockets died away when the ship was only a few meters above the seething surface, and its conical base splashed down with a soft bump into the boiling water.
Tugboats closed in and towed the spaceship back to the piers and loading bays that stretched for over a hundred kilometers along the coast. This was the main planetary spaceport that MorningLightMountain had built to handle the cargo flying between the planet and its offworld territories. Thousands of flights arrived and departed every year, pouring heat and mildly radioactive contaminants into the local environment. Nothing grew within a hundred kilometers of the spaceport anymore, no crops or weeds of any kind, turning the land behind the shore to a desert of sodden lifeless soil. Even the sea was dead, a choppy expanse of gray water with a thin skin of ochre scum.
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