Outside in the distance, a wildcat did growl… Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl. --All Along the Watchtower/Bob Dylan **** Hunger drives them into dangerous pursuits. According to local wisdom, there are a thousand ways to eat bread, and a thousand ways more to bake bread made from rocks. It is no new thing to mine carbonaceous asteroids for the organic compounds that support human life. It is no new thing to seek out life that humans may consume, or to tailor dry and dusty planets so that edible things may arise. And now, if there is but a single truth, it is that the Nemaean stomach is the primary motivating force behind expansion--into the nether realms of the galaxy. Into the extragalactic void, where rogue stars roam. Inward, as well, towards the center of the galaxy itself, where strange and virulent energies may be harnessed in the service of stranger, infernal machines. They have followed the sweeping spiral of the Orion Spiral arm. They have crossed the starless gulfs to arrive (safely, for the most part) on the core-facing shores of the Sagittarius Arm. Because their stomachs make so incessant a demand, they expand farther. Farther. And farther still. They have met others: --Mathematicians. --Blue ones. --Countless half-sentients on a number of worlds that bear Nemaean names. If it is the need for resources that drives Nemaean expansion--and, indeed, ALL human interstellar progress, then it is the need to defend human stomachs that answers the most nagging of questions. Why? (Defend from what?) It is the planet Taina that inspires the question. Its name belies its meaning. Mystery. So peaceful a name, but the world upon which it is carried is a planet that drives cold dread through the Nemaean stellar-national heart. Taina, the Nemaeans say, is an aspect of the Western Lands. For some, this reference is opaque and meaningless…but a study of the most ancient of ancestral-world societies reveals a disturbing meaning. The Western Lands. Taina is a place for the dead. The Nemaeans have discovered this in their pursuit of rocks for bread. Once, there was an intelligence on Taina. This intelligence called the world by another name. Now, there are only ruins, remnants of technologies that still function despite the absence of keepers, of masters. Now, this re-named world is a protected territory; its entire stellar system is off limits to all but the most heavily armed of military cruisers. Mine fields and drive-disruption pickets envelop the system in concentric shells like the most deadly of Rüs Matryoshki. The natives of Taina, the Nemaeans say, were destroyed from outside forces. Foreign radiations swamp Taina's atmosphere. The semi-sentient machines left by vanished masters, spew transmissions across the globe, and by association, outward in an expanding radio bubble. The machines are waiting, the Nemaeans say. They make plaintive radio and neutrino noises, presumably giving reports or querying for new orders. If anyone learns how the Taina-natives died, it will be the Nemaeans. And it is the Nemaeans who are the first of the human breed to inherit the strange technologies of Taina. For now, Nemaen military and scientific vessels cruise the system, assiduously ignoring the drive to consume resources and make space for living. Human life is quiet now. There are only the grumbles of stomachs, and the occasional political squabble. But the children of Nemaea sense a disturbance on the stellar winds, and it is here at Taina that they lie in wait for the mysterious, night-cloaked eradicators who are sure to return. **** As always thank you for viewing, reading and commenting on this an my previous posts. I hope you enjoy this (and the others) as much as I've enjoyed coming up with all of this stuff!