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.
