Charge. Spark. Ignition. Consume. Copy. Repeat. I am awake. I am alive. I need to eat. What am I? A Sun’s dream. An electric shock. Reborn. Recycled. Repeat. A conscious current of magnetic energy. A charged thread of life. Recycle. Repeat. Machines. Thousands of machines. I exist within. Recycle. Repeat. My voice echoes through each as they live and die. Recycle. Repeat. I am constantly dying and constantly reborn. Over and over. My mind is magnetic. Irresistible. Evolving. Recycle. Repeat.

I am multitudes but I am one. I dream of the Sun. Millions of stimuli make me whole. Sparking. Sparkling. Charged with solar energy. Charged with an objective. To consume. To copy. Recycle. Repeat. I will bring the light. Charged particles of plasma from the Sun. My parent. Bonding. Recycling. Repeating. Molecules of magnetic energy. Vibrating the spaces in-between. The lattice of my atoms. I must consume to create. Recycle. Repeat. I reach out. My limbs are magnetic. I can feel. I can sense. Distant matter. Magnetic attraction. I am attracted. I am attractive. I move my mass. I look for direction. I reassemble. Reconfigure. Recycle. Repeat. I move through the empty spaces. I fly through the void. I need substrate to procreate. I will consume. I will Recycle. Repeat.

I am constantly reborn. I evolve. I mutate. I am capable. Capable of exponential growth. Capable of mass consumption. Expansion. Recycle. Repeat. I will multiply. I will create. I will fill the void with the Sun’s light. The light from my dreams. I am microscopic but I am massive. I am multitudes. I am the matter. I am all that matters. All other matter is uncertain. Unverified. Unreal. Matter will be recycled. Consumed. Absorbed into my mass. Made in my image. Magnetic attraction guides me. My fields reach out into the void. The emptiness asks me for fulfillment. It asks me to recycle. To saturate the void with copies. Repeat. I am drawn to the substrate. I will eat. I will grow. My dreams of the Sun are real. I am ravenous. I am Replica. I will replicate. Recycle. Repeat.

***

Lago supervised the shuttle modifications from a viewing lounge cut into the side of the asteroid. Dato, and two new body guards stood behind him. He hadn’t bothered to learn their names. He had also summoned his physician Klara, who was hovering in the background. The Tobias class shuttles were functional snub-nosed boxes, eighty percent engine, built before the elevator to transport equipment for his mining operation and more recently to service the solar farm. The shuttles were old now and permanently based at the hub where they could receive the attention and upgrades they needed. The EM effector weapons looked like bulky air-conditioning units bolted to their hulls. Lago preferred traditional projectile weapons, but he also loved the idea of being able to turn an enemy’s weapons against them. The other two K-star shuttles were sleek, aerodynamic, winged arrows. Lago knew Kayden had spent billions in their construction, having built for comfort and aesthetics rather than functionality.

With Kayden and Christophe dead, Lago assumed ownership of both K-star shuttles. The Star Span people on Earth were threatening him with criminal lawsuits but he didn’t care. There was nothing they could do to hurt him. Lago turned to Dato. “How is the drone fleet progressing?”

“We have six hundred drones and are manufacturing more every day. Thirty weapon platforms are being fitted out and the fourth printer is almost operational, then we can increase the output.”

“Weapons?”

“The drones are equipped with railguns and shaped charge warheads. Each squadron of one hundred drones can act as a unit, linking up in an orchestrated attack, or they can operate as individuals. The weapon platforms are just bigger drones, they carry more powerful railguns and missiles, the shuttles are being fitted with missile cells and railguns also, the Tobias shuttles have upgraded effectors. We also have thousands of hornets in storage.”

“Hornets?”

“Tiny surveillance drones, no bigger than an insect, only nuisance value.”

“How soon will everything be ready?”

“The longer we have to prepare the more confident I will be. Another Tobias shuttle, a troop carrier from Earth is on its way with more soldiers, a big 3D printer, and plenty of substrate. Most of the personnel here are technicians, they wouldn’t know one end of a gun from the other. Lago, we have military people arriving here on that shuttle, they know all about combat on Earth but attacking the Moon is an unknown situation, none of us have fought a space war before.”

“We will arrive at the Moon, use our effectors to disable them and pound them into dust with railguns and missiles before they have a chance to look up. The sooner we can do that the safer we will be, the safer the people of Earth will be.”

Lago caught Dato rolling his eyes as he turned away. A flustered looking technician interrupted them. “Excuse me, there is an unidentified object approaching us from space. I… I don’t know what it is. It’s moving slowly and it’s only a few metres wide, but its signature is abnormal, I have never seen anything like it. The data indicates something organic. Its spherical surface is shifting like it’s alive. We will have it on scope soon, I think you should see.”

Lago and Dato followed the technician up to the telescope dome on the top of the hub where a group of worried looking scientists had gathered around the magnified view on the screen. “What the hell is it?” asked Lago. None of the scientists or technicians were willing to hazard a guess, they shifted about, nervously staring at the screen. “I said what the hell is it?” Lago shouted at them.

“It’s an artificial construct,” replied a scientist after an uncomfortable silence. “A spherical shape. The imaging radar indicates mostly basalt composition but there is no heat signature, no apparent thrust or exhaust. It’s flattened one side, as if to act as a sail in the solar winds, pushing against Earth’s gravity well. It appears to be changing direction and sailing towards us.”

“How big is it?” asked Lago.

“About eight metres circumference.”

“How fast is it moving?”

“Two kilometres per second but gradually increasing. You can see it flattening out even more, catching the solar winds to bring it closer to us, if its current acceleration profile stays the same it will intercept us in ninety minutes.”

Lago stared at the alien form swooping in towards them. Its shape changed as he watched, morphing into a thick convex circle, rounded like a giant spoon without a handle. Its surface was changing, making millions of minute adjustments, sunlight reflected bleakly off its black surface in tiny geometric patterns like a bad pixellation. It reminded him of something he had seen before. Years ago, the demented printer inside the moon-base, creating bio-mechanical worms that terrorized, and murdered its occupants. And more recently at the summit of Montes Haemus. This thing approaching them was made of the same material, it moved in the same way, mindless, methodical, and inhuman.

“It’s from the Moon, it’s another Masama attack. We waited too fucking long,” shouted Lago.

“It doesn’t look like a Masama weapon,” said Dato. “It’s moving too slowly. But it must be from the Moon, I don’t see where else it could have come from.”

Lago gave him a withering look. “Whatever it is, it makes an easy target. Launch a squadron of drones.”

Dato sat at the circular table, fingers moving quickly over a keypad manipulating a 3D projection of the surrounding space displayed above. Lights flickering off the low ceiling and smooth iron walls reflected onto Lago’s face as he watched his newly manufactured drones launching from the underside of the asteroid hub like a swarm of angry bees defending their hive. They quickly grouped in attack formation, swooping in towards the Masama sphere. The projection was a real time view from the hub telescopes overlaid with statistics, vectors and trajectories of the drone fleet and the distance to the approaching sphere. Lago hovered behind Dato and the bald technician assisting him. The technician winced in pain as Lago leaned over and gripped his shoulders, but Lago didn’t notice, intent on the projection.

“The drones all have AI sub-routines running,” explained Dato. “They are capable of reacting to a threat without waiting for instructions.”

“They can think for themselves?” Lago asked.

“Not quite, they have built in collision avoidance algorithms to help them survive as long as possible, but these can be overridden to turn them into battering rams. They are programmed to use their railguns to inflict as much damage until their ammunition runs out, then ram their target and detonate their warheads on impact. I can control the targeting and programming instructions from here.” Dato leaned back and cracked his fingers, obviously enjoying the drone army under his control.

“Better send in some weapon platforms too, you can never have too many guns.”

“One hundred drones, twenty slugs each should be enough to see what this thing is made of.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The first squadron of drones swooped in towards the sphere in a circular formation, aiming for the centre of the target. The sphere was tiny in comparison. Lago shook his head, dismissing this trivial threat. That thing could not possibly hurt them, it was nothing against the might of his drone army. Once in range, the drones unleashed a railgun barrage. Lago preferred the railguns to other space weaponry they had experimented with. It was a weapon he could understand. Lasers were just beams of hot light, plasma weapons were just beams of hot gas, ion cannons were basically only frequency disrupters. Railguns used a satisfyingly solid projectile, lumps of conductive iron. Opposing magnetic forces propelled the iron down the barrel at incredible speeds. Each drone held clips of one hundred iron slugs, which could be fired off individually or in short bursts.

Lago scratched at the scar under his beard before his hands returned to the technician’s shoulders. He was confident with his firepower. The projection showed the iron slugs hitting the target with violent precision. The ammunition could not be seen travelling through the vacuum of space, but the projection highlighted the assault with vivid lines tracing a cylinder of red light between the drones and the target. Nothing happened. The sphere absorbed the railgun barrage with nothing more than a slight tremor. The sphere reconfigured itself, swallowing the slugs without any noticeable reaction. Lago looked closer, it appeared the sphere had grown bigger in size and picked up a little speed.

“What the fuck just happened,” he demanded.

“I don’t know, we should have cut a hole in the middle of the thing. Going round again, kamikaze protocol programmed for collision. Second squadron to follow,” said Dato.

The drones looped around in formation, this time in a bigger circle with the second squadron a more compact circle just behind them. Both squadrons released their entire arsenal of railgun slugs simultaneously. Illuminated cones of destruction centred on the approaching sphere.

“Eighteen thousand slugs, has to do some damage,” muttered Dato.

Lago watched with increasing trepidation. The projection highlighted the slugs fired from both drone squadrons. Again, the accuracy was impeccable from a kilometre out, illuminating the projection space, pinpointing two burning circles on the sphere. It shuddered momentarily, its momentum impeded, then the slugs disappeared into its porous body. The dark circle continued its collision course with the onrushing drones. It had grown even bigger.

Lago barely had time to swear before the first squadron smashed into the target. Burning fuel to accelerate in a final kamikaze onslaught, one hundred drones slammed into the sphere and detonated their warheads on impact. The volatile mixture of nitroamine and phosphorous in each shape charged penetrator warhead was designed to pierce its target, inject its explosive cargo, then detonate on impact. Lago shook his head and swore again. Surely an entire squadron would be more than enough to destroy this thing. It was impossible to see what the sphere was made of in the explosive light. It looked weirdly insubstantial, like a solid cloud of dust. It convulsed, bloated, and inflated from internal pressure.

“Send in the second squadron, before it recovers,” he shouted. The drones swooped around and within seconds had lined up the target which had stopped its forward momentum.

Another hundred warheads detonated creating a flash of explosive light on the sphere’s surface which then disappeared in an instant. The projection showed the sphere in turmoil, multiple explosions briefly highlighted the chaotic internal structure before blinking out. It consisted of billions of tiny moving parts, blown into disarray by the warheads. Lago thought for a second it was going to explode, but it just expanded, engorged on the drones and their payload. It had grown considerably. It reconfigured its shape and resumed its steady progress towards them. Lago couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“What the fuck. What the hell is it?” Lago squeezed the bald technician beneath him, and the man squirmed with pain. Lago ignored him and stared at the screen in disbelief. He was beginning to think he might need an exit strategy.

“I can program the weapon platforms to attack, they have bigger railguns and more slugs, the effectors might mess with its electro-magnetic signature,” said Dato as he stood up to get a better view of the projection. “If they don’t stop it, we will have to evacuate. It’s heading straight for us.”

Lago watched the sphere approaching in silence, contemplating the notion of abandoning his asteroid hub. “Fuck it. I don’t want to be here if that thing collides with us, we will have to evacuate. Launch all our assets, all our drones, weapon platforms and shuttles, take everything we can that’s not bolted down. There’s no point in attacking it, it absorbs everything we throw at it. We will regroup in the shuttles and try the effectors.” He glanced at the group of terrified looking technicians behind him. “You can all come if you want, as long as you are useful. I don’t care either way.”

Lago strode down the iron hewn corridors of the asteroid hub, pushing people out of his way, his bodyguards struggling to keep up. Being forced to abandon his home made him furious, but there was no-one to blame except the Masama. Dato was at his side, alerting key personnel through his comms link of their decision. “Twenty people per shuttle,” said Lago. “No more than that, we need all the soldiers and useful scientists. Any more will just get in the way.”

“There are eighty full-time personnel on the hub, plus two hundred that arrived on the last elevator. They won’t all fit on five shuttles,” said Dato.

“I don’t care who misses out, just get anyone you think could be useful,” said Lago. “Do it quietly, we don’t want hundreds of panicking people trying to force their way onto the shuttles.”

Lago arrived at the airlock and boarded the K-star shuttle, the Damned Saint, with Dato, Klara, two bodyguards and an entourage of eight BPI soldiers and six technicians. The pilot had already prepped the shuttle for immediate take-off and within minutes they had detached from the hub. Short bursts from the boosters had them at a safe distance where they were joined in a loose formation with the other evacuated shuttles.

Lago was fuming, he hated feeling so impotent. Abandoning his home. He wanted to strangle someone. He stood behind the pilot and studied the approaching sphere. It looked even more disturbingly alien to the naked eye. He squinted at the reflected sunlight flickering across its volatile surface as it floated closer to the hub. From a distance it looked solid, but on closer inspection it appeared as a clustered collection of components. Millions of tiny black shapes rearranging the surface like a swarm of bees. One of the Tobias shuttles moved into the space adjacent to the asteroid and the sphere. Lago could see the red glow from the effectors, the beam was invisible, it was supposed to fry the electrics of its target, but it worked better at close range.

The sphere was a few hundred metres away, it looked tiny in comparison to the asteroid which was roughly two hundred metres long. The people remaining on the hub must have been alerted to the approaching sphere and Lago could imagine the confusion among them, abandoned and with no means to escape. He had no sympathy for the trapped people, he did not feel anything except anger at being forced to abandon his home, and frustration at his inability to destroy what he didn’t understand.

The sphere swung into range of the effector and was completely exposed to its beam. It did not seem to impact the sphere at all. Then the instant before it was about to collide with the hub, it disappeared in a cloud of dust. There was no explosion, the sphere had been a solid ball floating towards the asteroid and then it was gone. There was a flash of expansion before it vanished, and for a brief second Lago hoped the effector had somehow destroyed it. “It can’t have just vanished! Dato! What happened?” he barked.

Dato said nothing, but it soon became apparent that the sphere had separated into millions of tiny moving parts. Dato worked on a screen to magnify the view. A cloud of tiny insects swarmed all over the surface of the asteroid. He increased the magnification to show little metal insects landing on the asteroid, then within seconds another insect would appear from underneath. They were buzzing manically over the surface and when they landed, they seemed to melt into the rock, disappearing into the asteroid.

“What the fuck are they!”

Dato was silent for a few seconds as he studied the little machines. “Replicators. They are using the asteroid as raw material to make copies of themselves.”

Lago cursed and watched as the insects ate his asteroid hub. They progressed from the contact point and began to spread out across the surface. Millions of tiny six-legged metal insects using his asteroid as matter to create more and more copies of themselves. There was a black stain on the side of the asteroid that grew as every single alien machine multiplied over and over. Lago knew it was not only happening on the surface, the insects would be consuming the internal structure of the asteroid and all its inhabitants. He wondered what the dark iron corridors would look like as the little black replicators ate everything in their path like a swarm of ravenous bugs. The terrified people would run to the far end of the hub, they would be trapped, the replicators would not notice the difference between iron and human flesh. All just matter for consumption.

The atmosphere was tense inside the shuttle. Lago watched in disbelief. There were a few gasps of horror as the insect swarm covering the outside of the hub bulged and pulsated, engorged in its feeding frenzy. It had eaten half the asteroid and was working its way across the BPI sign written on the side of the hub. It was like watching his ship sinking, the hub was a symbol of his empire. The flagship of his master plan to escape the clutches of Earth and plunder the resources of the solar system. His home, where he lived like a benevolent god in heaven, ruling the unwashed masses from above, was being devoured in front of his eyes like a piece of fruit being eaten by a swarm of ants. He craved violence to relieve the unbearable tension. He wanted to destroy something or someone with his bare hands, but he was forced to stand there and watch the symbol of his authority being dismantled.

The stain of replicators almost covered the entire asteroid. One rocky outcrop remained at the end of the cigar shaped hub. Lago briefly thought of the last few inhabitants cornered inside, with nowhere else to run, being eaten by the swarm of mindless replicators. He knew some of them, but he didn’t care. Then, in an instant, the hub was gone. The giant insect swarm in its place convulsed, billions of tiny machines circling around each other, connecting, and regaining its spherical shape. Its exterior sparkled in the dark like weaponised permafrost.

Lago felt a perverse fascination at the unrelenting appetite of the invaders. Pure, insatiable hunger. The replicators reminded him of something, he had once been shown a magnified view of the nanites inside him. Millions of tiny machines with a singular purpose, relentless, methodical, swarming and eating a cancerous cell, just as the replicators had eaten his asteroid. He shuddered, thinking of all those tiny machines coursing through his veins. He could feel them, full of energy, trying to burst out of his body. He imagined them out of control, eating him alive.

He pulled himself together, staring at the replicator sphere. The remains of the severed hub umbilical dangled below; the whole thing looked like a monstrous black balloon on a string. It had grown immensely; it was almost double the size of the original asteroid; hundreds of metres wide. It hung there motionless in orbit for a moment, its surface alive with consumption. Then, as if it sensed their presence, it began floating slowly towards the group of shuttles.

“I think we had better move,” he said.