The Black

Eight

The ship was not shaped like any ship one would see in Human space. It looked more like an asteroid moving through space. It was moving fast, about 60% the speed of light. Few human ships got that speed, mostly because they did not need to, but then neither did this one. If you could telescope in on the surface of the ship you would see that it was basically a pill of garbage. There were broken technology, old cloth, paper, plastics, and more. The biological items were in larger number, and there were the bodies, nothing like anything that humans had encountered to this point either. The inside of the ship was a labyrinth of tunnels in what was in actuality an asteroid.

To be fair the race on this ship had purpose built space craft, there were plenty of them, but this was an old craft, in fact thousands of years old. In the early days of space, the race had left it's home world on these ships by the thousands, attained massive velocities, and over generations traveled between the stars. Not now, but then.

Another ship, a newer ship of the race, more identifiable as a purpose built spacecraft, but still oddly unfamiliar was moving to intercept and had been doing this maneuver for months. There were a few of these ships still out there, but they needed to be found. It was an imperative.

On the bridge of the newer ship was the Captain of the ship, he was in his pod resting there, he was not young, but clearly not old, he was in fact a Captain, you needed some experience to become any type of leader. He was black, round, with a hard outside shell, there was a head stim sticking out, and if he opened them about a half dozen eyes, his six arms were all withdrawn into the shell as he rested, and his six legs were too. His shell was mostly black, showing him a leader of Military forces. His language was a series of clicks and clacks that would be almost totally unable to write down in human language. In short if he were out of his pod, he would look a lot like a dung beetle on old Earth.

In the thousands of years that humanity had been in space, they had met no surviving insect races. They had found at least 40 planets that had been inhabited by them, they were all depopulated, and in the process of evolution out of the disaster that was an insect race. It was not that they could not get and maintain technology, but none of them seemed to have figured out that there were limits to what they could do to a world. They were shells of what they had been, with only very small life forms surviving to grow back.

When you also include the warnings about Insect Life, it had risen up at some point, but it was even more rare than Reptilian life, in space. This aside, this was a space faring insect life. On the bridge were three other members of the crew, all were in pods, their control boards had lights, and worked, but they seemed not to be doing a lot. One of the men was the pilot, he was Red, bright red, but clearly of the same race as the Captain, if smaller and thinner. The other two one was black like the Captain, but smaller, and the other was gray, he was the smallest of all, he was the Science Officer and he was a leader among the Brains, of the race. He looked smaller, thinner, l like the pilot, and just a little different, and he was different. All those on the bridge were males, all were of the same race, but they were born for different functions. On the ridge, right now, they were actually speaking. Since the discovery of the Pilots the ability to communicate without language had been given to all the race, this was not as hard for them as it was for humanity.

The Captain said to his Tactical Officer, the other black, "are all weapons ready?"

The Tactical Officer calmly replied, "Yes, my King."

The Captain waited watching on a screen on his console the old ship moving through the sky, he actually thought about how many of the old ones were on board, he was a little sad, well as sad as he could get, emotions like sadness and love were not strong or common in his people, "fire" was all he said.