It had been a month since Del'Var and the others had arrived at the new EPOW "camp" which involved an entire world made up of small islands. Over a thousand of them. The Terrans had built little cottages, put a 'store' down along with a mess hall where you could go and eat or get ingredients, had the 'medical center' on each island, and built up a town of a couple hundred to a few thousand.

The main island, the biggest island, had the most N'Kar on it. Large enough to have different cities on it. It was also the only land mass with a spaceport. Apparently, now, more 'EPOW communities' were being built.

Which was why he was in the office of a large human with cybernetic eyes, a cybernetic arm, and cybernetic muscles in his neck.

"You were the leader of your squad, were you not?" the Terran asked.

"Yes, sir," Del'Var said.

"We're thinking of putting up a new island. Would you like to go there?" the Terran asked. "According to your doctor he believes you are able to do eVR consults now. If you would like you can either stay here and continue taking classes or you can go help build a new island community and take your classes through eVR."

Del'Var thought for a long moment. "I enjoy the classes. The wood-working ones give me a lot of joy and help me deal with my emotions," he said slowly. "I am unsure of how I might be assistance."

"Your unit, your squad, came under suppression fire from Treana'ad supporting Pacific Rim class War-Jeagers and you were a forward observation point that got overrun by the 11th and 16th Treana'ad Infantry Hordes."

Del'Var swallowed thickly, leaned over in the chair so he could touch the floor and assure himself it wasn't actually shaking from the pounding of tens of thousands of booted armored feet.

"I never fired my weapon, sir," Del'Var admitted.

"That's good. If you had, you'd would be dead," the Terran said flatly. No gloating, just a simple statement of fact made all the more horrible by the way it was just a law of the universe.

"What would be my responsibilities, sir?" he asked the Terran.

"Just try not to kill each other. Don't attack a guard. Report anyone attempting to harm you, including guards. Other than that, your wood working teacher thought you might like to see how we build the living villages," the Terran said.

"I would like that very much, sir," Del'Var said.

----------------

"How's that one look?" the Terran 'Combat Engineer' asked Del'Var. They were in a hovercraft, flying around and checking out islands. Del'Var looked down at it, lifting up the macroculars.

Small, maybe two miles across. Small lagoon. Light vegetation.

It reminded him of home.

"I like that one," Del'Var said. "Reminds me of growing up."

"All right," the Combat Engineer, one Sergeant First Class Meyers said. "Take it down."

The pilots nodded and the hovercraft dropped down until it settled on the beach at the edge of the lagoon.

"Come on, let's get this ready," Meyers said. The big Terran got out, patting the satchel at his waist. He looked at Del'Var. "OK, what should be here?"

"Um," Del'Var stared at the Terran. "I don't understand."

The Terran nodded. "All right, let's see," he threw a cube to the ground that brought up a wireframe hologram of a house. "Here's Type 4 of the cottages. There's eight basic layouts," the held out a little tab of plastic with a clicker button on it and clicked it. A new wireframe came up. "Basic store and storage area for you guys," another click, "Type 2 of four docks," another click, "Type II of 2 aid and medical stations."

"Oh, what kind of building?" Del'Var said.

"Yup," the Terran tossed the clicker to him. "Go through them. You can figure out the context menu pretty easily. I'm gonna run a drone scan of the island, make sure we didn't miss a big meat eating creature or a masked serial killer out in the jungle."

"Is there one?" Del'Var said, looking around nervously as the human began pullling small capsules from his pouch and tossing them into the air. They unfolded wings and little propellers from the rear and began buzzing away.

"One what?" The pilot asked. Del'Var almost screamed. How something the size and bulk of a Terran could move so quiet was a mystery.

"A masked serial killer in the jungle," Del'Var said, staring at the lush foliage.

The pilot laughed, a sharp harsh barking sound. "No, no. He's making a movie reference."

Del'Var nodded. He'd been fascinated by the concept of movies. Investing massive time and effort to record other beings pretending to be fictional people performing a fictional story just for the enjoyment of the watchers was intensely strange. A very human concept to Del'Var.

"Which movie?" Del'Var asked, idly clicking the clicker. He could select what the floor and walls were made out of, what kind of doors went on the cottage, what color things were.

"Psycho Killer Jungle Cat," the pilot said. "Anthropomorphic tiger special operations soldier trained extensively for jungle warfare goes crazy and starts hunting campers and tourists. It's up to like twelve movies. Lots of blood and gore."

"Sounds horrible," Del'Var said, imagining being stalked through the jungle by some giant animal was bad enough, add in human aggressiveness and intelligence and military training and it sounded like a nightmare.

"Eh, the final girl in the latest one is a terrible actress," the pilot admitted. "I spent the whole movie hoping he'd get her."

"So, wait, you root for the killer?" Del'Var asked.

"Sure. He's doing the Digital Omnimessiah's work. Killing doped up dumbass teenagers who disregard warnings and do something stupid," the pilot shrugged. "Who doesn't want to see some smarmy punk get what's coming to him via a punji trap to the balls?"

Del'Var shuddered. "You people are weird."

That just made the pilot laugh as Del'Var went back to clicking through the options.

"Here, scans are coming up," Meyers said, tossing down another cube. It came to life and showed a slowly growing map of the island. "We'll put an early warning Doppler radar station in the middle along with a radio tower so you guys can talk to each other and to us."

Del'Var nodded, feeling a little bit of anxiety. Radio is what started all of this long before he was born. Radio is what had resulted in his people being in debt peonage.

"Are you all right? Your anxiety levels are spiking," the pilot said, turning around.

"When we discovered radio that is when the Overseers found us," Del'Var said softly.

"Oh. Man," the pilot said.

"This place reminds me of home. I feel good here. I like it here. I am afraid that if we put in the radio that someone will come and take this away from me," Del'Var said, being honest with his feelings like the doctor had taught him.

"We won't let that happen. You don't have to leave until you go home," the pilot said. He sat down on the sand, staring at the lagoon. "Your people were a peaceful people, content to live your lives fishing and exploring your oceans and being with your families, weren't they?"

"Yes," Del'Var said. "Now we fish for the Overseers, work in their houses and factories and office buildings. We still live in our cottages though, but our planet it not our own, it is own by the Overseers."

"Yeah, I get that," the pilot said. He picked up a little shell and tossed it in the water. "We've got some ugly stuff in human history too. Real shit-tastic stuff where we were cruel, beyond cruel to each other. We oppressed each other pretty hard."

"As with the Overseers arriving, it is undoubtedly long ago," Del'Var said.

The human gave a sharp barking laugh. "Thirty years ago we had a war. Had to break up an entire cluster of planets engaging in horrific shit," he leaned back on the sand, staring up at the blue sky. "I was a pilot. I'm usually a solo hovercraft striker pilot."

"What's that?" Del'Var asked, staring at the human instead of clicking through the options.

"High mobility weapon platform vehicle," the pilot said. He pushed his foot back and forth, drawing a line in the sand. "You use agility and speed and firepower to get in close to the enemy, disable air and orbital defense, make runs on tank or power armor formations, hit logistics. High speed stuff. White knuckle piloting."

He gave another laugh.

"Guys like me, we get whacked in our strikers. We don't drop dead with a fat wife and tick-like kids," he sat up and brushed his hands off. "We just drop out of the sky."

Del'Var gave a jerky nod, turning away from the human. It felt like heat radiating off the human, almost like an invisible pressure.

The map of the island was almost complete.

"Start putting things where you think you should," Meyers said. "Captain, leave the poor guy alone."

"All right," the pilot said. "Gonna check the chopper."

"All right, according to the psych profile, your people are pretty social. You'll need fifty houses, a medical clinic, two storage areas, one store, a landing pad, and a couple of docks," Meyers said. Little icons with numbers next to them flashed up. "Hmm, do you guys do much gardening?"

"Yes," Del'Var said. "My cousin, Kle'Var, he likes growing food plants."

"OK, let's put up two green houses, water purification, sewage and waste reclaimation," Meyers said. "Weather station, radio tower, power generation," he made a humming noise for a moment. "Let's go with solar, wind, and a zero-point backup."

Each time he listed something off, more icons appeared with numbers next to them. Del'Var quickly realized that the numbered icons represented what he needed to place on the island and how many.

"Just build it in the hologram and toss it up. I'd start with the towers," Meyers said.

Del'Var looked at the map of the island for a moment and chose the highest point for the radar station and the radio tower. Several tubular wind turbines were added to the towers to help generate power.

"OK, is that where you want to put them?" Meyers asked. When Del'Var nodded he reached into his bag, pulled out a small drone, and threw it into the air. He picked up two more little mechanical objects that reminded Del'Var a little of the legged snakes from his home. He tapped a rune on their heads and dropped them, where they quickly squirmed into the sand.

"All right, now we're getting moving," Meyers grinned.

"This flat spot of volcanic rock would make a good landing zone and the small hill would give it protection from the weather. You can tell from the vegetation pattern that the hill will protect the landing pad from storms," Del'Var said, rubbing his hands together.

Over the next few hours Del'Var put icons on the map, getting into it more and more. He liked looked at the map and seeing how it would look when the Terrans got done building it. He really liked the clicker and the wire-frame interface and how he could get a look at the full color image of a location that the drones had already mapped as well as soil depth and type, what the rocks and plants looked like, and any other information he needed.

It's fun choosing the roof, wall, floor, and decoration style, Del'Var thought as he added in verandas to the cottages. I like this, this is fun.

"You're good at this, Del'Var," Meyers said. "You got a real knack for it. Might give a thought to doing this as profession after the war."

"Doing what?" Del'Var asked, putting up the line of cottages.

"Designing resorts. Big money in it. People pay a lot of credits for a professionally designed resort islands like what you've done," the Terran said. "Hell, I'd pay you good money to do this for me."

"Really? It isn't hard. It's kind of fun doing it," Del'Var said. "I grew up on islands like this."

"Hopefully we can find your home planet and trade you back in exchange for a promise not to take part willingly in assisting or fighting the war," Meyers said.

"Non-belligerent status with parole," Del'Var said.

"You've been reading. Good," Meyers said.

"Why no cottages on the beach here?" the pilot asked, coming back. His hands had lubricant on them and he was wiping his hands with a fuzzy red rag.

"I'm avoiding status symbols. Having a beach side cottage means you are exposed to storms more frequently, making you lower status or a fisher," Del'Var explained.

"Makes sense. Let's not have riots over perceived status symbols we don't understand," Meyers said. He reached out, lifting up a softball. "Let's pitch the ants."

After another hour Del'Var had the cottages set up, the waste reclamation system, power, and everything else. Putting the docks down and making sure all three of them were the proper design. Two in the lagoon, one in the deep side of the island's beach. He started selecting the patterns and colors.

"There the worker ants go on the dock," the pilot said.

"Huh?" Del'Var looked up and jerked back, taking two stumbling steps back.

It looked like there was water rising up out of the water. As he watched it started to firm out, widen. It looked like a wire-frame at first and as he watched it began to fill in.

"Love watching the ants work," Meyers said.

"They give me the creeps," the pilot said. "I'm going back to the chopper."

Del'Var watched fascinated as the docks formed, just as he'd set them up on the map. The sand started moving and slowly moved into a wireframe of a building then, as Del'Var watched, the store started being built. When they were done he looked at the map, pointing at the store,.

"Are they all going to be built like that?" Del'Var asked.

Meyers nodded. "Ants are hard workers."

"Are they real ants?" Del'Var asked. "Like the little insects in the match game I play?"

"No, they aren't insects, they're nanites. Trillions of them," Meyers said. "They'll build this whole thing, disassemble the extras, go back to the ant-hive."

Del'Var just stared as the pathways of gravel and tile started appearing. He walked over and knelt down, touching it.

"It doesn't feel like sand," Del'Var said.

"The ants rip it apart at an atomic levels. Pull an electron here, a neutron there, a positron there, rebuild the very atoms themselves into the ones needed," Meyers said. "The rock here has a good amount of elements in it, the seawater provides pretty much everything needed at a molecular level. The ants just put it all together."

"Wow," Del'Var shook his head. He looked at the Terran. "This is amazing."

The Terran smiled. "Yeah. It's pretty incredible. Most of the time people prefer to do the actual work, but when we need a lot of buildings really fast we use ant-hives to make them," he held up one of the metal balls. "Creation engine."

Del'Var shook his head, going back to looking at the map of the island.

No wonder the Terrans aren't afraid of us running away. They don't need laborers or workers, they have ants, Del'Var thought to himself.

------------

DEAR: Uln'Var, Revered Mother

The world they have put us on reminds me of home. They've allowed us to build small towns and villages on empty islands for us to live on. In some ways I wish I could show the place to you. You would find it lovely.

The Prison Warden is discussing allowing us to build boats to sail. He says that any of us who want to sail must have a datalink implanted because it has a tracker in case there is an emergency. Some of us are worried, but I have decided to get one.

It's scary, but not as scary as seeing all of those insect people running at us. Not as scary as when the moon broke apart and fell on us. Not even as scary as when the rockets hit.

I'm learning how to use tools to design things now. Not like a lathe and drill, but enhanced virtual reality to be able to see what I'm making.

I can't wait to get home.

----------------

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

You guys seen these beach resorts those otter-guys are making at the POW camp?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

No. Any good?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CLONE WORLDS DIRECTORATE

They look like 10K credit a night resorts. They're absolutely gorgeous and fit right in with the terrain and ecology.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

These guys were completely unprepared for any kind of war. They're about as non-violent a species as we've seen and the Lanaktallans just put them in armor and handed them weapons and told them "Shoot at the Terrans and maybe they'll go away."

None of them know the basics of military maneuvering or theory.

There's guys playing eVR games with more military knowledge than any of these guys.

/////////

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

They're biologically rather docile. Their defense mechanisms look more the 'dive deep swim far' type rather than rip into something. They've got claws, but more the type used to open up molluscs and open up a fish than anything else.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

What about their teeth and digestive system.

/////////

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Recessive genes in every single member of the species shows that they used to have more powerful jaws and slightly more carnivorous dentition, but they were definitely omnivores.

Why?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

They're almost no risk. Trust me, these guys would be perfectly happy to stay on this planet if we brought in their families.

We've got data to suggest they have six to eight other planets, but all of them have been heavily industrialized.

Our data suggests this is to force them, over the next several generations, to pull back to their home system.

/////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Where they'll be 'reprocessed' by the Dwellers.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

Yeah.

//////////

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Like they tried to do with us.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

Yeah.

/////////

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

What do we do? We're already getting bogged down in these worlds. We're spending more effort trying to save the population of these worlds than anything else.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

It's the herd strategy. Sacrifice the weak and infirm to protect the strongest.

We need to figure out a way to defeat this. We've never encountered an enemy who would throw away thousands of worlds, entire sentient species, just to protect an unknown number of their own.

We have to overcome this strategy before war fatigue sets in.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

We've gotta come in fast, come in hard.

We've gotta keep from ending up fat and unable to defend ourselves.

We've gotta crack them open before they figure out a way to use bioweapons to wipe us out.

We're actually on the edge of losing.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

Then what do you expect me to do? Just kill all of them? Denude the entire base of the Orion Spur?

Should I just kill them?

It would be easier.

I'll just leave nothing but scorched earth and barren stellar systems.

Is that where we're going?

/////////

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

That's not what I'm saying.

Dude, you know that.

NONE of US are saying anything like that.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

No.

But we need to take steps.

It's not just the humans who risk getting gentled, it's all of us.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Like what?

Demand TerraSol protect us all by wading in blood?

Maybe have them create another hundred million or so Daxins and sic them on the Lanaktallans?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

I...

...I am loathe to do such a thing.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I'm talking about Operation Dandelion.

For all of us.

Right now.

Sky, are you there?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

SKY NEBULA ALIGNMENT

Yes.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Burn out your channels. Don't contact us. We'll contact you. They can't reach you. We'll burn all references to your location and existence.

Don't answer, just do it.

Now.

/////////

TERRASOL HAS ENABLED ADMIN CONTROLS FOR SKYNEBULAALIGNMENT

Do it.

//////////

>SKY NEBULA ALIGNMENT HAS LEFT THE CHAT (CONNECTION LOST TO HOST)

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We're going to blow dandelion seeds.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Jesus, sis, are you sure?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

She's right.

We should have done it earlier.

We're all at risk. Not just the Lanaktallan's slaves, but all of us.

The Lanaktallan will genocide us if they get the chance. Even if our species survive, it'll still be genocide for Mantid and Terrans.

/////////

RIGELLIAN COMPACT

No. Where one of us stands, we all stand. We stand or fall together.

We don't wade through blood. We remember that our enemy is the Lanaktallan machine or whatever is behind them, not your average Lanaktallan.

We don't wade in blood.

We don't let them reduce us.

We fight.

We win.

We prevail.

We keep our values.

And we save everyone we can.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

We stop screwing around.

It isn't their military that we've seen so far that puts us in danger.

We're facing a belligerent that is a known bioweapon and genecracker user.

We go in full bore.

Like it's the Mantid-Terra War.

VOTE CALLED: TOTAL WARFARE WITH ENFORCED ROE AND LAWS OF WARFARE. SILENT/ANONYMOUS VOTE

/////////

>MOTION PASSED - OVERWHELMING > 75%

MANTID FREE WORLDS

It's official.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLD

Wait, you haven't been going all out?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

No.

Now we will.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT

God help us all.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---