The convoy turned left into the farmland, crushing purple plants under their massive wheels. The lead vehicle crashed through a small wooden fence and parked itself in front of the small creek. Men and women wearing light weight spacesuits hopped out from the driver’s cabin smoothly, planting their boots on the soft ground of the alien planet.

“Set up a perimeter!” Ordered the leader of the group. “I want power flowing through my trucks, now!”

The largest truck in the back of the convoy slowly came to a stop. Buried beneath thick radiation shielding, the lead-cooled breeding reactor was generating enough electricity to power the entire convoy 10 times over. A few men ran towards the reddish yellow vehicle and pulled a thick cable out from the back. One of them stayed behind and examined the connection while the others carried the cable across the field.

Meanwhile, a bulky power distributor was unloaded from the convoy and anchored firmly onto the ground. Once the cable was brought to the distributor, engineers immediately plugged it into a large port and fixed it in place with half a dozen screws. The computer screen mounted on the side of the distributor came to life as engineers continued to plug different cables into the various ports of the delicate machine.

“Power output at 90%, transformer holding,” one of the humans wearing a yellow space suit reported.

“Good, raise the comms dish and establish the datalink.”

One of the trucks stopped behind the wooden fence. The parabolic antenna installed on the back of the vehicle rotated upwards, pointing at the largest moon of Knara Prime. Inside its cramped cabin, the comms officer started typing commands into the system. Soon, streams of data flooded into the processor of the comms truck.

“Receiving data from radar station beta… relaying data now.”

A complex signal pulsed along a fibre optic cable until it reached another processor installed in the command vehicle itself. In less than half a second, a fire control solution was generated.

“Fire control solution ready. Magazine loaded.” A human in red spacesuit reported.

“Load biological shell. Fire on my mark,” the commander said authoritatively.

The self-propelled railgun in the centre of the field was the core of the unit. Yet it was unmanned. The cabin was replaced by a complicated set of microchips and wires, accepting energy and information from various cables connected onto the vehicle. Likewise, the seemingly empty space underneath the giant turret was actually occupied by a revolving magazine and an autoloader.

With a single command, the magazine started spinning clockwise until it stopped at a shell painted green. The mechanical arm of the autoloader latched onto the round and yanked it up from its resting place effortlessly. With another mechanical whirl, the shell was loaded into the railgun itself.

“Gun loaded!” The human in red spacesuit reported.

“Good. Wait for my signal.”

There was a moment of tense silence. No one dared to move a muscle, everyone was waiting for that one single word.

“Fire!”

The capacitors connected to the railgun immediately discharged, sending the projectile out of the barrel in an instant. Its reinforced tungsten carbide tip cut through the thick atmosphere of Knara Prime effortlessly. Even the chains of gravity could not hold the fury of man back. The weapon cruised high above the atmosphere of the alien planet before its rocket engine finally switched on.

“Engine engaged. Thrust nominal.”

“Good. Pack it up people. We have 5 minutes to get out of here.”

The small rocket was oblivious to its human handlers’ new duties. It was only programmed to fly to a certain predetermined point in space. Adjusting its heading with the thrust vectoring nozzle, it was able to satisfy the strict demands of its program. It continued its journey into deep space, accompanied by tens of thousands of similar rockets launched from thousands of gun sites around the planet.

The first wave of shells was closing in on their target. Just before they turned their active radar seeker on, a powerful particle beam swept through the ranks of automatons. The high energy particles sliced through the tough metal casings like paper and detonated the fuel-oxidizer mixture in the rocket. Bright explosions dotted the skies as the weapons were stroke down from heaven one by one.

Yet the machines knew no fear. The next wave of shells streaked past the stars with their engines in full thrust. Some managed to reach radar range when another particle beam sweep knocked them out. The wave after that finally lived long enough to actually boot up their radar systems. Much to the smart weapons’ confusion, there was more than one target. In fact, there were hundreds of them. The rockets had no idea which one of them was the actual mothership they were supposed to hit. Shells started flying left and right, cutting through clouds of decoys and chaff as they search futilely for the target they were after.

The swarm of weapons was slowly dying down. With each passing second, there were fewer and fewer rockets flying towards the target zone. Yet the remaining machines pressed on. One by one, they followed their guidance system towards the target. One of the shells finally locked onto the right target. It followed the program’s instructions and conducted evasive maneuvers. The small rocket twisted and turned its nozzle, causing the shell to snake left and right. Narrowly dodging the particle beam, the shell rammed into the hull of the mothership, crushing the reinforced silicon armor at ease. The rocket continued to burn and pushed the round deeper into the space behemoth.

Gases rushed out into the vacuum of space around the smart shell, which was broken and twisted. It was half buried by some metal sheeting but the payload inside the shell was intact. At least the computer could not sense anything wrong with it.

Suddenly, the emergency bulkhead installed on the deck began to close. The giant metal piece worked like a band aid on a small cut. Air stopped leaking out. The world around the shell had quieted down yet again. Sensing the rise of air pressure around itself, the shell ejected the metal casing, revealing a vial of pink culture medium. The medium was ejected as an aerosol around the metal shell. Some even got sucked into broken pipelines around the impact site.

With its purpose fulfilled, the computer inside the smart weapon powered down.

The door refused to budge so the damage control team had no choice but to cut it open with a laser cutter. They pushed the pieces of broken metal out of their way to find the human weapon, lying quietly on the floor. One of the grey blobs extended its tentacles and wrapped them around the rocket. It was still warm to touch but it did not appear to be active. There were no lights. No sound. Even the transparent vial mounted in the middle of the shock absorbers was empty.

The alien blob was puzzled. The humans used to send high explosive shells at them. Sure, sometimes these shells fail. However, none of them had a glass vial like this one. As it was wondering what the vial was for, its tentacles started to itch. The itch soon spread across its moist mucus membrane and reached its round head. The alien began to tremble, it turned to its companions for aid, only to discover that they were all scratching their bodies uncontrollably. Pink mucus began oozing out of their soft bodies. One by one, they collapsed onto the ground.

They died not knowing what hit them.

Above their melting bodies, a broken pipe kept sucking air into the mothership’s main ventilation system. Small droplets of culture medium traveled from the crash site into deeper parts of the mothership. The bacteria in the droplet was deposited in various parts of the ship. Some lay dormant as hardened spores, others landed in warm areas and started to flourish. When they came into contact with their next unfortunate victim, they would enter the mucus membrane and start producing cytotoxic compounds capable of inducing apoptosis. Tissue necrosis ensued, causing massive internal bleeding and ultimately, death within minutes.

The fate of the crew was sealed.

“Sir, the mothership has stopped firing,” said the comms officer.

“Good. Contact high command, let them know that the attack is successful. Recovery teams can board the ship as they see fit,” the commander sighed in relief. He knew that not only was this colony saved, the human fleet had also acquired yet another trophy ship.

“But sir… What about the biological weapon onboard that ship?”

“What about it? The toxin only acts on alien amino acids, they should have no effects on humans. Now, send my message to high command.”

“Sir, yes sir!”