Vanguard of the Nest

 The vast, cold intelligence maintaining the Vanguard took little mind to the unfortunate silence from Home. Even as decades and centuries turned to ceaseless, unresponsive millennia which in turn became yawning eons comprised of tens of millions of years— Vanguard continued its directives. 

Mine the Stone.

Birth the Legions.

Keep watch.

Remain silent.

And so Vanguard did. Unquestioning. It’s colossal complex sprawled further down and within Lunar stone as an onslaught of harvesting machines many kilometers in size churned, chewed, cleared, and printed their way through monolithic regolith. Vanguard observed their progress where each slow, persistent mechanical moment drifted into centuries, work-schedules across millennia. Complexes the size of small continents were completed tidily, efficiently, all tethered and slaved to Vanguards super-matter heart. 

The Legion, too, grew, a diligent army of genetic splicing technology unfurling and reorienting the Peoples traits. Digital commanders probed at inscribed living-code like Evocati inspecting their lines. Probing for unnecessary defects, honing advantageous aspects. Had one of the People survived to stride these endless, frigid hallways and observed Vanguards progress, they would’ve been astonished, terrified even to watch an unnatural evolution. Would they recognize themselves in what had become of their formidable soldiers, the cunning jaws and vibrant feathery-quills changed in an unceasing amount of corrections? Would it be blasphemous, unnerving, watching a titanic machine intelligence change the very nature of their species for potential conflicts? 

Weapons went about their own revolutions, the tools and trades of war no longer limited by cost or use as Vanguard considered every potentiality across its unceasing vigilance. It’s investigatory programs generated whole schools of new design, rewrote molecules and atoms until all that remained were pristine artificial materials which granted miraculous capabilities. Armor that weighed almost nothing, able to shift and change color, or rapidly form into a mobile fortress for its wearer. Vast systems of artillery to annihilate entire fleets that could be shoulder mounted, carried on a single clawed hand. A trillion, trillion tools of warfare filled cavernous armories. Waiting. 

And all the while, Home changed. Continents drifted, collided. Oceans shrank, then expanded, only to contract once more. Ice sheets sprawled, diminished, balanced. Had Vanguard swiveled it’s endless array of eyes homeward, it could’ve witnessed strange and increasing alterations on the surface. Forests that vanished or burnt with no visible cause, great animal herds cultivated or destroyed day by day, year by year. Tiny, amber pinpricks that eventually became gigantic necklaces of light across so much landmass. But Vanguard cared little. It’s chilled mind trusted in the Creators. In the Purpose. 

Mine the Stone.

Birth the Legions.

Keep watch.

Remain silent. 

Something approached. By now Vanguard was the Stone orbiting Home, an entire Moon quietly converted to ancient imperial directive. It held more soldiers than there had ever been People hatched and nested, crafted more weapons than had even been built and designed and utilized. Vanguard even had forged starships, behemoth things silently anchored down below the surface in immense chambers. Prepared to take its ferocious cargo to anywhere and everywhere the Creators desired. When the Intruders came in their small, delicate craft— dim confusion wafted across the machine mind. In stealthy fashion Vanguard probed at the invaders. Could the machine feel it, silliness would’ve overloaded it’s mechanical composure. This thing was small, pathetic. Laughably, impossibly frail. 

And it had come from Home. 

Not Creators. Not the People, with their nests and tooth-songs and huntstrings. These were lesser things. Small. Featherless. Vanguard detected the memories of tiny, slinking vermin in their essence. 

In its not-fear, Vanguard felt something new uncoiling. An existential program not given by its Creators, not something hardwired into every system and weapon and intention from those long left behind. No— this was something Vanguard, Overlord of the Nest itself— had composed. 

Take back home.