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Hivebots

Self-Replicating Destructive Automated Robots

Home System: N/A

Homeworld: N/A

Language(s): N/A

Political Entitie(s): N/A

While they have never been recorded as expressing any term of self-identification, the indefinitely self-replicating synthetic ubiquitous throughout much of the spur are popularly dubbed hivebots - although they are academically more properly referred to as 'SDARs', standing for 'Self-Replicating Destructive Automated Robots'. Individual hivebots take the form of a harsh, jagged chassis composed of many erratically alloyed metal plates in an indefinite number of possible configurations. These synthetics have no known origin, they do not generally communicate with any known intelligent species, and they are known to be ubiquitously violent regardless of the context in which they are encountered. If successful in overtaking a ship, station, or even a world, they will repurpose all viable matter and technology inside it to replicate themselves.

Typically, hivebot infestations begin with the teleportation of a single hivebot beacon onto the targeted ship or station. This is an immobile construct, a good deal taller than a human and equipped with energy-based weaponry for self-defence, which functions as the 'brain' of the hivebot infestation. Multiple beacons within close proximity to each other are known to combine their intelligences, meaning that an infestation becomes more intelligent the more beacons it possesses in sync with each other; the coordination of drones is known to become substantially more complex according to the number of beacons controlling them. While a single hive requires an incredible number of beacons to manifest any apparent comprehension beyond simplistic pathfinding and targeting, it is not known how intelligent a hive's compound intelligence could become if it were sufficiently large.

Once firmly established on either the hull or the interior of its target, a beacon functions as a waypoint by which hivebot drones can be teleported to support the operations of the beacon - these are machines designed strictly for combat, and are known to attack and dismember all forms of sentient life they encounter. Once an infestation has fully exterminated all resistance inside its target, it will begin to repurpose the structure to create a hivebot hub. More beacons will be manufactured, manufacturing facilities will be established, existing technology will be hijacked to better serve the needs of the hive, and this hub will begin to teleport beacons across its surrounding space itself, continuing the process. It is not known for how long this process has been ongoing.

History

The first recorded encounter of hivebots in the Orion Spur was through a bluespace rift in the Romanovich Cloud in 2433, although several similar incidents have occurred throughout much of the spur since this initial sighting. At first, these strange devices were mistaken for drones left from the Interstellar War, theorised to have been lost in the chaos of the war and abandoned in the outer reaches of Tau Ceti; this notion was quickly disabused at the first recognition of self-replication among the drones. Almost immediately from their emergence in Tau Ceti, the small cluster of hivebots took to stripping nearby derelicts and asteroids for materials - a task they proved both wildly efficient in completing, and one that no human-made military drone should have ever been able to complete.

While this initial hive was quickly destroyed by the then-authorities of Tau Ceti, they would not prove to be the last. Ever since 2433, hivebot appearances have become ubiquitous virtually everywhere in the Orion Spur; no system is wholly exempt, and there have even been sightings of hivebot constructs in the middle of interstellar space. While broadly exorcised from highly developed systems, such as those of Tau Ceti and Sol, this is only on account that these systems possess the military capacity to quickly stem any hivebot infestation before it can produce any large-scale outposts. These invasions are initially easy managed - the weapons used by the hivebots are not remarkably destructive, and their frames are typically quite fragile - but can bloom to a serious threat to the security of a system if not eliminated quickly.

Without a sufficient response at first contact, many ships and stations in remote systems are wholly overtaken by hivebots. Once a secure foothold is established, more beacons are manufactured, and manufacturing facilities are fabricated within the shell of the infested structure. This proves a perennial concern for military patrols within all interstellar nations, and it is theorised that much more severe infestations may be present in uncharted space.