Fiction:The Nanohorde



The Nanohorde is a weapon, terraforming and industrial tool used by the Delpha Coalition of Planets. They are nanomachines, that have the ability to self-replicate and build other machines. They are microscopic.

Function
The purpose of these devices was to build other machines capable of peforming otherwise tedious tasks on a large scale quickly. In large scales, these peform like a hive mind, creating (or destroying) materials, cleaning up waste, building terraforming stations or even "eating" organic life.

They have several programmed instincts
 * Self Replication
 * Communicate to create pathways, eventually a hive mind
 * Consume and recycle what they have been ordered to and then build into something new
 * Never touch materials and objects they have not been programmed to use

Malfunction
Eventually problems began. On the DCP colony Peelatrubis, some nanomachines were layed down to consume some of the resources, to create new colonies and make the planet more habitable. Alas, just like organic cells, they can mutate and malfunction. Despite being programmed not attack everything on sight, throughout the millions that are created, just one malfuntioned. It went on to replicate itself, and soon hundreds, thousands and eventually millions of these bugged machines began to replicate. At first their impact was small, not allowing the colonists to know what was happening until too late...

Hell begins
A few days later, a starship was dispatched to the planet, only to the captain and crews horror - at least a third of the planet had been consumed. It had spread like a technological cancer, devoured all life on the surface, then went on to eat at the planets crust, mantle and even atmosphere. The starship left, and warned their superiors. A quaruntine was placed in that system. But that did not stop the nanohorde, once they consumed the entire planet in weeks, they needed something new to replicate with. The more nanomachines there are, the more intelligent they become and as a complex hivemind, they created a faster than light starship, but build entirely out of nanomachines or the now known - Nanohorde.

The plague continues
Over next few weeks, an ecological catastophie on the astronimical scale was taking place. These machines were invading every system like a horde of lcusts, getting more intelligent and more numerous. Already, 5 planets had fallen to the horde.