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 were 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...