In Living Memory
"But you, Adrian, you're just a man. The world's smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite."
-The Watchmen, Alan Moore
Expansion had come so easily to Gemkind it hardly mattered that they rose from the soil as slowly as they did. They could afford to take their time, languidly adding the base nutrients to their cores and fixing their masses to grow larger and more radiant before they breached the topsoil to take their first heady breaths of cool air.
It was rumoured that Diamond had been nurtured at the planet's centre for over a hundred thousand orbits, and anyone who laid their eyes on her could well believe it. She loved Homeworld, her blessed mother, and did not wish to suck the planet dry in the process of growing her sisters. Other planets were located, implanted, and although her own virtue compelled Diamond to decree that a planet should be left alone after sufficient nutrients had been taken, many gems paid no attention to this rule.
After gem ranks swelled to two hundred individuals, the galaxy was littered with the empty husks of planets, crumbling softly for eternity.
During this time, gems were at their largest and most beautiful. Life on the occupied planets was dealt with swiftly, much of it was organic, barely sentient and almost never hostile. The indigenous species quietly died in their billions as their home was sucked dry. The few hostile species they did encounter were so small and fragile that death for them was as simple as applying slight pressure to the sole of a gem's feet.
They were hedonistic pleasure-seekers, thriving on conversation and beauty and physical sensations. Nothing pleased them more than the birth of a new beautiful sister. For the longest time, everything was perfect.
The planet that heralded the first signs of trouble was an inconspicuos little rock, barely big enough to grow more than three decent gems. The machines were planted and the process started, but a Beryl who was there to supervise pierced an odd little pocket in the mantle and leaned in to inspect it.
The pocket released a hazy, motile cloud and before she could stop herself, Beryl inhaled. She was screened back at the ship, but the sensors didn't pick up anything unusual.
Reports sent back to Homeworld read that Beryl complained of an itching feeling in her mass. She was slow, confused, irritable. After a time the itching turned into a scraping sensation, then a fierce burn that could not be treated. Her mass decreased.
The first frenzied missive made little sense, but when deciphered it would appear that Beryl's mass burst and a flurry of tiny creatures emerged, scurried away before they could be caught.
Homeworld reacted with baffled but cold proactivity. A team was sent to investigate and to track the creatures for study. Beryl's gem was analysed and found to be almost hollow, eaten from the inside out. She had flouted the rules towards the end, broken the quarantine by leaving the lab so that the creatures escaped into the air vents.
They didn't find the creatures; the creatures found them. They had grown quickly in a short space of time, still less than half the size of the average gem but there were so many of them...
The ten gems from the original landing party and the seven sent to investigate were taken down, infested, devoured and abandoned to rot in less than half an orbit. Gemkind began to feel the sting of an unfamiliar sensation; fear.
Reports filtered in that the strange dust was being encountered on other occupied planets. The reports faded into eerie silence after a little while, no contact could be made with the gems there. Panic gripped Homeworld. They were now down to just fifty individuals, a quarter of their previous numbers.
They continued to expand, but there was no longer any time to just let a gem grow naturally. To swell their ranks, gems were plucked out of the earth after just a few hundred orbits. These gems were large but unrefined, or if there was a lack of space they were small and weak. Especially large and vibrant gems born during this time rose to the top and were given the most important tasks.
To meet their enemy in the field was rightly considered to be suicide. The beasts were fragile but they multiplied with such speed it hardly mattered. New machines were created to churn the earth, find the beasts when they were still small and vulnerable and crush them.
It worked.
For a time.
The creatures adapted. They grew larger with every new generation. They bundled themselves up in their exoskeletons and launched themselves into space, to colonize new planets. A gem could kill a hundred before being overcome, but as soon as she fell under them she was implanted with a new hive and eaten alive.
Smaller gems were sent out in teams to find the hives and destroy them. On Homeworld intelligent gems number-crunched the most efficient use of their dwindling supply of substrate. Diamond appointed her four generals to map out the best way to eradicate the beasts. Rose Quartz, Alabaster, Orthoclase and Iolite, all brilliant strategists, all uniquely skilled warriors.
The creatures, the zoatox, evolved folds in their exoskeletons and a liquid chemical core. They shot blasts of flammable fluid and ignited it to take out gem buildings and ships. They found ways to blend seamlessly into the earth. They could attack in hundreds of different ways and when one fell, a hundred trampled it into the dirt to attack in its place.
They did not plan. They did not hide, or trap, or retreat. They existed with the purest of motivations; to destroy any and all gems in their path and to make more of themselves.
Long after their hard-worn victory, gems still felt their presence as a sort of echo. Those that fought against them would from time to time caught the gleam of a pearl's smooth gem out of the corner of their eye and think on the equally smooth carapace of the zoatox, and in an instant all those orbits that had passed since the war were gone and they were there on the field, watching their enemy rush towards them screaming.