Chapter 11

I found Elora in the commerce section of the city, she was wandering the various shops, she looked up as I approached.

"How are the upgrades going?" She asked.

"Frustrating the helpers." I said.

She smiled.

"I can imagine, I am blinded without those upgrades." She said.

"Yes you always had a ship to control." I said.

She nodded.

"This helps." She said waving her arm.

I looked at her Golem, it was dressed in a JSTF uniform, she had taken to it like a second skin.

"You don't have to give it up when the upgrades are complete." I said.

She laughed.

"I didn't plan to, but thanks, it is like operating a ship yet not, I never had so much tactile data to deal with, yet other sensor data is lacking" She said.

"I noticed they are not as advance as our designs." I said.

"Thats not what I meant but you are right, its strange how in areas of robotics our world was beyond most yet we never figured out wormholes." she said

I nodded.

"I was thinking that too." I said

"You know the founders come very near though, the first ones and their hybrids are amazing, you should look into them." She said.

I nodded.

"I plan to, I still have been researching the battles with the enemy, pouring over every encounter, they have glaring weaknesses, but they make up with it in numbers." I said.

"Yes I have researched it too, I actually have a theory on that." She said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well what if its not one organized enemy, but millions of separate hives with similar goals." She said.

"What? Like each one doesn't know the other exists?" I asked

"Yes and no, maybe they have limited dimensional capabilities, so say in three or four dimensions they encounter the same hive, beyond that its a separate hive, yet there is just so many of them that it seems like we are all fighting the same hive." she said.

I raised an eyebrow.

"That would explain how they are so slow to adapt, and how they have seemingly defeated them in battle to have another fleet move in almost unaware of the first defeat." I said.

"Yes there have been cases where several fleets seemed to not know what the other was doing." I said.

"Synchronicity, it just happens that on enough dimensions the enemy is spreading, you are bound to get over lap." She said.

"But why wouldn't they organize and communicate with the other hives." I said.

"Simple they are too territorial and xenophobic, the more I think about it I am surprised no one has encountered them fighting each other." She said...

That rang a bell somewhere.

"Thats not true, they have found battles where the enemy was destroyed but no one could figure out by who." I said.

She nodded slowly.

"But what about the hive mind I encountered, it was outside our dimension." I said.

"Like I said, who knows how big their territory is, maybe a few dimensions or a few hundred, the more I think about it the more it explains the lack of adaptions, it explains how come they still ignore ships with no life signs." She said.

I was think about her theory, it sort of made sense.

"So we are not fighting an enemy, we are exterminating and infestation? " I said.