THE VANG
THE MILITARY FORM
CHRISTOPHER ROWLEY
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BOOK ONE
THE SEED
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CHAPTER ONE
THE DESOLATION WAS AS ENDLESS AS THE UNIVERSE itself. The tiny rescue pod, little more than a protective skin and respiration module, wallowed helplessly in the distant fringes of the asteroid belt of an insignificant orange sun.
As far as the Military Form could predict, the pod would continue to orbit there for as long as the solar system might last, which would be a long time, no matter which school of belief one might belong to concerning the structure and long-term future of the universe.
Unfortunately, the Military Form was built to survive. It could not contemplate suicide and it could live, if floating in the tiny pod could be called living, for just as long as the universe existed.
This brought on feelings close to despair when the Military Form contemplated certain cosmological possibilities. If the universe consisted solely of "remnant mass," left over from all-consuming gravitational contractions shortly after the big bang, then it was an "open" universe, and thus endless. The stars would eventually go out, the galaxies darken, and in the barren void it would float on, too far from anything else to effect a micron's worth of difference to the flow.
Twice, during the half-billion years that the pod had orbited there, it had passed within five million kilometers of another small body. With no motive power except muscles, and no spacesuit, the Military Form had not dared to strike out for either. It could survive in vacuum for a considerable time, but not if it had to adopt a form capable of work.
What made the situation irretrievably bitter was that the system boasted a life world, a bright fat disk that showed blue oceans in the telescope. A world that undoubtedly had host!
Host! it was enough to make even the Military Form quake with the wanting. But the water world was safe, and the Military Form could do no more than watch its bright disk and hunger for it.
Naturally, the Higher Form that the Military Form guarded within the pod, had gone into life suspension a long, long time ago, even before the pod had fallen into this solar system.
For this the Military Form was extremely thankful. Having the Higher Form awake with it, cooped up in the tiny pod, would have been miserable. Through many campaigns and innumerable victories, the Military Form had developed a powerful aversion to the complaining of higher forms.
In solitude therefore, the Military Form continued to obey its genetic compulsions, searching the surrounding space for close passing asteroids. Every so often it regenerated the optical surfaces of its telescopic limb to refresh the input. Other than that, it did little but breathe once a minute or so.
Its duty was to cling to life, no matter how bitter that might be. For all it knew, it was the very last of its race, the only survivor ...

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