The Martial Unity

All of these traits made her consider something rather different from their initial considerations of the homoarachnoids.

What if these creatures were not native to this world?

What if these creatures were actually from a different world that had come to Planet Amadeus III for the sake of another purpose?

”What if it’s the same purpose as us?” she realized with a chilling tone of voice. ”If they are aliens from another world who came to this world to extract resources, then it would explain why they seem so out of place on this planet. It doesn’t make sense for a planet to have no other forms of complex life except for the homoarachnoids, which are very complex lifeforms.”

If that was the case, then it changed their understanding of the situation.

”It might be that the relationship between the homoarachnoids and the alien virus is very different from what we think,” Schoel interjected with a grim, thoughtful expression. ”It’s possible that these creatures aren’t merely opportunistic, but have some broader agenda in mind and have greater involvement with the plague that plagues are cosmos.”

That was a chilling possibility. She had assumed that the homoarachnoids were merely native indigenous lifeforms that had taken extremely well to the alien virus and the esoteric matter that it brought to their civilization. If that was the case, then they were dealing with a civilization that was more powerful than she might have imagined.

She turned towards the revelation of just how hollow the planet was. ”What exactly is going on at those depths within the planet?” She turned back towards the experts and leaders who had gathered in the room before her. ”Do we have any other data points that can tell us what is happening. I have heard that on Gaia Prime, there are no phenomena occurring in the gap of space between the negatron core and the rest of the planet. Is that the same case here?”

One exogeologist shifted his glasses, stepping forward with a nervous expression. ”Madam President, we suspect that the hollow center of Planet Amadeus III is likely very different from that of the hollow space in Gaia Prime. The only information we have on what is going on in the latter comes actually from none other than His Majesty the Emperor of Water himself.”

Just the very mention of that name made the air feel heavier. As if he had just invoked an incantation. As if it was the a storm that loomed in the air. Arastia’s blood-red eyes sharpened. ”And what did my elder brother say about what he saw at the center of Gaia Prime?”

Her blood relations with the Emperor of Water as his younger half-sister were very well-known, of course, especially between the Blood Humanist Society.

”According to His Majesty, he saw a sphere of negatron matter that contained a tremendous amount of negative energy that was constantly growing with negatron matter created from the particle accelerator apparatus of the alien virus before His Majesty had destroyed it,” the geologist explained, taking on an educative tone. ”His Majesty speculated then, likely very correctly in hindsight, that the alien virus had captured the information of the planet that Gaia had been before the Epoch of Evolution: Planet Earth.”

The history of Gaia had become public knowledge in the thirteen years of the Era of Expansion. The Shepherd and the Scrier had published a series of books that documented the history of what Gaia had been roughly a hundred and eighty-seven thousand years in the past before the planet had been infected with a cosmic virus.

It was rather fascinating to learn how existing languages and cultures across Gaia and the Panama Continent were remnants and legacies of what Earth had been. Their ancestors, homo sapiens, were pathless, something that was shocking to each and every single modern human being of any race, and it was a civilization that, at its height, had managed to cross the threshold of Type-One Civilization and had begun taking steps towards becoming a Type-Two Civilization. They had even found astronomical evidence of what Gaia had been like as Earth, having described probes in space that had been deployed by this ancient civilization and ancient race.

Voyage 1 being the furthest and most ancient of them all, allowing them to gain critical information of just what kind of civilization they had been what their technology was like.

More importantly, of course, the insights that this gave them regarding what could possibly be at the center of Planet Amadeus III.

”Do you think that there is a negatron core with the same kind of information that Gaia Prime had and perhaps still has?” Arastia leaned forward, knitting her fingers in a steeple.

”Most likely, Your Excellency,” the exogeologist clarified with a serious expression. ”It might be that this level of hollowfication is simply a sign that the planet is closer to blowing up. And if that’s the case, we might want to re-evaluate how long-term this operation will be. However, there are also other pieces of evidence that we are able to garner regarding what might be at the hollowed inner surface of the planet based on what surrounds it.”

He showed her another scan, this time a geothermal scan of the entire planet from their infrared sensor array.

She found tunnels that ran through the crust of the entire planet.

”This...”

”Most likely, Your Excellency, these are tunnels that the homoarachnoids use to travel between the hollowed center and the outer surface of the planet.”

Her eyes widened at those words. ”Are you saying that they’re living on the internal surface of the world?! That’s crazy!”

”It does sound like something that is truly not viable, but based on the information that we have gathered on these creatures, it does certainly seem viable, Madam President,” another geologist remarked with a serious tone of voice. ”The sheer adhesion of their web fluid is so high that they could weave together an entire civilization across the internal surface of the planet, one that could potentially survive and not simply wander off into space in zero gravity, thanks to the adhesion of their webs. We know that their webs are extremely powerful and multipurpose. Based on the intel that we have gathered on them during this battle, they can have many purposes and can transmit a large amount of energy and information through them, and could thus viably be used to create a rather sophisticated and advanced civilization beyond the eyes of anybody on the outside.”