Orli was full of questions. 'Why do the Klikiss want to attack other subhives?'

Margaret had never been particularly good with children, even her own son Anton. She just didn't know how to talk to them, couldn't remember how to put aside her serious demeanour, but this girl seemed much more than a child. For whatever reason, Orli seemed to have taken a liking to Margaret. And DD. 'How old are you?'

'Fifteen.'

'You know that humans war on each other, as well. But for Klikiss it is a biological imperative. A form of population control.' Trapped among them, Margaret had studied the insect race intensely, examining their social orders, their interactions, at last learning to communicate with them.

'I comprehend them more as an archaeologist than a biologist. The Klikiss have a cyclical society whose driving engine is conquest, consolidation, and dominance. When there are many subhives, the breedexes war with each other. One breedex conquers and subsumes the weaker of the two, increasing its own hive, then continues its war against another subhive. Hives fission and grow, breeding new warriors to replace those lost in the battles. Each victor incorporates other hives, eliminating rivals and growing strong, until the entire scattered race becomes nothing more than a few vast conflicting breedexes. And finally when those struggles are over, only one breedex remains, controlling the Klikiss race.

'But a single breedex in a single vast hive would eventually grow stagnant and die out. After a certain point, the last victorious breedex fissions one final, spectacular time and scatters all of the Klikiss through thousands of transportals to new worlds. That is the Great Swarming. Then they go dormant for thousands of years. To wait.'

'Why do they sleep for so long?' Orli asked the question as if there were a simple answer.

Margaret had studied countless alien records, tried to ask the Klikiss for reasons, but even such a simple question seemed beyond their comprehension. No points of comparison. Crouching in the dirt, using sharp sticks and fingers to scrawl intricate lines of their mathematical script, Margaret had tried to pose her questions before the breedex lost interest. It had taken her months of captivity before she'd begun to understand.

'The centuries of all-out hive wars devastate countless planets, and so the whole race, the breedexes, the domates, and all the sub-breeds bury themselves and hibernate while planetary ecosystems recover. When the Klikiss awaken again, the newly created subhives start the cycle all over again.'

Orli made the connection so quickly, Margaret was astonished it her cleverness. 'That must mean other subhives are out there light now, if this is a new Swarming.'

'Yes, Orli. Many more. And although this breedex on Llaro still considers me interesting, I have no influence over any of the others. Those subhives will attack and kill any other infestations they find.'

'What do you mean, infestations? Other Klikiss?'

'Klikiss. Or black robots. Or humans.'