Art Pact 240 - Plantship

The great mother-pod rolled in its orbit, the lower castellations and towers on the surface of the craft rustling the leaves at the very tops of the trees below. Workers on the surface of the pod wound their vines and graspers around the nodes extended from the pod for safety, clamping tight so that they would not be swept off into the void. Some of them had the presence of mind to grab at the leaves that were brushing at them, snatching trophies and collecting samples for their work.

We are coming in, said the mother-pod. One more run.

The forest planet's green sphere spun beneath the pod. The canopy shielded the life forms below, and the surface workers clinging to the side of the mother-pod attempted in vain to peer below, signaling their frustration with waving tendrils. They had been expecting a less fertile target, and although the buzzing fecundity they found promised greater advantage for them, it was also an unnerving unknown. A planet so lush might be an uninhabited Eden, full of resources ripe for the plucking. But it might equally be the pleasure garden of some more aggressive strain. Caution should have been the byword, but they had not planned for caution, neither had they any resources to attempt the surface in any way other than their prescribed manner. The mother-pod's troops and bridgehead were ready in its vast womb, lining up nervously for their landing, and if they discovered resistance more stiff than that they were capable of defeating, there would be no reinforcements nor any hope of retreat. The mother-pod might in extremis dip down close enough to the tiny planet's surface to lower vines, but vines might so easily be repurposed by their enemies as tethers, so the risk would have to be worth taking. An expeditionary force's value would not be enough to justify the potential loss of a mother-pod, and the members of the group were grimly aware of that fact, marshalling their thoughts and turning them towards the optimism of success and away from the grim inevitabilities that were foot servants to defeat.

Ready first drops, said the mother-pod.

Beneath it, the planned incursion site grew closer and closer. The extra run the mother-pod had made over the planet had given it little more information about the landing spot, but had confirmed that there were no others it preferred - and since there were no better places, it might as well be the one that they had planned for. At least in the event of a complete loss, an expedition sent to determine what had happened would not have too difficult a time finding their remains. It was disturbed by the amount of growth that had occurred in the time available - the tiny message-pod that had alerted them to the planet's habitability had shown only rather sparse growth covering the surface - much smaller trees than the ones that now blanketed it completely, and an open area where the first growth of the bridgehead could begin without interference. Here, it seemed, there was no such opening. The landing crew and troops would have to baby the bridgehead, carving out an area of forest around its implantation point to prevent it from being strangled before it could grow out far enough that the mother-pod could reach it safely.

Release, it said.

Deep in the womb of the great living craft, the waiting troops and workers rushed towards the blossoming openings. They had their first taste of the atmosphere of the planetoid - thick, full of both oxygen and carbon dioxide, and heavy with a sweet perfume. They did not pause in their duties, although the presence of the scent was unexpected, and they knew that it might mean trouble - it was redolent of signals, of calls for help and of unknown and scuttling things that would rush in to defend the local flora. It could mean nothing, of course, but there was already the troubling speed with which the planet had changed since their scout had catalogued it and returned its message-pod to the home worlds. If the planet could change so much in so short a time, what other secrets could it hold? The possibility of "other forms", as the central minds diplomatically referred to them, was one that even the most hardened warrior found disturbing. Veterans of the forbidden campaigns would often speak in hushed rustles of the dark forms that moved faster than any normal person could react, of terrifying shapes, of an inexplicable free movement that allowed the enemies to attack from any direction at any time, striking and retreating before retaliation could be made, throwing encampments and bridgeheads into chaos before  vanishing into the night.

They tumbled like spores from the bottom of their carrier, plummeting and floating in equal measure as the mood took them - there was a deliberate randomness to the landing, a detail honed over generations upon generations of incursion to ensure that hostile growths could not develop simple plans for destroying an incoming bridgehead. Soldier and worker plants rained down in equal numbers, mixed together, and along with the actual bridgehead seed fell dozens of inert shells, chaff to distract any defenders away from the energy intensive prize that they would be looking for.

The fall was all too short for the soldiers. They thudded into the ground and began to work their way across the drop zone, seeking out and strangling a little circle of locals in order to clear space for the bridgehead seed. The seed itself had landed a little south of the intended insertion point, but workers were already swarming around it, leaning quickly over it from one side to encourage it to grown north as it reached up through the atmosphere. An opening in the canopy appeared and then grew as the soldiers did their deadly work, and by the time the mother-pod had down three more rotations the tip of the bridgehead was beginning to be visible climbing just above the local trees. The landing had proceeded entirely without incident.

Still, the brains on the mother-pod were nervous. Something was wrong with their information, and that made them uncomfortable.