The colony planet itself should have been the crew’s main priority, but the Vulture God crew’s attention was caught by one of the outer planets. It was being pulverized into an asteroid field, and its debris trailed along the curve of its old orbit for over a hundred thousand kilometres. Idris brought up images: the planet was swarming with vast factory-machines like city-sized flatworms. Past the ravaged curve of its horizon loomed a great bristling lump of mutilated-looking technology. This was a Naeromathi Locust Ark, the Jericho system’s very unwelcome visitor.
