War with a Race Billion-Year Lifespans

Dwellers were almost everywhere and had been there practically for ever. They had learned a few things about making war over that time, and while their war machines were believed to be as customarily unreliable - and eccentrically designed, built and maintained - as every other piece of technology they deigned to involve themselves with, that didn’t mean they weren’t deadly; usually for all concerned, and within a disconcertingly large volume.

Other species had prevailed against Dwellers on occasion. Entire planetary populations of them had been wiped out and whole gas-giants dismantled to provide the raw material for one of those monstrous megastructure projects that Quick species in particular seemed so keen on building, apparently just because they could. But the long-term results were, to date, inevitably unhappy.

Picking a fight with a species as widespread, long-lived, irascible and - when it suited them - single-minded as the Dwellers too often meant that just when - or even geological ages after when - you thought that the dust had long since settled, bygones were bygones and any unfortunate disputes were all ancient history, a small planet appeared without warning in your home system, accompanied by a fleet of moons, themselves surrounded with multitudes of asteroid-sized chunks, each of those riding cocooned in a fuzzy shell made up of untold numbers of decently hefty rocks, every one of them travelling surrounded by a large landslide’s worth of still smaller rocks and pebbles, the whole ghastly collection travelling at so close to the speed of light that the amount of warning even an especially wary and observant species would have generally amounted to just about sufficient time to gasp the local equivalent of ‘What the fu—?’ before they disappeared in an impressive if wasteful blaze of radiation.

Notes:

Folksonomies: speculation astrobiology

Taxonomies:
/society/unrest and war (0.489562)
/society/social institution/marriage (0.424905)
/pets/reptiles (0.408760)

Keywords:
Billion-Year Lifespans Dwellers (0.972514 (negative:-0.210193)), decently hefty rocks (0.831636 (neutral:0.000000)), monstrous megastructure projects (0.797485 (neutral:0.000000)), disconcertingly large volume (0.787619 (negative:-0.569150)), Entire planetary populations (0.777173 (neutral:0.000000)), wasteful blaze (0.535589 (neutral:0.000000)), asteroid-sized chunks (0.531479 (neutral:0.000000)), ghastly collection (0.530852 (neutral:0.000000)), unfortunate disputes (0.525595 (neutral:0.000000)), untold numbers (0.525216 (neutral:0.000000)), war machines (0.520013 (negative:-0.484071)), long-term results (0.515663 (negative:-0.230752)), raw material (0.514842 (neutral:0.000000)), smaller rocks (0.513793 (neutral:0.000000)), geological ages (0.511238 (neutral:0.000000)), large landslide (0.510204 (neutral:0.000000)), ancient history (0.509521 (neutral:0.000000)), small planet (0.509084 (neutral:0.000000)), fuzzy shell (0.508102 (neutral:0.000000)), local equivalent (0.507083 (neutral:0.000000)), sufficient time (0.504326 (neutral:0.000000)), observant species (0.504146 (neutral:0.000000)), Quick species (0.501598 (neutral:0.000000)), bygones (0.376892 (neutral:0.000000)), multitudes (0.294212 (neutral:0.000000)), pebbles (0.273588 (neutral:0.000000)), moons (0.267855 (neutral:0.000000)), occasion (0.264614 (neutral:0.000000)), Race (0.264097 (negative:-0.210193)), things (0.259483 (negative:-0.420016))

Entities:
Billion-Year:Quantity (0.010000 (neutral:0.000000))

Concepts:
Planet (0.905966): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc

 The Algebraist
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Banks, Iain M. (2008-09-04), The Algebraist, Hachette UK, Retrieved on 2014-08-09
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: fiction