It was quiet in the classroom. The children were sitting quietly in their seats with the headset on. The instructor stood by the wall with Derek, watching the projection at the front of the room.
The child’s figure became but a dot as the camera pulled back from above.
The attacks by the galactic pirates were but one part of the issues facing Old Grantz.
The camera panned to the distant sky, to somewhere beyond the starships of the galactic pirates.
Some viewers noticed something unusual.
[There doesn’t seem to be any ports here? Even the galactic pirates are just landing wherever they please.]
Ports played an important role in the takeoff and landing of starships. They were basically required once the number of ships exceded a certain value, otherwise everything would devolve into chaos. Planets without ports were either uninhabited or purely used for harvesting resources with a small crew stationed there.
However, every inhabited planet definitely required ports.
[Are you sure you didn’t just miss them? How could there be no ports? Maybe the galactic pirates just don’t have permission to use them.]
[There really aren’t any. I’m sure, I’ve checked around several time already. It’s not that the ports are temporarily closed, there really aren’t any.]
[Then what about all these people here? How can they leave this place?]
The scene continued to shift. The date in small font at the top of the screen denoted the timelapse. Although it was changing rapidly, the sky remained much the same.
Soon, the camera panned swiftly across the sky and back down to the ground once more.
Little had changed about the child. He was still very thin. Lakely glanced at the time. Around half a year had elapsed, but the child was still roaming the garbage dump with his companions.
Then came that familiar whoosh as a fleet of starships passed by overhead.
The children scattered again, taking shelter behind the rocks and garbage nearby.
The child whose perspective they were following instead looked up, seemingly having picked up on something. A few seconds later, the rest of the children came out into the open as well.
They even started chasing after the fleet.
Those starships quickly dropped a lot of crates equipped with parachutes. The children descended on them in a frenzy before they even reached them ground. They opened the crates to reveal some food and weapons inside.
The children scarfed down the nutrient solution and food on the spot and looted the weapons.
The child managed to grab a dagger. Excited, he gave it a few swishes before putting it away.
The children soon followed the fleet back to the residential area. The fleet slowed as they approached and started unloading more supply crates. They seemed to be deliberately picking out densly inhabited locations.
Supply crates rained down from the sky.
In reponse, adults began emerging from those seemingly long-abandoned buildings.
Some stood on the rooftops, others settled on window ledges.
Their response seemed far more measured compared to the children’s excitement.
[These starships don’t seem to belong to the galactic pirates. Are they allies? I don’t quite understand what’s going on…]
[Someone mentioned they couldn’t leave before due to a lack of ports, and now this. It doesn’t sit well with me for some reason. It’s almost like these people are being held captive.]
The adults methodically moved the crates inside. When space ran out, the rest were left piled on the side of the streets.
The children also seemed to settled down a lot. Instead of rummaging through the crates left outside, they turned their sights towards the crates that had landed outside of the settlement.
They seemed to have a system of their own and only took the crates that were accidentally dropped too far. Even when some starships purposely dropped crates farther from the settlement, the children just grumbled and dragged them back to where the adults left the extra crates.
The adults unceremoniously collected those crates as well.
The children still seemed to be in high spirits. They cheered whenever a crate was dropped.
The child they were following, however, left without hesitation after filling his stomach. He even used the extra food he collected to barter two daggers from the other children.
The child scaled the wall with practiced motions. He traversed the rooftops until he arrived at a particularly tall one where several adults were gathered.
The adults turned at the sound of the commotion.
The child approached them hesitantly, giving one of the daggers he managed to get to one of the women standing and the other to the one-eyed man next to her.
Both accepted his gifts.
But remained where they were.
A discontent young man pressed the child’s head down. “I know you have another one. I saw it.”
[Hey, I remember these two! They showed up with the group the other day to help.]
The child managed to wriggled free from the young man’s hold. “I know, I know. I have to give it to the Grantz.”
The young man huffed. “All you brats know how to do is fill your stomachs and fool around.”
The child bristled. “We’re not fooling around.”
“Everyone knows having a full stomach means the insects are coming.”
One of the adults stood up. “But we have the Grantz this time.”
Before the viewers could even come to terms with how long the Grantz family had been around, someone picked up on another detail.
[Wait, do you guys see that bracelet on the kid’s wrist? It’s ancient tech. Those from Keller should be familiar with it. There’s many examples in the textbooks and in public records.]
[Yeah, I’ve seen one of these in our research institute that’s on loan from the museum. It’s an invention that predates the insect plague and the loss of technology it caused. These bracelets were once used to track animals and film wildlife documentaries. The footage is stored locally. Each one is powered by a compact energy source that we have yet to find a substitute for, meaning they’re basically single use for now. If it’s left on, it can theoretically function for centuries. We still have the means to view the footage, and the quality holds up to this day.]
[So Grantz and Keller really did come from the same place. I always thought it was just Keller propaganda.]
[Is this really the time to bring that up? At least now we know the footage, at least the parts featuring this child, are real.]
The discussion in the chat shifted from moment to moment.
However, Lakely was too focused on the child’s words to notice. What did he mean the insects would come when their stomachs were full? How were the two related?
He couldn’t figure it out.
The camera panned up to the sky again as another timelapse took place.
When it panned down again, a black tide was surging over the horizon.
It descended upon them before Lakely could react.
Lakely’s pupils dilated instantly. This was the insect tide!
His heart thumped uncontrollably, so loud that he could almost hear it.
There was no doubt about it. Even the Alliance experienced insect tides, but they would always have advance notice and stage the battlefield in uninhabited buffer planetary belts.
If the insect tide spiraled out of control, the residents of planets in the splash zone would be evacuated via motherships.
Footage from the initial battlefield always came from unmanned motherships or from a distance, behind the safety of the fleet.
Lakely never thought he would see a scene like this, even in his wildest imaginations.
The child climbed to the rooftops once more. The camera followed him, showing how the rooftops of the residential area had been connected and fortified with rudimentary supplies. Supply crates were stacked high in the corners.
At first, the adults and children were all crowded together. Gradually, the children, the infirm and the elderly all retreated to the back.
Uneasy, the child they were following squeezed his way to the front and peered out into the distance.
The black line approached relentlessly. Shrill screching soon filled the air.
The camera surged past the child after he stopped, crossing over countless structures to the forefront.
Even though he knew logically what it was, Lakely still froze in place.
Millions of insects pressed forward in an unrelenting black tide. Even though most of them didn’t reach his knees, they still gave off an overwhelming sense of oppression.
Insects had already reached the buildings and started climbing up.
Just what…was this?
Could humans really survive in this environment? Without motherships, mecha or even any weapons of mass destruction?
It seemed like footage of active combat was mostly avoided out of consideration for the viewers’ age. Only a few key moments were shown.
[Hurry up and run, ah! There’s no point to standing your ground with this kind of insect tide, just run. What’s the point of this first person perspective?]
[They can’t run. There aren’t any ports, remember?]
[So what, are they some sort of living buffer zone?]
If so, perhaps it was better to die on your own terms rather than being torn apart and used as nutrients by the swarm.
As soon as this idea came to mind, Lakely saw a person being dragged down by an insect that clamped down on his arm, only to be saved by his companion. His arm was wrenched off at the elbow.
Despite their environment, these people were still struggling to find a way to survive.
Then, someone called out:
“The Grantz are closing in on the king insect!”
Before Lakely could digest what that meant.
The camera started pulling up again. Lakely spotted several dots within the swarm. The ground was visible briefly before being swallowed again.
The camera zoomed ahead. The first thing they saw after it stabilized was a terribly humongous insect.
It shrieked incessantly as it retreated, protected on all sides by the swarm. For some reason, Lakely almost felt like it was afraid.
A person appeared on screen just then, charging out of the all-consuming swarm.
He quickly ran up the insect’s forelimb in what Lakely recognized as a distinctly Grantz fashion.
The man soon reached the back of the king insect. After plunging his blade into a certain spot on its body, he held it in place despite the king insect’s wild thrashes. Then, he inclined his head and stared straight into the camera for a moment.
That was the last image the camera captured before it shut off.
Words materialized in the center of the dark screen- a date.
Followed by a top-down view of a planet.
A marked region gradually materialized.
Lakely recognized it as the previously mentioned ‘Homeland’ at once.
The areas inhabited by humans were obvious.
As the date began to rapidly change, so did the human settlements. Darkness would close in from the borders at times, kicking off even more drastic changes in the settlements.
Lakely knew that darkness represented the insect tide.
Time and time again, it came for them.
Lakely had lost count by the end. All he could remember was the settlements growing sparser and sparser.
He had a premonition that there was more to Old Grantz’s story than this short piece of footage could tell.
