A Bug's Life by Gini Koch Page B

horrific
destruction.
    The planet of Pilla had also been destroyed.
However, the Pillar had no special talents that made the Diamante
Families jealous or wary. They were an insectoid race – and unlike
the Arachnidans, who, per Willy, resembled a cross between Old
Earth grasshoppers, beetles, and spiders – Pillars weren’t remotely
threatening.
    Arachnidans had eight limbs complete with
pincers, were tall and could be imposing, and could move
deceptively fast. Among their many talents, they were excellent
hand-to-hand and weapons fighters, fabulous dancers and artists,
and, as Tresia proved daily, excellent chefs.
    By comparison, Pillars were long, but not
tall. They possessed a brittle shell and fifty tiny legs. When
threatened, they curled up into balls. This was effective because
their brittle shells became hard as iron when they were in a ball.
It was ineffective in that they weren’t able to do much other than
roll – if they’d curled up on an incline. They were good scientists
and mathematicians, however, their species focus was on their own
planet and people and doing their best to be left alone.
    Their main contribution to the galaxy was
music. Pilla had the most accomplished musicians of any planet –
fifty little legs could do amazing things with a piano, a drum set,
a violin, or anything else. They were mostly useless on woodwinds,
though some Pillars did manage to master them, and those who did
were always exceptional.
    There was no logical reason for the Diamante
Families to destroy this planet. Pilla had nothing impressive in
terms of natural resources, no solar- or galactic-level weapons of
any kind, a desire to just stay on Pilla and be ignored, and a
planetary belief that the power of music was all a being needed to
make the galaxy better. When a being looked up the definition of
“nonthreatening” a picture of a Pillar would be shown.
    But destroy Pilla the Diamante Families did,
as viciously as they destroyed Seraphina. However, they didn’t
destroy the Pillars. Because the Pillars had been warned somehow,
and the entire population was off planet when the Diamante
Families’ Destruction Fleet arrived. The general assumption was
that the Espen Resistance had given the Pillar leadership the
head’s up that it was time to run, but this had never been
proven.
    Due to their brittle shells, the Pillar were
unable to travel in warp – the pressure of traveling at warp speed
would crush them flat. They could go into what they called Round
Form and survive, but they couldn’t remain in Round Form for longer
than about thirty minutes to an hour. And the younger the Pilla,
the shorter time they could last in Round Form. And it was pretty
hard to pilot a spaceship if all you could do was roll
around.
    But what the most nonviolent race in the
galaxy had been doing since the first hints – decades prior – that
the Diamante Families were getting uppity had come to them, was
creating gigantic, generational, self-sustaining
spaceships.
    A Pillar Colony consisted of six generational
ships, tethered together. The Pillar had put their entire race into
these Colonies and sent them out, each one going in a different
direction in space. No one knew how many Colonies had left Pilla,
though – based on the Pilla reproductive cycle, which was short;
the Pilla lifecycle, which was also relatively short; and the
restrictions a generational ship put onto any race – a conservative
estimate was a thousand Colonies.
    In a sane galaxy, that would have been the end
of it. The Pillars would be heading off to nowhere, and the
Diamante Families would have been satisfied with destroying their
home world. But this wasn’t a sane galaxy, and hadn’t been since
the first Diamante decided that everyone else was a lesser being
than he was.

    “ It’s helping, Fren,” Roy said,
voice tight. “Hold it as long as you can, I think we’re almost out
of the wreckage.”
    The ship was still flipping and spinning and
it was still