Galiana, a short slender woman with grey hair stood in front of a class of 20 with ages varying from 18 to 32. Her face was expressionless, however the horn protruding from her forehead splashed and danced with colours of red, green, blue and yellow. Thoughts and emotions from the hive flowed in and out of her mind. Despite the numerous distractions she dedicated her voice to teaching the class "Four hundred years ago, as humanity was colonising the first systems we came across the relics of an alien race, the Amarantin. Their home world was destroyed a million years prior while the last surviving traces hid themselves in the computational matrix of a neutron star. They gave us a warning about the wolves - a self-replicating robotic race that lurked in the shadows of our galaxy hell bent on destroying all life. No negotiations were made as the wolves approached the newly human settled Amarantin system and constructed a weapon - a weapon capable of magnetically drilling to the core of a star and exposing the nuclear flames directly across the system sterilising all inhabitants. A hundred years after those events our collective decided to create this hive, a ship capable of travelling fast enough to outrun the wolves and spread pockets of life across the Milky Way in hopes that the battle of progeny and attrition would pay off. You, the students of the 5th colony will be one of those seeds." A boy of about 22 raised his hand, he had blue eyes and brown hair with a streak of grey across his forehead. "Yes?" Galiana's eyes met his own "I understand it's been 400 years... but have we really exhausted every option of fighting back?" She took a moment to respond recalling all the failed attempts of other colonies, hearing the screams of millions of lives being snuffed. "Energy weapons don't really affect them, and the problem isn't each individual bot, the problem is that there a trillions of them, no matter how many you destroy it only takes one to hide away and exponentially grow to a force that can destroy planets and stars once again." The boy hummed and nodded thinking for a moment "Are we aware of any control signals that they use to communicate?" "Not in the electromagnetic range unfortunately". Galiana's answer was a lie of omission. She brought up the boys file in her mind - Joseph, expert in micro black holes and spatial anomalies. She pondered in her mind about inviting him to the project then continued the class "As you should know the Wolves are attracted to any kind of technological indicator. You must keep your colony under complete radio silence so no sending messages back to your parents in the hive. All heavy industry must be suitably deep under the planets crust. Even after many generations the Wolves will still be out there so just find a way to live a good life." Joseph slumped in his chair as Galiana explained the exciting prospect of living under a rock. He leant over chatting to Matt about their project, "Do you think we can steal enough energy to succeed with our experiment?" Matt pursed his lips, his eyes a deep brown looking back at Joseph "Not sure she would be too impressed by us using the university resources for it" he tilted his head indicating toward Galiana. Joseph sat back and sighed looking up at the mural of the Milky way painted on the ceiling. Most of the stars were faint luminescent phosphors except for a single LED in a long line across the disc which indicated the current location of the hive. At lightspeed the time it takes to cross the Milky way is around 100,000 years. The hive accelerates very slowly and it's current speed was only around 70% the speed of light. However, after some amount of time the hive would venture out into the deep void of intergalactic space. That future would be beyond even the oldest humans jumping between epochs through reefersleep. However, it was a subtle reminder that even if humanity runs for an eternity the problem of facing the wolves would remain. "Eh fuck it let's go for it" Joseph gave Matt a smile as the sound of an old bell rang out over the class speakers. Joseph stood and walked with Matt from the classroom out along the walkways of the old university. The university was rather large as to sustain a colony indefinitely needed expertise in all areas as well as plenty of equipment to setup manufacturing on the settled world. Joseph and Matt walked past the central cafeteria grabbing a few snacks before heading to a small lab next to the primary power supply for the university. They had large aluminium connections into the lab, once they stepped inside there was a railgun from wall to wall. On one side was the coils for accelerating the payload and on the other end were the small detector wires around the experimental observation point. Matt sat down behind a computer and started configuring the device, adjusting the energy levels and turning on the observation side. Joseph walked into the room and checked for any contaminants from previous low power tests as well as prepped the target and chambered the compressive pellet. After finalising the preparation of the device Joseph walked back into the control room, they stood behind heavy reinforced acrylic and listened to the loud hum of the charging circuits loading energy into the capacitors for the explosive acceleration. The sound of heels clicking on the walkway echoed behind them as Galiana stepped into the control room behind them. She made a cough for their attention "Boys?" Joseph turned on his feet while Matt swivelled in his chair to look at her. "Galiana!" Joseph stepped forward with a smile extending his hand "Great to see you again, we're a little busy at the moment could we talk later?". "Oh drop it Joseph, I'm part of a collective, nothing happens without my approval. I'm here to observe your little experiment" he gave him a smile and waved for him to return back to look at the readings coming from the screen. A heavy relay let out a loud click cutting the charging circuit ready for release. A big red friendly button sat on the desk with a casing over top. "Is the observation system ready?" Joseph asked Matt preparing to press the button. He nodded and peered over his screen into the room at the potentially dangerous amount of energy stored inside it. Joseph lifted the casing and hovered his hand over the button, his heart raced a little before he pressed it. In a second the massive relay slammed together sending the charge directly to the acceleration coils, the payload slammed into the target where a small capsule of uranium was kinetically compressed into super dense matter enough to generate a micro black hole. The event generated a wave of electromagnetic and gravimetric energy that passed through the observation device showing up on Matt's screen. "Yes!" they both jumped seeing the gravity wave generated, previous tests had only shown a spike in the EM device. Galiana stood then with a small smile at their triumph, "Good work but I think we'd need something a little larger to deal with the wolves. Which is precisely the reason I came to speak with you both. Would you like to switch from being colonists to participants in a different kind of project? It would be focused on devising a plan to eradicate the wolves". Joseph and Matt blinked for a moment reeling from their successful experiment as well as the prospect of doing something to fight the genocidal entities. "Of course" Joseph replied almost instantly followed by Matt's enthusiastic nodding. "I thought you said that the wolves don't respond to EM waves though?" "But they do to gravimetric waves" Galiana responded watching the wave of realisation wash across their faces. "Oh." with a quick nod and sudden judgement Joseph extended his hand "We'd love to join the project. When can we start?" "Tomorrow a shuttle will pick you up and take you to the throat".