Sins of the Children (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Summary

The thing that came down right beside us was three meters high with a massive articulated body. A bug, really, Chelicer style. Eight crooked legs out from a central hub like all the mobile life here had, but most of what we’d seen was gracile, delicate, and came up to your waist. Even the Farmers — which we’d pegged as the most advanced species around — were only a meter and a half tall, and most of that was stilting limbs. This thing was not gracile. Every segment and joint of it was ridgy, armored, and spiky. It was dun and khaki like the planet’s dust, but too big to have hidden anywhere nearby, towering over the scrub. There were spread vanes like sails projecting from its back, but it couldn’t have flown under organic power. It must have weighed five tons.We just stared. In that moment, when we could have run or called for help, we goggled at it. The stalked globes of its eyes looked back, devoid of living connection. A vast armored monster, airdropped from nowhere.I saw the motion, off on a neighboring hillside. There was a second monster out there, surprisingly hard to spot. It hunkered down, drawing its limbs in.Chunk! That same sound. The thing on the hillside was gone.A second later it was on us, coming down right in front of Merrit. I thought of mechanical advantage, the tricks you could do with a rigid exoskeleton. I thought of fleas, but on an absurd macro scale. It jumped and came down on eight legs that must have been shock absorbers par excellence.Chelicer life doesn’t quite have a front or a back, built around that hub of legs. The mouth is on the underside and that’s what this thing tilted at Merrit. I’d dissected some of the Farmers and they had an arrangement like eight knuckly stumps to mumble over their food with. These new arrivals had a setup like a sphincter made of scissor blades and nutcrackers, more an industrial process than biology. We’d seen what those tools had done to the weather station already. Right then we were more concerned wit...