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Melberg arrived deep in the Guatemalan jungles just in time to see the Warren Ship lift off without him. However, the event hardly caused him to pause. After all, it's what he had expected. Twig had indeed gotten here first. He immediately continued on deeper into the jungle towards ground zero. His only hope now was to solve the mystery of whatever was to be found at ground zero, or to perhaps commandeer the human's primitive Space Bus, if and when it arrived on the scene. He still had valuable data cubes in his pockets, enough to make him rich on Ra. He would try to contact Twig, and buy passage home with her.
Knowledge about the Ground Zero mystery might also prove to be valuable. In pursuing that venue however, he would have to avoid Ren'Ca, as such an encounter would surely serve to hasten his demise. Hopefully, the mystery would keep the Ca’Ra too occupied to detect the presence of his old shipmate. Removing his shoes and socks to free his long grasping toes, he easily climbed a towering jungle tree to reconnoiter the lay of the land in the direction of the Dannos impact point.
When he tried to look in the direction of the impact point however, he felt strangely nauseated and filled with foreboding. He recognized immediately that he was being influenced to avoid further progress towards the impact point by incredibly powerful empathic signals, similar to those employed by Ra when hunting and incapacitating prey.
What was the source, however? The signals were far too strong to be produced even by any Ca’Ra, so the source wasn’t Ren’Ca. Yet, no artificial means were known to be capable of producing empathic signals, so the source had to be living!
Melberg climbed down the tree and resumed his stealthy advance towards the impact point. It felt good to be away from human cities and stench. This jungle reminded him of the Ra home world, except that the creatures in this jungle were far less deadly and interesting. Some of them were very tasty, however.
Ahead he saw a glint of something metallic that slithered along the ground like a snake. He couldn't sense it empathically, so it wasn't alive; he couldn't imagine what it could be. When he got closer he realized that rather than being one object it was a collection of thousands of insect-sized objects that clung together as it slithered and surged forward in waves of smaller pieces of itself. As thick as his thigh, it stretched to the left and right tens of meters and further until it disappeared in the green of jungle; he could see no end to it in either direction.
He hissed in surprise when he finally realized that it had to be an enormous colony of countless nanobots. It had obviously been deployed by Ren'Ca. Each insect-sized part of it was in turn made up of millions of microscopic robots. Now that he was closer he could see that countless thinner parts of it reached down into the soil like roots, doubtlessly to obtain materials for the growth of more nanites. A few tendrils led to trees and twined about them, tapping into tree-generated sap and carbon-based cell structures and consuming them.
The nanobots weren't there to simply grow however, they must be programed to protect the impact point against intruders. He had just decided that they could pose a danger to him when he felt something on his leg. He tried to step away but found that he couldn't move either leg. Both his legs were firmly encased in a tangle of pencil-thin nanobot tendrils that in seconds had sprouted up from the ground without him noticing.
He resisted his initial impulse to struggle and strike out at them. It was already far too late for that. His only hope lay in its programming.
The coils around his legs grew and surged over him until they covered his entire body, but they still hadn't harmed him. If he had been assessed to be an enemy he would already be dead and consumed, so they still hadn't decided if he was friend or foe. That they were even bothering to make such an assessment was a hopeful sign. They obviously hadn't been programmed to kill everything that they encountered. They now covered everything except his face, however. They could constrict and crush him in an instant, or burn him to a cinder and make use of his charred remains as building material for more nanites.
Could they hear sound? He didn't see obvious ear-like structures but he spoke a few words in Ra, identifying his name and rank. Immediately they stopped swarming over him. He felt a pin-prick on his left cheek. Several long moments later the nanobot tendrils rapidly flowed down and off of him. In seconds they had disappeared into the Earth, where they would resume eating and growing and waiting for intruders.
They were programmed not to harm Ra. Greatly relieved; Melberg more cautiously resumed his hike towards the impact point. He simply stepped over the thick coil of nanobots, carefully avoiding stepping on any parts of it that were visible. He was confident that as long as he didn't attack it, it wouldn't trouble him again.
He was startled when he noticed that he now wore a narrow shiny metallic bracelet around one of his wrists. The nanobots hadn't completely left him. They had tagged him as not being an enemy, but probably still tracked his movements. Melberg smiled. He could reprogram these nanobots if it suited him; he could reprogram them to make himself virtually invincible, if necessary, even from Ren'Ca. Long ago he was one of the inventers of the Ra nanobots. That could come in handy when he found Ren'Ca.
Ren'Ca had somehow managed to obtain highly illegal nanobot weaponry, but that could backfire on the Ca'Ra.