In the 23rd century, Humanity has fallen in two opposing fractions: gene-editing Shapers, striving for optimised biology and genius intelligence, and the Mechanists, replacing anatomy with cybernetic parts. This story follows Shapers, who have found a competitive advantage in dealing with an alien race.

They buy transport to the Beteigeuse system, where they want to investigate an even more alien race, the Swarm. That one has been around for millions of years, consisting of ant like beings which aren’t intelligent and don’t have a language besides their pheromones.

The Shaper agent thinks that he can exploit them. He only needs to test the workings of his artificially produced pheromones and bring back the gene sequence of the aliens. An endless army of mindless, efficient workers as biological machines would sure enough help the Shapers dominate humanity.

Well, the Swarm has survived a long time, and humans aren’t the first ones to exploit them.