I, Arrallen

  Arrallen was not like his heroic brother who rarely shifted out of his Human form, nor his brother’s lover, the enigmatic Human woman, Emily, the same Emily who had defended him so eloquently before the Council. No, when Arrallen took his adaptive form, the form demanded by the necessity of his Rite on KaTlyn — and not often these days since what would be the point —he would appear more like Kaea Sai as he remembered her: feather-lite and semi-transparent, her gossamer wings extended against the golden light of her Sun. No, he, Arrallen of the Second People, was no more than a machine, built by his mother, programmed by his father, completely adaptable to any environment he might stumble into short of the heart of a star or the belly of a black hole. He could shift his shape to be like Kaea Sai and then back again to his natural form, a radiating sphere as bright as the sun powered by an anti-matter heart and driven by a quantum computer for a mind.

Pogonomyrmex - The Pogo

The Pogonomyrmex employed directed energy weapons; hot plasma mostly. Hot plasma — electrons and ions at the same energy level, typically 10000 deg C which burns flesh to nothing at the boiling point of lead, 1740 deg C at one atmosphere. When their targets were more extended, they tended to use thermonuclear weapons seeded with cobalt so if the blast didn't destroy their target the residual radiation would. They constructed massive starships ten kilometers long and a kilometer wide capable of 0.18 light, often holding millions of their soldiers. Six legs on an abdomen allowing them to scurry around obstacles and climb walls; four arms attached to a thorax with which to manipulate the environment. Sometimes wings accompanying the arms and diametrically opposed compound eyes sensitive mostly in the IR. Ears embedded into the skull, sensing antenna for sound and touch, articulated mandibles to hold, aim and fire their weapons. A mouth to speak — allegedly that is, since as far as he could tell, nothing especially wise or profound ever issued from that part of their anatomy.