The X!chi
It's known that the
basic X!chi are an insectoid race approximately 3 meters tall and resembling
nothing so much as an enormous brown-green grasshopper. Individuals are
approximately 300 pounds, possess an exoskeleton, mandibles, and six limbs.
Their range of acceptable planets is much larger than that for humans.
They are terrifyingly fast runners and long jumpers, and clearly predatory.
Individuals are also not particularly intelligent -- a single X!chi has roughly
the intelligence of a dog or a rat, knowing to attack or not to attack and a
few simple tasks, and that's all.
However, the X!chi are a colonial intelligence -- bring enough
of them together in a confined area (planet-size, say) and their intelligence
rises geometrically with the number of individuals. 50 X!chi together
have roughly the intelligence of a man. 10,000 X!chi together have the
collective intelligence of a city. The trend rises from there. Fortunately,
the X!chi don't appear to combine their intelligence across interstellar distances
-- the intelligence of a colony would be limited to the number of individuals
that could be gathered on a single planet. There is no single
leader, so killing a single X!chi has a negligable effect on the intelligence
of the colony.
X!chi also do not possess warp drive. They colonize
planets by launching a specialized X!chi -- a sort of combination of a queen
and a sperm bank -- into space at a target star. This specialized X!chi
might take decades to reach the target star and has very limited manueverability,
but does have the ability to target a habitable planet and conduct a reentry.
At that point, this X!chi establishes the initial colony, which might take months
or years to produce its first basic X!chi. Soon enough, however, enough
of the basic X!chi have been produced that the colony gains intelligence and
sweeps across the face of the planet, and then all of acceptable planets in
the system. This new colony then launches its own specialized X!chi.
USS Coronado's crew has learned little else, except that
X!chi will develop and use technology -- they encountered an X!chi colony attempting
to study a system destroyed by the Traxati with fairly advanced sensors and
other equipment. It is also not known if there are other X!chi other than
the basic one and the specialized one. Coro's crew DID learn that they
have a very advanced biology, but not if they alter their own species genentically.
The X!chi know that the Traxati exist and will attempt to
control Traxati gateways if they find them. They don't know anything else
about the Traxati except the fact that the Traxati are hunting them. The
X!chi colony above, in fact, mistook a USS Coronado away team for Traxati and
attempted to capture them.