Within days, a large portion of the crews of both the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker had been infected, while most of the two ships fell under the control of the Many. Soon, a large number of annelid eggs were shuttled from the planet and stored there. Korenchkin ordered the Hydroponics Deck of the Von Braun cleared of all personnel without any explanation to the crew. There, both captains and the majority of their party fell to the Many's influence. Eager to claim credit for the discovery of extraterrestrial life, the commanding officers of both ships, captains Anatoly Korenchkin of TriOptimum and William Diego of the UNN Navy, led the exploration party to the planet. In reality, they were not aliens, but beings akin to the mutants that SHODAN first engineered on Citadel Station, with forty-two years' worth of extra refinements.įive months into the trip, sensors aboard the Von Braun and its attached escort vessel, the UNN Rickenbacker, received an apparently intelligent signal from Tau Ceti V. The crew of the Von Braun first assumed that the Many were some form of extra-terrestrial, alien life form which originated on Tau Ceti V. Twelve years after Beta Grove crash landed on Tau Ceti V, humanity's first faster-than-light ship, the Von Braun, was launched on its maiden voyage as a joint venture between TriOptimum Corporation and the Unified National Nominate. The annelids developed a hive mind, becoming a monolithic entity which called itself 'The Many'.

After thirty years of traveling through space, Beta Grove crashed on the fifth world of the Tau Ceti system, where the creatures thrived and evolved further.

During the events of the Citadel Station incident, the Hacker jettisoned Beta Grove, one of the four wildlife groves aboard Citadel Station, which SHODAN had been using for experiments with bio-engineered viruses.Īs the grove hurtled through space, the mutagenic virus and mutated creatures stored aboard Beta Grove evolved at an accelerated rate, eventually becoming a species of parasitic annelids with distinct personality, telepathic mind control, and genetic modification abilities. The Many are a creation of the malevolent artificial intelligence SHODAN.

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