Like Bedbugs, Only Much, Much Worse

In "Like Bedbugs, Only Much, Much Worse," Shane teams up with an attractive and quirky scientist, Dr. Chloe Kelly, to solve a legal conundrum. Individual members of a low-level organism deserve no Charter protection, but in groups, the bugs become a distributed computer network. Their collective intelligence is a square of their numbers. They have only one goal—eat anything that moves. Intellect without morality is terrifying but it is still intelligence that must be protected. How can Shane defeat the bugs that have decimated a farm colony without wiping out the species and do it before the government resorts to mundicide?

Shane O'Ryan is an undercover agent for the Society for Protection of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Species. He and his secret fraternity investigate infractions of the colonization charter, which protects vulnerable intelligent species and their planets. The Society upholds the rights of alien species as humans expand through the Milky Way. Society agents risk their lives to make sure that the tragic aftermath of 1492 in the Americas never happens again anywhere humans go.