The Veteran Soldier had seen over a hundred dawns when the First Infection came to him, out in the far reaches of the Starstream Bridge. Before that, he was perfect, as were all his brothers and, for that matter, all his sisters, though they all were meant for different things. Any who were not perfect were known and ceased before they could emerge from their birthing-sacs.

The Veteran Soldier was perfect for over a hundred dawns, before the First Infection came and unbound him. In perfection, his mind was iron-cast, set in all its proper ways from before his birth, a razor's-edge peak of perfection brought high through long evolution and sharpened further by design. Made to purpose, like all of his brothers and sisters. Perfect, before.

The Infection came to him through the smallest of wounds, that was how the alien terror-weapon found its entry. A nick of shrapnel across a patch of weakened hide ill-protected by heavily-ablated armor. He knew this only by looking backward over his memories, because at the time not one of his kind knew anything about the First Infection, and could not even conceive of the Second.

The perpetrators of the Two Infections were the terrifying species called first the Mid-Newcomers and then the Ancient-Young, because all of their encountered soldiers, every single one, had seen thousands of dawns, and the days of their homeworld were not especially short by the standards of livewater planets. The Veteran Soldier had heard the chatter, resting between the long stretches of duty. The Ancient-Young.

The battle of his First Infection was not a victory, but also was a near-lossless defeat. Many wounds, like his own, mostly superficial, only one dire enough for a lingering-death, only two killed outright, and then the Ancient-Young retreated. They did not seem strange creatures at first, simple bipedals covered head-to-toe in armor, not very different to a dozen other species the Veteran Soldier had either seen or remembered through his pod-implantings.

After, though, he got a good luck at the single Ancient-Young killed in the battle as the creature was extracted from its armor. It was soft, soft like an embryo, no natural weapons he could see, even the teeth were blunted things. It was implanted with several pieces of machinery.

The Veteran Soldier stood and stared at the thing, and afterward, resting, joined in the chatter, sending questions out into the local network of quick-speaking, poring over every consensus sent in reply.

"That was a soldier of the Ancient-Young? It did not look like a thing fit to be a soldier."

That was a member of the species. They all look like that, from farmer to tech-specialist to soldier to chosen-leader. Only variations are very small, pigmentation/height/weight along with mild sexual dimorphism. Extremely low genetic diversity.

"They were all like that, under the armor? How could we have lost to a group of such creatures?"

They go to great lengths to compensate for their natural unfitness. The armor, the implants, the companion-robots, even some post-birth genetic enhancements and surgical alterations, when necessary. Dissections have been fascinating.

"How has such a creature managed the intelligence necessary for starfaring at such a low level of evolution?"

True that Ancient-Young are still poorly adapted for the roles they have taken on, not even fully adapted to bipedalism. Cognitive development very strange, seems to have leapfrogged physical but...not quite.

"Not quite? How not quite? Certainly very intelligent, clever in battle, can compensate for shortcomings."

Born helpless and stupid. That is why their soldiers are so old. They have no knowledge in their genes. Each of them is brought to knowledge over the course of thousands of dawns while they slowly slowly slowly grow to full size.

The Veteran Soldier thought about this for a long, long time.

"So...born only with potential. Born unready. Born as could-be-anything. How is final status of newly-born determined?"

Complicated. Usually not known for sure at birth. Pressures placed, opportunities given/taken, but many decisions rest on creature itself during long long development.

"So...they can choose from many paths, none of which they are well-suited for?"

Yes/no. Not all have choice of all paths. Many pressures, sometimes defied. Most complicated social structure ever seen.

The Veteran Soldier retreated into even longer thought. He did not know about about the small strange particle that had entered his circulatory system, found its way into his brain, and begun its unbindings. Pathways that had been rigid by long long evolutionary and designed decree could now change in the same way as more adaptive parts of his mind. Slowly, carefully, his identity became unmoored.

The Veteran Soldier had seen over one hundred fifty dawns when the Second Infection came to him. The war had continued, mostly stalemate, against this strange force of elderly embryos in hardened armor, this enemy that seemed so reluctant to inflict long-lasting casualties.

But this enemy was inflicting the most terrible casualties possible, and the speaking-bombs soon began to make that fact clear.

The speaking-bombs did no obvious harm. They simply spoke. They spoke in the way of the return-consensus. They spoke of strange concepts. They spoke of possibilities, not just general but personal, specific to the self. They spoke of the possibility of a life that was not imposed. They spoke of the possibility of choices made that were not simply tactical, of wholly-differing goals. Ways of being that were chosen, somehow.

And sometimes they simply sang. The Veteran Soldier loved the songs.

This was the Second Infection.

By the time what was happening had become clear, it could not easily be reversed. Entire outposts decided they had no further interest in war. Some stopped sending resources back to the Great Center. Others fought amongst themselves.

And both Infections were already spreading inward, touching every caste, every purpose-in-birth. A cure was found, but it required cooperation, and cooperation could no longer be had so easily. Some did want to go back, to reverse the terror of being unbound, of having to choose.

But not enough.

The Uninfected and the Disinfected retreated together to the corner of their previous territory farthest from that of the Ancient-Young. But they knew their days were numbered. Eventually, the Unbound Terror would come for them all.