Bionts are the mysterious force that seems to originate in Australia. The name is given to them by humans. Their own designation is Surviving Union or Survion for short.
Background[]
In 2661 a great battle took place between the allied power blocs and a strong armed force from the South Pacific near Australia. Nobody knew (or has ever found out) what or who the "Bionts" really were. Was it a "fifth bloc" that had developed independently from the great power blocs in the deep sea? The Atlantic Federation's secret services have been monitoring the region for years, monitoring ship movements off the coast of Australia. All seemed passive... Until the Bionts became aggressive.
There was hardly any communication between their "Black Ships" and the rest of the world. Sometimes the Bionts logged into the on-board computers of several battleships and affirmed their intention to erase all mankind from the face of the earth to gain space for living peacefully "in the water, on the land and in the air".
The Black Ships had attacked the centers of Aqua’s civilization long before this decisive battle. Myths were nurtured that described them as the "Rumbling from the Deep", as possibly a submerged culture that had inhabited the earth for thousands of years, unnoticed, highly intelligent and with extremely sophisticated technology.
After people finally managed to board some of the Bionts' smaller battle boats, they had a great surprise: there was no crew onboard! It was as though they had been sent through Aqua's oceans by remote control, just like hungry predatory fishes, always on the lookout for prey. And they were always hungry for more. Their attacks grew increasingly daring, at first they just targeted great technological centers such as the Machina Antarctica, EnTrOx, and the "Clansunion.
However, it was enough to plunge Aqua into a whirlpool of violence and desperation. Some considered the Bionts to be an extraterrestrial civilization, come to punish humanity for its moral failure on the surface of the planet. Apocalyptic religions such as that of the Moghs ("Salvation lies on the surface") or the Hadesians ("Typhoeus, the devil, will rule in his kingdom of liquid night") became popular, and the worshippers of the POM layer in particular were eerily cognizant of the Bionts' strategy of attacking human stations using seismic bombs.
However, the Bionts overplayed their hand. Rather than fragment, the Shogunate, Clansunion, and the Atlantic Federation joined forces against the Survion, discovering that the Bionts were using special initial wave transmitters which enable them to trigger earthquakes in the weak zones of the earth's crust. The bombs caused the edges of the tectonic plates to vibrate by means of intermittent detonations. They've also analyzed the psychology of the Bionts, relying on the messages sent by it. The Bionts believed themselves to be - or rather IT believed itself to be - the only life form whose existence has a purpose. It's a view very much like the one humans used to elevate themselves over mere animals to make Earth its own. Survion was spreading across the world and wiping out any irritating pests that happened to get in its way, including us "gas breathers".
The most important discovery was that Survion did not seem to understand the concept of "I". It was conscious of itself, and in the messages, the impression of a "here" and "everywhere" were conveyed simultaneously, indicating that it was a hive mind, though connected to a single, central position. Translating the concept as "bridgehead", Shogunate scientists located this bridgehead on the southeast coast of Australia, about where Sydney used to be.
All Biont ships (and their navigating brains) seemed to be connected to that unit, allowing the three powers to join forces in a single, overwhelming attack on the coast of South Australia, leading to the destruction of the Survion bridgehead in 2661.
That was apparently the decisive victory.
One of the main characters in this battle was the mercenary Emerald Flint, who had managed to destroy the center of the Survion aided by the self-sacrifice of Shogunate warrior Hong Long. He was highly decorated for his actions as a fighter pilot. Hong Long, a Ronin (a name used by renegade Shogunate soldiers), sacrificed her life by delivering a seismic bomb to the heart of the Survion and posthumously made an honorary officer of the Allies.
There are still some Biont units in Aqua, but they are widely scattered and no longer as efficient as they used to be. To destroy them an international task force designated ANNSCAT (Annihilate Scattered Units) was created. Emerald Flint (by then promoted to an Atlantic Federation Commander) became its leader. He and his wing pilots Lt. Picollini, Lisa Bonham and Boston Harper fight against the remaining Bionts under the military supervision of Captain Eliza deGrange.
There is much pressure on Machina’s researchers, who are currently devising a way of transferring the Biont boats’ steering systems to human pilots, but so far without much success.
Organization[]
Unlike humans, Bionts do not have distinct individuals. Every Biont is part of a single hive mind, a tool, rather than a person. Machina’s scientists discovered that there had to be a kind of Biontic center, a central "bridgehead", from which the Black Ships were sent out and controlled. The Bionts later called the bridgehead “Survion”, the “fortress of survival”.
Scientists gradually uncovered further detailed knowledge, which they gathered from captured Biont boats.The boats were steered by a neural tissue structure (the "submatrix"), a kind of rudimentary brain. This brain consisted only of motor and sensory nerve centers, which explained the fast reflexes and adaptive abilities of the Bionts. These were specialized brains, without human features, yet highly efficient in terms of orientation, neural feedback (with the steering elements of the ships), speed of reaction and mobility in three-dimensional space.