The Shreds are an aquatic, highly advanced race. They are pitiless racists who hold that every other race ought to serve them, and they use those races solely as slaves.
Among the underwater races the Shreds stand high, contesting dominance with the Povody, which is why conflicts between the two break out fairly often.
But where the Povody lean on religion and mysticism, the Shreds lean on technology. More than that, unlike the Povody they built powerful weapons able to operate on land as well: best known are the four-legged BShM, several storeys in height.
Shred society itself is extremely hierarchical. It is divided into several dozen circles — castes, in effect — with the central circle forming the caste of rulers.
In a single lifetime a Shred may move no further than the neighbouring caste. Thus the lowest of the race, reckoned to be the performers and singers, can rise only into the adjacent caste of gill-cleaners, something like masseurs. And for a Shred dynasty to reach the standing of rulers takes forty generations.
A Shred lives around thirty years, and childhood and youth as such do not exist for them. Long ago the Shreds worked out a technology for passing knowledge between the generations of one family: it is copied biologically, and only between close relatives. A newborn Shred is sent for several weeks to a knowledge-transfer clinic, where he effectively becomes an adult.
Very few Shreds live past thirty: only the wealthiest can pay enough to add another thirty or forty years. Which is why the doctors of the life-extension clinics stand second in the list of castes.
The Shred Empire of Konpai is a large and well-developed country. Its seas and oceans are protected, being part of the Shred habitat, while its land is built over with enormous factory complexes.
Many planets of the sector the Shreds took by force, and numerous Agatylai worlds fell under them. To keep control of those worlds the Shreds contrived to breed a race of soldiers wholly loyal to their masters — the Shremarihaycy. The trouble was that only Marihays suited such remaking, so the Shreds began buying slaves in bulk, dealing with anyone who could sell them Marihays; a base of the “7 Circles” organisation also settled on imperial territory, and among other things it kidnapped them.
The cities are held under dictatorship: all power belongs to Shred governors, and each planet amounts to a miniature dictatorship. The Shreds themselves care little what happens on the surface so long as industry meets its orders. A hereditary emperor heads the empire and there is no self-government. The capital is Shrenida. The race holds other powers too — among them the aggressive Shred Empire of Atvai, whose stated aim is the widest possible spread of its own kind.
Beetle-caps are parasites that bend their bearer to their will: the “host” loses a large part of his intellect and remains interested in feeding alone.
They were first found by the Shreds on one of their expeditions, and the Shreds at once set about turning them into a weapon. From time to time various Shred empires still use beetle-caps as a means of bombardment.
A Shred itself is a fleshy creature blotched pink and violet, with a maw full of fangs and a wreath of tentacles around it; on land it moves inside a machine, from which only the head protrudes.
In the order of the illustrations: two Shreds on running platforms, one tracked and one walking; a four-legged BShM on a city street, beside which a four-storey building and a car look like toys; and a Shred in the cockpit of its machine, at a console of crimson keys.