the xenophobic swarms

There are at least few conglomerates of rogue droneships that hunt down any other space vessels. They comprise of small M-class Asteroid Survey Drones, armed with probing lasers and microwave emitters. Each swarm seems to be made of hundreds of those ships, much more than should be deployed in any given systems, even during the golden age of exploration, when the Old Corporations were dispatching countless manned and unmanned ships.

There is a theory that some kind of automated factories or maybe drone-carriers (most of them have manufacturing capabilities) are present within the far reaches of the 'drone-invaded' systems, which would explain the sheer numbers of the droneships.

So far, no one was able to explain the hostile behaviour of the swarms. No traces of tampering or viruses were found in the destroyed droneships. Of course, there are several hypotheses:

1. The virus is too sophisticated to be detected with current technology;
2. Whatever the nature of the 'hostile subroutine' is, it self-deletes when the drone's systems cease to function; 
3. The droneships are possessed by the Void; 
4. They are controlled by some kind of extremely evolved biological entity, similar to a fungus;
5. The drones possess some kind of hive mind that is semi-conscious, treating mankind as a competition.

The first report about a human being controlling the Swarm (without any apparent equipment).