Xhollin (The Season of Sustenance)

  Day 268

  1 A.E.

  447 days since my arrival

  Their defences were formidable. Every shift, dodge, and breach attempt I made was met with precision. The first five hundred of my missiles fell rapidly, their destruction a testament to the intricate web of laser fire and debris clouds standing between me and my objective.

  The deeper I pushed into their defensive network, the more the battle turned into a calculated dance of dodging, weaving, and adapting.

  Losses mounted faster than anticipated. I accelerated my offensive, unleashing nine hundred missiles, moving to attack from two directions. The fleet's formation shifted, reacting with machine-like efficiency. Every weapon in their arsenal ignited the void, transforming it into a storm of streaking missiles and blinding laser fire.

  The battle became a deadly equation—constant adjustments, shifting angles, reading the enemy’s patterns, predicting the unseen. Unlike past engagements, the mental strain didn’t weigh on me as heavily, but the complexity forced me to reassess my tactics. Every move had to count.

  The battlefield below was illuminated by the chaos. Clones either surrendered or died as I pushed deeper into enemy territory. Some facilities, unwilling to fall into my hands, chose self-destruction, their detonations casting radioactive shadows across the landscape. It was a costly loss—I had planned to repurpose those hubs.

  Still, everything was falling into place. I had reached my next milestone. My final ten ships were stripped down and modified for pure speed and were primed for one purpose: the colonization of Imreth.

  While the enemy scrambled in their chaotic evacuation, I launched them. Each ship carried enough architects, harvesters, and biomorphs to establish a foothold. They broadcasted false signals, marking them as friendly. Five moved directly toward the planet, while the other five arced wide acting like a contingency in case the enemy intercepted the first five.

  As I monitored enemy comms, no one had noticed them. The confusion of the evacuation had fractured their command structure. Their responses were disjointed—panicked calls for orders, conflicting commands, and voices filled with desperation and loss.

  But my focus remained on the battlefield.

  The missile salvos streaked toward their targets, weaving through the ever-thickening debris field and missiles. Then, unexpectedly, the void erupted in nuclear fire.

  Massive detonations tore through space. Shockwaves rippled outward, shredding large swarms of missiles.

  I was momentarily stunned as several enemy missiles moved wide past the range of my defences, streaking toward the planet’s surface. They weren’t strays as their velocity increased and projected paths changed—this was deliberate.

  Minutes later, they made an impact, detonating in the heart of numerous sectors that had the fiercest fighting.

  Friend and foe alike were incinerated as the impact unleashed nuclear hellfire and shockwaves across the battlefield, killing more. The comms exploded with curses, screams, and frantic demands for explanations.

  I gave the intelligence sub-mind to analyse and locate the source. Who had ordered that attack?

  Even as the chaos unfolded, my missiles adapted. They broke into smaller groups—two, three at a time—dodging the intensifying counterfire. The first wave to breach their defences locked onto key targets.

  As the missiles closed in, their manoeuvring thrusters fired, shifting their trajectory to run parallel to the enemy ships. Instead of direct impact, their sides detonated, ejecting boarding pods that latched onto the hulls.

  Numerous missiles were intercepted, but many of my boarding pods still managed to latch onto enemy ships. A few missiles had just enough time to adjust their trajectory, detonating near the main thrusters of their targets, crippling their momentum and leaving them vulnerable.

  The enemy armour was too thick for a full breach, but that didn’t matter—the real attack had just begun.

  My forces latched onto enemy hulls like predatory insects. Weapon platforms, sensor arrays, outer hatches—everything that looked valuable were attacked.

  Acid spitters liquefied key systems, leaving smoking holes in their wake. While my assault raiders fought the clones that tried to fight back, they were outnumbered.

  Some ships, realizing the futility of resistance, turned their lasers on each other, scorching their hulls to burn away my forces. It was desperation, and desperation was weakness.

  The momentary gap in their defences allowed my final wave of missiles through. Plasma detonations shattered armour, and acid seeped into the cracks, corroding metal. I was winning, and they knew it.

  Panic spread. Some captains made the only rational choice—they fled. Engines flared as they broke formation, scattering in different directions.

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  But I would not allow survivors.

  Half my fleet split off to hunt them down, ensuring none would return to threaten me. Those who remained continued the slaughter. Ships burned. Escape pods flared to life, hurling themselves into the abyss, their occupants pleading for rescue that would never come.

  As the last remnants of their defensive network collapsed, I pressed forward. My fleet closed in for the killing blow.

  This battle was over.

  Now, it was time to take everything.

  ———

  “Captain, the fleet can't hold any longer. We need to withdraw.”

  The clone's voice was steady—no fear, no anger—just the slightest hint of desperation.

  Varos-Thek barely heard him, his mind lost in the chaotic symphony of lights flashing across the holo-table. Sections of the fleet were destroyed. The battle was lost. His eyes flicked to the screens—ships rupturing, debris spilling into the void, the cold silence of space swallowing entire crews instantly.

  He didn't need to look at his clones to know what they saw.

  Failure.

  Most of the ships still holding their ground belonged to the Thek clan. They all knew what that meant. Defeat would not be taken lightly. Not by their people. Not by the rest of the fleet.

  “We hold.” His voice was firm, even as his stomach churned with dread. He turned to the clones, eyes burning. “Order the rest of the fleet to withdraw. Thek clan assets stay.”

  A moment later, engines roared to life as ships scattered in different directions, burning hard to escape the slaughter. But the enemy, the monstrous force known as Nethros, was already shifting, splitting its forces to intercept.

  Varos-Thek clenched his fists. He was afraid. But he would not run. He would meet his fate as tradition demanded. As the contract required.

  The ship shuddered violently. A hit—several systems flickered and died before emergency power surged back to life.

  Then his sensors caught the sight that turned his blood to ice.

  The spawn of Nethros was already on his hull.

  They slithered and crawled through the breaches like twisted mockeries of life, their grotesque limbs pulling them forward with unnatural speed.

  “Prepare for boarders!” he roared. “Leave the ship to the V.I.—today, we fight!”

  He grabbed his weapon, his exo-suit sealing around him with a hiss. The suit's interface whispered tactical updates in his mind, but he ignored them. He had no illusions about surviving this.

  He sprinted through the corridors, meeting the first wave of intruders in a hail of rail gun fire. They were fast—too fast—but he was faster. He turned, fired, and turned again. His rail gun rifle overheated in his hands, but it didn’t matter. The Great Devourer would not take him without a fight.

  His clones fought beside him, sweeping through hallways, clearing rooms, and securing doors. The ship itself was dying around them—bulkheads rupturing, power flickering, warning sirens wailing like funeral dirges.

  And still, the spawn of Nethros came.

  A sudden movement—too close. Damn it! He barely dodged in time.

  His instructor’s voice echoed in his mind, words from his youth: “Doors and corners, youngling. That’s how they get you.”

  But it didn’t matter any more.

  They were everywhere now.

  The walls dripped with acid, the air thick with the smoke of burning flesh and acidic bile. His rifle jammed—he didn't even bother trying to fix it. He swung it like a club, smashing through chitin and flesh, breaking carapace and limbs in the dim, flickering light.

  He took down five. Then ten.

  But there were too many.

  A sharp hiss.

  No.

  An acid-spitter latched onto him, its grotesque maw spewing searing liquid onto his armour. The plating cracked and melted, his systems failing in a cascade of alerts.

  He couldn't move.

  Hands—too many hands—grasped him, pulling him forward. He struggled, and screamed, but his exo-suit was failing.

  They dragged him through the breach.

  The void yawned before him, and then—

  Darkness.

  Not death.

  Something worse.

  He was pulled through passages of wet, pulsating flesh, the walls tightening around him, forcing him down a living throat of muscle and sinew.

  Then he was thrown into a chamber.

  Arms jutted from the walls, grasping at him like starving beggars. His armour was torn from his body piece by piece, stripped away like a carcass being picked clean.

  The chamber flooded with water.

  He gasped, choking as unseen appendages latched onto his skull.

  Then—

  Something poked at his thoughts.

  A presence.

  A mind beyond comprehension, beyond sanity.

  It whispered, it screamed, it laughed inside his skull.

  He thrashed, biting his tongue to keep from crying out.

  But it was inside him now.

  “I've been expecting you for some time.”

  And then Varos-Thek began to understand.

  And he screamed