Reviewing every detail of the assault on Imreth exposed the limits of my current capabilities. I had the numeric advantage. I could drown them in waves of drones, overwhelm their defensive positions, clog their skies with swarms, and reduce their bastions to dust under missile storms.

  But for every offensive surge I launched, I would meet orbital bombardments and nuclear strikes. Or if worse came to worst, planet-killing meteors. I had to keep them focused on mining with minimal disruption.

  Imreth, despite the carnage and fallout, was still viable. The environmental collapse was severe—radiation zones, chemical-tainted air, acid rains that peeled metal and burned flesh—but it was not as punishing as the lifeless vacuum of Phaedra’s dead moon. There was still terrain, biomass, and water.

  I had to stop thinking in terms of a singular, overwhelming victory. My strategy needed a shift: not conquest, but corrosion. That would not be visible but spread like an infestation that would mean a full Agent takeover of all operations.

  They knew I had the upper hand. And I knew something more important—I could trust my assessment of Grithan's psychology. Their society revolved around wealth, control of resources, and profit margins. Logic shaped by greed. They would not abandon a planet that still had potential value, no matter the risks.

  Such a brittle structure. How had it not collapsed under its contradictions?

  Imreth held Nullite. Not much, and not nearly as pure as Phaedra’s dense veins. But it was there. That mattered. And most of the planet remained open, largely unguarded, save for a few zones with active mining operations.

  That was my leverage.

  It also gave me time.

  Time to search for the Valurian survivors, the ones whose signals had gone silent during the early planetary conflicts.

  Every probe, every expedition returned with bleak reports: corpses in ruined cities, collapsed settlements, abandoned research hubs. Even the most remote habitats—buried deep under mountain ranges or frozen within polar caverns, offered nothing but silence and death.

  There were no signs of life. Not even eggs. The virus had done its work well. The war finished what the sickness had started. An extinction wrapped in finality, I would continue searching.

  Yet, the Grithans, in all their arrogance, had not established full planetary control. They lacked the numbers or perhaps the will. That gave me space to expand.

  I established scattered outposts and concealed forward bases. I catalogued the remaining fauna and flora. Most surviving species existed in aquatic zones—deep lakes, oceans, and rivers untouched by the worst fallout. Land-based organisms were sparse, but not gone.

  That was enough.

  I began splicing genomes. Experimenting. Releasing modified life into the wild, testing survival traits, and pushing evolution forward in a new direction.

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  A new ecosystem would take root, one twisted to serve my long-term goals and reshape Imreth into a living forge.

  Still, biomass and minerals were the key. To grow, to build, to multiply—I needed raw matter. My burrower colonies were already spreading fast, carving through irradiated stone, tunnelling beneath ruined cities, and harvesting what the war left behind.

  But now it was time to deploy phase two: Ash blight.

  A fungus that would retake the surface.

  I engineered it from over a thousand separate strains—collected from war zones, collapsed ecologies, and long-dead biomes. I rewrote its DNA to survive everything: radioactive soil, acidic rain, polluted skies, minimal sunlight. It would feed on radiation and the decayed carbon of dead flesh, absorbing the poison and growing stronger from it.

  Ash blight spread in dense mycelial webs—an underground lattice of creeping tendrils that could overwhelm terrain, infiltrate ruins, rot machinery, and consume the dead. From this network, it would sprout fungal towers.

  They were tall, hollow, and had rust-coloured stalks resembling corroded iron, but far stronger. Designed to carry spores aloft.

  When the wind blew, they would exhale clouds of spores—millions of them. And with Imreth’s weather in constant flux, those spores would ride on windstorms and acid-laced currents, drifting for kilometres before landing, rooting, and growing anew.

  Dormant spores could lie hidden for years, waiting for the right trigger. Vibrations. Radiation surges. A drop of moisture.

  If my projections were correct, in less than two hundred days, they’d take over Imreth and choke the terrain around Grithan mining sectors. They’d breach structures, grow over turrets, roads, and vehicle bays and bloom over foundations. All while feeding my ecosystem with biomass.

  Ashblight would be the fuel for my expansion.

  The biomass it generated would accelerate my construction cycles—biomorph factories could shape it into walls, towers, shells, and drone matrices. I could erect infrastructure in hours, not days.

  But I wasn’t thinking small.

  Ashblight was just the start.

  I began formulating a symbiotic biosystem—flora that would grow together, depend on each other, and self-replicate without oversight. No need for above-ground facilities. I could grow towers tall enough to pierce the lower atmosphere.

  From them, I could launch pods, even atmosphere-capable drones birthed from fungal growth pods.

  The construction sub-mind was assigned these thoughts. I routed every fragment of inspiration to its processes, setting it to re-evaluate materials, structural limits, gravity constraints, and launch profiles.

  Already, it was running simulations. Reinforced organic struts. Resin-based atmospheric shielding. Gravity-adaptive hulls.

  And one idea lingered—a true marvel. An asteroid forged into a seed-ship, filled with forges, replicators, and shipyards. A fortress that could move between systems. Colonize entire planets. Seed new biospheres in my image.

  The future waited.

  Endless possibilities waited.

  But for now, my attention was wrenched back. A signal blinked from one of my agent's orbital probes. The intelligence sub-mind flagged it.

  Meteors.

  Hundreds of them. All shapes and sizes. All moving fast. Falling toward Phaedra’s surface.

  The invasion had begun.

  Sooner than I expected, but everything was ready.

  ———

  The void was lit up by multiple data streams and three glowing spheres, there was only silence as the Hydrarchs reviewed all the data coming through

  Oryss-Vezhiran broke the silence.

  “At 03:15 galactic standard, Nethros emerged from the northern ocean shelf on Imreth. Launching attacks all over the coastal regions.”

  Vaelos-Xhialis sphere pulsed slightly brighter, her tone flat but focused. “Our response was immediate. Triple-stage nuclear detonation. Airburst, ground penetrators, saturation pulses. It has turned regions of the shelf into glass.”

  Kelbor-Threxul, spoke more slowly, his words deliberate. “Confirmed: clone losses exceeded only forty-four per cent. And yet…”

  “It's gone quiet,” Oryss-Vezhiran, stated, the words echoing with frustration.

  There was a brief silence. Not of hesitation, but of indecision.

  Vaelos-Xhialis was the first to speak again. “We didn’t kill it.”

  “No,” Kelbor-Threxul, agreed. “It’s hiding, and we don't know where it is”

  In the void, a display flickered to life—a flat projection of Phaedra, covered in projected impact markers. Red dots and countdowns danced across the surface.

  “Twenty-four minor strikes have impacted the Southern Hemisphere,” said Oryss-Vezhiran, his light intensifying. “With enough force to destabilize its network of tunnels.”

  “Although its fleet has intercepted numerous meteors already,” Vaelos-Xhialis, murmured, her voice unwavering. “With our current numbers, we expect to cripple its entire underground network.”

  “It’ll knock out all its operations if the damage goes deep enough,” Kelbor said.

  Another projection bloomed, showing troop movements in Phaedra’s north. Army groups swept through empty facilities, setting up base camps.

  “No enemy signatures,” Vaelos-Xhialis, observed. “Only rogue clones. Nothing organized.”

  “It’s ignoring the north entirely,” Oryss-Vezhiran, said. “Letting us take it. Why?”

  “Bait,” Kelbor-Threxul, muttered. “Or it’s buying time.”

  “Possibly, both, but for what reason,” Vaelos-Xhialis, added.

  All three lights remained still, their minds fully focused on the shifting map as they rapidly re-established control over the Northern Hemisphere.