These brief moments were the only fragments of my vast consciousness that indulged in observing other projects. The majority of my consciousness remained fixed on the war front on Phaedra, expansion across the asteroid belts, and a more long-term final solution still in early phases.

  When the enemy returned, I had anticipated an overwhelming victory. But the tide did not favour me as expected. The war devolved into a brutal stalemate, with both sides bleeding resources and lives.

  Their upgraded autonomous drones and aggressive new clone variant fought with relentless synchronization, showing no inclination to retreat. It was turning into a war of attrition, especially across Phaedra’s Northern Hemisphere.

  Phaedra's orbit had become a graveyard. The shattered remains of both our fleets drifted in silence—twisted wreckage and debris painting the void. Post-war clean-up would be complicated.

  My ship's numbers dwindled slowly with each death. Rebuilding would take time while growth pod excavation was underway, but the southern regions had been devastated—eighty-seven per cent of my subterranean tunnel systems were crippled by the meteor impacts.

  What pods remained focused solely on repairing my most damaged ships. Ship production had nearly ground to a halt. Some pods had been repurposed to manufacture Star Lance missiles instead.

  Still—war breeds opportunity.

  Director Kraklak, head of science and research for their fleet, was currently stationed at a heavily fortified outpost. He was trying, in vain, to find a way to kill Ashblight.

  One hundred and twenty clones and a detachment of their autonomous drones guarded the site. I learned this from two embedded agents still active within their ranks.

  My scouts observed the patrol rotations, searching for a weakness—but found none. This wouldn’t be a simple operation. Multiple coordinated strikes across key locations would be necessary to isolate the zone and prevent reinforcements.

  Twenty outposts could potentially respond to the incursion, along with seven Nullite mining facilities nearby. All would need to be neutralized in swift succession.

  Moreover, a quick-response force hovered above the region, stationed aboard a heavily modified troop carrier. It would need to be dealt with.

  The Mosquito units would have to be adapted for these atmospheric conditions. Infiltrator, assault, and sniper variants would require winged modifications. Perhaps even the heavies could be altered to provide low-altitude cover fire.

  This would take days of continuous surveillance, careful planning, and exact execution.

  But the prize was worth it.

  A nearby pod was already prepared for memory extraction and recycling.

  ———

  Kraklak couldn't focus. Not on his work. Not on anything. His thoughts scattered like ash in a gale, unable to settle. He had come to this forsaken planet in an act of desperation.

  He had hoped to meet with the Nethros face-to-face. To bargain with it.

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  To spare his life.

  But that hope had died the moment he arrived.

  Now he was trapped on the surface, surrounded by an infestation of fungi that grew too fast, adapted too well, and resisted every known countermeasure.

  The infection evolved to counter anything he did to stop the spread. It learned rapidly to counter the next set of countermeasures he tried.

  He'd told the Hydrarchs he was here to study, to analyse the enemy in a new environment. But they hadn’t cared. Their focus was as usual a singular goal, to kill the fungus.

  Kill it and everything it touched.

  As if that were even possible.

  He found that Nethro's biological designs… unnerving. The fungus had no clear origin, no clear DNA baseline, and no weaknesses. Its aspects were too precise, too deliberate. It was not just alive. It was self-aware.

  Was this a weapon? A message? A curse? The more he studied it, the more the boundaries of his understanding began to rot.

  His instruments failed. His samples mutated in sealed stasis. Observations contradicted themselves. There was intelligence behind it—that made his fear grow of what it was capable of.

  Could the Valurians or even anyone in the Triumvirate or civilized space have ever made something as complex as this? No. This was beyond them.

  What could he offer, something that was already winning the war?

  He had no answer. Only a gnawing dread growing with every passing hour.

  Then the ground shook.

  Not a tremor. Explosions. They were multiple and distant at first but rapidly approaching. His lab walls rattled, light fixtures flickering as alarms blared to life.

  Sealing protocols activated automatically. Bulkhead doors slammed shut. His experiments, samples that were never meant to be released were locked in tight.

  He snapped to the command console, his hands trembling as his V.I. pulled up external feeds.

  Cold dread stabbed through him.

  Each screen displayed chaos. Gunfire. Smoke. Firelight dancing off crumbling structures and dying clones. His elite clone guards were falling—quickly, and violently. Autonomous drones were shredded midair, their parts raining down in melted heaps.

  The attackers were relentless—bone shards launched like flechettes, each one detonating in bursts of molten plasma.

  He watched it all in horror seeing autonomous drones destroyed. Clones screamed as their armour was breached, and they burned from the inside.

  The air was full of smoke and liquefied metal.

  Then, something moved all over the screens.

  It was fast and blurred. Dashing through the mist—too quick for most sensors to track. His enhanced eyes barely caught the shimmering outline of them.

  He knew what they were.

  Before he could send a warning, one feed turned to static. Then another. Then another.

  His fingers froze above the console.

  A final image of translucent figures phasing into visibility, weapons raised. Rapid bursts of plasma cut into clone positions. The screams were short.

  Then silence.

  He was the only one left.

  The lab felt smaller now. The sterile walls and the humming machines were all meaningless in the face of what was coming. Panic clawed at his chest. He turned, scanning for an escape. His exo-suit was unarmed.

  He was a scientist, not a soldier.

  He turned to the door just as the world exploded inward.

  A shockwave knocked him back. Shattered wall panels flew like shrapnel. Smoke and dust filled the air. He coughed violently from the impact, his exo suit automatically moving back into stability.

  Through the breach, they came.

  Three Tall, hunched silhouettes with too many eyes and too many limbs, moving with impossible coordination rushed in his eyes and focused on their eyes. Eyes that didn’t blink and showed no hint of emotion.

  Kraklak turned to run—but something large and heavy slammed into him from the other side.

  He screamed.

  Three of them pinned him, their limbs like living steel. One reached for his suit’s interface, jamming in a device.

  His systems went mad.

  Symbols he'd never seen scrawled across his visor. Commands failed. Feedback loops surged. He was locked inside his suit, a prisoner of his technology.

  Dragged through the broken walls, he saw the carnage that was left of his lab. Clones butchered with drones melted and destroyed. The sky above was grey and lifeless, choked with rising smoke.

  Then he heard it, the distance buzz of something coming.

  He looked up.

  Descending from the clouds were four creatures—a new variant of air supremacy BCU, each one bearing massive insect-like wings. He felt like he was witnessing a predatory swarm ready to scope him up.

  As the BCU descended on four legs, he was taken to one as its side opened, like a living wound.

  He was thrown inside, its interior pulsed to an unknown rhythm. It was organic, wet, and breathing. He observed how the chamber walls were alive and pulsing. Translucent pods lined the interior, each one barely distinguishable from the black muscle and sinew.

  Soon, more BCUs emerged behind him. The camouflage variants whose shifting forms slowly faded back into light grey, their contours settling into visibility. The other variants remained as they ascended.

  The drones moved to the walls. Tendrils reached out, grasping them, pulling them into place. Kraklak screamed as tendrils latched onto his exo-suit —cold.

  He was dragged to a pod. It opened with a sickening squelch, he tried to fight, but it didn't matter. Tendrils wrapped around his exo-suit holding him in place.

  And then—darkness.

  His visor clouded. His senses dulled. All he could hear was the wet movement of flesh around him.

  As he finally calmed down, he observed some of them were injured. He watched on, in fascination, as the living ship repaired them—carapaces cut away and replaced, damaged tissue and nerves rewired and grown.

  Their surgeries were swift and disturbingly precise. He could only watch in stunned awe as the tendrils worked with mechanical grace, mending torn flesh, replacing shattered armour, sealing wounds with unnatural efficiency.

  One by one, the BCUs were repaired, released from their pods, and immediately retrieved their weapons each of them turning to face him in eerie unison.