Death, destruction, and chaos followed in the wake of my plan. My attacks spread like wildfire, dismantling and capturing key facilities across the asteroid belts.

  The Grithan positions were scattered, poorly defended, and most importantly lacked any unified command to stop my advance.

  The few patrol ships that dared stand in my way offered little resistance. Most avoided confrontation and adopted guerrilla tactics, using the dense asteroid field to mask their movements, slipping away before I could counterattack. The terrain favoured them, allowing them to vanish as my fleets cut a relentless path toward my objectives.

  I was fortunate enough to capture all three commanders of the first clone forces I had battled: Admiral Veraliss, Admiral Typhar, and Commander Nymala.

  Even as I ripped through their minds, searching for anything of value—secrets, ties, leverage, I found nothing. They were exiles, cut off from every clan or figure of real power, punished simply because they had failed to kill me.

  They were literal dead weight, I didn’t hesitate to recycle them.

  The operation pressed on. Each captured facility fed the rapid modifications of my Zhyrraak ships, converting the generation one framework into generation three adding cybernetic systems, fusion drives, and improved thrusters, increasing their speed.

  Of course, some stations fought back. They activated the war machines meant for Phaedra’s surface, swarms of their automations overwhelmed my drones, dislodging them into the void. Others overloaded their reactors, leaving behind irradiated wrecks too toxic to reclaim.

  I despised that—this suicidal reflex in the face of capture. A final, bitter refusal, even the Grithans I questioned couldn’t explain it, clearly having different views on the topic. Was it some form of cultural programming or a pact of annihilation this would need further study.

  Word spread quickly through the Grithan fleet. The war on Phaedra was shifting. Intercepted communications gave me brief windows into their chaos—talks of dwindling supplies, collapsing logistics, and the rising fear that I would soon overrun everything they considered safe.

  Arguments broke out on public channels—clans clashing with admirals and the Hydrarchs over stockpiles, over whether to fight or flee. Ammunition was now a sacred resource, and their unity was unravelling thread by thread.

  A task force was dispatched to reclaim one of the larger facilities in the Ebon Ring. It never arrived. They diverted their course en route, announcing their intent to break away and rendezvous at the Nexus Point to await the arc ship.

  Subsequently, the cracks rapidly spread. Ships peeled off, retreating into deep space. Facilities were shut down, stripped, or scuttled all were fleeing in the same direction, calls for unity became whispers, then silence.

  But if there’s one thing I've come to expect from the Grithans—it’s that greed will always resurface. A few banded together and turned back toward Phaedra, desperate to finish what Aegirarch had started.

  Aegirarch himself had vanished. There was no signal or trace of him. His ship had gone dark, he had isolated himself away from the rest of the fleet. My new generation-three ships would need advanced sensor tech to track him, as I hadn’t yet created a biological alternative for enhanced perception yet.

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  No matter, I would hunt him down.

  I informed Seer and his clones that this was the final push. Phaedra would be liberated before the remnants could regroup or reorganize.

  As for Imreth… not yet. It had to remain quiet and calm. The ash blight was spreading faster now, and my experiments with a new iteration of the Star Lance might soon let me breach the planet’s atmosphere at a faster speed—or I’d wait until I could send a fleet.

  ———

  The ground convulsed beneath the moon’s ancient crust as waves of Hexapods advanced, spewing plasma in blistering ten-second bursts. Their synchronized volleys lit up the dark ridgelines from the northeast and west, carving through enemy fortifications like molten teeth.

  Then, as quickly as they struck, I pulled them back—retreating into carved trenches and tunnel networks beneath the front. There, they consumed biomass to recharge, while the most damaged were either recycled or sent to heal.

  It became a rhythm to suppress, manoeuvre, resupply, and repeat. A deadly ballet of calculated aggression, every step timed to keep the enemy reeling.

  But the Grithans learned.

  From orbit, their commanders responded with fury—hurling titanic slabs of ice from Ivinal’s surface in kinetic strikes. Each impact shattered my formations, reshaping the battlefield with fresh craters and carving kilometre-deep gouges into the surface that we bled to take back.

  In orbit, I was split—my mind fractured across a thousand decisions per second. Missiles crisscrossed the void as both our forces battled for control of orbital dominance.

  I’d seeded over a thousand scout drones into the expanding debris cloud, tracking enemy patterns, and waiting for a crack to exploit. But their numbers held firm, their formations resilient despite the relentless waves of fire I launched.

  Their laser defence network was the core of the impasse—an overlapping ring of precision beams dominating the Northern Hemisphere. Every salvo I sent was swatted from the void before it reached its mark.

  The only strategy bearing fruit was my raiding flotilla, a splinter fleet that hunted down supply vessels and intercepted the ice slabs before they could fall. I ambushed their cargo runs and shattered their kinetic barrages mid-flight before they could reach terminal velocity. It wasn’t enough to break the stalemate.

  Every ship I lost chipped away at my momentum. I couldn’t hold this pressure forever.

  I needed more.

  Likewise, I was assembling a larger wave of Gen-Three ships to reinforce the next stage of my offensive. But before they could even reach the front, I was forced to divert them.

  A section of the asteroid belt, still under enemy control, had become the staging ground for something far worse.

  They were strapping engines to a massive asteroid, turning it into a doomsday weapon intent on slinging it straight at the moon.

  I wouldn’t allow it.

  I had bled too much to reclaim this rock.

  So I redirected every last Gen three's I could muster, to that section of the belt to destroy everything.

  My attention snapped back to the surface as a larger engagement pulled focus from the orbital grind. The war sub-mind surged forward, leading suicide drones into retreating enemy positions. Each detonation blossomed in sun-bright plasma, shockwaves ripping apart automations and clones alike, sowing chaos.

  Behind them came the Striders with sniper and assault drones clinging to their backs like vultures. They fired in coordinated bursts, slicing through clones and automated defenders that survived.

  Then came the breach.

  I clawed into the clone minds like a scalpel through soft tissue, and I filled them with visions of illusions of horror and nightmare, layer by layer.

  They felt their lungs collapse in vacuum as the illusions tore through their minds the clawed at their throats.

  I showed them their comrades melting inside their armour—skin sloughing off like wax, organs liquefying, bubbling through ruptured visors.

  Then I gave them something worse, the sensation of something alive inside them, writhing beneath their ribs, gnawing to escape. A parasite tearing through flesh and bone, dragging itself toward the light.

  And I let the madness bloom.

  It spread like wildfire through a dry brush.

  Clones turned on each other, howling incoherently, eyes wide with terror. They fired into shadows and screamed warnings to allies long dead.

  Some fell to their knees, tearing off their armour in a frenzy, welcoming the cold void as a release from the torment.

  They didn’t die fighting.

  They died screaming.

  There were too few Nullite generators on the battlefield, and their cheap psychic dampeners could barely hold my full offensive. All it took was one crack, and I was inside.

  The war continued as we fought for every crater, hill, ridge, and ravine, each one soaked in blood and debris. Some battlefields required an alternative solution.

  Resistance thickened in certain zones that were covered with reinforced ridges, choke points, and automated artillery lines that could compete with my Hexapods. I had no time for long battles of attrition.

  So I used the only solution.

  Hundreds of Mosquitoes, modified with nuclear payloads. They flew low amid other mosquito swarms, zigzagging through the enemy defences and then, at the perfect moment—detonation.

  Zones disappeared.

  Enemy formations turned to glass.

  My drones were vaporized—but that was the point.

  The truth was simple.

  I could replace my losses.

  Every drone could be replaced or recycled. They couldn’t replace every ship they lost, that was a crippling blow to their dwindling resources.

  Every clone killed was another they couldn’t create fast enough. Their unity was already fractured with opinions divided.

  This was no longer a war of strategy.

  This was attrition.

  And I was the living tide.