Waking up in the middle of the sleep cycle to a silent and dimly lit room is an odd feeling, considering that Nestor Stirling was sure that he had left the fan on before he had gone to bed.

Not to mention that his right eye wasn't giving him the overlay that he was used to seeing.

"What in two moons is my wrong with my eye?" Nestor muttered as he peered around his room.

Groaning as he sat up on his king-sized bed, he found himself looking at his dimly lit bedroom, with the only source of light being the dim purple glows of the moons Tirion and Gildor shining through the skylight overhead.

They seemed to be glowing brighter than normal.

Reaching over to turn on the lights using the panel located next to the bed he noticed that the panel itself was powered off.

The panels above his desk that were normally put to sleep also weren't powered on.

Glancing to his left, out the window opposite to the door, he could see that the renovated roadside lights that he had printed and installed himself a couple of months earlier were also completely powered off.

With an uneasy nervousness setting in, he clambered out of bed, hearing only the sound of his breath, the ruffling of his sheets, and the creaks from the wood floor as he moved.

Shuffling over to his desk, he tapped his portable tablet. Some tension left him as the soft glow of the tablet greeted him as the screen flickered to life, illuminating the room.

The device reported to him that there were no new messages other than the ones he had skimmed through while in bed using his eye.

He noticed however that the device was low on power and also had no data link connection. Considering the apparent lack of power throughout his farm, that wasn't all too surprising.

"Crow faced ones be damned, what the heck happened to my power." Nestor muttered to himself, as he scratched the back of his soft messy light blue hair covered head with one hand and scrolled through the tablet with the other.

Seeing that nothing was amiss as far as the tablet knew besides the obvious lack of connection, he tucked the tablet under one arm and grabbed the gloves resting oh his desk in the other.

His house was an extended, simple single story ranch styled building with a basement. The entrance to his bedroom lead out into the living room area that was centrally connected to the rest of the rooms in the building. It also doubled as an area in where he kept hardware that was needed to maintain his equipment.

Peering into the dim room, Nestor quickly observed that there was not a single sound besides his own breathing nor the glow of an artificial light. There was no humming of servers and machines, and none of the normal constant ticking that resulted from his contraptions.

All he could see was the hazy outline of the table full of tools and parts in the center of the room.

"Dang it, the power's really out!" Nestor grimaced.

That explained the eye not working, since the circuitry was usually constantly fed power remotely from the nearest access port.

Taking the eye out of its socket, he observed the sphere in his hand. It was an intricate piece of bioengineering and served its purpose well. At least when he had power.

A complete outage like the one he was experiencing was something that just didn't happen here. Generally infrastructure was self repairing either through drones or nano repair protocols.

Sighing, he popped his eye back into place and shuffled over to the center of the room. Kneeling down, he searched for his tool bag that he had put stowed away when he had returned from the outskirts of the farm.

He had left the tool satchel under the table, but there was also a metric ton of other trinkets, gadgets and other objects that he had accumulated over the years.

The dim moonlight only reached so far from the windows in the room and considering he had one working eye, Nestor currently couldn't see very much.

"I really need to organize this room" Nestor told himself as use the glow from the tablet to find the bag.

Setting the tablet and satchel down on the table, he opened the satchel and rummaged through the tools and pockets until he found what he needed.

Pulling out a small Farc crystal lantern, he mentally channeled some energy through the device. Feeling his power flow through the fractal circuits, a supernatural phenomenon he didn't fully understand, he felt the connection stabilize and the circuit connect with a satisfying mental "click".

With the circuit completed, the deceptively simply designed crystal holder lit up with a dim red glow, powered by him holding the light. As he kept channeling energy, the glow gradually became bright enough for him to see most of the room clearly.

With the light providing some extra illumination, he grabbed the satchel off the table and slung it over his shoulder. Grabbing some extra power couples from the made his way over to the entrance to his basement and set them down by the railing.

The basement was where he had installed the battery storage for the wind turbines around his property. He also had some solar panels, but those weren't as efficient at this latitude due to the planet's tidal locking. There was a distinct lack of sunlight this close to the terminator.

They were located more towards the star side of his property, as they are pretty useless on the night side where his house was situated. The turbines were more spread out, but they were harder to maintain, so he had opted to build less of them.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

As he descended the stairs, he pondered what could have caused the power outage for his house. He was normally pretty good at maintaining his critical infrastructure.

Though nowadays, he spent more and more time away from the house, which acted as a central hub, so he didn't really keep an eye on things too much.

Wondering out loud, he mumbled, "I wonder if the equipment was-"

CLANG, CLANG, CRASH

Interrupted by a series of loud sounds that echoing from the basement, he froze as his heart nearly stopped in shock.

"What the-?" he gasped as he nearly lost his balance and dropped the lantern.

Standing as still as high humanly possible, he peered into the darkness that invaded the edge of the glow of the crystal lantern, and attempted to find the source of the noise.

All that was visible was the dim outline of the server racks, pipe networks, and electric conduits.

He called out to the darkness, "Hello? Is someone there?"

Detaching a crowbar from the side of his bag, he gripped it tightly in his hand as he crept down the remaining few steps.

Receiving no response from the darkness, he slowly made his way over to the main control panel with his back to the wall.

He knew from experience that if there was something you should never do when you're alone, it's turning your back to the darkness.

The main control panel was located about 20 paces from the bottom of the stairs, easy access in cases of emergencies such as this.

As he shuffled along the wall, he could feel himself getting more nervous, his grip on the lantern getting weaker, his grasp on the crowbar getting sweaty, and his breathing heavier.

As he watched the room, he could see the dim reflections coming from the powered down servers, nano-fabricators, printers, his workbench, and the untouched back-up power bays. There wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary that he could see immediately.

As he got closer to the main control panel, he could better make out a severed power conduit leading from side of the the panel, across the wall, and into the darkness.

Growing nervous, Nestor noticed the conduit hadn't just been severed, it was effectively shredded and gutted. It was as if something had forcefully ripped open the metal conduit and took a huge bite out of the interior wiring.

"This is bullshit." Nestor muttered as he turned around to observe the rest actual panel dashboard; hoping that the system still had back-up power.

Tapping the screen to wake up the system, some of the tension left him as it came to life and projected out an interactable hologram for him to analyze.

While his eye wasn't working, he could still make out that there was a major spike in power consumption and drop in grid frequency within less than 3 seconds.

Confused, he swiped through some of the presented graphs and noticed that the spike in load had drained the back-up system of energy. It couldn't recharge because of the severed main cable, which seemed like a design oversight, Nestor pondered.

Leaving the lantern on the ground, Nestor estimated that he had about half an hour before the glow was gone completely. This was because that the energy he had been channeling into the device had also partially been charging an internal reservoir.

Still seeing nothing in the darkness, Nestor jogged over and up the stairs and grabbed the power couples he had left. Leaving the crowbar at the top of the stairs, he grabbed one in each hand and made his way down the stairs.

Returning to panel, he shut down the system and started attaching one of the couples to the severed portion of the cable closest to the panel.

While they were called power couples, they also could act as repair patches and pods for machinery and, in this case, wire conduits. Using nanites similar to those found in the nano-forge, they would take a slurry of metals and reconstruct the internal wiring and structure of whatever it was attached to.

Attaching the second couple to the other end of the severed conduit, the two systems activated and started to hiss as the nanites started doing their job.

Soon after, with a satisfying click and whirl, the main panel came to life, and the motion sensing lights flicker on. He could also hear the servers powering back up, and he sighed in relief.

Touching his eye, he powered it on, which started the boot up sequence as it received power from the now online grid.

It should start working soon and then hopefully I can-

Suddenly, as if triggered by the lights and power, there was a crash followed by a growling noise coming from the far corner of the room.

Whipping his head towards the noise, he grimaced as he now noticed a hole in the wall of the basement. The crash had come from a brick coming loose from the wall and landing on one of the workstations.

In the hole, Nestor could see three shiny five legged hideous creatures, each with a gaping maw full of razor sharp teeth, dripping with a brownish liquid. They were looking and him with their six eyes, and while he had never seen them before, they looked pretty unhappy and the sudden increase in light.

They were growling and made an awful noise as they started clamored out of their how and started crawling along the ceiling towards Nestor.

"WHAT THE CROW!" Nestor exclaimed as he backed up and kicked his lantern, making him jump even more.

Running towards the stairs he bounded up the steps like there was no tomorrow, and in his mind there was no doubt that if those creatures caught him, he would in fact not have a tomorrow.

He grabbed the crowbar and a power couple as he sprinted past, his satchel bouncing as he ran. He chucked the crowbar behind him, chuckling a little bit as he heard it strike one of the buggers.

Sprinting towards the center table, he grabbed a large wrench and chucked it at the first creature that had made it to the top of the stairs after him.

His large muscular forearms propelled the wrench towards the creature, and it hit the creature with a massive clap, and the momentum from the impact threw the creature into the wall. It hit the wall with a gross squishy slap and the wall was spattered in a deep yellow goo.

The other two creatures did not seem amused after seeing their comrade get splattered by a heavy object.

Picking up the next largest item he had on the table, one of the drills he had for mason work, he quickly inserted a large long bit.

By now, the remaining two creatures had started creeping towards him, one going to his left and one to his right around the table. Throwing the power couple he had in his hand at the creature on the left, he expected the mass of metal to at squish the beast, but it only stunned it for a short moment.

"Well bugger." he murmured as he watched the creatures come closer. He grabbed a few more wrenches and threw them at the same creature, each one bouncing until the last one embedded itself in two of its eyes, it fell over and stopped moving.

Hearing a hiss behind him, he realized he had stopped paying attention to the third and hopefully final creature.

Whirling around in the nick of time, he brought the drill up in front of him and shoved it through the center of the creature. The five legs of the creature twitched as the masonry bit churned its insides. He kept it there and punched the creature until it sagged.

Tired and covered in guts, he sat down on the ground and looked around the room.

"What a disgusting mess.." he sighed looking over the three bodies. They were spiderlike and had some form of squishy flesh on the outside. Their goop smelled unpleasant.

Nestor dreading cleaning up the guts and gore from his home.

His cyber eye chose that moment to finally complete its initialization sequence, and he finally had his vision back. Immediately he was alerted of a general alert for his sector.

Swiping the air to pull up the alert, a holographic box appeared in front of his vision.

---ALERT ALERT ALERT---

[NONCOMBATANT EVACUATION FOR SECTOR 42-A TO 59-G DUE TO RAPID DEPLOYMENT OF UNKNOWN XENO SPECIES]

---ALERT ALERT ALERT---

Underneath it gave a brief description about the reason, with the reason being that apparently light sensitive unknown hive species had landed on the night side of the planet. They were smart and seem to like eating electronic components, they were also attracted to large sources of energy.

Under that description were some images of the creatures, which looked oddly familiar to Nestor.

Looking at the three creatures he just splattered, he got a sinking feeling that they were part of the invasion….

"Two Moons be damned" he sighed...