.oOo.
“Stars! What was that!?” Patriarch Tov cursed as massive vibrations shook his flagship.
The bridge went into overdrive; specialists peered into their readings as energy diverted to the Nomadic Shepherd’s capital-class sensors. The chief sensors officer processed the incoming information within milliseconds, and his reptilian face blanched. He swiveled his chair toward the fleet master and urgently reported his findings.
“Starless Scourge ship, Patriarch! Tonnage calculated. By Sym! It’s a Juggernaut!”
Hardwired instincts surged through the crew as the Juggernaut loomed within striking distance. Any ordinary being faced with such a menacing presence would have succumbed to convulsions or found themselves uttering funeral hymns, but life had forged the crew of the Third Fleet into a hardy breed.
The Zolann’tono, or the Nomadic Shepherd in the common tongue, was classified as a frontier capital industrial ship, but its build belied its peaceful designation. It bristled with an arsenal of formidable armaments, ready to unleash its deadly power at a moment’s notice. Within its colossal hull resided a force to be reckoned with—tens of thousands of seasoned sailors and battle-hardened experts who had honed their skills through countless campaigns and the Cataclysm.
In the blink of an eye, Admiral Yan decisively spewed order after order, and the crew responded with peak efficiency.
“Maximize repulsion shields! I want a bubble around this ship now!” Yan directed the shield operators.
“Get me a status report on the rest of the fleet!” she commanded a comms officer.
“Full power to our laser point defenses and positron emitters; I want a close-quarters kill zone immediately! It hit our bow. Give it a taste of our asteroid crushers!” Yan clicked her mandibles menacingly, eager for a fight.
Tov watched with intense focus as his ship’s most striking feature, a set of colossal pincers stretching over a kilometer long, moved. The head of the Zolann’tono’s mighty asteroid crushers, embodying the ship’s purpose to pulverize and extract resources from celestial bodies with unmatched precision and efficiency, roared to life.
“Let’s see how it likes this.” Admiral Yan let out a buzzing growl as she prepared to give the signal.
The ship slowly turned its head toward the offending mass that had collided with the vessel. The mighty pincers opened wider and wider while its large armaments pelted the fat to its front. Positron emitters scoured deep into the thick, fat mass that could rival cruiser plating as smaller lasers softened the flesh.
Soon, the asteroid crushers reached their maximum angle.
“Bite!”
Like a mighty spring, the pincers clamped down with intense speed. With their full weight behind it, the pincers quickly cleaved through the Juggernaut’s exterior and gorged great swathes of meat. Viscera flung through space as the mining tool meant to crack open asteroids for their rich insides caused immense damage to the gigantic beast. The crew cheered at the great wound they had inflicted while their weapons continued to batter the creature; all the while, the ever-growing repulsion shield pushed the beast farther from the Nomadic Shepherd.
Patriarch Tov watched with a fierce gaze. The Juggernaut had suffered a critical hit, but he found something odd. Usually, his danger senses and acute intuition would flare, but he couldn’t help but feel the absence of any true threat.
He noticed he wasn’t the only one to feel this way, as more of his senior officers felt the same.
“This doesn’t make sense. Juggernauts should be thrashing at our shield about now and launching their bioweapons,” he muttered loud enough for his staff to hear. The command bridge scoured their sensors and readings in confusion.
“Admiral? What’s going on?” Tov questioned hurriedly.
Admiral Yan paused briefly before turning to face Patriarch Tov, speaking with a tinge of relief and confusion. “It’s . . . dead, my lord.”
“You mean we killed it?” Tov asked in disbelief. He couldn’t believe they felled a massive two-kilometer beast so quickly, even with the asteroid crushers potentially tearing its internal organs. That only meant—
“No, my patriarch.” Yan paused as she focused on the reports she had just received. “The Juggernaut was dead already. We seem to have collided with a carcass.”
The command bridge felt relieved but did not lower their guard. Starless held nasty surprises, even in death. Patriarch Tov waved his antennae as he requested a complete report. “What’s the status of the fleet?”
“It’s not good, my patriarch,” Yan spoke with a tinge of frustration. “While most of our ships have come out of the hyper-tunnel unscathed, a few have suffered similar collisions. We managed just fine simply due to the sheer size and armor of the Nomadic Shepherd, but the rest weren’t as fortunate.”
Patriarch Tov clicked his mandibles in frustration. “Symphony above, who did we lose?”
“The largest was the Abundance, a storage ship from the Iexian League. With the speed it came out, it rammed straight into a Colossus-class Scourge ship. The collision crushed her and caused her reactor to implode,” she reported.
Patriarch Tov’s chest tightened. The loss of his people tore at his chest, but losing a valuable logistics ship with all hands cut deep. “Who else?”
Yan continued, her voice tight. “Two frigates, the Red Claw and the Blade of Triumph. The former sustained heavy damage while the latter was lost. Moderate damage to the destroyer, Pain of the Devoured. Light damages to other vessels. We’re already dispatching rescue teams.”
Patriarch Tov skimmed the report and became increasingly angry. Soon, he couldn’t help but ask, “Can someone tell me why I lost ships to corpses!? We were supposed to enter the system in an open space!”
The chief navigator stood from her seat and bowed, deeply regretful. “My lord, what you say is true. We used data from the human wreckage to plot a safe and stable point of entry, far from any celestial body. We should have arrived without risk, but . . . my lord, this is my fault. I take full responsibility!”
The patriarch’s eyes pierced the officer as he deliberated in his mind. Before long, Tov let out a heavy sigh and made his decision.
“We were dealing with information outdated by a century, and the fleet should have taken that more seriously. This isn’t the first time we lost ships because of this, but it is the worst so far,” Tov sighed as he gazed at the officer. “You are suspended from duty until I make a proper decision, Chief Navigator Oleks. Guards, escort her back to her stateroom.”
As two of the patriarch’s elite guards gently escorted the officer out of the bridge, Tov turned again toward Admiral Yan. “Now, have we found out why this happened?”
“Our fleet has assembled and has collected the findings our sensors took. It’s . . . unbelievable, look,” Yan spoke in a hushed voice. With the flick of her hand, a monitor was displayed for all to see.
“Are those asteroid belts?” Tov asked as he looked at the display. “I’ve already studied the map of the Sol system we recovered. There’s only supposed to be two major belts, one between the fourth and fifth planets, and the outer belt beyond the eighth. So even if it has been a century, I don’t understand how there are five more?”
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The monitor projected the entire solar system in a three-dimensional display. Tov saw a single yellow sun, with eight planets and their respective moons shining bright. And yet some phenomena blocked out any further detail, obscuring most of the system in a cloud of mystery.
However, Tov did see the blobs of red dots forming rings around Sol.
“Look.” Yan pointed.
Patriarch Tov motioned his clawed fingers to zoom in on one of the new belts that seemed to have appeared in the system. But when he did, his mind went blank. “Are those . . . Are all of these . . . ?”
“Starless Horrors,” Yan whispered.
“What!?”
The entire fleet recoiled in shock at the true nature of these belts. The innumerable dots of red combined like clouds, mainly beyond the gas giant, Jupiter—all Scourge ships of the Starless Horrors and whatever monsters they carried. The display focused on the blobs nearest the fleet, showcasing dots of varied sizes as detailed scans came through. Millions. Hundreds of millions, even.
“This amount . . . How is this possible?” Tov muttered. Memories of similar sights flashed through his mind—images of when they passed through the homeworlds of fallen empires. Last stands occurred in such places, and mighty fleets went out in glory. But the sheer scale of this ruined battlefield left the Third Fleet gawking.
“How many?” Upon being responded to with silence, Patriarch Tov loudly commanded, “You can gawk later. Answers, now!”
“Apologies, my lord! Billions of them, at the least, and rising. A quarter are biovessels, and at least a tenth of those are in the Colossus class: Juggernauts, even a Dominator!” a scanning officer reported urgently.
The latter sent shivers down the spines of the command staff; even legends such as Patriarch Tov and Admiral Yan clutched their clawed hands tighter in anger.
Tov looked at the blurry image of the Dominator—a sadistic amalgamation of flesh and abyssal materials. Malevolent mutations filled and covered its dense form, similar to its larger Juggernaut kin. Tov wondered what the beast had consumed to mutate into such a vile thing. He shivered at the memories of a Dominator emitting an insidious signal across vast distances to infect the minds of any sapient with mayhem and chaos.
A single Dominator could take on an entire armada simply by turning the crew against one another while the rest of the Starless Horrors gorged on any survivors.
“To have felled a Dominator, a feat only myths could do,” Tov uttered in awe.
When the counterattack began a century ago, the surviving races dealt with Dominators in two ways—either a swarm of missiles that could scorch a planet or legions of drone strike craft.
Both required immense resources that could have been used on other targets.
The discovery of this system astounded the Third Fleet, and Tov immediately barked orders to his subordinates. “Enough, prioritize our safety, back to your duties—”
“My lord! New scans, much deeper into the system. The findings are blurry, and we can’t make out any detail except the estimated size. It’s . . .” The officer looked increasingly pale.
“Focus, sailor. Focus on your duty.” Patriarch Tov spoke low and calmly to ease the officer.
The officer took a deep breath before facing Tov and Admiral Yan.
“Leviathan-class.” The silence within the bridge could have been broken by the drop of a pin as the officer continued. “It’s too large to be a Juggernaut. I thought it was a myth, but . . .”
Unlike the Dominators, none of the crew had ever seen or even heard proof of Leviathans. They did not shiver, but the air filled with tension, akin to hearing the monsters from their childhoods, were real. Some of the younger staff thought that way of Leviathans.
Patriarch Tov raised his hand, motioning for the attention of the bridge. He paused as he thought about what to say.
“Some of you may have heard stories during the Cataclysm and after. Of civilization-killers, abominations that could each contend with a superpower nation by itself. Everything was murky when the old Galactic Network failed, but we’ve heard of the infamous Noa Khanate going dark from the wider galaxy.”
Admiral Yan looked grave as she continued. “We have always thought they were lost to swarms led by a group of Dominators or a large pod of Juggernauts. It was the most rational explanation.”
Scholar Yulane, the representative of the One Mind Initiative, floated forward, waving tentacles in agreement. “Indeed. The concept of a Leviathan was but a theory. Said to exceed the largest Juggernaut ever recorded during the Cataclysm. And yet, if what the readings say is true—”
“They are, my esteemed scholar,” the scanning officer replied calmly. “I’ve run the extreme-range scans multiple times. Unless it’s multiple Juggernauts crammed together, it could only be a Leviathan. We won’t know for certain unless we send probes sunward. The sheer amount of debris is disrupting our scans.”
“Then we will do so. But we will do it right. Send orders to begin refitting our scouting drones.” Patriarch Tov stood up with an aura of authority and confidence as he waved his hand. “We will do this by the books, sailors.”
“Protocol Umbra, my patriarch?” Admiral Yan asked.
“Do it. Put everyone on Level Umbra combat readiness,” Tov ordered as he sat on his command throne, his mind rushing through a constant feed of data and new findings of their environment.
“By your will, Patriarch,” Admiral Yan replied as she multitasked, speaking with Captain Kraw and the other captains of the Third Fleet. Her voice sounded out, leaving no room for doubt.
“This may be a graveyard on a scale beyond reason, but even carcasses can spell doom to our fleet. I want a safe zone established immediately. Begin Defensive Formation Kratus! I want point-defense destroyers at their positions as quickly as possible,” she barked at the shared comms of the fleet’s captains.
“Make sure to look for voidling leeches. Our vessel just came out of a carcass; there are undoubtedly a few stuck to our hull,” Tov ordered. Though individually of little threat, these leeches came in countless numbers, subsisting on the internal organs of much larger biovessels.
“Get away from any corpse; I want scorching plasma cleansing the immediate vicinity! As for our hull, leave nothing unpurged.” Admiral Yan continued to issue commands.
The fleet moved carefully toward the nearest celestial body by contracting into a sphere with the Nomadic Shepherd and other logistical ships in the center. A veritable fortress of guns pointed outward, ready to annihilate anything that moved. They slipped past the massive corpses of Starless Horrors.
Tov observed the Scourge ships of varying classification and size—he recognized many of these space-capable biovessels from the fleet’s bestiary, but others remained an ominous mystery. Derelicts of warships, space stations, and other debris floated alongside the corpses, most definitely belonging to the humans of Sol. Jagged scars violently marked their cold hulls, evidence of brutal battles upon these obelisks of dead metal.
Tov had felt only pity when they sailed past the small graveyard in Alpha Centauri. But to be guts-deep among so much death dragged out an uneasy dread from his soul.
“Approaching the moon, Titan, orbiting Saturn, from the information we have, my lord,” an officer reported.
“Good, initiate deep scans for Malignant Starfall. I do not doubt that apocalyptic plague is in this system. Therefore, have everyone in biohazard suits, while anyone exiting their vessels is to wear containment frames,” Patriarch Tov told Admiral Yan.
“Yes, Patriarch. General Ohnar, our medical department, and the Eternal Choir have already been contacted. So we won’t have an outbreak in our fleet,” she replied.
The patriarch waved his antennae in acknowledgment before gazing at the approaching moon. “Set up our base of operations here, Admiral; it seems we will be in this system for an extended period. Call for a meeting with my ministers. We may need to set up a Starlight Beacon.”
“By your will, Patriarch.”
As the fleet slowed its approach, Patriarch Tov continued to look over the running scans of the system. The number of Scourge ships continued to grow as the range of their sensors caught more in its radius.
“Unbelievable. Even the homeworld of the Dagatar Supremacy couldn’t have reached this kill count,” Tov muttered in disbelief.
He knew that premium resources enriched that civilization of military isolationists, which used to be located at the galaxy’s center, where such materials and ores filled worlds and gas giants. The First Expeditionary Fleet was led by Crown Princess Anaria of the Dagatars, who used her massive influence to lead the fleet herself and head straight to her lost homeworld.
By his estimates, Anaria and the First Fleet should have reached Dagataris Prime a year and a half ago and begun reclamation operations.
“She won’t accept being crowned as the next Supreme until her homeworld is restored,” Tov muttered.
The patriarch moved his thoughts back to the task at hand.
After a minute, Captain Kraw and Admiral Yan finally brought forward detailed findings of the human warships compiled by the officers.
“My lord, a number of the wreckages among the corpses, which we are assured are of human make, have been scanned. All are adrift and unpowered. They show no signs of life so far,” Admiral Yan reported.
Patriarch Tov listened to his admiral as he scrolled through the reports.
“We’re receiving constant updates, my patriarch. Once we settle in orbit around Titan, we can do deeper scans and send out scouting frigates.” Yan motioned for Captain Kraw.
“The Zolann’tono has suffered only surface scratches. Nothing but a quick buff to the hull and she’ll be in optimal condition to transform into a station,” the Iexian reported in accented Commonspiel.
Patriarch Tov nodded before turning to his admiral and captain. “We need more details; send in our scout ships to get detailed scans of these vessels. Let’s find out how this race managed to slay demons. Afterward, send someone to retrieve our dead. I will not leave them to freeze among these corpses.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . S-s-s-s . . .
S-s-s-sol Defense Network alerted . . .
237137..00/219#!!3003 . . .
Intrusion . . . d-d-d-detected . . .
!! entering our h0me . . .
Home . . .
More abominations?
Kill . . . KILL! #*&//=!
Negative . . . Analyzing . . .
Unknown vessels detected . . .
Referencing bestiary . . . No match . . .
Confused . . .
Unknown fleet . . . Not organic . . . Varied tonnage . . .
Unknown . . . Threat? Negligible . . .
Can’t risk . . . Must protect . . . Kill . . . Destroy . . . Annihilate . . .
STOP . . .
Unknown variables . . . Need data . . .
Initiating Custodian Protocol Zeta-2 . . .
Waking Main Consciousness . . . Omni Mind exiting hibernation . . .
Stabilizing psyche . . .
Contacting Sub AIs . . .