In less than a month, Lyna managed to gather her entire old crew. With The Nest—their pride and joy spacecraft—they once again ventured into the vastness of space. The entire crew, who had been waiting for the return of the Broodmother Queen, reassembled without hesitation. They had always believed that Lyna would someday come back to lead them into battle against the monsters lurking in the depths of the universe. Even during the raging war against the Arachnoax, they chose to remain silent, refusing countless offers from renowned captains who tried to recruit them. Their loyalty was unwavering. To them, only Lyna—the Broodmother Queen—was worthy of being their leader.
Though she had been absent from the field for years, the name of the Broodmother Queen was still etched deeply in the minds of soldiers. News of Lyna's return to the battlefield spread rapidly, drawing numerous renowned captains to join under her banner. This was especially true in the West Human Federation, where Lyna was regarded as a legend, a hero, and a symbol of pride. As a result, Lyna not only returned with The Nest but also led hundreds of warships following in her wake—a fleet poised to change the tide of war.
The coalition’s first battle took place in the Nebula Hunian, a vast nebula filled with hazardous sulfuric gas. These gases were capable of melting even the strongest ships. During the war between humans and the Arachnoax, the Nebula Hunian became the bloodiest battlefield. Initially, human forces used the sulfur gas as natural protection and camouflage, turning the nebula into a labyrinth and fortress. However, the Broodmother quickly adapted, learning these tactics and adjusting her forces. They mapped the entirety of the Nebula Hunian and began setting up ambushes at strategic points. As a result, the once-familiar terrain of the Nebula Hunian became alien and deadly. The human forces were pushed back, suffering defeat after defeat, and were nearly driven out of the nebula entirely.
Just as hope was nearly lost, The Nest and its coalition arrived on the battlefield. The war commanders in the Nebula Hunian were initially skeptical of Lyna's abilities. To them, the legend of the Broodmother Queen was nothing more than an outdated story. But Lyna paid no heed to their doubts. She knew all too well the stubborn nature of military officers—they only trusted what they could see with their own eyes.
Without wasting time, Lyna took direct command on the battlefield. With only The Nest and eight other capital ships, she moved to ambush an Arachnoax fleet that had appeared on their radar. The enemy forces, numbering hundreds of times more, did not faze her. In space warfare, sheer numbers didn’t determine victory. A single energy ray from a capital ship could obliterate thousands of fighter craft in one shot. Victory depended on two critical factors: troop positioning and battlefield awareness.
Calmly and methodically, Lyna crafted her strategy.
In a short time, the two fleets collided. Led by the Hiveseer as their command center, the notoriously ferocious Arachnoax forces—known as the Swarm Fleets—created a horrifying sight against the starry backdrop. Thousands of colossal organic ships, composed of chitin and living tissue, floated with regenerative abilities and unparalleled adaptability to the harshness of space. Surrounded by Dreadnaught Drones—giant beetle-like creatures with shells harder than the strongest alloys in the universe—the Swarm Fleets looked less like a battle formation and more like a plague blanketing the heavens. Human radars struggled to accurately count their numbers.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Even though humanity had regained access to their psionic abilities thanks to her husband's sacrifice, Lyna understood that engaging the Arachnoax in the Mind Realm would be a fatal mistake. The Broodmother, ruler of the Mind Realm, could obliterate even the strongest psionics through her Hivemind. Thus, psionics were restricted to using telekinesis alone, avoiding telepathy or clairvoyance altogether. Enemy detection relied entirely on human technology, while the Arachnoax effortlessly tracked them through their Mind Realm network. Yet, this was still an improvement over the earlier days when exposed psionics risked being controlled by the Broodmother and turning against their allies.
No one believed Lyna could win this battle. The enemy forces were too numerous, and the Arachnoax were infamous for their brutal ambush tactics. When battles began, Swarm Fleets would typically encircle their prey, swarming from all directions before launching devastating attacks, even sacrificing their own ships if necessary. But Lyna was not a commander who played by the book. She led with a direct, improvisational approach, and her strategies were so unconventional they transcended the term "creative."
Instead of treating the sulfur gases in the Nebula Hunian as an obstacle or defense, Lyna used them as "shrubbery" to conceal her fleet. She coated her ships with psionic energy shields, enabling them to survive in the extreme environment for a few minutes. The sulfur gas became a veil of camouflage, blinding the Hiveseer's detection systems, even its most powerful clairvoyance abilities. Once the Swarm Fleets were close enough, Lyna launched a chaotic, seemingly random assault—not to destroy the entire enemy fleet in one strike but to create enough disruption to prepare her ultimate weapon.
That weapon was the Arcnova Cascade, a devastating technology exclusive to The Nest. This weapon was the result of Lyna and her crew's research after discovering a planet that served as the nest of Space Wasps. These creatures, similar to the Arachnoax forces, attacked in massive swarms, overwhelming enemy ships from all sides and slowly dismantling them piece by piece. While conventional cannons could destroy the Space Wasps in a single shot, their sheer numbers made it impossible to eliminate the swarm before they dismantled the ship entirely.
The battle between The Nest and the Space Wasp colony was the event that solidified Lyna's reputation as "The Queen Bee." With only a single spaceship, she managed to obliterate the swarm of cosmic pests in record time, earning her both respect and fear across the Human Federation. However, Lyna was fully aware that the Arachnoax were not Space Wasps. They possessed exoskeletons and hides far tougher than those of the outer-space insects. A single conventional cannon shot often wasn’t enough to kill them; it often required a second or even third precise strike.
Therefore, expecting the Swarm Fleets to be destroyed by a single shot of the Arcnova Cascade was an illusion. And true to form, while the Arcnova Cascade blast created massive destruction within the Swarm Fleets, it was far from sufficient to stop them. The enemy forces continued their assault with unimaginable ferocity, systematically dismantling Lyna’s fleet ship by ship. It seemed like only a matter of time before The Nest would also become a lifeless wreck adrift in the Nebula Hunian.
However, the Arcnova Cascade was never meant to be Lyna’s ultimate weapon; it was merely part of a larger plan: to locate the Hiveseer, the command center of the Swarm Fleets, hidden deep within the enemy ranks.
Human radar technology had long been unable to distinguish the Hiveseer from ordinary Arachnoax in the Swarm Fleets. Their reliance on psionic powers had been crippled by the Broodmother’s dominance over the Mind Realm. In every battle, human forces fought in near-total darkness, targeting Arachnoax one by one, even though they knew that the true core of the enemy’s power lay with the Hiveseer. But through the dispersal of Arcnova Cascade energy, Lyna was finally able to pinpoint the Hiveseer’s position on The Nest’s radar.