Asuta hummed a little tune to herself as she walked through the empty hallway. Hmmm. She should go have another snack. She knew she should hold back from gorging so much, but the food was just so good. She just couldn’t resist when it was right there… Her mouth was watering just thinking about it. She shifted her path to start walking towards the kitchen. Just one more meal couldn’t hurt, especially if Emily never had to know about it…
Suddenly a harsh buzz filled the area and she instantly tensed. Oh my. Someone was attacking their system? She quickly jogged back to her room and picked up the holopad inside. She flipped through the screens to see what they were dealing with. Probably was just some mortal pirates, or a group of Independent Immortals in the worst case.
Usually people attacked her home system out of ignorance, and ran away scared after they realized how extensive her minefield on the exterior of the system was. She had spent millions of years constantly fortifying the place and building it up.
Asuta kept flicking through the screen, looking at the data of the ships that had just exited hyperspace just on the edge of the system. A lot of ships, over thirty of standard size or larger and one massive one comparable in size to her planet destroying ship. A perfect orb for the large ship, what a strange design. The rest were tubular and more what Asuta had expected.
Who was doing this? Neither the Plaguebringers or Immortal Council used ships that big. Took too large of a crew to man, and their militaries were limited more by manpower than their equipment. Not to mention larger ships were equally harder to maintain than the smaller ones, something that was a very important factor when you were immortal and would be using the same ship for long periods of time.
Could it be some of the independents? A group of Immortal pirates looking for the reputation they’d get from attacking her? Hmmm. Maybe. They might use a ship that big and strange as a statement of some sort.
Then something strange happened. One of the smaller ships exploded into fragments. Asuta blinked and inspected the data closer. The large ship hadn’t exploded, no that was wrong. It had dissolved into thousands of equally sized chunks that were now spreading out in the direction it had originally been traveling. Towards the minefield. Alright, they had a few suicide vessels to clear the way… But just wouldn’t be enough. Oh, wait. The rest were doing the same. Of the thirty ships, twenty dissolved into the chunks, all flying towards the minefield as one.
Asuta was confused. This was a lot of resources someone was putting into getting through. With that amount of shrapnel, they would make their main ships through the minefield by exploding all the ones in their path. But with the way the mines orbited the system the hole would be patched in less than an hour, trapping them inside. And inside the system Asuta’s automated weapons platforms were already heating up and preparing to unload their payloads once they were through.
She frowned as she tried to figure out what they were trying to accomplish as her mines began exploding and the remaining ten standard ships and single massive one started making their way through.
Even with all the chunks of suicide ships to clear the path, some of Asuta’s mines managed to survive. She had set all sorts of conditions that would trigger them to go off, so many remained silent and only went to target the bigger ships.
Asuta watched in confusion as one of the mines hit one of the big ships pushing their way through. Unlike what she had expected, the whole vessel… twisted out of the way of the explosion, only being slightly burned. She froze as she saw it straighten out again, as if it hadn’t almost folded itself nearly in half a few seconds ago. She looked over the data again.
Oh fuck.
What she had thought was a sensor error was real. The ships were shifting slightly and moving as they flew through space. It wasn’t human vessels at all.
It was the Endless Flesh.
She quickly sent a signal to the automated ship parked on the edge of the system, composing a message explaining the situation. After a few seconds it hyper jumped away to the nearest highly populated system. It would give a message to the Immortal Council and call for help, but even in the best case they would still take a week or two to arrive to assist. That was their whole purpose supposedly, to prevent things like this from happening. Or at least that’s what it was beginning before they expanded their mandate to include all of those other things as well.
The Endless Flesh fleet finally managed to get through her minefield, their ships burned and pitted. But even now, Asuta could see the large central ship healing its wounds. One of the smaller ships drifted towards the large vessel, creature, and latched on like a leech. It sat there for a few minutes and when it detached, all of the wounds it had received from the mines were healed.
Asuta looked at the data. This must be a pretty high Immortal count fleet for them to regenerate that fast. She sent the orders to her weapons platforms as the Endless Flesh fleet came into firing range.
Take out the small ones first, leaving the big one isolated. She’d just have to hope that her weapons were able to outpace the carrier’s regeneration once the little ones were gone… Depending how many Immortals it had in there providing it with endless food, her normal weapons platforms might not be enough to take it down.
She knew that her home planet’s defenses should be able to fight it off, but she didn’t want to wait for quite that long. Too close to home.
Asuta kept adjusting the firing paths of her barrage on the smaller ships that twisted and dodged nauseatingly like twisting worms or snakes. But after a few minutes she started landing some direct hits on them, and two twitched and went still. Allowing the follow up fire to rip them to pieces.
The eight remaining damaged ships started to retreat towards the big one, and Asuta managed to kill two more before they reached its surface. The highly damaged worms burrowed into the surface of the larger ship and after a few minutes were inside of it like a worm coring out an apple. Asuta shifted her weapons to target the hole left in their wake, and managed to land a few good blows to cause the larger ship to twist in pain as the explosions went off inside it.
But inevitably after thirty minutes of back and forth, the entrances on the main ship’s surface healed closed and it was an uninterrupted surface again. It kept moving slowly towards her home planet even as it kept getting hit with fire. Its surface was pitted and marred, but Asuta’s weapons weren’t ever punching anything more than a fifth the distance to the center even with concentrated barrages. The thing just kept constantly healing and when she started making progress in drilling a hole deeper, the creature twisted itself and its flesh rippled to fill in the hole. Sacrificing its overall size to fill the gap.
It was slowly shrinking in size as Asuta kept pounding it with her weapons, but slowly. And the smaller it got the faster it began to regenerate, creating an annoying balance where the instant it wasn’t being attacked it began to heal and slowly grow fractionally bigger again.
“Hey, Asuta. What’s going on?” Emily asked as she walked through the door, “Why’s the alarm still going? Is someone trying to get through the minefield?”
“They’re already through,” Asuta said grimly, “It’s an Endless Flesh fleet. Down to one ship left, but it’s got a high Immortal count. We’ll have to blast it when it comes closer to our planet.”
“Oh. Need help?”
“Yes, please.” Asuta handed over a second holopad to Emily and gave her control of half of the weapons platforms. Hopefully if they could concentrate enough fire they could pierce into the ship’s core where its Immortals would be held and stop it from regenerating.
— — —
“Should we bring out the big guns? The planet killer?” Emily asked Asuta, “We still have a few hours before it reaches our planetary defenses. We could bring out the ship and blast it.”
Asuta thought about it. The creature’s fleshy orb was now nearly a third of the size it had been when it entered the system. But its regeneration had become fast enough that they weren’t able to shrink it any farther.
“Sorry…” She said, “I already started disassembling it for maintenance. We won’t be able to fix it up in time.”
“Oh. Well, that’s annoying. How long would it take to repair?”
“A rush job? Maybe a few days. Doing everything properly and actually doing a full check would be a few weeks.”
“Well, I can go over and get started on it. I’ll go up and blow up that thing if you don’t manage it. As a plan B.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“We’ve already fired it four times without any maintenance,” Asuta countered, “It needs a full check. We could get it functional in a few days, but it’d be dangerous… It might explode with so much wear on the components.”
“That’s what the escape pods are for, right?” Emily replied, “I’ll go. Just as a backup if the planet’s defenses aren’t enough.”
“No! I’ll do it, I’ve… there’s…”
“No, you’re needed here,” Emily said as Asuta flailed around verbally for a reason why she should go instead, “You can coordinate the defenses, if it approaches and begins to bombard us then you’ll be busy. You know this place like the back of your hand, it’s best if you stay.”
“But… but… I built this all for you,” Asuta said weakly, “For us. You can’t go out there, you’ll be in danger. Not even normal danger, but at risk of being captured by the Endless Flesh.”
“But someone has to do it,” Emily said, “You can’t run the defenses from up there. You have to stay down here. I’ll fix up the ship and go. It’ll be fine.”
Asuta put down her pad, “No. If you go, I’ll go. Things will run fine down here without me. Not optimal, but still fine. We can’t have Sinestra on that ship without Queen Violet there to back her up!”
Emily smiled and then hesitated, “Okay,” She eventually said, “Together then. I’ll go get started on the repairs. You just keep working here and I’ll call you when it’s done.”
“You’ll call me?” Asuta asked suspiciously, “Even if I’m still working on the planet's defenses?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Well, okay. Let’s see if I can make sure we don’t have to use your plan B at all…”
Emily left the room and Asuta glanced at the door for a long moment before looking back down on the pad. Oh, she should probably tell their guests what was going on too. She quickly composed a message and sent it off to their devices. Hopefully they would forgive her for not explaining what had happened after the alarm went off. Oops. Well, she had sent it now. Time to get back to work. She leaned over the holopad and continued to prepare the firing patterns of the planetary defenses once the Endless Flesh ship came within range.
— — —
“Oh, I got a message from Asuta,” Lira said from the other side of the workshop. The two of them were working on building a hoverbike for old time’s sake.
Sean waited, still fiddling with the component in front of him. After Lira didn’t speak, he stopped and turned around. She was standing there staring down and looking at the message on her holopad.
“What did she say?” Sean asked in concern.
“Endless Flesh,” Lira said before looking up, “A fleet of the Endless Flesh is attacking. Emily and Asuta are working to fight them off, but the main ship will be in orbit in a few hours.”
Sean blinked, “They have fleets? I thought they were… animals, like a pest or something. How did they even get here?”
“I don’t know,” Lira said with a tight expression, “I thought that too. We should go find Ash. Maybe she can find something in the library that can explain it. Emily and Asuta are probably too busy.”
She reached up and Sean swept forward and grabbed her hand in his.
“None of us are getting captured this time, right?” Sean said, “It’ll be fine. And we know some combat this time. If one of those beetles attacks us then we’ll go BAM BAM on them!” Lira flinched as Sean suddenly increased his volume.
“Or that’s how Asuta would put it, I think,” he finished.
Lira relaxed and chuckled, “Yeah. That does sound like her. We should grab Roger too while we’re at it. I doubt he knows anything about it either but you never know.”
— — —
“Were you unaware of their importance?” Ash asked them, “I assumed Emily or Asuta would have explained about what happened after hearing about how we first met Nyx Vesper.”
“No,” Sean said, “It never came up, I suppose. Past explaining the basic situation.”
Ash looked between all of them before sitting down and his voice shifted into a more lecturing tone.
“The origins of the Endless Flesh are unknown. It has been around for as long as recorded history, spreading from planet to planet wherever it can. It is the stated reason for the formation of both the original Plaguebringers and Immortal Council as large governmental entities in the galaxy. Originally they were about equal in power. Prior to that point Immortals were more independent and mostly formed loose confederations that were more friends assisting each other than any form of formal structure that you see today.”
Ash scanned all of them in the room before continuing.
“The original Plaguebringers had much the same stated philosophy as Nyx. Their goal was to use their disease and bioweapons to infect the Endless Flesh and destroy their colonies in one swoop rather than using less efficient traditional weapons. They were heavily criticized for the collateral damage when they released plagues on populated worlds with colonies of the Endless Flesh on them. But they worked to mitigate the damage and usually had vaccines prepared that they shared with the affected worlds. The Immortal Council disagreed with their methods, and instead worked along the mortals to assemble larger fleets of ships of mixed Immortals and mortals to destroy the Endless Flesh through traditional military might. This eventually led to the Immortal Council having more influence over mortal affairs while the Plaguebringers were more isolated and insular in only wanting to interact with other Immortals. After some time the Plaguebringers became more genocidal and began to use their plagues on targets beyond just the Endless Flesh in pursuit of their goals. While the Immortal Council began to administrate and regulate the mortal worlds under their influence and claimed vast swaths of the galaxy as their territory.”
“But what is it?” Roger asked, “The Endless Flesh? How is it creating fleets and fighting off whole groups of Immortals? If it’s so powerful that Asuta and Emily can’t handle them then how have they not destroyed countless mortal worlds? Why haven’t we heard more about them?”
Ash nodded, “It is well documented that the Endless Flesh is largely dormant on mortal worlds. They spread and prey on the local wildlife, but don’t go out of their way to attack people more than any other animal they encounter. They are largely unintelligent and animalistic, and even the intelligent ones generally avoid attacking worlds if they don’t think there are any Immortals there. Like you experienced Lira and Roger, the Endless Flesh seeks to capture as many Immortals as possible for food to fuel their growth. Once they have a captured Immortal they rapidly become more intelligent and begin to develop new forms and specialized offspring using their innate skill in biological manipulation of their spawn and themselves. With seven captive Immortals after the enforcers got captured as well, the colony you were in would have become quite powerful if left alone for a while to grow more intelligent and create more variants of spawn to defend itself with.”
“So, I don’t get it,” Lira asked, “How are they not everywhere then? I mean in five hundred years of visiting planets all over the place we only got attacked by them once. Shouldn’t the intelligent ones be spreading their offspring everywhere to take over?”
“Yes, they do,” Ash said, “But without an Immortal as fuel and as a trigger for them, they quickly regress back into an animalistic state. The one that captured you was likely in the middle of this process. It was already quite large in size and had multiple variants of spawn that it controlled. Given a few more years I guess that the creature that captured you would be no more intelligent than the beetles it controlled and less than a tenth of the size that it was. And its offspring would have returned to a single variant of its choosing as its lower intelligence stopped it from being able to remember any biological alterations it would have to make to produce a different form. Once they are at that level, they can be exterminated by an Immortal group or even the mortal government if need be. Many animalistic colonies are destroyed by mortals just for being a nuisance, no one even realizing their true nature. Both the Immortal Council and Plaguebringers are always working to destroy colonies of the Endless Flesh all around the galaxy just in case they happen to get their hands on a wandering Immortal and start to gain intelligence and mutate into their more dangerous form and go hunting for more Immortals to fuel itself.”
“Hyperspace?” Sean said, “I understand perhaps it being able to create different variants of the beetles, different sizes, maybe even changing their jaws or other aspects a bit. But how would they even spread around the galaxy if they’re starting from scratch each time?”
Ash’s eyes flickered, “Who said they are starting from scratch? The Endless Flesh has been around for millions and millions of years at least. If no one attacks them, then the Immortals inside them are trapped until something kills their captor. They’ve slowly developed their own technology as a collective, even if it is much slower than humanity does. Even if they’ve been pushed farther and farther to the edge of the galaxy as time passes and the humans and Immortals work to fight them back.”
Sean suddenly felt his view shift. He was imagining a wandering group of hungry animals. Scary, but not people. “Are they sapient?” He asked, “Can they be reasoned with?”
“Some are sapient,” Ash said, “But only the top and oldest members. It is estimated that their number is in the low thousands to the hundreds of thousands. But the exact number is unknown. They are the ones working on the technology and guiding the rest in organized attacks like this one. The others are more intelligent than animals, but if they see an opportunity to capture an Immortal they’ll pursue it no matter how unlikely to pull off or how costly it would be to them. Ruled by their instincts and unable to express a coherent thought or communicate with others.”
“How did they have a hyperdrive?” Lira asked, “Is it metal in there, or…?”
“No, it’s all biological,” Ash said, “Humans could build them too, but we’d have to feed them food all the time. And since its biology it could mutate and start to eat or infect the crew if something went wrong, it isn't ideal. So we just stuck with building metal and plastic ones instead. Much easier to repair, and less chance of something going wrong. Since the fleshy hyperdrive is part of the Endless Flesh ship’s bodies, they can just heal if something goes wrong.”
“Huh,” Lira said, “How about that…”
“Why’s it called the Endless Flesh?” Roger asked.
“Because once one of them gets access to a couple of Immortals they send out endless waves of creatures to attack,” Ash said, “Hence the Endless Flesh. Also it refers to their sole use of biology for everything they do. Endless Flesh regenerating from the Immortals they have inside them. The sapient members of their species co-opted the name a few million years ago and now they refer to themselves as such whenever they deign to communicate with humanity. Immortal humanity at least. The intelligent ones do attack mortals, but only in pursuit in capturing an Immortal. Otherwise they largely ignore the mortals.”
“And these things are coming here?” Sean asked, “What can we even do to help against them if Asuta can’t shoot it down with all the weapons she has?”
Ash stood and his tentacles unwrapped and started waving around behind him, “I suppose we could start by arming ourselves as best we can. Best to be ready just in case.”
Ash walked out of the room and the rest of them followed. Having handheld weapons probably wouldn’t help against a planet wide attack by the Endless Flesh. But it sure would make them feel more prepared just in case. Sean wondered if Ash knew that or if he was being serious about the weapons helping them. Sometimes it was hard to tell.