The third ship took a glancing hit, a rail gun round tearing through its brain. For a brief moment, it drifted, lost in the void, command functions severed. It was helpless.

The enemy did not hesitate. They focused fire, hammering the defenceless warship with relentless precision. Plasma lances scorched through its organic plating, while rail slugs punched through exposed cavities, rupturing internal compartments.

The ship screamed a deep, guttural wail through the etheric plane before its outer shell finally collapsed, imploding under the relentless assault. The boarding parties inside never stood a chance, crushed within the dying husk before it was consumed in a final silent explosion.

The fourth ship attempted a calculated retreat, its engines flaring to full burn, straining to pull away from the heaviest fire. It nearly made it. Nearly.

A lucky plasma bolt from an enemy warship struck true, slicing into the stern, cutting through organic corridors and venting entire sections into the void. The ship twisted, losing control, spiralling in a slow, erratic death spin.

Its biomorph core strained to compensate, auxiliary thrusters desperately firing to stabilize its trajectory, but the enemy was relentless.

The final blow came in the form of a rail gun round, a single hypersonic slug that punched through the ship’s brain, severing its last command link. The vessel went limp, adrift, powerless before a stray warhead detonating amid the wreckage field ripped it apart in a blinding flash.

I pushed one of my ships dangerously close to an enemy vessel, bringing it within boarding range. A horde of assault raiders and acid spitters spilt from its hull, drifting through space, clutching onto the enemy warship’s surface.

Their claws found purchase, already moving to burn and tear their way inside. Acid spitters went to work immediately, melting through the outer armour, widening breaches, and carving open paths for the raiders.

The battle became a brutal, close-range duel, a relentless exchange of positioning, dodging, and retaliating.

One of their ships finally succumbed to its accumulated wounds, large sections of its structure failing, splitting apart in a slow-motion disintegration.

Survivors ejected, their escape pods igniting emergency thrusters, attempting to flee the battlefield.

I gave them no chance.

One of my warships, its appendages whipping through the void, surged forward, intercepting the fleeing pods. Its massive graspers seized them all, locking them in place before it retreated from the battlefield.

The enemy comms exploded with frantic pleas for a rescue that would never come.

The rest of the battle worsened, my fleet losing three more ships as the enemy fought with renewed desperation, their captains prioritizing survival over tactics. But I had already shifted strategy.

I ordered my most damaged ships into suicide manoeuvres, their mandibles locking onto enemy hulls, tearing through armour, and injecting assault teams into the very heart of enemy ships.

This was the turning point.

Five enemy warships were boarded, and their defences were overwhelmed from within. The tide had shifted. With their concentrated firepower weakened, my remaining ships tightened the noose, pressing the attack.

Enemy comms descended into chaos. A general retreat was ordered.

Out of the original twelve warships, only one remained adrift, its crew abandoning the ship in scattered escape pods, choosing to escape over death.

That left me with five enemy ships still in play, each one now a battlefield within itself.

The remaining six warships fled, limping away from the battle, their hulls scarred and burning. I estimated that, of those, only two would remain operational before the end of the day.

The others would succumb to acid damage, their structures slowly dissolving, eaten away from within.

I exhaled, the tension easing just slightly, the battle’s intensity fading to a dull pressure in the back of my mind. The fight had been a brutal, calculated slaughter, yet as I checked the internal clock on my neural implant, I realized.

It had only been twenty-three minutes.

No time to relax.

I redirected my focus to the vicious combat still raging within the enemy warships.

The acid spitters led the charge as always, their corrosive blasts eating through bulkheads, carving new pathways through the hulls. They served as the vanguard, drawing enemy fire, and soaking damage while assault raiders pushed forward.

The enemy was prepared. Exo-suited captains led the defence.

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Their armour was like Frivals, heavy exo-suits doubling their firepower, giving them the endurance of a war machine.

They would not go quietly into the void.

I intercepted their open comms broadcasts, catching oaths of last stands, and declarations of unyielding resistance. Clones and captains alike vowed to fight to the last breath.

I had no interest in pointless battles.

I increased reinforcements, flooding their ships with fresh waves of drones, overwhelming their defences.

Through my network of drones, I watched the enemy captains and their clones fight cold, ruthless, like machines.

Every movement was calculated, and every defensive position was executed with perfect coordination. No advantage was wasted.

But I would not waste time either.

I gave the order.

The acid spitters began carving through their hulls.

From every direction.

———

The ship screamed.

A deep, groaning wail echoed through its collapsing corridors as the hull buckled. Pressure seals failed.

Bulkheads imploded. The Abyssal Trench breaker was dying, its metal skeleton eaten away by the tide of acid and flesh.

Captain Xal’vir stood firm. Her exo-frame’s quadrupedal legs dug into the trembling deck, anchoring her as her upper limbs methodically reloaded her rifle.

Bioluminescent glyphs pulsed faintly along her armour, casting shifting greens and orange across the scorched walls.

The open comms crackled.

“This is Captain Drelis… our core is set for overlord… we are lost…” His voice remained even, and professional. Then static.

Silence.

The last ship had fallen.

Now only they remained.

Her clones did not speak. They simply stood, waiting. Emotionless. Unwavering.

Except for one.

CT-1297, nicknamed ‘Guppy.’

The clone adjusted his stance, aiming his plasma rifle at the nearest entry point. The barrel glowed hot, and the power cell overcharged from constant use.

“Acknowledging final service.” His voice was calm, neutral. “For the ship.”

Xal’vir let out a low hum, a sound deep and resonant, echoing from the depths of her people’s home world. A song of the abyss. Of cold oceans and endless darkness.

The bulkheads ruptured a tide of BCUs poured in.

Grey, sinewy things skittering and slithering, their elongated maws pulsing with acidic sacs, spraying jets of green death. The first volley burned through metal, armour, and flesh.

Guppy fired first.

A blue, white lance of plasma carved through the nearest BCU, its chitinous skull bursting in a spray of steaming gore. Another lunged, and Xal’vir crushed it beneath her exo-frame’s massive lower limb, the sound wet and final.

More creatures swarmed.

A clone was hit, acid spraying across his chest plate. His body thrashed around as his screams were heard on open comms for all to hear.

His armour sizzled and melted into his flesh, but he continued firing until his weapon jammed and his limbs liquefied until he was nothing but a burning husk.

Xal’vir kept humming.

Guppy fought at her side, even as clones fell one by one, their bodies disintegrating under the relentless tide. She stepped forward, her rifle finally spent, her combat blade flashing in arcs of precise, mechanical efficiency.

She did not stop.

Even as the acid ate through her helmet, even as her visor cracked, even as her eyes boiled in her skull, she only whispered her final words:

“Rogue wave confirmed.”

The creatures tore into Xal’vir.

She saw nothing but darkness.

And for the first time in her life, she was back home in the abyss.

———

I could only stare into the void of space as new suns ignited across the lunar landscape brilliant, dying flares of burning wreckage, casting shadows over the battlefield.

The surface was alive with war, a shifting sea of light and darkness where flesh and metal were torn apart in the silent vacuum.

I was not troubled. I had already claimed my prize. Three of my ships dragged the broken corpse of an enemy vessel, its ruined hull still melting from the acid. The thing was barely functional, but it was still alive.

A biomorph was slithering through its shattered frame, tendrils weaving, flesh expanding, patching the wounds as it consumed the bodies of my boarding parties, digesting them, repurposing them.

Another of my ships moved across the lunar surface, its vast appendages wrapped tightly around the captured escape pods.

They were not clones they were only Grithan.

And they would soon be delivered into my hands.