Aegirarch's office was a hollow sphere, suspended in the heart of his command station like a droplet of water frozen in space. The walls were smooth, bare, and translucent, offering an uninterrupted view of the stars and the bartered planet below marred by the scars of orbital bombardment and meteor strikes. Minimalism ruled the chamber, for Aegirarch valued nothing beyond efficiency, logic, and the pursuit of profit.
At the sphere’s core, a single console emerged from the floor like the tip of a glacier, housing an interface pad and a large wrap-around screen. Streams of data rippled across it—status reports from mining rigs, casualty updates, and projections of Nullite yield. The system hummed with activity, and yet Aegirarch felt none of the satisfaction he had anticipated when first laying eyes on this star system.
The inhabitants were docile and pacifistic to the point of absurdity. They held no weapons beyond tools for fishing, farming, and construction, most of their advanced work was automated. For a moment, he had questioned whether such a society could even comprehend violence until he saw how they treated Nullite.
Aegirarch clenched the corner of his bed as the thought returned. A resource so rare and powerful, wasted as mere decoration. They adorned their temples, their ships, and even their bodies with it, ignorant of the wealth they squandered. When the first scouts relayed images of unrefined Nullite crystals embedded in the foundations of their cities, Aegirarch’s usual calm wavered. His mind, cold as the abyss, flickered with something close to rage.
He had expected low yields—impurities at best. Instead, survey reports painted a different picture. The Nullite deposits in this system were not only vast but pure. The crystalline veins shimmered with potency beyond anything his operations had unearthed in over a century. This was no minor expedition any more. It was a harvest, the kind that could reshape his entire standing within the Triumvirate.
Aegirarch's gaze drifted toward a small symbol etched into the corner of his console, a serpent entwined around a crescent moon. Syrlin, the old god of prosperity and cunning. Venerating Syrlin was an outdated practice, frowned upon by the logical elite of his society, but Aegirarch was not above silent prayers. This fortune had to be the result of divine favour.
He pressed a hand to the symbol, falling into brief meditation. The hum of the surrounding sphere faded into the background. However, even this act of gratitude was tinged with frustration. For every victory, there were losses. An entire base and its infrastructure were destroyed by that thing below. A crystalline Nullite core shattered beyond recovery. The clones who manned that base gone along with their weapons and armour now irradiated.
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Replacements were costly, not just in terms of currency but training time. The commanders responsible for those failures had been stripped of rank and demoted to patrol duty aboard the outermost crafts. Aegirarch grimaced at the memory. Those officers should have been devoured by their spawning fathers. Waste was intolerable.
His screen flickered as a new report arrived, transmitted from his ship. The science division had completed another autopsy of the biological combat units—or BCUs, as they called them. The findings were troubling.
The enemy’s forces were evolving. Constantly.
The scouts returned carrying fragments of tissue from the last battle, along with BCU components that had adapted during the engagement. Their armour was thicker, weapons more efficient, each new variation reflected rapid biological evolution. Analysis of the samples revealed a grim pattern, the enemy forces he faced today would not be the same tomorrow.
The technological analysis yielded little, there were no machines, no circuits, and no trace of traditional engineering. Everything the enemy deployed was grown, moulded from living matter.
Aegirarch leaned forward. His opalescent eyes narrowed as he parsed the findings line by line. If this was true, it raised too many questions. What species was this? No record matched them. The system’s inhabitants couldn’t have created something so advanced they lacked even rudimentary knowledge, it spoke more of the species' origin.
The psionic division had voiced their concerns more than once. Sensitive to the etheric plane, they claimed the entity radiated like a beacon of death, its presence warping the surrounding space. Slaughter followed wherever it emerged.
Aegirarch recalled their warnings:
Do not engage until the moon is fully secured. The creature grows more powerful with each encounter. If we attempt to locate it directly, our casualties will be catastrophic.
Cowards.
Still, even Aegirarch could not ignore the practical dangers. The entity was expanding. Left unchecked, it could disrupt mining operations for years. And with the Nexus destabilized around the system, travel was impossible. Any attempt to leave would scatter his fleet to random points across the void. The ark ship, the only safe passage out, would not arrive for another decade.
There was no retreat.
His thoughts clicked into place like shifting plates of armour. If the thing below could not be fought directly, then it would be buried beneath the weight of attrition.
He opened a new directive, diverting thirty percent of all mining operations toward mineral extraction. The local rock was dense, and laced with trace elements suitable for fabrication. Within weeks, Aegirarch would have factories dotting the moon’s surface, producing waves of disposable machines.
He didn’t need brilliance to defeat the enemy. He required mass overwhelming numbers to wear it down.
A soft chime echoed through the sphere as his orders were confirmed. Outside the office, distance mining rigs continued their relentless excavation, unaware of the war brewing beneath their treads.
Aegirarch exhaled, long and slow. In the end, everything came down to yield. Nullite, machines, bodies, each was a resource to be spent.
And when the creature surfaced again, he would ensure it paid for every crystal it had cost him.