With a thought, I sent a pulse rippling through the etheric plane, a signal cascading outward like sonar, bouncing off the countless minds scattered across the battlefield. Each reflection marked a physical presence. The environment was target-rich, and I could taste their fear lingering in the mental current. Most of them were retreating, pulling back beyond the boundaries of my influence.

I couldn't allow that.

The furthest minds already escaping became my priority. I conjured mind drills, spectral lances of raw willpower, and launched them deep into the recesses of their consciousness. With surgical precision, I unravelled their sanity, fragment by fragment.

Mental breakdowns erupted along the retreating line like wildfire, and the war sub-mind immediately reported the chaotic fallout. Disorganization spread through their ranks, their cohesion crumbling in real time.

Panic now reigned on the battlefield.

Wherever my mind touched, fear blossomed. I fractured the psyches of clone troopers en masse, exploiting every vulnerability in their mental defences.

In the etheric plane, I encountered weak barriers protecting their psyches they had no safe harbours to protect them now. This realm was mine, and in my hands, it became a twisted nightmare.

While my assault surged through the unseen ether, the physical world mirrored the carnage. My forces launched a coordinated counterattack, striking at the clones whose minds I had left in tatters. My swarm left none alive in their counterattack, none were spared as they rampage across their base.

Enemy troops fled in disarray, abandoning weapons and armour as hysteria overtook them. Some sprinted blindly away from the battlefield, while others stood frozen, trembling and unresponsive. A few, having completely unravelled, simply screamed until their throats gave out. Those that still held rifles sprayed fire at anything that moved, striking friend and foe alike.

Reinforcements advancing from the west began their retreat. I felt their collective shift, the weight of their consciousnesses fleeing westward in droves. Even the armoured spearhead, their vanguard of their counterattack, faltered. War machines, bristling with weaponry, slowly reversed course, their counterattack dissolving before it ever gained more traction.

Curiosity tugged at me. Breaking them was easy, too easy. I wanted more.

I reached deeper, slipping tendrils of thought into the minds of those who hadn’t yet fled. Not only that, but I experimented, testing how far I could manipulate their perception. By whispering through the ether, I seeded false commands, illusory orders that danced on the edge of believability.

Some took hold immediately, and I watched with quiet satisfaction as small units turned on each other. Others hesitated, succumbing to hallucinations that twisted the world around them.

A few simply snapped.

One clone soldier clawed at his helmet, convinced that some creature had crawled inside it, he ripped it off, embracing the vacuum. Another dropped his weapon and sat in the dirt, staring blankly at the horizon, mouth slightly agape. Others erupted into sudden, brutal violence, lashing out at anything that moved within reach.

The tide was shifting in my favour, even as orbital fire rained from the heavens. The enemy's fleet did not discriminate friend and foe, alike were reduced to smouldering craters. Explosions stitched across the landscape, entire platoons vaporized by precision missile strikes. Their desperation was showing.

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Still, the bombardment intensified.

A cluster of retreating armoured vehicles vanished in a plume of fire as missiles tore through their ranks. The detonations rippled outward, consuming everything within range. They weren't holding back any more. Even my drones took hits, the outermost formations evaporating instantly. Those that survived retreated beneath the surface, rushing into the relative safety of the tunnels below.

But sanctuary was short-lived.

The tunnels of our lifeline had begun collapsing. The relentless orbital barrage fractured the subterranean network, burying entire swarms under tons of rock and debris. The war sub-mind projected catastrophic losses if we remained on the surface any longer.

And then, the hammer fell.

Blinding light pierced the void, illuminating the lunar surface in waves of raw, unrelenting fury. Nuclear detonations. The shockwaves ruptured the ground, and even my scouts, hardened against radiation, flickered and died. The surviving drones scrambled for deeper tunnels, but sanctuary was no more.

As the etheric plane quieted, I realized I could no longer sense the minds of my enemies. The clones who had fought and bled here were gone, silenced by atomic fire. Their echoes lingered for a brief moment, like whispers on the wind, before fading into oblivion.

Sanctuary had finally fallen.

In the aftermath, I moved cautiously. My last surviving scout drones fanned out, stretched across miles of lunar terrain, navigating the jagged wasteland that was once my domain. The intelligence sub-mind reported no signs of pursuit. Sanctuary now lay beneath a radioactive shroud, an unmarked grave for all who had died there.

I turned south, the last surviving scout drones following in lockstep.

For the next eleven days, we traversed the desolate expanse, avoiding enemy patrols and lingering radiation. On the second day, my scouts unearthed the remains of two Generation-One drones. They were ancient relics, twisted and half-buried beneath layers of dust. Despite our best efforts, they offered nothing of value. Their design was primitive, their technology obsolete compared to what I had created now.

The silence of the journey gnawed at me. With no battles to fight or biomass to experiment with, I found myself adrift, caught in the dull monotony of the void. I sifted through old audio logs, replaying them over and over, searching for distraction.

Meanwhile, splinters of my mind drafted new drone schematics experiments in design, weaponry, and propulsion. I speculated on space travel, mapping out theoretical systems that could launch the swarm beyond the lunar surface.

In the quiet, I also contemplated the lava tubes how vast could be to stretch across the Southern Hemisphere. How deep did they run? How far could they take me from enemy eyes?

The scouts trailing near sanctuary confirmed what I had suspected, no one dared approach the site. The enemy had abandoned it entirely, leaving nothing but charred earth and decaying radiation behind.

Still, my mind wandered.

Old memories resurfaced, fragments of a life I no longer claimed as my own. Human memories. I watched them unfold, reliving echoes of a past that felt distant and hollow. There was something surreal about those recollections, as if they belonged to someone else entirely.

And perhaps they did.

I watched quietly, detached from the images playing across my mind’s eye. Somewhere within them, I hoped to find inspiration or perhaps just a glimpse of the person I once was.

I observed the memories of my early childhood with a distant gaze, watching the years unfold like scenes from a distant play. I saw myself grow under the quiet warmth of my parents’ care, their love evident in the small gestures that once felt insignificant. The school years passed swiftly—struggles with maths stood out, moments of frustration lingering longer than others.

I noted the arrival of my first sibling, Mavuto. Our early years were marked by petty arguments over trivial things, but as time advanced, we grew closer. Yet, the simplicity of home life fractured with my father’s declining health. His passing left its mark. I recalled the day Mapalo, my youngest sibling, was born. His death shaped her future—pushing her toward medicine.

I watched the years slip by as she excelled, her achievements pulling her forward. University came early for her, a year ahead of me. Meanwhile, I drifted from one job to another, shouldering the burden of providing for the family as best as I could. The world around us seemed to shift under the weight of worsening weather patterns and the simmering tensions of a renewed Cold War between East and West.

In all those years, the happiest I remember seeing my mother was the day Mavuto graduated. It was fleeting—months later, I stood in a lift, leaving the office and contemplating take out for dinner.

Then, I woke up here.

The last day I remember on Earth—29th September 2056.