I am alone. The purple has expanded like a nuclear reaction, infecting the green and yellow and coming out on top. There is only purple left coloring the clouds surrounding me.

Something is happening that no one else has observed before in the recorded history of this alien species. I know because I had the log downloaded to my brainchip and as I cautiously fly among the puss I go through it line by line looking for the answer.

There is no metagrenade preceding me, I use the active field of the one already tied to my biosuit, far enough from my body not to mess with the nanomite concentrations. I have very few weaponized spheres left and am at no leisure to waste more.

The yellow degrades, the green feeds, and the purple is still a mystery hopefully left unsolved. I don’t want to know what happens next in this tragedy of a reality I swim in.

It's only been minutes since I left the Overlord Queen behind, and my mind is numb, afraid for my friend’s lives. My shoulder is being repaired from the damage by the faithful nanomites, with the pain muted so I’m unbothered by its persistent sting.

A possible answer to the lingering question is littering my surroundings. Empty eggshells float broken as I pass by them. The Overlord eggs have hatched.

“You got to be kidding me,” I whisper under my breath, frantically scrolling down the entries to find the description for baby Overlords that I had skimmed over once, but now need to reread carefully.

Newly hatched Overlords appear to be already in an adolescent form, skipping the vulnerable newborn phase entirely. The incubation period is mainly undergone in the ovarium of each Overlord, sheltered by the parent until it is time for the fertilized eggs to be laid and hatch.

Data strongly suggests the laying happens solely when an adequate feeding source to sustain the soon-to-hatch brood is found nearby.

Due to the scarcity of sustenance in outer space, the Overlord hatchlings have an exceedingly heightened prey drive; a genetic outcome of these harsh environmental factors. If there is insufficient sustenance, the brood might prey upon each other; a trait wholly absent in the observed adult Overlords.

There is still no indication that the Overlord Queen influences the species' reproduction process. Further inquiries are looking for answers to the mystery of the evolved Queen and how its presence affects the rest of the swarm.

…

I have read enough and my rifle is already clutched between my hands, a prudent move since I hope the armor-piercing rounds will be enough to repel the weaker armored hatchlings.

My gloved fingers nervously rub against the SFC logo on the handguard sticking out. They trace around the image of the Dreadnaught and the overhanging lettering reading ‘Spacediving Forward Corps’.

It’s not a weird coincidence that the SFC fleet composition, the SFC logo, and the Arthas Dominion shipyards orbiting C3XA, have as their main element Dreadnaght class battleships.

It's a rather obvious tell.

So come get us, SFC, House Arthas, or whatever you like to call yourselves. Please don’t let my friends die. We did the best we could. Now it’s your time to shine.

Don’t be broken yet, defeated by the swarm. Please, I beg of you. For once you have to save, not only destroy, not only kill but help those who are putting their lives on the line on your behalf.

It's a strange dark thought occupying my mind, but prayer won’t reach those godless assholes.

I hate it–Being powerless to control my destiny. How did I consider that I could protect the others if I’m uncertain I could do so even for myself?

My mind is drowning in the muck of my own creation. I am terrified of losing them.

It's impossible to find each other in the puss clouds. My optic scanners can’t pierce the corrosive mist. We can only rely on our skills and luck to make it out alive. And I have to trust them on this since I’ll need full concentration to find my way back to safety.

From the Overlord hatchlings, there is still no sign. Where are they? I desperately search my surroundings, but can only see so far–a few meters every which way the puss blocks my view except where I came from.

I speed up, giving the boot’s plasma thrusters free reign to push. More eggshells float at the tunnel’s edges where I can see them and imagine the little horrors stalking me.

I steal a glance above my shoulder to look behind me. The light from my helmet banishes the darkness to reveal the emptiness of the tunnel being eaten by the puss.

A few more minutes pass being chased by shadows of my imagination. My eyes blur, seeing and not seeing things swimming alongside me in the clouds.

I imagine a tentacle tentatively prodding at the edge between the puss and my metasphere-made tunnel.

Then, I blink several times. The tentacle is still there, swirling the puss as it keeps up with my speed.

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“Fuck me,” I curse. I’m already lining my body-positioning for an evasive maneuver. The thrusters light up and I dive upwards.

The tentacle disappears from view continuing in its trajectory. I change course again resuming my initial direction. Every few seconds I look back at the tunnel behind me, waiting for a sign that it's found itself back on my tracks.

Not it, they. I see shadows twice my size burst from the clouds behind me, emerging inside the tunnel and diving back out of sight on the other side, without slowing momentum. They have found me.

I swerve up, like climbing a colossal staircase, forward, and up again. The trail I’m leaving behind is clear as day, and I’m facing hunters who won’t relent in their chase until their hunger is satisfied.

I change directions without slowing down, I'm doing everything I can to prevent them from catching up. The second to worst case is that I will hit something in front of me that's simply floating there. Even with the enormous distances involved, a lot of stray debris from the battle is floating about only partially corroded.

Worst for wear with the added speed the metasphere’s active field doesn't have adequate time to collapse the puss in front of me and some of the purple corrosion is finding its way to my biosuit.

I hope it's not concentrated enough to melt through my only protection because I’m in a terrible rush and lost; no point in calculating the distances involved since I don’t know where I am or where I’ll end up.

I watch with horror as the sides of my mask distort like watermarks on clear glass from the outside. Sadly I’m in no position to slow down. Not just yet.

The chase is on, and I’m it. But when my nerves are close to breaking I burst out of the puss clouds like an explosion.

I strain my brainchip to its limit, the SensoChronometry gives me the necessary time to gather myself. The optics immediately register the fleet’s location, and I am relieved that the way I fled didn’t take me the opposite way.

The first thing I notice is that the battle is over. There is a hell of a lot of damage, however. Broken Dreadnaughts clutter the open space, herded by lighter-class vessels to regain as much of the lost materials as possible.

Yet, this is not my immediate concern. I track with my eyes the cloudy puss trail from the battlezone and soon find at its head the Overlord swarm fleeing the other way. A momentary elation washes over me. We did it!

It might have been us, winning the battle for the SFC. Regrettably, I can’t know for sure right now. Everything that happened was cut off from the fleet's sensors, inside the puss clouds with us the only observers.

I’ll have to compare my optic’s recordings with the battle’s, comparing timeframes, to see if there was any actual influence. Or if we came to this close-to-a-suicide mission for nothing.

I don’t slow down, except by letting my time-perception ease up. Some kilometers to my left another burst emerges from the puss and I zoom in only to see Tommy and Gardenia propel themselves to open space tied together by their arms.

With newfound hope, I survey the purple sea for Nik’s exit. The next appearance though comes from behind me. One, two, three, four in swift succession.

The Overlord hatchlings range from twice my size, to a few times bigger. They are paler compared to adult Overlords, slightly dark grey whereas the parents are a black-brown mix, but they are surely a miniature version in all its disgusting glory.

And they surely move fast.

My eyes google in surprise when I realize their speed is greater than mine. Space surely is relentless. There is nowhere to hide and no friction to mess with their bulky frames.

I have one little advantage. My centrifugal force is less than theirs, which translates into a smaller curve when changing directions, something I have been applying generously while maneuvering away.

“Guys? Do you hear me?” I say in the comms a few times before I receive a reply.

“Amon? Where are you? Ah lord! You have these things right behind you!” Gardenia gasps when she spots me and my following retinue.

“I don’t want to alarm you, but a few just came out of the puss from your side as well,” I reply bluntly watching a similar scene unfolding on their side.

“Oh, oh, what are we going to do?” She asks shaken.

“Calm down, Gardenia, here hold my hand,” I hear Tommy say in the comms. “Amon, you good buddy?”

“Been better, but hey, listen a minute, we have to meet up. Make them fall onto one another, it might mess up their momentum enough for us to get away,” I say and curve my flightpath slightly to intercept the two.

“Roger that, you've seen Nik?” Tommy asks.

“Not since we disengaged, he must have exited the clouds from someplace we can’t see directly,” I reply. Yes, that must be it.

I project the meeting point ahead calculating, then look back at my pursuers.

“It’s going to be close,” I say, and half turning I bring my rifle to point between my boots. I start firing round after round upon them.

When the first spread hits, I see the bullets pierce the exoskeleton of the lead hatchling. It doesn’t flinch at the damage but follows with a twist around its axis, making itself a harder target to hit.

I reload a new magazine, spend it, and reload again. And again. And again. And… “I’m out of ammo,” I call out in the comms. If I bought any time with all the firing I did, it's only a few seconds.

“Serves you right for leaving your blaster behind. Mine’s just out of energy.” Tommy says as I see them speedily flying maybe still a kilometer away, him searching for a spare battery with one hand while the other holds Gardenia still. She is firing plasma wildly at the pursuing hatchlings but missing her targets by a large margin.

Our trajectories merge every second that passes but so do the Overlord hatchlings in a hunger craze that ignores any damage we inflict upon them.

They will be upon us soon, never mind whether we meet or not, there won’t be enough of a gap to cover the distance to the fleet.

**Ping**

My brainchip receiver collects a signal transmission and I pull up the datapacket. An SFC Light-weight class vessel sent it.

**Marines, pest control is coming. ETA five minutes 30’’. Hold on tight.**

Thank the ancestors. “Tommy, Gardenia, help’s coming our way!”

—-

CreaseWing, Falcon Class Vessel

Atop the CreaseWing, or how it is more lovingly called the ‘CreasedWinged Falcon’ by the captain and crew due to the minor deformity, a slight curve on the wings, an issue in the model’s first batch productions that later got corrected, the bridge first officer is busily reading the scanners.

“Nothing captain,” he says in dismay and slumps his shoulders down on the chair.

“They can't all be dead, we are talking for thousands here, find me survivors damn it!” The captain barks back. Her ember eyes are glued to the glass screens zooming in and out combing the battlezone.

Below the captain’s stiff palms, the metallic chair has a sticker on one handle. A simple human face with no features but Xs for eyes. A bubble of text says, Luck or Love? Shitty Lucky Love, find it in LootStyle Bar, Fokal Starbase, C2K.

Just like the CreaseWing all surviving Light-Weight vessels are out and about looking for any signs of life. A random assortment of ships, most having gotten caught up in the fleet mobilization while visiting the SFC main hub, and unfortunately getting conscripted.

“Nothing showing up, I'm sorry Cap.” The first officer repeats holding his head with his hands.

“Wait a minute, what's this?” One senior crew standing behind the officer points out at the scanner screen. “The Overlords counterattacking? It can't be.”

“No, they are... chasing something? Are those Marines?!” The officer spells with a mix of horror and excitement at finally finding living among the dead.

“Captain, we are the closest ones to their location.” The navigator chipped in.

“The crazy fuckers! What are they doing all the way over there?! Crew ready to intercept! Let's scoop them up! And warm up those lasers, I’m in the mood for some hunting.” The captain orders with renewed vigor.

It might be their imagination, but at that moment the metallic sting from the ventilation systems kinda smelled like roasted chicken.