"I feel useless... Our daughter is fighting, and there's nothing I can do."

  They were far, far away from the battle taking place at the Pegasus Institute on Cyteen. In the ex-resistance frigate Xaya and Preston had reserved for non-combatants. It was a humble abode, but it was good enough for them.

  "You raised her, you love her, you do enough, Jen." Ron said, sitting beside a tablet he used to contact Xaya or Preston to give strategic advice.

  "I wish she could just have a normal life. Selene doesn't deserve this."

  Ron wasn't sure Selene was actually so broken up about it. She may have taken after her mother in how she looked, but not in personality. Sure, she'd experience ups and downs, but she was a warrior at heart. The call to action was her purpose in life.

  His daughter would never admit it, but a part of her enjoyed battle. He certainly did.

  "Be proud of our daughter. She's fighting to literally save the world. We'll have days again where we can just enjoy peaceful days as a family. One day she might have kids of her own."

  That seemed to cheer his wife up a little.

  "God, I could be a grandma. Where does the time go?" Her eyes searched the air for a moment. "...I think you should talk with Selene about your problem."

  Ron's shoulders slumped.

  "Jen, I don't know..."

  "What, you're too good for it? Your daughter is part alien, you know."

  He didn't want to talk about it. It wasn't so easy; during his time in the Icarus program, he learned a lot about the Zykra before anyone else even knew they existed.

  There were secrets about them that made him apprehensive about it. Sometimes people just died, and that was okay. It worked that way for a reason.

  "Sure. I'll... talk to her about it," he said.

  "Promise," Jen said, getting up and kneeling beside him. She placed her hands in his. "Promise you won't let this condition steal you away from us."

  He looked in her beseeching, teary eyes.

  "Mom?" Camden asked; he had walked in the room and was rubbing his eyes tiredly. His dark brown hair was tousled about wildly, and his dinosaur pajamas were half untucked.

  Jen stood up and wiped her own eyes quickly, then smiled at Camden.

  "I'm sorry, hun, did we wake you up? Let's get you back to bed." She scooped him up and rubbed his back tenderly. "You're getting big! I won't be able to pick you up soon." She looked over her shoulder at Ron with a knowing glance.

  He nodded sullenly as they left the room.

  Preston entered the institute cafeteria and swept a gaze across the huddled group of lab coats gathered in the center. Their soldiers were positioned around the room, making sure none tried to escape.

  The visor on his helmet flipped to the side.

  "I need a volunteer." He said loudly, looking to each doctor's face. "And a clone. The faster we get what we want, the sooner we're out of your hair."

  Heavy pressurized footsteps sounded as he paced the room.

  "No? Okay then, I guess we'll have to choose ourselves. Hopefully we don't choose an idiot because then this will all take even longer."

  A hand rose then.

  Preston grinned.

  "That's what I'm talking about. What's your name?" he asked.

  "Claire Chen, sir..." the Asian woman said meekly.

  "Dr. Chen..." Another lab coat said warningly. But Preston stared him down, then grinned at Dr. Chen again.

  "Don't worry about him; if you help us, you'll be saving the day. What's one clone for all these lives? Anyway... You know how to clone a full body?"

  She flinched in surprise. "Full-body cloning is considered highly unethical, sir, and facilities are usually designed intentionally so that—"

  "Save it." He said, raising a hand. "We have info that this place can do it, for a price. But we don't have the time or money to convince y'all the normal way. The fate of the sector depends on this clone."

  It probably didn't really, but making Selene whole would go a long way in moving them towards their goals in any case.

  The doctor's eyes lit up at that.

  "R-really? It could help someone? How?" She asked.

  "Maybe we'll tell you on the way. Come on, let's go." Preston gestured with his hand in an uplifting motion.

  "What about those monsters? Are you controlling them!?" One of the huddled doctors asked in a panic.

  "Yep. Don't worry about it. They're just keeping your guns off us. Once we're done, they'll be gone." Preston said casually as he led Dr. Chen from the room.

  An IBT battle frigate floated over one of the last Zykra-infested worlds. Major Crowley, who stood in the command deck, was currently overseeing the extermination teams.

  'Soon none of the Zykra in the Joaquin system will be left...' Luan thought. "Where are you?" She muttered aloud.

  Her homeworld was cleared. And only a few planets remained. She anticipated running into Selene long before now.

  "Uh... Luan, you might want to see this..." Brett said, handing her a tablet.

  She took it and watched the video playing on it.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  A man was running down a sidewalk, past grassy lawns and suburban homes on some fancy terraformed world. It was very shaky. He stopped and turned the camera into the sky.

  Luan's eyes widened as she saw.

  Two caasiok's were in the sky, and one was landed. Vespaxyn were swarming the city, and as admirable as its resistance was, they clearly had no standing army. Just a few expensive mechs and aircraft, which were far too few to put a dent in the Zykra forces.

  "There you are..." She said breathlessly.

  So they've been hunting down Zykra dregs this entire time while Selene rebuilt her forces elsewhere.

  "What is this planet for?" She asked.

  "Cyteen is for cloning research, I guess. It's in the Soma system," he said.

  ...Cloning? Why the hell? Cloning didn't work for telepathy, so it wasn't because she was trying to replicate her ability... So what reason could she possibly have to show her hand now? For a cloning world?

  "Cob." She said. "Yes, sir?" A man dressed in the typical protectorate uniform asked.

  "You finish up here. I have to make a call."

  "Yes, sir."

  Luan left the command deck and went straight to her quarters. It took restraint not to run. And she called General Desuran, who answered with anticipation.

  The platform elevator opened up; its chain-link doors split horizontally in the middle. Preston's suit was too big for other access points; it filled out half of the hallway as it was.

  He towered over the timid doctor as she guided him and his few other soldiers ahead.

  "It's this way. Y-you do know that the process takes awhile, yes?"

  "Yep." His pressurized steps sounded behind her. "But after you begin the process, we can transport the container off-world while it grows."

  Those 'containers' were expensive black-market ectogenesis devices. Yes, it did function off of a laserine power cell and was transportable, but the funds to procure a device like that were more than she could ever afford.

  They continued down the hall.

  "None of your buddies are going to pop out with a rifle, are they?" One of the soldiers accompanying them asked, scanning any fork in the hall they passed.

  "N-no? We don't exactly expect this kind of thing... I don't think pirates or anyone would try to attack a research facility like this. The facility has a few enforcer guards, but they're all up there, I think."

  They came to a dimly lit glass room. Walls of glass lined the hall here, and there were sliding glass doors that required a keycard to open.

  "This is where we begin. We'll inject your donor's somatic cell into an enucleated egg. Which is an egg with the nucleus removed, since we want the sample to—"

  "Spare me the science mumbo-jumbo, doc. Just know that if this doesn't work, it'll turn out very badly for you."

  Dr. Chen swallowed nervously, then swiped her ID card across the scanner. The glass door swished open.

  "Do you have the sample?" she asked. "Of whom are we cloning?"

  "Give it to her." He ordered one of the soldiers, who had been carrying a briefcase. They opened it up on the floor, and it let out a hissing sound as they undid the latches. A bit of fog rolled out from within.

  Inside were numerous petri dishes of some fleshy substance.

  At a young age all citizens of the Protectorate had these samples gathered from them for medical analysis and to clone spare organs in the event they ever need them.

  Dr. Chen took a deep breath and took the petri dish.

  "Let's begin then."

  On the surface, Selene was still fighting mechs in her kaiju-Selene form.

  She pommel punched a mech on the top of its chassis, indenting it inwards. It sparked and spasmed but then attempted to cleave the joint of one of her shoulders with one of its bladed arms.

  She dodged the swipe by leaning back while kicking it with another limb. Sending it flailing into the sky. A caasiok tentacle quickly wrapped around it and lifted it into the air, crushing it.

  "Nice assist." She told the caasiok psionically.

  It sent back the equivalent of 'happy to help' in alien creature vibes.

  "Okay. Who's next?" She asked herself. It was getting easier to limit the scope of her destruction.

  "Selene." Aboleth's voice suddenly resounded in her head.

  "What? I'm kind of busy here, Aboleth."

  "Other Zykra have arrived. They've begun attacking our forces. Judging by their color, they're Ku'senais."

  Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

  "The invasion started already!?"

  "No. The force hardly rivals our own; it is likely a targeted strike on you. I recommend you return to a caasiok and retreat, just to be safe."

  Selene stopped and considered this.

  She delved deeper into her Zykra essence, the ability gifted to her by Pipsqueak's sacrifice. The looming ocean that surrounded her mind on all sides. It responded to her will and revealed what her Zykra instincts would tell her to do.

  Aggressive feelings filled her. It told her to fight. Kill. Do not take this insult to you lying down. Queens do not tread into one another's territory lightly. You will not be satisfied until you leave her permanently scarred.

  The problem was the last time she gave into that instinct, Ku'senai plucked her limbs off one by one.

  "Okay... If you think I should retreat, then that's what I'll do. Most of the mechs are dealt with anyway."

  "That's very reassuring to hear."

  She ordered the caasiok, who had taken the mech from the sky earlier, to do the same to her. Its tentacle lowered itself down from the sky.

  "How are things going on Endelon 2—" she began to ask when the tentacle was severed above her.

  It crashed to the city floor, draping itself across many different buildings.

  Something landed on it. If Selene wasn't already kaiju-sized herself, she would feel more intimidated. She sensed it. It was one of Ku'senais's praetorians. Her royal guard, essentially. An extension of the purple queen's power.

  Its back had many silvery barbs erupting out of it, and its twisted human face had mandibles growing out of the bottom. One arm was disproportionately massive, while the other was dilapidated and held curled up close to the body.

  The uneven monstrosity was a gross fusion of human and Zykra. Honed for brutal violence.

  It glared at her spitefully only about 100 meters away from atop the dismembered tentacle and building it lay on top of. Its silhouette was backlit by the carnage her own swarm was currently inflicting on the city's defenses.

  "Hello, Selene."

  A garbled, yet familiar voice said.

  It felt like a stake being driven into her heart.

  "Dr. Bryant!? What happened to you? Why are you betraying me!?"

  Each heavy step thundered as she moved closer to him.

  "Selene, I will order all of our remaining forces to attack him. Your current form is not well equipped to handle an opponent with this level of speed."

  Selene ignored Aboleth's advice.

  Meanwhile, a purple-colored caasiok landed on top of the one Aboleth had landed to deploy ground forces; they grappled each other, but Ku'senai's caasiok clearly had the advantage. It was also deploying vespaxyn as well as flying Zykra Selene had never encountered before.

  They were wider and looked like miniature versions of cassocks.

  Dr. Bryant looked over his shoulder at the battle, then back at her. He was easily the size of four slaads clumped together but still small compared to her current form.

  "If only you had the spine for something like this before... Then it likely wouldn't have turned out this way, Ms. Carrington. I truly did have high hopes for you in the beginning, for what it's worth. But eventually all experiments must come to an end."

  He leapt at her in a blur.

  But a vespaxyn flew into his path, stopping his momentum but splattering into pieces in the process.

  "Selene! Retreat, NOW!" Aboleth ordered.

  More vespaxyn began to swarm him.

  While another purple cassowary descended from the sky.

  Selene felt sad. Dr. Bryant was there since the beginning. Her first ally since becoming a queen, he's never given her reason to doubt his allegiance before...

  "Get me out of here, Aboleth." She said, moving away from the Vespaxyn dogpile.

  Dr. Bryant roared and slashed at all the vespaxyn jumping on top of him with his largest arm. They broke apart instantly when they made contact. But whenever they did, there was one more behind it to take its place.

  She felt them dying. And she hated it. She hated that they were dying and who it was that was killing them.

  "Running yet again, Ms. Carrington? Face me! End your futile resistance, you coward!"

  Her Zykra ground forces began to flow past her like a river towards Dr. Bryant. And a different tentacle scooped her up and carried her into the mouth of a caasiok, dropping her in the fleshy hangar.

  After one final glance at the carnage below, the toothy maw closed.

  "...Did my uncle get the clone?" She asked after a while.

  "They're transporting it now..."

  Aboleth seemed to be conflicted by Dr. Bryant's appearance as well.

  "It'll take a few weeks to grow, which is fine for us since we'll need to expand our forces as much as possible during that time."

  Selene hoped it would be enough. That if they all huddled together, maybe they could withstand the coming storm.

  Aboleth sensed her queen's melancholy but wasn't sure how to comfort her. She was a tactician. Not a therapist.

  "Selene..."

  "-We can talk about me later, Aboleth. For now let's just make sure my uncle's forces get off-world safely."

  She was surprised by the sudden stoicism, but Aboleth nodded. Though Selene probably didn't pick up on her body's actual physical movements. There was a degree of guilt she felt for not actually being there, but she had to manage their growing forces and the infested on Endelon 2.

  Until they were reunited in the flesh, it was just business as usual.

  "Yes, my queen." She said solemnly.

  Behind the Chapter...

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