VRSPACE
Yesterday
The virtual meeting was held in an amphitheater with rows of black marble, ever climbing upwards the further one was seated. The Arthas dominion nobility, officers of war, and any people of certain influence or importance allowed to attend were seated neatly, filling the vast space.
Above them, the colors of House Arthas painted the sky red, white, and black. Above certain seats banners of each family branch of House Arthas marked their standing eminence. It was all neatly arranged for anyone and everyone to know clearly how far off from the center of power, the central stage, they were.
The SCF high command sat in the front rows, in a place of honor, or maybe for the simpler reason of being in the spotlight. They were under scrutiny from the rest of the crowd. After all, it was their intel feeding the information shown above the central stage, in vibrant descending letters, as if they were written on the air itself, accompanied by imagery of the Overlord swarm in all its terrifying glory.
In the center of it all stood Lord Kassinostavos Arthas, head of the House and ruler of the Dominion, in a white radiant hologram.
The accuracy of the pixels displayed in detail the clenched jaws of the most powerful man in the Cerebrus Galaxy. With his arms at his sides, his piercing gaze never let its intensity subside as he listened to the briefing before him.
Even with the slight latency caused by the enormous distances the connections traveled, bouncing on appropriately located relay space beacons throughout the Galaxy, the meeting proceeded without hiccups.
“Are you done spewing nonsense?” Lord Kassinostavos asked in a gruesome tone that made even those seated at the furthest seats flinch and the General of War of the SFC eat her words short.
She stood in the front row before the stage. “Excuse me, Lord Arthas,” She hesitated, wavering, her true body unconsciously signaling her virtual self the emotions it was currently feeling. “It has been vetted as the most viable plan…”
“Nonsense, do have you any sense, General? The Dominion of House Arthas does not cede territory to mere beasts.” Lord Kassinostavos cut her off impatiently with a raised hand.
“But my Lord…” The General faltered midsentence when Lord Kassinostavos glared in silent anger. His was not a loud temper, but a cold fury fuming in his intense gaze and posture.
“You have other options, have you not?” He asked, bringing his right hand to rub at his chin and the carefully trimmed beard. The other was caressing the naked blade of a dagger held awkwardly between his fingers.
“My Lord?” asked the General gulping down on air, having sensibly decided it would be better to remain cawed and accept any suggested proposal if she wanted to avoid an early retirement into exile.
“The SFC Marines would do just fine,” said the Lord of House Arthas with finality. His words were absolute.
The General stirred wanting to object to such a crazy idea that would undoubtedly lead to a massacre, but she didn’t. Instead, she replied in a monotonous blank tone, “Yes, my Lord, I’ll inform the main hub to start complete mobilization."
—-
Dreadnaught Ortheon II
Today
Jin Karf, the Company Commander of F567, gathered all 100 Marines of the company in a partially empty hold for a briefing.
Among the crates filled with weapons, below the overhead dim lights that powdered shadows between the men, the rest of the unit would be informed of what Amon was already privy to.
Commander Jin had just returned from a similar briefing, one Amon watched live by gaining access to the secure feed of the ship. The Dreadnought’s mainframe had a tiny chip shrewdly added to its servers giving him access to any onboard communication.
It had been a hell of an operation to install undetected, but now it was paying dividends.
During that briefing, Commander Jin and all mid-level officers onboard were made aware of the reasons for the mobilization, and the forthcoming battle plan. It was obvious how he felt about the whole situation from the sweat-stained fabric under his armpits.
It was a heavy burden to carry, one they shared between the two. Amon had kept his mouth shut until now. Creating a panic was not to his benefit, and allowing the knowledge to trickle down through the proper channels would be a better alternative for once.
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It was not that he didn’t trust Tommy to keep the information to himself, but they hadn’t had a chance to be alone since boarding the ship. As for the others, if the news leaked and the SFC surveillance caught on the fact that confidential information was circling around–Amon didn’t want that kind of attention sticking anywhere near him.
The Commander faced the Marines standing on top of a crate, an honorable man who found himself in a dishonest profession–dirty mercenary work. He opened his mouth several times but did not find the courage to spit the nightmare into reality.
Amon had heard the Commander had been recruited from the main planet, C3XA, a fresh graduate too, despite the grey peppering his hair. It looked like a clean ticket for promotion up the ladder to the top from here on out for him. It wouldn’t be easy though he suspected; a man with a conscience would kill himself over sending other men to their deaths.
The rest of the Marines around Amon shifted uncomfortably, murmuring at the prolonged pause. Everyone felt the tension like needles prickling on bare skin.
Commander Jin finally gathered himself enough to start. “Marines, I’ll be blunt, we have a difficult task ahead of us. Each and every one of you will be needed for what's to come. The main hub has mobilized the fleet. Twenty-seven Dreadnought class battleships follow close behind us. Twenty-seven thousand marines on them, sharpening their resolve. Three Star-Destroyers, with fusion missile cores armed for battle. The Fleet Command Carrier accompanied by all available lighter-weight class vessels the SFC can muster, tailgate our forces.” He paused for effect, and all marines hung in the silence, waiting for the drop. And it was time.
“An Overlord swarm has been spotted heading towards us crossing over from Derkal. Our standing orders are to meet it before it reaches our galaxy's borders and persuade it by any means necessary to find another place to migrate.”
As if someone opened the tap valve, the rumble of conversation almost drowned the Commander’s last words forcing him to shout the next part as if declaring his intent on the eve of battle. “Our priority is to protect the Galaxy, our people, our homes. We will never let the beasts get a foothold inside Cerebrus, not when any of us have a say in it.”
The marines. The debtors, the criminals. Every single one of them was needed. But Amon saw almost immediately the conflicts arise following the Commander’s words. The top brass removed as they were, ignored the measure of loyalty of the men ordered to die for a place that cared little for them. It was one thing assaulting an enemy ship, facing men, humans, that understood honor, understood mercy, even if none of it displayed its comforting rays on the battlefield, and quite another, to face beasts that hunted you for prey, for another meal.
The marines. Some had families living on the main hub, on star settlements close by, on colonies in the void or if they were the most fortunate on planets in Dominion territory. Allowing the Overlord swarm to gain a foothold, multiplying unendingly, feasting on ships, disrupting trade routes, and displacing millions of souls could easily spell a slow frictuous decline of the Dominion from the inside. Once in, it would be exponentially more difficult to flash them out.
Letting them roam free would only end in the SFC and House Arthas's armed forces, hunting to purge every single one of the monsters through starsystems to no end. A demanding and arduous task. But this was the way of dealing with swarm-minded aliens.
For all of Amon’s detest for House Arthas, he found this order to be less aversive than their usual projects. Defending the Galaxy against an alien invasion had a certain ring to it.
His home had been an artificial moon, Point C3X1DF. His childhood had been spent running around metal corridors and looking up at the expanse of open space and its bright lights. His Galaxy, the stars of his home. If every order they were given was to its defense, Amon wouldn’t feel as bitter at being sold into this life of constant struggle.
“Quiet now,” The Commander interjected before the situation and the emotions could spill into trouble. “I understand this is not easy to digest. Situations such as this before us are long since past in history when mankind first conquered the wild star systems of Cerebrus. When we faced horrors and kicked them out of our Galaxy to the very edges of the known universe. We will do so once again. Have courage, have faith, and preserve.”
Once he finished his speech, he gave the signal for the men to disperse. It would be better not to leave a mob-like agitated crowd unattended, and leave the clean-up to the security forces who were surely eyeing the situation from the ship’s surveillance cameras.
Tommy turned with a questioning look on his face and held Amon in his eyes. “You knew?” He asked pensively as we made our way slowly towards the exit. Amon nodded in confirmation.
“A little,” he replied, understanding how Tommy felt. Depending on how many of them survived, Amon’s long-term plans for saving their little group could very well be thrown into the garbage.
“Gather the others, we need to prepare. Include Gardenia as well, she seems reliable enough.” Amon said before they parted ways.
—-
I see them.
It's been two weeks of traveling since the departure from the main hub. They left the outer borders of the Cerebrus Galaxy not too long ago and entered the void of empty space.
It was either luck or misfortune that the SFC’s main base was located near the swarm’s migration route. If the spacebeasts had been moving from any other direction, initiating first contact would be someone else’s problem.
From what Amon had seen in the daily logs House Arthas hadn’t dallied either. The Dominion forces were rallying a proper armada that would arrive too late to make a difference for them, that was the latest intel on the battleship's servers. They would either repel the swarm or die trying, dumping the responsibility of hunting the remaining Overlords throughout the sector to whoever arrived first. It wouldn't matter to them then, they would already be dead.
The SFC had been offered as a sacrifice to buy enough time for a retaliation force to gather. His feelings for the merc company aside, the main bloodline of House Arthas tipped the scales on ruthless jackassery.
Of the vessel that sent the distress signal, there was no sight, it had either gotten away or been eaten by now.
Amon’s HUD updated with information from the mainframe followed along the fleet’s movements and displayed the two small and nimble SFC scouting vessels baiting the head of the swarm toward their position.
At this very moment, he was thankful that their scanners couldn't penetrate the puss clouds to reveal the swarm's true numbers. He did not want to be unnerved by the truth before the fight.
They were ready, the Spacediving Forward Corps, standing in neat rows in the Ortheon’s II main hold. Ahead the portals were closed. They wouldn’t be out until the fireworks were spent.
Most looked ahead in apathy. The mood stabilizers they had been given in preparation had an interesting strong kick. If his nanomites didn’t dampen the effect he wouldn’t trust himself to eat any of them.
The live feed projected the scoutships maneuver through the minefield. They made it out before the front wave of the Overlords reached their first line of defense.
The SFC would fight the puss toxicity with a chitinase-chitin acid complex as if they needed to prove whose chemical weapons could melt reality better. If it wasn’t so successful against their armor Amon would cite it to human pride winning over reason.
As the first of the beasts crossed the threshold the minefield blasted the acid towards the swarm. It spread in waves and struck the Overlord vanguard sticking on the chitin armor and melting its way in.
The tangle of tentacles, clouds of puss, and chitin-flesh spasming in frenzy, was captured by the closest battleship camera and projected for all to see. Amon imagined terrifying screams coming out of the alien beasts accompanying the horrific images but they didn’t even have mouths, much less vocal cords.
Yet the wave was not a wave but a tide. It couldn’t be stopped. It pushed forward, and other Overlords took to the front and kept chasing after the scoutships toward the killzone.
Even if it didn’t do much direct damage, the minefield had two objectives, to gather them up and rile the beasts to rush mindlessly forward. Amon saw them speed up the chase.
The three Star-Destroyers were lined up with the Dreadnoughts at their wings. The swarm was kilometers long, and even then the puss spread in all directions obscuring the view displayed by the vessels’ front camera feeds.
Amon held his breath, waiting for the first real attack to commence as the scoutships cleared the kill zone in a hurry. On the live feed, he saw the Fleet Command Center bridge give the signal.
His optics registering the mapping in realtime started displaying the payload as it left the ships. Blue dots pouring like rain.
Stardust burst and converged.
An aurora of destruction.
Hellfire bloomed.
