“Don’t go back. Please believe me, you’ll die,” She pleaded but I must know if Ella was alright. There was nothing that would stop me from finding out.

  It had been the five of us, Tommy, Nik, Ginny, Ella, and myself. We ‘enlisted’ in the same cohort, undergoing the 6-month long boot camp at the SFC main hub, bonding as a group.

  There were others we met and lost along the way. Those first battles with the SFC had been devastating, but they made us stick together like glue. A new family that partially replaced the old one.

  When I was sold to the merc company my parents were also moved to a Dominion planet somewhere, possibly on C3XB or C3XC. I was certain we would never cross paths again.

  My new family was all I had, and I just lost one person dear to me. Seeing her hurt, suffering through the pain, and hearing her pleading sobs hadn’t helped force my finger on the trigger.

  I knew her end was sealed the moment I saw the suit had been crushed. My mind had offered its expertise, listing the soon-to-be gruesome causes of death; Extreme pressure loss would boil and vaporize all liquids inside her body, and if she didn’t faint from the agony, she would feel herself exploding from the inside. When the biosuit’s oxygen stores depleted, leaking through the suit’s tears, her lungs would collapse from the vacuum. Space would pull her soul right out of her body in a torturous swift death.

  It didn’t matter that it was the logical thing to do, my hands were now stained with the blood of my friend. And another was in danger of perishing.

  “It’s too dangerous to stay in the puss clouds. We don’t have any visuals on the Overlords around us,” I said since my mind was already set on a course of action. “Follow close behind me, we need to regroup with the rest of the Marines.”

  “Sergeant, the outside space is swarming with the monsters,” Gardenia said blocking the way forward in an attempt to prevent us from moving forward.

  “I believe you, Gardenia, but staying inside the corrosion is suicide. The puss will eventually become a cover for an ambush we won’t detect until it is too late. We need to regroup with the main forces,” and find out what is happening to our team, and Ella.

  “Get in formation,” Tommy added at the right moment to tip the scales, and I spearheaded the 1-2-1 formation with Tommy trailing last. If I could count on one person to cover my ass as I led blindly it was him.

  Unfortunately for my arsenal, I was forced to expend another metagrenade to widen the path as the one we had been following had vanished ahead during the little get-together. The puss was creepily pressing the made-up tunnel around us. It was time to move on.

  We pushed ahead following the metasphere surrounded by yellow clouds, and I began to notice the battle’s residual waste, floating, partly melted, and corroded. The yellow puss turned slightly green when enough broken-down matter gathered, be it dead Marines, alien parts, or a combination of both. It appeared dead Overlord bodies corroded just as easily as the rest of us in this toxicity.

  Floating in a particularly dense yellow-green stain, I saw the first egg incubating. Its dark chitin outer shell was veiny and pulsing with life.

  It was uncertain how the alien beasts could or wanted to multiply during an engagement of such intensity as this one but I had an ominous premonition that on top of every green smudge we encountered an egg would be left behind to feed on the leftovers.

  For the Overlords despite the initial barrage, the 27 thousand Marines must have seemed like a feast. Since we had no idea how the battle outside was raging, cut off inside the toxic clouds, we might as well become dessert for the soon-to-hatch brood.

  I rechecked my mapping feed but nothing, the mainframe’s signal was still obstructed by the puss clouds. There was no communication between the brainchip’s receiver and the outside world. I had been downgraded to Lowtech, something I was not willing to admit out loud.

  During this time the corrosive clouds had expanded greatly, and we were forced to cover a much longer distance from where we initially entered. Our helmet lights were the only lighting source, piercing only a few meters deep into the toxic walls. They might have made us targets, but I highly doubted that Overlords hunted by sight alone.

  Nevertheless, we were cautious, observing the yellow mist for signs of danger. We encountered none, and this already painted a picture of how things progressed. The Overlord's onslaught had not been repelled.

  Soon the metasphere found the exit and flew off, and I stopped my momentum shy of the edge by bringing my boot thrusters forward. Peeking around the gaping hole, clear space greeted me but unfortunately, I had no direct visual of the SFC fleet. From the star systems I saw, we must be almost below it.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I sculked outside keeping close to the edge of the clouds and the rest followed close behind. It was unnerving to expect a fight and see nothing, so I flew further out into space to get a better view.

  Before I noticed anything but the unending sea of clouds, my receiver started downloading data packets.

  **All SFC Marines retreat to point B**

  **Engaging defensive drones**

  **Dreadnaught defenses compromised, Fleet Command Carrier initiating engagement**

  **All Marine forces support Light-Weight Class Vessels**

  “Shit,” Tommy said beside me as his optics revealed the horror line by line. “It doesn’t look too good. What do you think, Amon?”

  “Yeah, it looks like they might need a bit of help. We have some distance to cover, we are well behind the frontlines. All this is Overlord territory.”

  The hole in the clouds behind us closed, filled once more with puss. We got our heads together and charted a route toward the fleet. We would float above the clouds, close enough to avoid being observed, but far enough from the surface to be caught unaware in an ambush.

  Nik was particularly silent, his short-range comms only registering his heavy breathing when he sighed. Thankfully on the other end, Gardenia had settled down, following along with our directions. I wanted to berate her for recklessly fleeing inside the puss, blind and without a plan, only hoping to stumble upon us, but I wasn’t there to experience the fight she left behind. From her words, the team scattered when three Overlords set upon them simultaneously.

  The chances were that most of them were dead, and I hoped against reason that Ella was not one of them. We would have to regroup with the Marines to know more.

  Our boot thrusters lit up in neon blue, and we made good time covering the distance through the void. The silence of space was only overcome by the silence of activity. It felt as if we were the last survivors, sailing the yellow seas of a planet dressed in perpetual night.

  Seeing nothing but the dark universe had me worried that the fleet had been swallowed in puss, leaving us stranded in space to die lethargically when our biosuit life support and batteries gave out.

  But then, without warning my mapping feed returned online and I knew we would soon have direct eye contact with the fleet. What I saw on the optics made me want to turn the way we came.

  The previously organized line of Dreadnaughts was a clutter of ships and Overlords. Just like pimples on a teenager's features, the Overlords were stuck upon the SFC combat vessels, pulling them apart.

  Little blue dots signifying personnel and combat drones fought around them, evading the puss that dominated each scuffle. The Dreadnaughts too were constantly moving disengaging and retreating from the expanding toxicity.

  Light-weight class Vessels flew by, attacking with heatlasers, picking on the weakened chitin armor, and speeding away before any of the spacebeasts gave chase.

  This I noticed at a glance. The mapping feed accurately portrayed the battle’s landscape and the scope sent shivers down my spine. How could the four of us make any sense of all this chaos?

  Before my brain could answer negatively as it often liked to do, we flew over a cloudy hill, and at its peak, the battlezone unveiled before us.

  The scary part was not the dead Marine bodies that I saw flying like debris whichever what way, but the several destroyed Dreadnaughts, broken beyond repair, sinking inside the corrosion. Each was worth a fortune. Each was worth our salvation because without them none would make it out of here alive.

  We paused, uncertain of what to do next now that we were close enough to watch, but far enough to attract attention.

  “Options? Any ideas on how to approach this?” I asked, mostly for the two more experienced Marines to answer.

  “We circle the battlezone, come from behind, and regroup with the rest of the Marines.” Tommy offered.

  “C-Can’t we wait it out?” Gardenia asked and continued in almost a whisper, “I don’t want to go back in there.” She shied away leaving some distance between us.

  “We can’t stay here,” I replied, and since I knew she didn’t understand the reasoning I followed up with a simple explanation to clear it up.

  “Listen, if we win, and the Overlords are repelled, we might fall onto their retreating route. Neither you nor I want to be anywhere near the agitated alien swarm without the support of the fleet.” I spoke and looked her way to grab her attention. She was still absorbed by the battle in front.

  “But if we lose the main battle, the remaining ships will retreat in haste, leaving us stranded in open space. In both cases staying here is a bigger danger than moving forward. We just have to find the safest path.”

  Gardenia wasn’t stupid. After jolting with understanding she considered my words and I saw her nod her helmet once.

  I was mostly worried about Nik. He had a special relationship with Ginny, and her death might push him to do something reckless. I would keep an eye on him.

  Nevertheless, our objective was to rendezvous with the fleet without attracting undue attention. From our observations, the skirmishes and expanding clouds forced the Dreadnaughts ever backward. We would fly a good distance around them to avoid all the fighting and meet them from behind.

  It was when we were ready to blast off that a new communication from the Fleed Command Carrier reached us.

  **Critical Intel: Overlord Queen has been spotted. Sending coordinates… All available forces are to engage on sight. Top Priority, #Queen Imagery#.**

  The still image was distorted but revealed an unmistakably ugly Overlord surfacing among the clouds. Its purple outer armor was distinct from the brown-black of the rest of the host. It was also huge, double the size of an adult if the scales were true, and quite possibly twice as lethal.

  A Queen Overlord. Would that make a difference? If we hurried it away if not outright kill it, would that pull the swarm away too?

  —-

  “This is madness,” Gardenia said as I prepared my remaining weaponry. The coordinates showed the Overlord Queen located well behind the raging battlezone, protected by puss clouds at the tail end of the swarm.

  We were not close, but we had a clear path to reach her from where we were. Firing a metagrenade into the yellow sea would cut the distance to a short flight.

  Likewise, Nik and Tommy were ready to follow. They understood the unique opportunity we had, and even if it was close to a suicide mission, none of us could find the courage to object. This mission might turn the tides in our favor.

  “Gardenia, I’m not asking you to follow along. It’s a choice we make freely, me, Tommy, Nik,” I said pointing at each one with a gloved finger before continuing.

  “Above us, the fleet struggles against the overwhelming enemy swarm, it might lose, we might lose and then we are all dead. I’m not asking you to follow me, it might not make a difference, and we might not even make it to the Queen. But if you do follow, and your presence does make the difference we need, to kill this thing, to make it out of here alive…” I paused for breath.

  “It is for moments like this one that the choices we make matter, that we are truly free,” A speech translated right out of my heart. It gave me courage even if she decided to remain behind.

  “I’ll come,” She said after hesitating for a long while, “But promise me one thing.”

  “Tell me,” I replied.

  “Let's put this fucker out of its misery.”

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