The tunnel the metasphere created was wide enough for us to fly comfortably, but just as narrow in case an Overlord emerged into our path. There was not enough clear space to maneuver around the massive beast, which made any such confrontation especially dangerous and potentially deadly.

  Plunging into the surrounding puss even for a few seconds might get us lost. What if you couldn't return to the tunnel and eventually got separated from the rest? We were so deep inside the corrosion that kilometers of puss separated us from the outside space. There was only one thing we had going for us. I had securely tied an active metasphere to each team member, trailing a meter behind each to avoid influencing the nanomites, in case we did get parted during the fighting.

  "What a lovely experience," Tommy said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. It was not a pleasant feeling being compressed from all sides that was for sure. "If one of these overgrown spaceleeches comes along, we are clusterfucked!" He shouted in the comms.

  In these cases, the SFC Marines were trained to follow a code of conduct that all personnel must obey and abide by. One rule concerning active missions stated that completing objectives was a priority above any autonomous action that might endanger the mission.

  If the enemy Overlords struck against us, continuing to complete the objective should be prioritized above any injuries our small team of four might sustain. We would leave behind our fallen comrades, prey to the enemy’s tentacles, only to be able to reach the Overlord Queen.

  What a load of bullshit that was. I was never leaving a team member behind. Screw the SFC code of conduct and the mission objective if they believed themselves above my friends' lives.

  I was only risking my skin for the benefit of all fighting this battle, mine included. Right now everything hung on the tipping point, and I didn’t see how someone else might cross the battlezone to reach the Queen. Not before we did.

  With our lives on the line, our rules were set on the table. Either we reached the Queen together, and kicked her ass out of our Galaxy, or we made the best of the hand we were dealt with.

  Moving on, I saw more floating eggs to our left and right and prayed we didn’t encounter any newborn Overlord hatchlings on our path. It was said that they were so nasty they made adult Overlords seem docile. The universe was not a friendly place, and I guessed to survive in outer space you need to be a special kind of asshole.

  We flew silently, not even pausing to shoot at the defenseless eggs for fear of attracting the parent’s attention. I calculated the speed and distance we had left to cover. Just over 5 kilometers left to the point the initial coordinates indicated. We were close enough that we might intercept a stray Overlord if any were gathered near the Queen.

  At this point, so many things could go wrong that I was surprised at myself for being where I was. It was not a risk that I would normally consider taking. Worst for wear it was not only my hide in danger here, my friends and allies were with me, following my lead, trusting me to save their asses in case something did go wrong. After all, I had a good track record for it. So I hoped their trust wasn’t misplaced this time as well.

  And I was convinced something would go terribly wrong somewhere in this yellow hellscape. Maybe it would be the Queen deciding she wanted to move to a different location and we would be searching blindly, swimming in the puss clouds, cut off from any communication update until the rest of the Overlords noticed us.

  Maybe we wouldn't even reach her, set upon by the hungry alien beasts, seeing us for what we were, a juicy meal delivered to their doorstep.

  We had just two kilometers left, and we were still alone. Everyone was tense and fidgety, looking at the dark shapes drifting inside the clouds. The corroded dead stayed where they were, creating green puddles of puss in the otherwise yellow sea.

  And then without any notice, it was the other way around. Green was the color of our suffocating world whereas yellow previously dominated. It was a feasting zone of broken-down matter.

  A kilometer in we were forced to strafe around the decomposing materials or risk carrying the splatter with us. Since the puss was a gaseous substance, it was swiftly dispelled by the passage of the metasphere’s active field. However, the heavier, more complex materials aka 'the dead' took longer to eradicate, leaving us with a vile obstacle track.

  We weren’t rushing ahead, but when a colossal shadow darkened our front vision I relied on SensoChronometry to slow down my sense of reality. Frame by frame I calmly observed the numerous tentacles uncovering from under the green puss.

  There was something different about them. Meter-long hair roots extended in all directions along the tip and shaft of the tentacles, creating a wide brush that reacted with the broken-down matter. It appeared to be sucking the green-saturated puss back in. I believe…it was eating.

  I stared in wonder and noticed clearly when the tentacles came under the effect of the metashere’s active field. They flinched, hazily in my eyes, but I was sure it was rather fast for everybody else. None of my allies had a chance to react yet.

  The sucker-hair retracted under the tentacle’s ‘skin’ and the whole thing retreated, coiling close to the main body which was now starting to appear. A purple outer armor reflected our helmet’s lights, gleaming against the intrusion.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  We had found the Queen.

  “As we planned,” I shouted through the comms, my words took a while to form, but my mind was already racing ahead, selecting the most suitable location to ‘dig in’. My team, unable to operate at the same time-perception as me, followed my lead as best they could.

  The seconds between my calculated moves and their reaction time created a small gap between us. I plunged ahead toward the nearest tentacle-main body junction.

  The Overlord Queen was beginning to feel the effects of the active field with her tentacles flailing wildly, swiping at the nothingness around us. I saw the long trunks of alien rubber flesh from miles away but I couldn't say the same for the rest of the team.

  “Watch out!” Tommy warned, and my eyes tracked the slow decline of the blind attack that would overpass me by a comfortable margin, but I wasn't sure the same could be said for all of us.

  I didn’t have the leisure to look back. The hook in my hand punctured the rubber skin of the Overlord Queen and I hung secured from her alien flesh. Nik landed next to me a second later grabbing for a hold and similarly securing himself on the Queen's body.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Tommy and Gardenia flying disorderly, their boot thrusters lighting up, maneuvering to avoid the swiping tentacles. It was chaos all around them.

  There was not much I could do to help them, they had to find a way to approach before the drilling started in earnest. I expected the Queen to react strongly to our little extermination project.

  I watched them for a few seconds. The Queen didn’t relent in her barrage of attacks, and finding a safe pathing to our position while avoiding the maelstrom became a mounting complication. One hit from a tentacle would strike them away, and despite the damage it would cause, the disorientation and surrounding puss could finish the job as easily.

  “Tommy! Link up with Gardenia and find a place to encroach and dig in.” I said, fearing that the Queen might bolt unexpectedly and separate us.

  “Roger that. Give us a second,” He replied, and I saw them change their approach from trying to get to us to flying up to the nearest available spot.

  Once they securely hooked themselves on the Overlord’s chitin-flesh, Nik and I took out our drills. The drill machine was a square-shaped cone with handles on two sides. The moment I activated it the tip twisted and turned and burned hot, lighting my vision in an angry orange hue.

  It was showtime. I pushed the heated drill down on the junction between the tentacle and the chitin armor of the Queen, a location where the natural purple exoskeleton was absent, leaving it almost defenseless to my attack. At the drills’s touch, the beast’s alien flesh exploded outward.

  The general plan was to dig a hole, push a metasphere in, seal it, and do so again repeatedly for as long as we had to. If we succeeded the Queen wouldn't have a swift death, but a terrible one, decomposing slowly from the inside. The alien beast would probably flee in painful agony, recalling the rest of the swarm in its crazed flight. Or that’s what we hoped would happen.

  As plans went, it was probably the best we could come up with on short notice with the limited weapons we had on hand.

  Well, we didn’t expect the big fuck you that the Queen had in store for us.

  The tentacle hair the Queen used to eat her disgustingly-green-gaseous meal resurfaced and started whipping about. Nik was quickly forced to abandon his drilling just to defend himself and cover me. I was better suited for the manual work anyway. My strength and size reduced the chances that I would cave from the onslaught of attacks.

  It still hurt, however. Even with the biosuit on I could feel the whipping tendrils having a go at my hands and legs, messing with the positioning of the drill as I pushed it lower inside the Queen's body. The team comms were filled with grunts and curses picturing quite well the whipping pain. The gaseous toxicity was almost swarming the metasphere's active field tied on the metallic strings attached to each of us. It helped provide the breathing room we needed to survive the prolonged battle as I continued to enlarge the wound by pushing the drill in.

  When the tentacle hair failed to dislodge us, the Queen started vibrating violently. While I couldn’t see much with the puss swirling around us, I saw at least a fine mist being released by the Queen. It wasn't the usual yellow puss, but something else, something new.

  The mist mixed with the green puss and turned purple, as if a painter mixed two different colors and the clouds turned to a different hue. That couldn’t be good, but I didn't relent in my efforts and concentrated on the task. The hole I was drilling expanded adequately, and I took one of the last few metaspheres I possessed and placed it deep in the wounded slimy flesh of the Queen.

  With a twist, the two separated parts keeping the metasphere inactive clicked together and I saw the lines merge before an invisible blurry field started expanding outward. Almost immediately the alien flesh around it blackened to a dry husk.

  Taking a canister from the backcompartment I covered the hole with an expanding foam mainly used for temporary biosuit sealant or ship armor repairs and tried to get Nik’s attention who was still fighting off the tentacle hair. His blaster was out and it was blowing the little whipps apart.

  “Hey Amon, when you are done over there, we have a lady’s hole right here you might want to satisfy with your little toys.” Tommy joked over the comms. I chuckled at his joke but immediately saw the problem. We were not too far apart but getting our asses over there through the spasming tentacles and whipping hair would be harder than I had anticipated.

  “I’m not sure she is my type, she has some serious anger issues. Can you hold on over there? Closing the distance is a tad difficult right now.” I said grunting and rechecked the hook securing me in place. The vibrations and sudden movements of the Overlord were pulling at us hard.

  “In that case, I’ll use the one I have on me. Gardenia’s metasphere is more than enough to cover for the both of us,” Tommy replied and I understood it was the right thinking, but it still was dangerous to disregard the one thing protecting you from kilometers of death degrading corrosion.

  “Okay, be careful not to get separated buddy,” I said feeling the tingling sensation of worry swarm inside me.

  “We moving?” Nik asked me panting. There was a nice open space around us free of tentacle hair. Blackened damaged flesh tarred the base of the tentacle.

  “Unfortunately we have to. We should try to bury at least one or two more. You did a nice job remodeling this place though,” I said lightheartedly and Nik nodded with his helmet but didn't seem amused.

  “Where to?” he asked, but before I could answer a tentacle came crashing down on us. If I had kept SensoChronometry on my brain would have been close to spent from the strain, but I would have seen the attack coming.

  The angle helped reduce the impact but I was still flung away violently. My shoulder burst in pain as it was hit with force. A blinding burning sensation that my nanomites would soon be working on to heal.

  I didn’t worry about the injury much apart from the temporary mobility restriction, the brainchip in response to the pain spike automatically reduced my pain receptors to 50%.

  “ARGGHH,” Nik groaned as he was similarly tossed away from the safety of the pocket we had camped in, flung inside the purple clouds in a flailing dive.

  The toxic puss similarly greeted me but the active metasphere tied to the backcompartment of my biosuit kept it at bay. Another tentacle swiped in my general direction, but my boots helped me swerve from its trajectory.

  Before I lost sight of the Overlord Queen, I saw Tommy and Gardenia, linked arms in arms, fleeing the other way, maneuvering under a constant barrage of swiping attacks.

  All of the team had been repelled with little chance to approach again now that the Queen was aware and riled up. I could only pray the two metaspheres we buried were sufficient to finish the mission.

  “Team, everyone’s made it out?” I asked in the comms hoping to hear the familiar voices of my comrades.

  “BZZZZTTTTMMON HHBZZRE,” I listened closely to the incomprehensible static words.

  At least they were alive.

  At least I was not alone.

  https://discord.gg/QcZ9hzeTEy