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

  Something was happening that no one else had observed before in the recorded history of this alien species. I knew since I had the log downloaded to my brainchip and as I cautiously flew among the puss I went through it line by line looking for the answer.

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

  The yellow degraded, the green fed, and the purple was still a mystery hopefully left unsolved. I didn’t want to know what happened next in this tragedy of a reality I swam in.

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

  A possible answer to the lingering question littered my surroundings. Empty eggshells floated broken as I passed by them. The eggs had hatched.

  “You got to be kidding me,” I whispered under my breath, frantically scrolling down the entries to find the description for baby Overlords that I had skimmed over once, but now needed 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 had read enough and my rifle was already clutched between my hands, a prudent move since I hoped the armor-piercing rounds would be enough to repel the weaker armored hatchlings.

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

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

  It was a rather obvious tell.

  So I prayed to the SFC, to House Arthas, or however they wanted to call themselves. Pleaded to not let my friends die. We did the best we could. Now it was their time to shine.

  Pleaded that they still persisted, they weren't broken and defeated by the swarm. Please. I begged. For once they had the chance to save, not only destroy, not only kill but help those who were putting their lives on the line on their behalf.

  It was a strange dark thought occupying my mind, but prayer wouldn’t reach those godless assholes.

  I hated it–being powerless to control my destiny. How did I consider that I could protect the others if I wasn't certain I could do so even for myself?

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

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

  From the Overlord hatchlings, there was still no sign. Where were they? I desperately searched my surroundings, but could only see so far–a few meters every which way the puss blocked my view except the back where I came from.

  I sped up, giving the boot’s plasma thrusters free reign to push. More eggshells floated at the tunnel’s edges where I could see them and imagined the little horrors stalking me. I panicked.

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

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

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

  Then, I blinked several times. The tentacle was still there, swirling the puss as it kept up with my speed.

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  “Fuck me,” I cursed. I was already lining my body positioning for an evasive maneuver. The thrusters lit up and I dived upwards.

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

  Not it, they. I saw 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 had found me.

  I swerved up, like climbing a colossal staircase, forward, and up again. The trail I left behind was clear as day, and I was facing hunters who wouldn’t relent in their chase until their hunger was satisfied.

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

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

  I hope it was not concentrated enough to melt through my only protection because I was in a terrible rush and lost; There was no point in calculating the distances involved since I didn’t know where I was or where I’d end up.

  I watched with horror as the sides of my mask from the outside distorted like watermarks on clear glass on a rainy day. Sadly I was in no position to slow down. Not just yet.

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

  I strained my brainchip to its limit, the SensoChronometry gave me the necessary time to gather myself. The optics immediately registered the fleet’s location, and I was relieved to note the way I fled didn’t take me the opposite way.

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

  Yet, this was not my immediate concern. I was too far away from the fleet to receive any timely assistance. I tracked with my eyes the cloudy puss trail from the battlezone and soon found at its head the Overlord swarm fleeing the other way. A momentary elation washed over me. We had done it, we beat the swarm!

  Proudly I stared at the retreating aliens thinking that it might have been us, winning the battle for the SFC. Regrettably, I couldn’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 would have to check my optic’s recordings with the battle’s, comparing timeframes, to see if there was any actual influence. Or if we went to this close-to-a-suicide mission for nothing.

  Despite realizing that we had won, I didn’t slow down, except by letting my time-perception ease up. I couldn't keep at it much longer, my brainchip was starting to heat up from the strain, and I needed my apps functional in case the hatchling gave chase. Some kilometers to my left another burst emerged from the puss and I zoomed in only to see Tommy and Gardenia propel themselves to open space tied together by their arms.

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

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

  And they surely moved fast.

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

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

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

  “Amon? Where are you? Ah lord! You have these things right behind you!” Gardenia gasped when she spotted 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 replied bluntly watching a similar scene unfolding on their side.

  “Oh, oh, what are we going to do?” She asked once more clearly shaken.

  “Calm down, Gardenia, here hold my hand,” I heard Tommy trying to assure her. “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 said and curved my flightpath slightly to intercept the two.

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

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

  I projected the meeting point ahead in my mind, calculating, then looked back at my pursuers.

  “It’s going to be close,” I said pressing my lips together in a grimace. I needed to create some more distance. Half turning I brought my rifle to point between my boots. I started firing round after round upon them.

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

  I reloaded a new magazine, spent it, and reloaded again. And again. And again. And… “I’m out of ammo,” I called out in the comms. If I bought any time with all the firing I did, it was only for a few minutes at best.

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

  Our trajectories merged every second that passed but so did the Overlord hatchlings in a hunger craze that ignored any damage we inflicted upon them.

  They would before long be upon us, never mind whether we met or not, there wouldn’t be enough of a gap to cover the distance to the fleet.

  **Ping**

  My brainchip receiver collected a signal transmission and I pulled up the datapacket. An SFC Lightweight 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 Lightweight Class Vessel

  Atop the CreaseWing, or how it was 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 was busily reading the scanners.

  “Nothing captain,” he said in dismay and slumped 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 barked back. Her ember eyes were 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 read, Luck or Love? Shitty Lucky Love, find it in LootStyle Bar, Fokal Starbase, C2K.

  Just like the CreaseWing all surviving Lightweight class vessels were 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 repeated holding his head with his hands.

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

  “No, they are... chasing something? Are those Marines?!” The officer spelled 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 ordered with renewed vigor.

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