Hive mind Beyond the veil

The distant rumble of the convoy was the only sound that disturbed the silence of the valley. Wind swept down the slopes, kicking up fine layers of ash and spreading spores of Ash blight, which had begun to take root across the planet with alarming speed.

What had once been a dead, quiet world was now transforming. The new variant of Ash blight was thriving—its accelerated growth perfectly suited to Veridia's fractured ecosystem.

When the first biomorph pods landed, they were just enough to generate a handful of scouts. These creatures slithered low and silent, weaving through the broken terrain, and hiding beneath ruins and debris. Through their eyes, I was finally given a detailed view of what Veridia had become.

There was little left to survive.

The once-great Valurian cities were ash piles. Their towering arcologies were blackened and hollow. The vast migration roads were cracked, broken, and unusable.

Lakes shimmered with radioactive slicks; rivers were little more than chemical runoff. The world had once pulsed with alien colours—blues, purples, and greens. Now, only greys and bone remained.

Valurian bodies lay strewn across the land, decaying where they'd fallen. Entire battlefields were left untouched, only a few corpses had been cleared they were pushed aside to maintain the narrow convoy lanes that the enemy still used. Everything else was discarded, forgotten.

And yet… life persisted.

Here and there, stubborn flora pushed up through cracks. Primitive fauna and mutated animals skittered between the ruins. The fragile ecosystems tried to survive amidst the new environment. Whether it could endure the coming invasion was another matter entirely, one I might modify in the midst of battle.

When the first Ash blight spores took root, they began a relentless cycle: grow, spread, expand and repeat. The enemy responded with fire and chemicals, trying to salt the land. It was a futile effort. You could destroy one sector, only to discover three more areas were already consumed, and the areas destroyed started up again.

They were too late.

Biomorphs that landed near water sources began entrenching themselves, building subterranean nodes, and spawning new scouts and infiltrators. My sight across the surface expanded slowly, but the enemy adapted quickly—consolidating ground forces and increasing scans. Their patrols intensified.

I'd already lost several scouts and infiltrators to sweep operations. Each one eliminated limited my reach. But there were still moments and opportunities to strike.

Like the current convoy, Its gun platforms scanned constantly, while a detachment of drones swept wide arcs around it, mapping terrain and keeping sensor coverage tight. They moved with caution but not fear. That would change soon.

The key to disrupting them was to strain their vigilance—stretch their awareness thin. An enemy forced to be alert at all times will eventually break. They'll make mistakes and then they die.

The convoy crept into my kill zone.

Many beetles had burrowed beneath the road in advance. As the first four hauliers rolled into position, I detonated the charges. The explosions were deafening. The lead vehicles vanished into fireballs, twisted metal spraying outward, choking the road in wreckage.

The convoy staggered.

Surviving vehicles peeled away from the impact zone. Drones closed in fast, scanning every direction, their weapons online and tracking. I'd planned for that too. Additional beetles had been planted nearby, deeper and more widespread.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

More detonations followed.

They panicked and scrambled. Some units fired blindly into the haze. Gun platforms rotated wildly, trying to locate the source, while the dust and flame blurred visibility.

When it settled, only two hauliers and a single APC with a small complement of drones remained, they were damaged, sparking, but mobile.

A few clones had survived the blasts. Most were wounded, flesh charred and armour breached. They crawled and limped for cover, but bled, all bled.

They were given no mercy.

The accompanying drones closed in and executed them all, aided by the surviving clone soldiers. Any exposure outside the armour was treated as contamination.

This behaviour had become routine. A sign my agent program had been exposed.

Every battlefield now followed this pattern, they would be no risk. Kill the exposed and burn them where they fell.

Once the survivors withdrew, I dispatched a group of infiltrators to scavenge what they could from the wreckage. They searched for undamaged radios, weapons, or useful tech. But there was little worth salvaging. The heat and violence had rendered most of it scrap.

Penetrating their bases, factories, and outposts remained difficult. Clone paranoia had spiked. Security protocols had tightened. Comms were encrypted, and chatter was carefully controlled. I intercepted less and less.

I had considered landing a Neskar on the surface—but that plan had to be abandoned for now. The enemy had deployed tactical nukes to wipe out several of my forward outposts. Their willingness to escalate forced me to adapt to save biomass.

I would need to limit surface deployment to smaller drone variants, minimize exposure, and keep production hidden beneath layers of misdirection.

Time would determine whether the strategy could hold.

From one region, several of my infiltrators paused and looked up—watching debris from the orbital battlefield rain down like burning stars. It streaked through the ash-choked sky, tracing glowing lines through the clouds of war.

Above, the battle still raged.

What the first three Neskars had begun was now magnified—four more had joined them. Wave after wave of missile salvos tore through the clone defensive grid. Ships burned. Platforms cracked open. Impact after impact cut through formations, splintering coordination and overwhelming the response effort.

Their defences were faltering. I could feel it.

One or two more waves and their grip on Veridia's orbit would be broken.

I would begin clean-up operations soon after—scouring the orbital lanes, establishing control points, and securing stable windows for sustained surface bombardment.

I had already managed to smuggle more beetles and infiltrators to the surface using breaching missiles, adding more of my eyes and weapons behind their lines. My network of eyes expanded, node by node.

———

The chamber buzzed with activity. Aegirarch floated motionless as the final modifications were applied to his exo-suit. Multiple robotic arms moved in perfect synchrony, welding, sealing, and grafting new components onto the already imposing frame.

What was once a commercial-grade exosuit designed for tactical oversight had now been reforged for front-line warfare. The fragile external plating had been stripped away, and replaced with a hardened composite alloy—designed to absorb punishment.

The transparent frontal plate had been reinforced and sealed, now covered entirely by armour and lined with external multi-angle camera nodes.

Mounted along the suit's spine was a compact grenade launcher—self-loading and VI-guided. At his side, secured in magnetic clamps, rested his weapon of choice: a modified plasma rifle, overclocked to fire condensed, unstable energy bursts at devastating intensity.

He turned his gaze toward the display wall at the far end of the room.

Screens showed chaos unfolding across Veridia's surface. Sabotage. Wreckage. Contaminated zones. It had made planetfall.

Slowly, carefully—expanding its influence across fractured terrain. A cautious approach. Likely waiting for more of itself to arrive.

"Switch to combat feeds," he instructed.

The V.I. complied, shifting the screens to multiple helmet-cam views. Clones were locked in scattered engagements against the abomination creations. Bipedal creatures moving fast armoured in chitin—whose carapaces shifted colour to match their surroundings. They were near-invisible in motion. Already, this creature had proven exceptionally hard to track and terminate.

"Prepare to broadcast," Aegirarch said aloud, voice steady. "Open channel. Final words."

The V.I. acknowledged the command, beginning the live relay across all encrypted clone frequencies. His voice echoed through ships, platforms, and bunkers.

"Today has proven the scale of what we face. An enemy that outnumbers us a thousand to one.

Today, we face extinction.

And yet, my legion of clones—you were grown to survive.

You were bred for this.

For a challenge with no end in sight.

For an enemy that cannot be reasoned with, that cannot be stopped.

This is your purpose."

He paused, letting the words settle across the network. On the screens, clone squads had stopped moving. Heads turned. Weapons held still. Even mid-battle, they listened.

"We face the ultimate organism, it is limitless and relentless.

Though we may fall, we will not fall in silence.

For this is our creed:"

He didn't need to finish it.

Across the feeds, voices began to rise.

"We are the Overseer's warriors!

We are the last line of his defence!

We will burn our own to hold the line—

It is the last line to ever hold!"

The chant echoed and was repeated over and over again, it was raw, defiant, and unified. More clones joined in. From orbit to wasteland, from trenches to towers, they shouted with fading lungs and unbroken resolve.

Aegirarch watched them. With some pride, although it tasted bitter and twisted through his chest.

He turned back to the exo-suit. The arms retracted. Final diagnostics ran green. Systems stabilized. The armour hummed—alive, ready.

He would fall soon. He knew that.

But he would not fall quietly.

He would make the abomination remember him.

"Let it remember my name," he thought. "Let it remember the one who turned this solar system to ash"

The chamber flooded, and he swarm forward into his new suit, ready for his end with no fear.