Hive mind Beyond the veil

Druhalith (The Season of Resilience)

Day 408

1 A.E.

587 days since my arrival

Deploying Mosquito drones across Phaedra and Imreth confirmed the scale of devastation was even worse than I'd anticipated.

Imreth's surface had been reshaped by new firestorms that churned across the equator, turning any remaining biomes to ash. What few flora and fauna had survived the earlier battles were now obliterated.

The air shimmered with residual heat, firestorms still roaming like nomadic tempests. Any attempt at surface reclamation would have to wait until the fires burned out or were forcefully extinguished.

Phaedra, however, had suffered the most critical damage.

The Southern Hemisphere was shattered—vast cracks in the crust ran like planetary fault lines, that became an expanding debris field. Several of my old tunnels had collapsed in on themselves, leaving once-productive zones entombed under kilometres of rock and minerals.

Reclaiming them would take time, drones, and a new class of heavy burrowers would need to be designed to dig through the new shifting terrain while trying to maintain the structural integrity. I let the construction sub-mind begin drafting a new class—of burrower.

Kraklak had escaped major harm. His convoy was still moving south when the orbital strikes began. While they suffered no direct hits, radiation saturation was off the scale. Had I not made the genetic changes I had—reinforcing his bone marrow, enhancing his mitochondrial resilience, and weaving stabilizing gene loops—he'd be dead.

He lived, barely. However, the environmental pressure was accelerating the mutations in his convoy, leading to uncontrolled adaptation in him and my agents. If I didn't rein it in, they might become another pile of corpses to recycle.

Ivinal presented a different set of problems. Expansion was constrained radiation wasn't as severe, but the infrastructure for growth was limited with the current evolving conditions. Ankrae was still alive, she was still useful, but expendable. She remained under constant observation.

I kept her alive for two reasons—her access and understanding of the etheric plane could be useful when creating a more advanced drone or agent independent of my mind.

But every hour that passed, the radiation sweeping through Ivinal would kill her eventually until I could create a closed-off environment to begin her gradual transformation.

My current strategies were obsolete. The plans that were once plausible, such as coordinated planetary invasions, long-term infiltration, and sabotage, had crumbled in the face of overwhelming force.

I was scattered across the asteroid belts now, my ships divided into fractured task groups—five to ten vessels per cluster—each positioned far from the others, hiding in silence, waiting in the dark.

This made large-scale attacks slow and inefficient, it also presented a narrow advantage.

Cleaning the belt sector by sector, ship by ship, was my most viable short-term path to stability. I began modelling a slow, methodical sweep, each task group would bait isolated enemy ships and ambush them. There would be no large battles for some time, just quiet, surgical kills.

Stolen story; please report.

Not everything was bleak. Even amid the raging firestorms, vast spore clouds of ash blight still drifted across Imreth's charred skies.

Once the fires finally died down, the strain would need a second phase of gene editing—recalibrated to the planet's new conditions. Higher temperatures, altered soil chemistry, and atmospheric instability would all need to be accounted for. But the real advantage came from integration.

If paired with newly engineered flora, specially bred to not just survive but thrive in the new environment, I could rebuild Imreth's surface.

This wouldn't just be surface-level growth, either.

The flora would function as part of a parasitic-symbiotic system—spreading across the surface, harvesting residual radiation, and transferring nutrients to a network of underground collectors. This subterranean infrastructure would store biomass.

But I couldn't stop there.

Imreth's oceans, rivers, and drowned ruins still held potential. Though chemically unstable and laced with radiation and debris, the aquatic systems would be vast—and, crucially, interconnected.

If I could establish a self-sustaining aquatic ecology, one that absorbed trace radiation and transformed it into explosive organic growth, then the seas themselves could become living factories.

I began conceptualizing a new symbiotic aquatic network—composed of accelerated-growth algae, radiation-hardened filter feeders, and fast-breeding fauna that maintained a rapid growth cycle. With enough time, the oceans would become breeding grounds for large-scale biomass harvesting.

That would serve my long-term goals for biomass production, but not help with my immediate short-term goals.

But slowly reclaiming worlds was still a distant priority that brought new thoughts of fighting this new campaign.

Veridia was the key.

The bulk of the enemy's military fleet had pulled back to that single planet. Everything else was nothing more than a containment protocol.

That told me two things, Veridia mattered to Aegirarch, and he was likely there or nearby overseeing everything.

The problem, Veridia's orbital defences were unbreachable with my current ship numbers and type. I needed something different.

Something unexpected.

I moved around my workshop, my mind split, calculating what resources I had left and the time I no longer owned. My current fusion core creation process was still tied to the Grithan machines, tailored specifically for the Zhyrraak Gen-3 units and the newer Gen-2 Star lance missiles.

Both required enriched fusion materials, machines to shape them, and a stable production environment—none of which I had the luxury of right now. Mining and refining those materials took time. Time the enemy wouldn't give me.

The enemy arc ship would arrive soon, bringing reinforcements. If I didn't clear them out, I would lose and need to return to hiding again.

That meant I required options.

Something that would produce an immediate change, it needed to be cheap and cost less biomass

I could keep pushing Zhyrraak Gen-3s into the void, but they were biomass-hungry. Each one costs too much, in time and material. They were fast, and powerful, but inefficient to scale without infrastructure.

Even with boosted biomass growth, I'd only be breaking even. The new offensive in the belts had me outnumbered and was sweeping through multiple sectors.

If I couldn't scale Zhyrraak production, then I'd build something else.

A half-cost solution.

An ambush predator.

A new class of bioship, not designed for long-range assault or open battles, but for the belt. An environment ripe for camouflage and surgical strikes.

It would have to be compact, elongated—almost eel-like. Smooth plating across the back, overgrown with adaptive mimicry cells that could mimic surrounding rock and radiation signatures.

With long tendril-like appendages that it could use to grab onto the rocks and fling itself around. And a larger and stronger mouth for grabbing on to a target.

It would still host the most advanced plasma core design that I have.

Its weapons would have to be a limited payload of Gen-1 Star lance missiles. And an array of bone spike launchers, since the targets were unarmed.

The organic plating needed to be reinforced with minimal minerals. Not meant to survive extended battles, just get in, strike, and drift away unnoticed.

Its name was practically a ghost, maybe Ghost Maw or something else.

Half that of a Zhyrraak, potentially even less with a few more alterations to reduce the cost. I could grow dozens of them across the belt.

The only issue was fuel.

The plasma core was fast, but not sustainable for extended chases. I'd need a feeder—possibly a small support leech ship, attached before launch, filled with fuel-rich biomass and pre-ignited plasma sacs. It could detach once the Ghost Maw was engaged.

Time constraints remained my enemy.

I needed to start now. Every moment wasted meant more enemy ships converging. Their suicidal vessels hunted in packs—each kill costing me three or four Zhyrraak units.

Ghost Maws could bring the kill ratio back in my favour. Strike fast, vanish faster. With the asteroid belt as cover, they could hit hauliers, retreat into shadows, and wait.

At the same time, I had to start thinking beyond the belt. Veridia was still the end goal.

If I succeeded in the belt, I could deploy a deep assault fleet capable of reaching Veridia.

I split part of my mind to run calculations. If I diverted resources from some sectors, maybe even forty to forty-seven per cent, I could have rapid production of Ghost Maws.

If I cut production of Gen-1 Zhyrraak units, I could retake some sectors of the belt to draw enemy focus away from my factories, and set the stage for the next phase.

If I succeeded in reclaiming that zone, I could begin building more fusion cores and funnel them into Gen-3s or Star lance missiles.

Once I had enough Gen-3s, I could finally make the long-range push for Veridia.