Hive mind Beyond the veil

Xhollin (The Season of Sustenance)

Day 216

2 A.E.

731 days since my arrival

The enemy's offensives had slowed to a crawl. Where once I'd found clusters of ten to twelve hauliers pushing their overcharged cores through the densest portions of the Ebon Ring or the Shattered Veil, now I was detecting pitiful formations of three, sometimes four.

They weren't fighting any more, they were slipping, creeping, crawling into my domains like rats in a ruined house.

And it wasn't challenging to see why. Their numbers had dwindled beyond recovery. Over the last 193 days, I'd recorded the confirmed destruction of over 2,781 hauliers most were consumed in mutual annihilation from my missiles, and some were caught in the deadly aftermath of those explosions themselves.

Their V.I. had no real capacity to do any damage with their numbers reduced.

Today, four hauliers attempted a covert insertion through a dense sub-cluster of the Shattered Veil. I watched through the multiple eyes of my scouts.

These four ships were trying to mask their approach by hugging the gravitational shadows of a dense belt wall. Their manoeuvring thrusters hissed with minimal emissions, pulsing only to adjust course slightly.

I would have admired the attempt, but they were still too bulky and too hot. They weren't designed for infiltration, they were more oversized battering rams pretending to be ghosts.

But my creations were real ghosts.

I dispatched a squad of five Ghost Maw they slipped into place without a whisper, coiling behind drifting debris, spread across the field like venom in a bloodstream.

I positioned them for a kill box formation with maximum coverage and minimal overlap.

When the hauliers reached the midpoint of their approach vector, I gave the signal. The first volley of Star Lance missiles launched, hissing through space like bone-white serpents. Simultaneously, my Ghosts pulled back into secondary positions, curling away into deeper shadows.

Their engines flared, cores overloaded, and they split apart—separating to reduce splash damage and reduce tracking.

One of them chose to stand its ground, attempting to take the bulk of all the missiles I'd sent their way. It was a trick I'd seen too many times before.

I split five, directing them towards it, while the rest of my swarm diverted to pursue the others. I wasn't concerned—after so many battles, I had studied all their moves, and the outcome was already written.

Four new suns erupted in the dark, shredding everything around them with thermonuclear fury.

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But this time… none of mine were lost.

I had anticipated the exact trajectories of their counter-blasts and nestled my Ghosts behind asteroid clusters thick enough to absorb the destruction.

I observed the wreckage drifting outward in an expanding spiral, trailing slag and burning gases.

Since day 193 of this battle, I had begun to sense the change. The waves of suicide assaults were thinning, and the V.I. had stopped committing to full-scale pushes. They were trying to buy time to stop the inevitable. But the belts were nearly mine now.

War in this environment was brutal and costly, but it cost them far more. Their ships were irreplaceable, mine could be replaced.

I had already started diverting resources accordingly. The bulk of my Zhyrraaks were still in reserve. They hadn't seen battle in the last 34 days, instead repositioned to guard the high-priority choke points deeper in the Shattered and the Ebon Ring.

I had shifted my biomass to more productive work manufacturing fresh Gen-3s, altering a few internal ship designs, to mining and harvesting more fissionable material from the belts.

Phaedra was slowly becoming a hollowed-out moon, leaving larger tunnel networks and massive factories to expand. Millions of burrowers were stripping it clean of every useful mineral, within a century it would only be rock.

Ivinal's frozen crust was perfect for another field of expansion. I had installed new outposts and bases everywhere, seeded with new spore strains to study and guarded by nothing more than a token swarm.

With Imreth still wrapped in radioactive firestorms, I had assigned almost everyone to the dreamscape. Except for a few clones who found the idea strange and horrifying, I found their very notion strange.

Morrath and Kordar were finally mine. Their radiation lingered, but I had found workarounds. Testing new variants of drones resistant to hard-rad exposure, with a more robust internal shielding built from fused bone and plasma-hardened keratin.

There were still losses across every world, but in time, I would perfect the optimal design for even the most irradiated zones.

With every planet now entangled in my web, and no resistance left to challenge me, my expansion was almost complete.

There was only one target left.

Veridia.

Aegirarch's hiding place. His last bastion.

That brought with it a new series of problems. Veridia's atmosphere was largely intact, unlike the others. Its surface was once a sprawling biosphere of forests, rivers, and large lakes, which had been reduced to ash and acidic bodies of water.

I wanted it to remain intact, a proper invasion would be required to keep it that way.

I began drafting new designs, starting with an assault pod capable of delivering drones planet-side. Something strong enough to survive atmospheric re-entry, and anti-air emplacements, and configured to keep all drones to survive the impact.

Each pod would carry between a hundred and a hundred and fifty bodies—assault drones, snipers, infiltrators, and heavies. I adjusted my internal calculations.

Gravity on Veridia was slightly higher than standard, meaning my assault drone's wing structures would need to be shortened and their bodies lighter. I would also have to alter their internal organs to support their lighter bodies, and endomembranes would need to be reinforced to avoid collapse upon touchdown.

I pulled up a resin tablet and began sketching prototypes. A double-layered gel cocoon to absorb the landing shock. A thick inner membrane acts as a biological parachute. It would be lightweight, but strong enough to withstand atmospheric burn and fragment impact.

It needed testing. Imreth's oceans would provide a useful trial zone. If I aimed for the low-radiated zones, I could drop pods and analyse velocity resistance on the new designs.

But logistics were still king and required more. Possibly, a larger delivery system, maybe a new ship class that could ferry multiple pods to Veridia, unload them in waves, and then return to the void of space with minimal losses.

The first waves would be the Beetles, they had already proven effective on Imreth during my first large battle.

With a few modifications, they could spearhead both large-scale and precision assaults, overwhelming enemy defences and tearing through key structures with relentless efficiency.

Even so, the scale was immense.

I sighed. Planetary invasions were more enjoyable to watch than to plan.

Mental note: If I ever reach civilized space, I must absorb the minds of a few tactical officers, perhaps entire military colleges. Or expand my agent program, dispatch a few million to blend in and learn.

But for now, I needed orbital supremacy.

No landing would happen until Veridia's skies were mine. Their remaining enemy ships had to be hunted down to be destroyed or captured everywhere within the solar system.

Once orbital dominance was achieved, I'd begin the ground operation.

Phase one: Extermination

Millions of beetles flush the forests, valleys, and ruined cities.

Phase two: Occupation.

Assault, Snipers, Heavies and infiltrators to clean up what remains and deploy burrowers and architects while releasing ash blight.

Phase three: Consolidation.

Hexapods and Striders to destroy the most stubborn resistance, while deploying ash, more ash blight to the planet.

And then…

Then I'd come for Aegirarch myself.

Not to kill him. No, not yet.

Aegirarch was a living key. His mind held the access protocols to every clone, every… command line, every failsafe. If I took him alive, I could bend the entire enemy force with a whisper. I could make them kneel.

If that proved possible, I could shift my focus to expansion—waiting for the Arc Ship's arrival before deciding whether to destroy it or claim it for myself.

That thought thrummed through me securing my plans, it was time to get to work.