Silent Stars

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Jarrus Hartholm knew this fact well by now. So many times, she had stood on the barren bridge of this derelict husk of metal, hurtling its way through the endless reaches of space, and screamed at deities, emptiness, and the planets that sailed by. Throwing anger at whatever it was she could blame for this crushingly lonely existence she was forced to live.

Now, she mostly relegated herself to sitting, half-naked, in her torn and dirty blue-black security uniform, leaning against an abandoned captain's chair. More often than not, if she wasn't sleeping or contemplating death, she was staring out those cold, soulless, metal-reinforced windows that encompassed the command center, all the while loathing the multi-coloured console lights which flickered, flashed, and faded around her.

So many hours she watched those annoying points of light endlessly cycle, illuminating the dark bridge in their patterned taunts and cosmic, chittering whispers of sound. These reminded the stranded security officer that the Aetherite science ship was more than capable of working right; it just chose not to because of some random set of numerical code firewalling access to her commands.

Sometimes, Jarrus wondered if the Celestialis was actually alive in all of her metal guts, circuitry, and wires. At times she found herself staring into nothingness with her exhausted, golden-coloured eyes, thinking. She would stare, wishing the lights denoted Celestialis' ragged, dying breaths as it hurtled endlessly onward into the black. This thought gave Jarrus some solace, believing her prison may be suffering as she did within its dark, gunmetal-brushed purgatory.

She hadn't seen anything for so long. The Universe was vast; a painted space of dark, soul-crushing emptiness, incomprehensible in size and scale... Sure, every now and again the ship - if you could even call it that anymore - would pick up voices from some distant planet or star system somewhere out there in the ink.

It was always some sort of intelligible speech, though in a strange language. Sometimes they would talk, sometimes they would sing, but it would always be fleeting due to this corpse barge being stuck with its light sails out, heading to wherever.

She had tried many times to slow Celestialis' speed or control her somehow, but it was useless. She wasn't an Engineer, just a contracted Security Officer. Those voices haunted the walls like some sort of spirit from the great beyond was trapped in the husk of this crippled shell of metallic substances and dead Aetherites...

That wasn't to say Jarrus didn't enjoy those tidbits of life from nowhere; it made her feel less lost in this endlessness when the walls spoke to her. She knew it may have been the only thing that was keeping her going at this point.

She used to task herself with cleaning the corridors, trying to clear out the infestation when she could, sending the dead to proper rest, and weeding out the Cytoclade's Symbiothorns whenever they popped up among the corpses of her security crew. It seemed futile, however, and she had given up on it long ago.

The necroflora’s rainforest-like masses of crawling quietus, plant-like things had grown at such a rate that they consumed most of the ship, and she felt unsafe to leave the main deck now. Not that this mattered much, the only things currently working were the food and drink processors, cleaning pods, recreation deck, life support, and empty escape hatches; so it wasn’t like she needed to go anywhere.

Jarrus found it amusing that a science ship couldn’t function properly. This was ironic given her employers, the Aetherite, were cybernetic beings built from science. The communications and lights still worked, but they were set to a cycle and not able to be controlled until the ship was removed from Red Alert status. The best part was that this was impossible without the Captain's 128-digit security code.

Jarrus figured she would be able to free herself from this prison if she figured out the code the captain had set. Her security firm had long-range fighters available in the hangar. The system lockout prevented her from disengaging their security binders, however. So they were useless to her right now.

She knew that the communications systems worked, as they would send a distress ping every so often. Unfortunately, no one had come to save her yet. This was probably because the Celestialis was moving at such high speed that whenever someone picked up the emergency call, it had already moved millions of light knots away from where it pinged.

The Aetherite’s home world, Circuitra, could track fleet ships over vast distances, and Jarrus hoped they were sending some sort of help to try and catch the Science vessel before it spread the Obliterra Swarm's corruption in this sector.

Nevertheless, here she was, stranded and helpless, sitting in tattered blue and black cargo pants. Her greyish-black skin was soaked uncomfortably in sweat and stained with Aetherite or Cytoclade fluids, and her hair was matted in black knots. She sat in this chair like a forlorn Captain of a dying ship which refused to listen to her commands.

A captive in a useless husk with at least a hundred Cytoclade hibernating in their disgusting black-green death forests, which slowly spread necrofloral roots through the Celestialis' metallic structure, turning the ship into some sort of hybrid seed monster. This is how the Obliterra Swarm infected worlds and galaxies with their necroflora. They were a surprisingly mobile race of killers, considering they had no technology or space flight of their own.

What Jarrus couldn't figure out was why the all-knowing Aetherite thought it was a great idea to hijack a Primary Node Cluster to study it on an enclosed science cruiser that itself was hurtling through space. This was the exact way the Obliterra Swarm spread itself, and they seemed to know this.

She stared out through the observation window with her great, golden, oval-shaped eyes, watching the faraway stars slip by at breakneck speed as the Celestialis hurtled through known space toward some unspecified destination.

Was this the Aetherite's plan? What was the purpose of it? These things ate at her daily. Every little pinprick of light out in that vastness, they all had a possibility for life, and she was stuck out here alone in a universe teeming with intelligence and fighting with a seemingly unintelligent AI for control of her destiny.

She shook her head, then tapped the control panel and input a random set of buttons, attempting to regain control from the lockout. The console flashed red and beeped.

“Another failed code, beautiful.” She said to herself, locking the sequence away in her memory.

She knew that to calculate the number of possible combinations for a 128-digit code using a keypad of 300 characters, she needed to consider the total number of options for each digit. Even with a traditional keypad of 0 to 9, like every other damn race of people in the universe, a total possible combination of 10 on each key...

Jarrus thought hard, writing out the equation in her subconscious and talking to herself while she went,

"10^128 ≈ 1.0 x 10^128. For shit's sake… Three seconds per combination. 1.0 x 10^128 combinations * 3 seconds per combination = 3.0 x 10^128 seconds… for goddamn ever pretty much. Literally…"

She didn't even want to think about the possible combinations of a 300-character keypad.

Jarrus was well-equipped for the task of forever putting in random codes, as an Atlan, she had a type of eidetic memory and was not able to forget things. The problem was that Atlan weren't immortal beings. It was more likely that she would slam into a celestial body than figure out what code the Captain put into the system to lock it.

She input another random spattering of characters, furious with her calculation. The console beeped for a second and changed from its typical blue hue to a flickering green one, which had never happened before.

The Atlan's hearts almost leapt out of her chest, Jarrus flung herself up from her chair and yelled for the Celestialis to stand down. Her hope was short-lived, however. The console flashed back to blue, and the computer responded in its familiar digital-sounding voice.

"Ship lockdown, engaged. Input lockdown c... c... cooode," it spoke in the Aetherite language, and Jarrus understood very little of it; but the context was clear.

Jarrus fell to her knees and screamed in rage and sadness. Tears began to form in her golden eyes as she grabbed for her plasrifle, listening to the beeps and whirs of the bridge.

A ghost-like voice echoed through the ship's communication system,

"Good evening..." Part of the transmission broke off into static, then picked up again, "…I wonder what's keeping you up tonight? Drop me a line at…"

The voice crackled eerily, losing itself in static. The sound slowly came back as the host spoke,

"Here are the soothing sounds of B... B... Bing Crosby... in..."

It fell away again, static eating it from the background.

Music began to play. Old and hollow sounding. Like it was from somewhere lost in the infinite time of this empty space. Jarrus pulled her knees into her naked chest, listening intently as the bridge dimmed its lights. They faded from white to yellow, red, purple, and finally black. Everything went dark, with the exception of a few flashing lights on the consoles.

The man on the speaker sang, his voice haunting. Vibrating through space-time. The vocals were melancholy and soft, and they washed through Jarrus, moving her spirit into a place she had never been. Though she couldn't understand the words, the emotion translated well, making her long for… something.

"Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, someone waits for me; and the gold of her hair crowns the blue of her eyes like a halo tenderly..."

Green light from the consoles pulsed suddenly, lighting her skinny form. The song was something new, something she hadn't heard before. Cosmic bodies whizzed by as she listened, and then it was over. The voice was lost to the great black around her. Jarrus closed her eyes and cried, her head in her legs. The same deafening silence of the ship she was so accustomed to crept back into her ears.

The Atlan pulled her weapon close to her chest, opening her slit of a mouth. She stuck the barrel as far as she could, finger on the trigger sobbing into the dangerous end as she counted down in her head,

"3… 2… 1…" Still here, "3… 2… 1…" she counted again to no avail, then a third time.

That one almost did it. She pulled the trigger, but the weapon was still locked in safe mode. The weapon chittered as she tossed it aside, laying back against the cool metal floor. She stared up at the pipes and wiring that interlaced across the ceiling, thinking.

"Why didn't you?" she asked herself out loud, wiping wet from her high-boned cheeks.

"...Atlans don't go out that way," she answered her own question curtly, almost angry with herself. "Honor won't allow it," she mumbled through slowing tears, mucus, and sweat.

"Honor. What a joke. The real question was, what the hell is wrong with the ship's AI? I have never heard it stutter or pick up something like that. Other broadcasts from nearby planets, but nothing like what she had just heard."

She flattened herself onto the cool metal floor, closing her eyes. The tired Security Chief thought hard, scouring her infinite memories for any information that could be of use.

"I've never seen that console go green like it did, it was like it had been unlocked briefly. Was that a glitch or something caused by the broadcast? Or Cytoclade necroflora?" eventually she faded off into sleep.

The Atlan sat up in the dark a few hours later, as if she was hit with some sort of meteorite of genius. Jarrus wondered if, inside this ship's brain, the AI would respond to commands that didn't involve measures of security or protection of the crew. Like science-related questioning or science instrumentation.

"Celestialis, do you understand me?!" Jarrus' mousey voice echoed against the chronium chassis of the vessel. This was the second time she had even thought of talking to the AI; the first when the console flickered color.

The Atlan didn't really use them on Lunaris. Ever since she was a little Geneling, she remembered the Custodians would run anti-AI campaigns and enact laws against their use. Being a government of Environmental Stewards, the Custodians felt nature was the way to enlightenment, not computation.

Computers or machines were rare on Lunaris, mostly relegated to medical facilities and the genetic integration pools. Though they knew of AI and computer systems and were taught courses on the dangers of them, the Atlan were one of the only civilizations to stay true to their evolutionary roots in the universe and use them sparingly.

There was a flicker in the systems around her like the computer was deciding whether or not to answer. There were a few high-pitched beeps, then the AI responded in Atlanian.

"Hello. Security Chief Hartholm. How may I be of assistance," the AI chirped at her in its strange, gruff, digitized voice.

"How do you know Atlanian?" she responded, golden eyes looking around her warily.

"This AI is programmed with 13,490 different forms of communication," it responded.

"What can you do in lockdown mode?" she questioned, carefully.

"This AI is equipped with a range of sensors and instruments that enable it to collect, interpret, and synthesize data from various scientific fields. It can rapidly analyze complex datasets, identify patterns, and provide valuable insights to the onboard scientists and researchers," it barked digitally.

"And what about me? Do I have access to any functions?" she interrupted,

"Though this AI serves as a valuable resource, providing real-time assistance in identifying phenomena, suggesting research directions, and proposing hypotheses based on its vast knowledge and analytical capabilities. It can only collaborate with whitelisted personnel…"

The AI's voice stuttered, then got lost in a strange static. The whole of the ship seemed to let out a great mechanical sigh as the lights around her went out and all the security doors around the bridge slid open at once. It was like something had hacked into the brain of the ship and stood it down. Alarms started to go off, and the sounds of steam mixed with heat flushing from pipes echoed through the metal hallways.

"What the hell is happening? Celestialis! What did you do!" Jarrus' eyes flashed against a now pulsing red hue that filled the bridge. She raised her weapon to her shoulder, looking around warily.

"Securrrity, br, bre, breeeeeach… Security Chief to La.. aaa aaa.bs." The AI struggled to pass its message through its communication system, fighting with the broadcast in the background.

"Damnit…" Jarrus mumbled to herself, she felt as though this could be connected to the Cytoclade corruption rather than some phantom transmission bouncing around the stars. That was the last thing she needed, a complete system failure would mean she was as good as dead.

Chief Hartholm glanced around the bridge area one more time; she knew she had to go out into the ship's jungle and check whatever it was she needed to in the Science Labs. Though every bit of her being told her to hammer the manual lock and stay huddled in safety until something saved her, knowing that was the worst choice she could make.

"If the security system is shot, then maybe I can get to her team's long-range security craft and get out of this death trap. No security meant no binder power." she knew she had to go out and try.

Jarrus stood momentarily, trying to build up the courage to go out and face what awaited her. She figured that the necroflora had grown exponentially since she had neglected to push it back for so long.

The Atlan hopped back and forth on her long legs and loosened her muscles up. She stared into the hallway, feeling the adrenaline and fear begin to course through her. All three of her hearts were pumping, sending all manner of chemicals through her body.

She began slapping herself in the head, Atlanian survival genes kicked in; her body became taught, and its small frame grew as her muscle structure swelled and snapped, strengthening her. Her cool grey skin seemed to calcify, giving Jarrus a natural armour.

The hormone-fueled Security Chief raised the rifle; her veins forcing blood through her ear slits. Jarrus felt a rush of energy and pushed into the hallway, moving methodically down the long corridor that was lined with colour-coded stripes.

Jarrus followed the green stripe that led to the labs. She only knew the direction by colour, as the words were in the strange dot and line characters that comprised the Atherite language.

Silently, she made her way down the empty and gore-covered corridors, trying to ignore the rotting body parts that lay haphazardly around her. The horrifying, lifeless faces of the bloated half-machine bodies that littered the area were harder to shrug off, however.

Red lights continued to flash here and there, bathing the catacomb-like corridor in a furiously scarlet hue. Its methodic pulsing cast deathless shadows every which way at disconcerting intervals. Jarrus found herself hyper-aware as woeful, lifeless forms painted the walls.

As she continued to push her way through the macabre field of death, her breath became ragged and short. Panic had set in, and she was quickly losing grip on reality as her body laced her muscles with survival juice. She slowed her pace, trying to keep herself calm and focused, taking aim at the shadowy ghosts of the Celestialis' dead crew members.

"No Cytoclade horrors to worry about… just the dead," she whispered to herself over and over again, soothing her shot nervous system.

"Good evening Corvallis… another beautiful night in our beautiful city. Let me know what's keeping you up tonight. I hope it’s me…" the same voice from earlier crackled through the hallways, causing the sweating Security Chief to jump.

The being's voice was far off sounding, echoing in the madness that was the corridors. She swung this way and that way, checking the endless darkness for any sign of the Cytoclade horrors or necroflora corruption. Her own heavy breathing filled her ears as she pushed on through the tomb ship, finally arriving at a great black and white door marked with what looked like a beaker stencilled onto polished chronium.

Jarrus stopped and pushed herself against the metal frame. The air had gotten thick, heavy, and extremely humid. It was like she had been tossed into some half-swamp-half-jungle hell world. A mist hung in the air, and it stank like rotting flesh and flowers. This meant that the necroflora had taken root, and she was way closer to the jungle wasteland than she wanted to be.

The Security Chief reached into her back pocket and pulled out a black and yellow card. She swiped it across the door and waited for the ship to let her pass. The door hissed as it opened, stopping halfway. It jerked a few times before allowing passage.

What was left of the lighting in the laboratory flickered weakly to life.

Jarrus poked her head through the door, aiming with the rifle. There was a line of bulbous pods dangling from the ceiling at the entrance. She took aim and pulled the trigger, spitting white-blue liquefied plasma into the sacks.

They sputtered and sizzled, green and brown gore blasting off of them across the floor of the entryway. They ripped open, spilling yellow pus onto the stairway that led down into containment. Slowly, the liquid crawled away from her and down the stairwell as she entered the threshold, checking for more.

Jarrus mashed herself against the side of the wall, aiming her rifle down into the dark. Her light was bright enough to illuminate most of the area. The light beam cut through the thick air, somewhat painting the black and grey walls around her a stark white. At her feet, the liquefied remains of whatever was growing in the pods created tiny waterfalls of syrupy gore across each platform, this followed her at the heels as she descended into the unknown.

"Why are you even in here… you need to get to the security hanger," Jarrus spoke to herself lowly, creeping through the wall of fog.

The closer she got to the Lab area, the more oppressive the atmosphere became. The trypophobia-inducing metallic walls, with their thousands of little holes, clung to the sides of the narrow stairway as it descended away into the dark. She continued on, carefully.

The walls around her gave way to rust; she figured the Cytoclade necro spores had begun to eat away at the chronium coating that reinforced the ship's hull. Jarrus could see the end of the stairwell from where she was now; little bits of cilia-covered pollen danced endlessly through the air around her, causing her to step back a few stairs and into the gore that had been following her so closely.

Her eyes grew wide; she knew what these were and had to move fast. Using her free hand to reach around the back of her utility belt, she felt for the little metallic disk the Atlan referred to as a nanotool. She pulled it from the belt and slapped it into the side of her fleshy, discoid head.

A bit of white blood trickled down her cheek as a needle punctured deep into her temple. The disk spun and flowered, drilling itself into her brain. Then a group of nanite bots began to flood out from inside the housing of the device.

Wave after wave of tiny robots began printing and forming a sort of protective, angular-looking metallic apparatus over Jarrus’ mouth, eyes, and nose slits. She took a deep breath as the breather's teeth-like structures hooked tightly into her face’s flesh, sealing the protective mask.

She yanked the thing from her head, leaving a nasty-looking hole where it had burrowed itself, and then put it back on her belt. There was a pulse of blue energy that lit up her waist; the multitool clicked and beeped, then turned red. This indicated that the nanites weren't ready to be used again yet; they had to reproduce themselves after every use, which took a long time to complete.

The Security Captain took a few deep breaths through the filtered mask, confident that the nanites had done the job correctly. She grasped her rifle tightly, sliding a switch on the front with her long and slender forefinger. The white light flickered a moment, changing to a deep red colour. She pushed on, down the remaining stairs and through the spore-filled air.

The communication system began to crackle with popping sounds and static; music faded in through the white noise, playing loudly through the Celestialis' hallways.

"Children, have you ever met the Bogeyman before?

No, of course, you haven't, for you're much too good, I'm sure…"

The security chief continued her rush into the dark lab area, the inner doors were half-hanging from their frame, eroded and scarred with giant gashes from whatever was in there tearing its way out of the chronium-enforced entrance.

The lab’s lights flickered with eerie irregularity. Bizarre, twisted shrubs grasped at the caging that surrounded the light fixtures. The walls weren’t metal anymore; dark green and black vine-like trees grew thick all around her. It was as if Jarrus had stepped from a starship onto some foreign jungle world.

The Captain pushed her way through greasy, low-hanging plants. They hung limp with black-with-green-stripes, brushing past her face and body as she went on through the foggy void. There was a steady clicking, then a low chittering, like some sort of insect was working away somewhere in the deep lush dark.

The Captain began backpedalling slowly, her boots sinking into the lush moss-covered floor. She raised her plasrifle and fingered her trigger, expecting something to rush at her from the dark treelike stalks that suffocated the lab walls. She squinted through her yellow post sight. There was movement somewhere in the dark; without thinking, she pulled the trigger.

Bolts of white plasma flew down the corridor, illuminating the emptiness temporarily in a brilliant white shine before sizzling away at plant life, leaving smouldering pockmarks in the vegetation.

That’s when she saw it. A set of yellow, compound eyes, stretched thinly across an elongated and pointed green skull-like carapace, covered in cilia fur. There it sat, motionless against a wall behind a group of shattered test tubes believing that it was camouflaged into the wall, staring back out at her.

Without thinking, Jarrus rushed forward screaming. She fired repeatedly into the Cytoclade, bolts melted through glass and vegetation around her target. Luckily, one bolt hit the angled armour-like carapace that protected the Cytoclade's internals, refracting off to the side. The horror was moved back by the force of the shot, and the bolt left a nasty-looking crack in the Cytoclade’s chest. It immediately bolted away in silence.

“Shit, that thing's fast,” Jarrus said to herself, sweeping the area in front of her.

The Security Chief ran forward, her slender legs navigating the rough vegetative terrain under her with ease and speed. She could hear the Cytoclade's movements through the trees and bushes of vegetation, allowing her to easily track it in her heightened state.

“Why aren’t you trying to fight me…” she whispered to herself, moving a shivering leaf aside with her hand. She began to feel her body's defence mechanisms loosening their grip, she was slowing down.

“Why aren’t you fighting me!” she screamed out loud, “Why are you running!” the movement seemed all around her now,

Then everything went silent. She realized that it was too late.

Jarrus whipped around, ready to shoot. There behind her, illuminated by her rifle's red tactical light, was the towering Cytoclade being.

The monster was at least 9 feet tall on its hind legs, its body a bizarre amalgamation of insect and plant-like features. Its carapace was thick and angular across the whole of its massive chest. Overlapping plates of hard material interlocked and shifted, shuttering with the creature's movements.

Its hands were like hers, long, slender, bony things on the ends of its muscular arms, which were longer than its torso. From the wrists to the shoulders, the Cytoclade was wrapped in writhing, serrated, vines. Its fingers were tipped with blade-like nails that could easily flay her. Strangely enough, all it did was stand there, towering over her; its yellow eyes were dead and unmoving. She noticed the shot that had hit it cracked the chest plates and the injury seeped some sort of sweet-smelling sap-like substance.

Jarrus expected the cool embrace of death as the Cytoclade raised its vicious-looking fingers. She took aim, hoping to get one last neck shot on the thing, where its armour was weakest. She was far too slow for it to matter.

In an instant, the horror’s other hand shot up and its fingers sliced through the rifle's metallic outer shell like it was nothing. The weapon fell to pieces on the floor, followed by a defeated Jarrus. She was kneeling now, waiting for it to end.

The Cytoclade’s hand blades retracted into its carapace with a sickening snap. It placed its slender hand on Jarrus' head, and she felt wet, hot vines crawl over her skull and face.

There was a jolt of energy through her body, causing her to shudder and shake. It felt like multiple tiny needles pierced her skin at the same time. The Cytoclade was injecting something into her bloodstream. A feeling of euphoria washed through her as her mind catapulted through a tunnel of beautiful lights and harmonious resonance.

Jarrus was pulled from the tunnel and plunked on a cliff-top, overlooking a lush green and blue jungle world. Rain began to fall from the green-purple sky above, pattering lightly around her. She watched as the scene changed, the world began to grow and shape itself, it was like a million years flashed before her eyes in a second.

Night, day, night, day, the time zoomed by as she watched the world grow. Out of the rivers crawled un-named things, crosses between species with odd extremities and looks. They too grew and evolved with the world.

“Cytoclade?” she said to herself and thought she knew where the scene was going before it reached its destination.

The primordial beings morphed and evolved, changing into scaly bipedal creatures. The vegetation began to disappear, giving way to hut-like buildings, farms, towns, fortresses, and finally great cities. The natural world around these bipedal aliens slowly began to erode and change. Nutrients left the farmer's soil, turning it a white and ashy colour.

Then went the vegetation. All were removed and used up by the beings that lived in this world. What was left of the trees began to change again, morphing into thick vines and fungus of black and green

The great cities began to expand further into the wilderness surrounding them, consuming nature. The bipedal things, now scaleless, stark white, and long in the body began cutting back the necroflora using great machines of destruction. This time the forest fought back. Shivering, shaking, grasping with roots and vines, tearing harvesting suits to shreds. The bipedal aliens left, seemingly defeated.

More time passed before her. The black-green forest had begun to evolve again. Pods sprouted as the trees grew what she assumed were the first of the Cytoclade. They hung lifelessly for ages, dormant and waiting. Inevitably, the bipedal beings returned with weapons and suits of war familiar to her. Striking out at the living necroflora.

“Atlans?” she questioned, drawing back in horror.

The Cytoclade was beside her now. It pointed, clicking and humming in its own language. Jarrus looked on as a horrible fight unfolded before her eyes. The Atlans ran at the necroflora and began to viciously chop, burn, and destroy the forest. The pods hanging from the trees unfolded, releasing the Cytoclade progenitors in defence of itself.

The forest began to tear into Atlan warriors and pilots fighting them off once again. More time passed, and she watched as great ships took off from the cities in the distance, the necroflora had begun to reclaim the land that was theirs, driving the Atlans away.

After a time of growth, silver cylinder-shaped warships flit back into the darkened sky. These began to rain hellfire onto the planet, and Cytoclades and necroflora were vaporized under the vicious, unending, barrage. The surface was changed once again into a vast wasteland, leaving white soil in its place. This looked like where she grew up; it was Lunaris.

Atlan buildings began to pop up across the barren landscape. They began to dot the surface, collecting in small groups and clusters protected by those same glass-like dome shields that she remembered.

Jarrus knew what came next. She had lived through it and remembered every second of that tragic day. Oblittera Swarm ships, plant-like husks of derelict spacecraft, filled the sky.

The ghost ships hammered themselves into the surface, creating great explosions, ashy clouds of white, and fields of wreckage from which millions of Cytoclade poured out. Lunaris’ fate replayed before her eyes. The Obliteration of her people.

After, the plants regrew, overtaking old buildings and structures. Eating them and changing them into nutrients for a brand-new world. The white soil became lush and fertile again.

“Is this what Lunaris looks like now?” She questioned the Cytoclade. It sat in the grass and beckoned her to sit with it.

It drew a circle in the ground and pointed. Jarrus moved closer, looking, unsure of how to feel about all this.

Systems of planets formed in the sand of their own volition. Panoramas of the history of various planets etched themselves into the soil, all showing the utter destruction of the natural world by the inhabitants.

“All of these places had the same fate as here? Destroyed by the alpha race? Each with the same fate as Lunaris?” she questioned quietly,

The Cytoclade nodded its head, clicking its insect-like mandible mouth, the sand panels showing healthy plants changed, depicting burning and wilting. Then the Obliterra Swarm Ships would appear,

“The Obliterra Swarm tries to fix these tragedies? The necroflora eventually fixes all the damage done by the inhabitants.” Jarrus watched as each of the panels changed, depicting endless worlds that had fallen to the same fate.

The Cytocladian crossed its muscular legs and bowed its head swiping a hand over the living drawing, removing the Obliterra Swarm from the panels. Galaxies and worlds began to burn and turn to ash, colliding with each other before disappearing completely.

“Cytoclade aren’t killing everything, they are fixing planets killed by everyone else. Why do you not say this to anyone? Everyone believes the Obliterra Swarm is out to wipe everything away.

The Cytoclade waved its arms once again, and the panels shifted. They depicted alien life killing Cytoclade life, and Cytoclade life forced to evolve to defend itself. This she understood as well. They all judged the Cytoclade people by how they looked and the stories they heard from others.

“Am I the first connection your people have had with another race?” Jarrus stood, looking back out across Lunaris’ flourishing surface.

The Cytoclade nodded.

“How can I believe you?” she mumbled, staring out across the fertile valleys of her home.

It stood quietly and stepped back from her, the world around her faded into a mess of colours and resonance.

Jarrus found herself back on the ship, staring into the Cytoclade's dead eyes. They stood staring at each other for a long while. Then the Cytoclade made a move, which caused Jarrus to flinch. It raised its hand, crawling vines extended towards her. She backed away slowly, but the floating vine structures kept coming. She spotted a small chip in the mess of writhing vegetation.

“Is this what you just showed me? How did you imprint a chip with biological information?” Jarrus asked, confused.

The Cytocladian gestured around them to the many science computers and consoles consumed by the necroflora.

“I see, you learn through assimilation. So, you want to take me to the ship hanger and let me out?”

The being turned from her and beckoned, she followed. They made their way through the corridors and into the hangar above them; she continued to follow. As they walked through the darkness, Jarrus turned the small chip over in her hand.

Upon arrival, the Cytoclade placed its hand on top of a console. Its protrusions quickly wrapped themselves around the computer, and it began to hum and flicker. The lights in the hanger bay clicked on, echoing loudly across the silence. She heard the familiar thunk of security tethers falling away to the floor.

Jarrus stared at the tiny chip in her hand while it worked, thinking.

“Okay then…” she said, looking up. The Cytoclade was gone, and the hanger hummed to life.

The ship closest to the stairway was hers. Hopping into the cockpit, she activated the control panels, tears streaming from her golden eyes. She shut the canopy and activated the rest of her fleet of ghosts.

One after another, the empty fighter ships that belonged to the Shadow Moth lifted themselves off of the deck. The bay doors crawled open, revealing a bright blue star on the other side. In an instant, the ships shot out into the vastness, leaving Celestialis to whatever destination she was headed to. Jarrus never looked back, she and her fleet of ghosts warped away into the silence of the stars.