Chapter 463.5 (1/2)

Things had not been going good for the Ulvinstren System or the Ulvinstren people, to put it mildly.

The Unified Council had stripped the planet, one of the Core Systems of the Unified Council of Systems, one of the Core Worlds, and one of the oldest species. A bipedal, two-armed species of avian reptile, they were flightless bird/lizard hybrids with a beak, feathers, and claws on the ends of long triple jointed arms. They were patient and slow to move, preferring contemplation over action.

None of that had helped.

With a shimmering a portal opened, or rather, expanded across a section of the vast protocontinent that covered nearly 60% of the planet.

From the portal swarmed nightmarish creatures that attacked the Ulvinstren people and everyone on the world. From the Lanaktallan to the lowest Puknan, anyone captured by the creatures were either eaten or, if they were captured by a machine or taken back to the vast growths of fungal forests rising up, had their brains removed.

The Unified Military Council tried to put up a fight.

They lasted 19 days until the last of them were killed by a creature that resembled a shrimp crossed with a snail that had acid spewing vents on the sides of the shell. The Lanaktallan went down without a sound, grimly firing his weapon until his lower body began to melt. He pulled the pin on two plasma grenades and lifted his chin before the shrimp/snail surged over him.

The explosion had lifted the snail up as the confined blast had jellied its interior.

Since then, the rapid, frenzied, gluttonous rate of harvesting had slowed. The Ulvinstren people and other refugees found themselves pushed into forested areas, jungles, and swamps. Pushed into cities that were nothing more than concrete labyrinths. Many had resorted to eating fungus or large insects.

And sometimes each other.

Many had wept the day the sky had flickered and dimmed, the sun slowly turning a baleful red in the sky.

It had been only months after the Council had stripped nearly all the vessels from the Core Worlds to attack Terra itself that the creatures had arrived.

The Ulvinstren had seen actual Atrekna, gliding about, supported on discs of pure phasic energy, watching them lift stone buildings, strangely shaped with odd angles, out of the ground. Watched the Atrekna feed by wrapping their tentacles around the head of the victim and using their sawblade jaws to rip open the skull and suction out the brain.

They were unaware that outside the system only a couple of years had passed.

They were on their eighth generation to be born in the slave pits of the Atrekna.

For the most part they had given up.

But where there is life, there is hope.

It was by the light of the moon that it started.

------------------

Dilnmeer was a Ulvinstren that had grown to adulthood beneath the red star. Her eyes were wide, she moved about in a twilight, and did her work quietly to help keep her tribe fed and cared for. She had gotten up in the middle of the night to meet another Ulvinstren for some private time in one of the mushroom groves. The huge fungi had spores flowing from them and that meant Dilnmeer could get pregnant, as breathing in the spores was the only way to induce pregnancy since the time of her grandmother.

She had just entered the grove and begun to disrobe, feeling nervous as it was her first breeding cycle, when there was a shimmer in the air. She held her rough tunic over the front of her body and turned to look.

A tall biped stood in the shadows of the fungi, perfectly illuminated by moonbeams. He wore black clothing, had a black cloak with a red interior, a tall black headcovering, and a strange white thing covering his eyes.

There was a strange gleam off the corner of the angular device on his face as he lifted one arm straight to the side to expose the crimson interior.

With his other hand, he tossed a red flower at Dilnmeer's feet.

The sky exploded in flame.

----------------

The Atrekna Overmind saw it enter the system. A slight twinkle, as if something had left the higher reaches of one of the hyperatomic planes without slowing down.

The scopes got a good look at it once it passed by the gas giant that was being farmed for the Dwellerspawn hives.

Nine bipeds, dressed completely wrong for the vacuum of outer space. Short skirts, knee high hose, boots, frilly blouses.

All with tiaras, all holding strange wands, all with wide expressive eyes. They were following the leader, a blonde who's bangs formed a heart shape on her forehead, with the gem in the center of the tiara in the middle of the heart.

As they passed the supermassive gas giant one of them, wearing an outfit highlighted with purple, the blouse having petal-shaped sleeves, around her neck a windrose brooch and choker, lifted a long handled instrument. A blade snapped out, long and curved and gleaming wickedly in the light of the dull red star.

She twirled several times, raised the glaive over her head, shouted something that carried despite the vacuum of space, and brought it down in a fast swiping motion.

The supermassive gas giant shuddered, a ring puffing out, the compressed carbon core shattering in place a split second after it was cut in half.

The Dwellerspawn didn't even get to scream before they were pureed into slowly deconstituting mist that was carried away by the howling storms of the gas giants.

The Atrekna reacted by launching their ships they had grown and built. Vast mollusk and trilobyte appearing vessels.

The leader spun in place, her hands going to her hair as wings of energy flowed out from her back, and she swept her hands forward.

Before the Atrekna ships could even register what she had done on their scanners, the objects thrown from her delicate hand slammed into eight of the ships. The energy lance was visible through the entire system as they punched clean through the massive vessel's phasic shielding, their armor, and the flesh within, to exit the other side. Ribbons, sparkles, and flares shot from the impact and exit points as a loud 'thrumm' noise shook the cosmic structure that made up the system.

The ships turned black, then slowly came apart as powder that spread out in a cloud.

The others were not idle, wings coming from their back as they too began throwing objects from their hands that crossed entire light minutes in a second or two, lancing clear through the Atrekna ships. The group flew on, Atrekna ships exploding before they had even gotten a good readout on what was attacking the system.

One of the girls, with blue hair and blue highlights, heavy scarring across her face and arms, pointed out a fleet of bioships hiding within a grav-shadow, her goggles flashing in the red light of the sun.

The one with red highlights to her uniform, which was tattered and torn to reveal scars on her body that matched the ones on her face, none of which truly affected how cute she appeared, snarled and waved a round object that she slammed one hand on the stretched skin on the side.