Cyteen was a fully terraformed world, which was always an expensive process. Especially in the Outer Rim, where access to Core World materials was strained, but it's safe to say the institute could afford it.

  It was worth it. Out here, their more... ' Ambitious' work could be conducted without so much oversight by the core world moralists.

  The institute building was made mostly of white concrete, with a section of red brick outside with the company's logo near the entrance. It was covered in radar systems, HVAC units, and landing pads.

  A fountain outside had a statue with a Pegasus centered in it; its white stone wings were outstretched as it reared back, kicking the air with its forelegs.

  The garden exterior consisted of different concrete paths between the buildings. Wooden benches, neatly trimmed hedges and lawns.

  People in lab coats and surgical scrubs were moving about, mostly medical students. After all, it was disguised as an educational facility. It represented the hub of the planet—its primary purpose of existing was the research done here. Of course there were other businesses—construction LLCs, food industries, and just about anything else that was integral to sustaining an entire planet full of people. But this was what paid the bills.

  Dr. Lancaster and his assistant resident doctor, Chen, were in a secluded room deep within the institute compound on the Pegasus colony.

  The sterile room was dimly lit in a slightly blue off-white color. The flat grey walls had a light embedded in the base of them every so often, and the linoleum floors were white. Dr. Chen had her face pressed against a tiny window embedded into a blocky workstation, with her hands inside two holes that had gloves attached to them.

  "The nucleus is removed." She said, slowly withdrawing her hands from the gloved recesses.

  "Good. I've prepared the somatic cells. Here."

  Dr. Lancaster approached her with a tray with numerous slides on it. Each containing the donors genetic information. Sometimes she wondered how much money these 'donors' had paid to be immortalized this way, but she learned early on that asking questions that weren't strictly about the process was unwise.

  Not caring to ask is what has elevated her so far.

  She took one of the glass slides and inserted it into a hatch on the side of her workstation. There was another hatch inside that she would open to access them.

  "Careful. It's important the injections are as centered as possible."

  An elementary suggestion, but Lancaster would take any opportunity to remind her to take her time. It was important the process was done efficiently. Not quickly. It's not as if they had a large backlog of orders. Each clone would be a multi-trillion credit investment for someone. Someone with connections at that.

  She guided the needle into the oocyte with the donor somatic cell. Chen did this with multiple petri dishes while Dr. Lancaster oversaw her, ensuring each stage of the process was done with the utmost concentration.

  When she was done, she looked away from the square window and pressed a button on the side of her workstation, and a light flashed from inside.

  "Cells will enter the blastocyst stage soon," Dr. Lancaster said. "Then the real work will begin. Take a break, then head down to the conditioning department and check on the subjects."

  The conditioning department rapidly ages clones through a variety of means, but theirs would also prepare subjects to reassimilate to their cloned counterpartsparts lifestyles seamlessly.

  "Yes, doctor."

  They went through a decontamination chamber and then into a locker room. They would discard their scrubs and change each time they entered or left in an attempt to reduce the spread of contagions to the reproductive cells.

  "I'll be in rehab if you need me," he said before leaving.

  Dr. Chen remained a moment longer and looked at herself in a nearby mirror.

  Her face was completely void of expression. Good. Now she would just have to keep that expression for twelve more hours.

  A few of Selene's caasiok were positioned not far from the planet.

  When a couple of ex-resistance frigates appeared next to it from warp space. They've been recolored to no longer match the resistance, stripped down to their base grey color.

  "Alright, Sel, we got your... stuff," Preston said over their call.

  "Good." Aboleth's voice responded. She was far away on Endelon 2, but she was mediating the call for Selene anyway. Selene didn't want to keep pestering her followers to function as her body; luckily, that should change soon.

  "Oh, and don't call me Sel. Only my dad calls me that."

  "Whatever."

  "How'd you get it anyways?" She asked.

  "I don't know. Something about your medical records on Endelon. Ask your dad; he led the team. Are you ready? Once we start, it'll be a sprint to the finish. No hesitating. People might die; we don't have time for you to get all weepy about it, kid."

  Selene sighed.

  "I'm so beyond caring about stuff like that, after everything. I know how important what we're doing is. And how many more people will die if I don't do anything?"

  "Spoken like a true commander. Let's go then. We'll handle the institute; you handle the planet's defenses."

  Duh. They've already gone over this a hundred times at this point.

  "Yep. I'll knock them out fast. Try to keep up, Pres."

  "Only Xaya can call me—"

  Selene hung up the call.

  "Okay, you got the rest of the Aboleth, or do you need me to run something?"

  She communicated the thought directly inside of Aboleth's head. Which shook.

  "No. It's not a war; it's just a single research colony. I can handle it. Focus on you. You're our main weapon after all. I'll try to orchestrate the swarm in response to your actions."

  "Kay..." Selene felt a bit unsure. She wanted to talk with Aboleth more, now that she was feeling more herself again. "Aboleth, about your family. I—"

  Aboleth was annoyed in response.

  "I know you care, Selene. It's not the time. We can talk about me later."

  Same as any other infested in the swarm. They all needed to be paid for their service one way or another. It was the least she could do. She took their freedom to choose, their homes, and their families. But they were on Endelon 2 now, which would be a good place for them to be if something happened to her before then.

  Though if she failed to build a strong enough swarm before the invasion they'd all die anyway.

  A hulking body deep within the caasiok shifted and began to rise from its slumber.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  It was mercifully quick. Swarms of vespaxyn came out of the caasiok in giant clouds blanketing the sky. Their multiple sets of leathery bat wings sent them soaring through the air.

  They made a trilling call as they swept over miles and miles of area outside the institute.

  The colony's defenses sprang into action automatically, firing into the swarm above. Vespaxyn began to fall out of the sky. From far away, they might not seem so impressive.

  That was until one fell onto your car.

  Caasioks loomed above them, lowering themselves towards the planet. The shelling didn't do much to them—tiny fiery plumes appeared along them as the streams of bullets pelted them.

  Harrowing screams could be heard across the city, as well as the deafening booms of the planet's auto-cannons.

  A vespaxyn landed on a particularly tall tower and crawled around the outside of it. The onlookers inside recoiled away from the window as they saw the giant scorpion crawl across it.

  It had a large speaker attached to its side. A prerecorded message was playing in Aboleth's voice.

  "Stay inside. Do not attack the swarm, and it will not attack you. Stay inside. Do not..."

  Selene thought it could help keep casualties down. If people thought they were better off hiding rather than making a final stand, fewer would probably die.

  A horde of vespaxyn dove towards one of the AA cannons and spewed jets of acid across it. The metal sizzled and caved in as the vibrant green acid sank deeper into the gun's inner machinations.

  It exploded a moment later, sending shards raining down onto the enforcers who were currently running to their stations.

  It was about ten minutes into the attack when the first wave of air forces arrived. And they would continue to arrive from different cities on the planet, wave after wave.

  But Aboleth was right—this wasn't a war. Just a smash-and-grab mission. The faster Preston and Xaya got the clone, the fewer casualties there would be.

  In this world it seemed that the population was so diffused that they drove wheeled vehicles to get around.

  A vespaxyn was shot out of the sky, and it rolled through an intersection, crumpling different cars like these. A few other vespaxyn saw and flew down towards the wreckage. They swept low and landed to examine the body.

  One of them roared into the window of one of the cars that had been pushed to the side, causing the woman driving to faint from panic.

  Then it started to nudge the fallen vespaxyn.

  "Kill it!" Someone shouted. They turned to see that an all-black armored enforcer vehicle had pulled up and turned to the side. Numerous of the enforcers had gotten out and trained their rifles on them.

  Bullets sparked across the asphalt and wreckage.

  The vespaxyn mourning their fallen brother trilled in angry defiance and lashed their tails in their direction like a whip. Spewing the acid in criss-crossing ropes across the intersection. It cut stripes into whatever it touched, including the enforcers.

  "Oh, oh god!" One cried as a stream wrapped his shoulders and began to eat through. He reached for his armor's release switch, but his cries were quickly cut short as he fell over dead.

  His companions looked on in horror.

  "Back, back!" They shouted, moving behind the armored vehicle. One of them was swept up into the air, only for another vespaxyn wanting revenge to fly over and grab a different limb and pull the enforcer apart.

  A man with a baseball bat came up behind a grounded, wounded vespaxyn and hit it over the head. It roared and smacked him with its tail, sending him bouncing off a nearby building. Leaving behind a red stain.

  Pillars of smoke began to rise as numerous events like these were happening all over the city. Zykra forces have successfully formed a perimeter around the institute, forcing the planet's defenses to prioritize them.

  Meanwhile, Preston and Xaya's combined forces had begun landing shuttles around the facility. Deploying soldiers to secure it.

  Two frigates floated above, virtually unopposed in the sky. Xaya and Preston both stood in their frigates' command decks, overseeing the battle and giving orders.

  "Make sure to allow your HUD to scan each doctor's face. We need one who knows what they're talking about." Preston reminded one of his commanding officers.

  Xaya had just finished giving out her latest batch of orders and sighed. Then looked over at the carnage the Zykra were causing. You had to admire a fellow craftsman as they applied their craft at a high level. Any air or ground resistance from the planet was quickly apprehended by the swarm before they could even get close to the institute.

  "Maybe we should make green our new color." Xaya said absentmindedly.

  Preston scoffed. "I'll make sure to get our graphic design team on it."

  "Make sure that you do," Xaya teased. "I hear Selene gave her infested uniforms already. Maybe we could requisition some."

  "She can't make any more now that weird fucking doctor disappeared. Though maybe we can help her with that. We have a few VIPs gathered in the cafeteria; I'm going down to get things started."

  "I'll handle everything up here." She said, but then she seemed to consider something for a moment. "...Be careful."

  Preston gave her a confused smirk. "What's that?"

  "What's what?" Xaya asked poutedly.

  "...Nothing. I'll be careful." He chuckled and left the command deck.

  Some people really changed into different people when you started dating them. Xaya was definitely one of them.

  He suited up into his enforcer armor, an advanced, larger one. It was more of a mini-mech than a suit of armor, really. Instead of putting on those skin-tight leotards enforcers wore, he just stepped into the back of it fully clothed.

  And it closed up behind him. The HUD flickered to life and began to display different gauges that measured the suit's status from fuel and integrity to ammunition. It also had options for maps, information on objectives, and other basic stuff like a compass.

  "Are you ready?" He asked one of the soldiers standing in the shuttle as he came inside.

  "You always ask that," they said.

  "It's always good to be ready. I'm mostly asking for myself if I'm being honest." He took another deep breath, gripping onto one of the shuttle's handholds above him. Showtime.

  "What the fuck is that?" Selene asked Aboleth psionically.

  Bulky box-shaped ships started to fly just outside the battlefield and drop something off without landing. Dust would fly up from the ground as something heavy landed.

  "I forget this is the first time you're attacking a colony like this... as yourself anyway. Those are mechs. They usually have shielding that resists the vespaxyn's acid, and their guns have a large area of effect. It challenges our air superiority, but luckily they don't ever have many of them."

  A building-sized bipedal machine stood up out of the dust and debris. Its sleek black metal chassis gleamed in the sunlight. It had a turret on either shoulder and two arms with basic fingers and a blade that extended past the hands.

  Its legs were jointed like a bird's and crumbled the asphalt with every step.

  The vespaxyn swarmed it. Clawing its outside and spewing acid onto it. Which slid harmlessly off the mech's hexagonal black coating. Its shoulder turrets fired; they twitched and snapped to their targets independently of the main body's movement, it seemed.

  In the distance a caasiok could be seen landing. Its' sets of crab-like legs stabbed into different buildings, bisecting them, some causing explosions in the process. And its tentacles sprawled out across the city like ramps, and their ground forces began to join the fight.

  Munlocs, slaads, and scantids all began to stream out onto the planet's surface.

  "Eventually the acid will begin to break through the mech's shielding, but usually it's toward the end of the battle. Dr. Bryant said this was because there is a slight electric charge carried within vespaxyn acid, which dissolves the carbon links in the graphene."

  "So you're saying it's probably a Selene problem."

  "We were working on producing a zykra variant better suited for it. We weaved your scantid form into that variant. But be careful; we have no idea what will happen if your main body is destroyed again."

  Selene felt herself return to her true body, which was at this point Pipsqueak. But he had changed; thanks to the evolutionists' tinkering, the tiniest scantid in the swarm was much, much larger.

  It was different than projecting herself throughout her swarm. Interacting with their different psionic signatures. This was her body for now. And her abilities were centered on it. Without a psyphera nearby, it would be all she was limited to. And her telepathic abilities were definitely limited to it.

  "Ugh, I'm so fat." She lamented. Selene 'stood' up and moved to the caasioks maw, which had just opened. "I guess I just…?" She leaned forward and fell like a brick through the air.

  The street turned into a crater below her as she landed, sending a blast wave across the asphalt. Cracking windows and sending car alarms off.

  The latest Zykra variant rose out of the plume of dust, its massive yellow eyes lined its face, a dozen of them on either side, which curved all the way down towards the neck. Its densely wrinkled, leathery skin flapped as Selene shook her head. Clearing the smoke in the process.

  The rest of its body was as impressive. Its features were simple but of behemoth proportions. Plates of carapace overlapped one another all over its body like a pill bug's. And numerous prawn-like feelers spilled over its mouth, which had a set of mandibles beside it that could mash together like a scantids.

  Its body was designed to lean upright in order to fight but could also drop down to skitter along the ground more quickly in order to pursue prey.

  Its eight legs were all similar to each other. They were like mallets. No fingers or any gripping mechanism involved.

  This thing was adapted to fuck shit up. Nothing else.

  Selene set her sights on the mech closest to her.

  They were a lot bigger than the ones her Zykra-self had fought in that resistance hangar. But then again, so was she.

  "Okay, okay... Keep to the roads... Let's have a nice, clean fight." She muttered internally as she moved towards the mech, sending up clouds of dust with every step. The mech had noticed the Zykra-shaped building heading towards it and swiveled to face her without turning its legs.

  Its shoulder cannons fired.

  Selene ignored the tiny impacts she felt across her body and lined herself up on the street the mech was positioned on.

  Then went into crawly mode. She dropped down and began to sprint down the street directly at the mech. She sensed the team piloting it panic as a freight train of Zykra muscle barreled down on it.

  A loud BANG sounded as she collided with it. And it flew, embedding itself into the building a fair distance behind it.

  Selene stood upright again and watched as it tumbled into it.

  "Oops."

  The building's walls were stripped away in an instant, revealing layers of different floors inside around where the mech now lay. She saw people running into stairwells. Some were lying down motionless in office spaces. One woman slid off one of the exposed floors and fell multiple stories onto the mech and splattered across it.

  Selene moved closer as the mech began to right itself.

  "Stay down." Its entire body jerked itself back down as the pilots pulled back on their controls. "Stay." She ordered. She had no voice in this form, but her powers still worked. Good to know.

  The colossal creature moved in the direction of other mechs.

  Behind the Chapter...

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