Emily put down the datapad, her hands shaking as the recording finally shut off. It was true? Peter had been turning everyone against her this whole time? Done all those horrible things, been in charge of the Plaguebringers?

  She was such an idiot, how could she never have suspected him? All this time and he was manipulating her, hurting her behind her back while smiling and laughing when they met.

  He had never cared about her at all. She was just a tool to him. Sean had been right, she had been blind.

  Emily slowly relaxed her hands that were curled into fists and took a deep breath.

  She shoved all of her feelings into a box and her heart that had been viciously pounding in her chest slowed down its frantic pace.

  When Sean was out. When Sean escaped Immortus Station cleanly, that’s when she could get angry.

  She couldn’t let her emotions make her lose control and put him at risk, not after what he’d just done for her.

  Emily shuddered to imagine what Peter might do if he discovered what Sean had done just now and that he was working with Emily. Not when Sean was right in Peter’s clutches in the center of his power…

  — — —

  The information was confirmed. The Connected One had the proof that filtered across the link to the Endless Flesh and the Queens aboard. Nine Queens total, the original minds of the Endless Flesh, ever improved by the power of the Connected One.

  Peter Rose had been behind it all.

  And it was time to take him, to swarm, to bite. In deep space just out of the range of the sensors of the Connected One’s ship, the main fleet of the Endless Flesh vibrated and pulsed as their living hyperspace engines started to activate.

  One moment the fleet hovered menacingly in the darkness of deep space, and the next they were gone and screaming through hyperspace.

  The Endless Flesh had been patient for so long. But no more. Now was the time to strike.

  — — —

  All the lights on the control panels around the room were and flashing and blinking. An alarm blared overhead as Samir stood there inspecting the Enforcers frantically typing at their stations.

  “What is it? Is it the Plaguebringer fleet coming for an attack?” Samir demanded. The fleet was massive, a force far larger than the other Immortals had ever displayed before…

  “No sir, the ships themselves are… odd. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s almost like they’re… changing shape even as we scan them.”

  “Change shape?” Samir said, “Don’t be ridiculous that’s…”

  He paused and paled as he finally made the connection.

  “The Endless Flesh,” he whispered.

  “What was that sir? You know who it is?”

  “The Endless Flesh!” Samir said louder, “It’s one of them. An actual full fleet sent to attack us.”

  “The… They… Are you sure?” the Enforcer said as he glanced between Samir and the display.

  “Raise the general alarm. Everybody to combat stations, raise the station shields. I’m launching our messenger ships right now. We just have to hold until reinforcements come from across the galaxy.”

  Samir ran over to the nearest console and when the woman sitting there just stared at him blankly in confusion as he tried to brush by her to get to her console, Samir grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her to the floor. She gasped in surprise as she hit the ground with a large metal clank.

  Samir quickly navigated to the central server and typed up a quick message and the scans of the enemy fleet as well as an urgent request for reinforcements. He finished typing up the message and typing in the access codes as quickly as possible before a confirmation window popped up. Samir pressed the button on the screen and the hundreds of messenger ships automatically launched from the surface of the station and started firing their engines to travel away in all directions. They were unmanned, and were completely unarmed. Many would likely be destroyed by the Endless Flesh before they could get to the edge of the system, which is why it was critical to launch them as early as possible.

  Samir turned to the woman on the floor who was glaring up at him.

  “I apologize, Enforcer Shawna,” Samir apologized, “It was urgent. We only have three hours or less before their fleet comes into firing range. Well, what counts as a firing range for them from what I’ve heard from the records. Every moment counts for letting those messages get out to the galaxy.”

  He reached out a hand to her and she reluctantly grabbed it and let him help her to her feet and her anger at him softened somewhat.

  Sure enough twenty minutes later the pods that had flown off in the direction of the enemy fleet exploded into pieces. The Endless Flesh sent their fleshy suicide bombers through hyperspace to explode almost directly on top of them.

  In the gravitational field of a star system they could only forcefully fire these hyperspace missiles so far before the distortions grew too much, which was the main limit on their range, luckily for everyone else.

  After forty minutes, the message ships reached the edge of the star system out of the gravity well and over the course of a minute flitted away and disappeared into hyperspace to their destinations in the urban systems nearby to carry Samir and Immortus Station’s call for help to the galaxy.

  An incursion by the Endless Flesh was a problem for them all, not just the Immortals here in the system.

  “Alright, they’ll be here soon,” Samir said to the room, “Ready all weapons. This is a siege. We’re holding here until reinforcements arrive.”

  — — —

  “Malketh, breach in the hull of sector C-4,” Peter said as he rolled his shoulders in his exosuit, “Another probing strike. Want to come with or hold position here?”

  “I’ll come,” Sean said, “I’m not the pinnacle of combat anymore. Everyone’s improved since I’ve been trapped.”

  Peter chuckled as the two of them burst into motion and started running down the damaged hallways of Immortus Station with electric sparks and tears of metal from their other battles over the last two months.

  “Oh, you’re still plenty good,” Peter said, “Even with all this time, you’ve got more of an instinct for it than me. I wouldn’t be here on the front lines except for the situation. Luckily neither of us have had to fight too much. The reinforcements are taking some of the pressure off of us at least.”

  They turned the corner and entered a hallway filled with long tube-like insects with hundreds of legs. The creatures moved towards them as they both raised their weapons and opened fire.

  In their powerful exosuits, it only took a few stomps and casual blows to kill any of the creatures that made it beyond their gunfire. Over the next five minutes they pushed forward through the hallways to the origin of the breach, barely even slowing as they mowed through them.

  They reached the origin, a hold drilled in the metal hall and barely ten feet wide circle a few feet out of the floor. The long sinuous bugs continued to crawl out of the hole before scattering in all directions to damage the station and find nearby vulnerable Immortals to attack. All the civilians who didn’t want to fight were already clustered towards the center of the ship through all the defenses and the main shield generator and antimatter power sources. As time passed more and more of these small raids were making it through the station shields.

  The two of them finished cleaning up the creatures crawling out of the hole and Sean reached down to his waist and took out a red grenade. With a hard toss he primed it and threw it into the dark hole lined with pulsating flesh.

  The grenade went off and the seal between the orb of flesh outside and the outer hull of Immortus Station was broken. All the air in the hallway immediately started rushing through the whole in the station in a massive rush of strong winds into the void outside.

  Sean saw the fleshy ball acting as a breaching transport twitch a few times as more of the creatures tried to crawl out of it to escape. But the vacuum of space was too much and they all went still and died in short order as they drifted away from the surface of the station.

  Peter reached to his back and took out the large metal plate that was sitting there. Stumbling forward slightly, Peter went to the hole and placed the metal plate over the gap. The strong winds instantly stopped as the plate was tightly pressed against the interior of the hallway and blocked the majority of the air from rushing out.

  But there was still a faint hiss as tiny bits of air escaped through the little gaps on the side of the plate.

  Peter activated a precision laser that popped out of a compartment around his wrist and welded the square plate to the wall all the way around. Peter stepped out and let out a sigh or relief as the signature hiss of air disappeared as the seal was completed.

  “They’re attacks are getting more frequent,” Peter observed as they moved to return to the center of the station. A good portion of the outer third of the station was completely wrecked and damaged by the boarding parties of damaging insects. Sometimes the lights in the hallways went out entirely and they had to use the lights built into their exosuits to see. The floor was pitted and in a few places acid formed holes in the floor that sometimes went down through multiple levels below.

  “Yes,” Sean said, “Maybe they’re worried that the reinforcements from around the galaxy will manage to overpower them soon with pure numbers.”

  “It’ll be a while before that many arrive for a fleet this big,” Peter said as he leapt over a hole in the floor and Sean soon followed him, “I’ve never seen a fleet of Endless Flesh this big in all of my time. Not all in one place rather than spread out across multiple systems. They’re going all in on this attack. But you’re right, this might be because the reinforcements on the edge of the star system might start bogging them down soon.”

  “Containment, right? That’s the motto?” Sean asked as the hallway around them grew better lit and the amount of damage to their surroundings slowly decreased as they moved deeper into Immortus Station’s innards.

  “That’s right,” Peter said, “Reinforcements from around the galaxy stay at a distance and keep the Endless Flesh from retreating for now. Wait to strike until they have enough numbers to have a chance of taking them on. Act as a hammer to the anvil of Immortus Station to crush them.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “I don’t like how much damage the station is taking,” Sean said, “What if things start failing? If our shields go down then we’d be overwhelmed in minutes. It took a planet destroying weapon to get a breaching craft through the shields before during the prison break. With the fleet out there, they have enough firepower to allow multiple breaching parties through an hour.”

  “Everything is self-contained to the core of the station, Malketh,” Peter assured Sean as the last of the damage faded and they reached a hallway guarded by an armed Enforcer in an exosuit. The man nodded at them respectfully before returning to guard duty as they walked past him.

  “The rest of the station is just decoration,” Peter continued, “As long as the core isn’t breached and our engineers keep up the good work then all that damage on the exterior won’t impact them in the slightest. We have plenty of spare parts and powers for when one of the shielding layers goes down or there’s a malfunction.”

  The station rumbled and Sean heard the hiss of air leaving rushing away for a few seconds before it suddenly cut off as a series of metal clunks signaled the airlock doors isolating the damaged parts of the station from the rest. Their comms buzzed and they stopped moving. There was a click and Samir’s voice came over their comms.

  “All Enforcers, spread back out to the ring and push them back! They just hyperspace jumped one of their main ships into the shields even through our jammers! They’re pouring in the gap in our shields now. Engineers say it should be sealed again within ten minutes. They’re boarding craft look bigger than the usual ones. This could be the big one. Hold them back until the shields are back up!”

  Peter and Sean glanced at each other before turning around and running back where they came. This is where the real battle would begin.

  They rushed through the hallways and after less than a minute came across the first emerald backed beetle that leapt at them only to be cut down by a precision laser to the head by Peter.

  After a few more seconds of picking off the occasional beetles, they received a message from Samir who was coordinating the defense from the center of the station. Peter and Sean moved to a central hallway to defend along with three other Enforcers in exosuits as well.

  They fought as the insects streaming in from all sides trickled in in an ever rising tide as they maintained their position, not pressured by the swarm just yet.

  Sean suddenly got an individual comms request just as he brought his foot down to stomp down on an oversized ant that was attempting to bite as his ankles. Actually most of the insects streaming in had turned into ants by now. It was odd, usually there was much more variety in their forms…

  Sean accepted the request and suddenly a little holographic voice appeared in the bottom left corner of his helmet. A video call? Why?

  “Sean? Sean, where are you?” Emily asked him, “Are you there?”

  “Yeah,” Sean said as Peter frowned and glanced at him. Sean waved him off and fell back and let the others take up the slack in the fighting as he spoke.

  “Why are you calling? How?” Sean asked, “What are you still doing around here?”

  “We’re getting you out of there of course,” Emily said sternly, her holographic face frowning at him, “I had some override codes that I slipped into the Immortus Station systems a while ago. The others are here too. We brought our planet destroying ship and are about to fire it into the Endless Flesh fleet. We need to plan how to get you out of there in the chaos after. All the ships around the system are going to attack after we fire and it’ll be chaos as the Endless Flesh fights with everyone. It’s your best chance to get away. Otherwise you’ll be locked in there for hundreds or thousands of years as they restrict travel to and from the station after this. Where’s your location? I’ll navigate you to the nearest ship and give you a vector so you can get out… Oh wait, I have your position. Seems they’re tracking your exosuit and…”

  “Emily,” Sean said and tried to act casual as Peter shot him a sharp glance, “I’m here with Peter Rose. I can’t just up and leave.”

  Emily went silent and her eyes went off to the side as if reading off of a nearby screen.

  “Shit…” she said, “Can’t you get away? Things are about to go insane in this system. Who knows might happen once the battle begins. What if the Endless Flesh wins and you get trapped in there?”

  “I can try, but…”

  Sean cut off what he was saying as suddenly there was a large screech and rumble down the hallways around them. The ants around them went into a frenzy and threw themselves into combat even more viciously than before somehow.

  Sean had no more time to talk as he was forced to wade back into combat as the swarm rapidly increased in number and surrounded them on all sides.

  “Reinforce! Reinforce Position six!” Samir shouted over the open comms, “The swarms are all diverting towards Position six! We can’t let them break through!”

  Something large suddenly rounded the corner, the swarm of smaller ants as large as a man’s torso rushing beneath it. The five of them raised their weapons as the massive creature filling the hallway made its way towards them.

  Its bottom half looked like an ant. But near the front where the head would be its body extended into an upright position, its spine curving backwards over its main body to keep its balance. The sloping section was vaguely humanoid except covered with reddish carapace. Six long spindly arms lined the upright section with similarly long and delicate fingers perched at their ends.

  Right behind its head was a roundish disk of chitin that looked like a halo of sort placed vertically upon its head.

  Its head was perched on top of the torso and looked like that of an ant, antenna and all. Except where the pairs of mandibles would be was another set of maxilla, or the tinier limbs inside their mouths they used to manipulate food directly.

  Their gunfire and lasers stopped just in front of the new creature as the signature flare of a shield appeared around its body.

  The creature charged forward at full speed as the rest of the swarm screeched and hissed at them as one.

  “Pettttteeeeerrrrr Rose!” the strange creature hissed as its mandibles flapped even as its shield grew brighter and brighter as it moved closer.

  One of the Enforcers went down as one of the ants managed to crawl into her armpit and disable her arms in quick succession with precision bites. She fell over and her exosuit was disabled in short order.

  All of them fought, but one by one the others were overwhelmed by the swarm around them as they focused on mainly firing on the larger creature who had just spoken.

  Now it was just Sean and Peter left fighting all alone. The other three Immortals were being dragged away thrashing, their exosuits cracked open and their weapons rendered useless.

  “Sean, Sean! What’s going on?” Emily shouted over the comms, “Run! There’s too many of them!”

  Sean hesitated for a moment before taking a step back. Maybe she had the right of it. Peter took a step back with him and the both of them turned to run away.

  Blinded by its bright shield that must be near failure, the speaking creature charged past them and slammed into a nearby wall, denting it inwards from the force of the blow. In an electric crackle the shield failed in one burst. Sean glanced over his shoulder as he and Peter fled as quickly as they could towards the center of Immortus Station.

  The creature stumbled for a moment and braced itself with two of the spindly limbs on its left side as its body shuddered. After a second it drew its head back and with a hacking cough spat something out onto the floor in front of it. It quickly skittered back using its ant like lower body before the wet lump on the floor pulsed brightly before exploding like a grenade.

  “Peter Rooooooossssseeee!” The creature screamed in a buzzing high pitch as it charged after them even faster than before.

  The two of them ran, the creature rapidly closing the distance between them as it picked up speed in a straight line towards them.

  Peter and Sean kept running and tore around a corner with the creature just barely missing them as it slammed hard into the wall just behind them. Sean heard carapace crack as the creature quickly recovered and went after them, now all alone as it was far ahead of the much slower swarm.

  Sean turned and fired his gun directly into the creature’s torso just as it was right behind them. The gunfire did seemingly nothing, the armor barely even scratched by the attack.

  Before Sean or Peter could think to do anything else, the creature was on them. Sean was thrown hard to the side by a surprisingly heavy blow by the stick like upper limbs of the charging creature brushing him to the side.

  Sean hit the wall hard and felt himself dent the wall and his exosuit crunch from the force.

  “Sean! Sean get out of there!” Emily screamed over the comms, “Don’t let it capture you!”

  Sean looked up and jerkily got to his feet, his exosuit groaning and complaining as it tried to follow his commands despite the damage done to it.

  The creature had two limbs gripped around Peter’s exosuit helmet even as he struggled against it where he was pinned against the other wall of the hallway.

  The creature used its other four thin limbs to firmly grab Peter’s exosuit around the torso even as its upper pair wrapped around its head. In one sharp motion, the creature turned Peter’s head completely around with a vicious crack, and the man’s body went temporarily limp.

  The creature used the opportunity pf Peter’s healing to use its upper limbs to leverage open the metal chestplate and throwing it to the side. As if delicately extracting an animal from its shell, the creature reached inside and pulled out the now twitching body of Peter Rose. Peter’s head was now a skeleton with the barest bits of flesh sprouting into existence on its white surface.

  “Weeee havvvveeee you, Peter,” the creature hissed before turning to consider Sean who was staring at it.

  “We remember you tooo… Missing One,” the creature said, “Offspring, take him.”

  Before Sean could react, the rest of the smaller swarm made it around the corner and as one leapt onto him and tore him out of his exosuit before he could fight back for more than a few seconds.

  Once again Sean was being carried away alongside with Peter Rose whose body was directly being held up in the air by the speaking creature as he thrashed and cursed at the creature.

  “Currrrrsssseeee allll you wish,” the creature gloated, “Sooonn it shall be usssss, currrrssssing you. Yes, so many currrsssseesss stored up for youuuuuu. We shall makessss you pay.”

  The hallways around them grew more and more damaged as they moved outwards towards the edge of the station.

  “What are you doing?” Peter shouted, “Why are you after me?”

  “Youuuuu will knowwww why verrrrry intimately ssssooon,” the creature said, “Sinss of your passssssst, come to hhhhhauntssss you.”

  They reached the edge of Immortus Station and Sean, Peter, and the creature all were shoved inside a dark and fleshy pod docked to the edge of the station. As soon as they were inside there was a loud squelch and then they were moving through space again.

  Time passed as everything was silent outside through the emptiness of space even as the fleshy ‘ship’ around them squelched and quivered.

  A few minutes later, there was a loud sucking sound and suddenly rumbling all around them as something envelops the vessel they were in.

  Everything was dark and despite Sean’s thrashing, he made no progress on escaping where he saw pinned to the floor.

  There was a skittering as Sean was dragged into a much larger space while the creature went away with a shouting Peter still carried in its grip. The man’s shouts slowly faded away as Sean tried to escape the swarm of bugs working to keep him in place in the large chamber.

  Sean suddenly froze as a light turned on around him. He froze as the blueish bioluminescent light lit up the large chamber over a hundred feet in diameter around him. All around him on all sides were more of the same type of creature’s that had just carried off Peter. Even now Sean could see one was injured with reddish blood splattered across its chitin.

  The lesser swarm retreated and Sean made his way to his feet as the floor squelched below him. He slowly turned in a circle as all of the creatures stood there silently and stared him down.

  “Malketh. Sean,” they all said at once in unison in their buzzing tones, “Missing One. You have returned to us once more. Yet of all those in the galaxy… You are the only ones that worked to stop it. To save the Connected One’s family back on Gaia. The mortals that tended to us from our humble origins as a simple ant colony. The Connected One cares for you. We feel her worry and concern for you even now. So we release you. Goodbye, Missing One. May you bring the Connected One joy as your time marches ever onward without end.”

  Before Sean could respond, the floor suddenly opened up beneath him and he fell downwards into the deep pit. He looked up into the circle of light above and saw the heads and bone halos of the creatures lining the edges of the pit and looking down as he fell.

  Sean hit the ground and was enveloped in something warm and gooey. He sank into its surface until he was fully submerged.

  All the rumbles and sounds of the larger ship disappeared after a few minutes and there was only the emptiness of space around them and the small sounds of the much smaller gooey ship around him.

  There was a high pitched hum from all sides and Sean frowned as he recognized the sound of a hyperspace engine. What was…

  Suddenly he was exposed to raw space. He looked around and saw that he was hovering in a field of inky blackness outlined by bright stars. There was a floating cloud of red blood floating around him lazily as he remained there.

  The Endless Flesh had let him go… And sent him out here through hyperspace even through the jammers so he and the ship would be scattered as particles across lightyears of the darkness of space far from Immortus Station’s star system.

  Sean just floated there for some time and calmed himself down from what had just happened.

  After he was fully calm, Sean scrunched his body into a ball and picked a random star in the sky. His body slowly started to pick up speed as his body spaceship started doing its work as it expelled gas from his regenerating body.

  It would take a while…

  Centuries or millennia maybe…

  But he’d make it back eventually.

  And that sure beat being captured by the Endless Flesh for eternity.