-----------------------------
If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
-------------------------------
"General… thousands of ours are dead. We have no communication with Bucephalo, Broken Crown, Iron Requiem, Silent Hammer, Red Minotaur, Ashwalker, Gorgon's Bite, Worn Titan, Black Aegis, and Dying Ember… none of them respond," the officer said, pale, covering a wound while blood dripped all over the floor.
"Have whoever can still move send support to the other ships. We need to stop the fission generators from—" I stopped when, from the command center, I saw one of the cruisers explode into a thousand pieces. "—from exploding."
"I'll inform the commanders," the comms officer said.
The chaos inside the cruiser was catastrophic. Crew ran everywhere, putting out fires and sealing hull breaches. With telekinesis, I moved debris aside and recovered several crushed bodies from that hell.
I heard rushed footsteps, and a thought hit me before the marine even opened his mouth.
"General, the Cerberus has a Zerg infection out of control. They need immediate assistance—many of the crew are already infested!" he shouted.
"What? Zerg infestation? How? Is the ship connected to Moebius protoss matrix nodes?" I asked.
"I don't know, general… they just need reinforcements to contain it."
I increased my pace and ran to the command dais.
"Cerberus, do you copy?" I said, grabbing the officer's radio.
"Loud and clear, general. We need reinforcements, the security forces are losing control and we can't access the armories; the infestation started in that sector," the commander answered, with awful noises behind him.
"Hold your ground. Do you have the Moebius matrix or do we need to send shuttlecraft?"
"We have it… hit them with everything… don't let them reach the research lab!" he yelled before the communication died.
"Shit…" I muttered, grabbing my C-10 rifle. "Activate the matrix. Alpha squad is with me."
I went straight to the transposition chamber. Ten Ghosts were already waiting. The pulse began.
Stolen protoss tech, adapted by Moebius. A perfect toy for moving troops as long as the ships were linked to the network.
"I've always hated this crap," I murmured as the light swallowed us on the way to the Cerberus.
We materialized in the Cerberus' transposition room, where a few scientists tried desperately to keep the system running.
"Kill anything with Zerg DNA," I ordered. The Ghosts cloaked and advanced down the corridors.
We found a group of marines entrenched behind barricades, surrounded by infested corpses scattered across the hall.
"Shit, I'm out of ammo!" one shouted.
The other activated the C-14 bayonet. "Then it'll be with a bayonet, because I'm not turning into one of those things!"
I uncloaked right between them.
Both screamed in terror.
"What happened here?" I asked, taking off my visor.
"How the hell would we know? The eggheads let their experiments loose," one said.
"All right… call the others. I'll clear the way to the armory."
Without delay, I started shooting infested heads.
"Please… kill me…" murmured an abomination that still retained a sliver of consciousness.
I blew his skull open with a single shot. Then I released my psionic power, feeding off the fires already consuming several sections of the cruiser to burn masses of infested as I moved forward.
"Hendrik," I heard one of my Ghosts on comms.
"We're engaging infested marines. They're about to break through our line."
"Depressurize the area and use shredder grenades. If they get through there, we lose the whole ship. I don't care if the hull gets trashed; we can't lose the crew," I ordered, pushing deeper inside.
Inside the lab where the infestation began, Zerg biomatter covered everything: organic tissue crawling over the floor, walls, and ceiling. The disaster's source was ahead: a Zerg Infestor had been trapped in the ship and got loose during the chaos of the explosions. It infected everyone working in the labs where they kept a virophage designed to produce the terran-mutating virus.
Well… almost everyone — a few scientists were locked in a safe module, shaking.
The Infestor spat a parasite straight at my face. I dodged it effortlessly and blew half its skull off with a C-10 shot.
It roared and spit corrosive bile, melting the metal beneath it instantly. I knew that filth burned through CMC armor like nothing, so I didn't let it touch me.
I grabbed a neosteel beam that had fallen from the ceiling and hurled it at the creature, pinning it to the ground, crushing it to paste. With the same beam, I tore the virophage apart, causing it to explode and spray its filth everywhere. I contained the spread with psionics to prevent further infections.
Minutes later, Camazot teams arrived, burning every trace of Zerg infestation as they advanced.
When they were done, the scientists finally came out.
I started reading minds. All I knew was that the Cerberus was a Moebius Foundation transport and research ship, but what I saw…
These people were sick.
They used women as test subjects: impregnating them, then infecting them to study the virus's progress. Some were already infested and then impregnated just to see how it affected terran DNA.
They also transported an absurd amount of Zerg biomatter in the cargo bays. Enough to hatch millions of larvae. Moebius wanted to study, control, or enslave the Zerg. Or all three.
"Thank you…" one of the scientists muttered, still pale.
"Fix this damned place and use the facilities for something useful. Not for playing doctor with a virus you idiots can't even understand," I said, staring without blinking.
"General…" I heard through comms. "We have contact with more ships. Many are fighting to stabilize their fusion cold-core generators before they explode."
I finally returned to the White Star. After hours of emergency work and two cruisers lost because their cold-fusion cores went critical, everything was back to normal — if you could call it "normal" when more than half the fleet was destroyed and the rest were just hollow shells floating in space with basic life-support.
Only a third of our ships were operational, and the crew losses were massive — almost a quarter dead across all disasters. We had nearly a million men aboard the battlecruisers, and losing a quarter left us nearly crippled, barely able to maneuver, much less fight.
Without a proper shipyard, and with who knows how many light-years between us and the nearest one, we were on the brink of total collapse.
When my focus shifted back to the void, I noticed a planet very close by. It wasn't in any of our charts, and our sensors were barely functioning—most of our electronics only worked by some divine miracle, since half the systems were destroyed. They held together more through the monumental effort of our engineers than actual engineering. We had to repair the ships before life support failed.
"Prepare a scientific squadron. We're going down to the surface. We need to see if it's habitable or if we can find minerals to repair the ships. Sitting here waiting is worse… and if anyone's following us, they'll be in worse shape than we are. We need repairs," I told the White Star crew, who were still in shock from everything.
Without much delay, we prepared five Medivacs and one Hercules to descend to the planet's surface, running field investigations while the White Star's sensors were being patched together.
"Check that your suits are fully pressurized—we don't know what the atmosphere is made of," one of the scientists said, double-checking the seals.
Without giving it much importance, we began our descent, looking for mineral outcrops or anything that could help us out of this shitty situation.
When we reached the surface, what we found left us completely speechless.
"Initial readings complete. We detect an atmosphere with significant carbon-based compounds: carbon dioxide, traces of carbon monoxide, and residual airborne hydrocarbons. This indicates active geochemical cycles and potentially biogenic processes.
"The composition matches autogenous photosynthesis and could, in principle, support human agriculture. With the current atmospheric pressure and stellar radiation, it is reasonable to assume this planet can sustain stable ecosystems and produce biomass… and oxygen levels are high enough to be breathable," one of the scientists reported after checking a mountain of instruments he'd set up.
"A habitable planet, from what I see. What are the odds of that?" I asked, scanning the terrain.
"Low… usually we find sterile rocks we need to terraform for our needs, so this is rare… general," replied one of the scientists, just as baffled.
"I think I saw something earlier, but I thought I was mistaken. We should check it out," I said as I walked toward the Medivac.
"What did you see?" one of the marines asked.
"Farmlands. Entire plains of them… I thought my senses were tricking me, because there's no reason for terran life to exist here. No expedition ever reached this far," I answered, still confused.
The scientists exchanged glances and we took off again. We flew north, and there it was—plain as day: endless fields of crops, massive prairies stretching to the horizon, rivers cutting across the land…
But we found no terran structures. None of the usual metal-framed, automated farming domes. No drones. No irrigation towers. Just wooden houses.
That shocked us even more. Even the earliest terran expeditions never used wood. Wood is a luxury item, rare and expensive. If terrans ever found an entire forest, they'd sell it immediately and build with metal—ten times cheaper.
So aside from the existence of life, nothing matched terran civilization.
That meant one thing: this was a society that had evolved outside terran norms.
So I decided to infiltrate the society ahead of us and see what I could learn.
I walked cloaked through the empty farmlands. They were cultivating a kind of grain I didn't recognize. As I got closer, I noticed people—humans. Terran-like humans.
There was a slim chance they were descendants of ancient Earth exiles, not part of the expeditions that became the Terran factions.
As I approached, one thing stood out: they were starving. Skin stuck to bone, nearly no fat reserves, weakened bodies. This wasn't mutation or environmental adaptation. This was hunger. Chronic hunger.
Everything pointed to a feudal—or semi-feudal—structure. They moved and worked like serfs. Another shock: massive technological regression. Modern terran agriculture uses AI, drones, automated systems. You only need botanists and engineers.
But here… hundreds of people working the land by hand.
This was a backward world. Ridiculously backward.
I started reading minds. What I caught was miserable: pain, exhaustion, resentment, hunger…
But still they worked for their "feudal lord." They wanted him dead—many pictured it in their minds—but they couldn't do anything.
Because their lord had some kind of giant combat walker at his disposal…
"This is strange… such a primitive society possessing what looks like a THOR… did someone play god here? Maybe they hoarded all the tech for themselves and denied it to everyone else. It's possible," I muttered while moving between the crowds.
I didn't take long to see it: the giant walker was marching down a dirt path while thousands of people watched. It headed toward a nearby forest. The machine had something like a chainsaw mounted on one arm.
A work robot? A chainsaw isn't a military weapon—unless whoever uses it is insane. If they had such a machine, they could've mounted laser batteries or anything else. But no. A chainsaw.
As I moved through the crowd of serfs, preparing to withdraw, I heard a mental whisper. A voice promising impossible pleasures, tainted, venomous. I located the source: an aberration hiding among the people, cloaked in rags, visibly deformed.
I acted without thinking, pure instinct. I channeled my psionic energy into my fingertips and fired a psionic bolt straight at it. The creature died instantly… and five serfs standing near it collapsed dead as well.
"No… no… no… Warhammer 40K…" I whispered to myself as I grabbed one of the bodies and sprinted back toward where our ships had landed.
"I'm screwed… I'm so screwed… we are screwed… I should've stayed behind and died…" I muttered while accelerating, moving faster than any normal human.
-----------------------------
If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
-------------------------------