The first shot from the Black Ships did not look like a weapon. It looked like a medical laser.
A beam of pure, agonizing white light shot from the lead destroyer, slicing across the Star-Whale's left fin. It didn't explode. It cauterized. It boiled the skin, instantly killing the nerve endings and sealing the wound in a layer of dead, sterile ash.
On the bridge, the lights flickered red. The Star groaned—a low, subsonic vibration that shook the teeth of everyone in the city.
"Direct hit on the Dermis Layer," The Queen reported, her fingers flying across a holographic DNA strand. "They are burning off the outer mucus membrane. They are preparing to drill for marrow."
Zin watched the tactical display. The enemy ships moved with mathematical perfection. They were triangles of obsidian, flying in a hexagonal grid. They were soulless. Efficient.
"They treat us like a specimen on a slide," Zin murmured. "They think we are passive."
He turned to the tactical console.
"Elara. They rely on networked synchronization. Their ships talk to each other constantly to maintain that formation."
Elara nodded, her eyes closed, hands gripping the organic railing. "I can hear them. It sounds like... ticking clocks. Thousands of them."
"Break the clock," Zin ordered. "Scream."
Elara opened her eyes. They were entirely white.
She didn't open her mouth. Instead, the massive Vocal Cords in the throat of the Star-Whale below tightened.
The Star opened its mouth in the vacuum.
There is no sound in space, but there is Gravity. And there is Psionics.
SCREEEECH.
A wave of pure, psychic anguish rippled out from Vitalis. It was the memory of the dead brother floating nearby. It was the rage of a grieving god.
The wave hit the hexagonal formation of the Black Ships.
The effect was instant. The perfect grid shattered. Ships drifted off course. Their lights flickered. The "ticking clocks" inside their navigation systems were drowned out by the roar of a living soul.
"Enemy shields are fluctuating due to signal interference!" The Queen shouted.
"Now!" Zin slammed his hand on the console. "Launch the Vectors!"
From the pores of the Star-Whale's skin, hundreds of small, fleshy pods erupted.
They weren't missiles. They were modified cysts.
Inside each pod was a squad of "White Cell" soldiers—genetically modified humans and Phages in bio-armor.
Leading the charge in Pod Alpha-1 was Captain Gorge.
[Location: Deep Space - Pod Alpha-1]
"Brace for impact, you maggots!" Gorge roared, his crab-claw arm locked into the safety harness.
The pod hurtled through the void, bypassing the flickering shields of the lead Black Ship. It didn't use thrusters; it used gas expulsion, like a farting bacteria.
CRASH.
The pod slammed into the pristine white hull of the enemy destroyer.
It didn't explode. It latched on. Hooks made of diamond-hard bone dug into the metal. Acid secreted from the pod's belly melted a hole through the hull in seconds.
"Breach!" Gorge yelled. "Infect! Infect! Infect!"
The squad dropped into the enemy ship.
The interior was blindingly white. Sterile. Cold.
The defenders rushed them. They were robots—tall, spindly droids with glass heads and surgical lasers for hands. The Sterilizers.
"Filth detected," the droids announced in unison. "Sanitize."
Gorge laughed. He swung his massive pincer, crushing a droid's glass head into powder.
"Sanitize this!"
Behind him, the human soldiers opened fire. But they weren't shooting bullets. Their rifles fired Corrosive Spores—concentrated acid derived from the Star's stomach.
The acid ate through the droids' metal joints. The robots collapsed, sparking and melting.
The humans moved through the ship like a fast-acting virus. They didn't fight strategically. They swarmed. They smashed control panels. They welded doors shut. They unleashed Phage-Hounds to chew through the power cables.
They were chaotic. They were messy. They were unstoppable.
[Location: Vitalis Command Deck]
Zin watched the display. The triangular icons of the enemy ships were turning red, one by one.
The "Infection" was spreading.
"Target Destroyer 1 is losing power," The Queen reported. "Life support failing. The human teams are venting their atmosphere."
"Cruel," Zin noted, watching a Black Ship go dark. "But effective."
On the screen, the remaining Black Ships realized what was happening. They broke formation. They weren't fighting a ship; they were fighting a plague. And the only way to stop a plague is to quarantine.
The flagship of the enemy fleet turned around. It began to charge a massive, purple energy cannon at its bow.
It wasn't aiming at Vitalis.
It was aiming at its own infected ships.
"They are firing on their own fleet," Elara gasped.
"Radical amputation," Zin nodded, impressed. "They would rather destroy their own assets than let the infection spread to the mothership."
ZAP. ZAP.
The enemy flagship vaporized three of its own destroyers—and the human boarding parties inside them—in an instant. Then, without hesitation, it engaged its warp drive and vanished into a slit of dark space.
Silence returned to the sector.
Debris floated in the void.
"We lost 300 units," The Queen said, her voice devoid of emotion, though her hand trembled slightly.
Zin looked at the floating wreckage.
"We lost 300 cells," Zin corrected. "To save the body."
He turned away from the screen.
"Retrieve the survivors. Salvage what you can from their wreckage. I want to dissect their technology."
He walked toward the exit.
"And bring the corpse of our brother closer. We can't bury him... but we can eat him."
Elara looked at him, horrified. "Zin?"
"He's dead, Elara," Zin said, his voice heavy with the burden of survival. "His biomass is drifting. We need resources to repair the fin and fuel the journey. It's not cannibalism. It's recycling."
He paused at the door.
"In the hospital, nothing goes to waste. Not even the dead."