Xhollin (The Season of Sustenance)

  Day 261

  1 A.E.

  440 days since my arrival

  I moved deeper into the labyrinthine tunnels, passing through a series of reinforced membrane barriers that sealed shut behind me. The stale, recycled air of the outer corridors gave way to the controlled atmosphere of my latest project.

  The ground beneath me shifted from the reinforced hallways of the biomorph to the raw stone of the moon’s interior.

  Bioluminescent growths lined the ceiling, pulsing in rhythmic patterns that mirrored the accelerated growth of the biomorph reinforcing the sealing, casting the space in an eerie, organic glow. The scent of metal, lubricant, and controlled decay lingered in the air.

  Within this chamber, my agents, and clones worked tirelessly. Hundreds of burrowers scuttled across the floor, transporting raw materials, while towering assembly constructs pieced together the skeletal frameworks of my next project.

  The captured enemy forges roared, their flames smelting and refining all the ore I could mine. Mass printers hummed, extruding intricate components at an industrial pace, each piece slotting seamlessly into the metal frameworks.

  The war on the surface raged on, but the last few battles made one truth painfully clear. I could win, but only after a long and gruelling campaign. That was unacceptable.

  The vast eastern plains were falling into my grasp, albeit slowly. My forces were methodically encircling enemy facilities, factories, and mines, cutting off their supply chains piece by piece.

  However, just as victory seemed within reach, the enemy changed their strategy. They abandoned defence in favour of a scorched-earth policy.

  Their retreating ships returned, not to reinforce, but to obliterate. They carpet-bombed the terrain with such relentless firepower that neither my forces nor theirs could hold ground.

  The once-prized industrial hubs and mineral-rich sites turned into molten craters. The war had entered a new phase where their goal was not to win, but to deny me victory at all costs.

  The shift wasn’t just in firepower, it was in manpower. The clone forces on the moon, once precise and controlled, were now receiving fewer direct orders. Instead, cheaper, more expendable war machines took their place.

  And the clones that remained were different.

  No longer executing careful manoeuvres, they were now thrown into battles with no regard for survival. Wave tactics. Suicide charges.

  Tactics I had used before when the numbers made sense. But here, they were reckless, wasteful. Thousands of clones are discarded like broken tools in meaningless engagements.

  Something had changed within the enemy's command.

  A few of my agents confirmed what I suspected certain clone units had begun isolating themselves, deserting the larger forces. Their command structure had shifted.

  Someone new was in charge. Someone who valued brute force over strategy. Likewise, someone who believed sheer overwhelming power could crush me into submission.

  And it was working.

  The northern front had gone silent. I had only two bases left there, both operating under strict expansion orders, digging deeper into the moon’s core. The east had suffered heavy losses, eight out of twenty-one bases had been lost, forcing a tactical withdrawal.

  The west fared little better, reduced to six bases, all of which had been forced underground, launching only small-scale incursions.

  The South, however, remained mine. Enemy ships maintained their barrage, firing at phantom targets.

  The battle had devolved into a missile duel endless waves of projectiles fired and intercepted, neither side willing to commit ground forces.

  I needed this war to end.

  And there was only one way to do it.

  If they wanted to deny me victory, I would deny them the moon itself.

  Every Nullite deposit, every valuable mineral vein, and every strategic resource would all be rendered useless.

  That was why acquiring technical data on their forges and industrial 3D printers was necessary. The pieces were already falling into place. I was building what I required.

  Nuclear weapons.

  Nuclear fusion drives.

  The enemy's brute-force strategy gave me an advantage they hadn’t considered time. Their blind aggression meant more resources funnelled to my growth pods, and more material repurposed into missile stockpiles.

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  My fleet would be reconfigured, and upgraded with nuclear capabilities, allowing for precise, overwhelming retaliation.

  But nuclear warfare required control and precision. That meant solving the cybernetic interface issue. Each warship required new systems to regulate and deploy fusion cores safely. Implants would be necessary as a workaround to bypass the limitations of standard command structures.

  A fortunate discovery accelerated my plans. In the southeastern sector of my controlled territory, my mining operations uncovered veins of uranium. A perfect fuel source. With proper refinement, I could accelerate my nuclear program significantly.

  With this, I had options.

  A single mosquito drone, carrying a nuclear payload, could slip into an enemy swarm undetected. One explosion could cripple an entire facility chain, leaving entire sectors uninhabitable.

  Alternatively, I could deploy Star Lance missiles redesigned with nuclear warheads capable of delivering devastation in rapid succession. Perhaps even a new variant, one carrying multiple warheads, spreading destruction across an entire region in mere seconds.

  And with ships upgraded with fusion cores, my reach extended far beyond this moon.

  A ground invasion of Imreth was no longer impossible. Even Ivinal, the frozen moon could fall. Perhaps, with the right sequence of strikes, I could push beyond even those.

  All the way to Veridia the Valurian home world.

  So many paths forward. So many choices.

  It all depended on how the next few seasons unfolded.

  There was one undeniable benefit to all of this.

  I moved through the production facility, watching as cybernetic implants identical to my own were manufactured in increasing numbers. Soon, every clone under my command would have one.

  The sheer scale of what I had access to still astounded me. Over a few millenniums of Valurian research, technology, and knowledge lay before me, a vast archive of untapped potential.

  With my expanding network, I could create a closed-loop system, a controlled data sphere where I alone decided what was absorbed, what was filtered, and what was weaponized.

  One of my greatest limitations had always been my mind. Not intelligence, no, I had that in abundance, but capacity. Unlike the other etheric users, I couldn’t meditate to refine my thoughts or expand my consciousness in the way they did. My mind remained shackled to its natural constraints, unable to breach the barriers.

  But I had an alternative.

  Knowledge. Pure, unfiltered, relentless absorption of information.

  It didn’t matter what the subject was history, strategy, engineering, or the nuances of enemy tactics. Every fragment of data accelerated my growth. I could feel it even now, coursing through me like a wildfire as my clones remained linked to the network, their experiences feeding into my own.

  I wasn’t just learning. I was evolving.

  The implant had become more than just an interface it was my gateway to something greater. Every moment spent connected, every second absorbing raw data, brought me closer to a state of understanding that no ordinary mind could achieve.

  My thoughts processed information at speeds that would have shattered a lesser mind, weaving countless insights together into a tapestry of knowledge.

  But it still wasn’t enough.

  I needed more. Much more.

  The only other viable option was Grithan prisoners. If I wanted to disable their ships efficiently, I needed a faster, more reliable method, one that ensured a successful boarding operation before the crew could react.

  Simply breaching their hull wasn’t enough. Even if my forces punched through their defences, the Grithan captains still held direct access to their ship’s core, meaning they could initiate failsafe, overload the reactors, or purge critical systems before I could seize control. A desperate enemy was the most dangerous kind.

  I had other options.

  A hardened breaching pod, for instance—one designed to pierce directly into their most vital compartments, where command and control systems were housed. If I could deploy teams straight into their nerve centres, I could sever their ability to fight before they even understood what was happening.

  But the risks were still too high. A captain’s last command could turn the ship into a funeral pyre, taking my forces down with it.

  I needed a better solution.

  Something precise.