He didn't know where he was at first—only that his body ached, every joint pulsed with heat, and his skin felt like it had been peeled and rewrapped wrong. His head lolled to the side as blurred shapes passed him by in muffled silence.

He felt a powerful grip around his body as he was lifted and carried away. Forcing his eyes to focus, he saw it was a single BCU hauling him down a long, grey corridor.

He blinked once then twice.

His HUD was dead. His helmet was gone.

His name was CT-6691. He remembered that much.

…Flat plain… pushing toward the outpost…

Yes. That was it he remembered.

They had been advancing across the lunar basin—a great ash-coloured stretch of crater. His brothers moved beside him, step after step, BCU in tow leading the charge.

White-armoured forms surged forward toward an enemy-held mine carved into the edge of a small crater. They'd been so close. So damn close.

Then came the flash.

Not a regular explosion, but something brighter, wider. A wave of light and heat and distortion.

Crack of static… someone's voice… CT-9904? Something about the moon… too late… pull back…

Then nothing.

The shockwave slammed into him like a wall, lifting his body and flinging it like a doll. He'd hit the ground hard. His visor cracked. Something in his leg popped. He saw others—clones—flung into the air or collapsing. Some didn't get up. BCUs halted mid-run, twitching erratically before turning back.

He had heard something on the comms, distorted and slow. The BCU stopped the advance. One of them had scooped him off the ground like a broken tool.

Now, he was being carried down a long, grey corridor coated in what looked like resinous growth. It pulsated faintly under the light it produced, he hated how everything was alive around him, more clones were being dragged—some groaning, some limp.

Their armour hung broken, the white scorched black. Some still had helmets on most didn't.

All their gear was stripped off, he saw piles of it—discarded clone armour, stacked like waste. Burned plates, shattered chest pieces his vision focused on one helmet with a cracked visor with blood leaking out from the inside.

CT-3328—was being hauled beside him. His face was pale, his eyes shut. A line of black streaked up his neck, the hair fell away away showing veins cooked by radiation.

His stomach turned.

He was dying. He could feel it. Nausea. The heat behind his eyes. His fingers burned at the tips, and when he tried to curl them, they didn't move right.

The corridor widened into a vast cavern— and he felt like vomiting seeing the massive organ in the centre, pulsing under the unnatural light.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

And then he saw them.

Hundreds of thousands of pods. They were transparent and pulsing. Some are already filled with clone bodies. Others were still empty, their strange tendrils swaying in anticipation.

A new BCU variant he'd never seen before moved around the chamber in the hundreds. Its carapace was a vivid, almost luminous red. The upper body bore the standard four arms, but two long eyestalks protruded from its head, scanning without pause.

Its lower half was supported by six insect-like legs, and from its back extended multiple tendrils that writhed and worked in silence—gently placing clone after clone into the open pods like a ritual it had performed a thousand times.

His turn came quickly.

The BCU lifted him, ignoring his weak protests. It stripped his armour with methodical precision, piece by piece until he was naked. The air was cold against his burnt skin and fur he felt its tendrils prick his arms and he felt the relief.

He was laid into one of the pods. Tendrils coiled around his wrists, ankles, and neck—not tight, but secure the pod closed with a soft hiss.

A blue liquid began to fill the pod. He panicked at first, tried to thrash—but his body was too weak to move and the pain though reduced was there.

The fluid rose to his nose and mouth, and he instinctively held his breath, muscles tense with panic. He kept it in as long as he could—until his lungs burned and his vision blurred. At last, he gasped. The liquid flooded in… but it didn't drown him.

It was breathable.

His thoughts began to scatter. Like leaves in a storm whatever drugs it had given him took effect.

CT-9904… was he alive? CT-5572? 4827? That thief who tried to steal his alcohol rations?

He tried to hold on—tried to remember their names. Faces blurred. Voices echoed in static.

…CT-6691, report…

…Sector Four collapsing… massive explosion…

…where pulling back… wait… WAIT—

Darkness began to press in, he felt warm and cold at the same time. He felt something tap into his mind feeding him probing and feeding him calming words, who survived he asked the voice.

Who survived?

That was his last thought before his mind slipped fully into the dark.

Who survived?

Tell me please who survived!

———

Seer walked through the next cavern, his boots crunching softly on the resin-coated floor. The dim overhead lights cast long shadows along the tunnel walls, illuminating the grim sight before him—more of his brothers being dragged in, broken, burned, and dead.

The air reeked of scorched flesh and chemicals, and as he passed a side tunnel, he noticed several BCUs carefully stripping armour from damaged clones.

The discarded gear was tossed into a growing pile at the foot of the tunnel wall, like discarded shells of once-living beings.

Beside him walked Trumek, his ever-silent companion, whose calm presence had become a kind of anchor amid the chaos.

They didn't speak until they reached the next chamber, a wide space where dozens of pods lined the walls, glowing faintly with eerie light. More clones were being ushered inside by BCUs.

The deeper they went, the more grim the scenes became. Seer's jaw tightened. Some clones showed signs of severe radiation burns—open sores, peeling skin, and the unmistakable pale shimmer of rad exposure. He turned his head to Trumek, his voice low.

"How many are capable of surviving your treatment?"

"All of them," Trumek replied, his voice calm and clinical. "But it will take time. Their bodies can be repaired. What I cannot fix are the mental scars—at least, not without breaking them completely. There are limits to what even my vast consciousness can do."

Seer nodded silently, absorbing the weight of that truth as they ascended a sloped passage leading toward the upper levels of the labyrinth of tunnels.

The deeper they had gone, the more despair had soaked into him. Too many wounded. Too few resources. And above them, the war raged on without mercy.

As they neared the command wing, Seer turned his head slightly. "With the way things are going, I don't see us winning this."

They stepped into the command wing—an angular chamber reinforced by thick slabs of dark grey resin. Screens lined the walls, flickering with data, scans, and reports.

Clones sat at their stations in silence, talking in short bursts, low tones. The atmosphere was heavy—anger simmered just beneath the surface, mixed with the weight of collective grief.

"No," Trumek said finally. "Not really. This was more suicidal than I expected. The surface of Phaedra is a graveyard now. We can't even travel freely any more. Imreth is burning again—it'll take centuries to clean the radiation from that."

Trumek approached a wide display and brought up a holographic model of the solar system. It spun slowly, red markers blinking across nearly every planet.

"Imreth, Phaedra, Ivinal, Kordar... and Morrath. They're all irradiated wastelands now. Every surface facility was detonated. The enemy launched nuclear strikes from orbit, they sent ships diving into atmospheres just to detonate their cores."

He turned to the others in the room—technicians, scouts, and commanders, all listening. "Veridia is the only one left intact. For now. It's surrounded by enemy vessels, but no strikes have landed yet. As for the Hydrarchs... they're all dead."

Seer exhaled slowly, a bitter edge to his voice. "Then it's a losing war. Our numbers are down. Our equipment's irradiated, broken, or lost. Communication with other detachments is intermittent at best."

"True," Trumek agreed. "I've had to pull entire fleets out of sectors of the asteroid belts just to keep a foothold in key locations. And with the enemy treating every ship as a bomb, I've had to spread my forces thin—too thin."

Seer gave a dry, almost humourless chuckle. "Only the mind of Aegirarch could birth a scenario this insane. But why haven't they hit Veridia yet?"

Trumek turned back to the console. "They will. I'm planning to send in a few ships—modified, and hardened against radiation and impact. They'll breach the surface and plant multiple bases."

Seer frowned. "That's a suicide run. He'll be expecting that."

"I know," Trumek said. "But it's the only option left. If we do nothing, we lose everything. With enough drones and biomass, a few ships might break through and establish a foothold and dig in. Otherwise, it's over, and his reinforcements arrive."

There was a long silence between them, the quiet humming of machines filling the void. Seer looked once more at the blinking dots across the system.

"Well do your best," he said. "If it fails, we'll adapt. If it works… maybe, you get a chance to break his mind."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.