Amon was up a level, near the front end of the Dreadnaught, where a corridor with triple-reinforced glass allowed for an unimpeded view of their approach to the SFC main hub.

  Point C3XSFCMH was a bright speck in the endless void.

  As per usual, the corridor was packed with marines gazing over our destination. There was a quiet hum of conversation among the personnel. It had been a while for all of them inside the suffocating metallic walls of the Dreadnaught and being let out of the battleship sounded rather good by this point.

  They approached slowly, decreasing speed even as the SFC hub's size increased to dominate the viewing window. It was an awe-inspiring colossal sight.

  Close to a hundred thousand souls considered C3XSFCMH their home; some had been born there, in the dark quietness of open space, and had never known life outside of it. Amon didn't envy them no matter how pretty the sight he was seeing might be.

  The hub was shaped like a hollow ring with residential and industrial facilities placed on the inside. An AMAF ran along the ground floor providing a comfortable atmosphere for about 20 meters up all around the inner ring, and a clear-sighted blueish shielding membrane protecting the open atmosphere from any space debris. For any bigger targets, turrets were installed at set intervals that could pulverize the offending spacegarbage to dust without issue.

  From the eyes of anyone standing on the soft ground found in places on the inner side of the ring, the unending darkness of the universe with the lights of a trillion stars was only separated by the looping hub folding around itself. Looking straight up at the life of your neighbors brought hours of entertainment and a stiff neck. He spoke from experience.

  When the Dreadnought passed through several smaller battleships on patrol they were close enough for Amon to zoom in through his optics.

  He could see cattle grazing on green fields, organized lines of trees, and people laboring in one of the oldest professions throughout human history.

  Farming would never disappear as long as hunger existed. The hub was a port facility as much as a production hub. It was self-sustaining except for mining ores. It sourced any earth-bound materials by salvaging meteorites, apart from importing specific substances from nearby colonies.

  The thing was, Amon didn't see much of the produce the hub produced. After being processed and fitted in a mealbar little would be left to resemble its fresh and tasty origin.

  But with their return to the main hub, a feast with real food would commemorate their success. It was even more important for personnel morale than a boost in pay and an event everyone was eager to sit through.

  After all, he couldn't buy the real thing with credits. Not any of the Marines anyway.

  He tried to ignore the tall walls that separated each section of the inner ring but the contrast was so stark it was difficult not to see them. Amon saw the villas and the gardens, and when they ended at a wall, gray metallic buildings emerged on the other side that broke up the pleasantly green landscape.

  One of them was the company's barracks, Block F567, located at the center of several other facilities.

  Momentarily Amon felt a hint of anger, and imagined flames consuming the whole thing but it was a stray thought, not something he wished for. The hub was also home to the families of his comrades, those who had any either way.

  On the outside of the ring, located upon long platforms, shipyards and docking stations busied themselves with the numerous ships that came and went. The heart of the SFC was filled with activity and the dreadnought snaked through it to reach the platform and disembark.

  It had been a long trip, almost 4 months since the day they left. Amon could see the eagerness in the eyes surrounding him. A week-long vacation started today.

  —-

  Somewhere in D9L

  Unseen, skulking between star systems, a Light-Starcruiser hid from an Overlord swarm. It did not have the weapons to face even one from the hundreds, maybe thousands of the harrowing monsters that happened to be migrating simultaneously as the vessel tried to cross through the L system neighborhood of Derkal Galaxy.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The captain had a magnified image of one of the spacefaring beasts on the screens as the crew of 20 discussed countermeasures to their misfortune.

  The Overlord, an amorphous blob of chitin-like flesh armor with several slenderly extending tentacles was ejecting a cloud of puss in consecutive puffs. The well-named gonorrheal glands produced a highly toxic antimaterial substance that would stick to and corrode anything it came into contact with. In especially unlucky cases, in the mix of the gaseous puss, Overlord eggs would be left behind to incubate inside the broken-down matter. Not one living soul wanted to be anywhere near the hyper-aggressive brood, come hatching time.

  The captain looked horrified as the puss clouds gradually blocked the way forward, and knew that any rush movement from the Light-Starcruiser would end them up in a merry chase that the vessel was not so certain to outrun now that it had paused its momentum and throttled down its engines to avoid getting spotted.

  “They are headed for Cerebrus Galaxy… should we inform house Arthas?” One of the crew members pointed out when the mainframe calculated the most probable swarm migration route.

  “And let them know we are basically at their doorstep?” The captain growled back. “Not a fat chance of that.”

  “We can beep a packet signal their way and skedaddle outa here...” The bridge officer offered.

  “Silence!” The captain ordered. “We won’t be sending anything the dominion’s way. Now plan me a route out of this mess and fast!”

  —-

  C3XSFCMH

  The slight and constant breeze that cycled along the hub’s artificial atmosphere was a welcoming change to the dry metallic sting of the Dreadnought's ventilation system.

  It was comfortable enough to wear a light uniform, grey and black, in the typical colors of the SFC Marines, much different from the colorful red white, and black of House Arthas.

  Tommy sat hunched in concentration on a plastic chair outside the F567 barracks, placing his chess pieces with short agitated movements to defend in reply to Amon’s overextending attack. His pieces outnumber Amon’s almost two to one, but that was not a concern for his strategy.

  The difference between a game and real life. In a quick combination of the knight and queen, Amon had his king trapped. No matter how much material Tommy had on the board, his king fell to the ground and Amon kept his undefeated streak alive.

  “Why am I playing you?” Tommy asked, rubbing at his eyes with his fingers. “I thought, I had you this time, but it was all a trick, right?”

  He wasn’t a bad player, and to feel the challenge Amon had given himself several handicaps. “Another one?” Amon asked, wearing the winner’s smile bright on his face.

  “Maybe later,” Tommy grumbled and threw his head backward to gaze up at the open universe. A shuttle hummed overhead, its neon-white thrusters keeping it at the edge of the artificial atmosphere of the inner ring, just below the membrane shields, sending a light buzz of sound their way.

  It had been two blissful carefree days since they had arrived, and Amon was guilty of spending them carelessly. The mood playing out around them was similar, with tables set up in the courtyard in front of the barracks and Marines leisurely enjoying the downtime releasing the accumulated stress.

  Suddenly out of nowhere, the alarm of the barracks behind them blasted a high monotonous pitch. Amon jerked his head around alarmed as he was momentarily reminded of a familiar memory from the past. A bulkcarrier punching a platform to bits sending bodies flying flashed before his eyes. He shook his head to clear the memory from his thoughts and listened attentively to the speaker’s announcement.

  *Prepare for battle. All SFC Marines are to proceed geared up to docking platform 44A and await further instructions.*

  They rushed to get up. Inside the barracks, chaos reigned as marines dashed to put on their biosuits and check their weapons. Gear and materials littered the sidewalks of each bunk, impeding the flow of foot traffic.

  An emergency alarm in the SFC base of operations was not something that just happened. It was a situation that brought forth a familiar dread that had been buried deep inside Amon.

  No one knew what was going on and the combat personnel shouted between themselves for any kind of hint. With the biosuit on and his masked helmet tucked under one arm, Amon frantically searched among the servers for a clue.

  What he found made him pause and curse under his breath. A distress signal had just arrived with imagery attached. He saw a massive yellow cloud of monsters and tentacles chasing a hurrying ship. The moment Amon saw the still image he knew what they were facing.

  It was difficult to count how many Overlords might be hidden behind the gasses, but he tried to calculate it nevertheless by combining the distance from the ship, the size of the toxic clouds, and the relative puss production of each Overlord. He also compensated for the fact that only the head of the swarm could be seen in the images.

  Amon got a number that was definitely wrong, or he wanted it to be, otherwise, a lot of people would die.

  Now that he knew what he was up against he could prepare better even with the terror-infused tremble creeping along his limbs. Amon returned to his storage crate by his bunk and dumped several weapons he wouldn't need for the upcoming mission. Having custom-made gear gave him a number of options.

  Instead of the miniscout drones and the standard blaster, he took his secondary armor-piercing rifle with the new metagrenade launcher.

  With it, he stocked enough ammo in the backstorage compartment of the biosuit to bankrupt himself, but that was a problem for tomorrow. Since his tech and ammo were mostly his own the SFC wouldn’t be replacing any. He had 16 inactive modified metapheres in their casings ready to be deployed.

  It was the only thing at the top of his head that was fairly certain would do damage to pause an Overlord onslaught.

  And Amon knew exactly how to fight these monsters even if he had never been forced against one. The funny thing about memory-sharing no matter how much he detested it, was that it was a good damn training technique.

  He had relived several battles with Overlords if only to sate his curiosity. Some had been simple hunts, while others were proper engagements against Overlord swarms. Few had ended with the complete and utter annihilation of a fleet, and the first thing Amon acknowledged from each shared memory was that the monster’s name was well deserved.

  These aliens packed a punch. The adults reached easily 50 meters in length without counting the numerous extending tentacles that could wrap and strangle everything around them. Worse for wear, they were encased in living armor resistant to extreme heat/freezing temperatures durable even against penetration.

  In space, they moved freely, changing directions with puffs of the toxic puss that no one wanted to be anywhere near. If they happened to reach a vessel, no matter its shielding, they would eat through it in less than an hour, which happened easier than people might think.

  Spaceships more often than not had a forward-focused acceleration with secondary course correctors for slight adjustments. An enemy that could kite missiles and withstand heat lasers could close the distance surprisingly fast.

  There was a single strategy for dealing with these spacefaring monsters when faced against a swarm, and it was to bait the whole lot of them to a kill zone and pray you had enough firepower.

  With the size of the swarm presented in the images, Amon doubted they had enough weapons stored in the SFC hub to cull their numbers.

  Given that, a number of their technologies were simply useless against them, he was rightfully anxious about what they were about to face. Showering them in radiation has been proven to moisturize their outer armor, as is the case with the majority of spacefaring alien monsters, radiation was what they fed on during the long travel distances between systems.

  On platform 44A their Dreadnought with its hatches open accepted a continuous flow of cargo and Marines. As soon as their company of 100 arrived from Block F567 in a tight line, they got the orders to embark.

  The Ortheon II was soon ready for lift-off.