Annihilation of the goblins of the Proxima system was complete and merciless. They were of no use alive, and would still be annoying even when dead.

However... their ships and stations represented a lot of infrastructure and raw materials that was very useful once melted down, purified, and repurposed. The first purposed fabber-ship Zerg hove into the Proxima system with the Solar Furnace ship the Big Mouth, pumping out production modules that would make more production modules that would begin making all the component materials needed to establish factories and production lines here... starting with local defense systems, of course.

Within a month, the burning wreckage of the goblin ships and settlements was quiet, and wreckage was being fed into the Big Mouth for reformation and repurposing, hundreds of tons rapidly becoming thousands, tens of thousands, and increasing every day as the fabber ship Zerg took the raw materials and turned them into production systems.

The Ranthas had formed their own first exclusive off-world production facility, and it was roaring to life. Given it was being used almost exclusively to make GAMT-class vehicles, most of the open production on Janus was returned to servicing and producing GAMT and AMT materials for sale to support the wages of those doing the heavy work. Out-system traffic increased quickly as the upgrading of the home system fleet ‘trailed off’ and more of the much-desired tech was made available for other Imperial ships and interested parties.

Mundane munitions were also shipped out as the home system was resupplied. The ship production which had been drawing attention from higher up in the hierarchy trailed off, although much more limited production for the specific needs of the Coronals, Umbrans, and the local Thunder Bulls continued unimpeded.

Of the Harmonic and Tachyon Drives, no word yet had escaped from the system by human hands. Their crews were all Marked, and let nothing slip concerning them whatsoever. Even the Umbrans and Coronals of Janus said nothing, knowing that if such technology was revealed, they would probably not survive the fallout that would come after it.

Their only choice was to build, build, and build, until they could face down the reaction from those who didn’t want humanity to have such toys... and those humans who didn’t want anyone but themselves to command such technology, which was probably the worse threat.

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Clearing the nearby systems of their alien inhabitants proceeded apace. Psychic and EM jammer buoys were quietly dispersed by the stealth ships lurking in the systems, ensuring that no communication with other systems happened. The attacks were carried out mercilessly and methodically, not using quite the same battleplan twice, as the massive goblin akasha might instinctively react to similar situations and warn the goblins of what was happening, and figure out a feasible way to resist.

One attack did its work using thousands of torpedoes guided by carrier ships, crippling the entire system in less than an hour of anti-matter and fusion explosions. One system with an active agri-world worked by human slave labor had its command facilities infiltrated by strike teams, taken over smoothly, and every major camp and city on the planet was assaulted by ground attacks to blood the infantry forces on goblins.

Stealth teams using teleportation insertion were coordinated in a third system, blowing power cores of the major defense installations across the system and rendering them vulnerable to the Fleet pouncing on them afterwards.

The fourth system had the fleet hiding inside a comet burning its way towards the center of the system, its course altered to take it close to the major planets. When the ships emerged from the comet and blew it onto a course that plunged it directly onto their major Big Rock to the excitement of all concerned, the goblins didn’t react with any more discipline than they had in most of the other cases.

The fifth system was basically full of asteroids and rubble, shattered planets and debris fields. Goblin pirates had a dozen bases spread throughout the place, stopping there between raids on different systems, and the places had literally thousands of different goblin settlements on tiny worlds and rocks floating through the void, spreading through the asteroids like green, black, and yellow mold.

It was a place made for light ships and starfighters. After identifying the major bases, those were annihilated in the first strike wave, and new squadrons of MF-class Gunboats, H-Class bombers and Crescent-class starfighters were deployed for the first time. The whole system erupted in crazy dogfights as the many, many goblin clans sent out wave after wave of fighters, flitters, mining ships, and haulers to bedevil their enemies.

The sixth system somehow found out they were coming, but that didn’t surprise them, as the stealth ships noticed they were making urgent preparations to fight. Guesses were that some sort of psychic communication had been interrupted mid-way, and then attempts to communicate with other systems had failed, or perhaps an unseen pirate managed to enter one of the other ravaged systems and escaped to spread the news.

Sabot charges placed long, long ago and built over in the traditional Goblin manner went off, and their fortresses went down and dark just as the System Fleet came pouring in to practice pounding them down. The system became a classic Goblin/Human brawl of ships and styles, with the goblins frequently wondering just how the humans seemed to coordinate so wonderfully and have such accurate knowledge of their ships and positions. All their major assets were taking off-line explosively, and the massive Motherships beloved of the hobgoblins and the H-K’s of the urgobs never really got to show their stuff before being dealt with by either internal raids of surprising lethality or ambush attacks out of the void.

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“Cellulocusts.”

Splotches and blots spread across the system readings before them. Sixteen moon-sized motherplants, silently soaking up the sunlight, growing more lesser vessels like buds on their gargantuan masses, which remained attached to them like limitless leaves on trees.

The plant-like biovores were one of the most voracious races in the galaxy. Unlike the xenos, the cellulocusts did not do well without regular exposure to sunlight. The great leaves of the motherships covered hundreds of thousands of square miles each, like super-efficient solar converters, spinning sunlight, gases, and hydrocarbons into new life-forms. Where they went, they stripped worlds of organic materials and water, then soaked in enough sunlight until they made some sort of decision and employed gravity manipulation to head to the next system to feed again, either following some ageless path of migration around the galaxy as worlds recovered and regrew behind them, or somehow sensing worlds where organic life was thriving.

Their attacks were the very definition of a swarm, concentrating on overwhelming numbers and ready sacrifice to overcome any foe. If they had intelligence, nobody really knew, and nobody wanted to contact such a feral, aggressive plant-form that considered meat creatures just more fertilizer.

With enough sunlight, the cellulocusts could recapture and reconvert any losses, so such things were just considered temporary to them. They had never been known to flee any engagement, and nothing less than a full Sector Fleet had been able to destroy a Swarm of them... and never the worlds in a system, which had all been infested with seedlings and Omega Sanctioned helplessly.

Naturally the worlds in this system were stripped of almost all atmosphere and water, and nothing remained on them except for a basic moss that would slowly break down the matter of the mantles, slowly accumulating an atmosphere, releasing water, and growing and mutating into other lifeforms, to be harvested again in several million or billion years.

They would have to be Omega Sanctioned as well...

Sixteen Motherplants. Only fully Dark stealthships got within an AU of them, no psionic use allowed, and no radiant drives for the phenomenally light-sensitive cellulocusts to respond to. Even their course had to be erratic, as eclipsing a star along a course could be enough to warn the massive root-minds of the creatures.

A full cellulocust Swarm only 12.6 light years away. At basic Jam with ramscoops and solar sails, that was .35c, or thirty-six years away, if they chose to come to Janus III.

Archeological data into deep ice at the polar caps indicated that Janus III had once been a verdant world... and might well have once sprung from a cellulocust world-seeding, if the genetests were correct.

Might they be a little annoyed to find a Warpzone corrupting their little garden world and making it impossible to harvest? While they might not be angry as humans knew it, they would probably take steps to clean up the situation... and harvest what they could from the world, which would naturally include the entire human population.

So, if the cellulocusts moved, they were suddenly on a timetable, which was most definitely not a desirable thing to have happen.

Putting out word about this threat was definitely not a bad idea whatsoever. The only viable place to fight them was in deep space, in transit between systems, unless they wanted to lose any viable planets in a system. Even then, the cellulocusts would launch spores in their death throes, equipped with miniscule, primitive gravity drives and photoreceptors to guide them towards stars and worlds where they could fall, take seed, and be reborn in some far future.

Truly an eternal, hard to kill foe. No race was known to bother them in their transitions, and word had come from different, elder races that it was easier to just abandon a planet than fight the cellulocusts. Humanity had only ever beaten a Swarm once, and even then, lost the system to Omega Sanctions. In doing so, every Swarm encountered since had been unremittingly hostile to any human vessel, which meant the Swarms could communicate with one another across the galaxy, and differentiate species from their vessels alone, probably by sensing their akashic linkages.

Truly an old, ancient, and implacable foe, as remorseless as weeds, patient as moss, and relentless as mold.

And someone else had already pissed them off, so now humanity had to deal with them. Wonderful... because nobody knew how many Swarms of them were out there...

=========

Gloomheart...

Our fame/infamy/rep continued to grow as we headed towards the Heart of Blood, as a whole bunch of suicidal types looking to become very famous or more likely very dead were doing, all across this subspace.

Still, our ratings on both lists and viewers of our matches continued to climb. It wasn’t that breshkt hadn’t done well for themselves in the past, but four of us together was quite a thing, and was definitely earning us all sorts of proposals for our services in other ways. As those who we actually accepted invitations from had all ended up dead in violent and expressive ways, nobody had any idea how good we were in bed... but they were plenty willing to pay us to show people they didn’t like the details thereof, given what inevitably happened.

It was a pleasant and violent time, exposed us to ever-higher levels of drow society, ever more dangerous assassins, nobles, bodyguards, mercenaries, and bounty hunters, and generally ratcheted the entertainment level up continuously.

Four breshkt swordswomen, and we were so bloody hard to kill...

It was fun to see the commentaries about us. Celestia’s terrifyingly lethal swordplay; Jensa’s precise and penetrating killstrokes; Keva’s elegant and mystifyingly obtuse style; and my pure overwhelmingly brutal and arrogant forms that gave them simply no chances. There were dozens of commentaries on how to beat us, which surprisingly didn’t work very well for all those who tried such things. It was like we knew what our own weaknesses were, and min-maxed to cover them.

Now, there were two very different types of combat we had to be good at, namely in-arena and outside of it.

In-arena, you were allowed only melee weapons. Using missile weapons was a fatal no-no, taking away all the fun of the struggle. This was hardly an issue with us, as beating on things bigger than we were was what Ranthas called great fun, thank you, may we have another?

Outside the arena, active use of psionic effects was the death sentence, but we could use Gear and ranged attacks to our heart’s content. Naturally, we did so, especially on those who were very, very concerned about getting into range of our blades. It was so charming of them, we gave them tons of pointy presents to think about and drool over.