Currently over the newest official directorate colony Whofestea. The newest flagship of the United Earth Directorates

the Cataclysm class ship was a massive construct. The designer of the colossal ship went overboard in his construction making it almost impossible to invest in a second ship.

Admiral Jonathan Wolf is in command of this mighty ship

was a decorated war veteran who had won multiple awards and one of the few who did not go with the expedition to reclaim the wayward colony of the koprulu sector.

He was actually the second choice as leader of the expedition. But was left in favor of DuGalle. When the communication with the expedition was lost, he did his best to tarnish the reputation of DuGalle and Stukov. But he never had anything with the murders of their family's.

Politic is a cutthroat business, but he still had his a sense of honor. And right now his honor was put to the limit, as his current order was to bully colony to give earth more resources. Someone had been cutting the trade route to earth, in particular of food.

The price of a regular meal on earth had tripled in a few months. And worsening tensions between the privileged and the more common people due to that.

Right now the ruling elite demanded (read ordered) the poor admiral to accept donations (read pillage) in the outer colony. A place where the common peasants would not be cared, In hope, it would appease the masses on earth.

With the numbers of people on earth, a general riot was the last thing that the elite wanted. The admiral was a bit pessimistic lot and tended to imagine the worst scenario. And he did imaging earth with a giant riot into the great city of the capital world.

20 billion people could do a lot of damage, and depending on what type of riot they could be an astronomical amount of dead.

As of now, this colony had food necessary to the continued existence of the directorate as he knew it, and he did not want to go back to the time before the UED. Too many wars, too many comrades lost, either by the enemy or themselves.

(Admiral Jonathan Wolf) Prepare the dropship I want this done before they know anything happened.

(Crewman) sir yes sir

The plan since was to deploy enough marine in power armor to make it completely obvious to do everything they want and leave with the food.

He was once called a hero

now it seems his destiny was to fall.

The flagship entered the lower atmosphere as well some of his troop carriers. The rest of the escort ship would stay in high orbit to give them protection from a would-be hero.

The attack would be before the world dawn. It was raining an excellent time for a surprise assault, and the night shift was about to end. The sentry would be tried, and the morning shift would still be trying to stay indoors.

The admiral would stay in the flagship and let a young officer take charge of the assault.

Since it was a rather large settlement, the admiral wanted the capture as quick and effortless as possible.

He had sent the vast majority of his marine corp. He had received a complaint that they were getting restless traveling the star. So work will do them good and double as training.

———— 30 min after operation begin

The first boot hit the ground. They had landed just outside the local detection grind and moved to the colony staying out of view.

Their objective was a sabotage mission, hack the local command center, so the peacekeeper's force would not be targeted by the automated defense, often used to keep pirates out.

The second objective there was to locate and secure the local food storage as a training exercise, it was a weird one but then soldiers had to learn not to ask too many questions.

They infiltrated the city and keep to cover. They had managed to reach the command center. Seem like the security was busted, look like a moron tried to lock himself inside of the building.

If the local security did most of the hard work for them, they will not complain too much.

They entered the command center and proceeded to approach the central hub of it. They soon noticed that there was claw mark on the floor and near the door.

(Marine) Must be another breed of those giant dogs that I heard, so watch out since they can chew on steel.

A mutated animal was not rare out in the colony. The generations apart from each other made new race among domestic animals. In some case, those animals looked nothing like the original breed they came from.

They proceeded as quickly and silently as possible. A wild mutant animal had a recorded history of killing people even with power armor on.

When they arrived in the central chamber, the only sign of life was a cup of warm coffee. They were confused, thing was going to well. One of the saboteurs went and grabbed the cup of coffee.

(Marine) Still warm, but untouched for a while.

As he was done saying he wanted to say, he took a sip of the coffee.

(Marine officer) Do your job and hack the damn thing. There probably better coffee in the officer mess.

The marine took another mouthful of the coffee and proceed to hack the local defense grid.

The hack went perfect no alarm went off. The group signal it and left as quickly and silently to the second objective.

(Coffee marine) Sir?

(Marine officer) What is it marine?

(Coffee marine) Lifeform sensors picking a lot of reading inside of those buildings.

(Marine officer) It is a colony, boy, there have livestocks so it probably a cow or the local equivalent.

And with that, the chatter ceased. As they approach the storage they saw the back of a young boy in front of what look of a woman corpse.

They stopped, from what they saw the woman had been mauled by some beast.

(Other marines) Sir, we can't leave the kid alone whatever done that to his mom can’t be far.

(Marine officer) The mission first, but grab the kid.

(Other marines) Sir!

The marine approached the kid slowly looking at passageway a beast would use, as he reached the child who was still showing his back to him.

(Other marines) Kid? Come here.

No response, he must be in a state of shock, the marine began reaching to skate the boy

As the man was about to reaches out to the kid to grab him. As the hand of the soldiers touch the boy, the sound of something falling drew his attention.

There was nothing where the sound came from so he turning back to the child.

Something jumped at his jugular.

The woman who was presumed dead had risen up, her jaw split into two with nasty looking fang attached to them, claw had quickly grown from her hand. Her apparent wound closed and on her back near her rear, there was a tail.

The infested woman had used one of the less infested children as bait. if the marine had looked at its face he would have been clear it was no longer human. But from the back, it was nothing but a child.

The creature used it as a lure for them.

The marines open fire as quickly as they could, but the monster jumps back with an

unearthly grace and when hiding. As this happens the infested child had taken the gun and ran.

(Marine) What the hell was that!

Shouted one of the marines.

(Marine officer) Fuck! MEDIC!

The squad medic rushed to the victim. But he was too late, the haft of the marine neck was gone.

The officer tries to radio his commanding officer but his radio was dead. He quickly figured it out that it was jammed.

(Marine officer) We return to the landing site, whatever was that it needs to die

(Marine) What about Johnson sir?

(Marine officer) Pull the stretcher and we bring him back.

The medic did his task. As they were running to the primary landing site of the operation they saw a lot of marine flooding the streets. Some of them giving weird look as they saw the corpse of their

comrade.

As they reach their commanding officer the man was surprised as he did not hear anything about a dead marine.

The marine officer quickly told them of the event. The commander tried to contact the admiral but he was jammed too.

The commander ordered the marine to take a shuttle and inform the admiral of the situation while he sends a runner to inform the troop to look out for the monster.

As the shuttle took the air they began to hear gunfire coming from across the colony.

The officer just hopes it was not the creature friend if it had any.

Around mid-flight one of marine saw the weirdest animal of his life.

Floating high above the city was what he could only describe as a giant floating bag of flesh with a dozen antennas spread around it sparks of electricity could be seen. It had purple glowing flesh, it was the size of a truck.

He just assumed that it was a local animal.

As the ship landed on the flagship security came and demanded why they had come. The officer told his tale again, the security chief gave them the crazy look. But he radioed his boss, who contacted the admiral.

After 30 minutes of asking permission to the right people and waiting for confirmation. The marines were sent to the bridge. Where they meet the admiral and told him again the tale.

With the only exception was the marine who drank the coffee in the colony, he did not look well.

Suddenly the marine fell to the ground convulsing. The medic jumped on him to see what was happening to his friend. Only to be met with the armored fist swung at full strength, a pop could be heard as the neck broke incapable of holding the blow to the head.

Immediately the security on the bridge was holding it at gunpoint.

The sound of flesh re-shaping itself could be heard as the marine began to laugh like a madman.

(Infested marine) hahahahahah.

(Admiral) What are yo---

explain yourself.

(Infested marine) WhY OF course, Why Did I kill That MaN.

The infested marine was speaking with two voice one was the body original owner the other was the new master, the Overmind.

(Infested marine) MayBE You could ask YoUR Men On ThE GrouND, WhO I DiD PrEsenT Myself to ThEm.

As the creature laugh with a click of his remaining finger

radio chatter began flooding the bridge.

Marine begging for support, the voices of marines screaming as they were subjected to painful death. Men crying openly on the wave and the voice of the commanding officer yelling at his men to run for the hill.

(Infested marine) I come from the deepest corner of space to answer humanity the oldest questions.

The voice now belongs entirely to the Overmind. With a clap from his now deformed hand, the radio change again but this time it was a song.

--------------Listen to war what it is good for by Edwin Starr-------------------

(Infested marine) War, it the only thing you’re good for.

The Admiral just look at that monstrosity and then say calmly.

(Admiral) Open fire.

The infested marine was torn apart by the concentrated fire.

The dying marine was still laughing as the last bullet hit him, forcing the admiral to come close to the infested.

(Admiral) I happened to know war, and you have no idea with what you are messing with you Monster.

Pulling his personal hand cannon and aiming at the head of the infested.

With a smile, the infested human told the human.

(Infested marine) No, I know everything about my enemy, do you?

His response was let say rather explosive as the bit of head from the infested painted the room.