Far on the farthest and most remote reaches of known space in Arcadia’s territory, a planetary colony was undergoing the final steps towards full self-sufficiency. Once it and its population had reached the point where it could sustain itself, the colony would begin to see more investment and an influx of migrants. Once this occurred, the colony, or rather, former colony, would begin to see a massive boom in production and would be eventually added to a larger Sector so as to help with its bureaucracy and gaining rarer resources.

The colony was already well defended, as in order to be allowed to join a colonization effort all members had to be at least decently proficient with firearms and have some rudimentary knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, even if it was just how to throw a decent punch. Arcadian citizenry had the right to bear arms, up to and including handheld particle beam weapons, but those were only for ex-military and ex-law enforcement types. The regular citizenry had access to other types of weapons, from standard kinetic weapons to blaster weapons, and of course the higher output stuff (such as particle beam weapons) were restricted by extremely intensive background checks and job history.

Why go into this?

Simple.

This colony was about to be the first target of something not even Arcadia was ready to face.

The Scourge of Galaxies was here. Zeyhris was here.

…

The days and nights preceding the attack of the swarm were torturous to the Arcadian citizens on the colony of Darwin Prime. Every waking and sleeping moment of the day had each and every citizen’s Newtype senses screaming at them that something terrible was coming. The fact that all of them felt this disturbance was clue enough that they needed to prepare and call for aid, but they soon realized that they were not the only place with people experiencing such terror. A few systems in all directions were also sending out distress signals, not due to having something attacking them, but due to the fact that they too were experiencing the horrible sense of dread that was creeping its way closer and closer.

Thankfully, the bureaucracy wasn’t as inept as some could have feared, and with a threat so potentially massive that dozens of systems were sending up calls for overwhelming backup, the realization that something big and nasty was incoming hit the government like a ton of bricks. However, while the Sector governments of the various groups were fully aware that something big was about to happen, they thought that, if they banded together, then they could deal with whatever threat reared its ugly little head before the actual national military needed to step in.

Little did they know that the choice that they made would be felt for ages to come.

…

Eighty-nine warships dropped out of hyperspace inside the Darwin system and began to patrol. Their crews, upon entering the system, immediately felt the effects of the malignant terror that was incoming on their minds. However, they were confident that they could deal with whatever threat was barreling down on them. After all, the national military had not been called in, so the myriad Sector fleets should be enough to handle what was coming. In the event that their fleet was incapable of dealing with the entities that were causing this disturbance, the fleets patrolling the other nearby systems could be called in and the foe could be overwhelmed with sheer numbers.

Arcadia had never lost a fleet, so why would the battle to come be any different?

As the patrolling Sector Navy neared the main planet of the Darwin System, Darwin Prime, a sight they did not expect to see filled them with shock and disbelief. The planet, the entire fucking planet, had its atmosphere entirely blocked out from sight by some ungodly cloud of undulating flesh and chitin. Any attempt to hail those on the surface ended in failure, and to the despair of the crews it appeared that the other celestial bodies in the system also had themselves obscured from sight by the mass of organic grotesqueness that blocked out any kind of visibility.

The naval forces stood in horrified awe of what they were seeing before snapping out of their daze and sending out a call to all other fleets in the area for aid. The fleets responded that they would be coming, but that it would take a few hours at most before they could arrive. Not wanting to let the horrifying eldritch mass of organic hell continue doing whatever it was that it was doing, the fleet that was already on scene began to fire everything it had at the feasting abomination around Darwin Prime.

Particle Beams cut through the chitin armor of the monstrosity while missiles and shells took advantage of the areas damaged by the energy weapons. However, despite firing nonstop, the horrible creature/creatures did not seem to pay the fleet any mind. Actually, the mass seemed to heal from the damage at a rather fast pace, all while completely ignoring the fleet that was pounding it with all of its available firepower.

As the Fleet Admiral watched with ever growing concern, a single MSG entered the bridge and looked out upon the entity through one of the camera-viewscreens that existed instead of windows. The sight it saw was immediately transmitted across all of Arkhan’s personal creations and to Arkhan himself who, upon seeing the planet covered in the flesh and organic armor realized that the national debt was the least of his nation’s worries.

Arkhan alerted the cabinet that the military needed to be mobilized immediately along with the military industrial complex needing to resume production at record speed, even at the cost of going deeply into debt. The thing they were to face brought Arkhan no small amount of dread. Despite being a Gundam Otaku, he was also a bit of a Warhammer 40k and Starcraft fan and the thing he was seeing through the eyes of his creation caused him to remember the apocalyptic levels of devastation caused by the organisms in those series.

These obviously weren’t T******s or Z**g, but they seemed to function in a similar way, and that fact scared him. He immediately allowed those memories to be available for his creations to learn from and began to help prepare his nation for the biggest fight of its life. It would be do or die, with the “die” part resulting in extinction for everything in the galaxy. There was not a second to be lost, for even the loss of a single moment could be terminally fatal for the galaxy.