I laid down in my bunk, the chemicals always took a toll, especially that stimulant. It was sadly extremely addictive and deadly. It was even made partially of Ul’Katoin fluids. I suffered through the pain, looking directly up, thankfully only for a short bit of time, before the sleep meds kicked in, and I blanked out peacefully.

My dreams swam in and out of comprehensibility, the universe seeming to turn inside out, and logic disappeared. The world grew dark and cold, then bright and hot, and endless siege of the limits of what my senses could take. Unimaginable pleasure and pain, a light so bright the universe got as dark as a black hole, a sound so loud, low, high, and quiet it burned and twisted my ears. A taste so revolting yet enticing that I was lost in a sea of temptation and disgust, and a smell that was worse than I could imagine, but smelled heavenly at the same time. My mind felt as though it was stretched and torn, I was unable to move. Then suddenly reality snapped back into coherence, and I woke from my tripped-out dream.

I was sweating everywhere I could sweat, and I felt ice cold, although I knew I was burning hot. I passed out yet again.

Waking up, I took a nice warm shower and found it had been 73 hours since I passed out for the first time. The chemicals really did a fucking number on me. But to beat the monsters, you had to become a monster. Shaking my head as I cleared my head, and put on my military clothes. A thin, comfortable, and form fitting jumpsuit. Mine was a light blue, like Hawaiian waters, with light green highlights and details, the same color of pine needles. I then donned my nano suit, now fixed up from after battle. It was the standard purple blue coloration of the UG, and my helmet visor was a deep orange. I took a Plasma spitter, and inertial launcher, and an energy lance. I left to go out on patrol, but was stopped by the guard of the armory.

“Go grab a sludger, you have to burn down one of the bigger vines we've seen yet. Are you doing okay, you look a bit hazy.” Concern was evident in his voice.

“I think I might’ve chem od’d a bit, but I should be fine. Just slept for 73 hours.” I replied, knowing I should still be sleeping, but honesty was important to me.

“Ouch. Go kick some plant ass, and dude, get some sleep.” The guard said as she let me leave reluctantly.

“Thanks.” I said, getting into a jog and grabbing the sludger. It was a heavy-duty gun, used for burning away Ul’Katoin undergrowth and sometimes low-altitude carpet bombing. It was the size of an old school minigun, and weighed about twice as much. Massive air vents lined the side, heating the atmosphere to a consistency of magma, and vomiting it out onto whatever was beneath or a maximum of 15 feet in front of the gun. During the Jhar invasion, these were put on fighters that when used in squadrons of 100 would melt an unshielded cruiser down to scrap in less than ten minutes minimum.

I flew over to and began hovering over a section of the vine I was assigned, it seeming to recoil from the intense heat of other sludgers. I began spraying, the molten air condensed by magnetic fields emitted from the sludger, melting through enormous amounts of plant matter and dripping onto the ground beneath, or whatever was considered ground here. The plasma fizzled, and after getting out of the range of the sludger’s mag fields, it burst, crackling in the air, fizzling back into the atmosphere. The technology was far more complicated than that, that explanation being an extremely dumbed down version of what I knew of the gun. I heard screeching. Thousands of the newly dubbed Hunter Ul charged out of the undergrowth. Automatic LMG turrets locked on and began to fire. The fire rate increased rapidly, mowing down the Ul, but not well enough. They took the kinetic energy well, bullets sinking into their flesh, slowly moving through them, and then coming out the other side, minimizing damage to the Ul, the reason plasma was the primary weapon against them.

The Ul got closer and closer, to the point where a full retreat was ordered. I flew off, watching turrets get torn apart, metal ripped and torn by beaks and claws. That attack would set back progress for a few days. We couldn’t afford this, these attacks were becoming more frequent and harder to push back. But until we figured out how to expand the portal, we couldn’t bring our really heavy weapons in. Only small ships could come through, and while some bigger ships were being built, it wasn’t quite enough. I got back to base, which was still very well defended and fortified, far too entrenched to be attacked by anything less than a full army of gargantuan proportions. LMG turrets, plasma beamers, and the rarest weapon in the UG. Fission and Nuclear weaponry. A few straight-up fucking nukes, and far more complex weapons I could barely understand. Such as the massive ADRR, cannon. It stood for Atomic Deconstruction and Rapid Release. AI would designate a small area, deconstruct the atoms in hundreds of ways hundreds of times in the span of less than a second, and then release the energy from that in a targeted direction.

The energy prior to being released would form a miniature sun, incinerating the area around it. Still don’t understand how it is all done, but it is destructive. These immense superweapons were immensely hard to build, and nigh impossible to move to another place. Usually if one of these beasts was moving, it was because it was on a planetary defense station in the big five systems, or it was on one of two Atom-class ships. The Quark, was on constant defensive duty at the Jhar Empyrean-UG border. The other, the Neutron, was on constant patrol in the core systems, Sol, Alpha Centauri, Barnard’s star, Wolf 1, and Sirius. It kept away pirates from the heart of the empire and made it impossible for incursions from the Ul a wasted endeavor. One more was in construction, the Proton. This would be a smaller one than the others, but built with sturdier materials, and upgradable frame, and the best point defense and engine systems we could conceive of.

As I returned to base, I refilled my sludger and took a quick three hour nap. I woke back up, and looked at the current situation. There were a few new deaths from a wicked push of an unsuspected army. However, this left a new sector for extermination. Our push had burned away another few dozen square miles so far, of which half was already crystallized, while the other half was being guarded, and burning out any scraps of living plant life that tried to crawl in. I went to an exit, the guard pointing me to another area that was a densly forested thicket full of Ul’Katoin guerilla troops that had been harassing our troops. I took my Plasma Spitter my inertial launcher, and a scouting exoskeleton.

An hour later my cloak was depoyed as I cautiously snuck through the canopy. I stood still for a second, listening to the surroundings. I heard warbling calls from some of the odd creatures here. The odd atomosphere of surprisingly similar air to Earth itself carried the sound well, so I had to move quietly. I closed my eyes, stretching my mind. A sonar of Strand energy formed, sweeping through the trees, detecting a few Hunter Ul, and a bit of the natural wildlife not connected to the hive mind here. I slowly floated from the trees, restraining myself as the still shoddy cloaking systems barely kept to my form, it was the best we had and it kind of fucking sucked. I tapped the ground lightly, soundless, and lowered myself as the cloaking stabilized leaving only a strange sort of bulge in the air. I moved slowly, approaching the crawling hunters, their lower arms curled close to their bodies, but that isn’t what drew my attention. They had made tools. Long quaterstaffs of the surrounding wood like material were hung around their backs. They had spikes on small knobs at the end, looking deadly, and could absolutely hurt me through the relatively weak armor. I slowly took out my inertial launcher, keeping it close to the ground and my body as possible, as it wasnt cloaked, however some of the cloaking effect touched it as long as it was close enough to my body.

I slowly aimed towars the left eye of the leftmost Hunter. As the center one blinked, I took the shot. A loud deep Voooom sound could be heard for a few hundred feet as the round smashed into it’s eye, and stuck firmly inside the skull, catching on a thicker bit of bone, as it’s thick brain tissue slowed it quickly enough to not go out the other side. The Ul immediately rushed to it, one checking where the round went to see if it could decipher direction, only knowing it came from in front of them, and not any particular direction due to the lack of a hole in it’s head.They were both guarding themselves vigilantly, eyes locked in the area I lay in. Their quarterstaffs were out, and shifting in their hands. Eyes darted around, and the secondary set of arms was twitching and flicking around.

I took out my plasma spitter, knowing that with their heads always on the move I couldn’t get another clean shot. I got up quickly, leaving the cloaking system on as the center one saw a gun emerge from a bulge in the air, sensing soething amiss and charging, I fired. Four quick plasma plinters shot into its chest, it falling to the ground as the other one got close enough and swung at the bulge in the air. Making a solid hit, it smashed into my shielding, the shields on the border of shattering. I flung it away with Strand energy, as a loose blast was let out from my body, sending it flying through the air, tumbling and landing on it’s feet, charging again, took seven to the head and torso. All of them dead, I moved the bodies into some denser bits of shrubbery, and sat still for a moment, letting my shields recharge, re-activating my sonar, and allowing my cloak to settle once more.

Ten more running this way. And fast.