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Decurio B'rask Borus stood at the battlements of the ancient fortress that was at the center of, and still being used for, the ceremonial offices of the 1st Alarian Combined Army Command. The posting itself was largely ceremonial as well, and that gave Borus no real bother. He was having a good day.

The Alarian species had descended from fast plains hunters, and despite being modern starfarers, their appearance still reflected those origins. Coal-dark, craggly skin protected them from the harsh radiation of their star, a trait they found to be quite useful in the unforgiving vastness of space. They stood taller than the local-galactic average by nearly a meter, granted most of that height being four long legs, mounted on a short hind-torso. Their large eyes were also remarkably acute for local-galactic average, taking up most of their face that wasn't occupied by what were still quite combat-relevant mouthparts.

The last fifty years of Alarian history had seen a veritable golden-age of cooperation and progress among the once divided Alarian people, their five colony-star nations now united. Active efforts had expanded their reach in three more habitable systems, with explorers delving out boldly past that. Being accustomed to the high ammonia content of their world, they were able to quickly exploit systems that were passed on by other local oxygen-breathing civilizations.

The Dormian Ecclesiarchy, established scarcely less than a century ago, drew Alarians of all planets and nations together with such righteous conviction, such unity of cause and inspiration that the young race hurled itself rapidly and fully into its place in the universe with leaps in technology and capability that even the futurists of 30 years ago could not have dreamed of.

Had he been of a more inquisitive nature, Borus may have questioned how or why hundreds of millions of citizens across the colonies had simply gone missing, or he may have wondered why nothing living was allowed in or out of the Holy City of Trall, the needs of its inhabitants served, in perpetuity, by automated grav-rail, the city's land and water approaches long since walled off and its shield-dome never lowering since it had been raised 3 generations ago.

Trall's dome shield gave off a perpetual, blue-tinged glow that could even be faintly seen off the horizon from where Borus stood looking over the south battlement, a constant, reassuring reminder that all was going as it should.

High in the predawn sky, Decurio Borus's keen eyes caught a brief meteoric streak of light. Five seconds later this was followed by three parallel streaks along the same course, due south. That was a little odd. He keyed his communicator to report it in, just out of an abundance of caution if nothing else, but the communicator made no familiar 'blip' into his ear to signify that a connection had been made. He keyed it again with the same disappointing result.

Twenty seconds later, the blue glow that constantly lit the southern horizon for the last 70 years went dark.

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Lark watched the dome shield fall, and the ship had already accelerated out of the system by the time local space forces reacted to the intrusion, clumsily trying to pursue with their subspace distortion drives. Lark led them out for a while, accelerating lazily until they started to fall behind at just over a thousand times lightspeed.

Showing off shamelessly, the Hattoran vessel effortlessly accelerated away, dancing out of their sensor range to a casual 30,000 light. Lark imagined they would, if given the opportunity, spend years trying to make sense of the hyperspace wake it just left behind for them, rippling outward from where Lark touched and slid along the "above" before its drive caught traction on the fabric of ultraspace, speeding off.

It would take a long curving path around to scoop its charges back up, giving them nearly an hour to seal the incursion before it blazed back through the system and retrieved them via displacement. An unnecessary precaution to be sure, but Lark mused, the locals were at a 3-B level of advancement, close to skipping right over C to D at their current course, that was still several orders of magnitude away from being able to threaten Lark's 80 meter chassis, or challenge a single thing it may choose to do in their presence. It could hover over their capital, project a giant image of their dead gods, returned to exact retribution and it would be, to the Alarians at least, utterly indistinguishable from, and inevitable as, a real divine creator/mundane creation reckoning event.

Still it was good to practice caution, as unpredictability was a hallmark of the Incursion; not in the Incursion itself, which nearly always followed a usual pattern, but the effect it had on sapient life in proximity, and a level-6 or higher could become very dangerous very quickly under such an influence.

Lark dipped out of the plane of the smooth spiral galaxy and set course to loop around the near globular cluster before angling back in, all the while monitoring its team's feeds and poring through all the media and documentation it had skimmed from Alarian systems on its approach. To the massive processing power of the AI, an hour may as well be an eternity for evaluating the civilization and determining the depth of contamination. It spawned a few clone processes and set them to work.

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Redd perched herself on what had, until recently, been the base of an ornate stone column as she watched a thousand-year old tapestry merrily burn away. Nearly everything in the vicinity that was able to burn was in fact fully involved, only the high arched ceiling of the cathedral-like bunker, a kilometer below the city, providing much relief from the flames. The Hattorans had entered at hypersonic speed, crash-fields projected by their armor negating any inertial effect on their occupants and effectively turning each one into a four hundred kilogram railgun shell that smashed through city, rock, and bunker with equal disregard. Depositing them nearly adjacent to their target, the raw force of their intrusion violently ended anything that may have been alive in the vicinity and started the fires that now surrounded them. A few remaining local defenders were burned down with barely any effort, and stopped showing up after just a few minutes.

Redd dug into a small compartment on the heavy, oily black armor to extract a small, shiny-wrapped bar. The helmet melted back from a face of deep-red/gray scales as the bar was stuffed, wrapper and all into her toothy maw.

"How can you do that?"

"Wut?" Redd responded with a full mouth. "I di'nt spend a half hour a torture acclimating ta this nasty atmosphere just to stay in my suit tha whole time. An you know how this makes me hungry."

Redd started coughing and nearly fell off the pedestal with the effort of both keeping most of her lunch and hurriedly sealing her helmet from the choking smoke.

"Can't breathe what's already burnt, idiot." Blue casually kicked a robed, burning, tauroid form away before setting a suitcase-sized box down on the blood-slickened stone. An identical device was being set up directly opposite the Incursion, a quick handshake between the two boxes starting a sequence where they began steadily unpacking themselves, unfolding, growing, synthesizing components as they expanded.

Blue stepped back from the device, giving a bit more space. Between the machines, the Incursion roiled nakedly. Though the Alarian clergy had built an enclosure to hide it from casual view, the Hattorans destructive entry had exposed the tear, its raw *Otherness* seeping into the surrounding room. Obvious though barely visible, the rent in reality surged slightly when the Hattoran devices began to scan and surround it.

Blue noticed he was digging furrows into the tiles with the clawed toes of his powersuit. Proximity to the Incursion was putting them all on edge. They always did, ramping up their aggressiveness and shortening fuses. They would probably fight it out once back onboard Lark, if nothing else managed to attack them here. He released two pebble-sized drones from his suit, one spiraling up to the top of the cathedral chamber as the other tracked up the hole they smashed on the way in. He swapped over to monitoring the drone scans and displays, anything to distract from the infuriating itch of the Incursion.

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Decurio Borus was having the worst day.

By the time alarms were sounded at the ancient fortress, Borus had already grabbed 5 other soldiers, and they were speeding towards Trall in a drop shuttle. The city was naked for the first time in Borus's life. Its streets and spires exposed to the air, a thick, dark plume of smoke rising from its center.

Borus had a moment of hesitation. The holy city. None were allowed in. Yet.. What had happened? This was unthinkable. He had to see. Had to do what he could.

"Land.. as close as you can."

The drop shuttle slid in closer. Near the epicenter, dozens of buildings had collapsed, choking the air with dust and smoke. The drop shuttle circled, the rubble too thick for them to put down closer than several blocks away.

The parts that were intact, Borus noticed, seemed more run down than he had imagined. That couldn't be right. With a breather mask over his face, he rushed back towards the epicenter, long legs taking him over the scattered rubble. It was eerily quiet. He could hear other shuttles approaching, circling. Perhaps they hadn't found the resolve to set down in the holy city yet.

Borus all but tripped over a body in his rush and he stared, stunned. Though a soldier, Borus lived in peacetime and this was his first time seeing a dead Alarian. All color gone, wiped out by the dust that still hung in the air, still, the body looked somehow wrong. He gathered himself taking a closer look. The signs of concussive death were there but, no, this wasn't right at all. Shaken, he continued on, slower. Finding another body, and another. Dozens. Some intact, many not. But all of them, every one, was twisted and deformed, a mockery of Alarian form.

Borus dropped to his knees, ripping off his breather mask and retching, suddenly unable to hold himself up. What had happened here? What the hell? What the hell??!

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"Eyes up. Two minutes to seal." Black announced after quite some time, stepping back from the second console. Each rift had its own peculiarities, and closing one was a fantastically delicate and complex process using fields and exotic particles. Only the Ships really understood how it worked, but that it worked was all that mattered.

Blue dropped one of the burnt and broken bodies, stuffing an ornate necklace into his armor's thigh compartment.

"What ya got? Why do you do that?" Redd sneered, shoving in. "Trophy?"

He closed the compartment. "No, ah, I don't know, just feels right?"

"Huh?"

Blue checked the drone feed. Response to their attack was scattered, uncoordinated. Nothing of significance would reach the chamber in time. No surprise since they disabled communications on the way in. He called both drones back. "Contamination level here is at least seven, maybe eight."

"That bad?"

"You didn't notice?" He gestured all around. "You know, this?"

Redd shrugged, noncommittally.

"Containment protocol." Black went back to the console. 40 seconds. She activated a few more controls, which produced a large and ominous handle. It was given a quarter turn and pushed back in. "Lark just finished the assessment. It's an eight."

"Shit."

Blue looked up, optics filtering out the smoke to see, to record what was left of the murals painted on the ceiling. Not one of them made much sense to the Hattoran. "Right, it's in their heads, culturally. we close this one, they'll just try to find a way to open it again, or go looking for another one. At least this way there will be something left."

"That's dangerous, Blue."

"Not the Incursion, fuck that, but out of 30 starfaring civs in this galaxy, why this one?"

They had to pause as the last subspacial/superspacial stitches were put through the rent, pulling it closed with an impossibly shrill screech that cut straight through their suits audio filters, their own augmented ears, even their bodies instantly shutting off pain reception, driving all three armored Hattorans to the floor despite their efforts. Then, silence. The buzzing tickle, gone. The Incursion was sealed.

"Aaaaggh I hate it when they do that."

The Hattorans worked up to their feet in time for Lark, just barely skipping the edge of the system, to scoop them up via its translocator. Air collapsed in to fill the pockets of vacuum where the three Hattorans previously stood. This time, the ship was not even noticed.

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Decurio B'rask Borus looked up. There were now dozens of shuttles, larger ships overhead. Circling, landing. He heard voices, but to him they seemed muted, vague. What was this? Is this what the Dormian Ecclesiarchy was built on?

Borus felt hands on him, bearing him to his feet. He scarcely noticed. He was being led somewhere when a sudden, piercing noise obliterated his senses. When he could hear, smell, see again, he couldn't move. It must have only been seconds. Something had gone terribly wrong. He felt a gust of wind. Terrible heat and noise. Another craft had crashed. They were all crashing. Borus struggled with all his effort just to turn his head to the sky. Everything flashed white, then there was nothing.

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Lark sped off, soon hitting a comfortable cruising speed of 60,000 light years per hour. Far behind it now, visible only on Lark's superluminal sensors, eight tiny lights flared brilliantly before slowly fading into the infrared background of the galaxy known to some as Messier 90.