"Bleh!" Maddison shivered, dropping her spoon back into the bowl of off-white gruel before her, "That is horrid," She announced rather obnoxiously while reaching for her cup.

"How can it be horrid?" argued Felix, "it has no taste, literally no taste!"

"Yeah and that's why it's so vile, it's like I'm eating nothing, it just creeps me out," Maddison hissed.

"Well it's the only thing on the menu, so get used to it," pointed out Lloyd, pulling faces of perseverance as he continued slurping from his bowl. Felix tried with little success to keep from laughing at Lloyd's face.

"At least nothing died to make it I guess," she murmured trying to justify their particularly odd and underwhelming offerings, "wait, did anything?" Maddison barked.

"No," answered Felix bluntly, "Erranos was quite clear on that. Maybe if you listened to him more intently," he added sarcastically. To which Maddison scowled.

"I guess I'll try again later, maybe then I'll have the stomach for it," sighed Maddison excusing herself from their table. "I'll be with Emelia if anyone wants me," she announced shooting a glance towards Felix as she left the room. The door slid open and she stepped out into the hall tripping over straight away. She hit the floor with a mighty thud.

"Pardon me miss," came a voice from the floor. Maddison sat up rubbing her elbow.

Felix ran to her aid, "you alright Maddie?" He asked as he offered her a hand up.

"Bloody crab bot things!" She cursed as Felix helped her up, "they're everywhere, this the third time now," Maddison admitted angrily.

The Tarras were small six legged maintenance and repair units no bigger than a house cat, that roamed Tarraxen ships, sometimes in their thousands. Erranos had programmed them to speak English and to assist the humans wherever required, but the Tarras mostly ended up having to escort them when they became lost, which was quite often on such a vast and unknown ship. With only limited maintenance to be performed daily, most online Tarras found themselves cleaning up after their guests, without any hint of complaint no less.

Eva had supplied Erranos with coordinates for Gaia's trajectory based on the time they first departed. Erranos attempted to explain the way Tarraxen ships travelled by folding space to the humans, but only Eva had the slightest grasp on the concept. They were quite pleased however, to learn that their journey back to Gaia would only take three weeks or so.

Still curious about the Scourge and the threat it could pose to them, Lloyd sought to ask Erranos as much as he could. Erranos instead of wasting time answering dozens of repetitious questions, took them to a large room which he advised was an information access point. Erranos instructed them to become comfortable and allow their minds to be free of thought. Felix and Maddison found this concept simple and began to relax quite quickly, Lloyd took a moment longer, but Eva struggled to achieve a similar state of Zen. Her years of mental conditioning were working against her as she was unable to access what the others had so easily. Felix reached over to Eva placing his hand on her arm. Without saying a word he attempted to connect with her the way the Drusai had taught him. Eva's mind slowly began to centre and satisfied he had helped enough Felix pulled his hand back. Erranos explained the system would take direct precedent over their sensory perception to provide them with information directly to their minds so that they could see and hear things as if they had been present when the events had transpired.

Felix reopened his eyes and found he was alone and completely surrounded by darkness, a vast emptiness. Text appeared before him, the symbols were exotic, unknown, and presumably Tarraxen. An object manifested in the centre but was too blurry to recognise. The imagine gained clarity and the text distorted changing into English. They could all see it, a beautiful blue jewel they each first mistook for Earth until reading the translated text.

This is Arntarra, the home-world of the Tarrax.

Twenty one millennia ago, the Tarrax were a race with similarities to humans both physically and technologically. The Tarrax had begun to branch out into the cosmos and explore their stellar system. The Tarrax were a peaceful race focused on technology and scientific advancement. One day tragedy struck when a catastrophic outbreak occurred. It was presumed that an isolated research centre in the Northern continent was conducting forbidden research with potential bio-weapons, though this was never confirmed.

A virus either broke containment or was intentionally released, instantly infecting fauna in the surrounding jungle. The creatures of Arntarra infected with the virus became hyper-aggressive, infecting everything in contact and the virus spread rapidly over hundreds of kilometres in mere hours.

Once the Tarraxen Government became aware of the outbreak they attempted to eradicate it. Mass bombings were orchestrated over infected regions but the virus was unable to be stopped. Infected creatures that were killed would reanimate and continue to attack others, spreading the virus further. Outer villages were attacked and many abandoned. Weeks later larger cities were being overrun with the infected as the Tarraxen people themselves were becoming part of the ensuing chaos.

The last few cities standing erected great walls to keep the infected at bay. Over the next few months the entire world became tainted and the surviving Tarrax were forced to take to ships, fleeing their home before the walls were inevitably breached.

In a last ditch effort the Tarrax dropped bombs from orbit targeting fault lines and volcanic regions triggering seismic instabilities over the entire planet. The following chain reaction saw all of Arntarra shrouded in smoke and debris as volcanoes erupted unceasingly. The atmosphere had become toxic and the planet was no longer able to support life.

The Tarrax set off in search of a new home, leaving behind a satellite to monitor Arntarra's atmosphere with the hope it would one day stabilise enough for them to return. Only one thousand, nine hundred and sixty four survived from a population of over five billion. At the time of the outbreak Erranos was a young boy of age three. With so few numbers for genetic diversity the Tarrax were set for extinction. Highly skilled with robotics the Tarrax began to augment parts of their bodies with bionic prosthetics to extend their existence and stave off ageing.

A new world was found and a colony established. They named the new world Rescarr and over the next four hundred years Tarraxen bodies had become completely synthetic with the only remaining portion of organic matter in the form of their brain tissue still clinging to seemingly eternal life within their artificial vessels. Once settled on Rescarr the Tarrax continued to build ships, dozens and dozens. They had found a way to travel faster than light and would hope to colonise other planets while searching for a means to increase their numbers, though many had already accepted the inevitable. The Tarrax were no longer able to reproduce, they had gained immortality but their ranks would never increase.

Another millennium passed and a signal was received from the Arntarran satellite. Over the centuries asteroids had struck the planet repeatedly, bringing water and new life in the form of bacteria. The oxygen content of the atmosphere was still too low but had been steadily increasing.

With the hope Arntarra might soon be habitable once more a scout ship was sent to investigate. Arriving at Arntarra the scout's crew scanned the surface. Bio-electric signals were detected and the crew cheered at the discovery that primitive life had restarted on their former home. The scout landed on the surface to take samples. As the crew prepared to exit their craft they felt tremors. The surface itself began to move, a rift like crevasse opened up, swallowing the scout ship in an instant.

It was presumed by the Tarrax that the virus had survived even as the planet became inhospitable perhaps going into a state of dormancy. Over time the exotic bacteria arriving on Arntarra were altered by the virus and a new organism was created. The satellite watched on as the scout ship was slowly dissolved in some kind of acidic secretion. After a few days of soaking the hull was breached and tendrils entered, probing around the ship eventually finding the crew. Powerless to circumvent their fate the remainder of the crew's organic forms, their brains, were absorbed by the organic entity.

Until that point in time, the entity had been a simple life form. It had responded to the stimuli that was the ship landing on its surface and its only driving force was to preserve itself by acquiring food. The only organic matter on board was what remained of the Tarrax themselves. As the first crew member was being torn apart and his brain exposed, the tendrils latched on to what remained of his living tissue and it caused a significant change to the entity's genetics. With Tarraxen brain tissue acting as a catalyst the Scourge had awoken. As the remnant brains from the of the crew were all absorbed the entity had begun to process basic information. It had become sentient, gaining from the Tarrax a form of rudimentary consciousness.

As the Tarraxen life forces were being extinguished, the satellite sent a signal alerting the Tarrax to the fate of their scout ship and its crew. Without hesitation the Tarrax sent a Sarrat class destroyer to investigate. Holding position high in the atmosphere the Sarrat pilot found that the entity then covered 23% of Arntarra's surface like moss enveloping a boulder. There were thousands of spires erected hundreds of meters into the air scattered all across the infected surface. The pilot opened fire trying to eradicate the hostile entity. Sensing danger the spires swelled at their bases, inflating like balloons. They began to fire tethered harpoons toward the Sarrat. Three of the harpoons pierced the Sarrat and it was pulled down toward the surface. The pilot engaged the engines at full thrust but the tethers did not give. Slowly but unceasingly the Sarrat was pulled to just 100m from the surface and great tendrils reached up to grasp the ship. Unable to escape the pilot sent a message advising his people of his fate, before his ship was ripped apart and the entity claimed its prize.

With a harsh lesson learned, the Tarrax would not underestimate their new enemy again, the next time, half of the entire Tarraxen fleet was sent to destroy their first home. In total one hundred and eighty Sarrats and fifty-two Barooda class Battlecruisers entered the Arntarran system. The reconnaissance satellite was gone, presumably destroyed. Its last transmission indicated that the entity had began to draw in its reach and form into a single mass at the site of the Sarrat pilot's demise.

As the fleet neared Arntarra they found an immense object in their path. Appearing as an elongated asteroid the object was the entity itself. It's entire volume had come together to form a mass so large it dwarfed the largest of Tarraxen ships and it had departed Arntarra taking to space. There it floated, and nothing was happening. The Tarrax scanned for signals of any kind on all known bands and frequencies. What they found was most unsettling. The only signal detected was a complex series of overlapping Tarraxen brainwave patterns, the entity itself was now of a single mind.

The Fleet spread out taking up firing positions. The front line fired its first volley. No damage. The Tarraxen energy weapons burned and cut away at minuscule sections of the mass, only to watch as it repaired itself almost instantaneously. The Fleet readjusted and moved closer to concentrate their fire on a single point hoping to do more lasting damage.

As the Tarrax drew closer in the mass began to change again. The end facing the centre of the Tarrax Fleet started to open. Three triangular lobes peeled back opening the entire structure with a mouth-like orifice. The call went out to pull back but it was too late. Hundreds of tendrils erupted from the opening in a narrow arc at an incredible speed. Dozens of ships were snagged, even the main thrusters of the mighty Baroodas were insufficient to withstand being seized. The entangled ships called to their comrades. The remainder of the fleet fired at the bases of the tendrils in an effort to free their vessels. For each cluster of tendrils that were severed a dozen more came flying out to grip tightly on the next ships within range.

The ships were being pulled in to be crushed and their pilots organic components absorbed. In a last ditch effort the snared pilots abandoned their ships taking off in escape pods. Each of the doomed ships was set to self-destruct as soon as they were pulled inside the monstrosity. The gambit paid off, the tremendous explosions from the ship's power cores caused significant damage to the entity, large fissures appeared along it's flanks. Two of the large lobe-like mouth parts were blown away from the main mass and a handful of ships gave chase to completely destroy them. The mouth of the mass began to heal and started again to open. Instead of attempting to snare nearby ships the entity changed tactics and started to fire dart like projectiles. Like a hailstorm the barbs laid waste to several of the closest ships. The battered remainder of the fleet withdrew from the entity's range to regroup. Seizing its opportunity to escape the entity took off, propelling itself by igniting volatile gases for thrust. The Fleet attempted to give chase but the entity grew large appendages from its sides that spread into dozens thin protrusions, as they continued to spread apart a membrane grew to fill the gaps. The entity had grown wing-like structures twice the width of its entire length and as the membrane finished forming it shimmered with metallic lustre. The entity's speed increased, picking up more and more momentum from the light given by Arntarra's sun. Within a few minutes the entity had pulled away, the Tarraxen ship's top sub-light speed at the time was no match and they were unable to give chase.

The battered Fleet withdrew from the Arntarran system now having lost more than half of their ships and still unable to defeat their new enemy. One of the Sarrats moved into the debris field from one of the destroyed lobes. A sample of the entity was retrieved and the ship departed with the others.

Back at Rescarr, the surviving ships arrived to deliver the tragic news. The Tarrax chose to name the entity "Arntarra kor Teshkar" and the Scourge was deemed to be a severe threat to all organic life. Fearing the Scourge would follow them back to Rescarr the Tarrax left the planet as there was no feasible way to defend an entire world. Their shipyards were converted into larger craft to be able to travel while they continued their production. The Tarrax would need more ships if they were to stand a chance against such a gargantuan threat. Millions of observation satellites were sent out over the centuries forming a vast sensory web to seek out the entity.

The Scourge mass that left Arntarra was deemed as the first pod. Soon enough, its whereabouts were picked up by a satellite that then stayed in orbit to gather information during a Scourge attack. Having found another world with organic life, the Scourge pod crash landed and it split itself up into billions of individual forces to spread across the surface ravenously devouring everything. After a few months all the world's organic matter was depleted and the Scourge forces came back together to reform into a single mass. The mass was recorded at over six times the size of the original pod that first arrived. Much to the fear of the Tarrax, the large mass divided itself into ten pods of equal size and each set off in a different direction leaving behind a dead world, devoid of all life.

In the centuries it took for the Tarrax to advance their weapons and grow a strong enough force to destroy a Scourge pod completely and with little damage to their own, the Scourge had already devastated four planets that the Tarrax were aware of. There was now an unknown amount of Scourge pods en route to new worlds spreading further out into the galaxy. The Tarraxen Armada had grown vast in size but was still unable to find or track Scourge pods unless they inadvertently passed within range of an observation satellite. As the Tarraxen Armada expanded so did the level of their technology, the range and speed of their ships increased tenfold and their scanning technology saw a significant improvement. Tarraxen bodies had become completely synthetic as they had devised a way to transfer their living consciousness into machines. With the last of their organic brains now obsolete, the Tarrax would no longer be seen as a food source to the Scourge, providing them with some sense of security as they continued their efforts to exterminate the plague they had unleashed on the galaxy.

Studying the Scourge sample revealed little to help with it's eradication. The cells were constantly shifting into different forms based on whichever stimuli was provided. The genetic code consisted of seventy four pairs of chromosomes, most of which seemed dormant or having a specific role yet to be deciphered. Despite the Scourge material having an inherit weakness to most Tarraxen energy weapons, it's ability to regenerate was astounding. This coupled with the fact the Scourge could produce such high numbers so quickly made its elimination seem all but impossible.

Over the next millennia the Tarraxen Armada continued to expand building thousands more ships that were scattered across the galaxy in small fleets of six ships, more then enough to take on a pod or cleanse an infected world. The only way to eradicate the Scourge was to find all of it, a seemingly endless task. More pods were destroyed as they were found and each time new samples were taken. Alarmingly though not surprising, the chromosome pairs were increasing with each new world devoured.

Over time the Tarrax met a handful of sentient races on different planets and pleaded with them to leave their homes behind. They could only be protected whilst living on board Tarraxen ships. Once the Scourge had a foothold on a world there was no way to stop it, the entire planet had to be destroyed.

Most races, such as the Drusai rejected the invitation of living in space under the protection and hospitality of the Tarrax. The majority of the races encountered by the Tarrax were technologically primitive and many had deep spiritual connections to their homelands, preventing them from leaving. The Drusai, as with the others who refused were gifted with an emergency beacon, with which to call upon the Tarrax should they come under attack from the Scourge. Two races have already been wiped out before the Tarrax could arrive to respond to the beacon, another race, the Ji-kit were not able to reach a consensus on the offer of the Tarrax. The Ji-kit were an industrialised society but still yet to venture into space. Thousands of their people took to life with the Tarrax as a new opportunity to learn of the cosmos. Many of the Ji-kit however were unwilling to leave and were subsequently wiped out by the Scourge.