February 29th, 5252

You lean back in your post quarantine quarters and look over the various reports and brief that, as a golrak combat veteran (if one space engagement qualifies you as such), you now have access to. You always knew that the golrak were the fungal boogieman of the Star Empire. The endless, eternal foe used to unite the populace and justify the ever-increasing navy, royal marine, and army budgets. As a survivor of the underbelly of the sky city of Azumire you knew that a hefty portion of that is pure propaganda. After all the glorious Navy was able to hammer them seemingly at will.

As a member of the Navy, and especially after you received your commission, you started to hear rumors and read semi-declassified after action reports not available to the general public. You noticed a strange trend: ships that were damaged and boarded by golrak forces and either repelled the attack or were later retaken were often scrapped instead of salvaged. You had previously marked that down to the savage nature of close-quarters fighting aboard ships but these new briefs paint that in a new light.

Pinching your nose you start back with the brief that had come at the top of the hand-delivered stack and begin to skim.

THE GOLRAK: A NAVY COMBAT PRIMER

This document is intended to provide a reasonably concise overview of the golrak with a focus on the inevitable effects that come with fighting that species of bioform.

That the golrak are a fungus based 'hivemind' species is widely known. The exact mechanisms needed for this to work on an inter systemic scale are matters of ongoing investigations and not especially relevant to this document. What is relevant is the changes to established general doctrine and tactics that are essential when combating the golrak.

The golrak has no individual members, no 'I' as we would understand it. Instead they posses what can be best described as components. Both infested individuals of other species, henceforth referred to as drones, and purely fungal golrak spore forms are components on the golrak hive mind. Ships, buildings, and similar infrastructure that are at least partially constructed of golrak bio material can be considered lesser constructs; semi organic 'tools' of the golrak hive mind. Accordingly the presence of any sort of combat hierarchy must be seriously re-evaluated in the mind of an officer fighting against the golrak. There are no leaders to kill to cut off the head of the foe as every drone and spore form can instantly 'step up' into command roles as needed. In terms of naval combat this manifests as there being no bridge or combat information center then can be shot away to cripple the command authority of the ship. Likewise there are no dedicated flag or command ships in golrak formations and targeting priority calculations should disregard the 'command' factor.

That is not to say that spore from and drone 'crew' are of no use to the golrak hive mind. Golrak bio mater is ultimately fungal in nature and thus ill-suited as a replacement for structural metals, radiation shielding, complex electronics, and so forth. Thus these things are inorganic in nature and require other golrak forms to integrate or interface with them. Aboard ship this takes the form of dedicated integrated golrak bio forms as well as spore from and drone crew. This, naturally has its own consequences in combat.

Tactics that emphasize the destruction of the crew of a ship are only partially effective against golrak ships. They are more effective against infested ships then against golrak built ones but even with no crew aboard the golrak hive mind maintains a limited scale of control over the ship itself. The ship alone will react more slowly and operate at degraded efficiency but it will continue to operate long past the point at which a human ship would be forced out of the fight or considered a drifting hulk.

The golrak favor boarding tactics to the exclusion of almost every other tactic. This is, on it's face, suicidal. The brings to mind the massed infantry charges into the teeth of prepared defenses of the battlefields of yore. But when one takes into account the fungal and spore-based nature of the golrak bio form this tactic takes on terrifying implications. Golrak 'boarding torpedoes' unleash both close combat war forms that must be fought as well as a cloud of golrak spores. While the war forms are deadly enough, fully capable of overrunning a ship, they are the lesser of the two threats. The Golrak spores will voraciously consume other biological materials to replicate and extend the reach of the golrak hive mind.

Exposed living crew will become infested drones and increasingly come under the sway of the golrak hive mind as more of their body is consumed and replaced bio golrak fungus. Deceased crew will either be rapidly consumed to produce war forms or 're-animated' as drones for expedient battlefield reinforcements. Ship systems are also vulnerable to golrak spores under the right circumstances. Documented cases include, but are not limited to: spore clumps forming around data cables to leach information and disrupt communications, 'severed hand' spore forms manipulating manual airlock and hatch controls, hydroponics becoming infested, and other forms of attack both subtle and overt.

It is important to note that the golrak hive mind's degree of control over a bio form or system is directly proportional too the percentage of the bio form or system that is comprised of golrak bio materiel. Spies and saboteurs are possible but not common as the volume and mass of the needed golrak bio materiel quickly prohibits long term covert activities. The minimum mass of golrak bio material needed for a minimally viable 'FTL link' to the rest of the hive mind is between four and five kilograms and will take up a volume equivalent to that of the average human torso. This combination of mass and volume is easily detected in the human body. Infested systems are a marginally greater threat as a minimum viable 'FTL link' can be concealed in places where a human torso can not fit. Life sign scanners combined with anti fungal agents, concentrated radiation, fire, or other sterilization methods are usually sufficient to cleanse any infestation. However such methods are both prohibitively costly and destructive to be employed on a scale large enough to salvage an infested ship.

You set the document aside and sigh. The repeated scans and examinations of yourself, your crew (human and automaton both) and the Night Horse at large suddenly make much more sense. As you never boarded or were boarded by the golrak seeder ship, nor did not land on a golrak infested word, you are certain that the worst that will happen is that the food stores aboard the Night Horse will have to be thrown out and replaced. Irradiated food isn't exactly the safest to eat after all.