"The fear. The terror. Knowing that your life means nothing and its going to be wasted and nobody will care. They teach you to live with it. Teach you to love it. You learn to love it. You love it so much you start to crave it. You'll do anything for it. The only problem is... when it's over, they don't teach you how to stop loving it." - Unknown, Terran Resource Wars

The day was cold, the sun just up over the horizon. It still seemed almost 'streaked' in some ways, like it should be a mixture of yellow and dark red. It felt, weirdly, like it should bounce slightly instead of sitting just over the horizon.

Smoke streaked the sky, clouds here and there. There were no contrails in the air, no jet trails, no mushroom clouds, just good, semi-clean natural clouds. There were a few twinkling spots here and there, space stations that had survived everything the last few months had thrown at them, but they were few and far between compared to the previous sparkling belt of satellites and other space borne industry a modern industrial world required.

On the ground, the dirt was flattened. Here and there chunks of ferrocrete stuck up out of the flattened, dusty dirt. The skeletal structure of modern skyrakers thrust up out of hills that had formed as their upper stories had collapsed and formed debris mounds around the superstructure. Grass and lichen, nature's shock troops, had ground a lot of the material into dirt, which had turned into soft hills around an upthrust skeletal structure.

In some places there were doorways, carefully hidden, that led to the rooms inside the hills.

Sitting on his tank, chewing on the end of a ration tube, was a Hikken, missing his tail, wearing a Confederate Armed Services adaptive camouflage uniform, looked around slowly.

Taking the tube out of his mouth and pouring the saliva onto the armored bulk under his feet, Ekret gave a long sigh.

He closed his eyes, shivering for a second, then put the tube back into his mouth and grinding it between his teeth.

"Command's on the horn, boss," his EM warfare/commo officer "Hassler" said, popping out of the hatch. The EM officer, another Hikken, ran his hand through his short hair. "Looks like the whole planet's clear."

Ekret shook his head. "It's been a weird war," was all he said.

Hassler nodded, disappearing back into the tank.

One of the doors carefully hidden in the mound opened and a face peeked out. The newcomer looked both ways, slid out of the doorway, then closed it tight before looking around nervously.

The tanks of 1/1 were all sitting quiet, hull down and turbo fans turned off.

The individual, which Ekret knew was the local headman, scurried over to Ekret's tank. He was barely recognizable as a Nakaskian, but his short hair, triangular head, and sloped shoulders and long neck gave it away. His eyes were bigger, his ears bigger and sticking out further, his fur was pale, and his dentation was flat herbivore.

All 'evolutionary' changes.

A few hundred years had not been enough for the Atrekna to wipe away how the Nakaskian had looked and there had been a few million of them on the world before the Atrekna invaded and sunk the system.

The Nakaskian moved up, bobbing up and down, shading its eyes. It stopped next to the tank, shuffling its feet nervously, still bobbing up and down. After a second it looked at Ekret and made a high pitched whistling sound. It pointed at the sun when Ekret stared at it.

"Bright," he said.

Ekret merely stared.

"Make not bright," the headman said.

Ekret didn't say anything, just stared.

"Too bright," the headman repeated.

Ekret chewed on the end of the plas ration tube.

"Make not."

Ekret pinged the datalink and his driver, Sselssen, fired up the tank. The hoverfans roared as they got up to speed almost immediately. Dust bloomed out from the fans, coating everything, dropping visibility to nothing.

The headman gave an alarmed sound, a cross between a high pitched whistle and a scream, and ran away.

Ekret turned and climbed into the tank, pulling the hatch shut behind him. The sterifield would keep the dust out, but it also made a static sounding noise and that got on Ekret's nerves after a few hours.

"Tell 1/1 to roll out. Rendezvous point alpha," he said. "Engage any hostiles, but ignore the indigenous personnel."

Hassler nodded, putting on hand to the padded earpiece on the headphones he was wearing.

The headman watched with narrowed, shaded eyes as the great roaring beasts moved on. A few minutes after the last of the great beasts went by, quiet descended upon the village. More than a few of the villagers, living in the caves hidden in the hills, patted the headman's back and congratulated him on driving the invaders and their great metals beasts away.

True, the sun was still too bright, but night would come soon enough.

-----

The armor was red when before it had been white. The armor laminate looked almost plasteel but was much more sturdy and capable of taking a direct hit from modern combat weaponry than it suggested by its mere looks.

It was adapted to a myriad of races and peoples.

Each armor was basically the same. Very little was left to let a sniper or sapper know who was an officer or high ranking NCO, who had a critical job and who did not.

Six years ago, the armor smiths and technicians would have never thought that the armor would be adapted to the Lanaktallan.

Yet Lanaktallan in red armor patrolled the streets, a short iron sword in one hand and a red painted shield in the other. They held a blaster rifle at port arms with their other two hands as they trotted down the streets.

Their eyes were clear and focused as they watched around themselves, moving their heads in addition to using all six eyes. Their steps were sure and confident as they clopped along their patrol routes. Their backs were straight, their shoulders back, their heads lifted with pride.

They, like every other being in over a hundred stellar systems, served Darth Harmonious's will.

For the people of those worlds, it was not fearsome. It did not feel oppressive.

They had lived beneath the cruel uncaring boot of the Unified Council, the benevolent tyranny of Darth Harmonous was nothing compared to the hobnailed boot of the Council.

Then had come the shades. The fighting had been fierce, the forces of the Empire pushing back against their own dead, weaponized against them by the vile Atrekna and their defiling machinations.

Victory had come on the dawn of the third day when the Digital Omnimessiah himself had arrived to bring rest and repose to the shades, to lift away their rage and fury and take them to the afterlife. The red armored troops had thrown back the shades and witnessed the Digital Omnimessiah bring mercy to the disturbed dead.

Now, by order of the Empire, life was returning to normal as the fifth day dawned, two days without a single shade being spotted.

People were going shopping, going back to school, visiting one another, or merely going to the park to take a refreshing constitutional among the flowering bushes and blossoming trees. Many took the bus, relying on the efficient public transportation, which was nearly always on time.

One bus was full of children who were nearly adults. Secondary sex characteristics were well developed, they had left behind childhood desires, and the majority of them enjoyed a maturity of thought that even their parents had been unable to develop, their minds soaked in the drugs the controlled their minds and emotions.

The bus stopped at the school and the students all got out in an orderly fashion. They moved to where their class/group leader/president was waiting, keeping the lines neat. Once each grouping was complete, the class leader led them into the school, where they all went to their first class.

The classes were full of difficult subjects. Advanced math. Science. Technology. Physical exercise.

The hardest one, for many, had the easiest sounding name.

Interpersonal relationships.

They had all grown up beneath the Council's mailed fist. For many of them, even if they knew their parents, their parents still had difficulty showing emotion or interacting with their own children in positive ways.

The class taught how to deal with that, how to help the elders, as well as how to help one another.

In one of the class for near-graduating students, all of whom were at least twenty years old, everyone was gathered up and watching a recruitment video for the Harmonus Empire military.

Infantrybeings marched by, ran by, moved from cover to cover firing their weapons. Pilots stood in front of their vehicles, piloted their vehicles. Officers issued out commands in confident, assured voices.

The class stared. More than a few trembled, remembering when the Empire came to their world six years prior.

It was not a tremble of fear.

Their lives had been lived under a pallor of fear before the Empire had arrived and torn that ever present blanket of fear away.

It was a tremble of nervous excitement.

Now, they were permitted to make their own choices, for good or bad.

They all knew someone who had made a choice, despite the advice of others, and had lived to regret it.

But that was the thing with self-determination. Nobody was going to save you if you were warned, did it anyway, and blew your own head off. The Unified Council had made sure that nobody had self-determination, making all the decisions for everyone because they knew what was best for everyone, just as they had known for a hundred million years.

Not so in the Empire.

As the Empire decreed: Warned Thrice and My Duty is Done.

One of the young Lanaktallan leaned forward, staring at the video during the part with the aerospace fighters, watching intently.

After class the teacher approached her.

"Would you like more information on pilot's school with the Imperial Military Forces?" the teacher asked.

The young female Lanaktallan shook her head. "No, thank you. My father would, but I plan on becoming an emotional therapist," she blinked one of her sideeyes, indicating she was looking out that side, looking out the window. "The shades have only been eliminated for two days. My fellow students were often afraid to leave the house even before the shades came," she ducked her head. "I wish to assist them, so that they do not become shackled by fear."

The teacher nodded. "Very good. The Empire needs those who will help others."

Alma'ana held her head up high as she clopped to her next class.

-----

The shades had swept over the planet quickly, moving through the Atrekna super-luminal communications network. The phasic energy transmissions were instantaneous even over hundreds or thousands of light years, high speed enough with a thick enough data pipe that thousands, millions of telepathic conversations could take place simultaneously, even as massive amounts of technical and scientific data was moved.

The shades had flocked into the phasic superluminal network, multiplied, and then had come swarming out in a thousand different systems in a horde so thick it looked like a tsunami of psychic energy.

The shades attacked the Atrekna first. Beings of phasic energy and wrath going after what they could see the most clearly, the phasic utilizing Atrekna. The shades moved around the crystalline fortresses, through the tunnels, of the Atrekna. They moved through the streets at night, the reddish light of the purple sun keeping them at bay.

Not that the Atrekna realized that just being outside would keep them safe.

Within days, there was not a single Atrekna left on the planet. The last one screamed once as it was descended on by nearly thirty shades that collapsed its phasic defenses and pulled it apart, the phasic energy suffusing it's tissues more of a liability than a benefit.

The shades attacked the more intelligent servitors and slavespawn, going after the ones with more phasic energy first. They swarmed through the servitors warrens and tunnels. Unlike the Atrekna, the servitors fled to the fields and the forests. The slavespawn died in their breeding pools, in their warrens, in their chrysalises.

The servitors fled, reduced in number, but still managing to outrun the shades, to hide from them, to even learn to defend themselves.

Within a few months of the last Atrekna dying at the hands of enraged shades, even while the sun was still turning from purple to yellow, the servitors had been virtually wiped out, as had the more intelligent slavespawn, leaving only the ones with dim intelligence, little better than cattle, moving around.

The shades slowly went torpid.

It repeated on a thousand worlds. The Atrekna war machine slowed, covered by shades that ripped it apart and feasted on it until they were gorged.

On one world in particular, one of the Atrekna strongholds, which had over a hundred different phasic gates to a hundred different worlds, the phasic shades had ripped through the Atrekna and used the phasic gates to move to hundreds of different worlds.

Once there was nothing left to get, once the easy prey was gone, the shades flooded through the gates rather than going torpid.

The huge plain where the phasic gates were located was abandoned by everything but the shades that streamed out of one gate and into others, clustering around the gates, often tearing at one another.

The huge Ohm class slavespawn moved across the plains that made up the central section of the protocontinent. A few slowly churned through the shattered crystalline remains of Atrekna cities, usually moving on quickly when they realized, in their own dim way, that there was nothing to eat. They left behind fungal blooms, trails of lichen that tore apart the crystal, ripped hyperalloys down to component elements and composites, and exhaled out mists of bacteria and viral laden droplets to tear apart hyperalloys and modern construction material and make it into thick rich loam.

One Ohm class slavespawn had been slowly circling the gates, a little over a hundred miles out. It would move around, then slow down, slowly munching, for a year or so, then start moving around again as if it was looking for better grazing fields.

When it was still moving slowly a red light blinked inside of it.

When it was moving with a purpose there was a driving mind behind it.

Beneath the hard light shell was a PacificRim Class Jaeger Warmek.

Commander Jane Marcus Prastini rested her chin on top of her interlaced fingers, staring at her monitors.

She'd been down another eight months while the system had recovered. Biosamples were holding steady, but the body wasn't built to last longer than a few weeks, months at the most, leaving automated systems in control while her mind underwent the gentle touch of stabilization programs designed to keep her personality, intellect, and innate skills intact.

At least this time I was resheathed as a woman instead of a man, like the last three times, she thought, staring at the readouts.

She couldn't use standard viewscreens, which meant that standard surveillance systems were out. Instead, she had pure code to stare at.

Which didn't help when one was relying on the readouts from drones disguised as local wildlife.

But she'd been killed twice before she'd realized what was going on.

Now her cockpit was bathed in red, mylar with a slight silver sheen covered all of her monitors, even though they were just text and graph displays.

Probes had finally come back to report more than just a tomb world.

Well, one probe had.

The gate that opened to that world flickered often, lost power quite a bit, but the shades didn't really bother with it.

The gate had been damaged during the fighting and its phasic frequency was slightly off.

Commander Jane stared at the data.

She could build a launching platform if she chose, but there was too big of a risk she'd take a shade with her. They had an annoying habit of hiding in dark spots and jumping out when someone least expected it.

The phasic gate with the bad frequency seemed like her best bet.

She took a long drink off her Bingo Cola and stared at the screen.

"Those that dare, win," she said.

She punched in the command lines.

The heavily modified Jaegermek started moving, heading toward the gate.

Jane put on a hat made entirely of thin aluminum foil.

"Saint Calgon, take me away," she whispered.

The warmek, modified to look like a pillbug type Ohm Class slavespawn, crawled into the damage gate.