The Dark Between The Stars

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY
EXXOS

With their attack gaining momentum, the robot ships careened into the chaotic evacuation activities. Exxos would demonstrate their abilities to destroy, prove the worth of the robots. Success here would ease the pain of the Shana Rei, impress the creatures of darkness, and the robots would benefit from it as well.

Suddenly his ship lurched to a halt, as if a giant invisible hand had wrapped around it. His engines rattled and roared as he fought to charge into the fray; the hull groaned with the unexpected strain. The robots on the bridge struggled to maintain their balance on clusters of finger-legs.

“What is happening?” he demanded, but none of the robots could give him a report. “Is this a weapon the humans are using?”

The ship’s control systems winked out and plunged them into darkness. None of the robot attack vessels could move. Their weapons went dead. Exxos’s crimson optical sensors flared brighter.

The blackness on his bridge turned into static, and Exxos felt himself falling as the universe dissolved around him…

He reappeared in the entropy bubble with the Shana Rei glaring down at him with their singular eyes. “Your attack has been aborted,” one of the inkblots said. “We are done in this place.”

“We could have wrecked this outpost,” Exxos replied. “All of it, killed all the humans.”

The pulsing inkblots hummed. “We no longer want this place destroyed.”

Exxos hadn’t understood the choice of this target in the first place, and now he was even more confused. “Why?”

“We comprehend additional details now,” the Shana Rei answered.

The vagueness of their response angered Exxos. Retreat was foolish and unnecessary. “But we agreed to destroy all life. That is our plan. We cannot be selective. We are here: let us finish our mission.”

“No—they do our work.” The shadows refused to explain further.

“But we must fight,” Exxos insisted. “We have many enemies to destroy. Trust me to envision the long-term plan.”

The shadows were not swayed, though. “We continue our methodical eradication of the hydrogues through transgates into their gas giants. We access and attack Ildirans through their thism.” The shadow cloud began to collapse out of space and into the dark passages behind the universe.

“For now, we will withdraw from here. We have chosen a more significant target.” The Shana Rei paused as if conferring, then added, “We will go to Theroc and destroy the new heart of the worldforest. The verdani are powerful and cause us great pain. We have a way to starve them without destroying ourselves.”

Though frustrated, Exxos decided it was expedient to approve. Theroc was indeed far more significant than a minor human industrial operation in an isolated system. “Yes, that is a preferable target,” he conceded. “We will help you fight the worldforest.”

Through shifting reality around him, he could feel that the shadow cloud was once again on the move.