Chapter 31: The Void Recoils from Her Touch
High Orbit — Ker'polo System
Aboard the obsidian-lined command bridge of the Vigilant Womb, the highborn Ker'min known as Supreme General Ker'san'adra stood tall at 6 feet 2, her lithe frame draped in shimmering epidermis-weave robes encrusted with precious stones — not for vanity, but for the assertion of caste. Where common Ker'min bore wide, frog-like eyes and bald, glistening heads, her features had evolved toward elegance: narrower eyes that glowed a pale yellow, skin like polished amber, and a cascade of tentacle-hair that writhed subtly with psionic currents.
The bridge was alive with soft chimes and whispered status reports. Her officers — a blend of male and female Ker'min — worked at their data-altars, scanning the doomed world below with grim efficiency. A once-placid border planet, it had fallen into silence just half a rotation past the distress signal. A peaceful garden world, now mulch in the gullet of the Swarm.
"Supreme General Ker'san'adra." A young tactician approached and saluted, hand curled and pressed above his chest in proper caste protocol. He extended a data-slab, which flickered with a fresh stream of terror.
She accepted the report with a cool nod. Her yellow eyes darted over the contents — maps, swarm dispersal patterns, casualty estimates. The young tactician hesitated, as if afraid to continue, but pressed on. "The fleet devouring this sector is... anomalous. It resembles Swarm Cluster Heron — but Heron is confirmed bogged down in Sector Sigma Nine. Clusters Roc and Harpy are busy with the Midline Barricade. This entity is... unregistered."
Ker'san'adra exhaled through clenched fangs and rubbed her temple with two slender fingers. A new strain. Of course. The Swarm hadn't breached this sector in over a decade, and now something undocumented was waltzing in with the casual efficiency of a butcher inspecting a meat locker.
"Do we have predictive telemetry? When will they strike the next world?" Her voice was sharp, tinged with static from her leaking psionic field — frustration made manifest.
The tactician winced under the mental pressure. "Ah... y-yes, Supreme General. By our models, their rate of planetary digestion has increased by approximately 250%. The remaining force is excavating sublayers for raw material conversion, but the majority of the fleet is reorienting. Their trajectory suggests imminent attack — within the hour."
Thirty minutes passed like shards through an open wound. The enemy formation adjusted with horrifying elegance — vast, baroque bioships turning with the grace of predators scenting fresh meat. The planet Ker'polo had no orbital defenses worth the name, but Ker'san'adra was not the type to roll over and die. She summoned her inner reach, her psionic third eye, and cast it outward — an ethereal filament of consciousness probing the darkness between stars.
It was a dangerous move. The Swarm, for all their grotesque biology, were master deceivers in psionic space. Most dismissed them as savage insects — those people were now dead. Still, Ker'san'adra was no novice. Her mind-sense danced between the stars, weaving between gravitational folds, scanning for cloaked bioforms.
And then... something touched her.
A tap. Gentle. Curious. Like a finger brushing her mental deflector field.
But that tap nearly shattered her. Whatever she had encountered was no scout, no lowborn beast in psionic skin. It was a presence vast and ancient and horrifyingly intelligent. The touch alone carried enough psionic weight to cave in her skull like a ripe fruit.
She snapped back with a gasp — mindthread severed by reflex, survival instinct flaring like a war siren.
"Evacuate the sector!" she barked, composure fracturing. Her voice cracked with something dangerously close to fear.
A fellow general, bristling in ceremonial plate and pride, turned with incredulity. "Evacuate? Supreme General, we are more than capable of repelling this incursion. If you issue an evacuation decree, I will be forced to veto it under Battle Protocol Four."
Ker'san'adra opened her mouth — perhaps to curse, perhaps to cry — when a bridge operator gasped. "Command! Urgent update! The Swarm fleet— They're gone!"
Silence. Then chaos.
The tactical holosphere blinked. The monstrous signatures vanished. Not cloaked. Not scrambled. Gone.
Ker'san'adra dared to extend her psionic probe once more — trembling like a child afraid of what she might touch. But the void returned clean. No lurking bioships. No psychic traces.
No Swarm.
She exhaled again, trembling with something primal.
And yet... it didn't make sense. The Swarm didn't abandon prey. Not once in recorded history. This was no tactical retreat — this was something stranger. Something wrong.
As her command staff scrambled to recalibrate their models and enact countermeasures, Ker'san'adra stood silent, mind drifting.
"What in the Verdant Jungle was that?"
---
Aboard the Living Star: Crystal's Psionic Core
Within the inner tendrils of the ship-brain, Crystal retracted her consciousness from the psionic lattice — the tap she had offered the highborn Ker'min had amused her. That one had strength. That one had flavor.
"A worthy meal," she whispered, not aloud but in the liquid hum of her neurons. "If Irvine weren't on board, I would've swallowed her soul through her forehead."
But wherever Irvine was... well, there was no 'if'. Crystal could no more displease her precious human than she could stop metabolizing suns. So, she allowed the little noble to live.
For now.
Besides, her thoughts had drifted elsewhere.
She had not seen Irvine in hours.
And that simply would not do.
---
Irvine's Quarters – The Hivemind Ship
I awoke as if hungover, mind dull, limbs heavy, body submerged in warmth. Which would've been comforting... if it weren't for the fact that said warmth came from two separate women lying fully coiled around me like affectionate constrictors.
Kimchi and Crystal.
Respectively 6'6" and 8'0" of smothering, predatory biomass. Each built like the lovechild of a supermodel, an apex predator, and a tank.
And both currently using my body like a shared teddy bear.
I tried to move — I really did — but when you're blanketed by a couple of living weapons made from condensed war-meat and psychic love, struggling is mostly symbolic.
A voice slid into my brain, not like a thought, but like a whisper in my eardrum from someone lounging inside my skull.
"You look so delightfully frustrated, my love."
"Onyx?" I blinked. That voice didn't arrive via normal psionics. It felt like someone had lit a candle in my brainpan and was curling up beside it with a book.
"Indeed," she purred. "You are perceptive, as always. I'm speaking to you directly... from inside your Mindspace."
My head spun.
I closed my eyes, narrowed my awareness, and dropped into Mindspace — the metaphorical realm of thought and spirit. As expected, Kiya was in her usual spot — quiet, contained, diligent.
But Onyx was not where I had left her.
Instead, I felt arms wrap around my psionic form — thick, powerful arms marked with ceremonial shackles, still dripping with white psychic ichor. I turned, stunned, and found her there — towering, radiant, unnervingly tactile.
"Mmm~ I now understand why they did not let me snuggle your physical form. Even here, as a mental construct, your warmth is intoxicating," she murmured into my ear, her breath like storm-charged silk.
I would've been creeped out if I hadn't already had my boundaries destroyed daily by Kimchi and Crystal.
"How are you here, Onyx? I mean really here. Not just a projection. You feel real. And Kiya — she's always stayed quiet and in place, being a good little sword."
I rattled Kiya's chains teasingly as I said it. She responded by flaring a pulse of indigo indignation — but remained still.
Onyx answered with a lazy grin. "Kiya remains dormant because she is... incomplete. That will soon change. As for me — I told you I would be your shield and cloak. Such titles are not ornamental. I must dwell inside you. My bond is not symbolic; it is structural."
Her fingers ran through the strands of my Mindspace. "A full psionic projection. A true cohabitation. That is why your physical form feels... sluggish. Your brain is hosting a guest."
I stared at her, questions racing. One phrase stood out like a bloodstain on silk.
"Kiya... won't be incomplete for long?"
My heart beat faster.
Something was coming.