Hearts of Darkness - Plague of the Void Seeds / 6

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Post 6

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25 Years ago

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Jayden Carter, the Head of NASA, sat back in his chair. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the footage, but that didn’t matter, the effect was the same. Astonishment combined with a gut-wrenching hopelessness. He looked around the gathered representatives of the GAN, those in the room and those on the multiple screens. Shock and silence. He couldn’t blame them. The data collected from the alien-enhanced, Genesis2, telescope had enabled them to render images and footage of mind-blowing clarity and mind-numbing reality. Humans were now part of a galactic conflict in which they were completely, laughably outclassed. He thought back to the images of the huge fleet of alien Alliance ships. The technology in evidence was staggering. What exactly could we offer? We were primitive by comparison.

Then there was the threat. The time-lapse footage of a Void Seed destroying a star would haunt him always. A single massive black sphere had approached the star. It came to a stop just beyond the corona. After a while, the star’s surface seemed to become increasingly agitated until a huge plasma ejection erupted out towards the sphere. The Void Seed was completely unharmed. In fact, the ejection only seemed to establish a connection with the star and the sphere began to grow. As the sphere grew, a dark area grew on the surface of the star, between the terminals of an enormous electromagnetic field arc, intersecting with the sphere at it’s apex. Once the darker area had grown to encompass the field’s poles on the star’s surface, the Void Seed moved forward, into the star. There followed a tense period where no changes visibly occurred, then without warning, the star began to convulse and erupt with flares of plasma. Rapid colour changes and violent vortices began to materialise and spread across the star’s surface. It looked like a cell that had been invaded by a virus and was undergoing a battle for survival. The star’s convulsions increased in intensity, then it’s light began to fade. It had lost the battle and was dying. The light continued to diminish until, just before there was no light remaining, it seemed to burst outwards with millions of Void Seeds. Then, nothing.

If all of the combined might of multiple, highly advanced, highly durable aliens were not enough, what could we offer? Lost in his own thoughts, Jayden had not realised that a conversation had begun. Questions, so many questions. When the stars die, what happens to the gravitational fields within that galaxy or region of space? How many Void Seeds are there? How long has this battle been raging? Where did the Void Seeds come from? How long before our star or stars within our galaxy come under direct threat of destruction? What can we do? What can we do? Anna had gone with the Daxiste-agorian to find out. She had not reported back so far. Maybe there was nothing to report, except the eventual annihilation of the entire universe……

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Present

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Khalzirin-amonal had boarded the Shaad-rin (last and greatest of the legendary Shadow Knives) shortly after returning to the Alliance fleet, from the encounter with the Void Seed scouts on Earth. He’d left the brave and unusual boy with Click on the Daxiste-agorian Navigator, along with Bulvodin and Sill. They would be debriefed and contact him later. Meanwhile, Khal needed to visit Dagr, the Argantuan Smith, who had taken up residence on the Shaad-rin. The Shaddonos and Argantuan had something in common. Their people, once numerous and powerful, were on the edge of extinction. However, there was an important difference. The Counsel of Shades had betrayed the Shaddonos race, sacrificing almost their entire species to false gods. When the Shaddonos had first learned of the Void Seeds, instead of joining the Alliance at the behest of the Daxiste-agori, they had sought alliance with the enemy.

The Void Seed are effectively one entity. Communicating with one was to communicate with all, no matter the distance. They possess an intelligence of sorts, founded upon a singular goal…..to replicate and grow until something stops them. In their own universe, they represented a force for decay that was balanced by equally powerful opposing forces. Here, they had no equivalent. It was in their nature to destroy and they had taken the opportunity provided by the Counsel of Shades to destroy the Shaddonos. Khal and the Shaad-rin would have been lost had he not disobeyed the commands of the Counsel. He was deeply ashamed that the majority of his people had been so arrogant, so full of hubris that they had not only failed themselves, but all the other races of this universe by almost entirely wasting what could have been a mighty weapon against the Void Seeds.
Khalzirin-amonal, last of the Midnight Suns, Commander of the Shaad-rin, had pledged the remaining strength of the Shaddonos to the Alliance, unto death. It was not long after that Dagr had approached him and requested a place on the Shaad-rin.

The Argantuan are huge and powerful by any standard. They resemble a rhinoceros from the planet Earth but are a minimum of twenty feet high, stand on two legs, are covered in thick black hair and white bone they use as both weapons and armour. The white bone grows from their own bodies as they mature and then hardens to almost indestructibility during a very long hibernation. Their evolution on Eod in the Genr system had been savage to say the least and over millennia, they had evolved to become warriors without peer. They were the only reason the enemy had not advanced further and faster than they had already. The external white ‘bone’ of the Argantuans seemed to be the only substance in the universe that could permanently harm the Void Seed. Therefore it was unimaginably precious. Several vessels within the Alliance fleet had been fitted with adapted plasma canon that could fire a charge laced with the white bone. This latest innovation had brought the star destructions to a halt because the Void Seed had lost several mother spheres to the new weapons. In response, the Void Seeds were changing their strategy. It was a hollow victory for the Alliance given that their supply of white bone was very close to being exhausted and it seemed impossible to artificially produce any more. It was upon this subject that Khal wished to have a discussion with Dagr......