"Warning! Warning! Warning! Invading bugs found in compartment 077 — requesting support, requesting support!"
A soldier crouched in terror in the corner of a compartment, using the ship's internal comms to request support.
And just then, as it happened, a squad of fully armed interstellar soldiers came charging out.
Seeing these people, the soldier felt a lift of the heart — the interstellar marines!
These interstellar soldiers were combat personnel carried aboard a warship; the great majority of the time, in truth, they were never needed.
For in interstellar war as it now was, such interstellar infantry were seldom called for — only, on occasion, when a war had run to its very end and a boarding action had to be made against some starport, station, or planet.
The soldier watched these interstellar marines in their single-soldier exoskeleton combat armor, laser rifles in hand, hastening toward the compartment where the invading bugs had appeared.
These interstellar marines ought to be able to destroy those bugs. The soldier watched the hatch next door, into which the marines had run; and afterward there came the sound of gunfire, and a manner of shrieking.
The soldier got to his feet, trembling, one hand still braced against the wall.
Shff, shff, shff, shff.
And it was at this moment that the soldier heard strange sounds from the compartment next door — and most important of all, he heard the wretched screaming of soldiers.
"This is… Ergou Marine Squad 077. There are too many bugs… our losses are grievous, we are withdrawing, requesting support, requesting support!"
And then the soldier saw marines come fleeing back in twos and threes, in wretched disorder; some of them had legs and feet severed, and there was blood upon them, whether their own or another's there was no telling.
And behind them it seemed as though some devil were in pursuit.
Suddenly—
a marine at the very rear, one leg gone, was pinned to the floor by a bug that flung itself upon him.
"Save me… save me… somebody save me!" the legless soldier begged.
But not one of the other marines turned back; they fled on, terror in their eyes.
The soldier watched, wide-eyed, as that legless marine's body was torn apart by a hideous, mantis-like bug — his very entrails left hanging at the mutated bug's mouth.
And at this the soldier saw, in his terror, still more bugs of this kind swarming out.
He joined the marines' flight at once.
Fleeing toward the next compartment.
And just as they were about to reach it—
the compartment hatch came down all at once.
Locking the marines who had fled this far outside the door.
These marines beat furiously at the hatch.
"Open the door! We haven't got through yet!"
"Open it, you bastards — open the door for us!"
"We're begging you — open the door."
One soldier, in his terror, even fired at the hatch outright, heedless of the soldiers ahead of him.
Only, more's the pity, the weapons in their hands could do nothing whatever to the hatch.
And by now those bugs behind them were upon them.
Blood spattered across the hatch, and the screaming rose one upon another — and after that, there was only the sound of chewing.
Upon this warship's bridge.
The captain looked in terror at the internal-zone map of his own warship, upon which great stretches of red had already appeared.
Those red zones stood for the compartments that had fallen.
And one of those red stretches was plainly making for the bridge.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The captain whipped his head round to look at the bridge's steel hatch, long since lowered.
That was the sound of striking — as though some great beast were beating against the hatch on the other side.
"The escape pods — use the escape pods, quickly! Emergency evacuation!" The captain pressed the escape-pod button on his captain's chair.
But after pressing it several times over, the escape pods did not eject at all.
"Captain… our escape pods seem to be jammed by something!" the adjutant at his side cried in panic.
At this the captain's spirits dropped straight to the bottom. And just then he happened to look out beyond the bridge's viewport, where he could see several neighboring friendly ships in much the same state.
Some of them, more fortunate, had their escape pods eject.
But it must be borne in mind what the surroundings were.
Bugs — bugs everywhere.
To those bugs, these escape pods appearing one after another were for all the world like blind-boxes.
They swarmed up to hunt these escape pods one by one, and those pods, too, had near enough a zero rate of survival.
At this the captain despaired utterly.
He sat in the captain's chair, all spirit gone out of him.
And now the bridge's steel hatch was struck until it caved inward, and cracks like a spider's web appeared upon it.
The petty officers on the bridge were each of them frightened past bearing, holding their several weapons; some had broken down altogether.
Set against being racked here as they were now, and having to face the terror of the bugs besides—
they would sooner their warship were destroyed outright, for that at least was a swift death.
They understood well enough what end awaited them before these bugs; when they had closed those compartments a while ago, they had heard no little of the piteous screaming of comrades abandoned within them over the comm channels.
"Captain…"
The captain looked at the weapon the adjutant beside him held out to him, gave a self-mocking smile, and pushed the weapon away outright.
Against those bugs, what use was a weapon?
Did he still think to live on in such a pass as this?
How could that be?
The captain took out several grenades and laid them upon his lap.
"It's this that can give us a swift death, after all." The captain smiled bitterly.
In the next second, the bridge's steel hatch was struck fully open, and bugs in their hundreds swarmed in.
For a time there was gunfire without cease.
At the outset the petty officers' firepower could still check these bugs; but as the numbers pouring in grew ever greater, and some of the officers broke and cast away their weapons in an attempt to flee—
before long the whole bridge had become a hell on earth.
The captain looked at those bugs nibbling away at his own soldiers, and there came to him, of a sudden, the thought of those planets into which the hive-race virus had been injected.
Those under his hand might not know of that business; but they, the captains of these warships, did know of these things Qin Longcheng had done.
Those abandoned planets… the people upon them, facing these bugs — had they, too, been so utterly despairing and helpless?
Marshal… perhaps… this is our recompense.
The captain pulled the pin of his grenade, and the flame of the blast swallowed the captain's chair, and the space of the bridge with it.
Things of this kind were playing out not aboard this one warship alone, but without cease aboard the warships all about it.
And this anchor-pillar of the Prince Yan legion fleets, too, was about to be utterly submerged beneath the swarm.
The Owl Dragon Legion · flagship
Zhao Chen sat in the captain's chair; through the ship's radar he, too, could see the state of those imperial fleets opposite.
"It is fitting that you crew should taste, and taste well, all that those above 1 trillion living souls you abandoned suffered before their deaths."
Zhao Chen watched, cold and unmoved, those warship signal-units upon the radar being devoured by the bugs.
At this hour he was, for all the world, a judge.
Passing judgment upon the sins of certain men.