Galactic Center of the Milky Way
Spinning all around the bright glowing center was a massive cloud of dust and debris. It swirled around the center itself, and engulfed countless solar systems and star clusters within itself. More than that, the cloud helped obscure the glow from those countless stars.
Its brightness was truly blinding. Perhaps painfully so.
Entire stars orbited in long ellipses around the very center, a few with incredible speeds exceeding 20 million meters per second. Their combined glow absolutely illuminated everything all around them. Their combined heat obliterated everything else.
Except, of course, for the very center itself.
Instead, the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the galaxy absorbed all of th
Thanatos joined the other drogar ships and lobbed numerous disintegration mortars at their enemies. They flung streams of mortar fire down at the incoming enemy ships with reckless abandon - even if they missed, they still struck the station far below.Those that didn’t miss slammed into the incoming devastators with relative ease.The orange energies that encased them swept outward and completely shorted out any repair circuits near the point of impact. Then, the dark nuclei burst all over the armor plating where countless nanites began to eat through the armor itself.They chewed through every metallic element in their path greedily, and reduced the enemy devastators’ exterior defenses moot. Each of them had massive gaping holes that revealed far more fragile components inside.
Just as Freya was coming to the realization that their fight was nigh insurmountable and that they only held a very slim chance of winning, everything turned for the worse.To her horror, the station’s surface began to shift and move and flow, almost like quicksand.Every crater and scar began to fill back up and cover each of the wreckages and detritus inside of them. The station’s surface swallowed up the broken, destroyed ships that were dotted all over bit by bit as the moments passed.As it did so, the nanite pool dissolved everything it touched. Large swaths of torn armor or chitin plating, exoframes and internal structures, modules and systems, flesh and bone. All were consumed by the station’s nanites and broken down to their finer elements.
After many minutes of traveling through the planet-sized station, Thanatos eventually reached the inner core. It passed through the atmospheric shielding and pierced through to the inside.But it wasn’t quite hollow like Freya thought. It was yet another layer of nanite soup, much like the surface. She watched as a fully-formed hangar bay materialized all around her, as the soup created a hangar bay just for this occasion.It dawned on her that deep in here, they could be overwhelmed with nanites and turned into soup in mere moments. But they weren’t already, which meant there was some sliver of trust to be had.She docked Thanatos at the only docking collar protruding from the far wall. And as she neared the walls, they protruded outward and filled the space between. It made Thanatos fit snugly in
“How can the solution possibly be… whatever you’re doing?” protested Freya. “Do you honestly believe that constant conflict makes us stronger? That’s ridiculous!” “You of all people should understand how bodies work,” Anki retorted. “Our physical bodies are constantly at war with the galaxy around them. Simply look at your biological responses to viruses and bacteria. “Your bodies only improve and defend themselves through this constant conflict. Through the constant influx of stronger, more potent phages and antiphages. You can extrapolate this fact across every level and dimension of life. “It is the only way most organisms in the galaxy can survive. Without these base defense mechanisms, violent as they are, none of you would exist.” “That’s a false equivalence!” Claire cried out. “The drogar aren’t viruses or bacteria, and humans aren’t a separate organism from them at all! We’re the same organism, all living in the same cell! “It’s more like our antibodies can’t even tell t
Raijin sank down into the vast sea of circuits that ran the entire station. Her nanite swarm spread all throughout the core as her own consciousness mingled with and reviewed the various intelligences that ran it. And although this was all something she had done hundreds, if not thousands of times before, this seemed a wholly new experience for her.The station’s complexity and advanced technology certainly helped in making her feel this way. Mostly, it was because she was analyzing code that had lasted for tens of thousands of years.The entire system’s operational core was certainly antiquated, but it allowed the more complex self-healing, self-repairing, self-learning Administrator to grow around it. She was able to patch over most of the old code and modernize it. Most would see that as its only saving grace, but Raijin saw a bit more in i
Outside the station, the many thousands of previously aggressive ships had long since descended back down to the station itself. They all dipped down into the nanite pool they came from. And there, they were all quickly dissolved and redistributed back into the pool itself.Once they were all gone, the ships of the Einherjar and the Republic also descended down to the surface. But instead of sinking down into the pool, they instead landed solidly on its surface.There, nanite swarms flowed through the landing gears up into the ships themselves. They coursed all throughout every ship in both fleets and repaired and reinforced them from the inside out.Because the station had a near-infinite amount of raw materials of every element, it was easy enough for the nanites to recreate raw omnitronium ore. Or even bett
The Void Quark embedded itself in the iron ash core at the absolute center of the star itself, where it began to consume everything around it. And in the process, turned itself into a black hole.The sudden shift in gravitational pull at the core caused all the layers above to collapse and spin further inward, ever closer to oblivion. As it did so, it spun faster and radiated extreme amounts of radiation. Waves of intense heat and energy swept out as the black hole core was fed more and more, and caused it to grow exponentially.As a result, the star all around it turned a deep, dark orange and swelled larger and larger. Its equator began to bloat and stretch as the sheer energies of the black hole core spun it faster and faster. At the same time, it easily consumed the planets closest to it until it was to the point of bursting.
The Matriarch watched the swirling chaos of that distant system for a seeming eternity. To all around her, she burned a hole right through the space between. Whether that was vengeful or not, most didn’t know.She herself roiled deep inside. The guilt at all those losses ate into her. It shook her to her core and threatened to bring her to her knees.But thankfully, she held her will and remained firm.“I hope that’s the only shot we ever have to make,” she said.“You know as well as I do that they’re already calling our bluff right now,” replied the Grand Parliamentarian to her right. “I’ll bet a hundred ducats that both nations have already sent comms requesting for time. To get their business in order, or whatever