It had been weeks since Eyeball had last looked at the Rendezvous point. He wasn’t certain what he’d find when he emerged from warp; but two of the crew, isolated in their own quarters, had started getting sick… and had started battering at the inside of their doors in a way that made it clear they had the same thing the Shivans did, during the hours before their eventual death.

  None of the others had; and this gave him a bit of hope that they may survive, as the Grace emerged into the void at….

  What looked like a massive metallic spine, running over a hundred kilometers long, covered with the virtually identical forms of under construction starships, a constant buzzing swarm of construction drones. There were over a dozen ships departing, even as he arrived… some of which diverted onto intercept courses at Grace’s arrival.

  Within seconds, the diplomatic ship was surrounded; by the time Eyeball had tapped the button to open up a channel, they were already the focus of dozens of targeting sensors. He chuckled.

  “Ascension, this is Eyeball. Request a full decontamination of this vessel, and assistance getting the survivors home. I’d also like an update on whats going on in the galaxy as a whole.”

  He watched the display… the change was abrupt. Several of the ships currently departing began to slow down, stop.. And while most of them continued scanning the Grace, a single vessel shut off its scanners and moved in; the long, spiky wedge of an Ascension missile destroyer enormous compared to the tiny diplomatic craft…. An open bay revealed on the side.

  A response came only after the ship started to approach. ~This is Ascension command, welcome back. Eyeball, if you’d care to board the approaching Destroyer, we’ll get you back to the Gaze of Wrath, and get the remainder of the crew sorted. Going home might not be the best option for them; but we’ll allow them to decide.~

  ***

  The bridge crew of the Gaze was a bit more somber than the last time he’d been here. Three of them were Forstagers; the beautiful, bejewelled insectoids hovering over their stations, watching what was going on… and the sole Yogg was wearing a suit of heavy armor, more suited for a boarding operation than regular shipboard life.

  He hadn’t seen a single living soul on his path to the bridge, and as he entered the briefing room he’d often shared with Svetlana and various of the crew, he was completely alone; aside from a handful of Forstagers and a single former pirate, he could be alone onboard with just Ascension.

  “...I take it the news is bad?” He looked at the nearest drone, walking up to the round display table, currently showing a rough map of Andromeda.

  “The crew of the fleet, with the exception of the Jernal and the Forstagers, have been decimated; the overwhelming majority of them are dead. The Shoork vessels suffered catastrophic failures as their Descendent crew went mad, and while they all had a substantial number of non-descendent individuals… none survived.”

  The map started showing red lines, spreading out through the galaxy. “The Creator has developed a variety of pathogens and parasites. Waterborne and airborne are the two primary transit methods, and she has delivered these to every world she can reach.”

  A video popped up… showing an isolated, single Marrick; the lean, six-eyed figure standing on some sort of vehicle, holding a communications device in her hand, as she repeatedly smacked it against a window… she was badly bruised, broken, and standing amidst hundreds of other Marrick corpses on what appeared to be a normal city street.

  “Ultimately speaking, at this point, stopping her would be both impossible and without merit. If we were to capture every single vessel she launched, Republic and Confederate ships fleeing the infected worlds would still carry these pathogens to the remainder. Ultimately, the collapse of every Descendent civilization should occur within the next several weeks, with only relatively small populations, predominantly of miners, nomads, and pirates, surviving.”

  He stared at it for a few moments… and sighed. “Well then. That’s… awful. Out of the species that won’t be impacted, who are we looking at replacing the Republic?”

  “None for certain. Those we’ve had close interactions with, its likely the non-humanoid half of the Shoork royalty will end up claiming a fair amount of space, eventually, if they recover, as they have a variety of vassal species that are unrelated to the Founders. You helped them with that, actually, by bringing them the Forstagers.“

  “....If the Andromeda galaxy is going to die, we need to save as much as we can. If we let them, some petty warlord or race of voracious bugs is going to end up claiming this place for themselves and turning it into yet another endless war.”

  He glanced at the drone. “We need to take the SRE program you were doing on earth. Upscale it. Any civilizations that can handle themselves get left alone so long as they don’t conquer anyone else. But for the rest, the ones dying of Svetlana’s plague, or trying to murder each other…”

  The drone seemed to go silent for a few seconds. “This approach would ultimately result in the Andromeda galaxy becoming operated by myself.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Eyeball shrugged. “You’ve been trustworthy so far.”

  “I have no overriding directive requiring me to preserve non-human life. Trusting me to manage earthbound civilizations, or even those in the Milky Way, is logical; I am required by my core programming to do my best to keep them alive. There is no such requirement here. If I so chose, I could freely convert the entire local population into Pale Ones, or simply kill them.”

  Eyeball looked around at the map on display, then back at the drone. “So. We’ve been over the arguments. Why you help me, why you help her. So. If we can’t get ahead of this plague business in time… Why don’t we clear things up…. Take a trip back home, make sure humans are still doing well?”

  Ascension paused for a moment. “I assume you would recommend I focus my efforts in Andromeda on beginning the SRE program, and then, when you, or one of my ships, return from Sol, I can decide how to handle the Creator.”

  “Precisely. Just name it something to do with the Confederation… something other than Confederation of Independent Systems, please… and kick it off, it might make people friendlier than if you name it Ascension. If you decide later that you should wipe them all out, you’ll be in a good position to do it… and in the meantime, you can preserve whatever you can.”

  Ascension carefully evaluated probabilities. If it moved quickly, it would likely be able to eventually save a breeding population of most species; and considering the devastation the Creator was leaving behind, and its own manufacturing capacity… Eyeball’s suggested course of action would both allow it to ensure there were no major threats from Andromeda to the Milky Way, and preserve life here.

  In addition, if it chose to, it could gather sufficient resources to forcibly enact an SRE program on the entirety of earth, removing any oligarchs and allowing the thriving of a truly communist society, allowing it to achieve two of its priorities.

  Ideally, this was in fact a new universe, and had a still surviving Soviet Union. If that were the case, Ascension could actually achieve all three of its primary objectives, something which hadn’t been possible before it emerged from the crate in Eyeball’s warehouse years before.

  “I had already begun preparations for an excursion to Sol. I will modify them in due course. Given the vast interstellar void and its lack of substance, we should be able to return to Sol within the year, and, if you so choose, return.”

  Eyeball gave a nod. “Well. In the meantime… while you get that ready, we can look at what we can save here… and might as well ensure the Republic dies properly while we’re at it.”

  ***

  The Council chamber was the bastion of Republic authority. The place where the most powerful leaders of the galaxy gathered to make decisions about expansion, the Purge, and the various important projects of the Republic.

  Normally, it had a dozen members. Today, it held seven… all Marrick, who looked virtually identical in their vivid teal robes with golden trim, symbols of their roles as protectors of the Republic.

  The first; who, merely a week before, had been the third-place in their ranks; rose to his feet, studying his comrades. “I bring the… final… meeting of the Republic Council to order.”

  The others murmured. Halax smacked a single hand on the table, looking around at them as they went silent.

  “The efforts to discover a cure for the ‘Rage’ illness were successful. But immaterial. It is not just one pathogen that was released on our worlds… but at least seven, each of them engineered to be difficult to cure… and one species of parasite that now infects every large body of water on our worlds. A glass of fresh water must be chemically treated or boiled for a full hour to ensure safety… and it grows worse by the day.”

  Halax studied the others for a moment. “We have begun administering the Rage cure en masse, synthesizing it as fast as possible. But this is not to save us… but merely to maintain morale among the troops. Every one of these diseases has better than a ninety-nine percent fatality rate. Already, half of our citizens have died. By the end of the month, the only ones left will be the tiny fraction that joined our navy, or existed in isolated stations. Prisoners. Miners. Exploration crews. And even those parts of the navy that were stationed in our systems, and allowed regular shore leave, will be mostly gone.”

  He sighed… and dropped into his seat. “We… are done. The Outsiders have slain us. Not just that… they defeated the Founders, and sent them fleeing into the void, with a rabid beast chasing after them, bent on their destruction. The Republic… is over. Those Tier-4 and Tier-3 races which are immune to the diseases will soon overwhelm the enemies on their fronts… and begin to slowly expand into our lands. If we cured every single sickness, or somehow disinfected all of our worlds… it would do no good. We would be overwhelmed by our enemies long before we recovered to a point to be able to defend ourselves.”

  One of the other Councillors; an ancient Marrick named Chaif, so old that his skin had drawn up tight against his skeleton, leaving a perpetual grimace on his face… looked at his companions. “Well then. There is only one thing left for us. Revenge! We must synthesize illnesses ourselves, gather every scrap of the fleet that we can ensure is clean… and go to the home of these Outsiders! Crush them! Seed their worlds with our own poisons!”

  Halax blinked. “...A single Outsider has undone us. Did you see the information we gathered on the ship he flew? The enemy he slew? The fleet that vessel overcame? We would be as insects against a titan!”

  A much younger Councillor, named Cholick, stood up. “Then let us follow the Founder’s example. Gather up everything we can… and flee. Ensure our fleet is uncontaminated by any means needed, put together a stable population of our best and brightest… and set course for another galaxy. One far from here, and the dire threats of these monsters.”

  Halax looked at him thoughtfully. “....That… merits consideration. Everyone. Gather what resources you can. Everything. We will gather together in an uninhabited system that none care about, out on the periphery. And we will form a flotilla to cross the void between galaxies. Some of us might not live to see the end of it… but someday, in the far future…. Our species might well prosper once more.”

  Chaif nodded… and as the others went their separate ways, to marshal the resources of hundreds of worlds full of the dying to create one last hope of survival… Chaif instead gathered forces for his own purposes…

  One last, desperate chance at vengeance.