Interstellar Age

War it was a natural course of existence. So long as there were two living being with different origins and beliefs from one another. They were bound sooner or later to fight one another. It could be a matter of personal animosity, religious fervor, or a simple disagreement on political views.

But the reality was that it was a biological imperative. The universe had created so many life forms across the universe, yet despite the vastness of space resources which were needed to survive, thrive and expand would always be scarce.

And with the scarcity of resources came war. Fighting to determine who would control these resources. Such was the nature of life. And the Naraku were no different. It was hard to say where exactly the origin of their species lied.

They had existed for so long and expanded so far across the universe. With each galaxy conquered, a new hive was born, one less connected to their origin than the previous one which bore them into this universe.

Not even the mighty Naraku Empress’s who commanded a galaxy’s worth of their kind knew the exact origin of their species, or where their distant home world lied. For countless years they expanded, devoured, and expanded more. It was the nature of their species.

Only once in the recorded history of their kind, or at least as far as those so far removed from their home world like Andromeda and Triangulum were aware, had they ever met a species capable of holding off their devouring swarm.

It was not a biological lifeform at all. Rather mechanical. These automatons had fought on an equal, if not superior footing as the Naraku had, and the galaxy which they were created in, would never fall into the hands of the Naraku, no matter how many countless bugs were sent to die there.

The very word automaton was enough to spread fear into the hearts and minds of every Naraku. It was an ancient enemy, one which very little was known about to this day. And one that had never been defeated. Or at least as far as Andromeda and Triangulum were aware.

And it was this word that repeatedly crept into the back of their minds when fighting against the Armed Forces of the Germanic Star-Empire. The GSE, after all, was the only faction in the Milky Way Galaxy capable of withstanding their invasion.

Sure, their forces were split fighting against the galaxy as a whole. But in a war of attrition, which the Naraku had only ever lost once in their known history. They were suddenly once more on the losing end. For the first time in eons, the Naraku were being out competed by these strange biological life forms.

But how was it possible? Humanity, or at the very least the forces which fought on the ground, were very much flesh and blood. Even if the fighters they sent in space were automated. So why? Why were these biological lifeforms able to replace their losses, and their expenditures on the battlefield faster than the Naraku could?

There had to be something else going on. Some secret that the Germanic Star-Empire had. Something that allowed them to replace the losses of manpower and equipment as they fought the Naraku.

Was their population really so dense that they could afford to sustain such losses? Or were they capable of reproducing and growing their young at a rate equal to if not superior to the Naraku? It simply didn’t make sense.

No matter how much the two empresses tried to connect the dots, they could not do so. It was simply too alien, too strange for them to understand. Kurt was right. He had not run out of artillery shells before the Naraku ran out of biological material to continue breeding more bugs.

And after the Naraku ceased rising to the surface, he sent down his Marines, which specialized in tunneling through the Insectoid lairs beneath the crust, and began a grand campaign of genocide designed to wipe out all bugs on the planet.

Only after every egg and every bug was thoroughly torched. Every semblance that they had ever been on the planet was expunged. Would the rebuilding commence? This was just one battlefield among many where the Germanic Star-Marines were deployed in a show of force, to act as if they were doing their part to stop the Naraku invasion.

And yet on every battlefield they were sent to, the result was the same. Either the bug’s siege was broken through overwhelming firepower and a willingness to throw bodies at the problem until the problem was gone.

Or the worlds that the bugs had already conquered were thoroughly liberated. Any trace that they had devoured the world and terraformed it within their image was thoroughly removed. It was utterly maddening to the Naraku Empresses who could not help but try to understand how this was happening.

That is until finally Andromeda finally gave voice to her thoughts on the matter.

“There has to be some kind of connection between these specific biological lifeforms and the automatons. There just has to be!”

However, Triangulum was not in agreement with her sister. This theory did not make sense in the slightest, and she was quick to explain why that was the case.

“You say that, but the automatons despised all biological lifeforms. By the time our ancestors invaded the galaxy they inhabited, all biological life was already destroyed. It was one of the reasons why we were not able to win, because there was no biological material for us to devour, which was needed for reproduction….

Even the flora had been wiped out and replaced with metal. How could they possibly have a connection to these biological lifeforms? Not only are we half a universe away from the Galaxy where the automatons are. But the automatons are fundamentally incompatible with biological lifeforms.

There has to be some other explanation!”

Ultimately, the two empresses would continue to argue with one another about how they were losing a war of attrition. But none of them could ever understand the advanced resurrection technology used to replenish German losses, and the artificial intelligence which held control of her the entire Germanic industry.

And because of this, they were forced to remove their forces from any battlefield where the Germanic Star-Empire was fighting. Instead, focusing their efforts on the Germanic allies. Hoping this would allow them to gain enough biological material to create an army which their enemy couldn’t contend with.