Apotheosis Universe (original creation) Entry#4

Population as of 16,056 AQA

Tsvìets: females- 502,093; males- 31

Female MNRs- 402,383; Male MNRs- 23

Female PRMs- 99,709; Male PRMs- 8

Royal- 1

Combat ready: females- 439,030 males-29
Hunters (of the number above)- 4,220

Tsvìets in 1^st Expansion Armada- 1,309

Note: Those who are not warriors/soldiers are either researchers, engineers, pregnant or nursing mothers, and children not graduated from Path of War yet.

C.T.s: 503,283,000

Drones:
Combat (Support: pilots, drivers, etc.; Direct: infantry)- 303,384,939,000; MSVs- 23,300
Labor- 1,000,203,880,303 
Medical- 1,348,020

Basic combat ship dimensions:
Devastator/Heavy Destroyer roles - Length/Width/Height: 3 km, 218.19 meters (2 miles)/900 meters/500 meters
Hunter/Heavy Cruiser roles - L/W/H: 5 km, 632.7 meters/1 km, 350 meters/750 meters
PRM/Dreadnought-Carrier hybrid - L/W/H: 22 km, 530.8 meters/5 km, 400 meters/3 km, 000 meters
Mother/Support-role Carrier roles - L/W/H: 112 km 654 meters/27 km, 000 meters/15 km, 000 meters

Current time: 16,069 AQA
(13 year time span)

Tsvìet Origins: First Crusade Era. The Second Contact, system Aureis ('our'-'resin') pt.1, "The Caanis"

Time was a precious commodity for those of the crusading fleets. They were the first of their kind to venture beyond the star and planets they've known for so long. Many left behind children just growing into young adults, lovers who've spent long years by their bedside, friends who grew up and laughed and wept beside them through all of their happy and trying times, etc. This was not an easy choice to make for many of the Tsvìets onboard the craft. The saddest cases were perhaps those who were leaving behind nothing but the influence they might have made amongst their peers.

For the last 13 years, the Tsvìets could do naught but train, formulate strategies for whatever kind of enemies they may face, and comfort each other in case a feeling of homesickness was rearing its ugly head. Many days were passed at a single time by sleeping and conserving food and energy after training sessions. Other days included singing folk songs in gentle choirs. The Tsvìet tongue sounded like crystal bells and soft, whistling winds when they talked, so a choir would sound most closely to wind chimes on a breezy day with few noticeable pronunciations of alien words.
It was a soothing atmosphere for the listeners, whether they be Tsvìets, A.I. drones, or C.T. synthetics.

As for war preparations, while most of the armaments and MSVs were built and stored, it didn't hurt to build more or something new according to whatever information they received from the still-broadcasting satellites in the systems ahead. The seven fleets of Crusader Fleet group 'ANURAI' had just crossed the edge of the solar system with the blue star and two planets, the system sitting six light years away from their own.

The planets were about three times the distance from their star as the Tsvìets' own homeworld was from their sun. The sun was smaller, meaning it was hotter than their star as well, so the distance made for foreign atmospheres to the Tsvìets. The planets weren't as hot as on their homeworld but it was well above 110 degrees Fahrenheit on an average day. 

The stealth satellites couldn't get any closer than 300,000 miles to either planet without risking being spotted by the unknown ships' sensors. It wouldn't make much difference any as it was very hard to not detect 1,680 Devastator-class Destroyers, 1,260 Hunter-class Cruisers, 35 PRM-class DreadCarriers, and 70 Mother-class Carriers approaching with four million miles of your planet, especially for an obviously space faring species.

The reaction response was quite impressive as hundreds of ships as large as Hunter-class were launching off of the surface of the two planets and heading straight towards them within thirty minutes, though half of them would arrive hours after the ships from the near planet met the intruders.

To the Tsvìets and C.T.s, it was kind of funny how this species' ships looked even more robust then their own. The Tsvìets didn't really care about aesthetics and that only encouraged the pragmatic HUKE to design all of their ships with function over form. Many species who considered themselves 'civilized' would remark that the Tsvìets' ships looked like various shapes of vaguely giant creatures with trailing limbs and a gaping maw. 

This strange species before them...their ships quite literally looked like giant chunks of pinkish gems with a blue interior. They didn't shine brightly or anything but rather looked like a hunk that was just dug from the ground and hosed with water. There were parts branching in all directions from the center and they glowed in a pulsating manner. The average size dimensions couldn't be calculated in the usual manner but the shapes were generally around seven kilometers in width and height.

There didn’t seem to be any visible propulsion systems onboard but the sensors did detect anomalous energy fluctuations all around the ships and a thin arm of it branching out thirty standard Earth miles ahead of each one’s travel path.

The two forces came within 100,000 miles of each other before the Grand Primal (equivalent to Fleet Admiral) of the Tsvìet and C.T. forces ordered a full stop which was copied by the unknowns. The Queen had made the decision long ago to try their hand at nonviolent negotiations first unless something truly warranted war against an alien force they knew nothing about.

So, a single Devastator-class was sent out to act as a proxy while sending out a repeating message in the BOolrk language explaining that they know no other alien language after fighting the BOolrk out of their space. Really, the Tsvìets were forced to rely a lot on this method since the BOolrk might have had contact with these aliens directly or indirectly through another hive fleet as the Queen knew through the Blading of the first Hive Mind that it hasn’t had any interaction with this new species. The second Hive Mind might have known since it was within their solar system for decades but it was crushed and blown seven ways to Hell with no recoverable body samples- a tough but necessary loss given the circumstances.

The lone Devastator sat out there just 50,000 miles between the two forces until there was finally a response from the alien fleet.

It came in the form of one of the arms of the closest crystal ship glowing brightly before a massive energy blast that looked like pure fire exploded from it to tear across the distance in but a couple of seconds. The Devastator had no chance of dodging such a surprise attack even though the crew was in readied conditions. The entire ship was engulfed in the attack and their allies could only watch helplessly as a fine example of the backbone of their space Navy crumbled into dust within the fire.

Even worse, the attack had kept on going and even tore into the formations of the armada, annihilating three more ships as it tore out the back of the formation.

The response from the visitors would have been easiest described as apocalyptic as hundreds of thousands of laser and plasma batteries took aim at the single ship and unleashed their built up fury. Advanced computers noted how the crystal ship took over hundreds of blasts with no effect before the sheer number of the attacks impacted within seconds of each other. Strangely enough, the crystal structure seemed to crack along its body before erupting from the inside.

Broadcasting on all open channels, the Tsvìets’ earth rattling war chants and thundering drums brought the entire species into a controlled blood rage that boiled their blood and could only escape momentarily through the chants of battle.

All Devastators sped ahead at full speeds, splitting into different directions towards the enemy to avoid having multiple ships destroyed from a single blast again.

Hunter cruisers strode behind the Devastator metal shields while they acted in a similar role for the PRM DreadCarriers that stayed to bombard the enemy with their bigger guns and act as a shield for the Mother-class Carriers that were ordered to keep out of the attack in the case enemy reinforcements arrived.

The space between the charging fleets and the crystal ships became a blinding light show of lasers, plasma bolts and pure energy blasts with a dozen Tsvìet ships annihilated for every one enemy destroyed. In just the opening minutes, just over a quarter of the Devastator shield had been vaporized with casualties among the Hunter cruisers in the dozens while only a few dozen of the enemy were destroyed.

When they arrived at their predetermined distance from the enemy formations, the Devastators started flying up and down the x-axis plane (vertically instead of just horizontal) and charged at the enemies that were below or above them that had been focused on the Devastators in front of them. Before the crystals could take advantage of the broadside targets, they were now face to face with the heavier Hunter cruisers who could now utilize the full array of heavy weaponry not found on the destroyers.

Macro lasers batteries the size of World War II IJN ‘Yamato’ class battleships opened fire in their thousands from the hundreds of heavy cruisers, their red beams searing into the mineral looking surfaces of the crystal ships. Along with the Devastators before where it took hundreds of shots, the heavier cannons of the heavy cruisers needed only about a dozen to rupture entire arms of the strange ships. The Hunter-classes now became the main targets though the enemy was not defenseless against the flanking Devastators as the arms that were not pointing towards the Hunters but above and below them were capable of firing similar but smaller blasts of energy. Instead of the 1:3 ratios of shots to kills, it was now reversed for these weaker attacks. Though the number of arms and their rate of fire made it a killing field for the open Devastators, they pushed through the defenses and were able to maneuver within the expanses of space between each crystal ship.

This revealed a flaw in their defenses as the crystals wouldn’t fire their main weapons if there was a crystal in the line of fire.  This was only revealed when a Devastator firing on a crystal to its starboard side saw that another was about to fire its weapon. Knowing they wouldn’t survive the blast, the C.T. Primal of the ship maneuvered the vessel to put their initial target right behind them in the hopes of causing some friendly fire. To their surprise, the crystal that had them dead to rights simply kept the charge and waited for them to clear away from its ally. This information was passed along quickly and the Grand Primal ordered her ships to do something crazy in the eyes of ‘civilized’ species, namely to travel close enough to initiate boarding actions and if not, to use their weapon batteries literally with mortar range of the enemy if they had to.

The initial minutes of the plan gained them some success as the crystals couldn’t really fire on the ships without damage themselves but the Tsvìets’ Devastators showed no hesitation in blowing chunks out of the enemy that shot their efforts for nonviolence.

Boarding operations were met with some strange obstacles, one being that there wasn’t an interior of the crystals that was navigable like the insides of their own vessels. It was like an energy stream underneath the thick skin of the ship. Initial boarders who drilled in or flew into the wounds of the crystals were atomized by the energy current. This information prevented others after them from suffering the same fate. Instead, they stuck to demolition operations along the arms as the energy that flowed out meant the ships were suffering a literal fuel leak and would lose power overtime.

The crystals had some semblance of realization and from hundreds of spot along the arms, thousands of beings vaguely in the shape of a humanoid but made out of pink energy simply transitioned into their reality. Their melee and ranged weaponry was a simple part of themselves and were quite deadly yet their bodies, for all their nimbleness, were capable of being killed by the energy weapons of the C.T.s’ soldiers.

It was on one ship where such a battle had been ongoing that the crystal simply went into a sort of coma after so much damage had been done and so many energy soldiers had been defeated. Putting together details of the ship’s internal nature, the energy absorption and the weaponry, the C.T.s deduced that the soldiers and crew were part of the ship’s energy as semi-sentient extensions of itself. Whether this meant the ship was a simple physical shell for the energy that was sentient or the mass of energy was a conglomeration of the energy species themselves was unknown.

This discovery would turn the tide of the battle for the Tsvìets and C.T.s. Boarding craft in their thousands would launch themselves under the cover of support fire and fighter swarms. Keeping themselves spread out, they took minimal losses from the point defense weapons that were only as numerous as the arms of the ships. A ship with only a dozen arms meant that it only had a dozen weapon points to attack with, meaning a buzzing swarm of small, fast attack craft moving erratically was a nightmare scenario for them to fight against.

Once on the ships’ arms, demolition crews would immediately begin operations to blow chunks out of the surfaces in order to cause leaks. In turn, the crystals would materialize soldiers to eliminate the threats, playing into the hands of the Tsvìets who were well experienced in ground warfare and were decked out in strong Zero-G combat frames with heavy weaponry meant to cause as much damage as possible. It’s not to say fighting was costly for just the crystal ships as the energy constructed soldiers’ weapons made most forms of armor pointless, forcing the Tsvìets, A.I.s and C.T.s to constantly be moving. Due to the nature of the enemies and how they could simply materialize around and within the Tsvìets’ formations, heavy and slow assets were kept off the arms to attack them from some distance, leaving it to just the quicker troops who were loaded for close-ranged warfare.

This new strategy took a full three days as the Tsvìets’ ships used any comatose crystal ships as semi-living shields to move a Hunter-heavy cruiser in close and swarm their designated target with hundreds of attack and boarding craft while the Devastators pulled back to keep watch around the debris fields of their fallen ships.

The crystal ships had no concept of retreat as they fought until the last one went dormant. To keep the ships dormant instead of dead, the holes in their surfaces were covered with welded armor plates until the energy could be studied and Bladed if possible. It’d do them a lot of good to learn of this new foe and prevent huge losses like they did in this battle.

Out of the 1,680 Devastators, only 708 were unharmed with another 183 damaged but in fighting condition. The rest…were now space dust. Of the 1,260 Hunters, 253 were destroyed and another 39 damaged; 5 of them not fit for battle without major repairs. The destroyed ships weren’t as bad as the Devastators but still, having half of your superstructure vaporized wasn’t exactly heartwarming either. Thankfully, the PRM and Mothers stayed out of the close quarter battle. Yes, their huge compliments of fighter crafts and boarders would have made the process go by quicker had the winning strategy implemented them but their huge sizes would have made them prime targets for the enemy and had the crafts been sent out from the distance their carrier ships sat from the fight, they’d have left the Mothers defenseless had enemy reinforcements arrived near them.

Still, this was a very costly victory. Yes, their ignorance was to blame for the loss of tens of millions of A.I. drones and C.T.s and a few dozen Tsvìets but they didn’t have a choice. They were individually outgunned by a hilarious degree like nothing they had wanted to be possible. Thankfully, the collected battle data would help extensively in countering this new threat if more were just as hostile but they could not afford such losses again. 

There was no time to return to their home system to turn in the comatose ships to study and possibly blade. By their calculations, the other fleets would be arriving at their designated star systems within a couple of years at the latest. By the time this fleet had licked their wounds and left to try to catch up with the nearest fleet to aid them, they'd only arrive less than a year after they'd make contact with their systems own inhabitants of these crystal ships. The best they could do is secure the system and prisoners while sending a light speed message to them. It'd take a year at the least to reach the other two fleet groups but with the critical information, they might just suffer much less than the ANURAI Crusader fleet did.

For now, critical supply stations and fortifications would begin construction underneath the surface of the planets. While they would be sitting ducks for orbiting crystals ships, evidence of crystal formations on the planet suggested it was of some value to them and perhaps they'd not risk rupturing the planet. These sites were investigated and overtaken when the crystal rocks proved to be of the same nature as their ships when they glowed and spawned hundreds of energy guardians. This time, the Tsvìets were fighting on more comfortable terrain and their physical capabilities were able to overcome the reaction speeds of the energy soldiers, allowing the flesh and armored aliens to close the distance and slaughter the energy-based aliens.

The second reason was that the biological crews on the remaining ships were in need of stretching their legs. Seeing as how vulnerable their ships are to the massive energy blasts of the crystal ships, many felt it'd be a moot point to keep them onboard for safety reasons when a Devastator could get one-shotted along with the three Devastators behind it. At the least bit, the new species might not fire on the planets they had interests in.

It was three months later that ANURAI received confirmation that their warning and battle data had been acquired by the Crusading fleet groups of STHL (Stahl) and OTRCH (Outreach). They agreed to slow their sub-light engines to drifting speed so as to make modifications to their armaments and loadouts.

They would ferry over much of their land based equipment from the Devastators and Hunters to the Mothers so that they can create more hangars and silos before filling them with craft and missiles from the Mothers and PRMs. It was a complete reversal of roles in some cases but the Mothers and PRMs were much too valuable to risk at this point in time. Devastators and Hunters could be repaired and even built within the massive hangars of the Mothers and the supply fleets within each crusading group had enough refined materials to create half a fleet of Devastators.

The changes would take months to complete with the A.I. drones working nonstop around the clock while Tsvìets and C.T.s went over the gained battle data and ran simulations and battle drills dozens of times within each day until they achieved a simulated victory that wouldn't be as pyrrhic as the ANURAI suffered. The fleets modified the missiles and secondary weapon cannons to cause as much blunt force or piercing damage as possible. The data showed that the enemy ships could absorb much of the energy from their main cannons to fuel their own return attacks but it was discovered that the more energy a ship consumed, the more brittle its crystalline structure became.

The new plan was to launch the modified missiles that were in all honesty metal spears with scram jets on the bottom of them. These missiles would be fired in the tens of thousands to occupy the crystal ship's defensive efforts enough for the main weapons of the warships to attack. Upon absorbing much of the energy as the crystal ships could, those that didn't shatter from the draining would be pelted by missiles and cannon shells meant to shatter their arms from them or to just puncture enough holes in their superstructures to force them into a comatose state. This would decrease the necessity of the dangerous boarding and zero-g operations but if not that, it'd help the boarders' jobs in causing enough damage to shut the ship down.

Once the preparations were complete, they once again began their sub-light journey to meet the new enemy. Unlike before, a long range shuttle would be sent to parlay for peace while the fleet would stay much further back and hopefully out of sight in case of a hostile response. Many in the fleets were eager for a battle to repay these energy beings for the loss of so many friends and fellow soldiers but the primals were hoping to avoid the conflict if possible. 

Over the one to two year course of the fleets' renewed journey to meet their unknown fates, the ANURAI fleets were getting dug in deep into the crust and mantle of the two planets, discovering an abundance of minerals nearly of the quality as those found on Cradle of Life. Many felt it had to do with the heavy gravity of the planet as well as the gravity and heat of the super-giant blue star. These minerals were excellent energy stores and scientists believe the energy beings were creating their vessels out of these stones which would explain their presence on the lifeless planet.

Studies and experiments had began with merging these crystals with combat platforms to discover any uses for them. Upon first merger, the results were both a success and a failure. These crystals drained the energy right out of the combat droids so a new set of experiments were crystal energized to near breaking point and stuff into the droids. This time the droids were operational and showed only the usually estimated drain on the crystals as would have been on their original energy cores. The change in this relationship was like that of gas or heat. The two merged objects would coexist in a state of equilibrium. The droid would always be able to draw on the crystal's energy to improve its power and performance as long as the crystal could draw on energy from an outside source like the droid or a battery pack or power cable to replenish itself.

The military analysts and scientists both agreed that unless this function could be made into a one-way drain for the benefit of the droid, then these crystals were no better than a tag along that would take from you whatever you took from it. They could also be used as explosives but until further breakthroughs were made, they would see very little use in their military on a small scale level.

This breakthrough came when one group of scientists appropriated a Devastator warship to use a few of the more massive crystals samples to hybridize a macro-thermal kinetic cannon. The ship was kept plenty far away from the others for this experiment as it underwent modifications. Once weapon systems were activated, most power in the ship around those cannons were drained dry and the crystals began forcefully drawing from the engine cores themselves until it reached maximum capacity.

Despite the unforeseen reaction that was very obvious in hindsight, the ship's cores weren't at all drained and power was quick to be rerouted to return to the darken zones. Since the crystals in the cannons were full, they didn't drain the surrounding areas again. With that situation over with along with a dozen memos to develop power switches in the lines to prevent such a forceful drain again, the hybrid cannon's power was unleashed upon an asteroid field. The result was a very familiar beam of thermal kinetic energy that was too raw and wild to be focused into something like a laser but it did show a destructive capacity similar to the crystal ships' own main weaponry. Dozens of asteroids were boiled and vaporized in seconds. The blast was so wild that due to ignorance in design, the hybrid cannons suffered many energy blow backs along the energy coils which caused numerous explosions along the cannons' very structures.

The project was immediately jumped on by as many C.T.s and Tsvìets as it could bear while maintaining organization. It was the 'newest wave' through the science divisions of theoretical research and theoretical application into constructive uses such as more robust cannons capable of handling the strain of the weapon repeatedly as well as thermal energy drills for asteroid or planetary mining. What they didn't know was that they'd made a weapon completely different in nature than the imitated. It'd be many decades later before they would finally understand that the crystal ships' energy attacks weren't destroying on a usual overpowering and explosive level as they'd thought but rather turning physical space and matter into quantum energy where then a fraction of the new energy would be absorbed back into the ships after a battle ended in their victory.

Another Devastator was appropriated by a branching group who lined large crystals into the hull of it but kept it isolated from any surrounding circuitry while having a single line with numerous power switches (or dams, if you want a metaphor) leading to the power cores of the ship. Once completed weeks after its refit, the ship was fired upon by a pair of Devastators with their macro-laser batteries. The experiment was a rough success as the empty crystals greedily absorbed all of the two salvos. Instead of stopping there in the design, the Tsvìets had the connection to the core established so that the energy captured by the crystals would be sucked into the cores to fulfill the power consumption of the energy weapons and theoretically, even the hybrid cannons. This way, the crystals could absorb a potentially limitless amount of energy based attacks as long as the cores were draining it and properly utilizing it, such as refilling the crystals of the hybrid cannons, the batteries of the other energy intensive weaponry, the engine reactors, or even just flat out venting the energy into open space. The energy system was almost as efficient as that of the crystal ships' systems but the only problem is having to redesign the ship to house these new features and weapons while making it strong enough to survive such a high intensity stress as well as make the system efficient enough to not blow the ship up during a highly straining situation like coming under a constant bombardment in battle.

Months would go by with different tests either ending in failure or success, both unveiling more and more knowledge about their new enemy and the secrets of their energy manipulation. It would be around nine months after the devastating battle that a project would be born that would change the face of Tsvìet warfare and their knowledge of both their mysterious enemy and themselves. The consequences would change the Tsvìets forever.

One PRM scientist by the name of DRGN SLYR would make a bold and daring experimental plunge into the unknown and hook herself up to a device she created to try and blade the comatose energy within one of the crystal ships. Their research was plateauing and she knew that if she didn't present the queen with a more incredible discovery, she could find herself facing a horrible fate for not moving any of her based fleet group to even aid the other crusading fleets. 

Under the watchful gaze of Tsvìets, A.I.s and C.T.s, she activated the device.

The rate of transfer had no way of being slowed as the collective sentience of the alien energy moved of its own will except for backwards. Unknown to any at the time, the collective consciousness of tens of millions of these alien beings attempted to rip her apart down at the level of pure planck length energy particles as she tried to blade the mass of thoughts and experiences. What occurred was the longest, most agonizing experience of the scientist's life- something that would never be replicated by her again as her body and impressive brain tried to compute, quantify and absorb the maelstrom of sentient energy. 

With a horrible explosion, DRGN SLYR was disintegrated in a cacophony of loud, blue light dust and the crystal ship was empty of all alien energy signs. Many would wonder why the explosion didn't infect the rest of the facility and faculty but were left with no answers.

Until several months later as over the course of this time, strange anomalies would pop up here and there across the entire planetary system, whether it be in the mines on the planet or on the bridge of a Mother-class ship. It drew the concern of the fleet primals and any sightings were immediately reported with dedicated crews attempting to capture, contain or investigate the cloud of blue particles. After a week of the last sighting of that, an entity bearing eerie similarities to a Tsvìet nervous system was seen trying to communicate with those around it by using military handsigns. The only places it favored appearing at were the comatose crystal ships which it would drain pieces of it at a time. 

A month of this being's first sighting, with several more happenings between then and now, the figure had developed into a nearly translucent, semi-permeable figure that bore a facial similarity to the deceased DRGN SLYR. Rumors and theories were abound as the figure made simple communication with forensic teams and analysts but never allowed any kind of contact with its body. What they could understand from it was that it claimed to be DRGN SLYR and she was trying to learn all that she could. 

At the end of the third month, the entity appeared once more among the Tsvìets, this time was a radiant being with white skin and hair and red eyes. Many thought for a moment that their queen had somehow appeared and was standing on the nose of a PRM dreadnought...in space. Their confusion was somewhat abated when the figure's luminosity dulled as its hair turned jet black and eyes changed to a vibrant gold that glowed like twin fires. An immaculate but flattering black dress with a pair of white stripes across her waist appeared to hug her body, ending at her feet and donning her arms with open-ended, long sleeves.

Though her hair, skin and eyes were different, the face was mostly the same and it looked as if it truly was DRGN SLYR.

When she simply phased through the ship and onto the command bridge, she understandably caused quite a stir and all wanted to take some sort of defensive action simply because of honed training and instinct but they were stopped..by an overwhelming psychic force over the Tsvìets' pseudo-hive mind. Only one being could cause that to their knowledge and with a flash that blinded their minds and eyes, they were calmed as they all simply felt like their queen was physically there among them now.

Though they couldn't see it except through physical body signs from DRGN SLYR, their queen and the reborn scientist were having a private conversation.

For Queen SING, this was something she would have never guessed within a week's time. The action DRGN SLYR took was restless and paid a hefty toll but the woman's sheer genius-oriented physiology pulled through and she was able to reconstruct her entire being back together from particles even smaller than quarks and leptons; particles that would take them millennia to travel a Planck length of their own accord. Her consciousness had been spread apart among all of those particles and it was only by the sheer instinctual desire of the Tsvìets to feed and blade that the scattered pieces had unintentionally put themselves back together by constantly searching out and cannibalizing each other they could find. Eventually, enough were reunited that she regained a sense of awareness, disembodied as it was. Still, she could only remember her desire to feed and so she kept on blading her scattered remnants until she began regaining memories. Using those memories and her vast knowledge, she began reconstructing her body, amassing incredible amounts of energy by draining and blading the energy aliens resting in their ships.

Since she had been deconstructed to a point even smaller than quantum energy could be classified in, she was able to metaphysically drag them ''kicking and screaming'' into a plane of existence so tiny they had no experience with, much like with what they did to her. The process was slow the first couple of weeks but by the time she had become semi-permeable, she had the trick down pat.

Feeling quite bold now, DRGN SLYR had made several inquiries into the Queen's own nature which still dwarf her own. She would describe it as 'If I am an amalgamation of energy and data the size of a PRM warship, the Queen is like the planet of Cradle of Life by size comparison.' To her surprise and glee- as well as slight disappointment at not getting the chance to figure it out herself- the Queen disclosed with her her own true origins and the two swore to keep it a secret for now as their species simply wasn't ready. The only other who knew was HUKE seeing as how HUKE was born from the Queen's own being.

Queen SING was the actual embodiment of all that was their homeworld; an avatar containing its full power but sealed behind dozens of self-imposed psionic locks that required various stipulations to unlock. Every single bit of knowledge, every bit of skill and power each and every Tsvìet achieved funneled into her being as a conceptual law, that being "Of course, if the Queen is composed of all things accomplished by the species itself, than any knowledge, skills, power, memories, etc. gained would become a part of Queen SING."

It was how the Queen came to being in the first place. Tens of thousands of years of those horrid, brief lifespans beneath the homeworld's surface built her up piece by piece. This process wasn't all because of the Tsvìets either. While they did contribute the most and shaped Queen SING into her dominant form, she herself started out as the Cradle of Life itself. Bearing the body made indestructible by the intense, molten pressure of the planet's core over the course of untold millennia and endowed with the combined knowledge of all life forms on and within the planet's biosphere, she was technically a Tsvìet-sized cosmic entity. As long as Cradle of Life lived, she could not die. As long as the Tsvìets lived, she would forever be the most powerful of the species unless someone like DRGN SLYR blades every other Tsvìet in existence to gain power almost equal to hers.

The revelation was quite sobering for the new energy construct disguising as a Tsvìet.

Queen SING sought to capitalize on this opportunity and offered her a new position as her Right Hand, her species' Intellect- and 'Archive of Knowledge'- and all the clearance and authority she'd need to advance her people further. SING also endowed the scientist with all of the knowledge and academics every Tsvìet have ever discovered and/or understood. Being more of an energy reconstruction, DRGN SLYR's brain power was entire leagues above even C.T. capabilities and capacity. Once her brain's flesh could no longer sustain any more data, she began pouring the rest into a tome that was just as much a part of her as her new body was.

It goes without saying that DRGN SLYR agreed and didn't waste time with any formalities. With her new authority and powers, she returned to her original post where the Fleet Primals were informed of the new situation. Once the Chain of Command was updated, DRGN SLYR began using her newly understood knowledge to correct the experimental equipment with an efficiency and speed that hard pressed the others to just keep up. In a week's time, the next test firing of the hybrid cannons were a complete success with a destructive capacity nearing that of Kryazors, the newly discovered name of the species they were at war with. 

DRGN SLYR also finally understood why the Kryazors attacked them. It seemed the BOolrk had made many enemies. The Kryazors could only interact and differentiate based on electromagnetic and bio-electric signals which were usually unique to each species' own type of technology. The fact that the Tsvìets' own technological foundation began by reverse engineering BOolrk technology, coupled with transmitting a radio signal in the BOolrk language and the Tsvìets being direct descendants of others who quite literally ate and absorb tens of millions of BOolrk, made themselves indistinguishable from the BOolrk to the Kryazors.

Now that they understood the problem, SING ordered DRGN SLYR to transmit a data package made by the new Royal-class to the other two Crusader fleets to hopefully have a retry for a proper first-contact negotiation.

Aside from that and calibrating the new weapon and shield systems before producing them for the other ships, DRGN SLYR began assimilating more of the Kryazors ships like a glutton. She didn't suffer any kind of problem like she did before. Prepared for the onslaught of the energy souls who seemed more confused at her strange existence than hostile at her, she devoured millions upon millions of the individuals within each ship. As her power and knowledge grew by exponential bounds, so too did her tome become more and more corporeal as it seemed to distort space around it, becoming more visible and recognizable by others. It was a heavy looking black tome with a rough skin cover and outlined with metallic book guards. Green light wisps would flare around it whenever it was open and it captured the curiosity of all who saw it.

About three months after her true resurrection, DRGN SLYR began performing the blading experiment on other scientists that she would help through the process. Two hundred scientists and seven hundred warriors, each caste equally divided between the MNR and PRM-classes, were chosen by her after gifting them each with smidgens of the knowledge over the course of a week that were relevant to surviving the process. The mad science project began again and with the involvement of so many Tsvìets, splitting the available captured Kryazors ships among groups of thirty Tsvìets was a necessity.

The resulting experiment was a nightmare the A.I.s and C.T.s onboard would be traumatized by the amount of torture so many of their sisters went through. Unknown before it started, because DRGN SLYR had a hand in slowing the process down so as to not overwhelm the Tsvìets, this process dragged on for days. To her annoyance and intrigue, many of the Tsvìets- being so close to each other during the experiment- formed psionic bonds to try and overcome the struggle. Entire groups joined together as their bodies collectively disintegrated into quantum energy and latched onto each other to form singular beings.

With DRGN SLYR's careful psionic guidance and energy manipulation, she could not restore them to their original bodies but instead helped model them bodies much similar to her own.

A couple of weeks after their disintegration, the 900 Tsvìets were finally restored, but within just 13 bodies that shared the Royal-class phenotype associated with Queen SING.

This result was not what either SING or DRGN SLYR wanted and many desired for the Queen to reign the seemingly mad scientist in. To keep up with appearances, the Queen ordered a ship carrying DRGN SLYR and the thirteen 'Royals' to be brought back to Cradle of Life while the rest of the fleet would use the knowledge DRGN SLYR brought about to better fortify the star system with one-hundred of the newly modified ships leaving to catch up with the other Crusader fleets with their newly upgraded engines that were capable of relativistic speeds averaging about 88% light speed.

Hopefully, their assistance will not be needed and the Kryazors would listen to them now.

On the PRM-class ship, DRGN SLYR was helping her 13 unexpectedly successful experiments adjust to their new bodies and abilities.The Archive had a predatory smile on her face as she had a little under nine years to prepare for her 'trial'.

Tsvìets in 1^st Expansion Armada- 422

C.T.s: 420,543,110

Drones:
Combat (Support: pilots, drivers, etc.; Direct: infantry)- 300,384,939,000; MSVs- 23,030
Labor- 900,203,880,303 
Medical- 1,148,020

Combat ship count:
Devastator-class - 708/1,680; 183 (Repairing)
Hunter-class - 1,007/1,260; 34 (Repairing)
PRM-class - 35/35
Mother-class - 70/70