"Commander, Tathra and D'jorrin's ships are hailing on a shared call, would you like to take it on the bridge or in your quarters?" Moanthin's voice cut through his concern.

  "I'll take it on the bridge," Tony answered.

  As he arrived, D'jorin's stony, familiar countenance and Tathra's noble elven visage appeared on the main screen. He'd never spoken with D'jorin, but he had seen him fight Tolik in his early days and recognized him from the training grounds turned fighting pits.

  "Antonious!" D'jorrin's voice rumbled. "It would seem that I am in your debt a third time."

  "A third time?" Tony chuckled back.

  "Getting Tolik back for me, twice, and interceding on behalf of my crew and frigate. You've my thanks." the stony man said.

  "If that is the case then I would be twice so indebted," Tathra said with a nod. "I would have been loathe to have lost my carrier to that... doom station..."

  Tony waved off their proclamations, "Listen, orders came down that we were supposed to come to each others aid. You'd have done the same, I'm sure."

  The Ashtar and Celestial Elf exchanged glances on screen as though they knew how they were oriented on it and looked back at Tony, "Of course!" D'jorrin finally rumbled.

  "We're going to head back to the Haght'anak for refueling, repair, and respite. Would you join us in formation?" Tathra asked.

  "Commander?" Selmira, another Celestial Elf with short cropped pale blue hair and pale grey skin, his Systems Support and Repair Specialist, spoke up. "We're getting a strange jump signal... Eastern Quadrant."

  Tony let out a half-frustrated sigh. "You two should get moving. Send me your next jump coordinates and we'll rendezvous after we investigate... whatever this is."

  "As you will," Tathra said. "Ascend, and Endure."

  "Ascend, and Endure," D'jorrin parroted.

  Tony had mixed feelings about the sign off phrase, but the more time he spent on the bridge of the Anomalous, the more frequently he heard it.

  "Ascend, and Endure," he answered.

  The screen flashed and mirrored the scanner screens as Selmira announced "On the Main Screen for you, Commander."

  Tony's brow furrowed as he studied the display. It reminded him of some of the old sonar tech that submarines had used but more advanced. Not as detailed as some of the systems that he had glimpsed for long-range scans on the Haght'anak, but somewhere in between. What it looked like was a spider, just a bit smaller than The Anomalous, enveloped in some cloud traveling toward them at speed.

  "What the..." Tony trailed as he stared at it. "Scan for signatures," Tony said.

  Nothing happened.

  "Selmira!" Tony snapped, pulling his eyes away from the screen to stare daggers into the back of the woman's head as she stared out the viewport. Tony followed her gaze and saw the great spider lurching through space toward them. Great gouts of ichor poured from unseen cracks in its carapace and coagulated into lazily floating globules that, just as swiftly as they appeared, shrank into nothing.

  "Captain Selmira! Those were orders!" Moanthin bellowed as Tony continued to stare.

  The Systems expert snapped out of her daze and went back to her station, rapidly tapping on the display and controls until a ring pulsed over the main display. The large, clearly suffering spider was identified as ?-Arach, the apex evolution of the Arach males that did not reach the daimyo state... if Tony remembered correctly. The buzzing swarm that he had thought was a cloud was instead denoted as thousands of Tlacoltzin.

  Oh no Orbis warbled in Tony's mind, that's not good.

  What do you mean, that's not good? Tony demanded inwardly.

  Those are Tzitzivulca larvae, "Little Lords" or "Burgeoning Ones" they're called. I believe that ?-Arach was infested before it made its way out here.

  Before Tony could fully process what Orbis had said the main display glitched and distorted with green and red bars whipping across it, and when Tony looked around, all of the screens mirrored the phenomenon.

  "Please..." an ancient voice boomed over the loudspeakers "Blade of Arach... vanquish them... and end me before they take me..." the request etched itself across the screens of the bridge in Arach script, a collection of sharp characters reminiscent of kanji etched with a blade instead of a pen or brush.

  Tony's blood turned to ice. The whole situation was giving him the creeps... from the thing's sudden appearance, the voice on the loudspeaker, its request displayed across all of the screens, and that it had sought him out.

  "Commander?" Moanthin's voice cut through the indecision crowding Tony's mind. "Your orders?"

  "Sidro, fire on the ?-Arach... Vireth, prepare for incoming. We're not letting anything get away from us." Tony commanded. He'd decided to try and use his crew's names as often as possible rather than just barking orders to remember them better and make his Social Link Quests, hopefully, that much easier.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  "Sir?" Vireth answered.

  "All of those swarming things are, according to the scan, Tzitzivulca larvae. If they escape, they become much bigger problems for us later. Do you understand?" Tony barked. His words came out harder than he meant them, but he was getting real sick of his crew questioning his orders or ignoring them outright.

  "Yes, Commander," Vireth answered as the whirring of weapons systems charging sounded.

  Sidro fired round after round into the ?-Arach and with each burst of carapace and ichor, more of the flying larvae spilled forth. The auxiliary cannons fired nonstop, carving through the swarm as it massed and pressed toward the Anomalous and slammed into it, rocking the ship nearly horizontal.

  It was at that precise moment that Tony decided, sending Tathra and D'jorrin away was probably a mistake. A bunch of fighters out there peppering the swarm of voracious larvae slamming against his ship would be great right now.

  Slamming into his ship...

  "How are they getting through the shields..." he panic mumbled.

  Shield tolerance allows for -- Orbis started.

  "Kaelen, drop shield tolerance to Zero!" he barked.

  Kaelen acted first, then answered, to Tony's delight. "Yes commander! Shield Tolerance to Zero, setting shields to maximum!"

  A cyan sheen flashed across the viewports as the shields reasserted themselves and forced the larvae away from the hull. Tony bounced on his toes, wishing there was something he could do to affect the outcome other than do what felt like improvising for someone else. He couldn't cast any of his spells without touching the target and he couldn't breathe in space. The best he could do was trust his crew.

  "Shields dropping rapidly," Kaelen reported.

  "Auxiliary weapon systems close to overheating," Vireth called.

  "Navigation systems blocked, too much interference," Renestrae said.

  "No order has been given to retreat!" Moanthin shouted at the Navigations Officer. "Your Commander has ordered that none of these vermin are to escape and we will fulfill that order!"

  "Let the guns cool, fire intermittently," Tony ordered. "Sidro, get that main gun firing, punch some holes in the swarm."

  Tony's eyes searched the bridge and spotted Vasna lingering near the hall that led to the crew quarters. "Moanthin, the bridge is yours, you know your orders."

  "Yes, Commander!" Moanthin saluted.

  "Vasna, with me," Tony said as he left the bridge and headed toward a maintenance corridor.

  "What are you doing?" she asked with an arched brow.

  "Finishing this," Tony grunted as he opened the door to reveal exactly what he'd hoped, a ladder.

  "And you need me for that because?"

  "I need an air pocket," Tony answered.

  "You can't be --" Vasna started.

  "I can't deal with them right now," he let out in a harsh whisper with a nod back toward the bridge. "but I can do something about the bugs, I just need ten seconds of air... that's it."

  "If you die, I'm going to kick the shit out of you," Vasna threatened by way of agreement.

  The two ascendants climbed the ladder that led to the dorsal maintenance shafts and Tony rushed through them until he found an airlock.

  "So, what's the plan?" Vasna demanded more than asked.

  "I'm going to go out there, make myself a really appealing target and when they swarm, wipe them out," Tony explained.

  "How?" Vasna challenged.

  Tony hesitated for a moment as the interior airlock door opened, "Well, I'm going to be an organic thing in typically inorganic space and I'm going to make a lot of... energy noise..."

  "And the wipe them out part?"

  "Working on that part. Almost there," he admitted.

  "I hate you sometimes," Vasna growled.

  Tony stepped through the threshold into the airlock. "Just sometimes?" he smirked as the airlock hissed shut. He tied the winch cable in the airlock around his waist and cinched it together, then pointed at the door which caused Vasna to look down.

  She saw a large orange button labeled "Reel Winch" then looked at Tony, nodded, and mouthed "Ten Seconds" at him.

  Tony reciprocated, then punched the "Cycle" button on the inside. Vasna muttered the incantation for her "World Breathing" spell and Tony's eyes flicked to his status bar, went wide for a moment, and then relaxed as a pair of buffs appeared.

  World Breathing - Duration: 29s

  Effect: Breathe where you would not normally be able to. Beware, other forces such as pressure from depth may still affect you while this spell is active.

  World Shell - Duration 13s

  Effect: Encapsulates you in a shell of your native atmosphere. Being somewhere you shouldn't when this effect expires is ill-advised.

  The airlock opened and Tony leaped out into space. He released the hold that he'd clamped around his Aura of Vengeance and allowed the violent waves of essence and lightning to burst into being. He could still hear the crackle of electricity and the steady whoosh-whoosh-whoosh that the aura made, thanks to the World Shell.

  "Vae Victis!" Tony shouted as he brought Legion forth with all of the blade's enchantments charged and active.

  The swarm, just as he'd predicted surged toward him en masse and the system informed him of his situation immediately.

  You are in Combat

  You are Severely Outnumbered [2,137:1]

  As the larvae entered his engagement range, Tony's Lore bar filled instantly, "Come get some!" he roared his challenge into the pressing swarm. Tony held Legion high and activated Iron Lotus Unfurling and the Beam-Splitting variant of Adamant Slash+ simultaneously. Spectral copies of his Dreadblade bloomed into swaying carnage, carving through the host of wolf-sized insects and dumping their ebon ichor into space before the lotus discharged, firing arcs or crackling indigo essence into the swarm that split on contact with their first targets and continued their destructive swathe. As more and more of the bugs pressed in, trying to get some scrap or morsel of him, Tony continued to dump his Lore into repeated activations of the two talents until he felt the cable around his waist start to yank him back toward the airlock.

  Tony collided with something solid as he was pulled into the airlock and the door slammed shut behind him. When his senses returned he heard an awful hissing and buzzing behind him. He whirled to see that he'd been latched onto by one of the Larvae. The thing was huge, like a stump-winged Komodo dragon with a hard shell, four compound eyes, scythe-like mandibles, and a vicious stinger that had already punctured his side at least a couple times.

  Tony said the only thing that a reasonable person would say in that situation. "Aaaaaaahhhh!!! Fuuuuuuckkk!"

  He grappled with the thing as its mandibles snapped shut inches away from his throat. Tony slammed Legion's pommel into the closest eye, it burst, covering him in black ichor and caused the thing to screech. Tony kicked it off of him and buried Legion's blade into it's midsection then dragged it up and out through its head.

  "Mother fucker!" he shouted, then kicked the corpse and looked himself over. His armor was riddled with scratches and puncture marks where the stinger and spearpoint-like legs had gotten through. Tony's eyes drifted to his HP bar and saw that about twenty percent of it had been claimed by the ambush.

  The interior airlock door opened and Tony stumbled away from the twitching larva and almost into Vasna who stepped clear of his blood and ichor covered form. She looked at him with a nearly scandalized expression.

  "Ew, Tony."