“What are you?”

The being that towered grotesquely in the cross-corridor fixed a chilling gaze on Colonel Moody. It had already absorbed four maximum-power shots from his blaster and was unaffected. It looked vaguely human if every feature of a normal person was stretched vertically to twice its normal height. It wore featureless black.

It’s mouth opened and a chorus of screeching voices filled the air. Iris-less white eyes stared at nothing. Its unusually large skull was hairless and covered in bruise-like veins.

Moody fired again, and again, but the creature simply turned and floated back up the corridor, ignoring the powerful energy bolts it absorbed without reacting. Shadowy humanoids streamed around it and rushed towards Moody. He cut several down with his blaster pistol before he engaged the rest hand-to-hand. The big marine officer was more than a match for the relatively weak intruders one-on-one, and in the narrow cross-corridor they were only able to get at him one or two at a time.

He clocked the first one with his blaster, ramming into its helmet straight-on. The second swung wide and was rewarded with a swiftly broken elbow. After they slumped to the floor, the ones behind stumbled forward. The colonel was having the best of it until one grabbed him from behind. It jabbed a knife-like device into his neck. There was a moment of disorientation and then...

All Moo could say for sure was he was standing on a precipice that seemed hundreds of miles away from what it overlooked. Before him was a gigantic dull green translucent spherical object suspended inside an even larger chamber. If he didn’t know better, he would have said he was looking down on a planet during re-entry. The sight caused a wave of vertigo to rush over the colonel. The distances he perceived were beyond human comprehension. He had never been inside a structure even a tiny fraction as large as this one. It was cold and damp, and not home to anything even vaguely resembling human beings.

Yet somehow Moody could feel a presence at the center of that sphere. Somehow he knew it was Admiral Hughes. An image formed in his mind. He could see a human face staring into infinity, mouth wide open and thoughts of slaughter and conquest seeping from its mind. A thousand chittering sounds stormed into Moody’s consciousness, and over them a voice that was becoming less human by the moment.

“Weakness must be consumed. The strong must aspire to greater things. Else all is lost.” They weren’t audible sounds in the strictly human sense. The words felt like an icy cold wind drifting through the colonel’s soul. The sounds conjured images of graveyards and decay.

“Magnificent, isn’t it? What is born from here will soon be warlord of your reality.”

Colonel Atwell approached Lucas’ vantage point. He still wore the same faded and damaged uniform.

“You weren’t making any sense before, and you aren’t making any now, colonel.” Moo replied, still dizzy from the effects of the transition to Ithis space.

“Nonsense. We have been taught our entire lives how sacred life is, yet we never even once consider the sheer power of anti-life.”

“When I get you back home, I’m going to celebrate your court-martial with a nice thick steak, Atwell. You’re a traitor to your own race, and you’re a traitor to Skywatch.”

“Skywatch is a bacterial colony, colonel. I’m talking about galactic civilizations here. You don’t even recognize what you are seeing. This structure alone is so far beyond the pathetic boundaries of human engineering there are perhaps five men alive who could even understand it! If you flew across that expanse at your ship’s best speed, it would take days to reach the other side. Only three men have ever seen an enclosed space this large in all human history. The Ithis are the stronger species. Why can’t you accept that?”

“If they’re so strong, then why do they need a fleet of our ships to do their dirty work? Why steal our technology and attack our people? What could they possibly have to gain?”

“They want what is in our minds. The more primal and more powerful our emotions, the stronger it makes them. They see us as a source of primitive vitality. It is something they’ve lost over the millennia, but they never lost their craving for it.”

“If they’re that advanced, they can find their cavemen elsewhere,” Moo replied. “Why did you bring me here?”

“To see and experience what Admiral Hughes has become and to consider your own destiny. You will witness the sheer power at his command and you will join us in our great mission to re-invigorate a thousand ancient civilizations with humanity’s one unique spark, colonel. The resulting conquest will be so far beyond anything we’ve dared dream of I suspect none will command the words to describe it.”

“There’s nothing here for you, Atwell. You’ve gone mad and sacrificed Admiral Hughes to whatever is taking place in there.” Moody glanced at the distant structure and again was almost staggered by the sheer volume of visual information he was asking his mind to process. He closed his eyes and tried to regain his composure.

“End this.”

“Turn my back on the greatest discovery in human history? And you’re the one accusing me of madness? Even if we leave aside the fact we could be witnessing what no other human being ever will, what of the technologies these creatures have gathered? They have been traveling space in their dimension for millions of years! They only seek to rule us like they rule every other species they conquer. The Raleo obelisk is only a tiny demonstration of how they can change our entire reality!”

“Which means only one thing, Atwell. We have about as much business here as roaches have asking me about fuel cell maintenance. We don’t belong here! Now send me back to my ship, or I’ll make it clear to the Admiral and anyone else in this circus you aren’t to be trusted! You turned your back on your own species! The more advanced these Ithis are, the more likely it is they’ll recognize your treachery for what it is!”

“Oh, they already understand it, colonel. They just don’t care. You can bark at them if you wish. If they don’t kill you outright they’ll simply empty your mind and consume what is left of you for heat. It’s not a pleasant process. If you like I will introduce you to the humans its been performed on. Have you ever seen a man or woman with literally no mind?”

“Then what are you waiting for, colonel?” Moo growled, his muscles trembling with a barely-restrained rage.

“Once the two human fleets have destroyed each other, the Core will be unprotected, and our rulers can enter our existence to take what is theirs. Hughes is simply giving the Ithis the savage impulse to invade and conquer. And when the admiral’s mind is gone, yours will take its place.”

Atwell turned to leave. “The overmind will turn man’s flawed nature into his extinction, and we’re going to start with Captain Jason Hunter.”