When Commodore Dorian Peterson emerged from hyperspace in the now-familiar ''Charlie'' system, the difference was truly startling.


    Four full-sized Destroyers were almost complete, the long, sleek hulls bristling with the attachment points for the armor plating still being manufactued. A roughly spherical space station, the outside hull studded with hundreds of artificial gravity emitters much like the net that had been used for the 13''s trip, hung in place well beyond the system''s rim. And the Anvil...


    The Anvil was a full-fledged shipyard. After over two years of objective time, its population had grown into the thousands; still mechanical, no actual life signs apparent; with the long spines of hundreds of under construction starships, mostly of the Gunship size, but blended in with at least a dozen larger hulls.


    As he studied the system layout, he brought up an image of the sphere. "Nav, get me a course here. This is where we''re going to be releasing our prisoner."


    With a nod, Shiraki gave the ship the subtle, steady shift to start bringing them in line with the station; as the Commodore called down to the cargo bay. "Sergeant Vasquez. Follow the good doctor''s advice as much as possible, but you''re in charge of moving that thing into the containment sphere. The plan is to ''feed'' that blue jello some mass once its in there, but we still want to keep at least a small amount of the original mass for study. I''m leaving you in charge of the transfer."


    After a few seconds, the Comms officer glanced up. "Captain, I''ve got incoming calls from Captain Amari as well as a Doctor Kent."


    "Summarize whatever Kent wants, and bring up the captain for me." He leaned back in his chair, the seemingly young japanese woman emerging on screen as the officer spoke. "He''s a xeno studies specialist who has studied everything we''ve got about the different races the Survivor learned about. Was added to the list to wake up once we knew we had aliens to deal with."


    "Nice! Hey, Ichika. I''m going to come see you in person. I''m going to have this Kent guy work with Howe and Vasquez on the alien interrogation. Me, you, Jacobs, Smith, and anybody else you feel is worth letting have input, bring them all into the 13. We''ll meet in the conference room as soon as you feel is reasonable."


    She gave a low chuckle. "Well, I''d wanted you to come aboard anyway, but I suppose we can have some company for a while."


    "No worries.. we can take some time for ourselves after. However much of a threat these guys might be, they certainly aren''t a fast one."


    Captain Amari tapped her own icon a few times, bringing up information. "Everyone is fairly close, the Alecto is scanning an iridium-rich rock over on the other side of the ring. I can get us all together in... two hours, if she takes a gunship."


    "Good. I''ll see you as soon as we drop off our cargo."


    ***


    The containment sphere was a relatively simple device; a solid iron core with a wall that caused it to form a shape vaguely like the ''crew quarters'' of the alien ship, twelve electromagnets, and a ring of dozens of artificial gravity generators, all emplaced to keep that iron core distant from the outer tungsten sphere; as well as to push everything firmly towards the center, creating a relative 1G for the central section of the sphere; and a much higher 10G right at the rim to help push away any splashes of liquid or escape attempts.


    As the fuel tank was carefully ruptured at the sphere''s outer edge, and some of the blue liquid was allowed to spill inside, a blend of ''feeder materials'' were added; which the blue liquid consumed, generating massive heat in the enclosed space; that the sphere bled off into a series of external heat sinks, which would, in turn, take hours to reach a comfortable temperature.


    The tank was slowly lowered down; once a roughly 2-meter depth of the liquid covered that iron core; and broken up; the creature immediately swimming outward... and then flopping down onto the iron surface.


    The pale, almost maggot-like consistency of the caterpillar was only expected for the moments it was visible; before sonar was required to view the unmoving form at the depths of the sphere. Vasquez studied the screen for a few moments. "Who the hell built this thing?"


    Dr. Kent; who, at present, appeared to be a young, vibrant man with long blond hair and an overly enthusiastic disposition; clapped him on the shoulder. His own robotic form was a blend of designs; no built-in weaponry, but a fully robotic shell. Less capable of the ridiculous acceleration and speed of the standard models; but immune to the strange dissolving liquid. "That would be myself, sergeant! According to our diagrams, the whole compartment they were in was mostly just smooth surfaces, and we couldn''t identify where the controls were. Aside from the lack of a roof, this matches the layout of where it was retrieved from. Granted... we''re assuming it somehow draws nutrients from this fluid."Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    Vasquez gave a slow look over the construction. Then at the figure on the sonar screen, of the prone alien caterpillar. "You just dropped a creature that, from what we can see, never moved at more than a fraction of earth''s gravity into a 1G tub. The ship it was on couldn''t accelerate at 1G unless it was thrown. Did you see anything about artificial gravity plating in my reports?"


    "I.... No. I..." The doctor stared at the screen. "Shit. Is it hurt?"


    "Hurt? Probably. Killed? Maybe. If any of my men had actually died acquiring that thing I''d be throwing your dumb ass into the sun right now."


    Doctor Kent grimaced as he looked out at the orb; toying with a tiny labradoodle puppy that appeared to have his icon controls around its collar. "Ahh... Engineering, can we turn down the artificial gravity at the core to, say... one percent?" He turned to look at the sergeant. "I apologize. I know full well that earth is on the higher end of gravity for sentient species. I should''ve known better. I was just considering our own comfort in operating down there... when we won''t even be feeling it, really."


    "Ehh. It deserved it. These things are monsters. Don''t try to talk, just shoot and run the moment they see you... or shoot and charge. Hopefully we just end up wiping the damn things out."


    ***


    Captain Peterson looked around the table. This conference room had once served as the bridge of the 13 while it was in transit; and easily fit the small gathering of officers inside. "Alright, people. Here''s what we know." At the center of the conference table, a map of the 187 systems of the cluster appeared; with one star at its very edge highlighted in red, and nearby stars highlighted in orange or yellow. "We are near the outer edge of the milky way galaxy here. The black hole in the center of the cluster is why these stars are so close, most of the stars out here have dozens of lightyears between them. This one red dot is where the aliens who we are now calling the Mags... first entered the cluster."


    "Mags?" Derek questioned.


    A small image of the prisoner appeared; solid white, bulbous, and fat, covered with a thin layer of some sort of slime, and with a long row of greyish-yellow legs down its bottom; with a long, prehensile tongue emerging from its mouth, where its claws centered.


    "Short for Maggots. They bear a vague resemblance to a blend of caterpillars and maggots, and they don''t have a spoken language, so we went for it."


    The crowd around the room mostly looked in disgust; though a few looked in fascination.


    "This slime they cover themselves with, which we have a sample of, protects them from the liquid; and we believe it allows them to filter nutrients from the substance, while making it hostile to any life-form but themselves. If we replicate it, we can use boarding parties with non-metallic components; we''re working on that now, but that''s a low priority. Our top priority. Do we stay, or do we go?"


    Derk glanced up. "As much as I''d like to avoid a fight, I''ve got to say. Wherever we go, these things are going to be a problem... eventually. And its always possible some isolated group will discover hyperdrives and then the whole mass will snowball like crazy. In fact... I had the fabrication team spread receivers throughout the system, and it gave us some... disturbing information."


    The starmap suddenly expanded, covering the region up to five hundred lightyears away; and showed hundreds of purple dots between the cluster and the galaxy''s edge.


    "Either the Mags were born out here, on the galaxy''s edge, in one of these systems, or they''re extragalactic. Regardless, they seem to have begun at the edge of our spiral arm and started to slowly work their way inward; The one thousand eight hundred and forty-three systems marked in purple represent probable radio signals from Mag developments; getting more intense the closer to the galaxy''s edge they go. A few of them don''t even seem to be coming from stars... meaning that they likely have a full-fledged dyson sphere."


    A soft murmur filled the room as Peterson looked over the map, giving a slow nod. "Excellent work, Thompson. So, flight is an option; but will only delay the inevitable. We have an enormous tech advantage. Can we use that?"


    Captain Smith gave a small grin, her freckled face filling with malice. "They have no hyperdrives, and their acceleration is worthless. I strongly suspect we could even imitate their radio signals and hull and infiltrate their systems with ease. Maybe there''s millions of them... but its millions of bugs that we can crush in vast numbers. Their core systems might be unbreakable, but we can stop their expansion cold."


    "Nothing is unbreakable."  Jacobs gave a long look at the gathered officers. "If Leanna''s right, we can mimic one of their hulls... and slip a starship right up by their star. We have enough iridium here to build thousands of hypercannon. Destabilizing Sol in such a way that it wrecked hyperspace took sixty-four high-scale hypercannons firing in perfect sync. If we just hit the star with three or four of them, we''ll create a mini-nova. Enough to be irritating in nearby star systems, but absolutely fatal for everything in the system itself. There could be a billion of the damn things and that would do the job. Hell. Drop a chunk of antimatter into the star''s heart directly from hyperspace, and you''ll kill the launcher and the star at the same time."


    For the moment, everything was quiet. Peterson looked up at the starmap. "So. We start out here, at the cluster''s edge. Work our way out. If the concentration is too big to kill... we nuke the star. If its thin enough, we wipe it out. What sort of timetable are we looking at?"


    Jacobs studies the map. "It''s five hundred and seven lightyears to the galaxy''s edge from here. If we can figure out how to copy the enemy hulls... Nine years to build enough ships, and another couple years to get them all into position. I''d recommend we do it as close to simultaneously as possible for the systems outside the cluster; reduce the odds of one of the systems figuring out a hyperdrive... and clean out the stars that have witnessed us ASAP."


    "Alright folks. Operation Orkin is in effect. Unless the interrogation team figures out some way we can live in peace with these creatures, we''ll just have to clean them from our skies."