My arrival to Cryos wasn't all that eventful, though seeing the planet from orbit really ended up unnerving me... not for no good reason, though: you see, the planet's core has cooled down, meaning no volcanoes, which means that the atmosphere isn't being pumped full of greenhouse gasses. Now, this might sound-like a good thing to some of you, considering how Earth's greenhouse effect is melting the poles and turning Antarctica green. Well, the problem is, Cryos has so few greenhouses gasses in its atmosphere that the entire world has become a frozen wasteland, where all natives species have to fight tooth and nail for even the humblest scraps of meat. The Crogenitors looked at this situation, thought it was mucked up, and attempted to rectify it by putting a 'white hole' in Cryos' core, which would generate an unlimited amount of heat and hopefully reignite the core.

The end result of this?

The core ended up covering parts of the planet in lakes of lava, while failing to fix the frozen surface. Now hailfire peaks compose a huge portion of the planet's surface, making life even harder for the natives. And that is discounting the Darkspore.

Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me.

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My arrival and efforts to set up an F.O.B. went as well as they had the previous three times I'd made planet-fall on Darkspore infested worlds: complete success.

After that, well, I ended up making an interesting discovery.

You see, according to the game's lore, the Crogenitors had left behind some ancient weaponry on Cryos that, if accessed, could help end the Darkspore and ensure the galaxy's freedom. Unfortunately, they had to abandon the technology due to being attacked by a new kind of Darkspore: the Destructors. Now, the facilities that had contained the technology were occupied by Darkspore. Whatever it was they left behind, I wanted it.

Of course, accessing it was a real challenge: the Darkspore didn't want people getting that technology, so not only was the area heavily guarded, but the Darkspore had set up explosives to destroy the facility if it was breached. Needless to say, a frontal assault was not an option.

Fortunately, I already had a way around this.

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On a hillside near the abandoned labs, I had a land scout survey the area, checking for any signs of Darkspore activity. While the Darkspore offered a fair amount of creatures guarding the facility, most of the forces that I assumed were sent to defend it lived in a set of caverns to the East of my target.

Good for me.

The first thing that told the Darkspore something was up was the sound of engines flying overhead, followed by the explosions as my bombers dropped their cargo. Tanks and bots soon joined the fray, causing the Darkspore to flood out of their caverns to fight my army. As did some of the Darkspore stationed at the facility.

Exactly as planned.

Once the facility was less protected, I sent the Genetic Heroes inside to plunder its tech. Leading the assault was Seraph-XS, the last of her kind, the combots. Seraph was designed for infiltration, so she was easily capable of being stealthy if she wanted to, but to my surprise, all of the heroes were acting stealthy for this mission, even if they groused about it like Zrin and Arborus did.

Well, works for me.

With most of the Darkspore busy fighting a losing battle to defend their warrens, the genetic heroes were easily able to slaughter their way through the remaining ones inside the facility. Once they were dealt with, I ordered the heroes to deal with the explosives: some were disarmed, some were moved very far away and blown up, and one was chucked into a lake of lava.

With those out of the way, time to start searching for that Crogenitor tech. I had Seraph link me into the lab's computer and got to work, while my starship started scanning the ruins to get anything I missed.

For the most part, the technology was just advanced countermeasures to EDNA, such as ways to cure corruption by it and weapons tailor made to fight it. I downloaded the designs for some of the anti-EDNA and modded it into all of my units to give them anto darkspore munitions, so as to make the rest of he fighting easier. There was also some info on the white hole, which I decided to keep for later: an unlimited heat supply would inevitably find some use for my armies.

Other than that, though, there wasn't really much intel in the labs, which was rather disappointing.

But there was one last thing that had me interested: apparently, one of the cryogenics buildings in the laboratory was still active, and contained something inside. Something alive. I decided to go and warm-up the lab, eager to see what was inside. I ordered Krel to enter that building as well, just to have some firepower on standby.

Needless to say, I was surprised when I found out what the facility was filled with: eggs.

Well, not just eggs: it had eggs and embryos inside, in varying stages of development: some were just barely fertilized egg cells, others were embryos mid-way through development, and the eggs were ready to hatch.

According to my scans of the eggs, the creatures inside resembled dogs.

Also, Krel was staring at the eggs in a way that indicated disbelief.

Why was he doing-wait.

I used the scanner on the eggs again, this time to bring up their genomes. Then I crossed referenced them with Krel's genome.

When the comparison was done, a total of 50% of the eggs shared mulitiple genetic similarities to Krel. Which meant these eggs were his eggs.

But, how could that-

I pulled up the data on the cryo-lab again, then examined the research log to see if that would illuminate me as to what was going on.

Sure enough, I found what I was looking for.

Though we have not been able to locate the last of the Crogenitors, our victory over them in battle is all but assured. Their fortress on Perceptum has fallen, and we are already purging the last remnants of their civilization from the cosmos. Soon, all that will be left of them is ruins... and this. This is my final insult to Ptyron and the rest of our foes: these are the last of the eggs belonging to the beast they call Krel, the few that we did not corrupt. Alongside them are frozen embryos gathered from research labs that had tried to preserve the species from before the Darkspore even existed. All of that work, now worthless. Still, it makes for a good trophy.

-Merak, the Devastator

...Well, someone really couldn't just settle for crushing his foes, could he?

Not that I'm complaining: Merak's pettiness meant that I now had a way to save Krel's species, and I was not about to let that go to waste.

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Look, I know that, in the grand scheme of things, saving just one species might seem a small victory, but it was still a victory for me.

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AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!