With Zelem's Nexus stable again, I decided to turn my attention to the other worlds under assault by the darkspore. I already had fleets putting pressure on the other planets I'd visited on my journey through this universe, and since the only ones that were under siege at the moment were the ones that had had destructors on them, those fleets were rather large. Now I merely had to decide where I wanted to focus my efforts on at the moment - the others would likely sort themselves out by the time I finished with that one.

For nostalgia's sake, I focused my efforts on Nocturna. I'd be lying if I said my only reason for focusing on Nocturna was for nostalgia - I needed to be sure that the Nocturni Legion hadn't simply used the Darkspore's disappearance to return to dominance and begin oppressing the natives again. They'd said they wouldn't do that, but I needed to be sure. Plus, Nocturna was just exiting a period of near eternal twilight, which I most certainly did not want the Darkspore to ruin. So yeah, I had plenty of reasons to head to the Planet of Eternal Night.

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I got good news and bad news when arrived at Nocturna.

Good news: THe Nocturni Legion really had reformed and were being nice people, though they were still a rather imperialistic and caste defined society. At least they weren't essentially space Nazi's anymore (yeah, according to my Necrogenesis heroes, some of the Nocturni ELders and their followers really were that bad, and all of my Necrogenesis heroes found those particular individuals to be horrible wastes of breathable air. Also, the new elders had apparently made social advancement in the reformed legion easier. Reminded of the Empire of Man from Warhammer, in a way.

Bad news: the legion was now getting demolished by the darkspore, with a very real chance of fragmenting soon if action was not taken. That would probably spell the end of civilization on Nocturna for a while, and that was the best case scenario. Worse case was way worse.

Well, time to act.

A quick orbital scan revealed that the Legion was making a stand at one of the cities nearby the planet's capital - not a last stand, but close enough. IF the battle went on according to my best projections, the defenders would suffer 75% casualties and would likely be finished off and devoured in a battle at the capital. That was not something I wanted to happen, so I Decided to help them by bombing the main body of their assailants with antimatter bombs, albeit small ones, so as to minimize friendly fire. That still generated a giant crater in the center of the horde, which stalled its advance in the wake of my attack, giving the legion a chance to counter-attack. My forces began landing to assist them, and the battle soon turned into a route.

Okay, main enemy force dealt with, now time to stop the enemy from recuperating.

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It didn't take long to locate the main spawning sites of the Darkspore - after all, the mutation mine impact sites were visible from orbit. The big problem here was that destroying them form orbit was not an option - the Darkspore apparently took prisoners to corrupt into more of them later, so I'd need to eliminate the spawning sights via conventional assault, not from orbit.

Well, I had a giant army of killbots and my own monsters. They just had monsters. This was going to be easy.

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Phantom, know to her friends and family as Phan, sighed. This was it - no running now, she was doomed. All around her, the darkspore were staring at her, waiting for some signal to act. She knew exactly what they had in store for her - they'd infused her with E-DNA, the substance that made these monsters from otherwise ordinary creatures, and turn her into another one of their abominations.

All this because she had been attempting to help some lost families reach safety. She didn't regret saving them, though, only that she could not find a way to save both them and herself. OH well, she though, no time to mope. Though she would regret leaving behind her parents - she may not have been the most favored of her siblings, but her parents still loved her, and they would be devastated to lose her.

Nearby, several other prisoners were restrained, some trying to break free, others crying for mercy, and some just quietly resigning themselves to their fate. All were equal in death, but not in how they chose to meet it. Phan, at least, wanted to meet it with dignity.

Before the darkspore did anything to move her, though, a distant explosion filled the air. Then another, this time closer. More followed, and soon, the explosions were happening right outside the room she was trapped in. Confused, the beasts headed outside, only to return a moment later, albeit now with their bodies sharing the consistency of water. Following them were strange robots, which quickly began untying the prisoners. Once free, Phan joined them in freeing the captives, before quickly organizing the prisoners into a group and making a break for it, using a newly arrived group of machines as cover.

It seemed that today was not her time to pass on. Not yet, at least.

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With the last group of prisoners free, I began blowing the ever living crap out of the spawning sites, dropping first regular bombs, then missiles, then pulses, then antimatter missiles and satellite blasts on the target zones, until only smoking ruins remained. Then, I dropped an antimatter bomb on each one, just to be sure.

Well, two down, three to go.

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