First sign

It was bad.

The whole reason Khylon chose to operate a stealth squad was so that he could quietly survey the area without having to be political about his appearance on some other Federation's planet. After careful consideration, he'd only chosen a handful of officers to follow him down to the planet's surface to minimize their footprint.

But now—

"Requesting emergency evacuation!"

—now their small team of 7 were in over their heads.

...

By all rights Khylon and his company shouldn't even be out here so close to the borders. This galactic sector barely counted as part of his jurisdiction, but he knew that the Solar Empire that lay on the other side of this galaxy wasn't doing anything to control the Zergs that had settled here.

And by "here" he means: on a vastly barren planet within a dying solar system.

Typically, he wasn't the kind of person to seek out violence and enter into conflict with other Races without a sound reason to. Putting those of the Solar Empire aside, it was this particular set of parasitic Zerg that bred like rabbits and spread through planets like locusts, that was a particular brand of nasty. Their very existence was harmful to a vast majority of planets, and nearly all forms of interaction with them(the Zerg) usually ended in violence because of it.

At first all he'd wanted to do was survey the immediate area surrounding the affected planet. In this galaxy that was sandwiched in between two others, Khylon was tasked with just making sure there was only the singular inhabitable planet in the solar system, as was recorded in the Archives.

As far as he could tell, the planet under investigation barely even counted as being 'inhabitable'. For it couldn't host many forms of life because its rotation and distance from the sun meant that the two sides of the planet were permanently either too hot, or too cold. Only something like the Zerg could settle there; they were a species distinctly known for their poor diet and extreme living conditions. Which is exactly what made them such a fierce enemy—because they had a tendency to survive almost everything thrown at them.

They were basically space roaches.

However!

The only sun in this solar system was already set to implode roughly three or so months from now, so that meant whatever life was on this planet, wouldn't have lived for that much longer anyways.

In theory, Khylon's mission was to make sure these Zergs hadn't evolved far enough to prematurely leave the dying planet. And if they had, then he and his team were to eliminate the threat.

But herein lies the problem.

Primarily this region was used as an outpost for the Solar Empire. They already had various militia and related personnel based in the area — which, what that actually meant, was that if he and his team were caught in their surveillance, then it could increase the tension between them and the Empire, potentially escalating into an international incident.

All this could've easily been solved if the Solar Empire just did their damn jobs! How hard was it to send a few soldiers down to the ground..? They were already in the goddamn vicinity!

But. Orders were orders.

There wasn't much to see up in space, so after making sure the ship was well hidden from—albeit incompetent—eyes behind a planetary ring; Khylon put together an expedition team and loaded himself up in a shuttle.

Being who he was, Khylon had known that something was off the moment they touched down on the Antarctic side of the planet. All his senses were taut and alarmingly going haywire despite there not being anything visibly amiss. Because for as far as the eye could see, the surface of this planet was covered in a vast, white blanket of snow that was deeper than it appeared.

The shuttle they arrived in had an automatic adjustment feature, so it wasn't until the moment their mechas touchdown that they realised just how deep this snow is. Almost immediately, they sunk down to the knee joints. On a 17m model, it was a good thing Khylon changed his mind about this squadron going in wearing simple Active Suits — the snow alone would've hindered them.

Once their eyes adjusted to all the whiteness around them, it was surprising to spot a group of gray rocks that seemed to be poking up from beneath this snowfield. Just how large were they? It also mustn't have snowed recently, for the tops of these rocks were not covered and were instead smothered by varying shades of.. moss.

Sure, the 'moss' wasn't green but purple, and happened to be moving, but it simply turned out to be a harmless type of bug — as explained by their resident Zoologist, Gabrielle Hurmand.

['These guys are quite tasty,'] she had murmured. It didn't go unheard by any of them as she'd left her mic on, ['They're actually a sort of delicacy in the lower galactic regions!'] and after saying that useless bit of information, Gabrielle then materialized a net and scooped some of these 'delicacies' up before she stored them somewhere in her mecha's hold.

Khylon was.. unsure if she was taking them to further analyze, or to get someone to cook them up once they got back to the main ship!

He side-eyed Gabrielle's mecha from inside his own. Despite his unwavering nerve, seeing the sheer amount of them restlessly wriggling and crawling across the rocks had weirded Khylon out.

Just what about them was appealing, huh? He ended up zooming in on the creatures and before he knew it—his mecha had bent into a crouch and he maneuvered the arms to pluck a few of the bugs off a rock closest to him.

"Pi—!"

"..." said Khylon.

Why did they make a noise.

He wordlessly stared down at the fingertips of his mecha. Upon seeing the out of place coloring, his lips twitched.

It couldn't be helped — his mecha was mainly geared towards fighting so he may have killed a few!

Their existence though, just further proved his theory that something was odd about the planet. Because if it was truly dying, then these bugs that had a very particular kind of diet, would not have still been in existence — or bred large enough to be mistaken for moss at their density and mass, at the very least.

Besides, how the hell had they survived the cold?

['Evolution,'] Gabrielle had answered his unasked question. Which was great and all, but still didn't explain how they were here. However it seems even she didn't know the answer and the ominous feeling in his gut once again threatens to rear its head.

['Captain?'] Someone called. Going by the sound of their voice, it was Lieutenant Jarma; their exploration team's vice-captain. ['There seems to be nothing else here. Should we continue?']

Broken out of his musings, Khylon then manoeuvred his mecha up from its crouch over the moss-covered rock that he'd been inspecting.

He issued the order, "Proceed with caution!" And stupidly, like the arrogant fool he was, Khylon chose to continue their investigation. He'd thought that whatever could possibly come their way—this squad of veteran Elites were more than able to handle.

In the end they had uncovered a whole nest of Zerg.

The pests hadn't shown up on any of their scanners, nor did they leave any kind of sign that this area was even inhabited; Gabrielle was just as shocked as the rest of them when they, and the vast network beneath them, was revealed.

This is probably what had put Khylon on edge the whole time they'd been on the planet.

"RETREAT!" Khylon bellowed from beneath a hoard of Zerg that had rushed his mecha. One of his team members had fallen into a glacial cavern and he was the closest rescue they had at the time of their fall. What that meant was it was just the two of them in the Zerg nest and Khylon didn't want that number to increase — hence his ordering of retreat to those up on the surface level.

['Captain?!'] [Sir! Are you ok?!'] ['Shit! Why is it always Aliyan!!'] His subordinates were harried as they shot at the Zerg attempting to climb up and leave the nest; the 'entrance' had to stay clear for their captain and teammate to safely exit through.

Sure, their mechas could blast a whole new tunnel to escape into — but this nest of Zerg had created such intricate tunneling beneath the snow and ice that no-one wanted to even entertain the thought of the two of them being snowed in from melting its structural integrity.

"Skree—!" Mercilessly, Khylon slaughtered his way through the Zerg. The guns attached to his mecha ran too hot for him to use in a cave susceptible to said heat, so Khylon had to wield his cold weapon, Trianthe. It was a short sword, but only in comparison to his mecha's build. Khylon would've perhaps used a longer sword, but this cavern was too narrow for it.

Anyway, the weapon didn't matter much. The thing with fighting in a mecha is that it was less about skill and more about efficiency. The arch of your swing, or timing your thrust mattered little when with hoard-type Zergs such as these, you could swipe wherever and still hit something.

That was, of course, a rudimentary explanation — and only if the weapon in question had a simplistic design. Anything else required a higher level of skill to wield that Khylon didn't find the need to bring out. But even if his weapon changed from Trianthe to a steel pipe, he was more than capable of swatting a few of these alien bugs to death!

After what felt like hours when in reality it was merely a few minutes, his mecha's field of vision finally cleared and a direct path towards Khylon's subordinate could be vaguely made out among the quickly building pile of Zerg carcasses.

It was good enough.

Khylon made his decision. With one final, heavy swing of his sword, he flung the Zerg off the blade that hadn't died from a one-hit, and conveniently decapitated a bigger Zerg that had the gall to try and sneak up on him in doing so. He boosted the engines of his mecha, aiming for a speedy rescue before he thought about doing anything else.

When he reaches close enough, Khlyon uses his free hand to grip onto the head of Aliyan's mecha.

.. what? It was the only part he could see!

The other man's mecha was completely buried in Zerg that he hadn't managed to shake off. Khylon knew first-hand just how relentless they were so he didn't think too deeply about it. However, upon contact, some of the alien bugs used his arm as a bridge to crawl onto him.

"Ss! Annoying pests.." he cursed under his breath.

Before Khylon began once again slicing and dicing them into extinction, their movement had revealed that the real reason Aliyan hadn't moved was because he couldn't. The web weaved across the torso and limbs of his mecha was barely distinguishable among its snow mode that changed its usual dark steel to a muted white, and the clear ice and scattered snow still built up around them didn't help the fact.

Although for someone with as sharp an eye as Khylon, this webbing may as well have been black.

['Boss..!'] Aliyan wailed as soon as he was connected directly to his captain's direct comms. It wasn't like his screen was broken, so Khylon doesn't understand why he was so surprised to see him. ['You came for me—!!']

"Shut up!" In Khylon's defense, the reply was automatic. He minutely paused when the scrunched up face of his officer came on screen beside his mecha's many functions. The video camera only captured a person's shoulders and upwards, but Khylon could still see Aliyan shifting, indicating that his hands were moving as much as his mouth was.

At least his pathetic display hadn't affected his competence, even now he was working to free himself; Khylon could hear the groaning of his mecha as it strained against its restraints.

['I'm so happy to see you..'] the bawling man continued to uselessly babble— except Khylon had long stopped listening to him. It was enough to know that he was alive and conscious.

Unfortunately, the webbing that Aliyan was covered in happened to be ridiculously viscous and firm. Its solidness meant nothing in the face of Khylon's strength, but if he attempted to simply cut through the strands then the blade would get stuck— or rather his weapon would instead be the one covered in this annoying string.

Luckily his EVOS was one that was convenient in dealing with such tricky things.

He glanced at the ever present panel that showed his information, and flicked his gaze down towards—

<EVOS>

<Title: Empty Pocket Dominance

<Class: Spatial

<Rating: SS*

… it was just as obnoxious as he remembered.