Prologue: Unseen Observers

Planet Earth, Sol System

July 4th, 1996

It was a truly beautiful world.

A world of water coloured in bright and dark blues, oceans that covered the vast proportion of the surface. However, if the planet had been nothing but ocean, it would probably have not held the same attraction. There were vast continents that betrayed the greens of forest, prairies and jungles, the red and yellow of deserts and the brilliant white of polar ice-caps; all combined to create what seemed to an outside observer like a world truly blessed.

An observer of that same world at this precise time however, would have swiftly concluded that all of that beauty would soon be stripped away like flesh from bones.

The herald of that terrible fate - a fate that had befallen so many beautiful planets in the galaxy - loomed over the blue-green sphere, advancing on it like some monstrous predator born out of blackness of space itself.

A huge, almost egg-shaped hemisphere, with two great horn-like structures hanging beneath the prow. Up close, the surface of the planetoid-sized monster was covered with trenches, channels and all manner of artificial structures - but from afar it seemed smooth, polished, almost organic save for a disk-shaped indentation close to the highest point of the hemisphere, which formed the bulging prow of the gigantic vessel.

It was a form that had come to be feared and recognised all too well. A hiveship of the Swarm had arrived to feed, claiming yet another ripe, defenceless world in its long list of victims.

Those who inhabited the planet below likely had not seen it approaching from a distance; their primitive level of technology was certainly one reason to believe this. But the hiveship had cunningly approached the planet from behind the single moon. It had parked itself there in a stationary orbit, using the lone grey satellite as a natural shield while the forces of the Swarm deployed planetside.

By that point, the people of this world would have been able to see the bringer of their doom, even with their rudimentary sensors and observation systems.

Yet there was something else, something that they would not see at all - and hopefully, nor would the sensors of the Swarm.

Something else - like the invading mothership - that was not of this world.

It was hidden just at the southern pole of the planet's moon, nothing more than a tiny insect or microbe compared to the monstrous hiveship. Close to the surface, no more than a few hundred feet and making every effort to stay unseen by the invaders.

Anyone trying to look at it with the naked eye would have to be less than one hundred metres close to see anything of note. Even then, what they would see would be nothing more than a brief, soft shimmer; a minor compensating adjustment of camouflage as the object quietly and subtly changed position, bringing itself into lunar orbit.

Anyone who saw that shimmer would have made out a sleek delta-shape, crafted to perfection for the purposes of stealth and discretion. It was the ideal tool for observing the Swarm's latest activity, from what its crew hoped and believed was a place of complete safety.

The master of this remarkable vessel felt no need for worry - his command was from the most advanced class of stealth-scout ships in the galaxy. Thanks to the specially designed alloy coating and numerous scrambling systems, almost no known technology could detect it on any sensor screen.

Furthermore, the active camouflage on the scout ship's hull rendered it all but invisible to the naked eye, too.

If he had turned the camouflage off, an observer would have been immediately impressed by the beauty of his vessel. Like all things made by his people, it was built with such precision and love that made it both aesthetically stunning and practical to a point. The hull was a dull silver, with glowing blue lining and power vessels pulsing across it's elegant form.

The engines emitted this same pale purple-blue light, energy capable of propelling this vessel at incredible speeds if needed - even though they were currently inert. Right now, most of the ship's energy was devoted to the stealth and scanning systems - the rest was for life support only. She was currently using a back-up propulsion system that required no diversion of power and ensured maximum stealth - a pair of energy fields, mounted either side, that acted as solar sails.

Thus the scout ship moved softly and silently with the solar winds and cosmic rays, like a sailing boat on a calm breezy day.

Her light armament would not be used here. She was but a phantom, lurking in the shadows.

Her mission was not to intervene. Only to watch.

The Swarm would not see them, the commander was sure of that. Still, he knew he was taking an enormous risk with his own life and the lives of his crew by putting his vessel, a mere ranger shadow-ketch, this close into the hiveship's path; even if it was the best point of closest observation.

Yet he was a Vorentine Ranger of the Ambul'tiyen, as were the rest of his band. They had all passed the most gruelling of trials, sworn the most solemn and binding oaths to become Rangers of the Grey Wanderers, who scoured and scouted the length and breadth of this galaxy in service to their people. They would do what was expected of them.

"Keep us in the shadows," he commanded, after making the last orbital adjustment. "Let us not become an addition to their feast in this system."

The crew - no more than five Rangers in total, including the commander - obeyed silently, as was their custom. Their cat-like eyes glowed blue and gold in the dim light of the sloop's cockpit as their large, four-digit hands cycled across the holographic controls. Writhed in grey cloaks and dull-coloured, advanced stealth armour, Ambul'tiyen Rangers were masters of stealth and subterfuge in their own right.

As such, nearly all Ambul'tiyen vessels were built the same way. They tended to sport the same dull silver of this sloop's hull, as well as dark bronze or gunmetal. A far cry from the impressive golden ships of their more common kin, the vessels that served in the mighty battlefleets of the Vorentine Empire.

Yet they felt no need to impress when it came to their spacecraft design. They were outside the borders of the vast imperium of their species, and thus were not bound to its customs and expectations. Ostentatious hulls served no purpose for those who walked the Path Beyond - a path of total ascetic devotion.

The vessel had powered down to the point that even the most highly-advanced sensor systems would register it as nothing more than idle static, even if the stealth systems were not switched on. While that might have seemed like an excessive precaution, no chances could ever be taken where the Swarm was concerned.

This Ranger band knew what their enemy was capable of, having survived far more dangerous tasks than this. Together with Resistance forces, they had observed and harried the Swarm in this remote spiral arm in many separate engagements. Their mission in this system was just the latest stage in a long hunt, having tracked this hiveship for many cycles before the trail had finally lead them here, well beyond the borders of Vorentine space.

The latter point was not unusual for the Rangers, but even so - the captain always felt a small level of...unease, whenever he and his band were the only living members of their kin for many parsecs. He could fell this in the minds of the others on board too, a feeling no doubt multiplied by the Swarm's presence. They knew his thoughts too - all of his kind possessed that ability.

They were all nervous. But that was of no consequence. They all remembered the mantras of the Ambul'tiyen, of every Vorentine warrior.

Fear is but a barrier of the mind.

A barrier to be crossed. An Illusion.

It cannot stop the devoted, the faithful, the righteous.

The Ranger captain gazed upon the hiveship and its prey through the holo-display. Thirty-six of its huge harbinger craft, the first to deploy to any world it invaded, had already detached. Right now, they were hamstringing this world to the bone.

The rangers had first arrived when the harbingers of the Swarm had begun to deploy above the sprawling cities of the native sentients - primitive, mammalian-simian beings that were known to call themselves Humans. They had been secretly observed by other scouts of the Ambul'tiyen and the Empire itself before; their existence had been known for a long time.

Not that knowing of them was really significant. Humans were a planet-bound species, the captain knew. From previous observations it was known they had made a few manned orbital flights, launched a vast array of crude satellites and even robotic probes to their neighbouring planets.

Beyond that, they had not done much else outside their planet. They were a divided race; it was known that they regularly waged war upon each other on their own homeworld, from which they could not leave (and would now never leave). Previous observations in the few dozen solar cycles before now had found strong radiation signatures consistent with the detonation of nuclear weapons - whether these were tests or used in an actual war, it was not clear.

It was also known that their crude technology was polluting the local environment; the rangers had made early scans of this planet on arrival and discovered a shockingly huge hole in the ozone layer, as well as an increased greenhouse effect caused by the burning of combustible fuels.

The Ranger allowed himself to shake his head at that thought. If the Swarm had not come for these primitives, they would likely have destroyed themselves.

It brought him no pleasure to see the demise of a sentient civilisation. His people tried to hold themselves to high standards; he had been taught to value the sanctity of life, that every living being deserved respect and a chance for life in this universe.

Still, humans were primitives - to a Vorentine they were barely insects on the evolutionary ladder. In galactic terms they were an insignificant and unremarkable race, trapped in their blue-green paradise with no conception of what lay outside of their cradle. Their best minds might well have believed they were the only sentient race in the universe - until now.

Humanity thus fell well within the rules of non-interference with lesser races, that strictest of all Vorentine laws. Had the humans been an interstellar species, more significant to galactic affairs, it would have been a different question.

But this was not the case. The Rangers were only expected to observe humanity's demise. Nothing more. Not every race in this galaxy could be saved.

So they had watched the Swarm burn the defenceless cities, slaughter countless innocents as they had done so many times before. The Ranger's sense of revulsion never faded, even after witnessing the Swarm's repeated atrocities and disregard for all other life on countless occasions. He knew all too well their capacity to inflict suffering and misery.

If only there truly was some way of exterminating them, the way they had done to so many others...

The Ranger brought himself back to reality. Though the Swarm had been defeated on occasion, those victories had nearly always come at tremendous cost. Even then, those 'victories' had only been barely enough to delay the Swarm, let alone wipe them out for good.

Even the Empire had learned this to its cost, at the Battle of Ravvenia Minioris. He himself had been present at that battle, seen so many of his kind slain. Though they had scattered that Hive Fleet and slain the Harvester Queen at its heart, the fleets and legions of Holy Vorentium had suffered badly.

Amongst the dead had been the reigning Emperor himself - a blow that every living Vorentine still felt in their minds. The Ranger still recalled that day, the psychic pain at the Emperor's death throbbing in the back of his mind.

After the battle, the Empire declared the Swarm temporarily defeated and withdrew from further direct confrontation with the invaders. It seemed a sensible decision - time was needed to replenish all military assets in this galactic arm, so pitched battles were best avoided. The Swarm appeared to have been turned - that 'victory' was, according to the Ancient herself, the only time a Harvester Queen had ever been slain.

However, this proved to be premature.

The Ranger had tried to believe all that sacrifice had been worth it - but the Hive Fleet had simply splintered into smaller fleets, mostly commanded by the Navigator caste. These splinters continued their Queen's campaign of galactic destruction and pillage in their wake.

This lone hiveship was one such splinter, albeit a very small one. It would devour enough primitive, poorly-defended worlds such as this, gaining strength over time to form its own fleet, perhaps spawning its own Queen.

These splinter fleets had been ravaging this part of the galaxy for some time now, in the wake of Ravvenia Minioris. Their attacks occurred beyond the Empire's borders - thus they were left unchecked in spite of the Ambul'tiyen's protests. Though the latter continued in their actions against the Swarm, Holy Vorentium only provided token aid to the Resistance.

The Ranger sometimes felt anger at that decision - but the fact remained that the current Emperor did not wish a repeat of the battle that killed his father and so many brave warriors. Vorentium needed time to recover its strength - and the days when his people vigorously expanded their borders were long over. It cost so much just to keep the Empire alive in these times.

Perhaps that was a hopeless task...

The Ranger finally decided to remove himself from his thoughts. They could infect the crew with low morale. That would not do.

He would focus on his duty.

"What is the status of this world?"

The inquiry was needless - but it would give the Ranger his focus.

"Grim, Brother-Warden." The fellow Ranger addressed the commander by his formal rank among the Ambul'tiyen. "Over one hundred of the native cities have been burned. Biosigns from the planet indicate that less than half of their population yet lives." He glanced once more at the scanner readings. "The Swarm is about to commence their fourth cleansing."

The Warden nodded, while indicating acknowledgement in his transmitted thoughts. They had observed three cleansings from the harbingers thus far - the first being the initial surprise attack.

The Swarm was nothing if not consistently methodical - their attack followed the standard pattern for nearly every other world of this technological stage that they had descended upon. First they would launch waves of cleansing, decimating the native population and crushing all resistance. These cleansings would be carried out by the harbingers, positioned evenly across the planet. Clouds of strikers would destroy anything the harbingers missed.

Once the final wave of cleansing was complete, the harbingers would land on the surface, converting themselves into temporary colonies while a tide of colonists and warriors would pour in from the mothership, expanding the new colonies as they grew.

At least one such harbinger had begun that process, and was now drilling into the planet's core - the main resource the swarm desired. Other colonies would be devoted to processing all plant and animal life into food product, extracting all valuable minerals and harvesting the planet's atmosphere and oceans for air and water supplies, respectively.

Only after everything else had been consumed would the planetary core be extracted - and then this planet would be left an airless, barren rock, stripped of all life and everything it had to offer.

Then the Swarm would move on, further strengthened by the latest feast.

The end would not be long now. The rangers knew that it would be the same outcome they had witnessed many times before.

Then a jolt of surprise shook one of the other crew-members at his station - a feeling of shock that spread through the thoughts of all the others. The Warden immediately sent an inquiry.

"What is it?"

"I can't explain, Brother-Warden...it simply does not make sense..."

"Tell me what you see," the Warden replied bluntly, while transmitting mild irritation and impatience to make his point. "If it made no sense, you would not have picked it up."

"The computer systems on the hiveship, Brother-Warden, their command signal...it has been thrown in turmoil. It shouldn't be happening, the Swarm's systems have always proven efficient...wait..." He cycled his fingers over the holographic controls, as he further exposed great confusion in his telepathy. "Brethren, whatever is affecting this hiveship's systems - it is attacking their shields most of all."

A moment of silence followed as the rest of the crew absorbed this revelation. That same crew-member broke it.

"Could it be the natives, Brother?"

One of the others made his derision clear in the local telepathic field.

"Nonsense. What in Verix's name could those insects do against a hive fleet, even a tiny splinter such as this?"

"Nothing," another scoffed, a crackle of dismissal echoing through his transmitted thoughts. "They aren't anywhere near the right level."

As unbelievable as it all seemed to the Warden, he had learned long ago to keep an open mind.

"Not as far as we know," he conceded, before sinking into his thoughts. There could be more to learn here. In a split-second, he made a decision. "Launch observers. We shall take a closer look."

The dismissive crew-member spoke up again, his telepathy making clear that he remained dismissive as ever.

"Really, Brother-Warden, why should we waste any more time and resources than we already have on these indolent, barely-sentient barbarian..."

"Enough!" The Warden's command snapped like a cracked-whip of psychic energy through the minds of all his underlings, before his voice returned to its usual serenity. "Launch the observers. Let us find out more."

Without further objection, the crew complied. The diminutive observer probes, shielded with stealth fields and leaving less than a whisper as they were launched, sped towards the planet, entering the atmosphere and surveying the surface below them.

What they discovered sent an even greater wave of surprise through the crew's minds.

"By Voren...they are fighting back." The mental voice of that first crewmember to report the anomaly was now laced with amazement, fascination...and now a strong trace of admiration. "Brother-Warden, my previous readings were correct. The energy shields of the Swarm - they have been compromised. The native weapons are hitting their mark!"

The probes relayed holographic recordings of the battles below them, which now played live throughout the cockpit of the shadow-ketch. Sure enough, the harbinger's shields had been lowered - and the human missiles, fired by their crude aircraft, were striking the giant hiveships and blowing chunks out of their hulls.

The feared striker craft, which had been massacring the human aerial forces in the past few planetary rotations, were not immune either. Hundreds of them were blown to pieces by the primitive homing missiles, or shredded by kinetic projectile weapons. The Swarm was taking serious losses.

"They must have done it," that same crewmember continued, the admiration growing in his thoughts. "They must have lowered the shields somehow. Disrupted the hiveship's command signal."

That same admiration was reflected in the thoughts of another crewmember - one who was usually far more reserved.

"They are making the Swarm pay," he remarked - before his thoughts overflowed with empathy for the primitives below. "They fight with honour."

In spite of the fact that they were still forbidden to interfere, the Warden felt some level of newfound respect for those he could only observe. They had observed previous battles the humans had fought against the swarm - as expected, they had been little more than massacres. The human weaponry and strike aircraft had been totally outclassed - they had no hope of penetrating their shields and the outcome had been obvious.

And yet, in just one of their planet's rotations, they had turned the tables. Somehow, the humans had disrupted the hive's command signal - and the Swarm was being repaid for their aggression. However, as the Warden brought himself back to reality, he knew this was simply a final act of futile defiance.

"If only it were enough to save them. See how their weapons strike the harbingers - they cause only surface damage. They can't bring them down - they don't possess the firepower. The shields of the Swarm filth will be restored soon."

"Unless they use their nuclear fission weapons," mused one of the two dismissive crewmembers - though the Warden could sense their contempt for the humans had faded. "But then they would only leave their planet poisoned. This effort of theirs will be for nothing."

Then a greater shock followed - one that flared through the crew's telepathy like a bright, booming firework.

One probe had been observing just long enough to capture the event - and the crew had to play it back several times to accept it as truth.

A single human aircraft, in a final act of desperation, had rammed the generator of a harbinger's central cascade beam - detonating it inside its housing in an almighty explosion. The feedback had created a cataclysmic firestorm - which the cascade beam was designed to unleash onto a target below - that now spread through the giant craft, burning it inside out.

The mighty ship was set ablaze, slowly descending from the sky before settling onto the sandy desert of the local surface, explosions cascading along its length. All around the scene of the battles, the remaining striker hordes - bereft of their local power source - either retreated to the closest harbinger in range or came crashing down onto the desert below.

The humans had just won their first victory.

"Impossible..." the Warden allowed that single thought to flow from his mind. The rest of the crew could only watch in silence.

Then there came another shock - one that was more relevant to the Vorentine observers.

One of the probes suddenly stopped transmitting, its feed lost in a blaze of static. At first the operator put it down to an isolated fault - before another failed, and then another.

Any chance that this might simply be a technical problem was swiftly crushed - by the final recording of one probe, which showed a striker craft firing green plasma which atomised the faithful observer to dust.

"We have been discovered, Brother-Warden!" The warning from the external sensors operator echoed sharply, a telepathic lightning bolt jolting the others into action. "The hiveship has traced the observer signatures...they are sending strikers for us!"

Sure enough, the sensors confirmed the warning, while the Warden called up the ship's tactical display. A formation of Swarm strikers, represented in red by the holoscreen, were headed straight for the glowing blue shadow-ketch.

He cursed his rashness - had he launched the observers one at a time, in different positions around the moon or around this immediate system, rather than all at once in one place, the Swarm would not have noticed.

But recrimination was pointless now - death was coming their way.

"Withdraw solar sails! Activate our propulsion! Prepare for in-system jump!"

The crew obeyed, and the shadow-ketch turned from gentle cruiser to streaking arrow in an instant. All pretence of stealth was gone as the Vorentine craft sped away from the planet's moon and into open space.

But the Swarm was nothing if not persistent. The striker formation, having been dispatched from the mothership, streaked onto their prey like predatory insects, their powerful drives propelling them faster than any native aircraft could ever hope to be. Slinging around the curvature of the moon, they homed in onto their quarry.

Yet the Vorentine scout-ship also had advanced technology and speed on its side. Executing a flawless loop to the other-side of the solitary moon, as far away from the mothership as possible, it streaked into the void, the engines flaring from blue to purple as it made its escape at incredible speed, a silver-purple comet shooting away from the dark gnats of the Swarm.

Soon enough, the vessel was in open space. But so were their pursuers.

"They are upon us!"

"Activate point defences! Cycle up gate generation!"

The small array of point-defence turrets came online, sending streaks of blue plasma at the Swarm attackers. Two that had sped ahead of the main group were destroyed instantly, the oxygen flaring in fireballs that vanished within a second in the airless black.

But the others were following close behind.

At that point they began to open fire. Green-coloured plasma streaked through the vacuum, flaring up the shadow-ketch's shields.

The Warden knew his vessel was no war cruiser or dromon - the shields would not stand up to such punishment for long.

"Gate generation complete! Preparing for jump!"

The simmering portal of energy that had been generated into reality by the craft's jump system crackled into being right in front of the prow. Within a second of it appearing, the Vorentine vessel shot into the portal, which closed behind with a flash.

The Attackers, incensed by their prey's escape, broke off.

At the farthest reaches of this solar system, beyond the furthest of the outer gas planets, beyond even the belt of ice, rock and dwarf planets that marked the farthest border, there was utter stillness.

Until another shining, crackling portal opened.

The shadow-ketch shot out of it like a silver dart. In less than a second afterward, the portal disappeared.

The Rangers had just made it into the gate - they thanked the gods that the hull had only suffered minor damage.

But this escape was only temporary - the engines would have to charge up again for a jump out of this system. There was every chance the Swarm had already traced their escape.

Once again, however, fate swiftly dispensed with their assumptions.

The Warden was just receiving the last details of the damage report - thanking Voren and Verix, the twin-suns and almighty gods of his race's home system, for protecting his vessel this day. It was through them alone that the damage was nowhere near as serious as it could have been.

It was that same young Ranger and the sensors station who gave the next report - with great difficulty.

"Brother-Warden...the hiveship...I cannot say..."

"Just tell me what you see," the Warden replied, subtly allowing for impatience to seep into his thoughts. He was still exhausted from their escape from certain death, and thus was in no mood for hesitation.

This was enough for the subordinate Ranger to simply turn and face him, and get to the point.

"The hiveship has been destroyed. From the inside!"

The Ranger had been using the vessel's systems to scan the Swarm mothership at maximum range - the rangescopes were just able to pick up the image of the hiveship being present at one moment, before suddenly disappearing in a brilliant flash.

"Scans indicate high levels of radiation," the Ranger had turned back to his console. "Consistent with detonations of the native nuclear warheads."

The whole cockpit fell into silence. There were no words to be said that were worthy of what was being seen now.

This was unprecedented. No-one could have imagined this to be possible. Yet the facts from this latest observation were all too clear.

The humans had destroyed the main hiveship. Without it, the Swarm's forces on this world would fall into disarray - their ships would lose power, and whatever remained of their ground forces would be stranded, their process of devouring the planet halted in its tracks. In less than a single rotation of that primitive world, the tides of fortune had been reversed.

The Swarm had been defeated...by such primitives...where so many others had failed.

Such a revelation had to be known. The Warden knew what to do.

"Process all data - make sure everything we have seen this day is secure. Then prepare another gate. We make for the Sanctuary."

The orders were followed to the letter. It was not long before another shimmering gate appeared, and the Shadow-Ketch vanished gracefully into it.

With it went the revelation of the victory won today - one that would change the galaxy forever.

A/N: For all those who enjoyed Mind of the Locusts, thank you for your patience. I hope you like what you see of this Prologue! Please review!