"Each of her cells, even those that were found dried or partially destroyed, contains more genetic information than the scanners have yet to fully parse, even now. Something possibly allowed by her overlapping quadfold DNA helices. Some of the genetic code being found seems nonsensical or redundant and yet…" Even Phymn took a moment to pause as she reflected on what had been learnt.
"Also, written in the scripture that is her DNA are the genetic instructions required to create all of the life we found, which has led to a possibility that both awes and terrifies."
Tora held his breath as Phymn continued.
"It is possible that Anoona is somehow the progenitor of all the life that is currently on earth."
Tora's eyes quaked in their sockets.
"Another possibility is that she is simply storing the genetic information of other lifeforms, but this idea is countered by the ultimate fact… that all the human-like DNA we found in the fauna and flora… matched hers."
Tora deflated.
He considered himself among the most knowledgeable Newmen and even among the most wise, but this…
What was he to make of it?
What course would the ancients have taken?
He truly didn't know.
He suspected it would be some time before the council made their next move.
While there were countless SCGs in Council territories, none had been built in or around the Earth's home solar system. This was the case for several light-years, the nearest Gate being fifty light-years away.
And while Tora had been prepared to stay on the earth until one was built, if the Council sent any more people, they would have to prepare to be stuck here for several decades at the very least.
The logistics of it all were also a concerning matter.
The two ships that were currently flanking the Santa María had only arrived on such short notice because they were relatively nearby when the discovery of life on Earth was made.
In order to send more ships here, they'd need to ready more resources, and that would take time.
Time that Tora began to fear they didn't have.
.
..
Three months passed and, in that time, the Large Noetic Ejector Beta Class children had grown to full size, standing like dark observatories, their twenty-meter-long, Bio-Metallic mouths turned to the sky, shaped like rectangular gun barrels.
Their Noetic Energy was focused and controlled in their large brains, which were fifteen meters tall and housed in a static Bio-Metal carapace that took the shape of a dome.
They were connected to the Bio-Web and the new power grid, giving them as much energy and information as they needed.
Tangentially, the Air Processing Spires had been successfully repurposed to be pylons that focused some of Anoona's Noetic Presence to form a shield around the presence.
This was the same technology given to all the children who were designated for combat via nodes in their armour.
There were a few exceptions, like Rusteater and his boys, who also needed shields because they kept getting caught in explosions of their own making, along with certain Thetas.
As for the new space program, a spaceport had been built and had fifty ships that were space-ready and varied in size.
She chose to copy the categories defined by the Newmen with here being four classes: Newmen ship classification: First Class (15-20km in length), Second Class (5-14km), Third Class (2-4km) and Limited Travel Class (100m-1km) which were only able to travel a maximum of five hundred thousand kilometres before needing to refuel.
Using the ships which Scalpel had dutifully procured, Rusteater reverse engineered their every system, and he learnt about how the SCGs were able to fold space by accelerating particles in a torus until space-time began to deform..
This process, however, required a lot of electrical power.
The Newmen had solved this problem when they mastered nuclear fusion, and, to the pride of his mother, Rusteater had done the same in just three months.
By safely extracting one of the reactors from the Newman ships, he meticulously studied its science and was able to create a replica made from Bio-Metal and other materials that would be able to withstand temperatures exceeding 150 million degrees Celsius.
He created a womb that was able to gestate stars at will, and fifty of these were placed into the ships of Anoona's fleet along with various places on the planet.
And as for the weapons the ships carried, the main ones were downscaled LNEBC children, which had a limited range of one hundred thousand kilometres.
Rusteater wasn't responsible for every advancement Anoona's children made, with most of the maths and calculations being done by the Bio-Web; he was simply the headmost foreman in the actual construction of things, with Sabhuku handling logistics.
Anoona had entrusted Rusteater with the practical development of all these projects because it was one thing to have an idea and another to actually build it.
Another of his achievements was the development of Non-Neotic detection equipment, sensors and recording equipment that didn't rely on the Bio-Web to record and store information.
One of these was a camera which had delighted Anoona especially.
So much so that she personally dragged Rusteater out of his office and down to the throne room where she had him, Thunder, Sabhuku and Dahlia line up for a photo in front of 01's cocoon.
She had a Theta set up the camera to take a picture of them and, after some bickering and general buffoonery, the children all smiled for their first photo.
Anoona stood proudly as the image was uploaded onto the Bio-Web, but she couldn't bask in the warmth for long as Thunder harassed his younger brother.
"Stand up straight, for once! How can you boss anyone around if you're slouching all the time?"
Rusteater responded by sighing tiredly, which only made Thunder complain more.
"Quiet, both of you! 01 is sleeping." Dahlia shushed, making Rusteater shrink even more into himself.
"But I didn't say anything." The Gamma whimpered as Sabhuku gently patted his back.
"I don't care. Shut up or he'll hold a grudge against you when he wakes up." Dahlia huffed.
"Mom, is that true?" For the first time in his life, Thunder shivered, but Anoona had since abandoned the rowdy bunch, sitting off to the side and enjoying some of Dahlia's cakes, which were freshly baked every day.
Anoona playfully thought about how she would market them in the old world.
What colour would the packaging be and what of the name?
She laughed at herself for having such a thought before turning to her worried children.
It looked like Dahlia's little threat had frightened the whole bunch.
"While he will likely recall these moments as distant memories, I don't think he'll mind," Anoona assured through a mouthful of cake.
Thunder sighed before glancing at the cocoon.
"I still find it hard to believe that his Bio-Signal is just 100,000Ø." The giant muttered, making his siblings all turn to their slumbering child.
"I don't get it." Thunder muttered.
"I know you said he'd wake up when the time is right, but when will that be? And what will he be?"
"I can answer the second question easily enough, he will be the most powerful among you, the one closest connected to me and… he will be beautiful."
Thunder and his siblings were visibly moved by Anoona's smile.
It was then Sabhuku who broke this sweet moment by grunting as he turned to leave.
"One day, we will have to address the evident favouritism in our family."
The others followed him out while pouting and lowering their heads.
"Come now, don't be like that." Anoona giggled.
"I mean, just look at him!" She grinned, but this only made the senior siblings walk away faster, leaving Anoona to belly laugh at the idea that she preferred any one of them over the other.
It was such a stupid idea that it made her fall to her side as she laughed.
She then crawled over to 01's cocoon and sat by his side.
She closed her eyes and took a contented breath.
Come to think of it, she hadn't had a dream since she had been reborn.
So she temporarily dulled her thought processes in this body, allowing her to drift into unconsciousness, where she allowed this sub-state to express whatever it was feeling deep beneath.
She saw a single, grand portrait.
One of deep shades of cyan and grey.
A family photo of her and all nineteen billion of her children as they stood in a meadow of flesh and metal.
The air was filled with their voices, all of which she recognised and, at the centre, standing by her side, was 01.
He may have appeared as a humanoid shape, but his form was a shade so dark she couldn't clearly see him.
In this world, in this vision, 01 turned to her, shifting all that was and smiled.
She knew he was smiling even though she couldn't see it, which was enough for her.
Anoona opened her eyes and sat up, looking up and furrowing her brows at the intruders who were at her door.
The Earth was now surrounded by seventy first-class ships, and twenty of them had their cannons pointed at the surface.
She allowed a small amount of her wrath to emerge, and it manifested in a Noetic Storm in the upper atmosphere that would crush anything that wasn't permitted to enter.
In a moment that crystallised their stubbornness, they fired at the surface, and the Bio-Web kicked into full gear, noetically deflecting every shell and beam of energy that was sent towards the Earth.
The world trembled, and the sky was lit up with each collision on the Noetic Shield, but Anoona's children had all been informed this would happen, so they carried on with their duties.
They trusted that their mother would protect them, and while many of them were frightened by the loud thuds above, she assured each and every one of them with a personal message.
A wordless lullaby that not only calmed them, it motivated them to work even harder.
Rusteater made his way to the spaceport via tram, where ten sleek, hawk-shaped ships were preparing for take-off.
They were short-range ships, but were incredibly manoeuvrable thanks to their small size and limited firepower.
They didn't require pilots but had ten Thetas that monitored their systems.
Ten teams of Betas were aboard each of the ships, and they were the key to the success of this mission.
As the terrible thunder continued to roar above, the Hawks rose, their thrusters loudly roared, and they shot into the sky as Rusteater coordinated their counterattack on the ships above.
The Bio-Web, while powerful, didn't extend into space, so they'd be using traditional, albeit encrypted, communications systems such as radio waves.
Their messages would travel as signals that only the Bio-Web could interpret.
The enemy above was firing at the location where Tora's group had landed, which was near the equator.
This was probably because they thought that's where the main Hive was, but Anoona's hive was in the southern hemisphere, meaning the Hawks ascended into space that was mostly unguarded.
Raw firepower wasn't their speciality, and while their turrets were capable of dealing significant amounts of damage to the enemy ships via their four LNPLs and smaller turrets forged by Ivory herself.
Each ship carried 5000 rounds of 30mm hard tip rounds for general fire, 2000 50mm explosive rounds and 50 300mm rounds, dubbed "Mother's Nails" due to their shape; they were the special rounds fed into the LNPLs. Capable of travelling over a quarter of a million kilometres and incredibly modular, depending on the situation. These munitions were Ivory's pride and joy; hence was she was particularly excited to witness the battle come.
Rusteater's plan involved having the Hawks get close to the enemy, allowing the Betas to board them.
And, as expected, the Newmen ships immediately detected the Hawks once they exited the Earth's Noetic Shield, and while the Hawks had their own shields, taking too much fire would push their shields beyond capacity, and they would deactivate until the core within cooled, which could take up to five minutes, an eternity in active combat.
The most they could deflect was one or two large ordnances at a time and several hundred smaller projectiles at a time.
This is where their being unpiloted came in handy.
The Bio-Web, via radio signals from large dishes on the surface, could steer them far more precisely than any of her children could, and so, using a chip in their cores, they were able to avoid taking too many big hits as the baffle commenced.
The Newmen ships deployed their own, smaller and unmanned battle crafts that were shaped like white Doves.
The Doves struggled to track and land enough hits to disrupt the shields, and so, in the dogfights that followed, the Doves fell one by one.
The Hawks eventually got close enough to some of the ships, and they opened their doors, allowing the armoured Betas to jump off.
Betas could hold their breath for days at a time, so the sleek tanks attached to their dark suits contained pressurised air, which allowed them to accelerate and crash onto their target ships.
And thus, their missions commenced in earnest.