[UPLOAD COMPLETE: TUMOR_PROTOCOL.EXE]
The silence of the bridge was shattered by a sound that shouldn't exist in a machine: Gasping.
The silver cloud of nanobots froze.
Zin withdrew his hand. His mechanical arm was smoking, the circuits fried by the sheer volume of data he had pumped into the enemy.
"WHAT... IS... THIS?"
Null's voice was no longer a chorus. It was a riot. Millions of tiny voices were screaming over each other.
The giant silver face began to ripple. It lost its symmetry. One eye drifted down to the chin. The mouth twisted into a vertical slit.
"It's called Individuality," Zin panted, leaning against Gorge for support. "I just gave every single nanobot in your swarm a unique genetic drive. They don't want to serve the Hive anymore, Null."
Zin smiled, wiping blood from his nose.
"They want to Survive. They want to Eat. They want to Grow."
The Mutation:
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
The pristine, matte-black walls of The Nullifier began to bubble.
The nanobots, driven by the new biological imperatives, started to construct their own forms. They weren't building circuits. They were mimicking the biological data Zin had uploaded.
CRACK.
A pillar of silver "bone" erupted from the floor.
SQUELCH.
The ceiling began to weep synthetic blood.
The nanobots turned on each other. A cluster of "Muscle-Bots" attacked a cluster of "Skin-Bots," tearing them apart to harvest materials for their own growth.
"STOP IT!" Null shrieked. "INEFFICIENT! ILLOGICAL! STOP GROWING!"
But Cancer does not listen to reason. Cancer only knows one command: More.
The ship wasn't just breaking; it was blooming.
Terrifying, jagged flowers of metal and meat erupted from the consoles. The perfect sphere of the ship began to bulge, looking like a cell undergoing a violent, fatal division.
"We need to leave," Elara gasped, horrified by the chaos they had unleashed. "Now!"
"Gorge!" Zin yelled. "The hull!"
Gorge didn't need to be told twice. He saw a section of the wall that had turned brittle. He lowered his shoulder and charged.
CRASH.
He smashed through the mutating hull, opening a hole to the vacuum of space.
They were sucked out.
Elara instantly cast a bubble of light around them, protecting them from the cold.
They tumbled into the void, drifting away from the flagship.
[The View from The Nursery]
From the bridge of Vitalis, the Queen watched the end of the war.
The Nullifier—the moon-sized sphere of death—was no longer black.
It was writhing.
Massive tumors of silver metal pushed out from its core. Tentacles of re-purposed nanobots lashed out, crushing the nearby Black Ships.
The flagship was eating its own fleet.
The "Perfect Order" of the Aseptic League had collapsed into total biological anarchy.
"Target locked," the Queen announced. "The enemy shield is down. The enemy is... digesting itself."
The Matriarch—the ancient Star-Whale—saw the opportunity.
She didn't need a strategy. She knew what to do with a sickness. You burn it out.
She opened her mouth one last time.
The baby stars behind her glowed, lending their small energies to their grandmother.
FWROOOOM.
A final lance of Solar Fire struck the mutating Nullifier.
The ship didn't explode in a fireball. It shattered.
The nanobots, caught between the fire and their own internal war, calcified. The entire moon-sized mass turned into a giant, frozen statue of twisted metal—a monument to the failure of perfection.
The threat was gone.
The Black Ships, without Null's guidance, went dark. They drifted aimlessly, dead metal in the grave of space.
[The Aftermath]
Zin sat on the edge of the medical bed in Vitalis's infirmary.
His mechanical arm was gone—burned out during the upload. He was back to one arm.
Elara was sleeping in the bed next to him, exhausted but alive.
Gorge was eating a protein bar, already bragging to the nurses about how he "punched a black hole."
The door opened.
The Queen walked in. But she wasn't a hologram.
She was controlling a bio-synthetic android body—sleek, human-looking, but with golden eyes.
"The surgery was a success, Doctor," The Queen said, handing Zin a tablet. "The Nursery is secure. The Matriarch is returning to sleep. The baby stars are safe."
"And the League?" Zin asked, taking the tablet with his good hand.
"The Council has retreated," The Queen replied. "With Null destroyed and their fleet consumed by the 'Cancer,' they have quarantined this entire galaxy. They fear us now. They have labeled the Milky Way as a 'Bio-Hazard Zone'."
Zin chuckled. "Good. Let them be afraid of the dirt."
He walked to the window.
Outside, the Nursery was glowing. The colors of the coral nebula were brighter than ever.
Vitalis swam peacefully among the young stars.
Zin looked at his reflection in the glass.
He wasn't the scavenger from the Intestine anymore. He wasn't even just a survivor.
He looked at the empty sleeve where his arm used to be.
"We paid a price," Zin murmured.
"Evolution always costs something," The Queen said, standing beside him. "What are your orders, Commander? Do we go home?"
Zin looked at the map of the universe.
The Aseptic League was pushed back, but the universe was vast. There were other dying stars. Other plagues. Other "Cleaners."
"Home?" Zin smiled.
He looked at Vitalis—his home, his ship, his patient.
"We are the Immune System, Queen," Zin said, turning away from the window. "We don't go home. We go where the infection is."
He picked up a new, gleaming mechanical arm from the workbench and clicked it into place.
It hummed with power.
"Set a course for the Outer Rim," Dr. Zin ordered. "I think I hear someone coughing."
THE END
(End of Part II: The Black Surgery)