The Chromosome Wars

01. Zygos-7 submits.

                Alone in the ambience of her private quarters, Phoenix Aleph was dressed in the virgin robes of the unconquered, the contours of her being hinted at through the folded cascade that enveloped her. Raising an open hand to dim the background gaslight, Phoenix composed herself, closing her jade eyes to review the report she was about to deliver to a God, Shaitan.

These Holo-relay meetings were demanding on her attention, taxing her energy to maintain a perfect composure like the Machine Lord. The wave of her hand before the display projector made other lights bloom, highlighting the planes of her face in green as an image began to coalesce above table, the floating bust of a cloaked figure outlined in the shifting colour spectrum.

"Lord Shaitan."

Lowering her head in veneration before the focusing image, Phoenix felt her earlier confidence waning, leaving her cold. Shaitan had never been overtly cruel to her during the 32 cycles she had lived, encouraging her to learn and evolve through focused training, grooming her to become the fleet Admiral.

"Navarch Aleph." The holy being's reply rang like hollow metal cylinders, microtone layers that hummed in adjacent octaves.

In some distant chamber orbiting Aphros thousands of spatials away, Shaitan observed Phoenix and those features of her quarters that were reproduced in scale through the holograph imagery, no larger than the size of its fist.

"You may begin."

Shaitan motioned for his servant to deliver her report.

"Your holiness..." Phoenix raised her veiled face "...we have won for you the colony Zygos-7. These are the seals of the Controller and System Ministers, along with their heads."

The focus lowered to a row of grimacing faces on display, before each was an intricate medallion.

"The attempts of the colonial guards to block our entry points through the abrasion shielding was neutralized within an hour, infiltrating the habitats through the gas conduits. As instructed, the populace was tested for defective Y-chrome carriers."

Passive and unseen with the fringe shadow of the hood across its brow, Shaitan asked;

"Colony guards only? There were no SA soldiers within Zygos-7 when you captured it?"

"Only two squads of knights, one of whom where escorting a prisoner to the docking bay. They were the only major threat we encountered throughout the whole colony.

With a nod of acknowledgement, Shaitan asked the Akashic Record to playback the scenario on a separate projecter. Phoenix could hear the violence from where she waited, the grinding edge of gunblades at close quarters, the hiss of knight armour exhaust panels venting as her Gynoid sisters shrieked with the lust of battle.

The glass complexion of Shaitan's lower visage offered a warped reflection of the events he was watching. Helmets with swept visors like a raptor's beak moved across the valley of its lips and chin, duelling with the larger chassis of an SA knight until it fell with a sword tip wedged through its eye socket.

"You have done well." Shaitan closed the other image and returned his attention to the miniature holograph figure. "How many X-chrome converts were you able to save from the colony?"

"Forty percent of the X-chrome carriers, thirty two percent of the total populace. Those that could not acknowledge the truth of X were disposed of beside any remaining Y-chromes."