Fiction:New Grox Wars/Phase 2

Over a century ago, the Grox's dominion over the First Gigaquadrant began to decay, thanks to new powerful alliances spreading from one galaxy to the next. Then, during the Tigris Wars, the Grox suffered near-destruction. But their luck began to change once more. It has been several months since the Annihilation, and even the most powerful empires of the First Gigaquadrant had been misplaced or destroyed. Nearly every surviving empire seeked refuge in the few habitable galaxies, mainly the Milky Way. However, the Grox didn't suffer a single loss, hiding within the Meta-Emperor himself to escape the deadly waves of chaos. And now their forces are beginning to march outwards once more...

Border Skirmishes


Although was not a dedicated enemy of any of the s, it knew that they were not allies of Apalos either, nor would any other empire rush to their defence if they were under attack. It also knew that, since being given new technology by the during the, the Grox would often assimilate unique technologies from alien races. For these reasons, Apalos decided to conduct several raids on random Grox colonies within several galaxies, then try to assimilate any captured Grox vehicles, buildings, or even soldiers.

The typical strategy in these raids involved emerging from hyperspace within the atmospheres of Grox colony planets, activating cloaking devices and shields, disabling Grox technology with ion cannons, EMP bursts, and often more powerful weaponry to overcome the Grox's shielding, and then scanning, tractoring, or transporting disabled items for analysis. The raids were generally successful, but particularly in the innermost colonies, the Grox defence forces were able to overwhelm the Apalos fleets with the appearance of larger ships such as their "Super Star Destroyers".

Merging Grox Empires
After several months of raids resulting in little technological gain, Apalos decided that the Grox needed some help. One Temple Ship discovered a Grox flotilla had arrived at the edge of the, sent on an exploration mission direct from the himself. Over a thousand parsecs away lay the territories of the Borg Collective, which was towards the end of its recovery after pyrrhic victories against the Tokzhalan Empire and the Human Coalition during the Imperial Civil War. Apalos had concluded that the Borg Collective were probably an offshoot of the Grox Empire that had become rogue several millennia before; furthermore, they had also assimilated the technology of many powerful civilisations during their history. As far as Apalos was concerned, these were two good reasons for the Grox and the Borg to be merged into one entity.

In order to achieve this, several Temple Ships cloaked and flew to within a few hundred thousand kilometres of the Grox ships, and a second group flew to a similar distance near a trio of Borg Cubes at the edge of Borg Space. They then opened a wormhole between the two locations, and watched as the Borg and Grox ships both approached and scanned the portal. One Cube and one squadron of Grox Warships moved close to the edge of the portal, and both simultaneously teleported infantry forces into each others' vehicles. However, as the transfer beams passed through subspace, they emerged into the wormhole and were momentarily intercepted by what appeared to be a random tetryon storm. This was actually artificial hypermatter-based computronium, which added miniscule amounts of Apalos interior material to parts of each beam. When the forces were rematerialised inside their target ships, the Apalos material quickly reconfigured their nanobots in order to achieve "mutual assimilation", and then dissolved into its constituent atoms. As Conqrix Hives buried their roots inside the Cube, and Borg Drones forced assimilation tubules inside the walls of the Warships, connections were made between the components that made up the Grox Empire and those of the Borg Collective. Almost instantaneously, the mind of the Borg merged with that of the Grox Meta-Emperor. The two once-distinct cyborg collectives had joined into one unified force.

Both sides gained new technology from the merging. The Grox Meta-Empire used the ideas behind the Borg Collective to solidify its own group mind, making it into a full hive mind and thereby minimising the potential for further offshoots to form. They also gained a new force in the Milky Way, already fully-formed and able to launch attacks to help defeat the Meta-Emperor's enemies and rivals. For the Borg, while they were once at risk of destruction, could now be brought back even if every Cube in the galaxy were destroyed by having a backup across the entire Meta-Empire. As for Apalos, they closed the wormhole and fled; their ships would wait a few more months before conducting any further raids on the Grox.

Ambushes


Apalos's first action after the Grox-Borg merging was to warn members of the of the Grox's activity, and to recommend that the members of the Milky Way Cooperative prepare their forces for a Grox invasion. Although it knew that the Grox would aim to assimilate the various technologies of the Milky Way's empires, and intended for this to happen, it did not want to take the risk of the Grox successfully destroying the Cooperative.

After twenty-six hours, the Grox made their move. Small fleets attacked several target empires, but only one planet per empire. One exception to this was the, as the Grox thought that attacking one of their colonies was too much of a risk, and so instead ambushed a Subjugator-class warship on patrol at the edges of DCP space. They successfully disabled it, but before its systems failed, it sent a distress call out to its home empire. This resulted in an Assunder-class bowship arriving to its rescue, but this too was outgunned. The Grox then assimilated both ships and left before further reinforcements arrived. Another exception was a steed-ship, which the Grox would normally have destroyed due to their hatred of non-Grox life, but the Borg's influence changed their opinions for the purposes of further assimilation.

The DCP went to war, and was called to the front lines, as he had close and personal contact with the Grox and Borg before. It was decided that the DCP were not to use their most powerful weapons and defences; while these would repel the invason at first, the Grox's adaptability may soon overcome the DCP's ingenuity. Kilnok would be one of the managers over seeing the defence, and he would see action sooner than he thought. The Grox had now managed to enter the first defense in the maelstrom, the graviton spheres and subspace weapons; although the DCP's millions of drones were keeping ships at bay, the Cube ships began to wade through. Within 15 hours, Kilnok's ship was sent a message. "We are the Grox. Surrender your ships and colonies to the collective. Your distinctiveness will become one with us. Resistance is futile". "So you couldn't let go of your last phrase", Kilnok replied. There was no answer, instead, the Iron Hammer was caught in a tractor lock. Fortunately, for Kilnok, the tractor bean was an assimilated version created by the DCP, and using a buffer, Kilnok was able to guide his ship and crew free. However, the Grox Cube began to advance on a nearby colony, only recently re-settled. Kilnok ordered ships to transport as many colonists as possible.
 * In DCP Space, Galactic Core zone

Luckily, due to recent events, systems were only beginning to be re-colonised, and it was quite easy for the new colonists to retreat. While the Grox were now faster than before, the DCP's maelstrom defenses had been compromised, and planets were beginning to be assimilated, the Grox were not attacking any specific colony, which allowed some open advantages that Kilnok realised. The Grox were heading towards a system near the galactic center, simply numbered "9939". This system housed several experimental technologies, including one of the DCP's new ship designs, the Obsidian. The trap was set, the bait being a entire planet of technology new even to the Coalition, and a fleet of over 100 warships. The Grox could smell their tachyon traces, and followed the scent. The ships - empty unmanned shells, discarded during the - were tossed aside, but during this momentary confusion, Kilnok activated the Obsidian remotely from the Iron Hammer. The Grox however, now had assimilated upgrades to their transmat technology, and beamed straight aboard his ghost-phased ship. The tables had turned; the crew was ordered to adandon ship when Drones were beamed abaord. Unfortunatly, one of the crew, a female Grimbolsaurian, tried to fight, and suffered the consequences. Kilnok beamed to the surface. He was sad at the loss of the Iron Hammer, his second favourite ship, and doubly, the loss of a crew member. Without hesitation, he boarded the new Obsidian. There were now hundreds of Grox ships and a few old Borg Cubes and Spheres entering the system, but he brandished a new weapon. It was, in fact, never intended as a weapon.
 * Assimilation begins

The ship, made of pure neutron-degenerate matter hull, rose through the planet's surface as if it wasn't solid at all, and of course, this stuff occupied more space than normal matter, it really was almost sold. After rising through a few miles of rock and few miles of air, the ship was in orbit. Kilnok looked down on the surface; the planet had already been assimilated. "Is our weapon prepared?", he asked, and his answer was what he wanted. A fleet of Grox ships appeared in front to block his way. "Fire at will". Two white points of light raced towards the fleet of Grox and Borg ships; they "unfurled", releasing truly tremendous energy, even enough to bend the light of the explosion into warped curves. Three more were fired onto the planet; within minutes, its surface exploded in on itself. There was only one ship left, a Cube. From several million miles away, Kilnok collided the Obsidian with it, slicing the Cubecleanly in two. However, the two halves began to rejoin. "Dice it into molecules; we can jump in and out of hyperspace in a scale of 30 seconds from different langles around the ship". Once the trajectory was set, the Grox Cube turned into a cloud of vapour. The new Obsidian class was perhaps the Milky Way's last stand. However, the new weapon wasn't a weapon at all, and it was limited. In the last two decades, the DCP had been collecting objects of heavy mass which were sinking towards the center of the galaxy, as heavier things have a tendency to do so. A cosmic string had been caught in the grip of the supermassive black hole at the center, and was wrapping around it, where it became a loop; once this occured, it began splitting into smaller defects which, when opened up, released some of the most tremendous energies seen in the universe. These loops then split into ever smaller loops, creating a cluster effect. The DCP had learned how to store this reaction for use as a power source for grandiose projects like wormhole-enginnering, but 20 years of effort would now lead to a pivotal weapon.

Revenge of the Salamanders
The Grox weren't alone in their crusade. Their revived servants, the Marinox, were also with them. Originally destroyed during the Battle for Planet Kaizox many centuries ago, the Grox managed to bring them back to activity and scatter them to pretty much all territories controlled by them across the universe. They were almost as common as the Conqrix now, and they were only increasing in number.

With a significant degree of independance, the Grox had allowed the Marinox to go after those who had originally killed them off: the. The first move was on the peaceful colony of Planet Gokmar, which was totally unprepared for an assault.

Upon receiving news of who the attacks were, and  were left startled.

Jerkon - ''The Marinox... are back?'' Koluap - ''I cannot believe this! We can barely defeat their demon cousins and they return to bug us again?'' Jerkon - ''Well, we can say our truce with the Grox is over. And we know what to do now...''

The Collective went on full alert and prepared themselves to face their nemesis of old once more.