Greyloch.

In the initial expansion from the Sol Star System and Humanity’s native Earth, a prosperous new future began to emerge on the horizon. Millions, perhaps billions of citizens worked tirelessly to maintain the operations of planets like Mars, Europa, Vrallahos, and others.

By the early 23rd Century, many worlds in the Local Cluster had themselves been declared independent nation states, and formed their own entities with which to manage economic and social growth. A new concept was brought to light in the form of a: “State of Solar Union Declaration” any world with a population exceeding one billion is encouraged to take careful inventory of planetary resources, and trade in dynamic prospects with neighbouring worlds.

This system reduced the strain on Earth to find a means of Governance for colonies tallying in the hundreds, trade and mixed resource sharing helping to build the world’s now called home by many Terran descendants.

In the later half of 2088, Martian scientists would perfect their understanding of how to harness large-scale fusion energy sources, mathematical physics, cosmology, and astrophysical chemistry. Put together, these concepts when discovered in 2090, culminated in the largest and most audacious engineering project ever undertaken by mankind; construction of the first Relativity Gate.

Essentially a gargantuan decahedron measuring eight kilometres in diameter, powered by two fusion cascades ‘star-shards’, the particle compressing element core reactors that achieve the same plasma energy output of a living star miniaturised. A Relativity Gate would become the primary means of interstellar travel.

The first mission undertaken by scientists to test the Gate met with some setbacks, gravitational fluctuation, miscalculated co-ordinates and inefficient stabilisation designs. Once the testing, retrofitting and redesigning completed in 2100, the first manned mission to Sirius took place.

A massive Explorer-Craft built and patented on Mars, carrying the components to build a Relativity Gate at the Sirius side of its journey, would depart through the Terran gate to the Sirius Solar System, and return within five years. Marking arguably, the most successful and grandiose of human achievements since the invention of atomic weapons in the 21st Century. An event now disputed as being anything worthy of mention as human achievement.

With humanity firmly setting its sights on goals that would see it become the type of species it was born to be, many never questioned the technological and scientific wonders which enabled Man to spread out into the cold void of space. Such a question had never needed asking, but some people, even on Earth, began to find a nervous question itching in their minds which had plagued humanity since it could understand the nature of time and space: Are we alone? Does other intelligent life exist in the Cosmos?

The answer to this and other profound questions would come in February of 2178. A mission to construct a Relativity Gate in the barren Sirius Constellation went awry as the explorer-craft Pisces set down on a moon around a gas giant planet designated Hol-43. Later named the Piscean Cemetery. Hol-43 became the site of the first-contact scenario many high-thinkers had dreaded since the dawn of human evolution… Outright hostility… Explorers, scientists, future colonists, and terraforming engineers among many others found strange structural edifices on Hol-43’s moon.

Further examination opened shafts leading deep into the core of the planet for kilometres. Tunnels, antechambers, and vast rooms extended into the crust of the moon. Scientists documenting the incredible discovery mused at the precision with which the facilities were built, the sheer genius. Amidst an air of hope, a question arose about the origin and who built the fantastic places they were witnessing for the first time. No machinery or technological artifacts had yet been found. No evidence to suggest by what means, such structures would have been built. Until exploration uncovered the planet’s deepest point, the central core.

In the core of the world, untouched for aeons, the explorers found a spherical hall. Huge in scale, at least fifty to eighty kilometres in diameter. All along the interior of the sphere, dark and shadowy containers clung to the inside surface. It would seem that whosoever built the mines or shafts into the moon, had hollowed out the planetary core. The reasoning for this is wholly speculative, but one fact remains; Thousands of the containers - more like caskets, shone under lamp-light, their outer panels sealed tight to the intruding men and women, but each of the explorers had little doubt they contained something or someone. Within these containers, lying dormant or inert, a colossal mystery, an obscure collective entity.

A stray hand of curiosity would find a dome shaped structure in the exact centre of the sphere-room. At the bottom of the dome, a pedestal upon which it sat. As the person or persons approached it, it dropped down, and closed inwards. Like the mechanical functionality preceding the unlocking of a locked door. The enormous cavernous room began to thrum with the application of power. Activation enabling hidden machinery to rotate, twist, or contract. Gases escaped into the cold vacuum occupying the dull void deep inside Hol-43.

The caskets hissed and whirred, dim pink light blooms pulsed in the creeping airless darkness beneath the moon, the unfamiliar sounds of power eschewing from somewhere unknown revived the planet from its stasis. The static alien shapes, were resurrected. As the caskets burst open, the chittering whining forms of large machine/organic nightmares poured from their disturbed sleep, hacking and dicing apart the soft, fragile bodies of the crew of the Pisces.

Those in the central sphere had no chance. Cut off from their entry points and surrounded in the pale gloom by machines with scalpel sharp blades for limbs, and brutal tenacity, punished every human they could find for their trespassing. Long shafts deep inside the moon were splashed with blood, streaks of gore leaving trails to where terrified faces had been torn off, or limbs lying scattered through the chambers where petrified scientists, engineers, or colonists were ambushed and utterly destroyed. Most would be cut open, impaled, or sliced apart before the decompression from their atmosphere suits could kill them.

The aliens would not cease their pursuit, chasing down survivors to meet the same end as those unfortunates trapped in the sphere. The aliens poured through their domain until they reached the surface. They burst through the planetoid in hundreds of locations to scour the moon in a frenzy of disdain for human existence. As they reached the Pisces, the crew attempted to lock down the ship to prevent access and facilitate take-off, but here, the aliens would prove the extent of their intelligence, breaching the craft in multiple locations to bear down on those within. An earlier scene of destruction repeated once again, completing the butchery of all aboard. The cold and seemingly unremarkable moon of Hol-43 had made itself known. The Holcroids, named after their celestial planet nearby, dragged the hulled carcass of the Pisces into the ground piece by broken piece.

Months after communication with the Pisces ceased, a despatch was received from Vrallahos on Earth containing the last known transmission from the lost explorer. A damaged, hazy and incoherent vid-log and paralight display revealed the tell-tale signs of a distress call. It would take the transmission nine and a half months to reach Vrallahos, by then all the crew and compliment of Pisces were long dead. The event set in motion a flurry of new and refined laws governing exploratory space travel, conditions for marking territory began, and at first, no exclusive press-conference on the First Contact Event at The Piscean Cemetery. Those close to the crew of the Pisces established an inquiry into the fate of their loved-ones.

This inquiry would shift the laws governing clandestine knowledge provision to civil mediators. And ultimately petition a second rescue and recovery mission to the Perseus Constellation. The threat of the Holcroids, not yet fully realised, would be seen as a general occupational hazard before the rescue ship departed. Debriefing prior to departure would be the mission’s undoing (as well as being a civilian managed operation, no military involvement authorised,) no information could be gleaned for the danger at hand. Six days later, the next vessel would depart Earth and head through a Gate to Sirius.
The rescue operation was to be split into two separate phases; the operation would ensure the safe return of the second ship and its compliment, and finishing construction of the new Relativity Gate in Sirius. The direct purpose of the rescue team would be to learn the fate of the original exploration mission. Nothing could go wrong. The planning for the mission seemed fool-proof; however, the rescue team would suffer nearly the same fate as that of the Pisces when it encountered the moon. Though the careful and timely crew made full use of landing shuttles to the moon’s surface, the small groups were ill-prepared for the Holcroid onslaught. The more nimble shuttle-craft allowed some survivors to escape back to their ship, living to tell of the horror they had witnessed and confirming the fate of the Pisces.

Phase two of the rescue operation was successful, phase one would only be partially successful. The relentless nature of Holcroids ensured that any human being who dared to set foot on their world, would either die, or escape traumatised by Holcroid efficiency in the art of death.

As soon as the failed rescue operation ended, and the team made their jump through the finished Gate back to Earth, they immediately petitioned for military mobilisation to answer the threat in Sirius. The shortened version of the vote read:
“If there is to be any further exploration of the Sirius System, let the Colonial Military do it, there is no telling what these things are capable of. We should take it to them, before they do to us.”

Three weeks later, the Colonial Military Sanction Regular Army would finally have justification to commence an expedition into Constellation Sirius.

The expedition into the Holcroid system, would unearth startling facts about the alien constructs. Though able to be damaged and destroyed on the battlefield, they are of a biomechanical origin. It would seem that nearly all Holcroid forms, bear similar attributes which enable them to evolve and adapt both physically and intellectually. The machine element of the alien serves to be the adaptable feature, able to refit, or reshape its components to suit the needs of situational defence or offence. The organic component, likely is the basis for adapting or evolving the literal intelligence of the race.

Theories have been put forward suggesting the Holcroids may have once been an entirely organic species, and created a vast civilisation long ago. Somewhere in time, they developed technologies that may have originally been designed to prolong their comparatively short lifespans. Scientists again, in sheer blunder (though not without understanding how fraught with danger such a notion is), decide to attempt capture of a live/operational Holcroid…

After numerous attempts to capture a specimen, and many lives paid for in blood, total failure. The Army conveniently decided to sideline the requests of its scientific attachés, instead focusing its efforts on finding other technologies utilised by the sleepless alien monstrosity. What began as small scale skirmishes began to escalate. At every turn, the Army would collect detailed information on the Holcroids, the enemy seemed extremely advanced technologically.

Several encounters in space with Holcroids would show to be harmful as well as intriguing. The aliens, have a means to bind themselves together, to form larger and more complex shapes. Indeed, with a coherency to make use of far more insidious technology of their devising. It proved damaging to the Fleet. Some ships suffered cataclysmic loss or were destroyed outright.

Huge clusters of Holcroids would collect strange pieces of machines previously unknown and assemble themselves around it to essentially become space-borne assault platforms complete with weapons and propulsion systems. The terms ‘Bio-Complex’ and ‘Metaclasm’ were coined to describe this kind of phenomena where Holcroids bind to make new forms with which to attack or defend. The general terms being definitions for any type of Holcroid construct that is not an individual unit or piece of technology.

The Holcroids have been observed closely by (though physically distanced) academic minds. They do exhibit varyingly extreme traits in that they are a merging of flesh and highly complex machine. As though a perverse prosthesis had occurred to curtail the entirety of the species, grafting the mono-singular to a chassis designed to enhance their existence.

This observation became catalogued and the subject of perpetual debate among theorists, one side suggests they could be the victims of a technological singularity. Perhaps they, in developing an artificial brain needed to control their cybernetic bodies, lead to such a brain achieving sapience of its own and dooming its creators to an eternity of lecherous servitude to it… This serves as the most likely theory.

Proof however, lies in examining the nature of the machine, versus the animated organic component.
For all the scientific reasoning currently at hand, or mountainous archives of collected data or recordings on Holcroid physiology, no one person can definitively claim that any of it serves to hand humanity an advantage.

Newer progressive studies hypothesise that the alien race has an exponential quanta for adapting to its environment, and the objects found in it. In the existential spectrum, Holcroids adapt more efficiently to combating human expansion and existence, the longer they are exposed to human behaviour or environments/situations constructed by them. Tactical outwitting is a recurring necessity among both species to secure victory, and the species that adapts its tactics fastest will undoubtedly win the skirmish.

The push by Man into the Perseus region ensured a preliminary victory. Opportunities frequently presented themselves to collect samples, data and documenting the Holcroid systemic entity. To describe the aliens as having any kind of ‘culture’ is not correct, it is simple mechanistic sophistication.

The threat of Holcroid retaliation still exists, with all of humanity hanging in the balance…