The Clarion Encounter

The Clarions were a covert Thalerian research division specializing in unauthorized bio-experimentation, clandestine gene-splicing. The Intergalactic Committee had been tracking Clarions for months with no success until a secret spaceship was tracked down.

A report log from another IC Commander cued about Clarion's covert ops aboard a massive dreadnought. The report, however, was expensive. That IC ship was destroyed by Clarions. Nomad was briefed of the situationand awaited Eve's output. Eve opted for an immediate strike.

Fighters were out to get SoulDrifter, but Clarion pilots could not out perform Vayne's maneuvering. SoulDrifter finally landed into an open bay from where fighter jets were emerging. The team jumped out while the craft hovered. This time, Mira was also part of the mission, fully loaded and geared up. Although Mira had agreed to stay on Nomad, Eve couldn't talk herself out because Thelarians had once already succeeded in capturing Eve with the help of Mercs.

So this time Mira didn't want to take chances.

The Harbor Bay didn't take long to clear out. Then Eve kicked open the boarding ramp. Axel rolled in beside her, scanning displays red-hot. "Clear till intersection three." Mira stomped through the breach, flashbang in hand. "Pop and cover on my count—three, two…" The grenade detonated. Two Thalerian sentries tumbled from cover.

Jax and Axel were precision shooting Clarions in ambush.

Eve's steadily strode forward as her team followed, her pulse rifle barked. "One down, one on the left catwalk!" Hannah dropped on one knee, planting a deployable shield between the squad and a volley of plasma fire. She pressed buttons and a tri-barrier shimmered alive. "Shield up. We have breathing room." Jax fired from behind, hostiles dropped like flies.

A Clarion comm-looper hissed with static: "Reinforcements inbound in thirty." Eve slammed her boot on a sealed airlock. "We take it."

They charged in. Jax stormed the huge platform with heavy gunfire, bombs and launchers coming out of his massive Exosuit.

Eve swept forward, "Sweep the deck." Axel fell back, scanning for traps—infrared flickered, he pointed. "Left flank compromised." Eve twirled, meatheads in stealth armor pressing forward. She back-to-back with Mira; both emptied clip after clip until the corridor lay littered with bodies.

By the time they hit the lab access portal, gusts of bioluminescent mist curled around control panels. Eve keyed her wrist-pad. "Secure the area."

Axel peered through the small viewport. "Looks clean—no containment yet. We're in."

Eve's wrist interface showed a hologram of the exact lab facility they were standing in. The spy of the downed IC ship had successfully scanned the lab; he couldn't make it out alive. Other data on the hologram hinted at secret experiments deep within these corridors.

The squad spread out, sweeping passageways. No signs of biotech, no evidence of genetic tampering. Eve raised her scanner again and again, frustration curving at her lips. Axel murmured, "Nothing here." Mira shook her head. "They're hiding it."

They pushed deeper, sub‑corridors branching off like veins. Then they found it: a sealed lab, pods lining walls, mist swirling in the glass. Eleven human forms slumbered inside bio‑chambers, shards of circuitry tracing their limbs. Eve's heart lurched—each pod labeled: Eve‑C1, C2, C3… and so on. The labels read: "Incomplete. Inefficient." Clinical archives brutal and dehumanizing.

They were all clones. Eve's clones!

Sleeping behind the glass. Eve put her hand on one pod and it was like looking at a mirror.

Mira came from behind holding a data pad she just took from one of the shelves. She showed it to Eve.

"Commander, they are clones but they have feelings like you do, like a human does. These logs show they communicate with each other like sisters. And the video files… the procedures they have been put through… they were put under extreme mental and physical conditions so the powers within their genes could trigger. Clarions were trying to simulate your xenomorphesis. None except a few showed satisfactory results. I can't watch these videos."

A single moment stretched: Eve stepping forward, hand pressed to the cold glass. They looked like her—each clone, the exact versions of her own face, stolen DNA twisted into replicas. Her breath bloomed against the pod's surface.

"So when you rescued me, Thelarians already had a back up plan."

"They had your genes," Mira said in a worried voice.

Axel spoke on comms, "reading more datapads, Thelarians hit the same brick wall Dr. Salam faced. Dr. Kyle and Synthia's unbreakable security overlay. Your machine genes were fortified by Synthia. Dr. Kyle made the architecture further unreadable, and he also fortified your alien genes. Their findings say, there is some kind of spooky particle effect in work that resonated with the original Eve. It didn't matter where she was in the universe. The genes just hummed to her."

"The same way Eve's alien genes hum to the planets and species and give her expressive physical traits," Hannah spoke.

"Except that the resonation is the second layer, Clarions here were eating dust trying to decipher her the design of her machine architecture," Kai said, absorbed in an interface, hacking lab data.

"So the machine and alien genes talk to each other, and give each other a supportive layer. They react to each other in a constructive way," Axel commented.

"I would be fascinated to know what Dr. Salam thinks about it," Eve said, thinking of the only person who gets to use her genes as his playground. The she said in a saddened voice, "I am the reason they are suffering from this fate."

"We even don't know if your genetic make up was successfully and fully inherited into them. Even if wasn't for resonance they had no chance at expression without incomplete genetic synchrony," Mira placed a hand on Eve's shoulder, as she continued to stare at her own face inside the sleeping pod.

"We have to get them out. Wake them up," Eve told Mira.

"On it," Axel said and started operating on the Clarion interface.

Kai, who was reading the lab's virtual framework, suddenly screamed, "Wait!!"

Then the alarm screamed.

Red lights battered the lab. Speakers crackled: "Foreign presence detected. Self‑ destroy in three… two…" Panic bloomed. Axel yanked out breaching tools, sparks arcing as they tore seals. Eve worked furiously at the closest pod, fingers slippery. Mira shouted, "We can't break them open in time!"

"The lab was designed this way, there is no way in," Kai said with exhausted energy as continued to hammer one of the pods with a metal bar.

The pods hissed. Sequence lines glowed red. The clones were waking up. The one Eve stood closest to opened her eyes. She looked at Eve wide eyed first, overwhelmed, dumbfounded. But then she smiled with tearful eyes.

"Just hold on," Eve pleaded, voice breaking. Off-white smoke swirled inside each pod, the clones' eyes flicking open in terror. They pressed their hands against the glass pleading to Eve and her team, banging their fists against the glass in pain and horror as they coughed with difficult breathing.

"The gas is mixed with some kind of life tissue degenerating nanobot virus. It's eating their cells down to their DNA," Kai explained breathlessly as he continued pounding on the glass powerlessly.

Self‑ destruction sequence hit zero.

A massive injection of gas hissed inside. The bodies in the pods began to degenerate like a high-speed timelapse of a rotting cadaver.

Eve clones collapsed in silence, skin peeled away, circuitry frying. Eve fell to her knees, she couldn't help the tears, as squad members watched with sorrowful eyes.

The flesh melted away into small fibres and then into ash. No one moved, the smoke choked them in numbed reverence.

Squad retreated—Axel and Mira dragging Eve into the hallway as the ship's engines began a violent roar, warning of imminent implosion. Behind them, the lab incinerated.

They evacuated. SoulDrifter zoomed out of the blast radius. Eve's breath came in ragged gasps as the ship splintered behind them, shards scattering into the void. The explosion blossomed—a funeral blossom against darkness.

Eve was broken, "We have to act… against the Thalerians." The squad remained silent. As the aftermath settled, Eve's resolve hardened. She stared at the remnants: genetic monstrosities born from her own flesh.

Later Mira logged in the command console the full report. The report also highlighted that Thelarians' attempt to create a controllable army of Eve clones could raise the single most formidable threat in the universe. Mira also had a holographic meeting with IC's governing body.

An argument was posed about the containment of Eve. Mira strongly negated that solution wasn't containing Eve, it was taking on Thelarian threat once in for all. Mira had extensive info on the Intergalactic Committee's past misadventures and she quoted them as perfect icebreakers.

Besides, the governing members were well aware that the committee would better take their chances with Thelarians than Eve. Not just because she was daughter of Andromeda and multiplanetary Queen, but because she was worth fearing as an enemy. Besides, they had pursued the second option long enough in vain. Before Saiyarans embraced her, not just the Intergalactic Committee, Thelarians but many other organizations had huge bounties on her head. She prevailed on them all alone in a time when she was isolated, dissociative, unsocial, and unaware of her Xenomorphic powers. A new born nascent, untaught and untrained Eve out-maneuvered the entire universe with law and lawless powers combined. She survived, outlived, and prospered. Now, the IC wouldn't dare put a finger on her knowing what people of Andromeda had done in order to find her when she disappeared for just eight years.

Mira could feel it—the hesitation. The Committee's distrust toward Eve lingered like a stain on the air.

Mira stood tall, voice calm but edged with steel.

"With all due respect," she said, eyes sweeping the chamber, "she is not some rogue to be questioned. She is not the outlaw Eve. This is my queen you're speaking of—and the people of Andromeda will bleed before they let harm come to her."

Then, without another word, her hologram turned, and disappeared mid-stride, leaving behind a silence heavier than war.

Committee Members muttered among them.

"Such Arrogance."

"Saiyaras must learn their place."

"Mira stood before us then pleading, begging for Eve's rescue"

"Nomad must be decommissioned."

"Eve is a greater threat than Thelarians."

"We must throw Eve into the dark galaxy and eliminate her if she walks out.'

"We can't create a diplomatic crisis."

"It is because of Eve Andromeda has a seat at IC."

"Eve is an asset."

"Eve is a liability."

"It is true, IC can't directly challenge Eve."

"Then we must put pressure on Andromedans. She threatens the entire Galaxy."

"Her genes are unbreakable. Eve Dr. Kyle Sephalis couldn't fully unravel them."

"That traitor!!"

"He made Eve a weapon to disrupt the IC's hold in the universe."

"The IC is not in position to denominate Nomad, nor do we have reasonable evidence."

"Her DNA can be obtained. It cannot be decoded."

"Then we play Eve by human game."

"Send a message to Nomad and Andromeda."

"No. Send a message to Eve. Make sure only Eve gets it."