Chapter 22: Space Empress

Much time had passed since Belle had consumed her home solar system.

Top Zleetdek officials were currently entertaining two so-called “Brass Ambassadors” of Belle’s empire. The fancily dressed, four-armed, purple-skinned alien elites sat in their chairs as the two beings, who had simply teleported in, finished speaking.

Both were female in shape, adult-human in size though made entirely of brass. They looked different from one another, one having longer hair and the other short. Each looked like a living statue that clanked as its limbs moved with gesticulations, and their sculpted forms included the shapes of some old Earth clothes. One wore a suit and the other a short skirt, made of metal and molded into their forms, of course.

“So you see.”, said the one with shorter hair. “It is in your interest to submit at once. Otherwise, Belle herself will be forced to show up and she won’t be pleased with anything other than unconditional surrender.”

The longer haired brass woman spoke.

“Indeed, the future will be within her divine self, so it’s the sensible thing to do to. Just give in to the divine empress and your peoples’ journey into her body will be a more pleasant affair.”

Both the ambassadors bowed with respect.

The aliens banged their fists, outraged by this insolent demand. They had known of Belle’s Empire via rumors and credible energy signatures. They knew she was massive, but they were a civilization spanning a dozen planets in their star system. They would not be intimated.

“No.”, they said. “How dare you even suggest such a thing?! Guards, take them as prisoners at once!”

The guards moved in towards the “ambassadors”, but paused as the entire chamber lit up with warning lights. A message came over a spherical speaker nearby.

“Warning, a massive being has entered our territorial space. She’s larger than any planet, and scanners show made up almost entirely of metal: mostly a combination of copper and zinc. We believe it to be Belle.”

“All planets unleashed their defenses.”, shouted one of the Zleetdek officers.

The two brass women laughed, their bodies slowly shifting to nude ones, to identical shapes of a perfect human female form. They looked exactly like Belle did, in fact, only smaller.

“You idiots.”, they talked in unison. “I was already here. ‘Brass Ambassadors’? Please, as if I’d trust any consciousness but my own with diplomacy. I was merely testing you, to see if you had the good sense to surrender peacefully, even without faced so directly with your doom. You failed, and now I’m sure you’ll try to resist me, wasting energy on such a futile task when you could simply slide down my throat, no fuss, if only you’d cooperate.”

The guards readied to attack these bodies of Belle, but those bodies struck first. She made short work of the guards, tearing into them with strength and speed far exceeding what metal bodies that size should’ve been able to exert. Blue Zleetdek blood sprayed all over the room as they ripped the guards and soldiers in half.

The two bodies ran towards where the elite commanders sat. They morphed their hands into brass blades and spinning saws, and carved right into them.

Soldiers flooded the chamber and, with substantial firepower, managed to eventually disable the bodies. Still, they were aware though, and had killed all but one of the commanders in the room.

Their severed heads laughed.

“It doesn’t matter. These bodies, this matter, will be reclaimed and repurposed. Just as your entire species will be.”

With that, the view of the stars from the windows was occluded. Outside the mother-ship, Belle’s true and megalithic form had opened wide to ingest the ship. She swallowed it down, whole.

That done, Belle turned to face the planets before her. Even the largest was but a grape in scale. She smiled as they swarmed with start ships. Slits opened on her bare brass shoulders, and she sent forth her own vast armada, millions strong, to attack.

The steamtech spaceships were often piloted, as she had designed the controls to be not too dissimilar to those of the airships her forces were familiar with on Earth. Still, the Zleetdek forces had their own tech, and though it was inferior, they still got some lucky shots off.

Nevertheless, Belle was winning, as she always did.

Her massive body moved to the nearest planet, on which billions of Zleetdek’s ran about in a panic. Word had already gotten around they were under attack, and the entire sphere swarmed with space ships, shooting at Belle’s lips.

She simply parted her lips, stuck out her tongue, and tugged the comparative-grape-sized world inside. One swallow and it was gone: an entire world eaten.

It wasn’t her first.

Far away, unmanned steamtech spaceships of hers crashed into planets. They exploded into a swarm of minibots, which proceeded to fan over the various distant planets to facilitate her invasion. The spread like locusts, circumnavigating the globe at unfathomable speeds.

They then dug to the planet’s core, to begin construction of the terrifying and confusing energy harvesting mechanisms Belle placed on her victim planets.

Some minibots stayed behind though, billions actually, and they gathered up into one another, taking the shapes of Belle herself. They’d fuse into smaller bodies of hers, titanic, which would proceed to toy with the ground forces. They’d stomp resistance out under their feet, while digging into the cities and devouring matter both organic or not.

The starting sizes of the other bodies varied from hundreds of feet to miles in height, but the goals were the same. They’d devour as much as they can, grow, and eventually be reintegrated by Belle’s main form when it at last hovered over.

Belle moved from the first planet towards the last, gobbling up opposition along the way. She could generate suction with ease, and simply engulfed the swarms of spaceships sent to try and stop her between planets. Once actually reaching the worlds, she was pleased to see they were already almost entirely picked clean by her lesser bodies. She simply opened wide and took them in.

It wasn’t long till she was at the last planet the star system had to offer. She pinched it up between her fingers, admiring the brass energy harvesting structures her minibots had already built. She took it into her being.

“Ah.”, she said, talking over the communications means possessed by the scant few billions of Zleetdek spaceships which had still managed to evade her forces and her forms.

“It’d seem the only thing left your star system has to offer me is your star. A pity.”

She floated over towards it. In the process, her planet-ruining toes dashed through a battle between billions of Zleetdek ships and millions of her own forces. The action had plenty of friendly-fire on her side, but still tilted the conflict in her favor nonetheless.

The massive, red dwarf of a star was calling to her. She set her hands on the thing, and her minibots started to swarm the surface of it. It began to glow bright and vibrate as she prepared it for ‘processing’. Oddly enough, it began to shrink as she deliberately disrupted its ongoing fusion reaction.

Once small and dim, Belle took the star into her body, and then effortlessly finished off devouring what was left of the Zleetdek people.

Another star system, all hers.