Anoona assumed control of a modified Ani, which would conceive about five million children when she got to the moon.
She was fitted into her space suit, a sleek Bio-Metal, armoured article and promptly boarded the Royal Vessel and First-Class Spacecraft, The Black Feather.
It was a colossal ship, at twenty kilometres long and was shaped like its namesake.
It held two million of Anoona's children and was fitted with, among many smaller canons, eight Large Noetic Projectile Launcher children.
It had a dark, opalescent Bio-Metal sheen and countless, omnidirectional thrusters.
The reason why Anoona hadn't manifested a fuller version of herself was that she technically wouldn't be able to see through the eyes of her smaller self, since the moon was so far.
So she planned to leave the Ani on autopilot once she reached the moon, meaning her original body wouldn't really know what it was like to be on the moon, until some of the Ani's cells returned..
The captain of the Black Feather was none other than Splitter himself, who stood by Anoona's side.
His sword had been placed in one of the ship's hangar bays, and he stood poised as one of the elites among the Second-Generation Betas.
Anoona could feel, by the way he was focusing his Noetic Presence to a razor-thin barrier around himself, that he was trying to show her that he was just as capable as everyone else, which made her smile a little.
She leaned her head on him, prompting the warrior to gently place his hand on her shoulder as the ship rose.
She sent out a positive ping to all of her children as the massive ship rose into the clouds above.
She was genuinely excited and wanted to share that feeling with her offspring.
Monitoring the ship's systems were a dozen Thetas who sat behind various consoles on the deck.
These were bulbous Bio-Metal machines that the Thetas jacked into via silky threads that went from their left hands to the consoles.
There were only a handful of digital displays, but they weren't really necessary because of the Bio-Web, which directly sent important information into the minds of those who needed it.
Things like the consoles, however, were useful for when someone needed to make a decision on their own and were vital fail-safes for if the Bio-Web was ever unavailable.
Anoona needed to know that her children would be fine without her guidance or her presence, although she dreaded the possibility.
The ship continued to ascend, and the view from the visor steadily darkened as the blue skies faded to reveal the stars above.
Anoona's eyes widened, her oceans of cyan sparkling with the distant fires of the heavens.
The ship angled itself towards the moon, allowing Anoona to gaze upon the Earth's sister.
Pale and radiant.
A celestial body in its own right.
And yet... Barren.
It looked a little lonely.
Anoona was going to give it some adoptive children and even entertained the possibility of one day joining it in its cosmic grandeur.
This moment of reflection and thought was disturbed as Anoona's eye caught a glimpse of the Newman fleet that was half a million kilometres away.
Hunters, poachers, thieves in waiting.
A flicker or hatred graced Anoona's face, and she felt Splitter shiver a little, which made her sigh and rub his back.
That was one of the major disadvantages of the Bio-Web.
While her children could share in her joy, they were subject to her wrath, even if it wasn't directed at them.
She chose to drown out the chaos by listening to the soft hum of the QDEs and the contemporary thrusters.
They made the otherwise silent trip quite pleasant, a habit she had picked up when Rusteater and his boys were making a racket in the Repository of the main Hive.
She would tune into their sounds, and they brought her comfort.
The Black Feather eventually reached the moon, allowing Anoona to see the many deserted bases and settlements of the ancient past.
Mankind had harvested a modest amount of the moon's resources, but, counting the ruined or empty cities, there was plenty to collect from the Earth's cratered satellite.
The Anoonian vessel eventually landed near Menstra, the largest of the old lunar cities, and the Thetas immediately went to work.
Their adorable antlike selves were now clad in Bio-Metal armour and cute little helmets which protected them from the frigidness of the moon.
As strong as they and the Betas were, being too cold for too long would leave them brittle and broken.
The first step in the lunar assimilation was to set up Noetic Pylons that would obfuscate the sight of prying gazes.
These would be made mostly of Bio-Metal, which was easy enough to produce, and the Bio-Web would set up the Noetic Shield, using the combined Noetic Presence of all her lunar children.
Next up were the LNPLs, which were set up without issue, each of their mouths pointed at the distant fleet.
They were powered by the pre-assembled Fusion cores that Rusty had packed onto the Black Feather and were loaded with ten thousand rounds each, some of which had the same explosive power as a nuclear bomb, but had less range due to their increased size.
The Thetas went to work, expanding and assimilating the human settlements into military bases that doubled as spaceports.
A hive was also constructed, and this one was only five levels deep, measuring 35 meters.
The fourth and lowest level was the Hatchery, the third level was the Nursery, the second was the Armoury, and the first was the entrance to the base, which also acted as a Tram Station.
All this preparation was being done to deter any who approached, but sometimes, more overt means were required, and that's why Anoona was pleased to hear that one of Rusteater's designs was coming along smoothly.
He suggested that, if the conflict ever escalated, Anoona could eventually use the Kuiper Belt as a barrier filled with LNPLs.
This would undoubtedly help defend Anoona and her children, but would also condemn the LNPL children to an eternity of silence and loneliness.
As hard working as the Thetas were, they always took time to talk to each other, to laugh, to cry, to complain and to comfort each other.
Anoona shook those sad thoughts away and instead chose to focus on the task ahead.
For the first time in a little over a century, she was on egg duty again and now that conventional signals were being sent to and from the moon, she could speak with her Ani.
This particular body had eaten hundreds of thousands of kilograms of food, and her stomach now housed 5 million embryos.
The Thetas, like their slumbering older Gen 1 brothers, constructed the Bio-Gel cannisters, which their new siblings needed, and all the Ani had to do was deposit the embryos inside.
This would be too tedious to do one by one, so the Ani would spend the next month vomiting out the children and have her scouting cells carry them to their pods.
It was an incredibly painful process due to the sheer number of children that were clinging to her stomach lining.
The life cycle of most of Anoona's children began with one of her stomach cells changing into a single, undifferentiated cell. Anoona would then set its future state, and it would begin multiplying to form a zygote after gaining access to nutrients whenever Anoona ate.
It would rapidly consume every nutrient available to it, growing not in size, but complexity.
It was at this point that the cell stopped being a direct part of Anoona, sparking with a Noetic Signal that was wholly its own.
Determining its own path down the river of chronology.
While the Ani was throwing up, she thought about Prithvi and the truth she represented.
A docile baby queen who was never to bear children.
Prithvi had yet to say anything, even though she was almost three years old, but Anoona concluded that the old mother nature was never one for words.
That said, Anoona would keep her around for as long as she behaved.
She planned to see the end of all this with her.
It was the least she could do.
Ret, who had entered a state of hibernation, had been moved from the Black Feather to a sealed chamber in the lunar hive where she would rest until she was needed.
She was fed molten Carbonic Gel, which she metabolised, releasing tons of hot carbon dioxide, which was being put to use.
And the heat she was generating was being used to provide warmth to some of the eggs in the Hatchery.
All of this was overseen by Splitter, who had been promoted to the rank of Senior Sibling.
While Thunder had a very hands-on kind of leadership, Splitter allowed the Thetas to make decisions in his stead, offering advice and company only to those who needed it.
He said this was because every child was capable of leadership, and he didn't want to interfere in pipelines that those under him were diligently setting up.
He patiently watched as his siblings set up a complex of utilities that distributed water and other essential resources across the surface, and what couldn't be through then was carried by the surface-level Trams.
The Thetas were builders, so Splitter let them do what they did best.
Six months passed on the moon, and by then, the surface was home to a fully functional and independent colony with Anoonian ships coming and going to exchange resources.
It was also during this time that the Bio-Web detected movement in the Newman Fleet via telescopes and other sensors.
It looked like they were mobilising and preparing some sort of large-scale attack, and, according to data the Bio-Web intercepted, they were going to launch several nukes at the Earth and move in afterwards with two hundred First-Class ships.
They were apparently going to launch three hundred warheads at the moon's surface.
According to what Anoona had learnt via data that was gathered in the captured Newmen ships, these weapons weren't typically used in warfare due to their destructive capabilities. A few private and government actors had decided to unseal several of them with the hope of pushing the lunar Noetic Shields to their limits, which was a viable strategy not because Anoona couldn't block them from reaching the surface, but because of the fallout that would befall the moon if they detonated too close.
And that's where the LNPB children came in.
None of them had technically been tested yet, and so Anoona was waiting for the exact moment the distant ships cemented their guilt, listening closely to their communications and waiting.
The two hundred chosen ships eventually began moving, accelerating towards the moon and preparing their weapons.
Aboard were almost one hundred million Newmen, and each of them called for the death of Anoona and her children, which was more than enough for the mother of almost twenty billion.
She gave the order, and a fleet was immediately assembled.
It would consist of twenty-five First-Class ships, ten Second-Class vessels and five hundred Hawks.
After seeing what deplorable tactics the Newmen were willing to use during the bombardment of the Earth, Anoona was taking no chances. None of her children would board the enemy ships and would instead focus on disabling or destroying them.
Rusteater had fast-tracked the development of Short-Range ships called Bowerbirds, which would be tasked with safely retrieving any useful debris or secured enemy vessels.
Also, because he kept asking, Thunder had himself flown to the moon so that he could partake in the coming battle.
He argued that he could not allow any more of his siblings to face dangers that he had yet to experience himself.
He said that this would also give him the experience he'd need to better lead and be a better warrior, but everyone back on Earth rolled their eyes before shipping him to the moon, where he arrived with his legendary spear in hand.
"Watch closely, slumbering brother! Mother and the others are in safe hands!" He bellowed to the applause of thousands of Thetas and to the shame of Splitter, who shook his head.
He and Anoona stood behind Thunder's crowd of fans in the landing bay the warrior general had arrived in, letting him have his moment.
"My peaceful, quiet moon… ruined." Splitter shuddered, making his mother smile warmly, although her children could all sense her unease.
She didn't want to lose any of them in the coming battle.